Your why, the reason you pursue a creative career, may be very hard to identify. For example, it’s rare for us to admit that one of our career goals is to make money. Often we say that money is an important part of success but we are not following a lucrative career path to match our goals. We choose professions and put our efforts into developing careers where the odds of becoming financially successful are lower than if we pursued other careers. Regardless, we still take these paths, which don’t align with our goals.
It’s important to start thinking about your creative why. The reason you’re starting a business may be emerging and evolving over time. When you realize that your path is not in line with your big picture, let yourself be inspired and change your career path. It’s never too late to refocus and spend your energy to pursue your dream career. Don’t look back and think of the former path as wasted time but as an important element of self-discovery. This is why it’s crucial to just start, as this initiates our transition process.
Often there’s something unspecified that pushes us ahead to follow the creative path we have chosen. This energy is invigorating and can be compared to when we blindly fall in love or when we unconditionally love our child. This energy is our reason to be. This reason to be differs depending on the person. If we find ourselves pursuing the path influenced by others, we’ll be following someone else’s dream path.
Our creative why is personal. If we let others influence it, we’ll end up dissatisfied. No matter how costly, it may be necessary to make mistakes and let the discovery process take its natural course.
Through the years, we have been defining a creative person as someone with capabilities in painting, sculpture, or another domain that requires an innate talent. When we talk about creativity, we think of Monet, Van Gough, or Picasso. Treating creativity as an exclusive trait, we claim that we are not creative. It would be too intimidating to admit otherwise. We’re not like Picasso, therefore we are not creative. Why do we set the bar of being creative so high?
Ken Robinson, in his hilarious TED talk “Do schools kill creativity?” defines creativity as a process of having original ideas that have value.1 Taking this broader approach to defining creativity, we can timidly admit that we are all creative. We come up with creative solutions, approach things in new ways, write proposals in a creative way, and lead creatively. Just in case you were in doubt: you are creative.
I’m sure you realized that those who are the most successful are not the most talented. Making it as a creative entrepreneur involves the whole bouquet of skills; it’s not “just” the talent to create. There is a large number of very gifted artists who create beautiful pieces but they don’t know what to do with them. They stubbornly block themselves from becoming informed about sales and marketing, assuming that they can just focus on creating and someone else will do it for them.
Creative entrepreneurs who respond to customers’ needs, making pieces based on what’s in demand, win. These business owners create communities and have an audience zeroing in on providing value. They are smart, creative entrepreneurs, and the work they offer gets exposure. They take feedback from customers and improve their work accordingly. Artists, now more than anytime, need marketing skills or need to be open to learning them. They need to run their businesses creatively. If you’re not in the position of having an agent or a representative working for you, and most of us are not, you need to take on this multidimensional hustle to succeed in your creative career.
Those who succeed do have street smarts, which is more important than being overly educated or talented. It seems that talent by itself is too one-dimensional to compete on a broad scale. Times when virtuosos, prodigies and other masters were getting discovered are over. Genius must now have legs to get to places.
It’s easy to believe that we are not enough. Thoughts about accomplishing too little are with us daily. By comparing ourselves to those who started earlier, are better, faster, richer, we strive to feel equal or superior. We carefully choose those who we pay attention to as if we craved this feeling of dissatisfaction and inadequacy. We follow, watch, and obsess about the idolized lives of others. We even created a special term: we are now “living vicariously through” other people’s lives. This expression got normalized, we openly admit that we live through the lives of others instead of living our own.
This feeling of not being enough paralyzes us to the point that we are not able to focus on one thing, not able to decide what we should start and master. Each area has those who are better and who make us feel inadequate. We look at a group of people, all being masters of different things, and we want to be better than them all. If only we were consistent at that one thing, but that would force us to stop watching other masters. Plus how would being enough feel? Would we feel so uncomfortable that we would have to focus on the new master and have a new benchmark? What if we ceased feeling inadequate and stopped playing a victim? If we refocused our efforts on our own progress, we’d start thriving. To do that, we need to accept where we are and who we are, and wholeheartedly know that we are enough.
Dissatisfaction became a trend. We downplay our experiences and good becomes “not that great” or “you never know.” We consciously choose to focus on what we’re missing, what doesn’t work, and what we’re striving for. We present our work, saying apologetically that we were not at our best. We feel that what we have is not finished and we’re not ready to show it. This striving for perfection paralyzes us. The feeling of not being good enough prevents us from starting a business, transitioning into our creative career and designing the life we want. We lack creative confidence, and present our work and ourselves in this unattractive, apologetic way. Our potential clients move on to those who represent themselves in an appealing light—confident in their talent and loving products they created. We keep missing out on opportunities taken by those who show up with creative confidence. Stop what you are doing and let this sink in: you are enough.
Being at zero—zero followers, zero income, zero fans—may feel very awkward and discouraging. We don’t hear speakers on stage talking about being at zero. We hear about starting from scratch but only in the context of the success that follows. No one dwells on the time when they were at zero. If we knew that we’d succeed, we’d gladly share our struggle while it was happening, but being unsure of our future, we prefer going through the zero stage alone.
Because of how busy we get with our careers, side hustles, and such, we rarely spend time discovering unknown artists and their work. We tend to watch recommended movies and listen to popular songs, letting the votes, likes, and reviews decide how we spend our time. Popularity evolves into stardom, and unknown work with no commercial budget remains undiscovered.
Because views attract views, how can we get visible being at zero? We can do so creatively, being equipped with a lot of patience. Here are five crucial things to remember in the process of becoming visible when we are at zero:
The beginnings of following your dream path may be the hardest. Let this sink in, but also visualize where your efforts will lead you and trust the process.
I knew John when he was starting his career as a hairdresser in NYC. However, I’ve never heard John introducing himself as a hairdresser. According to John, he was a celebrity stylist. John has positioned himself as a celebrity stylist since the beginning of his career and started living up to this new role by offering haircuts and styling services at fashion shows for free to build his portfolio. He then started strategically applying to cut hair at more prestigious shows and events, showing photos from all his previous jobs without mentioning that he wasn’t paid for them. John kept cutting hair for free and showing his portfolio until he started getting paid. This is a simple and effective way to start almost any career you dream of. All you need is a lot of patience and courage to say you are the person you want to become. Confidence in manifesting who you want to become does magic.
Struggle, rejection, and other forms of discomfort are difficult to handle for all of us who are often too focused on the immediate rewards. We satiate our needs for immediate comfort, but it’s a temporary distraction from our real goals. If we want to have the life we deserve, our dreams can’t be just dreamt; they need to be lived. Yes, we won’t see the immediate rewards for our work, and often we won’t know if we’ll see any at all. This risk and the hustle for the unknown may be very dissatisfying, but keeping in mind that we are racing toward the life we want will make it easier on us.
We often have to start our creative careers at night after work and on weekends. We find ourselves thinking about doing it, but too often can’t resist the temptations of brainless TV watching or meeting our friends who are always free after work because they settled for their jobs. Enticed by the stable comfort and routine of now, we’re tempted to settle too and continue working toward the dreams of others. We know well that this is not what we want to do but we can’t resist the comfort of the boring familiar. We choose not to choose and decide not to decide. If you are aware that that’s not enough and that you want to stop living your life by default, start designing your creative career. Get ready to accept the process fully—all its joys and discomforts, failures and rewards. Hold on tight and get ready for the bumpy ride toward your dreams.
Barry Schwartz, in his bestselling book The Paradox of Choice, states that the multitude of options available to us don’t liberate us but paralyze us.2 We’re often very indecisive about the business idea we should choose and once we narrow it down, we can’t decide what strategy to focus our efforts on. We’re undecided if we should develop our presence online or attend trade shows, get into wholesale or focus on partnerships with brands. We are stuck and overwhelmed by all the options available to us. The urge to do it all and fear of missing out paralyzes us to the point of not being able to do anything. Even if we manage to choose an option, we have spent so much time and effort on gathering information necessary for us to make a choice that we end up experiencing decision fatigue and our productivity suffers.
Similarly, the multitude of social media channels affects our commitment of posting content regularly. We start writing blog posts and cultivating our Facebook presence, but the new social media channels, which show up constantly, tempt us to veer off the online marketing path we set and focus our efforts elsewhere. Not wanting to miss out, we try to be present on too many channels, and as a result, our consistency suffers.
A study from New York University found that “restricting the choice of creative inputs actually enhances creativity.”3 It says that if we are liberated from pressure of choice and fear of missing out, we let ourselves be open to having a fresh start of a creative process. Treating making choices as an evolving process instead of a final decision may liberate us from the need of considering all available options. Any idea can flourish if properly executed so if you have two, three, or four business ideas the best option would be committing to one of them and devoting your efforts to it.
Decision paralysis is one of the main reasons why many businesses don’t start. To overcome it, free yourself from thinking in ultimate terms. Your business decision may not be the final one but the best way to learn and find out is by making a choice and taking action.
The emphasis used to be put on getting the right education and climbing the steps of the career ladder one by one. Hard work used to be the only way to get results and rewards. Nowadays if you’re a persistent beginner or a lucky one, you will skip the steps of the ladder; you may even skip the whole ladder overall. Your drive, hustle, and consistency can lift you up above those with an innate talent who wait, blame, and don’t believe in themselves. It’s not about the skills but about the application thereof. It’s as if we were living in the world where everyone has the same degree, and it was up to us to show the world our version of the diploma. Doing our best is not enough anymore; it got upgraded to doing our best with grit.
We’ve always put talent on a pedestal but it’s actually its application that matters. Our perseverance and commitment to our goals is more important than our talent. Also, our passion for the business, which we can describe as infatuation and obsession, will not serve us if there’s no consistency. Passion will not contribute to our success if it’s not sustainable. If our excitement about a new project fades, and we focus on another, often unrelated project, we will not advance in creating our dream lifestyle. We’ll keep coasting through our lives looking for immediate satisfaction, not focusing on designing our careers.
Instead of starting to work toward designing the life we want to live, we make excuses that we are not talented or that we didn’t go to school for it so we have no formal education. All these excuses are the explanations we give to ourselves not to step out of our comfort zone and experience temporary discomfort of risk, unknown, possible failure, waste of time, and so on. We’d rather admit we’re not talented and continue living dissatisfied in our status quo. Sometimes pushed by the discomfort, we may decide to take the first step toward change, but not seeing immediate results and being used to the world based on quick fixes, we get too impatient to wait for the results, claim that we’re not talented, and quit. Because talent is not something that can be measured, not having it can be always our excuse not to take action.
Keeping our winning attitude is key to the successful execution of our goals; consistency and grit matter more than passion and talent. Those who understand that transformation is a process and there’s no way to shorten their path to greatness will get what they want—with or without the talent.
One of the hardest things that creatives and other business owners have to deal with is running our businesses when life gets in the way. Our personal life is never a straight line. When there’s a bend and we are not able to see what’s next, it can take a toll on our professional life if we let it. I know you may think that your story is different and that no one else has to deal with the death of a loved one, divorce, being single, getting married, moving, disease, having a child, or just feeling down in general. Guess what? We all do; we all get slowed down by life’s roadblocks, but those who develop resilience and stubbornly go ahead, at times at a slower pace, will thrive. I’m not encouraging you to shake things off. This doesn’t seem sustainable. Accepting our feelings and processing what we have to process is necessary. But it’s important to realize that we need to run our business in parallel to dealing with life’s setbacks. There’s no point in waiting for something to pass because there will be always something to deal with.
I can confidently say that our reaction to failure and life’s roadblocks will highly influence our success. Cultivating resilience is an individual process. It means we’re not only strong after taking a beating, but we’re showing up as a greater version of ourselves. Adam Grant and Sheryl Sandberg, in their collaborative work Option B, present a thorough and courageous introspection of resilience.4 In 2015, Sheryl Sandberg lost her husband to a sudden death related to heart problems. Through studies, help, and a lot of self-growth work, Sandberg undertook a journey of resilience to show up stronger after the tragedy. In Option B, Grant and Sandberg make us aware that resilience is not something we have a fixed amount of, but something we have to build.
Cultivating resilience is crucial during our humble beginnings as a creative. You may schedule your first yoga class as a teacher and no one will show up, you may set up your booth at a trade show and end up with no orders. What will influence how well your business does is your resilience, is how strong you’ll show up after the failures. A surfer gets washed out by the waves that cover him and make his body tumble in the ocean like in a washing machine. Does he go back to the shore? No, he resurfaces stronger and keeps surfing, ending up experiencing the euphoria of riding the perfect wave.
Your path to your dream career may not have the tools you expected. There may not be people giving you tissues or hugs. It’s for you to build a toolbox equipped with tools you’ll develop and have at the ready. The tool of resilience will help you come back stronger after the waves of life crash on you.
When you ask someone what they do, they often sound apologetic. Their answer tends to be convoluted, either downplaying what they do or convincing that it matters. They’re starting their introduction assuming they’re inferior. They often describe what they do by making it sound easy, insignificant, and boring, rushing to move on and ask questions about their conversation partner’s career. Once the talk shifts, they feel relieved. I’m sure I don’t have to convince you that this is not an attitude that will help you live the life you want. Here are five tips to make a winning introduction:
Since you’re reading this book, you’re probably a self-declared nonconformist or on your way to becoming one. I noticed I was living unconventionally when I turned 17 and got my first job. I was a news anchor at a local TV station in my hometown in Poland and was earning a nice salary. To this day, I can say that this was probably the best job I had ever had, but back then my joy was overshadowed by the fact that I felt different. My classmates’ first jobs were bagging groceries or flipping burgers, so being a journalist felt like an outcast.
I felt I constantly had to downplay how great being a journalist was. I was meeting many people, getting freebies, being invited to press events, but the gap between my friends and I kept widening, being fed by my TV adventure. It was as if my unconventional job was exposing me to a different language, which I was soaking in but which was only echoed by the walls of the TV studio. No one understood me. It was all glamorous, yet I had nobody to share it with.
Through the years, my life has become even more infused with unconventional opinions, experiences, careers, and lifestyle. The discomfort tied to living my unconventional life sets in and fear of sounding arrogant makes me want to reframe, omit, or just not share details—or at least add that it all has its drawbacks too. Living unconventionally comes with its territory and here is what you may feel:
Living unconventionally comes at a cost. By being aware of it, we can start building our unconventional shield. Understanding that unconventional life gets unconventional reactions will make us forego striving for understanding, acceptance, and approval, and let us accept the life we are living.
Beginnings and transitions are scary. You may be tempted to postpone starting your creative career indefinitely because you like the predictable comfort of the status quo. You may think there’s still time for change and your fear of unknown can be too paralyzing to take action. You’ve heard the advice that the time is now and that you should have started yesterday. All this may add to the discomfort. The time is now for those who had taken necessary steps to get ready.
Starting or transitioning into your creative career doesn’t begin with you transitioning but with you getting ready for it. Self-discovery work, research, and meetings with those who already have your dream career are all parts of your transition, and the more diligent you are about completing the steps, the smoother your transition will be. Preparation will reinforce your decision, making you less likely to reconsider your decisions. Getting ready will build a solid foundation for your new career. You won’t be wobbling but striding confidently through the process of change.
Here are helpful tools you may need to execute your transition plan:
These are actions worth taking when you start getting ready for your transition:
When you execute your action plan, it’s important to stay curious and open. Not every step you take will be useful in your transition progress, so it’s crucial to get a start on the process with an accepting mind. Discovery process may make you reshape your dreams and steer your transition path in a more fitting direction, if you just keep taking consistent action.
What can keep you committed through the whole process of making it?
What is the winning attitude to succeed?
What’s stopping you?
What do you have to be putting up with because of your limiting beliefs?
What have you been missing out on because you haven’t been stepping into your greatness?