By Tuesday evening I still hadn’t settled on what this week’s episode was going to be about. Monday and Tuesday had both filled up with projects, I’d been pulled in several directions, and I normally have it recorded by then.
So I did something a little different, and went onto Instagram and asked what you’d most love me to talk about, anything at all that would help your creative business.
And one question came in from Rosy, founder of Studio Sturt, an interior design practice in West Sussex, that I knew straight away I wanted to answer properly.
She wrote: “I would love to know how people carve out proper time or structure things in creative businesses to actually be creative when the business side of things takes up so much time and mental capacity. It’s something I’m constantly battling and wonder how others may approach this.”
Somebody else wrote “hear, hear” underneath, and a handful of DMs came in asking much the same thing. The creative work feels like one thing, and then there’s all this other stuff that has to get done, and the two are endlessly pulling against each other.
I asked Rosy what a typical week actually looks like, because I wanted to answer this for her rather than in general terms. Site visits, some planned and some not, so she has to stay flexible and drop things when she needs to. Showrooms and suppliers. Then the desk work, invoicing, sourcing, tracking deliveries and lead times, keeping the systems updated. And then enquiries and marketing, discovery calls, emails, content, the website.
All of it on her own.
I’d imagine that sounds rather like your week too.
You are far more organised than you think you are
So I want to say this plainly, for Rosy and for you.
We are already extraordinary problem solvers. In a more traditional business, the thing being sold sits inside all that process as one part of running it. For creatives there’s a whole other, enormous element on top, because you’re also the one dreaming it up, designing it, making it and pouring yourself into it. And very often running your whole life alongside, and looking after the people around you as well.
So often we tell ourselves we’re not very good at the business side, when we’re quite extraordinary at it.
So many of the creatives I speak to are far more organised than they believe. They’ll describe their week as chaos, and then tell me about the systems they set up and the processes they’ve quietly kept running for years, and I’m sitting there thinking, you’re doing so much of this brilliantly, you just can’t see it.
A lot of the overwhelm, I think, comes from how we’ve been taught to fix it. Most processes and systems and platforms and courses are overwhelming, and it’s because they aren’t designed for creatives. They add on, and pile on, another framework, another tool, another thing you ought to be doing. I hear it constantly. Somebody has been on a course, come away with pages and pages of notes, been so overwhelmed by all of it that very little got put in place, and then decided that’s their failing. It really isn’t.
And on top of that we’re so hardwired towards the things that feel hard that we bypass entirely the things we do naturally, the ones that come so easily we’ve stopped counting them.
They were never two separate things
I’d love to go back to how Rosy asked the question, because so much of the answer is sitting in her own words.
Carve out time. The business side. Constantly battling.
Every bit of that treats the creative work and the business as two separate things fighting over the same hours. And the shift, which really does change everything, is to stop seeing them as separate at all.
I heard once that cars are designed around men. The standard is modelled on a man who is five foot nine and just over twelve stone, and I had to go and look that up to get it exactly right, because I find it so fascinating. There is a smaller measurement used for women, but it’s really a scaled-down version of the male one.
I’m five foot two and a half (that half is very important!), and I remember thinking, my goodness, I’d never considered it that way before, but of course. So much of how a car feels to me was never designed with somebody like me in mind. I rarely feel comfortable driving, and I’d simply come to accept that as how it is.
I think exactly the same is true of so much in business. We’re set up to find it hard, because it doesn’t fit the way our brains work, and so we assume we’re the problem, and that this jarring, effortful way must be the right way.
So much of this is finding the ways that really work for how you work, and putting the enjoyment back into every one of those steps. Which is an extraordinary opportunity, because we get to shape things and design them around ourselves rather than fitting into somebody else’s boxes, and designing things is the one thing creatives do best of all.
Start by taking something away
So before you change anything at all, I’d love you to stop and see how much you’re actually achieving. Put a proper spotlight on it. The things you do incredibly well, the ones that come easily, everything you’ve quietly built.
Because something happens when you really see how good you are at what you do. Space starts to become available. You find the confidence to build the systems that are right for you, and the headspace to put in place the things that make sense to you rather than the things you’ve been told you should be doing. And you get that little rush of, my goodness, I’m actually rather good at this. That’s so often when the time to be creative appears.
And creativity needs saying here too. You can’t block out when you’re going to be creative. Rosy said it herself, it doesn’t necessarily arrive at a scheduled time on a Tuesday afternoon. The work is clearing enough away that there’s room for it when it does turn up.
For most of us the first step is something small. Take one process that feels like hard work at the moment, the one that jars every single time. Work out the right way for you to do it, how you could simplify it, how you could enjoy it, and picture the very best case, the version that would be an absolute joy.
Some of those are things you’ve been putting off for a while, and they often need nothing more than a little time set aside once, so they’re simpler for good. It might be as small as moving your invoices into a system you already use, and then it’s one less place to look and one less thing to hold in your head, every week.
AI helps here more than people expect, and you don’t need a course to begin. Describe everything you’re doing at the moment, the whole week, exactly as it is, and tell it this is what I’m doing, this is who I am, this is what I enjoy. Then work through it together. For Rosy that might be describing the whole procurement process, from ordering to tracking deliveries and lead times across every project, and asking how it could be simpler.
And then there’s the bringing somebody in, when the time comes.
The thing that changed this for me was realising I needed to be specific about the person, not just the role. The tech behind everything in my business used to give me the biggest headache, and there were times it made me feel quite sick. So I worked out what the very best case would look like, and I realised I needed an expert who was a very particular sort of person. Gentle, kind, an incredible problem solver who actually likes problems, the sort who hears one and says, fine, I’ll take that away. Somebody who wouldn’t dictate, and who would ask really good questions.
Once I had that clear picture, her skills and her personality both, she was easy to recognise when I came across her. That’s Rachel, and she’s been with us since the spring of last year. We have a weekly meeting I really look forward to, and the thing that used to make me feel sick is now light, and rather fun.
I remember talking to my friend Mary Hyatt about bringing people in, and being nervous about it. Mary is a holistic life and business coach, and she asked what would happen if I switched it round, and saw it as something light instead, incredible people I get to work with and brainstorm with, who are adding to the business. That’s how I changed my mind about it.
And when something is stressful, or working with a particular person feels like hard work, we tell ourselves it’s because we’re not good at it. That’s rubbish. Those people are out there. You need to understand what works for your brain and your way of doing things, and then go and find them.
All of it depends on one line, though, and it’s worth saying plainly.
This is who I am.
AI can only simplify what you can describe. Finding the right person only works once you know what you need them for, and what you’re keeping for yourself. And most of us, however long we’ve been running our businesses, can’t yet say clearly what we’re brilliant at, because it’s far too close to see.
Most creative businesses I come across are absolutely jam packed. And when we feel stuck, the panic says add more, do more, learn more. What helps, every single time, is taking things away.
You are already running something extraordinary, and far more capably than you give yourself credit for. The business side and the creative side were never two separate things fighting over your week. Everything you need is already there, and the work is taking things away until the whole business feels like you.
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