Hello! Over the past few weeks I’ve been trying to put together a list of things I have learned from running a business for the last 4 years and being self-employed for the last 8 years. Just so you know these tips are instructions on how to start a business or how to open an Etsy shop etc, this is more of a list of things I did wrong that I am hoping you can now avoid doing or things I have had to think about differently to keep myself sane. So let’s get started!

So let's get started on these 15 creative business tips...

TIP 1) You have to be your loudest cheerleader.

This tip may not apply to you if you are really lucky but just in case this does happen to you, here is my advice, ignore them. You have a dream to open up this business right? You have no idea if it’s going to work but you can feel it in your gut, mind, body, soul that this is the right thing to do, yeah? So if you’re getting comments similar to the ones I’ve experienced like…

“Are you still playing with that little sticker shop?”

“When are you going to give up and just get a real job?

“You just don’t want to work, you like sitting at home all day”

You look them straight in the face and you say, yep, exactly. You don’t need to defend yourself, you know what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. You have to be your biggest and loudest cheerleader. When this happens remind yourself of why you’re doing this, that no business that exists today knew if they were going to succeed, that YOU CAN DO THIS.

Rise above it if you can but I won’t judge you if you tell them to go boil their head.

TIP 2) Nobody is going to push you.

This tip almost follows on from the first tip in that whilst you might find that you don’t have any emotional support during your business journey, you will most certainly not have any physical support either, at least not all the time. Even if you’ve managed to rope your sister into packing orders for you on a Saturday she isn’t going to be there all the time.

Nobody is going to force you to get up at 7am and get on when you don’t really have to. Nobody is going to tell you what to do or when your deadlines are, what your schedule should be or reprimand you for being late. You are on your own, you are the employee, the owner, the manager and the receptionist and nothing will get done if you don’t get up and do it.

If you have help available, ask for it, there’s definitely no shame in it and if you have supportive friends, family, partner, neighbours etc that’s great, they should want to see you succeed.

Self-motivation is an invaluable skill that will serve you well in any position but it is mandatory if you want to work for yourself and hopefully if you have chosen a business that you love, that your passionate about, this will be fairly easy. I did say fairly, it won’t always be easy.

Create a schedule, get up and get ready for work as if you were leaving the house, setup an office and stay there until 5pm, later if you want, but be careful of burn out.

TIP 3) Remember why you started.

This tip is easy at the beginning, or at least it was for me. I was so excited about getting all my ideas out of my head and on to paper that I was on a single track for a while, focused and inspired. Unfortunately, it started to fade and I will admit I did suffer from burn out at the beginning but that was more a result of my personal life (I got divorced) than it was about my business. I am definitely guilty though of using work to avoid my problems and feelings, don’t follow my lead.

It's very easy to fall into the money trap, particularly with a creative business because money isn’t very inspiring. I started to research A LOT, thinking about what products would make the most money, how could I make more money, MONEY, MONEY, MONEY. Now I’m not saying that money isn’t an important factor in running a business, I’m sure at this point my dad would tell me you can’t eat dreams for breakfast, and it’s true, you need money to live and run your business.

My point is, if you focus entirely on the money, your creativity will dry up. At least it did for me anyway. I stopped thinking for myself and letting my own ideas wander and grow and create the very things I was excited to sell in the first place, I lost my focus and spent more time worrying about money than I did creating.

Once I remembered WHY I was doing this, it was easy to overcome that creative block. Money is important but it’s not the MOST important part.

TIP 4) Imposter syndrome is the worst.

Imposter syndrome is defined as the following:

The persistent inability to believe that one's success is deserved or has been legitimately achieved as a result of one's own efforts or skills.

"people suffering from impostor syndrome may be at increased risk of anxiety"

I’m sure if you are reading this you must also run a creative business and relate to that definition entirely. This is particularly difficult nowadays when we have constant reminders of our competition in our hands all day every day. Just scrolling for a few minutes on Instagram sometimes is enough to make me want to shut everything down, give up and move to Canada. Why am I bothering? Everyone else is SO much better than me? They’re better at drawing, younger, have no kids, I can’t compete. I will just quit. Sound familiar? Or is it just me?

This happens to me regularly and at the very beginning this is really really HARD. Right now I can have a quick flick through my messages from customers or read some reviews and remind myself that yeah I’m maybe not as crap as I think I am. I’m a real artist, I’m really doing this.

Your stuff isn’t worse, it’s just different, keep telling yourself that and just keep going.

TIP 5 ) Doing something is better than nothing.

Now I can’t take any credit for this tip as it was given to me by Struthless in one of his many amazing productivity videos, if you haven’t found him on YouTube yet, you need to, thank me later.

One of his many pieces of advice was that when you are struggling with motivation, inspiration, energy, whatever it is, doing ANYTHING is always going to better than doing NOTHING and more often than not, once you start, you end up doing more than you thought you would. For example, with this blog, tonight my goal was just to get one tip written down and now I’m already on TIP 5, how did that happen?

Another part of this advice came with his 2-minute rule, if something only takes 2 minutes, do it NOW. Don’t put it off and let it linger in your mind on your virtual to-do list taking up valuable space and energy, just do it. It’s only 2 minutes and then you can stop thinking about it, DONE.

Break down tasks into smaller pieces and aim to just do one piece if the whole thing is overwhelming or aim to work for 15 minutes and then break for 5.

Anything will always be better than nothing.

TIP 6) Keep it simple at the beginning.

This tip is exactly what it says on the tin, keep it simple. You really don’t need to spend weeks or months coming up with the perfect name for your business, you can change it later. All you’re doing at this point is procrastinating, you have work to do, pick a name for now and maybe it will change later. You could always just be super boring like me and use your name, sorted.

All you need to do at this point is figure out the basics, you don’t need to know everything straight away, you will learn as you go and you will make many mistakes, change things and then make more mistakes.

Pick a name, pick a logo, register as self-employed so the tax man doesn’t come for you and then get to it.

TIP 7) Plan but then stop planning.

This tip again follows on from the previous one, its so easy to get lost and stuck in the planning stage, and why wouldn’t you? The planning stage is FUN. The problem with the planning stage is that nothing is getting done.

I was guilty of getting lost in plan land and enjoying making my lists and labelling my folders, buying stationery and equipment and not actually doing any of the work that I needed to do to actually make my business function.

Plan, do what you need to do but then stop and get on, I know it’s scary and the planning stage is exciting and taking the next step might feel huge but it’s time to stop planning and just do it.

TIP 8) Take care of yourself.

Ok I mentioned burn out earlier but it definitely deserves it’s own section. Just like I mentioned in Tip 2, nobody is going to push you but nobody is going to tell you to stop either. You have to take breaks and you and your work will suffer if you don’t. It can be tempting to sit up until all hours, work 18 hours a day and cram in as much as you possibly can into 24 hours and at the beginning sometimes days like that will be necessary but you can’t do that every day. At least I can’t at 34 anyway, maybe back in the day when I was 18 and I could do a party until 2am and then go to school for 9am.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t put everything into you, you absolutely should. Just take care of yourself along the way. You will get more work done and it will be much better quality on 8 hours of good sleep in comparison to 4 hours of sleep and a caffeine high.

Set alarms on your phone for breaks, take a lunch break, step away from your work for a bit and breathe. It will be there when you get back. Watch what you’re eating, eat proper meals, away from your desk if you can and if you’re stuck behind a computer like me, move your body.

Nobody wants a hump or a tech neck, STRETCH.

TIP 9) It’s serious but not that serious.

This tip might not apply to all businesses, but this definitely applies to a creative business. I used to take my business super seriously, I had message templates on Etsy if a customer wanted to talk to me and I would sulk if my reviews were anything less than 5 stars.

I promise, it’s not that serious. You started a creative business because you love it, because you have something you want to create and share with the world. You should share your personality along with that and let it shine through every part of your business, whether that’s your branding, how you communicate with customers or even the dreaded social media.

Unfortunately the internet is filled with a lot of bored and bitter people and if someone is having a bad day it doesn’t matter how great your product is, how amazing your customer service was, they are going to complain.

Get a cup of tea and some chocolate biscuits and keep going. I recommend eating them two at a time, I forget about the reviews faster.

TIP 10) Try, fail, then try again.

This tip I imagine is one you’ve already seen or already know. It’s impossible to do anything new without making mistakes. I am always trying to explain to my daughter at the moment that its ok to make mistakes at school, you learn by trying, making a mistake and then figuring out what you did wrong and trying again.

Starting a business is no exception to that rule and as much as you don’t want to, you will get something wrong. You will want to change things as you learn more and you will look back and think, what was I doing? You didn’t know any better!

So in conclusion, go forth, fail, get back up and try again.

TIP 11) You are not too old.

This can be a big barrier for some people, not just age but circumstances can play a part as well such as, I’m a stay-at-home mum, how can I do this with kids? I’m nearly 40, I don’t have time left to follow my dreams, etc etc. I had so many of these thoughts when I was first starting, and they still creep in now. Sometimes I find myself working constantly again towards this invisible deadline that doesn’t even exist, I only have 6 years left to succeed, then I’ll be 40. Yeah, because everyone moves into an old folk’s home and their dreams die at 40, obviously.

This was a big part of why I avoided YouTube and showing my face on social media. What if I looked old compared to all the other artists in their early 20s? What if I looked tired compared to the artists that didn’t have kids and could do this full time? Watch out for the what if spiral, it’s easy to get sucked down there and stuck there.

You are not too old to start a business, especially not if this is something you have been wanting to do your entire life. There is no time to waste, you get one life, just go for it now. Tomorrow is promised to nobody, what have you got to lose?

TIP 12) Work doesn’t have to be boring.

Just because you enjoy what you’re doing it doesn’t mean it is not work. I often get told that my work counts for less because I enjoy it or I get to sit down at a computer so it doesn’t count. It counts and when you’re passionate about what you’re doing you will often put more time and effort into it.

Another part of this tip is that even though you need to treat what you’re doing like a job with a schedule etc, you should enjoy the perks of working for yourself. If having an audio book or film on in the background helps you focus, do it. If having music on in the background makes you happy while you’re doing a boring task, then do it. If a nice, scented candle on your desk makes you want to go in your office more then buy the candle.

You are the boss, and work doesn’t have to be boring to count as work.

TIP 13) People don’t care as much as you think.

Now this tip feels very hypocritical to write because even though I know its sound advice, I really struggle to follow it myself. Over the last couple of weeks I have recorded two YouTube videos, potentially three by the time you see this. They are sat on my phone, unedited, unseen. I keep going online and looking for something that will encourage me to edit them and be brave enough to list them but realistically it’s never going to happen. This is never not going to be scary and waiting for it to not be scary will mean these videos never make it to YouTube. At some point I just need to do it.

The best advice I’ve had with regards to putting yourself out there is that people really don’t care or judge you as much as you think. Think of your favourite youtubers, did you notice that in some shots that they have a double chin? Can’t say it’s something I’ve ever noticed, so why am I worrying about it so much?

People want to see you being yourself, they want to see your personality and there will always be someone out there that relates to you, your flaws and your weirdness. There will also be people that don’t relate and that’s fine too.

So post the videos, I promise I will too. Maybe.

TIP 14) Stop making excuses.

Now I’m sure this tip includes a few things from the other tips but it definitely deserves it’s own point and I am very guilty of this one. We’ve all been there – putting off tasks, goals, or dreams with reasons that feel valid in the moment. But when we step back, we often realise that these reasons are just excuses. Whether it’s fear, procrastination, or self-doubt, making excuses can prevent us from reaching our full potential. So have a think about why you haven’t started that project yet or your business, is it a real roadblock or are you making excuses?

If you’re not sure, have a look at this list of common reasons people make excuses:

Fear of Failure: It’s easier to say “I’m too busy” than to risk failing at something we care about and the idea that something you’ve put your heart and soul into could flop is really scary.

Perfectionism: We wait for the “perfect time” or the “perfect conditions,” but they rarely come. There will never be a perfect time and I’ll say it again, tomorrow is promised to nobody.

Lack of Motivation: Sometimes, it’s just hard to find the energy, especially when a task feels overwhelming. This is where tip 5 comes into play, break it down, do a small task every day, set small goals. Anything is better than nothing.

Comfort Zone: Change is uncomfortable. Excuses allow us to stay in the safety of what we know. I personally hate change, but I also hate sitting still and nothing changes if you don’t change things. Sounds so obvious right? But it’s hard.

Every time we make an excuse, we miss an opportunity to grow, learn, or achieve something meaningful. So have an honest think about why you’re avoiding starting that thing you want to start.

Is it a genuine reason or an excuse?

TIP 15) Research and practice never hurts.

My final tip is a lot more serious and hopefully one that you’ve already done or at least made a start on. You can’t start a business without researching the market that you plan on joining or at the very least see if there is one for what you’re hoping to sell.

This part of the business isn’t my strong point, I tend to make it up as I go but I watch a lot of YouTube videos and learn from people that do. When it comes to finding information online though just be careful. There are a lot of scams out there and remember anyone making YouTube videos is making money from you being there, the information might not necessarily be true, they just want the ad money. Watch out for clickbait like “How I made £10,000 in my first month on Etsy” is it realistic? No.

If you haven’t discovered him already The Etsy Consultant on YouTube is an excellent source of information, highly recommend.

The second part of this tip is practice, never stop researching, learning and practicing your skill. Art is a skill that’s never completed, even without realising you are learning and growing from each piece that you create. YouTube is another excellent source when it comes to keeping your pencil in gear, follow tutorials, try a new style, switch things up and do some traditional art if you’re a digital artist.

Never stop pursuing art, there is always room to improve, new techniques to learn and maybe even a new passion to discover. Don’t let the fact that this is now your job destroy the hobby that brought you here.

The End

So now you’ve read all 15 creative business tips I hope that maybe you can avoid some of the roadblocks that I have faced while I’ve been trying to figure this out. Well, I should rephrase that, roadblocks I am still facing, but they are significantly easier.

I really hope that whatever venture you are exploring goes well, I wish you every success and if you’re on Etsy lots of “Cha-Chings” on your phone!

If you found these tips helpful, I made a little poster out of them for you to stick up to remind you to keep going, stick it in your office and look at it whenever you doubt yourself or you're having a bad day.

DOWNLOAD BUSINESS TIPS POSTER (Coming Soon)

Have an amazing day!

Anna x