One day, while making a list of things I needed to do to keep my art licensing business alive and growing I shook my head and thought to myself, "This is like running a circus!" There are so many pieces to coordinate simultaneously, seemingly independent actions that all work together to turn a hobby or passion into a profitable business.
The concept kept festering and I started to look more closely at the analogy.
Here are four similarities between art licensing and the circus:

1. The Big Top - The main attractions happen under the Big Top and this is why people come to the circus in the first place.
   So the Big Top represents your art.
   Just as with the circus, this is where most of your energy is spent because if you don't have a main event, or art, you don't have a show, or business.
   
2. The Clown Car - The little car that would have clown after clown climb out was always my favorite part of the circus.
   How did they all fit in there? Well to compare the Clown Car to your art business, you are the car and the clowns are your art.
   To succeed in licensing you need to keep creating art over and over and over...
   this is an industry where quantity as well as quality, is very important.
   
3. The Advance - In circus lingo, the "advance" are teams of employees who travel ahead of the circus route to put up posters and arrange for advertising, usually arriving in each town four weeks, two weeks and one week before the show.
   So for you, this is your agent if you have one, or your marketing efforts, either done by you or a team.
   In art licensing as in the circus, no one will know you have "the Greatest Art for Licensing" if you don't tell them about it!
4. Alfalfa - This is what circus folks call paper money.
   So the Alfalfa of art licensing is in the form of royalty checks.
   When products sell that feature your art, you receive a percentage of sales.
   May you have more alfalfa than you know what to do with!

As long as you don't have a fear of clowns, perhaps this analogy will make you smile the next time you sit down to create your art and see clowns piling out of a little car holding your images.
If you are going to spend your time, you might as well have fun while you do it!