As an artist specialized in multiple mediums, I Brandon Neely (owner and founder of Artistic Odysseys) grew up as a child enjoying art, finding passion and a love for learning as the creative process brightened my views of life and my place in this world. However, as I grew older and explored my options, becoming a professional artist seemed a pipe dream; a cautionary tale to the working class; and a guarantee into poverty.
We all know the common proverb of “struggling like a starving artist” and it is an all too real situation for many people who have developed their craft. That is where we at Artistic Odysseys aim to redirect the narrative.
For years, I re-evaluated my dreams and tried to find inspiration, fulfillment, and passion in other professions. But ultimately to no avail, my heart had already chosen the path it wished to walk. After many years pursueing a career in the culinary industry. I found my mind always coming back to art and what it meant to me. I started asking myself questions, such as: why is it so difficult to become a professional? What makes it so risk aversive? and what makes it unsustainable to pursue as a career?
With these questions in mind and ecouragement from friends and family, I went back to school and decided instead of educating myself on art, to try a different approach, that of business. For years I studied modern marketing and laws, accounting and management, among many other aspects of business. and once I graduated, I aimed to build this company, in the hopes that I could find the answers I sought for artists like myself.
On April 2nd of 2023 the LLC was formed and the journey to start searching for answers had begun. The plan was for the first year of operation to begin developing growth strategies, SOP’s to document processes and a firm understanding of all the roles that interplay within a business especially while overhead costs were minimal. This allowed us time to truly learn the fundamental elements of each key position in an organization and break that information down to minor roles that a single individual can perform. This reverse engineering of roles is key to our business model for we realized that one main issue in the art industry was the lack of practices and standardization. With a million ways to sell something and a multitude of ways to price things among several platforms, the options to develop and operate a business have grown exponentially. But so too has the void of information on the internet telling people how to get started and where to begin.
With this realization, we came to understand that the best approach would not be to form rigid conformitive practices, but rather to develop an adaptive and customized framework around the artist and the practices that they currently specialize in. While we identified inconsistency being a key issue in the industry we also took into account that inherent risk and growth opportunities arose from the multitude of options that branched from all of the available income streams.
Fast forward to now in 2025, we have studied many industry leaders, interviewed local businesses and interviewed local artists to start developing comprehensive processes to begin helping others. The last steps for planning and scaling growth for the owner’s artwork are being implemented and now we are meeting with artists to begin discussing ways that we can begin assisting them. At this point you may be wondering, what is our true goal in all this then?
Our Mission:
“To assist artists in developing their careers, to teach key business practices and provide direction for professional development. As well as to foster a sense of community and comradery among creatives”
So if you or someone you know is a creative…
Please feel free to reach out, We would honestly love to have a conversation with you. Whether it’s simply to hear your story and to learn about you. Or whether you feel like it’s the time to take the next step in your creative journey.