Starving Artist No More

Over and over again, in my work as a creative entrepreneurship coach, I hear some variation of the question, “but what if it doesn’t work?” Fear is a natural part of trying anything new, and for most artists and makers and creatives, focusing on the business side of their creative enterprise is indeed a new thing. Much of what we do as creative entrepreneurs is objectively hard! But if we never tr...

Figuring out your strategy to make your creative business work is much easier said than done. You might think you know how things work in your creative industry, and you might be doing all the things that should be the right things, and yet nothing is working for you. Perhaps you even see things working out for one of your creative colleagues, but it’s just not happening for you. When you feel lik...

I’ve said before that your beliefs about what is possible for you and your business will be the limiting factor in how your business grows, which is absolutely true. But your beliefs about the possibilities available to you and your business do more than impact your big picture. Those beliefs touch every part of what you do, from that big 10,000 foot view all the way down to the email you write wh...

The life of a creative entrepreneur is a busy one. There is a lot on your plate on any given day! You need to do the creative, artistic work that your business is built on. But you also need to reply to emails, manage your marketing, handle your business finances, and deal with project management tasks. Like I said, it’s a lot! In that mess of tasks in front of you, how do you figure out what is m...

The life of a creative solopreneur is one of constantly being pulled in two different directions. Direction 1: the creative stuff! The reason you’re a creative entrepreneur in the first place! This is the creative, artistic, innovative, unique work that you do and that brings you joy and fulfillment and that fills your soul. Direction 2: the administrative necessities of running a business. The em...

What habits do you have? What are the things that you do automatically, on a regular basis? When we talk about habits, often the first place we think of is at  bad   habits we have – smoking, doomscrolling social media, staying up too late. But today, I want to talk about  good   habits. Epictetus, a Roman Stoic philosopher, wrote that “if you want to do something, make a habit...

In almost every artistic training program the world over, regardless of the specific creative discipline, the pursuit of perfection is a driving factor in the training. I spent hours in the practice room during my conservatory training practicing the same passages over and over to get closer to that ever-elusive “perfect” ideal. Lessons and masterclasses were fine-tuned examinations of the details...

I have a bit of a controversial thought to share: Hustling isn't a good thing. Allow me to explain why I say that. Hustling is all about working harder than everyone else and doing everything imaginable to get the job or gig or project or whatever. It's about sacrificing everything else on the altar of getting ahead. Hustling is what the "starving artist" mindset is all about, and you all know tha...

This episode is originally being released on July 3, 2023, meaning that as I’m recording this, it’s the midpoint of the calendar year. Recently, on The Half Marathoner substack  (which is an awesome newsletter if you’re a runner, like me), Terrell Johnson wrote, "This time of the year … has always felt like second base to me. As if you’re on a baseball diamond, running the bases, and you’re a...

Funny story. I’ve had this topic, being a good boss, on my list of upcoming podcast episodes for  months . Literally. For week after week after week, I’ve had this episode marked down as the next episode I was going to write and record for this podcast. And I kept pushing it back. I kept saying to myself, “No, I want to talk about this other thing this week. This other topic is more on my min...

The life of a creative entrepreneur is one of gig work. I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase, “gig economy.” For workers in many industry, this gig economy is a totally new thing. In decades past, engineers and computer programmers used to always work as employees of a company. They didn’t have to jump from project to project on their own. My grandfather worked for the same textile manufacturing compa...

The feast or famine cycle is a vicious thing. If you’re not familiar with that term, “feast or famine” refers to the awful roller-coaster-like situation when your business vacillates between months with tons of work, and tons of income, to months with almost no work and almost no income. There’s no doubt about it: riding the feast or famine roller coaster is an awful place to be. But you, my dear...

The feast or famine cycle is the bane of every creative business and every creative entrepreneur I know. “Feast or famine cycle” refers to the stomach-dropping ride that you experience when your business flip flops from months with so much work you can’t handle it and stress out like crazy (even if the resulting payday is pretty nice) – these are the feast months – and then careens down into month...

Do you have any friends or colleagues who just seem lucky ? Who appear to have great opportunities fall in their lap all the time? I know that, from the outside looking in, it can sometimes seem like other people have all the luck! Well, I’m here to tell you, my friend, that the appearance of luck is just that: an appearance. It doesn’t match reality. Behind the scenes of that other creative’s car...

Imposter syndrome. I’ll bet that you have a visceral reaction just to hearing me say those two words. Every creative that I’ve ever known has dealt with imposter syndrome at some point during their artistic career. Imposter syndrome is virtually impossible to avoid. But it’s not impossible to overcome. You are not helpless in the face of your imposter feelings. You can take steps to hit the mute b...

If you could go back to the very beginning of your journey as a creative entrepreneur, what would you tell yourself? What pieces of advice would have made your journey to this point a little smoother if someone had whispered them in your ear at that early stage in your career? Or, what pieces of advice were whispered in your ear, but you ignored them and learned the hard way, and now you wish you’...

One of the most common pieces of advice that business coaches give entrepreneurs is to outsource. A lot of discussion in the world of entrepreneurial coaching deals with how to build a team around you, how to delegate tasks to employees or contractors, how to work as a leader within that team. This is all excellent advice for entrepreneurs in more traditional fields, but what about artists? What a...

Our culture tells us we need to hustle and go! Work work work, busy all the time. That’s what we’re supposed to do right? That’s what we’re supposed to be. And I don’t want to deny that there are elements of that mental framework that are helpful. If you’re a self-employed working artist, like most of the people who listen to this podcast are, then you do have a lot on your plate. Being a solopren...

How do you use your time? During your work days, are you efficient and focused with your time? Time is one of our most precious and most finite resources. As artist business owners who sell our time and creativity energy, time is incredibly valuable to us. So how can you use your time effectively? Are there strategies that can help you get more done, without adding stress and overwhelm to your cre...

When you’re thinking about what you want out of your creative work, the ways in which you want to grow your artistic business, how do you figure out your strategy to get there? How do you figure out exactly what your goals should be? What goes into formulating a business strategy that will actually help and guide you, rather than one that will set on a shelf in your office, or languish in an unope...

Goals and goal-setting are sometimes really hard for creatives. I work with a lot of artists who struggle to set goals within their creative work. They want the freedom to pursue any project that strikes their fancy, and they’re afraid that establishing a formal business plan or writing set of strategic goals within their business will keep them from accepting work they would enjoy. Or sometimes I...

What can you control in your business? You may hear me ask that question and have an instant, knee-jerk reaction. “I’m a solopreneur. I do everything in my creative business. I control it all!” Or maybe you have some people working with you, but you’re still the driving force behind your business, so your reaction is more along the lines of, “I may not have my hands in every single project at ever...

What are the components that make up a thriving creative business? If you listen to business coaches who are working and teaching in the non-creative business spaces, you’ll frequently hear discussions about the components of a successful business, things like providing value to customers, hiring great employees, understanding the market, employing sound financial management, et cetera et cetera....

If you could do anything, if you had no limits whatsoever, what would you do? Where would you go? How would you grow? If the impossible became possible, what would you be just so incredibly excited to create? Perhaps, as I was asking you those questions, you journeyed with me on my little thought experiment and allowed yourself to dream. Or perhaps you resisted. “I do have limits,” you might have...

Do you know where your creative business is going? Do you know the things you want to achieve and do and create in your business in the coming year? If you do know where you want your business to go, have you taken the time to make those goals concrete and specific? Knowing where we’re going in our creative work has a lot of advantages, and in today’s episode we’re going to talk about why it’s so...