Transcripts
1. Intro: For a long time, I wanted
to have my own business and for it to be based around
my creative passions. But initially, I
struggled to know how to make those two
dreams come together. From teaching guitar
in living rooms and recording in the makeshift
studio to launching my own multi award winning music charity that now
employs a team of people. I've learned how to
turn creativity into income without losing the joy that made me start
in the first place. In this class, I'll show you how I did it and how
you can do it too, with whatever your creative
passions or business dreams are. Hey, I'm Mark. I'm a full time musician, the
founder of a music charity, and director of a creative
company called Time. I also operate as a course
and content creator, and I'm a top teacher
here on Skillshare. My charity's aim is to build people's confidence
and creativity. We provide inclusive music
sessions that are available to everyone regardless of age,
ability, or background. My journey from hosting a weekly drop in session
that was organized by free friends to becoming a company director
is all covered here. The skills I've
learned from launching a creative business has
helped me lead a life and build an independent
career that I truly enjoy and feel
privileged to deliver. Class we'll talk about imposter syndrome and self
doubt that you might experience when trying to turn your creative outlet
into a form of income. I'll show you how to
create that company that aligns with your
passions and interests, but also starts
to pay the bills. There'll be examples of how
me and my colleagues set up mobile income streams
where you don't need a huge social media
presence to get going. The most useful apps and
productivity hacks to help you and how to manage your time, health
and well being. Becoming a business
owner I should mean you just triple your workload and the result in mental fatigue. Trust me, you don't want
to keep hearing burnout. I've been there, that's
no good for you, your creativity, or the people that benefit
from your business. We'll look at ways
to balance that. Have an idea and a creative outlet that you're
passionate about passing on and earning a living from, then
this class is for you. Whether you're looking
to get started or you're already
up and running. They need clarity on
direction and how to grow, then there'll be
something here to help. I'm still on my journey and always looking for
ways to improve. But the experiences and
insights that I share here should get you to this point a lot
quicker than I did. I look forward to hopefully
seeing you in the next video.
2. Class Project: To hopefully help you realize
the opportunities you have, I want to start with a
really simple class project that you can make more detailed
as the class progresses. So we're going to start with a very basic outline for now. You'll see a worksheet attached to this class if you want
to go and grab that, or you can just follow
along with me for now. So starting simple. What is the broad area you
want your business to be in or what is that main passion that you're looking to monetize? It could be art, film, photography, copyright,
design, whatever that is. So for me, it would be music
or more specifically guitar. And then you want to identify five to ten related skills or areas that branch out
from your main passion. So if we look at that music or guitar heading to begin with, we've got guitar
player, guitar teacher, songwriting, recording
studio engineer, producer, live music events
management, music therapist. And all of these individual
roles will be able to sprout off and create other roles or more defined areas
for you to work in. But we can talk more
about that later on. Now, as this class progresses, that list will become
more definitive. Those single line headings, those single roles
that you'll have will start to branch off
and eventually create a much clearer idea of the type of business you're going to
launch. This get stated.
3. The First Hurdle: So this is probably going to
sound frustratingly simple, but you just need to get
stayed and start small. Don't overwhelm yourself. So many people are held back by that initial process of just getting going.
Impostor syndrome. You've probably heard
that phrase before, and the chances are if you have that magi voice in your head, it can be hard to settle or ignore it. But
don't let it stop you. It's about trying to turn
that self down on it. Starting and saying to yourself, there's no pivotal goal here. I don't need to earn
$100 in my first month. I don't need to monetize on YouTube and get 5,000
followers on Instagram. In my first year, it's
all unnecessary pressure. Actually, if we just get
going, do that first drawing, set up your business
profile and social media, share your first few
product designs, upload your first YouTube video, whatever the small thing is, we find that we build
momentum quickly, those little steps forward, those tiny wins, they
just compound over time. Can reflect and look back
and see that you've achieved a lot and you now have the perfect platform
to build from. The music company and Charity I run have been operating
for over ten years, but we started with
a two hour drop in music session for people with additional needs that took place once every two weeks
that eventually turned into a full time music service that now employers
multiple staff. You learned so much
along the way. If I was parachuted
into my business now, there's no way I
would understand the systems and processes
that we have in place, the marketing needs, the cash flows, accounting,
managing staff. They're all things that
we learn as we progress. So as we make mistakes,
that can be the best and sometimes the
only way to learn. No one who is thinking
about stay has the perfect business idea.
It doesn't work like that. I see so much about how your first three
businesses will fail. I hope you done, obviously, but the point is
the initial idea you have to set up
the structure that you imagined probably
won't look the same once you get going and
you become established. But that's the point
you've got going and that's when you
start to learn, develop, and starting that process, you fine tune, you
learn new techniques. You meet new people that are further along the
journey than you are. All those opportunities are
out there once you start. Don't be put off
by other people in the field already doing
something similar to you. It's only their version, and you're going to
be creating yours. Early on in my journey,
I reached out to someone who is massive in
the graphic design space. Didn't think he'd
get back to me, but I was really inspired by the sort of life that
he was leading, the courses he was creating, and the way he seemed to be able to manage his time and have
all this creative output. He got back to me. We'll talk more about reaching out to people like
that a bit later. Now, some of the
advice that he gave me was just invaluable
in that early stage. We spoke so much about
work life balance, flexibility, managing
his own time, the time that he
gets with his kids, just how empowered he feels
to run a creative business that's inspired by his own
ideas, his own output. But one of the biggest
things he said was to not be put off by other people already
operating in your field. The chances are you're not
going to create something totally unique that has never been seen in
the world before. But what is different
is you're going to be pouring your heart
and soul into it. He was like, it's going
to have Mark markness. There are other
people talking about charities they run or
delivering guitar, tuition, music therapy,
guitar courses. But the difference is
I'm sharing my passion, my input, my experiences,
and people connect to that. So remind yourself
of that when you are launching and you're
putting yourself out there. Then when I did come
to creating classes, the first one that I put out
was a beginner guitar class. That's a crowded field.
There's a lot of people already
operating in that area. It would have been very
easy for me and that impostor syndrome have
just taken me over, convinced myself
I had nothing to contribute, no worth
in this space, and just not end up
definitely intimidated, but I reminded myself of
my passion for music, my unique journey
and relationship with my art form and
my creative outlet. I told myself, I'm just documenting that
and sharing that. If one person connects,
then that's great. I got picked up as a staff
pick and I got put into a teacher development program and then top teacher status. It sparked a whole
new direction of travel in my creative
and professional life. Arguably, I'm here creating this class because of
taking that initial leap. I just had to overcome
that initial self doubt, not set myself huge
goals or expectations, pour my genuine passion into the thing and just get started. Dive a bit deeper into that.
4. Business Concept: You may have asked
yourself this already, but why is it you want to
start your own business? I think it's really
important to have that in your mind as it can help shape and direct what you create and who you
target it towards. Does the idea of
working for yourself, being your own boss give you massive motivation and drive? Do you want control
over how something looks and how it's delivered? Are you passionate about
being directly involved in the satisfaction
someone receives from your service or product? Does the idea of seeing
something start from scratch and turn into a form of
income really excite you? Any and all of them are great reasons to start
your own business? Those initial feelings
and I still have them. The journey of being a business owner and maintaining that creative output really
excites and motivates me. In this class, I'm coming from the angle of having a
creative passion and then turning that into
a profitable business, which is what I did. But doing that without
ruining the love and the passion you have for that creative outlet,
that's very important. Unfortunately, every
job has its downsize, it's hard days, it's bits of admin that aren't
the most exciting. It's important to
keep that in mind. To do now would
be to load up the worksheet that's
attached to this class. We're going to go
through that together, but obviously pause
at any point to say Beavers and think
about your answers. A few quick pointers to help you with this worksheet
and generally just help you with getting the ideas going for the business that
you're going to launch. What are your unfair advantages? Things you do regularly or
have big experience of. They may be the direct source of your passion and creative
career like mine is guitar. Look at guitar and think
before I launched my business, I had been playing
guitar for 12 years. I had ten plus years
guitar playing experience. I'd also talk guitar to people of a mix of ages and abilities. I'd worked in recording
studios as a sound engineer. So there's already a good
mix of attributes there, and then you can look
at adding experiences that might not be directly related to your main passion but will really
benefit your business. For example, I had experience
of working in schools and then homeless hostels and care homes for people
with disabilities. This meant working with a
massive range of needs. Lilies and having to
adapt my approach, adapt to my communication, really try to be
approachable and accessible for people from a real mix
of backgrounds and needs. I can add adaptability,
communication, awareness of the care system, inclusivity and accessibility, all good attributes to help with business and liaising
with people, and hopefully selling my
idea, my product, my service. Let's have a look
at that worksheet. We've got five questions that we're going to
be going through. What is the name, concept
of your business? Don't worry if you don't know
a full name for this yet, if you just got a broad idea, even if it's just
what your passion is, web design, art,
illustration, whatever it is. What is your mission statement? Who is your target audience? What is your vision,
and what are your short and long term goals? Let's go through those together. I knew I loved music, how could I find a way to
earn a living from this? Music or guitar is going to be my broad initial term that I'm going to
put into this box. Guitar was the first
instrument I learned. I played it every
day, what would be a nice fulfilling way
to monetize that? Music or more
specifically guitar. We move on to a little
bit more definition with a mission statement. I knew music changed
my knife, literally. It wasn't just about
getting good guitar or listening to my
favorite records. I gave me a sense of
identity and purpose. Improved my confidence, provided a whole new network of
people and social circle, gave me some really
cool experiences. So how could I create
a service that's facilitating and enabling
that for other people. I really like the line,
help others develop their confidence and creativity through
music participation. Then let's drill down
a bit more on that. Target audience, that would
be aspiring musicians, quite an obvious one to start with music lovers, obviously. Earlier about helping
people's confidence. People that could be
suffering isolation, vulnerable from a big mix of
underprivileged backgrounds, potentially, communities, any environments where the
opportunities to access music, creativity in
general are limited. And because I had experience of working in the care sector, it makes sense to look at that environment because
that's something I know really now let's try and expand on the vision of the
business a little bit more. Shortly after I started
playing guitar, my mom began working in a school for children with
disabilities and I heard so much about sensory
approaches and music and the benefit that was having on the
children that were there. As a vision, I began thinking, how can I incorporate
that into my business? How can I bring
that multitude of benefits that music
provides into my service? Well, I know that
I'm going to want to create an inclusive service. Going to have to focus on
things like accessibility. It's going to be able for all ages and abilities
to be able to access it. Those people accessing it
should be able to gain the therapeutic benefits
of music participation. That's what I want my
service to provide. Again, it's brawl, but we can niche down later if need be. This is all about just getting the ball rolling and
the brain ticking. Inclusive and accessible is a big vision for how I
want my business to be. Now let's try and bring all of into some short and
long term goals. Don't worry if you haven't
got definitive ideas yet. Take your time but this pause whenever you need to
sit and reflect on it. We're not filling
this out now, again, to have a definitive idea of what this business
is going to be. This is all a
process to hopefully just gradually bring
around more clariy. So this cobe all of that into some short and
long term goals. So for me, sure, utilize
love for music and guitar. We know that's my initial idea, my dream to generate a
form of income while helping others discover
their potential. Sounds nice, right?
Cool. That's enough of an idea or enough of a reason to want to get a
business up and running. As we look a little bit
longer into the future, if I'm going to have
a long term business, I want a sustainable service, and I want it to
be recognized for its inclusivity and have a positive therapeutic benefit on those that engage with it. Then looking even more detail
to that long term goal, we want to see some results
from this business. What would those
results look like? Public performances to enhance the well being and increase
confidence and self esteem. We spoke a lot
about that earlier and your own business is brilliant for your
own mental health, but if you can
then affect others possibly as well, fantastic. I'm not saying you have to
go and create a business now that focuses on therapy
and well being, but I'm sure if any
of you watching this artists,
creators, generally, you got into that creative
outlet and it became a creative passion because of
how good it made you feel. Once you pour that
heart and soul into your business or
product, naturally, it's going to be something
that solves problems for other people or it's going to make them feel good,
something they enjoy. Me, other results as well to see others become
musicians, performers, songwriters, or launch
their own businesses based on their passions. We now have a broad overview of our business and starting to build an idea of the purposes and goals and impact
that we want it to have. Mine involves music or guitar, which was the main passion in my life when I was looking
to work for myself. I want it to be
inclusive and accessible for people of all
ages and abilities and aim to have a
therapeutic benefit that goes beyond
just playing guitar. Start to think
about your passion, your initial idea and use this worksheet as a way
to build more clari. When you're ready, jump into the next video
and we'll talk about ways to actually turn this
into a profitable business.
5. From Passion To Profit: The big thing for me when
working at Howard I'd run my own company was trying
to align my love for music with a career
and realizing that music and guitar didn't mean just trying
to be a rock star. It also meant, how
can I help others enjoy and access
music and guitar. And help others was
a key moment for me. I knew how good
music made me feel, and I wondered how many
people are missing out on that music participation
and how hard it is for them to obtain
that this lesson, I'm going to provide
a brief overview from teenage music lover to
music charity founder and a huge variety of
options that existed for me under the heading of how do
I make money from music? Try to think you can apply these steps to your own
idea and situation. Once I got okay at guitar, I started teaching
absolute beginners. You only need to be a
little bit ahead in the journey of those
that are behind you or have not
even started yet. Ali Abdel who's on YouTube does a lot about productivity,
got millions of followers. He says that he tells himself, he's making videos for himself two years
ago. I love that. I didn't need to be
a guitar virtuoso to start passing on my passion
and help others get started. Music production, you
don't need to have a chart topping
album to start to tutor to someone how to use music software like
garage band or logic. You don't need 20
years of filming and edit experience to become a videographer and start doing your first job for a local
business or a content creator. So that's an
important concept to remember and start
to think how you can apply that to what your passion is and what you want
to help people with. Carry on with that
journey, I'm now earning a little bit
from music for guitar, allowing me to do more
music for myself as well. And this led me to get
a little local studio with a couple of friends.
We got cheap rent on it. We initially used it
as a rehearsal space, and over time, we started to kick that out of a
little bit more equipment, recall our own songs there, and then we could open the doors and invite other local bands and artists to come in and
recall their songs. Suddenly, we're running a
studio for the local community. Remember the SEN school
that I mentioned earlier? Well, I heard they had
no music provision, so I thought, I'll just attend there one
week with my guitar. Once I realized what I
took on on the morning of heading there and being
like, I can't actually sing. I still can't sing,
couldn't then can't I'm going to
do for an hour. But once I arrived in that environment, I
started to perform. People would come forward
and feel the vibrations. It gave me all these ideas about communication
through music, sensory and therapeutic
approaches. So many ideas sparked
just by seeing that musical participation
in a new environment. So what challenging
environments could you enter that might spark
a whole new wealth of ideas because you'll
have to communicate and deliver in a different way? When you have to adapt something to suit a range of needs, you're obviously
forced to become more adaptable and creative
in your approaches. This can be applied to business. How accessible is your idea, and how can you increase that accessibility and include people can
access the music, you automatically have a wider pool of people
that are interested. This led me to learn
about music therapy and potentially becoming
a music therapist. I was attending that school
on a weekly basis for free. I had the guitar work that
was keeping me aflow. Because I had some
guitar experience, I turn up with a smile
on my face every week. I would spend time researching some new ideas and approaches the school were very
happy to keep me on. It became such a
crucial period of my life where I could
learn, develop, and try out new ideas, and ultimately benefit other
people at the same time. I wasn't paid for my
time, but I can't put a price on how
much I learned there. Suddenly, from teaching
guitar to running a studio to delivering music
sessions in an SEN space, rock star idea didn't turn out, I had three different
income stream ideas. They all compliment
each other, and I loved every one of them. So start to think
about the ecosystem of your business idea. You don't want to overwhelm
yourself with multiple ideas, but is tuition a first
step or coaching. You probably have
valuable advice and experiences that
you can pass on. Are you in a position
to volunteer in an environment that could
become the perfect ground for you to experiment and test
your business ideas and generally just learn and develop quickly look at another example. We can take the broad term of art or artist, and if
that's your thing, then you should definitely
be creating, sharing, promoting, having a website, posting regularly
on social media. Even though it's a crowded
area, never let that stop you. You need to retain
space for art, your creative outlet in your
life because that's what led you to want to earn your own living in
the first place. Alongside that, teaching
is always an option. Passing on your experience
and creating an art course, sharing tips and
techniques you use. There's plenty of platforms
that you can host them on, like the one you're
watching on now. Remember, you only
need to be a few steps ahead to start sharing your
knowledge with others. Create digital products
within programs like Procreate digital templates
that people can download. Work and sketchbooks
with prompts and moments of inspiration to help
people with their own ideas. In my local area, an
artist offered to do a drawing on one of the
local businesses windows. Lots of other shops
started to ask about it. Before you know it, 70, 80% of the shops on this
busy street have got some form of his artwork on beauty of it
is, it's seasonal. You can change these drawings, these paintings
throughout the year. People are coming back. It's a regular form
of work for him because he went out there and he offered something for free, a little bit different, had
a bit of a twist on it, and then he could make these
unique bespoke pieces of work for whoever asked.
It's on the high street. Always got people passing by, I marketed itself.
Such a great idea. Hopefully, you can
start to see how the broad heading of art or music can branch out
into so many other ideas. Let's take the mobile
income stream idea a bit further and look at some more definitive ideas and examples.
6. Multiple Income Streams: We can now dive a bit deeper
into what income options are available to us and
hopefully spark some more ideas for the business
that you're developing. So if you imagined all music as the main
trunk of the tree, and then you got all these
branches that come off. If we were to use my passion and my journey as an example, music, guitar, I discovered guitar, been in love with it, started teaching others,
eventually had a studio. I heard about music therapy
and the benefits that had, I went and delivered a
workshop in a local SEN school and that ultimately led to me
launching a music service. Lastly, once this
was established, we knew our disabled
community so well that we realized there was a real need for a disability nightclub. We started an inclusive
disability club night. It made perfect sense. We worked with people on a daily basis from these communities, so we already had the clientele that we
could advertise to. Again, an example about what comes once you
just get started. I could have just started
with a disability nightclub. We wouldn't have known
there was a need, we wouldn't have
had the audience, but all the other stuff linked and gradually built towards. Those things I've listed
were stepping stones, either natural progressions
that link together or new opportunities that arose from the initial
idea or service. Where can you diversify? What avenues can your
initial idea expand into? You have the
worksheets attached, so it's time to get those up again and we can work
for them together. Questions on one sheet, income stream
examples on another, and we've used videography
and art as two examples. We're going to look at video.
Arting nice and simple. What skill or passion
can you monetize. We're saying here, we're
looking at videography. I've banged on a lot about
music and my guitar journey, so let's look at another
industry, videography. Then what I'd like you to do
when you're thinking about your own passion and what you're trying to align for
your creative career, free ways to monetize
your skills or passions. Now, I've talked about a
lot of examples with music, and we've got some
here for videography. Client you can start
with local businesses. Remember I spoke about
the artist as well, who started painting
on the shop windows. Well, you can apply something
like that to videography. Who's going to need some promo videos for their
local businesses? The chances are your
local businesses and people online even they
need a bit of promotion, but they might not have
the skill sets and the knowledge to go and deliver
it in this kind of way. Online content creators, man, if there's ever an industry
that has got a lot of people that are
in need of footage and promoting that and
editing it cleanly and putting all that
production behind it, it's content creators. So yeah, a lot of promo, social media content,
YouTube videos. That's just client work, but lots of things
that exist within it. Stop fridge. You've got lots of sites where you can go and you
can sell your stop fridge. That's another little
avenue you could have that's topping you up
a little bit of income. Digital courses,
spoke about this quite a bit before and the
big benefit that they have. Thing about each of these is they link in
together as well. You do the client
work. You can host that on somewhere like
your YouTube channel. It's also a great place to put some of your
stock footage, again, acting as a promo
for you and your services. Once you've got a digital calls, what a perfect
thing to link after people have seen
the free content that you're putting out. You want to be able to do this, you want to learn from me. Here's a digital calls
that you can access. I know YouTube is incredibly
busy over saturated market, and it's not necessarily going
to monetize straightaway, but I do believe it's a good
avenue and outlet to have, even if it's just for you to be sharing that work,
holding your skills, use it as an opportunity to test will build a
form of audience. You might not take
off stray away, consistency is key with
that sort of thing, but it's a great place
to host your work, provide something for free, maybe post links to
courses or newsletters, something that is
getting your name out there and the more stuff that
you're putting out there, it's a really good way of building trust and raising
awareness of what you do. Focusing on digital
courses for a second. This isn't just for videography. This is whatever your idea is. A digital course could be a
really good avenue for you. Most industry's creative outlets would benefit from a
beginner type course. Even if it's a bit of software
that you know really well, that could be a
really good outlet and a really good course
for you to share. Something you have
to do right away, but I would suggest not leaving it too long because
once that is up, it's not passive income because that term gets
thrown around a lot. I believe that most things, pretty much everything are going to involve some form of work. Obviously, upfront, there's
a lot of work to be done. But even once that's uploaded, you want to turn up for anyone
that engages with that? There's no point in just
hosting it, leaving it, let it do its fing and and
the money's going to roll in. If someone's engaging with that content, if they're
writing reviews, if they're asking
questions, you want to be present and you want to be there to be able to
help people out. Delve a little bit
deeper into what the strategy to start
monetizing would be. You can obviously do this in a bit more detail
in your own time, but we can have a little
look through it now. So branching out
from that initial core product service
idea that we've had, you can start to see all
these different outlets that we spoke about
the YouTube channel, the stock footage,
online courses, freelance, editing services. If you are in
videography, selling digital products like
ts and templates, newsletter, which
we'll talk a bit more about in a minute, some
really good ideas. So just getting started. We spoke about that at
the very beginning. Do you have a camera? If not, so many people in
this industry would be using their phone
to capture content. There's something very
personal as well about sharing videos that are
just your phone to face. Tying into this simple
little projects. You surrounding short films, offer to shoot music videos. You can see how many
different avenues for potential income there are
and some that you can offer, low cost or ideally for free to build that portfolio to
get you up and running. Then you've got
all that in place, it's going to be a
lot easier to start offering your first paid
gig, your paid services. Suddenly, these events, these
promos, these music videos, you can start to charge
because you've got a good CV, you've got a lot of stuff
that people can go and again, build that trust, build that relatability
and reliability. While all of this is going on, you're just constantly
building content to build an online audience all across your social
media platforms, Instagram, TikTok
LinkedIn, wherever it is, just places to
showcase your work. This is where things
like AI tools come in to make this process, and this is applicable,
as I'm sure you know, to so many industries
for scheduling post to refurbishing clips or
brainstorming content ideas, there's some good ones at
Opus Slip Spot Studio. Really worth checking out. Again, not just for videography. You can see how so much
that can be applied to all sorts of
creative outlets. You've got a website, you've got a landing page, you've
got a YouTube channel. This all ties in to diversifying your income stock footage
sites that we spoke about, continuing to develop
that YouTube channel, upskilling yourself, and
building your audience. You've got editing services, fiber Upwork, all
these sort of places, and then thinking about
that online course, even a beginner
videography tutorial would be perfect after all this experience
that you've built. And then close to
some, not passive, but kind of a nice
little trickling in of income you can get
from certain websites. And all this just helps you plan for that long term growth, regular clients, things that you could do on a
retainer basis, is their monthly
social media content? You could do workshops,
live coaching. You host a workshop online. It's endless, the amount of people that you could
get to attend it. You obviously builds
your audience, but you're kind of doing
all this stuff beforehand. So when you do launch
these workshops, you've got a nice bit of
profile to go and expand into. Naturally, like in any
industry, as you grow, you get better gear
you're allowed to take on more higher paying
jobs and you can start to think
about outsourcing, freeing up your workload, allowing you to focus on more of the things that
you want to do, and you are still able to grow. We'll speak a bit more about outsourcing in a little while. Start to think about
how you can apply this mindset to your own field. How can you turn your
creative passions into multiple income streams. This one I've just
highlighted doesn't have to be the
definitive journey, but it hopefully
just demonstrates how many different examples and what journey you could
go on in this industry. You go on that journey, one particular thing
might stick out. One particular area
might take off, which then sets off its own little branches and other little ideas. That's
why it's so important. They networking, they're
creating the ideas. They all just benefit each other and continue to
compound over time. Newsletters are another
great thing to explore. We mentioned them very
briefly earlier on. You'll hear creators
talk about building email list a lot. There's a reason
for that because it becomes your direct audience. It ties again perfectly to
what we spoke about earlier, trust, reliability, that
regularity of content. People really get
to know you and become familiar
with you approach, your service, your
product, whatever it is. Chances are, it's not
going to monetize early, but it is another skill
set that you will improve. You will develop as a writer, you'll become better
at sales pitches. You'll become better
at storytelling, presenting what it
is that you offer. You're building an audience
as this goes on and you can use places like
Substack and Melchi, and as they're free to use,
you've got nothing to lose. You don't have to spend
a ton of time on it. You can just block that
out in your calendar. It could be weekly,
fortnightly, monthly, even just something
that's there, hold you to account,
and over time, you'll see it's a
brilliant place for you to share your thoughts, your experiences,
your storytelling, and people really buy into that. I'm quite early on in my
journey, we have newsletters, but it's already
expanding my reach, my engagement, and some sales. You can see why it's important
to diversify your income. It gives you a
better opportunity for growth and it's rare that one form of income is the thing that
catapultual growth. It's usually due to
multiple income streams. But always, there's
a balance to be had. You don't want to
overwhelm yourself, you don't want to spread
yourself too thin. This doesn't mean
you've got to go out there and create
multiple products. If you're tactical,
you can create one main product or service, and then a lot of
the other things, a lot of the avenues and income streams exist around that. What resources do you
already have to start? It's the easiest way to
get your first paid gig. Which income stream sounds
most exciting to you what small action could you take this week to help
you move forward? Think about those
questions one at a time. Don't overwhelm yourself,
see what ideas they spark, and see how you can start to take some gradual steps forward.
7. Outsourcing: Outsourcing, one of the
best ways to help you grow, but one of the hardest
actions to take. So many people who run their own business or use their creative passion
to earn a living, find it really hard to
relinquish complete control. It's very easy to think no
one can do this like I do, or no one has the same passion for this idea or
art form than I do. But every business
has tasks, systems, admin that exist around
your main passion. It's really important for you to realize what you might
not be the strongest at, what you haven't really
got that desire to do, that's okay. It's right
to think like that. As soon as you are in a position to outsource something, it. The time that it gives
you to focus on what is really the core of your main
passion is so valuable. So recognize what you're
not the strongest at, and that's okay and
see if there's anyone who can get on board
with your idea early on. Think of a trades
person example, we could all try and tackle
those DIY jobs at home. We could do YouTube searches around how to fix your
boiler or washing machine. Up a lot of time, and
there's people that are specialists and do that
for a living for a reason. I appreciate money
might be an issue. There's certainly no way
that I could outsource straightaway and bring
on a big team of people when I first
started my business. But you can be a bit tactical with it and look
for other options. Like the trades person, example. A lot of us have
got a mate who's a plumber or an
electrician or a builder. I started to look at that from the relevant industry
that I was going into, social media, web design, logos. We actually did this when
we launched our service, which eventually
became our charity. Had a friend who was
working in design, and he designed as a logo
that we use to this day. It didn't cost us
anything. We tried to give him some drinks and a couple of quid
where we could. But because he was seeing
maids start a business, he was really passionate
about helping us and he done it far better
than we ever could. And it's still something to this day that we get a
lot of comment about. That logo has become obviously our brand and it really
represents us so well. If you're young enough,
you might know people that are studying at college or UI that are studying
subjects that are relevant to what you're doing the industry that
you're going into. Pull in a few favors from there. If you're a lot older, you
might have mates who got their own kids that are
going to college or UI. That could be
another opportunity. Just go direct to colleges. They usually have
departments and people that are looking
for placements, opportunities to help
their students develop. And one thing you're going
to get there is keenness. Someone who has gone to
pick this subject is usually very keen about
developing in that. I'm not saying you're
going to get the most high end things
straightaway. I'm not saying you have
to go out and do this, but it is an option,
it is an idea. Or online, there's
places like F and Up some of them are
some cheap examples, but you do find some
really good ones on there. We actually used that a
lot in the early days for some design and some marketing and that worked out well for us. A great book to read around
the process and advice on outsourcing is Tim
Ferris' four hour workweek. I definitely recommend
checking that. Now the game changer in the
modern world, AI hatiBT. How many hours have people spent working out what
description to add to their digital course and engaging catchy YouTube title, a really punchy sales script, the Muss idea and coming
up with ideas for content, business names, business
logos, replying to emails. The list and the
tasks it can do, as we're all becoming
very aware of nowadays is AI doesn't have to
write everything for you, but it is the perfect
ideation tool. It can refine work
and make brilliant suggestions in an instant. You could record a 1 minute
voice note a newsletter idea, sales pitch, YouTube script, and then throw that
into ChatBT and it will turn it into a
ten minute article, sales pitch in Depth engaging script, whatever
it is you're after. In an instant and then you can tweak that. It gets
the ball rolling. I definitely recommend you
find a way to slot that into your workflow and
your idea creation. It makes you more efficient
and saves you a lot example. Recently, I've used it
for media related tasks, feedback on marketing
materials, thumbnails, brainstorming
YouTube, title IDs, or heavier business stuff
like cash flows and budget sheets and drafting
policies for my organization. Once you get the ball rolling, you realize how many
things it can help with. I could create a whole class
around the benefits of AI, but luckily, there is already
a quality one out there. It's popping up now or
links in the description, so I definitely
recommend checking out. A few more suggestions to
help with your productivity, use Canva for things
like graphics, use calony for scheduling, use notion for task management. All these things are list in
the attached resources PDF. They are all things
that will generally help you generate ideas, save time and be more organized. You also have more
traditional routes like apprenticeship schemes that ties into what we were talking about
with the college earlier, you might find something
good if you are art based, you're within that
creative career mindset. Look into your local
arts organizations. We did this and there's a
quick little success story. They were offered an opportunity
for a young person to go and work in the
creative sector with a local organization. They would cover all the wages. There was no obligation to take that person on at the
end of their placement, but it was a chance for them to go and develop because it can be hard to get into
the creative sector as I'm sure most of you know. This young person
who did come to work with end up just
blowing us away. We then put them on a contract
and they came to work with us full time after
that initial placement. We got so much out of them. They really helped us grow. We learned how to manage staff. The arts organization
funded their placement, and then we ended up with this brilliant person
who had got to know that organization inside out and just helped us carry forward
and progress and grow. Looking to that, there could
be some really good support, promotion opportunities, and
advice that you can get. You should have
someone in your local organization or part of your council or
arts organizations that can do something like
that for you as well, you don't always have to be a charity look in
start searching, start local and start freeing
yourself up to do more of the things that you love that helps you build that
dream business. You need to be able to have head space and be able to shut off at times by lightening that workload by bringing
in other people, by relinquishing some control, it will really help
you avoid burnout, which ultimately is
just going to affect your productivity
and your creativity. That is the last
thing you want when you are building your
dream creative business.
8. Materials & Support Network: We spoke about outsourcing. I'd like to expand a little
bit on what other forms of help are out there and some recommended routes that
I suggest you try. There is a PDF attached to this class with a full list
of everything that we cover. So check that out, and if
you've got any questions, just get in touch. Be
more than happy to help. To delve a bit deeper
on that point, don't be scared to
reach out to people, especially those
that you perceive to be far further
ahead in your journey. They've got this bigger status, it's bigger audience be amazed how often people
do actually reply. Derek Sivers is a
great example of this. I've personally
got so much value from his perspective on life, the journey he's been on with personal development
and business, a big musical background,
lots of travel, lots of gratitude, generally
just decent values. To start with, I definitely
recommend checking his books. I began with anything you
want and hell yeah or no. But also, he makes
a big point on his website and very
recently in a podcast on a Mark Manson podcast that he replies to messages and he
says he spends an hour, an hour and a half
a day connecting with people from
all over the world. For someone who's had a
really interesting life, dropping my line, you might get some really valuable advice. Mentioned earlier,
the guy, Daniel, who was huge in the
graphic design space. I got in touch with him. We ended up on a Zoom
call for nearly an hour, gave me so much
valuable insight and perspective from his journey as an online content
course creator, really good at what
he does, started to share that knowledge, build
a really big audience. And we ended up
talking about how he manages his work life balance, and he's able to go and
take his kids to football, pick the kids up from school, have this really
good family life, and then find those
little pockets of time that obviously
he has his business, and he can balance things in a much more manageable way because he started his own
independent creative career. Rota Savan is another one. I found him on YouTube a few
years credible musician, loads of followers, releases
records, tours the world. I've ended up on a
couple of zooms with him because I just asked
him a couple of questions. He's someone who's
given me his time, and I'm really
grateful for that. Another one that I
didn't expect him to. But because I reached out, I got something
really positive back. I've mentioned some authors, but to briefly recap, Tim
Ferris' four hour work week. That's a really good book again about outsourcing
managing your time. You could get some really
good ideas from that. Mark Manson's really
popular book, the satellite of No
Giving the ****. That's a really good book
to read in regards to prioritizing what's important in more business side of things, Alex Homose is just taking
off all over the Internet, massive on YouTube nowadays, obviously a really big figure
in the business world. Some people might label this as the hustle culture
side of things, but he does give some really valuable sales and
marketing advice. A lot of it's long form content, but maybe you could throat
the transcript into Chat GBT and ask it bullet point or the
really key takeaways. We mentioned productivity.
We mentioned Ali Abd. There was stuff
initially that I saw about investing in finance, but also building a business, especially as his businesses
have started to grow. I've got some really good
valuable business advice, not just productivity, but finance and business
from him as well. If you're going
to get one app, I would definitely
recommend notion. That has been an
absolute game changer. My organization, business and personal life, to be
honest, it's brilliant. It's like your only
little website where you can jump between tabs, brain dump some ideas,
script out courses, create to do list, link your Google calendar,
it's brilliant. So definitely have a
little look at that. As you're building
a team, you can start to share this
between your team as well, so it becomes a really
good community hub where you can all interact and throw ideas and
brainstorm stuff. Yeah, definitely check
out. Haven't already look into places like
your local council. I think a lot of people
assume that they need to have charity status before
they're going to be eligible for any
support or funding. We wasn't a charity
for a long time, but we approached
our local council and we found that
they had pots of money and support groups as long as you were doing
community based products, they could come in and
they could support you personally or professionally
and financially. So pitch some ideas. It could be a great way to test some of
the ideas that you've got, get a little bit
of local support, a little bit of promotion,
some great networking. Eventually, if you do
get charity status, then you've done a lot
of that hard core work, and then you're opening yourself up to a lot more opportunities. Yeah, definitely
have a little look got any product or service, you're going to want some
website or landing page. You can balance a lot
of it on social media, but you will see many creatives
and business nowadays, even if it's a
simple landing page, somewhere like Squarespace
or Fin kithic or teachable, they have AI features
well built in, so if you've got no design,
background or experience, or you're just really struggling to know
where to go with it, throw your ideas
into their sites, look at their templates,
and you will come away with something
really professional look. Pretty reasonable costs as well. Then places like Fin
Kifik you can host one digital product and
multiple PDFs for free. It doesn't cost you anything
on their basic plan. You could start to already
direct people towards a landing page that could host your product and you've got
somewhere like YouTube, you've got your social media. All these avenues, actually
you can be posting, creating content,
sharing it for free, directing people to a landing page doesn't cost you anything. All these little ways
to start building that audience organically
at very low or little cost. You could also load up chat GPT, tell it your business idea, your name, your situation. I think that'll give you some pretty good
suggestions as well. The AI class I
mentioned earlier, you can dive a lot
deeper into that way. Lastly, if you have an idea, product that you want to test, look on places like
reedit, discord, look at the groups
on there that are relevant to your industry, your creative passion and outlet and see what people are saying. See what people are
after, learn as much as you can about your product, about your idea, get
as much feedback as you can before
you fully launch. This will save you so much time in the long run
and hopefully mean there's far less tweaks to be made once you do fully launch. All that data you've
gathered beforehand means you will have the best
possible impact from day one. Again, all of these points will be linked in the document, but I just wanted to expand
on a couple of those, give you a bit more
detail on insight, all the best of it.
9. Outro: You're here, the
Outro. Thank you so much for working
through all these lessons. I really hope you got something valuable from the
course and you're feeling positive and confident about your creative career. Wherever you are
in that journey, this class has hopefully
provided you with some tools, some guidance to help
you push forward. I feel very privileged
to live the life I do, and I'm very grateful for the opportunities
and experiences that running my own
business has given me. As we've discussed, there's
been some hard days. I've made some mistakes and
learn from them quickly. Become stronger because
of that, and you will do the same because
your passion for your art form or idea is what keeps you going and seeing
the impact that it has, your product, your service,
when it enters the world, regardless of how small it is, is what provides that
momentum and that drive to keep you building and
keeping on progressing. I wish you every bit
of successful out. If you have any questions, then please feel free
to send them over. I love hearing from and meeting
students of the classes. Also your creative outlet,
your business idea, your art form, whatever it is, please feel free
to send that over. I'd love to learn more about it. I'd love to have
a chat with you. Reviews are also
massively appreciated. So please consider leaving one. I learned so much by seeing and hearing what has resonated
with students of the class. If you'd like to leave
one, that would be massively appreciated. Also see a link to my newsletter or I'll be popping
up on the screen. Please consider signing up. It's totally free.
I write regularly. There's further
business insights to expand a bit on the content
that we've covered here, as well as some new things
all with the goal of building people's
confidence and creativity. If that sounds interesting, please feel free
to check that out. I wish you all the best. Get going with that
creative career, believe in your ability, start to share your passions
with the world. It can make a huge difference to your life and the people
that discover you. Take it.
Marc Barnacle, Music Instructor
