Do all creatives have to be entrepreneurial?

Perhaps the two are inextricably linked in today's 'working artist' landscape.

When the author Bernardine Evaristo won the 2019 Booker Prize, she became an overnight success.

Except, of course, she didn’t, because she’d been grafting for years.

She’d toiled as a writer - while running an all-women theatre company - for decades before winning the prestigious writing prize, aged 60.

(The spiritually-curious may be interested to know that Bernardine believes in manifesting and had ‘win Booker Prize’ on a vision-board.)

You can read about her creative career in her brilliant 2022 memoir Manifesto.

Bernardine was the classic ‘struggling artist’ in the sense that she had no financial backing and yet she never gave up.

And this can feel like the most honourable way to make art: stay true to your vision; never give up; never sell out.

But I wonder if today’s ‘working artist’ landscape is different, as we have the internet and social media to both share - and sell - our work?

This is open to newly-emerging artists, as well as the most successful, like Tracey Emin.

I also wonder if this open access to certain artists and their ‘behind-the-scenes’ reveals the entrepreneur behind the creative.

Emin is certainly entrepreneurial; Damien Hirst too; Margaret Atwood; Elizabeth Gilbert.

But one question for those of us who consider ourselves artists, or creatives, is:

Will you make your art the product, or earn from a separate business/job to ensure your creativity is uninhibited?

Here’s my plan…

Right now, I’m earning a reasonably good income as a full-time writer (non-fiction author, journalist, ghostwriter and on Substack).

When I look back at my own vision boards, all of them have ‘full-time writer’ in there quite centrally.

And so really, 'I’m living ‘the dream’.

But there’s something bubbling up inside me; a hunger for building a business.

It was this hunger that inspired me to launch my first online course.

I wanted to take back the reins; to no longer rely on editors commissioning me if I wanted to earn money for my writing.

Anyone who has relied solely on being commissioned, as a writer, to earn a living will know it can swing between precarious and financially unviable.

Growing an online business, meanwhile, is firmly within your own control.

And so, in 2019, I launched a course, it became a business and it felt fucking great.

Empowering, exciting, limitless.

If the pandemic hadn’t happened, I’d probably still be in that business.

But we can’t change the past, only the future.

And actually, when that business slowed down, I got my next book deal and moved into ghostwriting.

That’s when my writing dream really came together.

I should be grateful for this evolution. And I am.

But…

Now, I feel this familiar stirring inside me - inspired, in part, by returning to live in London with all its Big City energy - and I’m working out how to channel it.

I’ve quietly added some online courses and coaching offers into the shop on my personal website.

It’s where I launched my first online course and if I’d had the wisdom then that I have now, I’d have kept the courses there.

But I didn’t.

So I launched a platform just for online courses; keeping it separate to my writing career (as a journalist, author and poet).

I’m ashamed to say this, but I was never hugely proud of running online courses.

Perhaps it felt like my version of ‘selling out’, somehow.

But the truth is: I fucking loved running them.

What a paradox.

If anyone asked what I did, I’d say:

I run online courses

(quickly)

and then:

…but I’m a writer, too.

Often, they were more interested in the business.

Maybe it’s because I whispered the ‘writer’ part, as I felt like an imposter.

Maybe it was because they were trying to work out how to earn a living from home themselves.

Either way, I wanted them to see me as an artist but I felt like they saw me as an entrepreneur.

I had in my mind that you can’t be both.

However, the reason that online course business took off was because I used words - and writing - to both create and sell the courses.

I told stories.

True stories.

And people got swept up by those stories and joined my courses.

They then told me their stories - about launching a new business off the back of this course, or earning £100,000 after spending just £99 on this course or growing their freelance careers by securing press coverage.

I loved those stories. I kept a note of them. It made me smile and feel like I had real purpose with my work.

Many of them were working around young children, like me.

Their stories mattered to me.

Women matter to me.

Mothers matter to me.

Shifting the gender pay gap matters to me.

Upping our pensions to match, or perhaps surpass, men's - currently much larger - pensions matters to me.

And so does career fulfilment.

When I think back to the times I’ve been happiest, in terms of my career, they are:

• While writing my last book, Raise your SQ (and researching incredible spiritual practices that I could then share in the book).

• While I was running my online course business. My mission was clear and the money was flowing in. It felt incredible.

And so I find myself back in this exciting space, with two streams to my work:

1. Being commissioned to write, by editors.

2. Being my own boss and teaching my community new skills and ways of thinking.

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Important note:

I should say here that having three babies in five years, while launching my freelance career, made it impossible to grow a big business and have a full writing career.

People sometimes advised me to keep going with the business and write ‘on the side’.

There is no ‘one the side’ when you have a five-year-old, a three-year-old and a baby.

They are the main event, the business or writing is on the side.

But now, with all three kids at school and mostly sleeping through the night, things are definitely easier. Lighter. I have more time, energy and mental space.

I can be a mother, a writer and run a business.

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Substack

I get to do some of my writing/business on Substack, by sharing words that I hope inspire people to make big and small changes to their own lives.

It’s wonderful to offer this at a very accessible price (£3.50/month or £35/year).

But I don’t want the writing to be shaped by the money exchange.

I want to feel completely free to write whatever I’m thinking about, or doing, without wondering if I’ll get new paid subscribers off the back of it.

Also, while I feel ‘held’ by Substack (they deal with customer service and collect payments), I’m realising I need all the control in at least some aspects of my career.

And so I’m going to continue with Substack, continue writing non-fiction books and articles but also bring my personal website back to life.

New online courses

When I was leaving Somerset for London - two years after leaving London for Somerset - a friend said to me:

You’re good at change.

At first, I wasn’t sure I liked hearing this. It made me feel flighty.

But now I’m fully embracing it.

I am good at change. I’m good at new ideas, making changes, evolving, taking risks, trying something new and seeing when it is no longer working.

I’d like to help other women to make big life changes too, and I have ideas for new online coaching courses that will help with this.

This is in-line with the next non-fiction book I’m hoping to write, too.

But I’m going to do ‘business’ differently, this time. Start it the same way I did before - with a gentle, nurturing, feminine energy - and stay in that energy.

No silly Big Boy marketing tactics.

Just trusting that through my messaging and intentions, I’ll find the women who need what it is I can offer.

What about The Dream?

A voice in my head says: stop. You’re living your full-time writer dream. You don’t need to run a business. Let the top dogs pay you, do your Substack and keep quiet.

I respond: while I love writing, I’m also entrepreneurial and I find that side of things thrilling. Why are you trying to dampen that spirit?

I wrote a piece for Emma Gannon’s Substack The Hyphen about the year I committed to writing poetry and how it didn’t really work out.

Poetry can’t be the only thing I do, work-wise, because when it becomes about earning a living, the inspiration stops dropping in.

Even the ‘struggling artist’ has to relentlessly pitch or ‘reveal’ their art, in some way, to make it work.

So there’s an entrepreneurial edge to this too. It just usually takes a lot longer to feel as if you’re succeeding.

Conclusion

Unless you have a trust fund, you’re going to need to earn a living.

And this can be a good thing: I’ve heard of ‘artists’ from super-rich families who find it incredibly hard to motivate themselves.

But, as I said earlier, it’s about deciding whether you’re going to sell your art or earn money a different way so that your creative process is free from financial pressures.

If you’re a mother to young kids: this is a very real additional hurdle. It doesn’t make it impossible but it definitely makes it harder.

However, there’s something about having to earn a living, as an artist - and prove yourself, as a creative mother - that can fill you with a determination to succeed.

Annie x

Want more from me?

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