How separating your biz processes is useful for overwhelmed creative entrepreneurs
As a new multi-creative entrepreneur, overwhelm is real, and it can keep you stuck for a long time. With the mountain of stuff to learn, where do you even start, right? Separating your processes has helped me, read on to see if it could help you too.
There’s no question, it’s overwhelming starting a business, let alone being alone doing it. I’ve spent many years in business learning mode, which at times only led to more overwhelm.
One thing I learned, that made a big difference to me in terms of getting “unmuddled” in my head about all the things needed to start and run an online business.
Separate your creative biz processes
By separating the different processes involved in your online business, it hopefully becomes a little easier to make sense of the work that needs doing.
It’s also important to remember that it IS more overwhelming to be a solopreneur, than work for, or with, someone else. You have to wear all the hats, and that is major badass. It’s no wonder if you feel it’s a bit much. It is a lot. So, give yourself a big ol’ break, will you?
Branding and business clarity
Business and brand clarity is more or less the same things. This is about getting clear on the big questions, like, what are the values that drive your business?
What is the bigger purpose of the business you want? What will you be doing? What small group of people will you do it for, and how does it matter to them that your business can help them? What is your customer trying to do?
Brand clarity is also about design, images, colors, and how your website looks and feels. But it’s more than visuals. It’s about the foundation of your business.
Knowing why you’re in business, other than making money, what the purpose of it all is, and who the people are that’s going to make it a business for you: your customers.
This process is a mixed bag of sweets for me. I use images, feeling words, color psychology, mood boards, strategy questions, and my values. Like all creative work, it's a completely non-linear process, there’s nothing linear about it at all.
I switch between the different things mentioned above, write and rewrite.
Chances are your interests, skills, and direction will change over time, this is the natural progress in business, but your core values and what’s important to you, might not change that much.
This process is difficult, and it can be helpful to talk to someone about it.
The point of branding is to create a specialized business, that stands out from the crowd so brightly, that the right small group of customers will be attracted to it, and you don’t really need to do much marketing.
2. Your own sustainable creative process
I think this is your most important process. This is the day-to-day work. Having a sustainable process for doing creative work can, as I see it, only be personal.
Only you can know what your life is like. Kids, no kids, young kids, grown-up kids, work best in the morning, or afternoon, single, married, in a relationship, pets, no pets, city, country, job, no job….. So many things play a part in how much time and energy you have during a week to do creative work.
A sustainable creative process is one that works long-term, without leading to burnout. For me, that involves listening to my energy level, it’s putting things in my old-school diary, it’s focusing on taking small steps to minimize overwhelm and perfectionism (often linked).
It’s just better to do some creative work for 15 minutes a week, than not do anything at all because you put too much pressure on yourself. Every little step helps.
“It’s not about marketing, it’s about mattering”
3. Simplify the tech as much as possible
This is a biggie, isn’t it? Why do we need so darn many tools and apps to run a business?
I use Squarespace for my website, and this is what I recommend, or Shopify if you sell physical products.
As a solo entrepreneur, your time can so easily be pulled in directions away from your creative work, and the reason you want to share your passion in the first place. My opinion is, the tools we use have to be as simple and easy to use as possible.
I use Tailwind for automating Pinterest pins.
I use Canva and not Photoshop. Simple and user-friendly works for me.
Unless you’re in the business of graphic design and website design, simple and user-friendly tech, with a manageable learning curve, is what I recommend.
4. Sustainable marketing simplified
Focusing on SEO is sustainable marketing to me. I cannot post on social media every day. Pinterest and Google are my top references for driving traffic to my website, and I don’t have to work on SEO every day.
I have created my own website, and I am based in the small town of Horsens in Denmark. Most of my clients find me through Google and Pinterest from all over America, the UK, Bali, and throughout Europe.
I could probably have built a bigger audience faster by spending a lot of time on Instagram, but it drains my energy and triggers comparison, so it’s not sustainable for me.
I prefer to spend time on creating a specialized business, that will attract a small group of the right customers, so I don’t have to do much marketing.
How can you separate your own business processes?
When you think you have to do and know #allthethings all at once, it quickly gets overwhelming. But separating categories, and working on them separately in small steps, will help you move forward, slowly, but surely.
It’s also worth remembering, that in companies with 3 or more people, these jobs are spread out to several people. They have each other to talk all these decisions through, so please don’t think you have to figure this out quickly.
It IS more difficult to do all this work yourself, but you can definitely do it.
If you can find someone to talk to about this, maybe a Facebook Group, or somewhere, that might be helpful to you.
You can also book creativity coaching with me. :)
