Going “all in” for my Creative Business

I think a lot more people wonder about owning their own businesses than they’re willing to admit. I know I was curious but hesitant. I continuously referred to these dreams as “side-gigs” to completely avoid the potential disappointment of wanting something more. I let my fear paralyze me, which led me to career opportunities that didn’t light me.

So who am I and what is my plan? I’m a writer and overall creative person. I want to be able to pursue working as a writer full-time. I approached that as practically as possible. I started with marketing, my equivalent of making a living as a writer. I wrote copy for websites, email campaigns, programs, business pamphlets, and press releases—you get the idea. A lot of writing to explain and bring in business for someone else’s vision. But I didn’t enjoy it, and in 2020 that really struck me when I was trying to make business writing my full-time job, trying so hard to get clients but not having any success. And then of course the pandemic hit, which didn’t help anything. I was struggling to get traction for something I didn’t even enjoy doing. I didn’t want to do marketing. Not in the sense of writing material for someone else’s business.

I didn’t start really being honest with myself about my dream until 2023 after a lot of tears and soul searching:

I want to be a business owner and an entrepreneur through my creative passions.

I want to do the work I am so passionate about while supporting other people who want the same thing. And to do that, I had to let go of the business marketing work that I thought I needed to do to be a successful full-time writer. I realized that I had to let go of this belief that I had to do strictly business work to be an entrepreneur. I had to let go of the belief that the only writing that mattered was “professional” writing.

Last year I started a journey of looking and really being honest with myself about what I wanted and what I wanted to do and what that really looked like and I realized that it is doing my creative pursuits—doing the things that lit me on fire, not just writing for someone else. It means I have had to be brave enough to admit that I want something that I haven’t seen anyone in my life do before and risk that I could potentially fail miserably. But I want a life that I am thrilled about. Staying exactly where I was became a lot more scary to me than the risks of going all in for what I wanted.

This business and blog are designed to share my experience behind the blank page of the creative and entrepreneurial process. I’m just starting my journey as a creative entrepreneur, and I can’t wait to share it with other people. I hope that by sharing my successes and my failures, the realistic time frames this work takes, and the work that has to be done, creatives can learn, grow, and find the courage to pursue their passions, too. This process will be messy and raw. There might be some typos, and I won’t do everything right. But we can learn and grow and improve together. I’m so excited you’re here doing this with me.

Thank you for reading (and sharing, please!), and I can’t wait to be with you next week.

We can do this–I promise.

With love,

Kariana Anderson