To succeed as a maker, you have to be good at much more than making. Across the country, craft organizations are addressing that need with programming designed to help craft artists gain the business skills that will help them thrive in today’s market. Entrepreneur’s Workshop: Craft Your Commerce, a pilot program by the Center for Craft, Creativity & Design, the University of North Carolina at Asheville, and Mountain BizWorks, aims to do just that.

Affordable workshops offer advice on marketing, photography, storytelling, and how to sustainably grow a creative business. An additional five-week course helps makers integrate those lessons into their business plans, reflect on current challenges, and identify opportunities for expansion. Although the series is led by experts in the field, peer-to-peer learning is also emphasized. 

"Workshops like this are so important,” says Regina Connell, former director of communications at Heath Ceramics. “I like to think about business as sharing your work with the world. If you’re proud of it, care about it, and want to make a living doing it, then you have to pay attention to it.”

She taught the inaugural workshop, which focused on marketing positioning. Asheville makers can still partake in the two remaining workshops offered this March. They can sign up for Alpine Cohort for Makers, a five-week course that runs from April 26 – May 24. Workshops scholarships are available for UNC–Asheville students. 

Connell notes that there has been a real hunger within the craft community to learn about business and marketing. The key to success, she says, is finding a way to tailor lessons from the broader business world to their needs. “It’s so important for creators to find the way to make their businesses work in their unique ways,” she says. “This is the creative community, after all. Get creative!”