Six Ways My 6 Month Business Leap Changed Me
When I decided to take 6 months off from my day job to try to take my creative business full-time, I thought a lot about how it would change my business. I thought less about how it would change me. Yet as I’m now nearing the end of my leap, I can see that those changes are the most important ones.
In creativity and business alike, your beliefs, identity and mindsets are going to play a huge role in your work. It will affect what you create, how you create and, in extensions, what results you get. So today, I want to tell you about six ways my business leap has changed me, and how that in turn is affecting my creative work and business.
My identity has changed
Back in June, I realised that my identity was changing. Before my leap, I ran my business alongside a day job, and I had seen myself very much like that. A blogger who started a small business, and I didn’t quite take my work seriously. But there’s something about doing the work that makes your identity eventually catch up. After a couple of months of running my business full-time and working with more coaching clients than ever, I started feeling a shift. I was getting more confident in my work, and I was embracing that yes, I’m actually doing this now. I’m a creative coach, and I run my own business.
A shift in identity creates a ripple effect. I go into it more in detail in another blog post, but when my identity changed, I saw how my old identity was reflected in my work. This propelled me into a redesign of my website, made me dig deeper into what my work is about and strengthened my confidence. Earlier, I might have felt awkward telling people I had my own business, or hesitated to talk about my coaching. Now it simply feels natural. I’m no longer playing down what I do, I believe in it, and this makes me show up in my work with much more confidence.
I’ve started seeing all that is possible
One of the first big realisations I had during my leap was that I had a scarcity mindset. I had listened a little too closely to everyone saying how hard it is to build a business, and it had transformed in my mind into this one, narrow possibility that I had to get exactly right. Of course, building a business IS hard, but the possibilities are also many.
When you’ve always been walking along the path you’re supposed to follow, it’s hard to spot all the other ones. Because if they are possible, why are you walking the worn one, if it’s not something you enjoy? When our cultures say “this is the right way”, it also has to close our eyes to all the other ways. And my eyes had been firmly shut for many years. When I started my own business, it was a result of starting to peek a little. But not until I was on a different path, running my own business full-time, could I see clearly. The vantage point was so different, making me see paths I had never known was there, and my eyes were open.
You’ll never pursue something you don’t believe is possible. At least on some level, we have to believe. These last 6 months have made me start seeing all that is possible, making the options for me and my business spread out before me.
My risk aversion has softened
I’ve written a lot about fear and courage in creativity. But I’ve written less about one thing that affects why we feel the need to be brave in the first place: how we see risk. This is probably because I never challenged my own aversion to risk, I just saw it as natural.
You see, I was never a risk-taker. I’ve done what was expected of me for most of my life, partly because it was the safe option. Risk was something I had learned to avoid as much as possible. As you can imagine, starting my own business and taking the leap was well out of my comfort zone.
Creativity and business will always have an element of risk. Earlier in my journey, I learned to accept the kind of fear associated with emotional risk - the fear of failure, of disappointment, of being different. During these 6 months, I’ve gotten to practice accepting another type of risk - the risk of not having a steady pay check, of changing paths, and being in charge of making my own money. While highly uncomfortable in the beginning, I’m starting to make peace with this kind of risk. It’s not that I enjoy financial risk. But I’m starting to see risk just as the flipside of possibility, part of the package when choosing freedom. And this is opening me up for experimenting and trying new things in my business.
I’ve rediscovered old interests
After so many years of doing my creative work in my spare time, everything flipped around when I began my leap. Suddenly, my day job was gone, creative work and coaching filled its place, and I now had extra free time on my hands.
This was a little disorienting in the beginning. I was so used to blending creativity and slow living, and apart from slow activities, watching Netflix and spending time with friends and family, that was pretty much my free time. I had paired everything down to make space for my creativity, and now that space was open.
I’m still exploring this. But one thing that showed up in this space was an interest for things I hadn’t had the mental capacity for the last couple of years. I started watching lots of nature and environmental documentaries. I started listening to audiobooks about history and society. These are old interests of mine, ones that lead to getting a degree in political science. They’re returning but in new forms, reshaped by my experiences, and I’m intrigued by it. Influences from other fields, beyond those of creativity and business, gives us a wider perspective and can deepen our work.
My relationship to money has changed
When I planned my 6 month leap, I didn’t realise how shaped I was by what money had looked like in my working life thus far. I’m so used to predictable, monthly incomes that I vastly underestimated how much things go up and down in a business. Especially in a small, new business like mine. Especially over the summer.
I’ve learned that clients don’t book at a steady trickle, they book in waves. I’ve learned that income will reflect these waves, going up… and then down. And then up again. This has made me take a more long term view on bringing in money. But it has also clarified the connection between what I do, and what money I get. In a 9-5 job, you can have an inspired month and do a lot of good work. It won’t show in your pay check. The same way, you can have a month of low energy and little productivity, and it won’t show in your pay check.
I’m now starting to see money as a reflection. Something that I can influence and experiment with. Not just a necessary evil, but something to get creative about. This, I believe, is a very helpful mindset when growing and developing a business.
I trust myself more now
I used to second-guess myself so much. In my early twenties, I questioned everything. Who I thought I was. What I could do. Certainly my ideas, my creativity, my writing. Over the years, I’ve slowly built trust with myself. First trust that I actually know myself best. Then that I was a creative human. But for a very long time, I didn’t trust myself as a business owner.
To start my own business wasn’t something I ever thought I would do. It was so far beyond what I saw as possible for me, I never even considered it until a few years ago. Spending these past six months working in my own business has built more trust for myself than I ever have experienced before. I’ve gotten great support, but I’ve also built something all on my own. I’ve showed to myself that I can trust myself. And that will forever be a gamechanger.
Creative projects will change you
I know this from all my past project as well. You’ll go into it one version of yourself and come out a slightly different one. Projects, especially big ones, changes us. I see it in my clients as well, when their confidence grows, when they embrace new mindsets and start taking their creative ideas seriously. Our creative lives transform us, and we in turn transform our creative lives in an endless, organic cycle.
I’m so glad I did this 6 month leap. I’ve gotten so much out of it, personally and creatively. As this project comes to an end, I look ahead. And what’s ahead… that I’ll tell you about soon.
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