Creative Business 101: 4 Tips for Building Longevity and Success as a Creator

1. Introduction: One, I'm Amanda, and if you're new to me, I have a YouTube channel where I teach people all about art, drawing, and journaling. And through my content, I love to encourage people to be creative in their daily lives. And over the years of creating this video content, I've also been able to build a business where I sell my artwork in the form of stationary, coloring books, planners, notebooks, and it's been such an amazing journey. Over the past 11 years, I've definitely learned a thing or two about what it takes to grow a creative business in a way that's fulfilling and successful. I've never really had a chance or place to share this knowledge that I've gained over the years, so I'm very excited to share that today. So in today's quick little class, I'm going to be sharing three key points that I keep in mind when it comes to being in a creative industry. But I really do think a lot of these things are very universal and can be applicable to you, no matter whether you're in a creative industry or not. Whether you have a business or not. So as we go through them, I would love for you to think about how they can apply to your own life. One of my favorite parts about doing these skill share classes is the community aspect of it. So feel free to use the comments or the project discussion board as a place to talk with other people who are in similar positions or even read about experiences from other people because, of course, this is just my personal experience that I'm sharing with you guys. All right, so let's get started with the class. 2. Diversify, it's healthy: Number one, diversify. The first thing that I quickly learned over the years of doing business or just honestly, anything in life is that diversity is so so important, and this applies to both your business and your life. Diversifying ensures that you'll never have to just rely on one thing, and in the context of business or the creative industries, especially in a world and society and industry that is ever changing. This is so important because you never want to rely on just one thing. As an example, when I first started posting videos on YouTube, that was my main thing and only thing that I was doing so, of course. My only source of income was ad revenue from the views or any sponsorships. Even though things were going really well at the time, I got really stressed still because I was depending on external factors to bring me a source of revenue. I was depending on brands to choose me for ad campaigns. I was depending on turbulent YouTube views for ad revenue. All of these things were mostly out of my control. I mean, I could control things the types of videos that I posted, the quantity and frequency of videos I posted. But other than that, I was just kind of at the free will of the algorithm and other brands. I found that this made it really hard for me to focus on the things that I actually wanted to do or make the videos that I actually wanted to make. So to combat that, I actively tried to diversify the things that I was doing, my revenue sources. I was doing things like streaming. Doing memberships, skill share classes, I started my stationary brand. Of course, there are pros and cons to this. You know, you're spreading yourself a little bit more thin. You're not able to focus 100% on one thing. For me, especially having the stationary business as a place to focus my energy on when I didn't want to think about sponsorships or views, it was a good balance to have. And vice versa, I think if I only had the stationary business, it would be too much pressure on me, putting energy and hard work and time into that. So, you know, kind of having a whole diverse range of things that I can do in my business really was the key for me to be fulfilled and happy and successful. I think diversifying also applies to your life as well. I like to view my life as little cups of multiple different categories. You know, you have your work cup, your personal life cup, your relationship cup, family, friends, travel, and I only have a certain amount of water to fill these cups with, so I can't fill one all the way to the top because that means that the other cups will be completely empty. So you have to constantly be filling these cups in a way that's even so that you have a fully balanced life. So for this first lesson, I would love for you guys to do a little check in with yourself. You can even draw out those little cups and see what levels of water all of those cups are at and see where you need to focus on diversifying your life a little bit more. Or if you're applying this in the context of your own business, whether it be a creative business or not, Think about ways that you can add more cups or more categories to your business. And I think in that way, that's how I kind of think about diversifying. 3. Focus on what you offer: Number two, focusing on your customer, your product, and what makes you unique. I've been making YouTube videos for about 11 years now, and I've also been doing my stationary business for five. I've seen the creative industries change so much over the years. What I've noticed is no matter how turbulent the industry gets, no matter how much things change, The one thing that will always come out on top is a good product and a good connection to people. In the example of May YouTube channel, which is a business in itself, it's the business of content. It's the business of getting people's attention. It's the business of social media. I wasn't really focused on getting those sponsorships. Obviously, those came after the fact. I wasn't focused on getting views. Those came after the fact. I was really just focused on making videos that I would want to watch and making the best videos that I possibly could at the time. But I think the same goes for my business. The reason I started it was actually a direct answer to my viewers. I had already been making my videos about journaling and drawing, but I was getting so many questions from people saying that they loved my spreads, they loved my drawings, but they didn't have the time or the artistic skills to recreate them. So from there, I thought of the Doodle planner, which is our flagship product. It's a coloring book planner as a way to solve that problem. I started with that one product, and I didn't really think it would grow into a fully fledged business that would still be running to the stay. Looking back, even though I didn't know much of what it takes to run a business. I had dropped out of business school. I think the one thing that I still kind of knew that I wanted to focus on was just creating a good quality product. I didn't take any shortcuts, and I just wanted to make a product that people would want to buy and can stand behind. And I think my customers and viewers did take notice of that, which is the reason why it was successful. Since then, we've been able to expand the business and add other products and focus on the extra fly things like rebranding and packaging and logos and stuff like that. But first and foremost, when I first started and launched, we definitely were just focusing on the product first and finding a way to tell the story to our viewers of why the product was created, why it's a good quality product, how it came to be. Even though we've expanded our customer base to people who might not know about my channel or me, I think I still focus on my connection with the people who have been there from the beginning, and we always ask them for their opinion or feedback and reflect it in the next year's planner. I'm very transparent and open about those things, and I love involving the customers in the creation of the product. So now, I love for you to think about your product or business or your potential product or business if you're thinking of starting one. Write down what problem you think it solves for people and also write down alternative solutions for that problem and how you think your product or your business is unique from those. I also want you to think about how you can share the story or the origin of your product. To your customers, whether that's through marketing, through social media, through the packaging, or through the product itself. 4. Solve Problems & Pivot: Number three, creative problem solving. Spinal section is my most important piece of advice, and I think it's something that I definitely focus a lot on. At the end of the day, everything is about problem solving. I know that term doesn't sound very fun or cool. It sounds like something that you would hear in school. But in my opinion, even something creative like art or drawing is problem solving. It's just visual problem solving. You're finding out the best brush stroke to solve the problem that is your empty canvas. In business or in life, I think being adaptable and knowing when and how to pivot. Is the greatest asset that you can have in any role. You know, sometimes things will go wrong, and you can plan for everything, but I think the people who are able to think on their feet and solve these problems in a way that's creative and efficient are the ones who will make it out. Okay. An example of this in my business was our 2021 planer launch. I thought I was so on time and prepared that year, but When the mass inventory of planners was created, we found out that there was misprints in every single planner. It was definitely too late to reprint all of the planners, and I also just didn't want all of these planners to go to waste because for the most part, a lot of the pages were fine. It just wasn't good enough for me to sell. The thing about planners is that they are a time sensitive product as well. So of course, we couldn't wait to relaunch them, and there is a specific window of time that people buy planners. And are excited about buying planners. So what we ended up doing, I think, was a very creative way to solve this problem. We actually ended up selling them as oops planners. We sold them at a discounted rate, and we were very, very upfront about every single error on the page to the point where on the product page, there were, like, red circles on what was wrong. I also explained in detail why this happened, why we're selling them at a discounted rate. And I think people just really appreciated the honesty and transparency. And so many people were actually willing to purchase these op planners. I think it also made people feel like they were part of something, Unique. And the other good thing about this situation was it also meant that people who couldn't afford the planner previously were able to purchase it and afford it now because it was at a discounted rate. That whole situation could have been such a disaster, and it was definitely so stressful at the time. But I think because we were able to pivot quickly and think on our feet of a way to solve this problem. I honestly ended up being an opportunity instead of a crisis. It was an opportunity for customers who aren't able to afford the planner normally to buy it, and it was an opportunity for us to be more transparent and open with our customers. And deepen that connection. So when I look back on this whole situation, when the problem arose, we did three main things. One, we identified the issue and the impact. So in our case, our planners were misprinted. We didn't have enough time to reprint them, and selling them would mean that our customers would lose trust in our quality of our products. So the impact of selling these products was too severe. Number two, we had to brainstorm ways to pivot. There were a lot of other solutions we had including fully reprinting them, selling them later, selling stickers to go over the issues. We weighed out which solution would be best and also which way we thought had more advantages. Number three, you have to market the pivot. The way you present your pivot or your solution or your change definitely matters, you definitely don't want people to lose faith in you or your product. In our case, if we hadn't been transparent with our customers, they would have lost trust in us in our products. And I think me telling the story of why this happened and also explaining how manufacturing and production timelines work just allowed for people to understand us a little bit more. As I mentioned, this was an opportunity for us to be almost more personable and real to our customers and not make us seem like this big corporate robot giant. So for this final lesson, I'd love for you to think of a problem that you currently have in your business or life and brainstorm ways that you can solve it creatively and turn it into an opportunity for you. So One, think of your problem and the severity, the impact two, brainstorm ways to solve it and pivot, and three, think of ways that you can present that pivot in a way that makes it into an opportunity. 5. Final Thoughts: So that's it for this class. I know we talked about quite a lot of things within a short period of time, but I hope you were able to take away something from it and hopefully it can apply to any of your creative endeavors in business or life. Please do leave any takeaways or thoughts that you had while listening to this class in the comments or discussion board below. Maybe you'll find some other people with similar problems to you and you can discuss together. I think that would be really fun. I wish you guys best of luck in all of your creative endeavors. Bye everyone.