How I’m Building A Creative Business In My Own Slow Living Way
My creative work is a source of joy, calm and fulfillment in my life. As I build a creative business, I don’t ever want to lose that. I don’t want to fall trap to the idea that business has to be fast and hustly, or that a job needs to be hard and stressful.
Instead, I’m choosing a different way, one I call my own slow living way. I’m still in the beginning of my journey, just a little over three months in, but these first few months have really forced me to get clear on my values and define how I want to move forward in building my business. And that’s what I’m going to share today.
Beginning as you want to go on
Earlier this year, I shared how I struggled with fear of failure in my first month of business. It made me very focused on the end result of having an established business, made me anxious and stressed trying to make that happen as fast as possible. After a few weeks of this, I got honest with myself and decided that wasn’t the way I wanted to grow a business.
I think many of us have an idea about the start of a business being a time for hard work, that you can ripe the fruits of later. That might be true if you’re financially dependent on the business from the get go, and have to kick start everything very fast. But most of us starting creative businesses can do so on a small scale and at a slow pace, on the side of a day job.
If you don’t want a business that is a constant source of stress, don’t begin that way. The risk with starting out with a hustle is that you build a business that demands you to keep working that way, and the day of slowing down just gets pushed further and further into the future.
Growing slowly
I made the conscious decision to grow my business in a slow way in early March. By mid-March the coronavirus and global lockdowns were reality, and fast growth was made pretty much impossible anyway. Good riddance, I suppose.
Taking a big leap, quitting my job and hoping a brand new business would catch me was never very tempting for me. I’m not in the financial situation to be willing to take that kind of risk, neither do I have the mental constitution for it. I’d probably break down under the pressure and my business with me.
Instead, my hope is to grow my business in a slow transition. These first six months, I’m building it alongside a full time job, and from September on I will go down to working four days a week. When me and my business are ready for it, I’ll transition further.
The perk of growing slow, I believe, is that you’re building something sturdier and more well-aligned. When you build your business over a longer time, you have more space to reflect and tweak as you go, figuring out what kind of business you really want. You don’t have that stress of having to try everything and sticking with whatever works, but can create more mindfully and intentionally. You also have longer to build strong relationships with the people you’re creating for, making it more likely they’ll stick around.
Slow creative days
Growing at a slow pace is one thing, but you can still spend your days stressed out and anxious. Over the past four years of doing creative work mainly in my weekends, I’ve found a slow pace that suits me. I’m not changing that pace just because I’m building a business, but I’m changing what I’m spending my time on and how I’m prioritising.
My creative days are a blend of creative work and living slowly. As I don’t try to push everything to happen as fast as possible, it’s less important exactly what I do when. I don’t cram my weekend to the bursting with different tasks but make sure there’s plenty of space for going slow and embracing slow living activities too.
I won’t burn myself out trying to launch workbooks or workshops as fast as possible, but instead create them in the way I enjoy best - slowly with space for reflection and tinkering, making them more well made and longer lasting. Likewise, I won’t take on more clients than I can handle, if that day comes.
Listening to myself
When I started my business a little over three months ago, I went into it with the mindset that I would have to rethink everything I do in my creative life. It was probably good, because it opened me up for learning and reflecting. But as I’m settling into my business a bit more, I’m also realising that I have to trust myself if I’m going to build it in my own way.
I have shared my writing and ideas online for over four years now, and though the selling aspect is new, I know a lot about what I enjoy most creating, what I’m good at and what my right people respond to. That’s valuable knowledge for any creator. Yet for a while, I disregarded all that, thinking I had to become someone new to earn my place in the creative business world.
Specifically, I thought I had to become more how-to and write less about my own journey. It’s an old worry, that the softer, more complex ideas have less value than the clear how-to ones. Typing it out makes me frown at myself, because it’s really not something I believe. But it’s one of those ideas I picked up along the way that surfaced again when I felt the pressure of putting a price tag on what I create.
Now I’m learning to trust myself as I build my creative business. To trust that though I have much to learn, I know my business best. To follow my intuition and value what I already know. To trust in my own slow living way.
Because I don’t just want to build any business, I want to slowly bring to life one that I love.
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