Imagine yourself basking in the warmth of the sun on another glorious day. Now imagine that on this glorious day you are in a park and you have parked yourself (pun intended) on a bench right across from the weeping willow that reminds you of whimsical romances and flittering fireflies. You reach into the white paper bag on your lap and pull out the still warm croissant and giggle at yourself at the fleeting (yet secretly obsessed about) vision of you as an elegant French woman. Maybe the Eiffel Tower is over your shoulder. Maybe a guy named Jacques is on the bench across from you and maybe he is winking at you seductively in an attempt to get to you come back to his French villa and make wild passionate love to him in the middle of the day.
Eh…maybe not. Maybe you are actually running late. Scarf that croissant sweetheart and…wait. On second thought, toss that croissant in the trash, it has too much gluten. Ok, so you’re running late to that place “they” make you go to. You know the place I’m talking about. It’s the place we need to go to in order to pay the bills. The place where you don an apron, or get shackled to a desk, or the place where you’re just working until you “make it big” and all of this is “just temporary.”
I’m talking about the job. The J.O.B. The spot where we all make an appearance at some point in our lives. But to a person like us? Someone who is creative, who considers themselves an artist, who is in their element when they are performing, writing, drawing, acting, dancing, etc…well a J.O.B. can come with many more mixed feelings than your average Joe may experience. We’re the ones that at the end of the day walk out of our place of work, look up into the heavens, and shake our fists while saying with exacerbation, “Why oh why can’t I get paid to do my (insert your creative thing here) so I can get out of this trash heap?!”
And the answer to that question lies in the very thing that most creative types are extremely bad at: keeping their creative endeavors as a hobby and not turning it into a business.
Now hang on. Before you start throwing stones and rotten tomatoes my way with exclamations of, “I can’t concentrate on a business! That’s the opposite of what I’m trying to do here. The point is to not work for the ‘man’ even if the ‘man’ is me,” just give me a minute of your time. And I will start with a confession.
I was precisely one of those people.
Growing up I wanted to be a writer more than anything else. But with that vision also came the very real expectations that writers are broke, drunk, damaged, haunted, and oh yeah, did I mention broke? Without much other thought I wrote off being a writer for a living and decided to keep it as a hobby. A hobby I quickly shoved under my shoe collection as I searched for the perfect way to make a living. That is when I found wedding planning. It was the perfect balance of using enough creativity (because if you think decorating a table top and trying to talk a bride off a ledge are just two different forms of creativity, you would be right. I digress) and donning the rational “make a living” situation. I had become an entrepreneur.
Webster’s definition of entrepreneur is this: one who organizes, manages, and assumes the risks of business of enterprise.
Gee. How sexy.
So I created a definition of my own: a majorly creative person who sets out to take the act of doing their “thing” from On a Whim to On a Roll.
Let us dive into this even further. Last year I went to my first writer’s conference. Having walked in extremely nervous, I was immediately put at ease by the welcoming smiles of the mix of novelists, screenwriters, poets, authors, copywriters, bloggers, and even one guy who likes to scribble haikus on the back of cereal boxes. I was home.
Soon the sessions started and you can bet that my Type A personality had a typed up agenda in my hand, including an eating schedule. So I head to my first session. Having already been familiar with the joys of running a business, I was hungry to get to this particular one that featured the business of writing. Upon walking into said session, I was aghast at the tiny turn out.
“Where did everyone go?” I thought to myself.
The class was run by a fiery Hermione-esque editor who jumped right into the content. At one point I looked around the room and saw expressions of disbelief, anger, pain, and I swear there was one older woman in the back who looked like she was going to bum rush the poor teacher. I naively continued to be amazed as she was peppered with questions from the writers, all with the theme of “but do we really have to do this? I just want to write.” I made the mistake in thinking that everyone thought like me, in that we’re just as excited to do the “business” part of it as we are to do the “art” part of it. Boy was I wrong. These writers were fighting tooth and nail to NOT put up a website, get a business card, or just create a more professional appearance for themselves.
When I got home I discussed this with my husband who is also a creative (actor/writer/filmmaker) and he said, “Well yeah, look around you. Most creatives are like that.” So I did. I thought back to past friends, past coworkers, acquaintances, and anyone else in LA I have met who are pursuing something creative and I saw that there’s a true epidemic out there. The Business Allergy. It’s like having a gluten allergy. The latter allergy keeps you away from bread, the former keeps you away from having a real chance at making a living doing the thing you love so you can one day quit your J.O.B and maybe board a plane to France to eat that croissant and have wild passionate sex with Jacques.
That’s the type of thing I’ll be discussing here on Ms. In The Biz: finding the right antidote to the Business Allergy and having more fun than the neighbors while doing it.
What about you? Are you already traveling down the path of the creative entrepreneur and if so, tell me about even the smallest of triumphs in the comments. OR do you want to roast me up for dinner? It’s an option, but before you fire up your grill, tell me why having a business for your “thing” is just not for you. I wanna know!