Before you start a creative business...
The Calm Creative Business School, part 1
Welcome to the Calm Creative Business School - a 6-part series on how to start, and grow, a creative business. This series is for paying subscribers of The Calm Creative only, but read on for a free preview.
Disclaimer: I'm not a business expert. I'm just a fellow creative solopreneur who's been making a living on my creative skills for over a decade, read an embarrassing amount of business and marketing books, and learned the hard way what works and doesn't work. Use this as inspiration, not objective fact. 😊
Welcome to the first part of my series about (calm) creative business building. My aim is to summarize all of my best learnings and insights about running a creative business, in logical order, as a kind of roadmap to follow when starting your own creative business.
I will especially have artists and writers in mind (since that's where a lot of my own experience lies), but most of what I say will be just as applicable for musicians, performers, film makers, creative freelancers such as photographers and illustrators, and craftspeople of different kinds. Anyone who wants to build a business around one or more creative skills, either by selling the products or services they offer, or teaching their skills to others.
Let's start from the very beginning, when this business of yours is still on the embryonic stage.
Maybe you're still in school. Or your creative practice is your hobby, or something you do therapeutically. It lights you up, feels deeply meaningful, and you often think to yourself: "I could do this all day, every day..." Maybe you've gotten compliments for your work, with the addition of "you should do this for a living". Maybe you've even sold some of your work already. But the step to actually start a business around it both excites and terrifies you.
Spoiler alert: those two words kind of summarize the whole experience of running a creative business. Terror and excitement in one, big, glorious roller coaster ride. It's not for everyone, but if you're reading this, I'm assuming there's at least some part of you that craves that in your life. I've always thrived on the dizzying freedom, empowering independence, and limitless possibilities of entrepreneurship. And even though I sometimes lament choosing this way of life, and fantasize about regular paychecks and benefits, I would choose it over a more stable, predictable career any day.
You don't have to be a risk taker to start a business, though. You don't have to be an extroverted, high-energy, type-A person. You don't have to be the best at what you do. But you do have to be comfortable with insecurity, unpredictability, and relying on yourself to figure things out and get things done.
As long as you have those qualities, I believe you can overcome any hardship that running a business will bring.
Still, there are some things worth thinking about before taking the plunge and starting a creative business.
The first one is...
Should this creative passion of yours even be a business?
This perspective is so often missing from the general discussion around entrepreneurship today, which is all about "follow your passion", and "make a living doing what you love." I certainly was steeped in that advice in my twenties, when I entered the job market. I read books like Gary Vaynerchuk's "Crush It!" and Chris Guillebeau's "$100 Start-Up". I listened to all of the online marketing and entrepreneurship podcasts. The overall message was: "If you're good at something, and love doing it, you should start a business around it."
And so I did. I loved writing, and so I started blogs, wrote for magazines, and freelanced as a copywriter. It worked well for me. I was confident enough in my abilities, and had a process for producing text that I could rely on. I learned how to write even when I didn't feel like it, and deliver under pressure. I did the same with web design - a skill I had acquired on my own, out of necessity. But when I tried running an art business, and monetizing my love for painting, it did not go as smoothly. Art was something I discovered while recovering from burnout, a therapeutic practice that gave me a break from the hustle mindset that permeated everything else I had been doing up to that point. I loved painting because it didn't make demands on me. It felt like a sanctuary. And even though my logic at the time was "I love doing this, I want to do it full-time", the reality of that turned out to be quite different.