I see patterns (and they help me to earn a living)

Rather than feeling flummoxed about what to post where, whether you should share the same posts on multiple platforms or create original content for each and how to make any of it pay - read this.

I like systems. And frameworks. I like to find patterns (and patterns like to find me). But it all usually starts with a creative experiment.

It’s been like this since childhood.

I remember the first piece of writing I felt proud of it. It was a poem about Maltesers, written when I was about six or seven.

I liked writing poetry. I liked Maltesers. I wrote the poem.

But what I didn’t know was that it was the start of me becoming a poet, which has been a lifelong ‘framework’ for processing the world.

I had no idea that I’d be interviewed about that Maltesers poem many years later for Primer Magazine.

That is how I’ve continued, creatively, through my life: experiments. Some build into something bigger; some fade away, after a period.

For many years, I enjoyed composing music on piano and performing it. I danced on stage. I liked acting.

But I didn’t have an outcome in mind.

That is the beauty of youth: you get to create, freely, without thinking but will it pay? Do I have time? You just create.

If the patterns and frameworks are going to form, that will just happen naturally.

As I entered my late teens, I wrote poems and put them in envelopes to leave around London, and wherever else I went, addressed Dear Someone.

I had an email address - Dear Someone {at] something dot com and when people found the poems, they sometimes emailed me.

Like a German man who found one of the envelopes slotted into the pages of a graphic novel. He’d bought it in London and got it all the way home before finding it.

Again, this project wasn’t about looking for a particular outcome, it was about being freely creative and enjoying the connection, when anyone emailed me.

The ‘pattern’ - I see now - was about connection.

Some time ago, I became disillusioned with Instagram. I’d once enjoyed being on there connecting with other women and sharing words. Now, it was all about money.

People would sell their courses and coaching to me; I’d sell my courses and coaching to others.

It had become boring. Dull. Uncreative.

So, I had a think about what I liked seeing on Instagram (poetry, passages, stories, artwork), and what I liked creating (poetry, passages, stories, artwork).

It didn’t take long to see what I needed to do, including: unfollow quite a lot of accounts that no longer inspired me.

I stopped making all my posts about a lead towards a product or service. That hadn’t been exactly what I was doing before, but it felt like that had become the main aim.

Now, I would create for the love. For my heart, soul, passion, desire, pure creativity. All of the things that feed me and you and everyone. Art.

I started sharing only poetry and poetic prose passages.

Meanwhile, over on Substack, I was writing essays.

Sometimes about business, because I love sharing business tips and ideas within my community - wrapped up in a story - and because money does matter; we need it.

But also, self-development tools - coaching exercises; ideas for a mindset shift.

And personal essays. Stories about my home-life, work-life, motherhood, marriage, friendships, successes and failures.

These essays felt nourishing to write, and to share. I didn’t have any rules around what to write, I would just write whatever had landed and felt as if it mattered.

I started to see that many of the people who were enjoying my writing on Instagram came to join me on Substack. Even though the genre was different.

Now, there were two other areas of my work that I needed to look at.

1. Online courses.

2. Coaching.

I love creating online courses but I’d also become disillusioned with that world.

It had become oversaturated with ‘online entrepreneurs’ over-promising and under-delivering.

I didn’t want to be associated with that.

But I love teaching. I would say that in terms of work, writing is my first calling and teaching is my second. Or perhaps the two are actually the same thing.

With my coaching, I could see that women were getting in touch having followed me on Instagram and/or read my Substack and/or joined one of my courses.

This pattern started to form.

There was a clear path from Instagram to Substack to courses to coaching.

There were also different starting points and different ways that I was reaching people and getting to connect with them - but it was became interlinked.

When I saw this framework building; this business model, I grabbed hold of it. I called it The Creative Way (to earn a living online) and I turned it into a course.

I launched it once in the spring and nearly 100 women signed up and again this month, and nearly as many joined again.

I did a slow, quiet launch the second time, because I was also moving house and now have a child at home full-time.

I thought that I would then close doors on that course, so that I could focus on being with the women who’d already joined The Creative Way.

And, after that, shift my focus back to creating again: Instagram poetry, Substack essays.

Then I had an email, on Monday:

Annie, 

I’m so in love with this course, and the way you teach! It feels like such a wonderful gift to work through, soak up your words and reflect on the prompts. 

Thank you! 💖

Rachel 

And straight after, another one:

Again - another fantastic course module.

It's so powerful when you connect with a person’s writing and feel inspired to take the next steps.

Steph

I felt the power of teaching The Creative Way business model and I wondered if there was a way to continue teaching it that fit with the current flow of my life.

What that would be is:

Creating an evergreen (ongoing) option.

So that women could join the course whenever they fancy and I could talk about it ‘as and when’ rather than just during a launch.

Again, it all started to come together in my mind.

I created the flowchart you can see at the top. About how it all links up, and how the same posts and essays and ideas can flow between different platforms.

I realised that this is my signature course; the only one I want to be putting out and teaching because, right now, it’s exactly how I’m working myself.

When something forms in my mind - when the pattern becomes clear - I fly with it. And that’s what I’ve done.

The Creative Way (evergreen) is now open for students.

Soon, I will explain to you how I’m creating an additional model, now, that leads people through the ‘evergreen funnel’ (using Instagram ads).

I see a pattern forming that links that poem about Maltesers with the poetry I write now.

And how my need to share my thoughts about the world lead to me to writing longer-form essays.

And how, from there, I want to teach the patterns I see within it all, which in turn help us all to earn a living from our creativity.

And that’s The Creative Way.

Annie x

Read more about The Creative Way here - and sign up today.