The Biggest Things I Have Learnt

I’m close to reaching my 1 year anniversary of being full‑time self employed!!

It has flown by whilst feeling like it’s gone slow.

I’ve grown in confidence and artistic ability and had a lot of firsts.

First solo show, first university lecture, first private studio space, first YouTube video, first founder of Doncaster Creative Network, (soon to be) first TedX Talk and more that I can’t remember right now.

It’s been an amazing journey, so I thought why not share some of my biggest lessons and learnings with you..

Build your business skills.

Building a financially sustainable practice isn’t just about refining your artistic abilities. It’s growing in other areas too. Communication, negotiation, teaching, logistics, finance, marketing, writing, documenting.

If you want to boom your practice, the best place to start is building on these surrounding skills that will help uplift what it is that you do.

You can expand your learning by checking out podcasts, ‘Diary of a CEO’ hosted by Steven Bartlett is my personal favourite. ‘The Freelance Friday Podcast’ by Latasha James is great too. Or get reading, I’m currently on, ‘What They Don’t Teach You At Harvard Business School’, by Mark McCormack, which covers topics like negotiation and making the best first impression. If YouTube is your thing I’ve enjoyed watching ‘The Futur’ channel by Chris Do, he covers all about how to speak to clients and how to raise your price as an artist.

People work with who they know, like and trust.

What are you like to work with?

Do you show up with a positive attitude? Do you go out of your way to help others? Are you responsive to receiving feedback about your work?

This has been a game changer for me to grow my practice and client base. Understanding that to get more work you need to build real connections is what flipped the switch from feeling ‘salesy’, to naturally attracting more of the correct clients.

A strong community is more important than follower count.

I’ll be honest I did at one point get sucked into studying my follower count and trying to understand why it wasn’t increasing as fast as I would have liked.

I felt like it made me produce content with lacked integrity and was pretty surface value. My sole driver then was to grow my followers, therefore I wasn’t paying attention to the people who was already following and supporting me.

A compliment I get often is how strong the community is that I have here. I’ve spent time to genuinely get to know you and I feel the support you send me. Sharing my journey with you has been amazing and all my aim is is to help other artists like me along the way.

You don’t need 10,000 followers to be a full‑time artist.

I’m proof of that.

You’ll always feel like an amateur. 

I’ve spent time with well seasoned artists who have been doing their craft for decades. Even they get a little nervous on certain commissions. It’s normal to feel like you haven’t got it figured out yet.

You moment you start to think that you ‘know it all’ is when you’ll stop learning and in turn stop growing.

I make it my goal to be the ‘best student’. Ask as many questions, soak up as much information and then put that knowledge into practice.