Who among us hasn’t judged their own work?

It’s part of our job to judge and evaluate the work we create, determine if it’s good or not, determine if it’s worthy of completion or continuation or not. It’s our job as a creative to create a self reflective narrative so the world can see who we are.

Incorrect.

It’s our job as creatives NOT to judge our own work, but to create. Anyone who uses social media can tell you of a time when a post they didn’t really like very much garnered far more attention than anticipated or a post that was heartfelt and personal resounded with very few people.

It’s not up to us to determine how the world is going to receive our work, but it IS up to us to watch and interpret their reaction.

I feel like this idea is one of the biggest struggles facing new creative professionals today, and we certainly see a massive amount of it in the wedding industry and stationery world. New creatives come into this community, follow the trends and create what is currently popular. It creates massive amounts of competition and very little room for growth, but it does help weed out the less creative and driven.

You have joined an industry because you saw others being “successful” at it. Rather than pursuing art, exploring and expanding like we talk about in the Passions course, and then producing…you just followed everyone else. Have you ever produced anything other than the items you feel fit within the paradigm of the wedding world? A lot of you probably haven’t.

Producing is such a huge part of being successful, and I don’t mean producing a wedding invitation. I mean generating art. it’s in the generation of art as an idea, as an exploration that produces great ideas and unique approaches. Without that generation, you’re not moving forward.

When you position yourself to create something in the exact vein that you see others creating and then hold yourself as the only judge and jury, you’re setting yourself up for stagnant and sluggish growth or no growth at all.

It’s not our jobs to judge, it’s our jobs to create and to put those creation into the world and allow the world to judge. It’s our job to then listen.

In the creative industry, so many of us struggle with Imposter Syndrome, where we feel like we’re just faking everything and we really have no clue what we’re doing.

Like being an “amateur” is the worst thing someone could say to us.

There is this idea that we can either be an amateur or a professional, but those two titles have zero overlap. We either get to be one or the other.

Once we’ve hit the “professional stage”, there are things that are no longer permitted…it’s like being an “adult.” Once you’ve grown up, there are just certain actions, behaviors or thoughts that aren’t acceptable or as acceptable as they were when we were younger. Some of those are reasonable, like saying out partying all night, but some of those we should try and hang on to more tightly, like curiosity and wonder.

I feel like so many artists apply this to their work and their identity as well. When we hit this stage where we consider ourselves a “professional,” we aren’t allowed to be fearless, to explore, to take risks.

Yes, technically, amateur means that you’re unpaid while professional say that you’re paid for the work you’re doing, but we’re going to blur the line between those two a bit more. There are some things about being an amateur that we should hold on to and guard more than we do. Amateurs don’t have to let money dictate their actions or decisions.

This allows them to take risks, experiment, and they have little to lose in the process. They share more, exploring ideas publicly and sharing those results. They’re willing to try anything.

Let’s all spend a little bit more time in the mindset of an amateur and worry less about fear and less about what others will think. Explore more, grown more, and never think you’re as knowledgeable as you ever will be. Don’t allow the fear of what others will think to stunt your own potential. There is always more out there, so let’s think a little more like an amateur.

It's not enough to be good.  You also have to be discoverable.  

The landscape has changed drastically in the past ten years.  When I first started out, it was all about networking and building those in-person relationships.  Social media has altered the way we do business and has removed the local boundaries to our work.  It allows us to connect to people worlds away and show our work to hundreds upon thousands of people who would never have otherwise had a chance to be exposed to us and us to them. 

Rather than focusing on networking, we can now focus on building a network.

On the other hand, if you're an unbelievably amazing artist, but don't have a strong social media presence, how do you plan on being found? 

If a tree falls in the woods and there is no one there to hear it.....

These days, it's simply not enough to be good at your job if you don't also maintain and build your social media presence.  It's a tool, just like your email and your computer, that has to be maintained and used on a daily basis.    By maintaining and updating frequently, we’re building an audience we can leverage later.

So many people make the mistake of creating something in the shadows and in the background of their business, hinting at it, being secretive, but not actually showing it or sharing it. Then one day, a new product is launched but is launched to such a blind audience, that it falls flat. Showing the growth and process is part of what makes an idea or product successful and desirable. A big reveal without anything leading up to it only reaches a very small portion of your audience, while exposing and sharing along the way builds anticipation and reaches a much wider group of followers.

Creativity also isn’t born in a vacuum. Great work is rarely the product of a lone genius, but is rather the culmination of collaboration.

A network of creatives challenge each other, mimic each other, look at each others work, drive the industry forward, develop trends, it allows for the rapid exchange of techniques, and out of that mindset of collaboration, genius is born.

Being part of a community like this isn’t about being a genius, it’s about what you have to contribute.

There are so many benefits to sharing and showing your work. It makes you discoverable, it builds anticipation for upcoming work or projects, it builds a network, and it contributes to the overall community. Developing your work in solitude because you’re too scared to share it or that it will be copied or stolen only hurts you because without it, you aren’t discoverable anyhow.

To read more on this idea, check out the idea of Scenius, developed by Brian Eno.

Something that new artists struggle with above so many other struggles is finding their own voice. I feel like new artists expect art to pop out of their fingertips like magic onto a page; that they'll immediately produce wonderful, unique and sellable work.  

Most often, an artist begins their journey by being drawn to the work of others around them.  They've curated a community that they follow, wether it be on instagram, youtube, other students at school, etc. and that will be the work that most strongly influences their own.  We all begin by mimicking the work that we're most drawn to, but this creates a few problems down the road that we don't anticipate at this stage.

The first is that the work we're copying is the work of someone who has found their voice and practiced speaking in the voice for some time now.  Our mimicry will fall flat, looking like a sad amateur copy, resulting in disappointment and discouragement.  

The second is when we continue to pursue perfecting another persons voice, we only end up sounding or looking like them rather than coming into our own voice. 

So how do you do it? How do you find your own voice?  The first step is to start speaking. 

Again, most artists begin by mimicking the work they're drawn to, but so many of those newer artists continue the same copying procedure in their pursuit of their craft.  

Rather than continuing to copy (aka "being inspired by") someone else's work, view that work as a jumping off point for your own voice.  It's like learning to sing...you begin by singing along with other songs in the car, learning the melodies and lyrics, moving on to karaoke, learning a cappella, exploring your own sounds and understanding what note ranges work well for you.  

In order to develop the same unique voice with artwork, we have to go though a similar process. 

Produce work, produce shitty work, produce it again. 

Evaluate your work (evaluate is different that criticize).  Identify the details you like and dislike about what you produce and produce something focusing on the detail you liked from your previous work.  Evaluate and produce again.  And again, and again and again.  Continue this process for a month, creating and evaluating something every day.  At the end of the month, line up your pieces with a few from the beginning, a few from the middle and a few from the end and see how your style developed, evolved and became more distinctive to you and less of the copy you started with.  

Identify what makes your work unique.  Are you drawn to unusual color combinations?  Odd scale combinations?  Unique medium combinations?  As you evaluate your work, watch out for the things that stand out to you and continue to build on them and embrace them. 

It's those things that you identify as being unique that will become your voice.  Own them.  Be proud of them.  Have the courage to stand up for them.  

Being an artist is like being a dumpster diver - we're looking for things that others have discarded or dismissed.  We're always hunting for the shinny object poking out of the bottom of the trash heap that everyone else has missed.  We shift through the debris of every day life, culture, influence and we pay attention to the things everyone else is ignoring.  Find inspiration in those things, develop them, evolve and evaluate and then own the shit of it as you develop and evolve with it.

 

Now you have a voice.  

Something interesting happened the other day.  One of our students had posted a question on a facebook board she and I are both member of, and her question was similar to this: 

Any Type A perfectionists out there?  Who is so OCD that you have a really difficult time finishing a project?  I do a project, I'm unhappy with it, so I'll do it over and over and still end up hating it.  I've spent a ton of time, money and trouble stressing over wether or not I should even proceed with this as a business.  Does anyone else struggle with this?  How long did it take you to gain the confidence to know your work is up to par with your pricing?  (paraphrased) 

As creatives, we've all struggled with this.  We like to have control, we aim for perfection, and strive for excellence in everything we do.  Her question was absolutely relevant, but what was interesting was peoples responses (there were a lot of really wonderful responses as well).  

People jumped on the bandwagon of proud.  Proud to be so anal retentive that they never are happy with a project and will redo it 10 times.  Proud that it takes them 5x as long as it should because they see a tiny mistake.  Proud that they won't relinquish control, won't alter their process, and won't settle for less than perfect. 

Sound familiar? 

In my opinion, this is the dividing line between running a business and running a hobby: understanding the value of your time.  When running a business, we have to understand that done is better than perfect.  

I know the thought of turning over an non-perfect project to a client is unbelievable; how could you possible charge money for something that isn't perfect??  Oh the horror!  It's easy, and that's how we are able to make money. 

First, let's look at that illusive word: perfect.  How do you define perfect?  Without smudges? That you completed it at all?  Or are you comparing your level of work to the other artists that you stalk on instagram who have a decade of experience behind them and striving for their level of perfection?  Are you comparing yourself to someone's work who has more followers that you, more work than you and more clients?  That's not how we define perfect.

As artists, we have to define perfection closer to the definition of completion.  We know we prepared ourselves for the project well, that we gave it that time we had available, it meets the clients expectations and that we did our best under the circumstances we found ourselves in. 

We don't have all the time in the world.  There is a concept that we're going to be discussing further in next semesters Time Management course:  every decision we make is a sacrifice.  Meaning, every single choice we make in our daily lives is a sacrifice of something else we could be accomplishing.  When we redo work over and over, we're choosing to sacrifice the time we would otherwise have to: complete other projects, start a new fictitious project for our portfolio, create something for the holidays, educate ourselves, read a book, cook dinner, prepare the week's menu, run errands, spend time with our husbands and kids, etc. and most importantly, to work on other client work.  In addition to that sacrifice, we're also driving ourselves mad.  In the end, we find ourselves frustrated, tired, and with no more time. 

This is where that dividing line comes in.  Someone running a business knows they need to keep moving, because one client project overrunning it's time pushes off another client's project, and so and and so forth.  You can't get paid if you can't finish work in a reasonable amount of time.  

Your time also has a price tag on it.  Say you're billing $100 for a custom project.  The cost of materials is $10 in non-reusable (like paper).  It should take you two hours to layout the project and complete it, so on that project, you're billing a bit shy of $50/hour.  But instead, you take two days to do it, totaling 10 hours and you've gone through 4x as much paper.  Once you take that initial $100 and take out the cost of all the wasted paper (100-40=60) and then divide that number by the hours it took (60/10) you're making $6 an hour.  You'd do better working at Starbucks.  

When we're running a business, we understand that our time is the most valuable thing we have and it's definitely NOT worth $6/hour.  Understanding this idea makes it much easier to step away from a project and know when done is better than perfect.  

Here are some ways to break out of this mentality: 

Prepare yourself for your project:  I wrote the above quote twice (well, kinda.  the first try I only got through one word).  I wrote it twice because I didn't do this step.  I didn't prepare myself for the project.  Preparation saves us a ton of time redoing something.  Warm up your hand, layout your project in pencil, do a sketch, etc.  know what you're going to do before you do it.  Don't just expect to create something earth shattering by putting pen to paper and expecting magic to come shooting out the end of your pen.   I mean, I could have spent more time editing the calligraphy above as well.  The p and f are a bit shaking, but I didn't have the time in my day to spend 30+ minutes editing something that I know you wouldn't notice unless I pointed it out and isn't for a paying client. 

Never throw things away:  If you don't like something, don't toss it.  I first heard of this idea in an art class (and someone mentioned it on this facebook conversation as well) that the best art someone creates is very often in the trash.   A little perspective and time very often changes how we view a project. 

Finish it: if you don't like it half way through, finish it anyway.  Just keep going.  I do this with watercolor quite often, and if you follow me on periscope, you've seen me do this.  I'll be working on something, not happy with where it's going, but push through anyhow.  It challenges me to narrow down what exactly I don't like and then correct it.  For me, it's very often a color balance thing, and by continuing to work on it, it allows me the time to grow the depth of the art and color and bring in the balance I want to see.  I've learned that I prefer a look of layers, lots of pale, some medium and then some super dark on top.  Without finishing pieces I didn't like, I wouldn't know this. 

Challenge yourself:  do a 60 second sketching challenge, or three minute writing challenge.  Time yourself, give yourself a limit and complete a series of 10 things in one or three minute intervals. Learn to work quickly and efficiently and then move on to the next item.  

Walk away:  walking away from a project is often the best thing we can do.  Leave it over night.  I still do this - you walk away, come back later and your project magically looks WAY better than it did a few hours ago.  

Have an accountability partner:  some of the concern we generate is wether or not something is actually good enough to be selling.  Having an accountability partner is a great way of testing this - have someone else who has a great creative eye, even better if they're in the same industry, and it MUST be someone you trust.  Use this person to gauge your work and you theirs.  If something you do really does need to be worked on a bit more, trust them to tell you (and you to tell them).  If they tell you it's amazing and stop messing with it, you MUST trust their judgement.  

Understanding and embracing this idea is incredibly liberating and satisfying, and hopefully this brings you just a small step closer to accomplishing it. 

It comes in different degrees and different manifestations.  It affects our work, our decision making abilities and our sanity.  We've all been there, and we'll all be there at some point.  

Scarcity Mindset.  

This is the mindset you fall into when you don't know when or where your next dollar is coming from.   The fear of not knowing this causes us to make very poor short term decisions that have a massive impact on our future self.  Scarcity mindset is our current self screwing over our future self.  

Living in the middle of scarcity mindset is a terrifying place to be.  It's a dark, frantic place.  I know this place very well, I've been there and the likelihood is that you've been there or are currently there.  

This is how it happens:  you have a passion, a dream.  Your dream is to quit the daily grind and have a job you're excited to get up to in the morning.  This dream job may be as a fine artist, it may be as a singer, dancer, calligrapher, photographer, programer, or designer.  It could be anything you suspect will bring you joy.  So in an epic fashion, you quit your day job to pursue your passion. 

However, you still have to make money.  If you haven't given yourself any overlap cash reserves, you're basically screwed.  Everyone wants to follow their dream, but no one bothers telling you how hard it will be.  

So you take whatever work comes your way, you're not picky.  When a client tell you have they have a budget of $500, you work your ass off creating a project that you're happy with and shows your work, regardless of how deep of a discount it took to make that budget work.   Your dedication and desire to succeed means that you spend too much time, effort and money completing projects so that they're up to your standard regardless of what the client can pay you. 

You discount your work, you do work for free to "build your portfolio," or "exposure," you do work for friends, family, and free work for clients.  You're working 50 or 60+ hours a week, nights and weekends, you're stressed, tired, frustrated and still not making any money.  Your house is a wreck, your life is a mess, and you have no time.  This type of erratic and frantic behavior also trains your clients to demand more of you, ask for more discounts, and expect a better product from you.  Every single one of them will take advantage of you, your generosity and your desperation.  Clients are like dogs, the can smell fear and desperation.  Now you're taking whatever work comes along, even though it's not really the "dream work" you had in mind.  You're not even proud of half of it because it's just not your style or aesthetic, but you "need" to take it because you "need" the money (need is in quotes because working like this generates so little profit that you don't really "need" that money because there isn't any).

Now you have demanding clients, you're working crazy hours, you're terrified and stressed about money, you're trying to build your portfolio with work that you don't like, but you also don't have time to create work you love, you're exhausted, and you think you're alone in this.  

You're not.  This is scarcity mindset.  

Scarcity mindset can be avoided and corrected.  Here are some of the ways we talk about avoiding it this semester:

- making sure you have some overlap cash from quitting your day job to going full time with your passion

- or make sure your passion covers your bills (and then some) BEFORE you quite your day/part time job

- go through the entire process of your passion BEFORE making it a business.  you have to not only love the passion, but love the process

- say no to work that isnt your idea aesthetic

- say no to work that isnt your ideal budget

- dont give discounts

- know and understand the value of your work and price accordingly

- stop being a perfectionists - done is better than perfect 

allowing yourself some overlap time and cash between your day job and passion job (this could also come in the form of a part time job) or making sure your passion covers all your bills before you quit allows you time to grow and curate your business slowly and wisely, and gives you the time to have your long term goals in mind rather than having them overshadowed by scarcity.   Creating a goal road map, understanding how much money you actually need, and choosing the projects that align with those goals builds value in your work in the long term and keeps you sane in the short term. 

Want to learn more about how to avoid it?  We go into great detail with scarcity mindset, getting your money right, when to quit your day job and what it really means to "follow your passion" in our Finding and Exploring Your Passion course.