In many ways, the dream of being an artist is the dream of being self-employed. Often when we think of working artists, we imagine a jet-setting life of all-the-time creativity. Sometimes that’s true, but statistically, that life isn’t the norm – not by a long shot. Being a full-time creative is about being a businessperson and entrepreneur. It’s about knowing how to manage yourself, how to diversify, and how to live within the confines you set for yourself.

Let’s break that down:

• How to manage yourself
• How to diversify
• How to set boundaries

These are the pillars upon which successful artists build their businesses. 

My career, which has spanned nearly 10 years of successful “artisting”, has consisted of adapting as I go. Realizing what works and what doesn’t, fast and with smooth transitions, is the life of an artist. 

Here are my top 10 tips for becoming a successful working artist. Or, for working for yourself in general.

1. Set boundaries. The self-employment life is alluring, largely for the freedom it will grant you. Especially if you come from a more structured job, it can feel all at once incredible and overwhelming to suddenly have no boundaries. The people I know who are self-employed have an insane work ethic. They know how to prioritize, how to set goals, and how to create structure. 
   1. Find your most productive 4 hours of the day. What time do you work best? Figure that out first. If your most productive hours are from 6am-10am (like me), prioritize those hours. Set your most difficult and, if we’re honest, least attractive goals for that time. You will feel naturally more energetic to get them finished. 
   2. Don’t let “norms” get in the way of you doing you. A lot of people I’ve mentored feel bad if they hate getting up early. My advice? OWN IT. If you’re a night person, utilize that time to get your work done. You don’t have to fit into a stereotype, and you’ll find yourself much more productive if you simply choose the times that are right for you.

2. Set goals. In this case, I don’t care if you’re not a goal-oriented person. If you’re not, it’s very likely that you will fail at being self-employed. You need to develop an amazing sense of forward momentum to be self-employed, and particularly as an artist. Your mind needs to be able to think in three ways:

1. The past – note what tactics work and don’t work, but be willing to move on fast. Analyze every decision you’ve made and don’t make the same mistakes twice. Even when you find yourself making great choices, try not to rely on repeating them. Always move a step forward.
2. The present – know what you want to accomplish day to day. 
3. The future – this is where you can let your big dreams shine. Think about the dreams that you wish your business would embody. After you’ve thought them through, start to set long-term goals to achieve until you fulfill the largeness of the dream down the line. 

3. Manage yourself well. Managing yourself has a lot to do with goal setting and organization, but it has equally to do with mindset. It is your job to figure out how you work best (alone or in a group) and where you work best (from home, in public on a laptop, or in an office).  

1. Set up the workspace you will thrive in. Don’t skimp. Many people, especially visual artists, are deeply influenced by their surroundings.
2. Set up a ritual. Light a candle, put on background music, have tea or coffee, etc. Find a routine that brings you peace. For example, every time I light the candle in my office, my brain knows to settle into work mode. Every time I play a certain playlist of songs, my brain knows to settle into editing mode. It’s great to have comforting sensory cues to dive into work. 

4. Diversify, diversify, diversify! I don’t know a single artist – literally, not one single artist – who makes their living through one revenue stream. This is how I’ve made my money: print sales, licensing images for book covers/album art/website design/movie posters, commissioned images for individuals/bands/authors, writing books and articles, teaching workshops, motivational speaking, sponsorship and partnerships, and hosting retreats….That’s 8 categories, and a total of 14 different ways that money might come into my life.

1. How can you diversify? Think of the ways in which your passions can be profitable. I’ll share a more in-depth version of this topic in the future. 

5. Plan, list, calendar, go. “But Brooke, I’m not a list person.” I. Don’t. Care. One thing all self-employed people have in common is they run a tight ship. Either they hire someone to take care of these things for them because they know they don’t excel at it, or they get better at it. I was not an organized person. Some would argue I’m still not. But I have learned how to be a list/calendar/planner person. 

1. Get a physical daily planner. You might balk at this, but my experience is that if I write it down physically, it feels more pertinent and important. It sticks in my head better. I am absolutely addicted to crossing items off a page. 
2. Sync an online calendar. I use Google Calendar for my appointments. I have reminders set to email me 20 minutes before my meetings. I write copious notes about said meetings in the calendar event. I sync my calendar with my husband and a friend who helps me out when I need it. 
3. Make a long-form to do list. I also use the Google suite to do this (tasks in the email client). I keep my everyday items that I want to accomplish in my daily physical planner, but I keep my long-running to do items in my more permanent list in Gmail. These items include things like: Emails to follow up on, people to pay or request payment from in the future, prints to ship, etc. Things that can’t be done today, but need to be done soon.

6. Get your email under control. Seriously. Are you listening? I used to be the worst at email – it would sometimes take me months to write back to people. I lost jobs, contacts, and respect by operating this way. Then I hired an assistant, and things got better, but still weren’t perfect. Then I lost my assistant, and I took over again 100% alone. Guys, I work entirely alone. I have no help. IT CAN BE DONE!

1. I have a 48-hour email policy. To be honest, it’s more of a 24 hour policy as I almost always respond on a daily basis, but I do take weekends off, so times can vary slightly. Choose a time frame that works for you and stick to it like your career depends on it. Spoiler: it does.
2. Choose a time to write your emails. I write my emails first thing in the morning. I feel most refreshed then, most eager, and it is the beginning of my peak productivity. I thrive off of getting emails done first thing. It makes me feel mega-accomplished and I love that I can essentially ignore my inbox for the rest of the day. 
3. Write email templates. I get a lot of emails that are essentially the same requests. For example, every single day I get an email from a school student who wants an interview for an assignment. There is no way I could answer all of those emails in the way they want, so I made a template. I send a generic, although very helpful, response to everyone. It essentially says thank you, that I’m busy, and it lists a bunch of links to interviews I’ve done so that they can find what they need there. 
   1. Think about what emails you get that you could streamline. Is there a generic response you could copy/paste to them? I save my templates in my email drafts folder and use them as needed. Another template I use frequently is for print requests. 

7. Artists, keep charts. I don’t know how you feel, but I feel a deep, intrinsic repulsion to excel spreadsheets. In all honesty, I really don’t love keeping them, but I so appreciate that I do. Before you even get your business up and running, or if it already is and you need to check yourself, implement the following:

1. Print Sales Spreadsheet. I keep a detailed list of all the images I’ve printed, where they are (with me or a gallery), if they have sold, when they sold if so, what edition the print is, what size the print is, what paper it is printed on, and the title of each image. Set up this spreadsheet asap and you’ll never lose track of your print info. I use Google Drive for all of this so I can access it anywhere, anytime, from any device (pending internet). 
2. Licensed Image Spreadsheet. Similar to above, I have a sheet that tracks what images are licensed (the terms, the date, the image, etc.). 
3. Income tracker! I’m the worst at this one. Anyone else feel a little yick when it comes to money tracking? My aversion is terrible. It’s not attractive. You know what is attractive? Getting paid what you’re due. Track the money you are owed, and ask for it, too. 

8. Create pricing handouts. When I say handout, I mean digital. For example, I have a pricing sheet for my prints that I can pass on to buyers, galleries, and design agencies. It’s a simple JPG that I email to anyone asking that states my print information, sizing/editioning stats, and prices. If you want to make money, chances are you’ll have to state a price. Making a price sheet is a great way of showing someone that you already have prices established and they will be less likely to haggle with you. 

9. Find a healthy reward that motivates you. It’s easy to get your emails finished with the promise of cookies afterward, but we can’t very well eat a bunch of cookies on a daily basis. Find a way to motivate yourself that is healthy for you. I have three main ways of motivating myself. One is to go to the grocery store. It sounds weird, but I LOVE grocery shopping. It’s one of my favorite things to do out of the house. If I have a task I’m particularly dreading, I take myself out after to do some meal planning. Either that, or I go for a hike. The second thing I do to motivate myself is a little thing I call “nice cream”. I am sweet obsessed, but too much sugar makes me feel sick. So, I make nice cream (spoiler: it’s just frozen banana, cocoa powder, and oat milk). The third way I motivate myself is to watch TV. I’m a total sci fi lass and I love getting to vegetate for a little while after doing something I don’t like. Find your own motivators! 

10. Do you know what every successful entrepreneur that I know has in common? They know their value and how they provide value to others. If ever you lack motivation to create or run your business (and yes, it will happen), make sure you know the answers to those questions. Write down what value you bring to the world. Refer back to that answer often. Make your answer a natural part of you. You’ll have to take breaks – that’s normal – but it’s good to go back to your why. 

Your Immediate To Do List:

1. Choose the time of day you work best. 
2. Write down your biggest goals of the future and save them in a place you can access regularly.
3. Write out all of the ways – no matter how far fetched – you could make money from your craft.
4. Get yourself a physical daily planner.
5. Set an email response goal for yourself.
6. Type out any email templates that would be helpful.
7. Establish your firm pricing and create a handout for it.

Would you like me to host an online seminar about this? Comment and let me know if it would be helpful!

I decided that I wanted to be able to take a few months off of my regularly scheduled work program, but I wasn’t sure how to go about doing that. How does one simply stop working but still make the train keep chugging?

BATCH WORKING! I didn’t know that was a thing until I started doing it naturally. And that’s my point here – I think it is natural to do this. Batch working allows a state of creative flow and maximizes our potential to put out cohesive content.

Batch working is pretty simple. It’s when you group together like content and produce that content all together, rather than spread apart over long periods of time.

I’ve recently used the batch working process to write 25 blog posts in one day, and record 24 videos in one day!

It sounds impossible, right? And yes, some people will be more or less prolific in their ability to batch work. I’m particularly well suited to batch working because I focus easily and I love a juicy and hard-to-achieve goal. But you don’t have to be some content-producing mastermind to dive in.

1. Find your purpose first. If you understand your long-term mission, you’ll find it easier to focus on the work that will take you there rather than feeling scattered. Take copious notes here. Draw up vision boards.

2. How can you be a resource to your community? If you understand the ways in which you can give most successfully, you can spend your time doing those things without guilt. Make lists and hone in on what aligns with you!!!

3. Spend a lot of time planning your specific content before you make your content. This is perhaps the most important point. Take the time to write spreadsheets or detailed lists about the exact content you want to make, the long-term plan for it, and how it will impact your community.

4. Clear your schedule entirely by doing the work ahead of time. Emails? Get to “Inbox 0” before batch working. Meetings, social media, etc….do it all in advance so that you can spend the time you need to batch.

5. Write notes for yourself. If you’re creating a lot at once, know exactly what your plan is. Before I was able to record 24 videos in 5 hours, I spent many more hours writing notes for each video, prepping files, and going over my talking points.

6. Motivate yourself to get through the work by reminding yourself of how much content you’re producing. I like to think in terms of weekly releases. For example, by making 24 videos, I produced 6 months of weekly content.

7. Action > Perfection. Keep reminding yourself of that as you batch. You an always scrap something you made later, but you can’t release something you never created in the first place.

8. Creative flow: figure out how you are creatively effected in terms of where you work, noise you like playing (or silence), snacks/drinks, and anything else that soothes you, like candles/scents.

9. Batch! Remember when producing your content to match like-content together. Choose one day for photographing (try 3 images at one location instead of just one!), one day for writing (try creating 10 social media posts in one day!), etc.

10. Long term planning. Create a production calendar with deadlines that are realistic yet challenging. Write your do to list every evening for the next day so that you don’t feel overwhelmed with just the big goals and deadlines.

Find a sweet spot that works for you. It might not be 25 blog posts in one day, but make it 5. We all work at different speeds. Don’t be ashamed of whatever speed you work at.

The important thing to remember when batch working is that it’s all about creative flow and productivity. Set yourself up for success. If you wake up and feel off, don’t push it. Get yourself into the flow and let it happen organically when possible. But always be proactive in your attempts to get yourself into that headspace.

As for me, I’ve got to edit the videos I recorded, write another 50 blog posts, create newsletter templates, upload to YouTube, and produce 10 photo shoots with behind-the-scenes content. Needless to say, I’ve got another 1-2 months of work ahead of me before this “time-off” experiment kicks into full swing

I hope this helps – let me know in a comment!

Lots of Creativity,
Brooke

Let’s get really honest really fast here. I consider myself a good business person. I make decisions swiftly and effectively most of the time. I have strong ideas with a lot of follow through. But the reality is that being a good business person isn’t all about gavel banging and big ideas; that is just the fun stuff. I’m good at the fun stuff. I can take pictures for days, post on social media endlessly, find topics to write about on my blog, etc. etc. etc…

But that isn’t the GRIT that it takes to run a successful business.

Let’s define successful business. I don’t just mean a “working” business, or a “bringing in money” business, or a “getting by” business. I mean a business that runs smoothly, is profitable in the ways that it wants to be, and treats clients in the most respectful way possible.

I started my business when I was 22 years old, and was 21 when I started laying the groundwork for it. I was very naive. I had no experience in running a business or in business at all. I never even bothered to take a class in college despite having that available to me (Oh what I would do differently now!). I would say that I entered into my business selfishly. Not in every way, but in some ways that ended up being really detrimental to my work. The number one way I messed up from the get-go is thinking that I didn’t have to do anything I didn’t want to do. Let me explain.

My stubbornness in wanting to do only what pleased me was really good in some ways. It allowed me to focus like a lightning rod on the tasks that brought me joy. That proved to be helpful in starting a very specific business that eventually grew in only those aspects. I wouldn’t do that differently at all. I would never go back and accept odd jobs or different types of photography sessions because that was not my passion and therefore not my pursuit.

What took me six or seven years to learn was how to separate what I want from what my clients deserve. A business requires two types of respect: respect for your clients and respect for yourself. I had respect for myself, enough to only do what I loved. I lacked in respect for clients. I did what they asked for the most part, but I did it in my own time. I lacked respect for other people’s time, and in doing so, didn’t respect my own time.

For years and years I told myself that I simply got too many emails to deal with it. I wouldn’t respond to people, or I would take months to get back with people. It cost me money in jobs, but far more importantly, it cost me relationships. My attitude was that I was above it all – that I could respond whenever it suited me and I rarely thought about that person waiting. (Well, I might be exaggerating at how bad I was, but still, it wasn’t good!). I decided at some point that I wanted to change my behavior so I hired an assistant. She helped a lot and I was able to mostly stay on top of my work. It was a wonderful 2 1/2 years. And then that ended, and in October I found myself alone again working as a business of one.

Come December 1st I knew I wanted to make a change, and I didn’t want to go back to my old ways of being unreliable. I liked the feeling of being in control of every aspect of my business. In that way it felt the same as doing self-portraits. I love being in full control, so why not in business as well as creativity?

On December 1st I reformed. I became a totally new business person. I made these significant changes:

1. Email Labels. I have had email labels for a long time, but I really got to using them properly. I made two folders, one called “Fresh Greetings” and another called “Pending”. Every time I would receive an email I would put it in Fresh Greetings, and when I answered it, I took it out. When my Fresh Greetings folder was empty, I knew I had finished my emails. My Pending folder is for emails that couldn’t be responded to yet.

2. The 24 Hour Policy. I decided I would not let any emails go unanswered for more than 24 hours. I carved time out every single morning for 20-30 minutes to knock out my emails. I am a morning person, so I use my best energy on tasks that aren’t as much fun as taking pictures or writing, etc. So, my best 20 minutes are spent emailing. Further, as emails come in through the day, if I am conveniently at my desk and can answer, I do. I don’t let it linger. I used to think I would look too “uncool” if I started answering people immediately, but it is better for everyone.

3. I shifted my attitude. I used to see emails as annoying or time consuming. Now I see them as neither. I look upon the sender with genuine love and appreciation that they took the time to email me. I want to give them that same respect by sending my heartfelt thanks to their message, or to give clients the respect they deserve with a prompt reply.

From December until now I have completed a photo a day challenge, spent a full month traveling, and am selling my house. Busy, right? Even in that chaos, I haven’t gone more than 24 hours without responding to an email. Further, in January alone, I received 3 emails from clients thanking me for being so easy to work with – for making decisions quickly and for responding immediately.

I stopped the toxic behavior I was exhibiting. If there was a decision to be made, I used to put it off for weeks if I was unsure. Now, I make it immediately. I don’t wait and let it linger, I simply search my soul and say what I feel is best. Sometimes it means outright turning jobs down, or taking them, or telling people to hold off for a better time. Sometimes it involves answering interview questions right then and there, and other times I simply can’t at all. This new way of working has revolutionized my time.

The downside is the increased desire to check my phone and make sure my inbox is cleared, that all decisions are made etc. So, the next step in my business reform is to lock my phone up after a certain time of day until I wake up. Productivity should only be taken so far. How far? As far as you can take it to be on top of your work while not letting everything you do need a productive excuse. Read more about that idea in this incredible article.

And it isn’t just emails. It is everything. For example, I have a tax day on the first of each month. I organize and categorize my receipts. I backup my files once a week. I follow up with people by creating events on my calendar to remind me.

The big change I made was IMMEDIACY. I always thought that was crazy. I thought people who were on top of their emails didn’t have a personal life, or were addicted to their phones. That doesn’t have to be true. I spend most of my days without a phone in front of me. I try to be in the moment for whatever I am doing, truly committed. I have found that I have more freedom – with my time as well as in my mind. I no longer stress about getting back to people. I no longer worry about if I’ve missed a deadline. And while I do suffer from thinking even more about my work now that I’m on top of it, I know that I can change that as well and not let the immediacy of my business bleed into my personal time.

Yes, it could all crumble and I could slide back into my old ways. But so far, so good. I’m 4 months into working alone again and I have never had a more smooth running business.

Want more details or to share what works for you? Leave a comment!

I am arranging a small mentorship for anyone interested in this topic.
A totally-free, just-because-I-love-business, Skype session with about 10 or so people.
To turn YOUR business around and to help each other grow!
Want to join? Let me know below!