Marketing Mondays: What Would You Tell This Young Man?

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Here's a snippet of conversation that Loren Munk, the artist, had with his wife, Kate, which he posted on Facebook recently and which I repost with his permission.
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 "A young family friend, estranged from his  mom, talked with me for hours. I told Kate, "I think his problem is, he wants to come  out..."

Kate says, " That's great. I'm so glad."

I finish, "... as an artist".

She says, "Oh dear God, not that."

Joking (I think) Munk adds, "An intervention might be the only way to save this youngster from a life of tragic desperation."

It's like one of those New Yorker jokes that cuts to the bone. Funny. And then you realize you're bleeding..

When I was lecturing in the early aughts, mostly to senior-year B.F.A. candidates or grad students, I used to say, "You're going to start out at the bottom of the pile, but this is a robust economy and you have nowhere to go but up." Indeed, the art fairs were going great guns, galleries were selling well, and even artists selling out of Open Studios were pulling more than enough to pay the rent. 
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Of course all that changed in October 2008 when the economy came crashing down. Art sales disappeared overnight. So did many galleries. While blue-chip artists and galleries are back to doing OK, they are the one percent. Most of us--artists and dealers--have our shoulder to the wheel. "Breaking even" is the new "profit" these days.

(The image that opens the post is from, surprisingly, a campaign for the College of Creative Studies in Detroit. There's more of the campaign here.)

So here's my question to you:
Knowing what you know about rejection, about the difficulty of earning a living, about working endless hours for small wages. And knowing what you know about the economy now, what would you tell this young man? Go for it? Find another line of work? Do it but have "something to fall back on"? Marry rich? Make your peace with poverty?

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