Blog
Articles on finishing self-generated work and building expertise-based creative businesses, with the Creative Engine, Ground Truth, and Capacity frameworks.
How to grow your audience | Promoting your creative work doesn’t have to feel sleazy
Promote your creative work without feeling sleazy | STOP skipping steps in the audience journey and grow your audience Ok, so you’ve got a new project out—or maybe the release date is bearing down on you like a freight train. You need to put a spotlight on it. You need people to know, to get interested, to buy. You need to grow your audience. So, what do you do? → Post a few times on your social channels: “Hey it’s out! Order now!” ?→ Send an email to your list—or does that feel weird because you haven’t emailed in forever? …And what would you say? You can’t just throw up your hands and give up. But it also feels impossible…
Your new superpower: NOT trying to do everything
When you pay yourself first, not only with money, but with time, you can choose to focus on your highest values without having your entire life dialed in.
How to build a sustainable work process that produces results WITHOUT burnout
Jennifer Shiman came back to her career in animation determined to have a better relationship with her work. “This is an opportunity to really create not only a sustainable way to earn a living, but a sustainable work process, which is necessary for my health.”
1,000 True Fans + 1 Elephant in the Room
Listen to this post: The compelling logic of 1,000 True Fans In 2008, Kevin Kelly (former editor of Wired) proposed the thesis that a working creative doesn’t need millions of fans. They need only 1,000 “true” fans: diehards who will buy anything you do. The idea that working creatives can succeed with a such reasonable, human-scale fanbase is so compelling that it’s generated hundreds of responses over time. In my own life, this idea spontaneously came up in conversation twice in the last month alone. And honestly, the empowerment and inspiration creators feel when they come across the 1,000 True Fans is extremely valuable in motivating action But when getting those 1,000 True Fans, and keeping them, proves out of…
Why just making more work doesn’t lead to making more money
Listen to this post: When they’re faced with an income plateau, here’s what creatives (artists, designers, writers, whatever) think they need to do to increase their income: Notice a certain word popping up frequently? MORE. How much more do you have to give if you want to increase your self-employment income? If you’re like most creatives I know, not a lot. You’re probably functioning at your outer limit as it is, scraping by financially while you care for others and try to keep making your work…somehow. Of course you need to make more money. If the idea of wanting to make more money makes you uncomfortable, think about it this way: → More money means time, freedom, flexibility. → More…
From Burnt Out Artist to Joyful Creative Coach: The Power of the “Perfect Fit” Business Model
Listen to Eleanor’s story in her own words: Eleanor Chaney is an artist and educator who has worked as an illustrator, exhibited her prints in shops and galleries, and taught skills-based arts and crafts classes to thousands of people. But as a working artist and teacher, she felt like she had hit an upper limit on how much money she could make. “[During the pandemic] what became really, really apparent was it wasn’t that I wasn’t capable of making a living as an artist. The things I was being paid for weren’t even fulfilling in the way that they had been in the past. Because I had changed. And what I wanted from my work had changed. And I also…
How to make it as an artist: Stop following the rules
Yeah, that’s me on stage with podcasting stars Roman Mars and Glynn Washington, with my comics projected 20 feet tall onscreen. It was 2015. It was a pinnacle of my artist career. Yet I had no idea how to truly make it as an artist. That’s the problem with looking at the outside of someone’s creative career, and thinking you can learn much of anything about the inside from it. From the outside, things looked great Random House had just released my book Out on the Wire: The Storytelling Secrets of the New Masters of Radio, and I was in the middle of launching a New and Notable podcast of the same name. I was on an actual book tour….