I’m excited to share with you the third part of my mini series, guiding anchors, minimalist instructions for the creative and business Life. We started with talking about building foundations for making work and sharing work. Then in the last episode, Weaving a Business Ecosystem. And today I want to recenter on why we’re doing this anyway.

How when I get carried away with building business ecosystems and weaving webs and sharing my work, I remind myself that art is my creative life source. Art is the center of my world. This episode is about recentering art.

the two false paths

We’ll talk about decompartmentalizing your artist self from business self. I’ll share how I think of artist energy as life source and the very long journey of reimagining containers to hold that creative force in the form of sharing or business structures. And how I think about artist energy as something we channel in two forms, the essence that moves through everything that you do and the work of making art itself.

The world teaches us that art and business are two opposite things. The models that we have for how to be a successful, quote unquote, artist in your field is generally of two paths. Either A, get external validation of some sort, whether that’s institutional or diplomas or grants or growing your network, your relationships with agents, editors, critics, gatekeepers, or be successful on social media. All of these rely on recognition from others. Or B, compartmentalize and get a day job separate from your protected art practice so that you can keep your art feeling sacred.

I explore this in the early episodes of this podcast, how the way and reason why I realized I needed to build a business is because I couldn’t or wouldn’t do either of those pathways. I couldn’t get myself to keep playing the game of trying to get external validation or recognition. And I had multiple jobs in my twenties, but I found that I couldn’t really split myself in that way. I needed a third way that allowed me to show up as the multifaceted nature of who I am to my business and to my art. That is the dilemma that led me here.

I wanted to make art at the center of my work, even if art doesn’t make me money immediately. I am who I am because of my creative practice. And I knew I needed to build a business that allowed me to center that, which meant thinking about how I would create and share my work that kept me free from needing external validation.

I talk about this in episode number eight, make art for no audience. Well, if I make art for no audience, that also means I can’t immediately commodify my art to sell. And if I don’t need an audience to make art, what do I need? Well, I need a way to support myself. I need a business that is more expansive than commodifying my art, but allows me to show up as my artist self in her entirety.

what is art

Before we talk about that, the compartmentalization journey, first I want to explore a definition of art. Art is what I make when I’m in deep conversation with life. It’s how I channel my creative energy in process. Art is not just the product, the finished work, the output. It’s the ongoing process of being close and intimate with life source. It’s an act of witnessing my life in small and big moments.

When I make art, I make things in my imagination have form. I layer on my interpretation of my life on top of what feels chaotic or meaningless or uncomfortable. Making art is how I allow myself to create a sense of belonging wherever I am.

When I remind myself of this, I know in my soul that this energy is what fuels everything that I do. It’s why I’m building anything at all. That energy is the same energy that goes into my offerings, my courses, my one-on-one guidance work, my websites. All of my philosophies and practices come from a desire to honor and cherish that raw creative vision, to protect it from the need for external structures of validation or platforms, and to create my own worlds where that energy could take up space.

the power dynamic

It took me a really long time to decompartmentalize what it meant to be an artist from what it meant to have a business. That journey challenged all of my beliefs around what is art, what is money, and what is a business. I first articulated this in a post I wrote in 2023 called "The Way of the Artist Entrepreneur," because in the past, I downloaded the belief that my business self needed to be responsible and linear and vigilant. It needed to be the protector, the adult, whereas my artist self could stay a free child, pure and happy and protected from worldly material concerns.

The problem with this model is that it creates an inherent power dynamic. My business adult and my artist child, business feeling masculine, the artist feeling feminine, or the business taking up the external role, whereas the artist felt like it needed to hide in the corner of my room where it could be safe.

I realized that this inherent power dynamic within myself was not serving me. I thought I was protecting my artist self from the demands of the material world, but she lives there like it or not. And I started asking myself, well, what would it be like? What would it feel like to allow my artist self to step into her power? What if my artist self made my business stronger? What if she was the leader and my business became the structure and scaffolding around her desires, her imagination, her vision and her power?

I realized that my artist essence is what makes my business unique. And instead of feeling like I always had to compromise or compartmentalize, I challenged myself to integrate her into everything that I did.

deprogramming false binaries

And in this process, I had to deprogram these false binaries in my head to think about business as not just something that makes money that extracts maximum profit, but business as a system in exchange, a conversation that is about generating creative energy in a way that can nourish its community itself and the world around it.

Where money doesn’t have to be an evil necessity to live within capitalism, money can also be a deliberate channel for flowing attention, energy, love, creative source. Money can feel like love instead of like an oppressive obligation. Therefore, embodying the energy of my art is the way into creating a business that aligned with who I am. Therefore, the creative power I held as an artist is the source of infinite abundance that I can bring into whatever I build through taking this long, hard path.

I discovered that building a business didn’t make me less of an artist. If anything, it made me more of an artist forced to reckon with survival, money, structure, in a way that honors the artist energy. That journey forged me into something stronger. It made my artist self go from this dreamy, fragile, child-needing protection from the harsh realities of the world to an artist who is a grown woman, an adult in her power, who knows how to survive in the wild, who doesn’t compromise who she is, who takes a stand and gathers community and resources around her to share.

And even though I cried and this journey was full of sweat, blood, and tears, I would do it all over again.

reimagining containers

I think about containers as structures and systems that allow you to create the work, share the work, release paid offerings, and nurture the channels where your work exists on the internet. I realized that my entire business emerged from my obsession with re-imagining containers from scratch because none of the existing blueprints worked for me. All the courses that I teach come from years of exploring, synthesizing, and distilling my own way.

I didn’t want to build a website that felt like a brochure. I wanted to build a website that felt like a world. From that, I created my course, House on the Webs. None of the traditional productivity systems worked for me. I needed ways of relating to my creative energy that honored the idiosyncratic ways that I work and exist on a day-to-day basis. From that obsession, I created my course, Creative Systems.

I had been off of social media for many, many years, and I wanted to deepen in the practice of sending work into the internet void, and so I created my course, Sharing Space Camp. I had been feeling like money work, money healing, felt really heavy and overwhelming, so I’m currently creating an offering called Money Juice Cleanse. I’ve been looking back at how my business is all about infusing my artist perspective and power into business building, and from here, I’m creating a course, Digital Abundance. At the center of everything I do is navigating uncertainty, non-linearity, moment-to-moment discernment through practice and process, and so I created my seasonal community, Labyrinth.

creating your own containers

I think at the core of all of my courses and teachings is that making containers is a deeply personal journey that takes time, a lot of experimentation, and self-awareness. I teach these courses about building containers, but I cannot make the containers for you. Central to my teaching is that you don’t need to follow anyone else’s blueprint. You can imagine and create your own, and when you create your own, you create something that truly belongs to you.

You create something that you’re willing to show up for day in and day out, which can change and evolve alongside you and keep magnetizing energy to your world, and yet it’s so easy to get lost in the container building in focusing on the ecosystems, the sharing channels, the newsletters, and building the offerings, and sometimes I can also forget, like, what am I doing this for anyway? I love business, I love being able to support myself, but fundamentally, first and foremost, I am an artist.

art needs to be the center

I think there’s a myth that if we just get our businesses to a stable place, then we can work on the art, but I don’t think that’s true. If art is the life source, then art needs to be our home. It needs to be the center of our world. We’ve spent all of these years building the container, the systems and structures and offerings and web of our business. It’s crucial to turn our attention to the contents of that container to the substance, your art, your work, your imagination, your sensitivity, your perspective, your essence, your values, your vision, your creative force.

When I think about the substance that makes up my art, I know that my art is about imaginative experiences of my inner world, deep emotions I’m processing, moments of witnessing my life, my relationship to place, home, belonging, displacement, nature, spirit, love. That is the raw force, the raw energy, the substance or contents. And when I zoom out and look at the container, my business offerings and courses are all about creating systems to hold this kaleidoscopic, infinitely expanding, imaginative self who wants wholeness, who wants to feel integration in everything that they do.

So when you think about your offerings as it relates to your art, you could explore how those offerings honor the essence and substance of your creative force. How is it made from the same material? How is it just another expression of the same energy?

two forms of artist energy

In your creative ecosystem, I think of artist energy, creative energy as showing up in two different ways. The first is as your artist essence, the source. That is your creative power, which moves through everything that you do, which infuses your writings, your offerings, your decisions, your way of seeing your perspective, your values and your vision. Your artist essence is what makes your work feel like you. It’s your signature. And what would it mean to write a newsletter as an artist to create a sales page as an artist to bring that energy to everything in your world?

Then the second way this energy shows up is in the work itself, in the art itself. These are the creations that feel like the most pure expression of you when you’re in conversation with life or spirit. These are your paintings, your writings, your photography, your films, your music, whatever your creative practice is, whatever it is you feel like you must do in order to feel like you, in order to feel alive.

When you are building a business as your artist self, both forms of this energy is necessary. The essence is like atmospheric energy that flows into the web you’re weaving, your business containers, your offerings, and makes your business feel alive. It is what creates the structure of your ecosystem so that your ecosystem can hold your art, the innermost sacred work that you do. Your art gets space and freedom and safety because those creative business containers exist, because you made them to hold your art.

nourishing the ecosystem

And so part of the practice is trusting that your ecosystem works. It doesn’t have to be perfect. You don’t have to spend years and years optimizing for everything just so you can return to your art because your art is part of its life blood. Your creative energy is what makes it work. And when you nourish that, you nourish the entire ecosystem.

When I get lost in weaving my web or making an offering, I return to why I’m doing this. I’m building a business. I’m re-imagining structures and systems in order to let my artist energy thrive. And so I talk to it. I ask it, what do you want to make? What feels inspiring and exciting for you? I follow its urges and let that be a thread, a voice that guides and nourishes my entire world.

invitation

My invitation for you to consider is to ask yourself, what is the art that wants to take up space in your world? What is the art at the center? And what containers and systems and structures would allow your creative energy to feel safe and free? How can you practice infusing that artist energy into your ecosystem, your offerings, your business, and how you show up on the internet?

I will say that building a business as an artist is so hard and it’s not for everyone. It requires a willingness to struggle with and embrace your sense of power or powerlessness in the material world. But if you decide to embark on this journey, it’s about letting your artist self have more of a voice, to take on more responsibility, more visibility, and to embrace the ongoing dance, the both/and, of nurturing your ecosystem and centering and re-centering in your art.

I think that’s what it means to make the art of your life, not just making individual pieces or writing books or music, but making a life where your art is the ongoing conversation. Your art is the abundance that flows through everything and takes a seed of an idea, transforms it with your energy, your creative power, and makes it real.

closing

Thank you for listening to this mini-series. We started with the foundational practice of making the work, sharing the work, then talked about building business offerings and weaving the web around it. And we’ve come back to the soul, the center that holds everything, your creative power and life source.

If you’d like to work deeper with me on the how of building a business through channeling your creative energy, I’m teaching a live session of my course, Digital Abundance, starting in early March. In late January, I’ll be releasing a seven-day course on transforming your relationship to money called Money Juice Cleanse. And the second season of my community, Labyrinth Library will start in mid-February. The best way to keep in touch with me is through my newsletter. You can explore more of my work on my web world.

Take care until soon.