Establishing A New Balance As A Part-Time Business Owner And Full-Time Creative
What does a balanced creative life look like? How do you know you’re out of balance, and how do you know when the time has come for a change? It’s a question I’ve pondered this summer, after a spring ending in worry, stress and the realisation that I had hit my messy middle.
The truth, I suppose, is that there is no one signal to tell your creative life is out of balance. Instead, it’s the many small signs you need to look for. When the little frustrations and worries that on their own are acceptable pile up to something larger, a consistent trend, that’s when you need to look out.
When the same issue keeps popping up, when one problem is overshadowing everything else. When only one part gets attention, another gets neglected. When you’re always trying to figure out the balance, yet always failing. Those are the signs of a creative life out of balance. And my signs were there.
Facing reality
When spring ended, I knew I had entered a new phase in my creative business journey. One year had passed since I went full-time with it, and I had been through both successes and setbacks. I had experimented, tried, planned and winged it. I had figured out the work I wanted to do, understood what didn’t work, and I had put on my big girl business pants and looked at what it would take to make my business sustainable.
My first 6 months as self-employed, I was still high on the change. I was revelling in being in charge of my own time, I loved the creative freedom and couldn’t imagine wanting another job. I was seeing things through rose-tinted glasses, and the following 6 months would slowly wear that tint off. By the end of spring, I was seeing things clearly. I saw the joy, but I also saw how the worry about money was wearing on me. I saw the persistent low level stress, I saw the amount of time it would take to get my business stable and sustainable.
There is a myth in our online world that businesses are built quickly and easily. People (well, business coaches wanting to sell their services) throw around stories about making three times their former income after three months. Maybe those stories are true, I don’t know. Maybe they are just misleading. What I do know is that I’ve talked with a lot of business owners this past year, and none have had that experience. Instead, it has become abundantly clear that business takes time. A long time. For the vast majority, the time to get a business stable should be counted in years, not months.
This was the reality that was dawning on me. That my business wouldn’t be a comfortable full-time business for quite some time yet, and I wasn’t willing to put myself through years of worry and instability in the meantime. So at the end of spring, I gave myself a deadline. I would keep going until the end of the year, and if things hadn’t improved significantly, I would look into getting a job.
But that’s not what happened.
A new vision
It was a sunny day in the end of July. I was in the middle of a four week summer break from my business, and I was researching jobs. At first, the idea of having to get a job had felt like failure. It would be seen as failure, wouldn’t it? But as the weeks passed, I got more comfortable with the idea. I even warmed to it. If I could find a part-time job, it would relieve me of a lot of that worry and stress I had felt, yet it would still allow me the freedom to keep running my creative business. Perhaps this could be a good thing.
The more I thought about it, the more I liked it. It would allow me to make more long-term decisions in my business, without having to worry about paying my bills the next month. I wouldn’t have to grow as fast as possible, but could develop things in my more natural pace. I could keep my membership smaller and more intimate. I could relax a little and enjoy the journey more. A good part-time income from my business felt like a goal within reach, much less overwhelming and much more comfortable. And besides, working on my own for a year had actually made me miss being part of a team. To strategize and bounce ideas with others felt intriguing.
The problem was, I had considered part-time jobs before, and it seemed impossible to get one. With a degree in political science, my background is in public administration, and this rigid, inflexible and uncreative world was what I had fled as I pursued self-employed life. Part-time positions were extremely scarce, and frankly, I didn’t want to go back to that kind of job. I had also looked into more simple jobs, like working in a café, but they pay so poorly that a part-time income wouldn’t bring in much. I’ve also considered freelance gigs, but honestly, the idea of having to pitch and chase work felt like just adding one business on top of the other.
What I really wanted was a communications job. And yes, I had experience of it, some from my governmental background, and loads from blogging and running my own business. But Sweden is a country obsessed with credentials, and I didn’t have the formal education for it. I hadn’t thought I could get a job like that. But what if I could?
So during my summer break, I started to research the job market of communications and marketing. I looked into role titles like copywriter, UX writer and content writer. I looked up courses and short educations that could improve my chances. And then on a sunny day in July, I stumbled upon the perfect job.
My new job
It happened when I searched for the job title “content writer”. I scrolled through a couple of job listings to see if this was even a role that existed, and there it was. A part-time, partly remote content writer job for a young AI tech company with its office in central Stockholm. Their AI automates parts of the bureaucracy around public procurement, making it easier for companies to apply to provide services for governmental organisations.
This was a job that played to my interest for bettering society and the frustration I had felt working in bureaucracy, seeing how much of it was manual and tedious both for us administrators and for the public having to navigate it. It tied together this interest with my love for writing, communications and content marketing. And with how much I like the tech world, having a partner and many friends working in IT. And my love for building things, and my distaste for too rigid structures. It was my very own personal dream job.
I was at my mum’s summer house when I sent in the application. A couple of days later I had my first interview, then another, and at the end of August I signed a contract for 20 hours a week. The people I’ve met seem creative, visionary and as delighted as I am about me working with them. Which blows my mind a little.
A year ago, I wouldn’t have dared to apply for a job like this. I didn’t think I could get it. Had I not spent so many years writing content, I wouldn’t have gotten it. Which just goes to show that possibilities exist even if you don’t see them, and that self-taught creative skills can open unexpected doors. Working for myself this year has given me a confidence in my creative work that I didn’t have before. And I’m thrilled that “writer” will be in my job title. I didn’t think that would ever happen.
Establishing a new balance
The day this blog post is published is my first day as a part-time creative business owner, part-time content writer. Half of my work week will be dedicated to running and growing my creative business, doing the work I’ve built and love so much. The other half of my work week will go to writing content as part of a marketing team, to help a young tech company I believe in grow. It’s a combination that feels aligned with my why of a creative life that is good on the inside, because though running your own business full-time looks more shiny from the outside, I believe this will feel better on the inside. And though it might seem like I’m stepping away from my business, it will actually allow me to committ to it more long term.
Since applying for this job, news in Sweden have gone wild over an approaching economic recession. Inflation, rising mortgage rates and skyrocketing energy prices are together creating the fastest rise in the cost of living in decades. This alone is a financial stress, and I’m very glad to not have to put all that pressure on my business.
In the months ahead, I’m going to explore this new balance. I will test new habits and weekly plans, and I’ll have to get a little smarter with my time. I’m very glad that I’ve chosen to transition from fortnightly videos, to a podcast and occasional videos, which will be much more time efficient. I’m excited to keep things simple in my business.
Not for a second do I regret this past year and a half of running my business full-time. Sure, there have been hard parts, but it has also been incredibly fun and meaningful. This period has given me the crash course I needed to understand my business, to get to know myself as a business owner, to figure out what I want my business to look like and to grow as a creative coach. I feel a hundred times clearer on the path forward. It has also given me the time away to heal my disillusionment with the working world, and the confidence and experience to apply for a creative job. I’m incredibly grateful for this time, and will look back on it fondly. Am I sentimental for leaving it behind? A little. But mostly because I’m saying goodbye to a dream I held onto for many years, to make space for something new.
I see this new balance as the one I will have for the next couple of years. Maybe I’ll eventually want to go full-time with my business again. Maybe I’ll keep seeing this as the perfect balance, one which actually gives me more freedom in my business. For now, I’m very happy about this path. It feels aligned, it feels balanced. And even if I’m going part-time with my business, I’m still going to be a full-time creative.
