Make a living from your passion
Put your hand up if you know a creative who earns less than minimum wage. Put your other hand up if you're making less than minimum wage!
I've had a long career in the financial sector, and the last few years I've put my skills to use at a charity. Now I'm looking for a change. I've spent the last eighteen months researching how to start a prosperous creative business. I've used my knowledge to take the best advice to give myself the best chance of success. I'll cover some of the ideas I'm implementing in this blog, I'm already seeing great results.
Where to start
You need to approach your art as a business from now on. This might frighten you - but I promise it's not as daunting as it sounds. I had a hang-up to start with, I thought turning my passion into a business would stop me enjoying it. I was wrong. Turns out I actually dig selling myself to others too. If that resonates with you, I'd suggest putting your doubts aside and find out for yourself.
You can't do this overnight. You need to gradually build your business, it will eventually snowball and gain momentum. But there's a lot of hard work and learning involved before things come together.
"You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with." – Jim Rohn
Find your crowd. Who are the people local to you that already do what you're working on? Reach out to them, ask if you can do anything to help the community. Find out how things work. BUT be careful who you take advice from - the things that work for them might not fit your business.
Niche down
There's no room for average in creative markets. Understand and work on your weaknesses and lean into your strengths. Don't dilute your personally. Tell people why you do this work, why you're different from your competitors, why you're a part of it; not apart from it. Remember, you're looking for your customer. Deterring people who aren't your customer will save precious time for both of you.
How do you price your work?
Some people mess up their pricing, particularly while they're starting out. You can fall into that trap too if you simply earn, and cut your cloth accordingly. That's a mug's game and a quick way to fail in business.
If this will be your primary income, you need to earn enough to support yourself. This is how you work it out your prices in four steps.
Add up all your personal outgoings. Log on to your online banking, and methodically write down and categorise ALL your outgoings over the last twelve months; accommodation, food and drink, utilities, clothes, entertainment, gifts, EVERYTHING!
Now add twelve months of estimated business costs. Include the cost of materials, advertising, banking, accountant, tax, insurance, website, and other business running costs. If you're not sure, reach out to one of your new friends. People can be surprisingly open and keen to help.
Add your personal outgoings and business costs together. This is your gross income, the minimum amount you need to earn every year.
Finally, divide your minimum gross income by the number of sales you predict you'll make in 12 months. The answer is the price you should charge.
Here's a quick example to illustrate
I need to gross £40k or more to be comfortable.
I predict I'll make 100 sales in the next 12 months.
So I must charge a minimum of £400 per sale.
Got it? How much do you need to charge?
Now is the time to be brutally honest with yourself. While you aren't trying to sell this to everyone, you still need to make some sales. Is your work worth that amount to at least enough people over 12 months? If not, this will have to be a side hustle until something changes.
Cash rules everything around me
Treating your art as a business can a lot of fun. However, getting people to see the value in your work can be emotionally draining.
Many potential clients don't realise the amount of time and effort you invest in your work. Sometimes showing clients behind the curtain can be a quick fix. Other times you might need to work harder to sell an idea. Adding value doesn't have to mean giving more away. Tell them what they'll get from investing in your work. Tell them your 'why'.
Constant improvement
There are almost endless ways you can strengthen or trim parts of your business to get more value. The value isn't always money - it could be time back in your day, or experiences that you'd never thought you'd have. It's almost an art in itself. But beware - you can have too much of a good thing if you forget your 'why'. Turning your workday into a kind of perpetual hangover.
Tim O'Reilly said "Money is like gas on a road trip. You don't want to run out of gas on your trip, but you're not a tour of gas stations."
Keep Tim's words in mind on your adventure. Making money is a careful balance of work and play.
Focus on the strengths of your business and fix what's holding you back.
The things you need to fix will be different depending on your situation. But as an example, you might need to do a better job at connecting with your target audience. Consider how you would do this if you had all the resources in the world, then slowly scale that plan back until it's something achievable. You'll be surprised how close you can get with limited resources.
Weather the storms
Keep aside enough to see you through more challenging times. This seems even more poignant today, as I'm writing this a couple of months into the UK's COVID-19 lockdown. Many self-employed people have been living day-to-day, reliant on hand-outs and loans, their livelihoods at serious risk. And if you think about it, there are plenty of scenarios in a healthy environment where no-one will step in to help you. Work can dry up for any number of reasons, you can get ill or need to care for someone, it's endless. Life has a way of testing you in the seemingly unsurprising ways you're entirely unequipped for.
A life' a work
Strangers paying you for your passion is very fulfilling. I'm only at the start of my creative career and still have a lot to learn. There will be incredible days, there will be shot days. But I will hold on to that sense of fulfilment every time money changes hands.
How about you?
What's the biggest lesson you've learned you wish you'd figured out earlier?
