Starting Your Creative Business Is Scary and Challenging, But Here’s Help
In this blog post: tools to get you started selling your creative work, or selling more of it, dealing with money trauma and why the way your artwork is received is inextricably linked to your self-worth, plus more reference articles about working on how all these things affect you.
First, I'm excited to announce that the revision of my business plan book, Passion, Plan, Profit is out!
You can check it out here.
What's new in this edition?
In addition to a bunch of updates, I rewrote the entire marketing chapter. Marketing tools are 100% easier to understand and cheaper to use. I thought you should know. This is an important piece of the puzzle, but only there is more to put together. And if you've had some trouble helping your creative business come to fruition or be as successful as you know it should be, it could be some money trauma holding you back.
All the marketing tools in the world can't help with money trauma
The funny thing is even with easier, cheaper marketing tools, it can still be just as scary and challenging to start a business to get your work into the world.
Why? Because all the cool marketing tools in the world don’t deal with the trauma you’ve already experienced in getting your work out there and having people who matter to you (and even ones who don’t) judge, criticize, or just plain ignore your best efforts. It's all linked to your self-worth, your attitudes about money/money trauma, and patterns you may have seen modeled in your family early on in life.
That’s my next book
My next book, Artists: Don’t Starve! Will be out in December, if the planets align. In that book, I talk about what to do to address the money trauma so you can get your work into the world. In the meantime, you can preview some of the book concepts in this article, They’re Trying to Protect You But They’re Actually Keeping You Down, and also this article, How to Put in the Work to Uncover Your Unconscious Money Beliefs. They'll give you an idea about where to start metabolizing the pain.
Do you want to start something anyway?
If you are ready to start selling your art, download my cheatsheet: Keep Calm & Sell Something. Follow the directions in there, and tell someone else you’re doing it so you can be accountable to them. While you begin working with your trauma, the best antidote to pain is companionship and connection.
If you want to make yourself a day job (which means starting a business), get Passion, Plan, Profit, and find someone, or better, three other someones, and go through the book together. The book tells you how to work in a group or in pairs, and you can download the worksheets in the book here. Companionship and connection again.
If you want guidance, book a 15 minute chat with me here and I’ll get you pointed in the right direction. It's definitely possible to work through your attitudes about money and money trauma, and I'd love to support you in this.
Your work matters. Your art matters. What steps are you willing to take to get it out into the world? Need some accountability? Let me know how you'll start in the comments below.