Trigger Warning: Making Money for your Creative Business

One of our core beliefs with Artist’s Strategy is to not take the work personally. We must be able to separate the very personal and intimate aspects of our creative work, and the cold hard business principles that will ensure our art will thrive.

To that end, today’s post revolves around a responsibility that gives artists everywhere a great deal of discomfort. However, looking this fact square in the face may unlock a fire in you that you didn’t know existed! It’s a simple and obvious one: you’ve got bills to pay!

Sometimes people will ask me if I “ever get tired” or if the work is “hard for me”, the answer is always a resounding ‘YES!’.

But – I’ve got bills to pay! This is what I do for a living. While I’m sure I could do lots of other things, my work as a creative is what I do well and it’s how I’ve made a living for 15 years. Most importantly, I don’t have the willingness to consider anything else. Well if we want to continue doing what we do, we must fully embrace the reality that we have bills to pay. This tenet is what has pushed me to work harder than I ever thought possible for my own creative business and has helped us to build a curriculum we believe allows creatives to engage with the same action for theirs.

While this post is primarily about the psychological “justifier” for the good deal of work that goes into all of this, I think it’s a worthwhile exercise to identify:

• How you are currently making money with your creative business.
• What is your plan moving forward?
• Is your model of making money in your field based on luck and others giving you opportunities? If so, here’s our next question: will that belief light a fire under you to take the massive efforts needed to build a sustainable future? Probably not…you will more than likely simply wait for it to all come together like you very well may have been doing up to this point.

Remember, you are the person who will have to build a successful and profitable business. No one else will do it for you.

The sad irony is that accepting this responsibility, that you have bills to pay, is why so many artists give up.

We know dozens of highly gifted individuals who reached a point where they were unable to justify their lifestyle because “they had bills to pay”.

We absolutely agree, what they were doing is not sustainable. Instead of throwing in the towel, what if they accepted their responsibility to become creative entrepreneurs? What if they decided to stop the wishful thinking and committed to running a resourceful, organized, and savvy business around their art? We believe that they’d pay their bills doing what they love, and then some!

Also by Artist’s Strategy:

The Power and Importance of Search Engine Optimization

An Artistic Career: The Ultimate Paradox

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