Some of my creative coaching clients think that being poor makes them actually more creative.
What do you think: does poverty make you more creative?
Do you have this idea in your head ‘to suffer for your art’?
Do you love ‘make and do’?
That frugal attitude might help you to save money in the short term, but don’t deny yourself to enjoy life in abundance.
Are you actually poor or do you feel poor? Who or what makes you feel poor? When do you feel poor?
I have had clients who were poor when they were earning £35K p.a., and I have had rich clients who ‘only’ earned £12K. A lot of money challenges are about perception and attitude, and what you think you need or deserve.
If you have been trying to sell your work you know that it is hard. The crafts and design sector in the UK are very competitive – one of the most competitive in the world.
They always have been. The current recession hasn’t really made it that much harder to make a living as a creative.
It always has been difficult. It is a fact. That’s all.
Do you use lack of money as an excuse?
Blame the recession or lack of funding for not being able to start?
Or dream about ‘if only I had £50K then …?
Just check in with yourself for a second and be brutely honest with yourself …
No doubt £50K would help a great deal, but it is very unlikely to happen (no bank or funder would give you that if you don’t have substantial experience or proof of existing clients).
It has always been difficult to make a living as a creative. It might actually be easier now in the recession as there is less competition – many less determined people have given up. And besides the UK being a very competitive market it is also one of the most vibrant ones for designers and makers!
Is lack of money just an excuse, as you are afraid of getting started? You need to become more creative and resilient than that to succeed!
Some creatives try to avoid the ‘money question’ as if it doesn’t matter.
MONEY DOES MATTER!
It makes the world go round. It is what you do with your earned money that really can make the difference!
Especially as a creative you need clients, as without clients or an audience there isn’t really a creative exchange. If your work is gathering dust in the attic, then what’s the point? Your work really will come to life when your work is seen, enjoyed, used by people!
Many creatives struggle with the question: ‘How can I be creative and make money?’
They state this question as a dilemma, it is OR OR instead of AND AND.
Think about the creative possibilities of how you can make it happen over time.
What do you need to do to create AND make a living?
Who are your role models in this area?
What can you learn from successful designers and crafts people (there are plenty of them!)?
The most common money challenge however is creatives who expect that potential clients ‘magically’ find them.
They love the making, and just make, make, make, …
Especially in the first 2-3 years of your business you will actually need to spend as much time on marketing your work as making it. Sorry, very few art colleges told you that!
Yes it is scary to go out there. People can be rude. People might not understand. It is tough, because if they even slightly criticise your work, it hurts.
But people can also be wonderfully supportive, get great enjoyment out of your work, become big fans, and friends even over the years.
But you will never know if you don’t go out there …
Are you waiting for this ‘magical pot of money’? Then check out this blog post Busting the myth of funding and The Design Doctor: Where can I get funding? You can get here some practical ideas about how to get started with marketing on a limited budget .
If you are struggling to combine money and creativity and want to get a more positive attitude around money and finances , then check out the Creative Money Manual by our affiliate partners Mark McGuinness of Lateral Action & Sarah Thelwall of My Cake.
What did you think about this blog post? Did it make you cross or get some insights? I would love to hear from you in the comments box:
Once I started treating my business as a business, not just a hobby or part-time dream, I started making money. It was, and still is, a tough transition, but if you want to be an entrepreneur and make a profit, you need to think and act like one.
You are so right about that Julia, it’s a very interesting observation indeed.
As always, very useful, spot on information…… !
I love this post Patricia – your writing is so energetic!
Money is hugely important in a business, it’s not really a business otherwise is it!?
I think having a long term plan is also just as important. A start up business shouldn’t expect a profit in the first year, they need allow for all the expenses of setting up a business. Marketing, advertising, buying materials, web design and so on – as well as PAYING themselves a wage for the hours they put in. If your business isn’t covering even a modest wage, after a year it’s probably not a goer.
The recession has made getting a loan or even a credit card more difficult. aka Catch 22 with knobs on… I guess most people just have to work for nothing whilst supplementing their income with a ‘means to an end’ job.
Thanks Hilary.
As with a lot in life I think it is about the choices you make. For some people it is better to have a great hobby and have a job in another field completely that pays the bills. But if you want to earn your living from your creativity you need to think about the money aspect, as otherwise indeed it ain’t a business. And lack of money is an absolute creativity killer for most people, and the fun will go out of it rather quickly.
Patricia
Excellent Blog Post with lots of food for thought. It is important to get your name out into the world, either through direct contact, social networking or backlinks to your website. I probably spend 75% of my time doing this when I would much rather by making! Friends and family can only buy so much from you.
Lack of money can be a creativity killer, as I often find myself running out of something or just not having the right component and having to wait for an order before I can finish or continue creating. However, it’s like Christmas when the order arrives and the creativity continues!
A really useful post, it puts things in perspective.
I have several talented friends trying to make a living who say, when I try to talk about SEO for their websites for instance, but I can’t be bothered with all that, I just love making.
I’ve tried saying well you can either do the tedious stuff like that (and accounts) for your own business, or end up doing tedious stuff for someone else but I just get blank looks.
Thanks for this blog post, I’ll now just send people your way!
Thanks Penny
In my opinion creativity and business go hand in hand, and they need to influence each other all the time. Make sure you are creative not just with your products, but also when working on your business.
Patricia
Not having much money does make you more creative as it forces you to think up ways to maximise your marketing efforts. In our business we had a marketing budget of about £2000 a year which is tiny but we’ve made it work by using creativity to reach new audiences. I imagine that if we’d had a bigger budget we would have been less careful about what we spent it on. The phrase ‘necessity is the mother of all invention’ can be applied to being a poor creative!
Thanks Sarah. I think not having a lot of money makes you creative up to a certain point. Many other creatives probably will say that having a £2K marketing budget is massive … but if you really have only a couple of quid then it really becomes very hard to do anything, and it can be really de-moralising if it continues over a long period.
Great post! I agree, you need to account for around 60 percent of your time on sales, marketing, biz planning, finance etc. But I guess it depends what you really want or need out of it. In my experience many creatives don’t aim high enough because of a lack of confidence. If you don’t have a clear vision for what you want financially its unlikely you’ll make a real success of it. And it’s true, marketing is a creative skill, so we should be good at it!!
Thanks Clare for your comments. I do think if you want to make it a business then you do need to spend enough time on marketing, otherwise it just wont pay off.
Great post.
It’s always easy to blame money on why you’re not doing this and that, I’ve been guilty of that in the past too. My business keeps evolving and I love the challenge of finding new clients and projects and making new work.
Probably one of the reasons I like being self employed is that it’s never boring! A 9-5 job suits me a few days a week, but I love being my own boss and making my own way with things x
Hi Patricia.
Much of what you write has great resonance with my past work as CEO of a smallish charity… When I arrived it was controlled by people full of good intent and almost puritan approach to spending on what they saw as non core items. I was able to get a commitment to a small but guaranteed marketing budget and used it to attract regular donors. The net result was a huge increase in credibility, and thus attracting more funding was made far easier year on year.
As an added bonus we became one of the media points of contact for stories or comment as a well respected leader in our sector. Nothing about the charities’ aims and objectives had changed and it still delivered the same service and to the same client group. Oh and that small budget was tiny in relation to turnover – 1% or so.
How we did it is possibly a useful consideration for small cash poor creatives too. We set out a wish list of all the help we needed, such as design input, goods, services etc. For example we needed a cohesive look and design elements we could use simply and cheaply across different media. We approached colleges and universities and offered ourselves as a client with a commercial brief that students could work on and use for a portfolio with references. We approached very big art and ad agencies too and got a surprising but brilliant outcome. It seems that agencies often find creativity is constricted by clients who are generally attracted by previous work.. they choose their agency because they want something similar. We were able to get top flight campaign creatives to take on a project because it was small enough not to overburden them but gave them a showcase for a different creative approach.
Coincidentally the project was the charity annual report and represented our biggest marketing spend each year. The end result was totally unique, and got us and the agency a lot of awareness and the report won the agency team a Design & Art Direction award for best use of media. An exhibition of the winners toured the world and we gained exposure in ways we could never have imagined. All for under £1000.
In following years we had creatives offering their services free on the back of this.
The key issue is to be professional about it and be open to anything that meets your design brief while not compromising your core values. Just as you are struggling to sell your work now there are others who have different skill who need a client… it may not always be free but it can get you a far better value for your invested £.
Dear Gordon
Thank you so much for sharing your personal experiences here, much appreciated!
It’s so interesting to see what happens when you start using your creativity to work ON your business, and create opportunities as the ones you describe above.
Weirdly enough, I think being a starving creative can actually help you forge relationships with other people starting their creative journey by making you more willing to share things. There’s a phrase I love- “When all you’ve got is nothing, there’s a lot to go around”- and I think it applies here.
I know lots of young creatives who look out for each other, sourcing free materials (hey I found you some wood on the street!), cooking and sharing cheap meals (come round for lentils), doing skills trades (if I pose for you, can you design me a business card?); because we’re time rich but cash poor.
When you get into stable earning, you get a little less willing to share because your time gets more of a monetary value ascribed to it.
Hi Ru
Interesting point, as I do see more cultural organisations sharing now then they used to do, as that’s the only way to survive, but also I think partly because many of them have focused on a specific niche area and know better what they are about.
I hope that it isn’t just young starving creatives who share – I think there are plenty of examples of other people who share too, and of young starving creatives who don’t …
Your comment reminded me of one of my favourite money quotes:
‘Money will only make you more of what you already are. If you’re mean, money will make you meaner. If you’re kind money will afford you the opportunity to be kinder.’ – T.Harv Eker in the book ‘Secrets of the Millionaires’ Mind’