As a creative business owner, one of the biggest challenges is focus. I hear it all the time:
“I have so many creative passions, how do I choose just one?”
“I like to do a lot of things.”
“I have a hard time focusing.”
If this sounds like you, you’re not alone. As a creative entrepreneur, I’ve experimented with lots of different ideas and products throughout the course of my business. Yes, I’m most known for my jewelry, and I’ve had consistent revenue selling that. But it’s not my only interest.
My MFA thesis was actually sculpture. And in the past thirteen years of my creative business, I’ve created a laser cut metal home decor line, a laser cut felt product, a digitally printed textile line, and played with painting.
Some of these creative pursuits made me some money (the textile line and the laser cut felt product), some of them were pretty big busts (the laser cut metal home decor line – though I learned A LOT), and some were mostly for my own creative enjoyment (painting). Because while I love making jewelry, sometimes my creative brain just needs to jump in another direction for a while.
But I’m not here to talk about my own lack of creative focus. (Though I hope that by sharing that, you’ll see that it’s perfectly normal for creative individuals to not always be married to one thing.) Instead, I want to talk about the mechanism that made all those creative experiments possible.
And that’s teaching.
Teaching has been the economic engine that has allowed me to pursue these other creative experiments.
When I first launched my laser cut home decor line, I was teaching part time at a university. As anyone who’s ever been an adjunct knows, it’s not great pay. But it gave me just enough consistent income that I could experiment with that product line.
But the real creative flexibility came when I started teaching my own classes online.
Having an online course (or a few) in your back pocket means leveraged income, and that means more time for creative exploration. (As long as you’re not underpricing your courses.)
And yes, I’ve derived a large portion of my revenue from my jewelry sales over the last thirteen years. But I’m going to be completely honest with you. When I’m in the busiest seasons of my jewelry business, I don’t have a lot of time for other creative explorations. (The one exception to that was when I had an employee doing the bulk of my jewelry production for me. Which is a conversation for another post. And even then, I was still running my own online classes.)
Running my own online classes lets me step back from only focusing on jewelry from time to time to experiment with other creative pursuits.
And my creative experiments have also fed my teaching. Dabbling in lots of different creative pursuits has made me a more effective teacher. All those experiments (the successes and flops) give me information I can share with my students and the members of my online mentorship program.
Suddenly, all those experiments aren’t just learning experiences for me. They’re hugely beneficial for my students as well.
All of which is to say, if creative focus isn’t your strong suit, fear not! You’re not alone and you’re not doomed to business failure.
Developing an online course may be exactly what you need to both bring more revenue into your business AND give you the freedom to experiment with lots of different creative passions.
And as I address in this post, you don’t have to be an expert to be a good teacher or develop an online course. With teaching, you can turn your broad interests and experiences into something useful for your future students.
That’s what I did (I was hardly a business expert when I started Designing an MBA, but I’d had lots of creative business experiences), and it’s given me even more freedom to create and explore as a result. And the same could be true for you too.
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When I first decided I wanted to teach online, I honestly had no idea what I would teach. (Other than a vague idea about teaching business to artists and makers.) So I started a blog first! And even now, ten years later, blogging is STILL an incredibly valuable tool to build an audience for your future online classes.
And that’s why I’m launching a new course called Blog to Teach! This course will show you how to use the power of blogging, search, and Pinterest to build an audience for your online course, even if you haven’t launched one yet.
So if you think this is the year you might want to start teaching, but you’re not totally sure WHAT to teach, Blog to Teach is a great place to start! Click here to join now!
Blog to Teach is all about helping you build an audience of raving fans for your courses. But if you need help learning how to build an online class, be sure to check out my program Do/Teach!