What Ambition Means For Creative Entrepreneurs
I posted something on Instagram last week that felt important to say out loud:
“Let’s fully embrace and celebrate ambition. For most creatives, ambition is having a sense of purpose, doing good work you’re proud of, and being fairly rewarded for it. And that is so important.”
Because somewhere along the way, ambition has become associated with things that don’t necessarily resonate with creative entrepreneurs. Hustle culture. Sacrificing everything for growth. Becoming someone you’re not. Losing the essence of what makes your work meaningful in pursuit of metrics.
So when people talk about scaling or growing or being ambitious, many creative entrepreneurs instinctively recoil. Not because they don’t want success. But because they don’t want the version of success they see being sold to them.
This week, I want to redefine what ambition actually means for creative businesses. And I want to show you what it looks like to scale in a way that makes you more yourself, not less.
The Three Elements of Creative Ambition
Having worked with so many incredible creative entrepreneurs, seen how they work, the real challenges and what tends to motivate all of us, I’ve identified a clear pattern in what we actually want when we talk about growing our businesses.
This is not about building an empire. It’s not about maximising revenue at all costs. It’s not about removing ourselves from the work we love doing or creating something purely because it can sell.
Instead, the type of ambition I see looks like this:
A sense of purpose. You want your work to matter. To create genuine impact for the people in your audience. To contribute something meaningful to your industry, to the economy or your community. This isn’t fluffy or nice to have – it’s fundamental to why you do this work in the first place.
Doing good work you’re proud of. Not just any work. Not work that compromises your standards or forces you to be someone you’re not. Work that uses your natural strengths. Work that energises rather than exhausts you. Work that showcases what you’re genuinely exceptional at.
Being fairly rewarded for it. And this is where it gets interesting. Because “fairly rewarded” doesn’t mean apologetically charging just enough to scrape by. It means financial independence. It means sustainable income that reflects the value you create. It means not having to choose between doing work you’re proud of and paying your bills.
This is ambition for creative entrepreneurs. Purpose, pride, and fair reward.
These three things aren’t in conflict with each other. You don’t have to sacrifice purpose to be well paid. You don’t have to compromise the quality of your work to scale. You don’t have to lose yourself to grow.
In fact, the creative entrepreneurs who scale most successfully are the ones who refuse to separate these three elements. They insist on all three. Purpose AND pride AND fair reward.
That’s not less ambitious than traditional business growth. It’s more ambitious. Because it requires you to build something genuinely sustainable, not just something that looks impressive on paper.
What Scaling Looks Like When It’s Aligned
So what does growth look like when you’re committed to purpose, pride, and fair reward?
I’ve seen this in creative businesses that are thriving, and it’s quite different from traditional scaling advice.
It’s not about multiplication – doing more of the same with less of you involved.
It’s about amplification – creating more impact with your unique strengths without diluting what makes you exceptional.
You might remember me mentioning Kate from a few episodes ago. She was caught in relentless sales-chasing mode. Her team was groaning about another CRM system. Everything was feeling pretty forced for them.
She made one shift: changed the question from “when did they call?” – as in, when did the client last call us – to “what is the client getting from this interaction?”
Within four weeks, her team felt the stuck feeling lift. Her Instagram followers started growing after being stuck for ages. Not because she was working harder or implementing more systems. Because she stopped trying to fit into a blueprint that wasn’t designed for her business – one solely focussed on generating and receiving as many sales calls as possible.
That’s scaling through alignment. Not adding more complexity. Instead, finding what actually works for how you’re built.
Or an interior designer I recently spoke to who was spending most of her time on free consultations that rarely converted. She shifted to offering a paid clarity session instead. Her income increased, but more importantly, the clients who did book were genuinely ready to work with her. She was doing less, but creating better outcomes for everyone involved.
This is what aligned scaling looks like. It’s about leverage, not just volume. It’s about working with your natural strengths, not against them.
The Foundation
The creatives who are scaling successfully aren’t the ones working the hardest or following the most complex strategies. They’re the ones who’ve done the foundation work to understand their value and their strengths, and then built everything from there.
That foundation work – the shift from “creative person trying to do business” to “confident creative business owner who knows their worth” – that’s what changes so much in your business.
Without this foundation, every decision feels difficult because you’re not operating from clarity. Instead, you’re operating from fear or comparison or trying to follow someone else’s blueprint.
But with this foundation:
Pricing decisions become clearer. You’re not guessing what you’re worth – you know what value you create.
You can easily evaluate opportunities, whether they are right for you or not. You can see which projects align with your strengths and which don’t.
Because of this, saying no to things stops feeling scary. You’re not afraid you’ll never get another opportunity – you know and trust that the right ones will come, so turning projects away that you know are not fully aligned with your skills or direction you’re looking to grow in becomes so much easier.
And with this, scaling feels natural. You’re not forcing yourself into someone else’s growth strategy – you’re building from your actual strengths.
This is why the expensive hobby conversation and the financial independence conversation matter so much. Because you can’t confidently charge what you’re worth if you don’t believe your work is genuinely valuable. You can’t scale aligned with your strengths if you’re not clear what those strengths are.
The foundation comes first. Then everything else becomes possible.
Your Own Terms
I’ve been thinking about my own journey with this.
When I was building my flower business, I had this moment where I had to choose: take the investment being offered and scale in the “traditional” way everyone expected, or design the business around what actually mattered to me.
I chose the latter. And that wasn’t less ambitious – it was more ambitious. Because it meant building something that reflected my values and definition of success, not someone else’s.
That decision – to be ambitious on my own terms – led to working with clients I genuinely loved, creating work I was deeply proud of, and building a business that gave me genuine financial independence.
The same pattern shows up with the creative entrepreneurs I work with now. The ones who are thriving aren’t the ones following generic scaling advice. They’re the ones who’ve got very clear on what they’re exceptional at, what success looks like for them specifically, and how to build around their actual strengths.
What You Need For Aligned Growth
So if you’re sitting with this thinking “yes, I want to be ambitious, but I don’t want to lose myself in the process,” I’d love you to understand that ambition isn’t the problem. Following someone else’s definition of ambition is the problem.
You don’t need to apologise for wanting financial success. You don’t need to choose between doing work you’re proud of and being well paid. You don’t need to sacrifice purpose for growth.
What you need is clarity on:
What you’re genuinely exceptional at. Not just good at – exceptional at. What comes naturally to you that creates genuine value for others? What do people consistently come to you for? What feels easy to you but is clearly valuable to them?
What success looks like for you specifically. Not revenue targets someone else set. Not what looks impressive on Instagram. What do you actually want your day-to-day to feel like? What kind of impact do you want to have? How do you want to spend your time?
Where you can create better leverage. Have a think about the one area where you could create more impact without working more hours. Maybe it’s packaging your expertise differently. Maybe it’s partnering with someone whose strengths complement yours. Maybe it’s streamlining one process that’s taking too much energy.
This is how you scale in an aligned, straightforward way.
And here’s what I know to be absolutely true: when you build from this foundation, growth doesn’t feel forced. It feels natural. It feels like you’re finally doing what you were meant to be doing.
That’s ambition that serves you. That’s scaling that makes you so much more yourself.
The Steps Forward
There’s something amazing about this approach: it’s not easier in the sense of requiring less work. But it’s easier in the sense of feeling aligned.
This is the foundation that makes everything else possible.
Without this foundation, every decision feels difficult because you’re not operating from clarity. Instead, you’re operating from fear or comparison or trying to follow someone else’s blueprint.
But with this foundation: pricing decisions become clearer, opportunities are easier to evaluate, saying no stops feeling scary, and scaling feels natural.
That clarity – that foundation – is what makes ambitious growth possible without losing yourself.
So let’s fully embrace and celebrate ambition.
Not the version that asks you to sacrifice everything or become someone you’re not.
The version that says: I want to do work that matters, work I’m genuinely proud of, and I want to be fairly rewarded for it.
That’s not too much to ask. That’s exactly what you deserve.
And it’s entirely possible to build, simply by getting clear on your exceptional strengths and building from there.
Purpose. Pride. Fair reward. You don’t have to choose between them. You get to have all three.
That’s ambition for creative entrepreneurs. And it’s time we fully claimed it.
Comments +