The Creative Business Masterclass (How I Built Income That Lasts!)

If you've been trying to build a creative business, and you feel like you're constantly starting from scratch, not making enough money, or working really hard without it going anywhere, then this video is basically a free masterclass in building a creative business that actually works. I've taken the best conversations from this channel all about income streams, building around a full life, and the truth about what actually lasts, and I've put them into one place for you. So, you'll notice the outfit changes, hairstyle changes, and backdrop changes, but it's a curated selection of conversations that I think you'll find really valuable, where I share everything I know about building a sustainable creative business from scratch. The chapters are below if you want to skip ahead, otherwise, grab a coffee, listen to me as you work, or watch and lock in. Okay, let's get into it.

You see so much advice online about building a creative business, and a lot of it sounds great on paper, but I do think that a lot of it assumes you have loads of time and loads of capacity to throw at your business every single week. And that's amazing if you do, but a lot of people don't. A lot of people are building around parenthood, a full-time job, health issues, or just a very full life. And I think sometimes when you're in that position, it can feel like everyone else is racing ahead because they've cracked some magical formula that you've missed, when actually, a lot of the time they're just building in a completely different set of circumstances. And I really wanted to make this video because if I was building my creative business again now, knowing what I know, there are a few things I would do very differently. Because I've learned a lot through building in very real, very full seasons of life, and some of these lessons would have saved me a lot of time, energy, and overthinking if I'd understood them earlier.

For those of you that are new here, I'm Meg, and I built a following of over 57,000 subscribers on my art YouTube channel Fizz and Flourish, where I was sharing studio vlogs, art tutorials, and draw with me videos. And that led to hundreds of paying Patreon members over the years, really popular goody box sign-ups, a physical shop where I sold thousands of products, and then later thousands of digital sales after I pivoted. And more recently, I've built a software company for creative business owners to run their business, which has been a whole different season of learning and building and figuring out what really creates long-term sustainability. And I say all of this not to do some dramatic look-at-me intro, but because I think the most relevant part of my story is that I built all of that through some very full seasons of life. So, I started my illustration business just before having my eldest, and I kept growing it during the newborn stage, and then again through the chaos of having twins, who are now two. And that to me is the thing I care most about sharing. Not because you need to be a parent to hear this, but about building when life takes over.

Now, I love seeing creatives build amazing businesses, and it makes me so happy when I see it. But sometimes, when you watch people online, it can feel like they've got endless time to pour into it. And I know that for many people watching, that is just not reality, and it can sometimes feel a little bit frustrating. And if you're watching this and nodding along or shouting, "Yeah, me too." at the screen or wherever you're listening, then just know that if I can build this with a toddler and newborn twins, I promise you do not need perfect conditions to make meaningful progress. So, I want this video to be the version of the conversation for the person who's trying to build something in the cracks of time. The person who has got ideas and ambition and wants more for themselves, but has a real life to factor in. Because it is possible, but you have to build it differently. So, if I was building my creative business again now with the life I actually have and the lessons I've learned the hard way, these are the things I would focus on much sooner and the things I would stop wasting my time on completely.

The first thing I would do is spend much more time understanding what actually sells, but not so much time that I drift away from the thing that I actually care about making. And I think this is such an important balance because I do not believe the answer is to blindly follow your passion and hope that the right people magically appear, but I also don't think the answer is to chase every trend, copy whatever's popular, and then end up building a business that doesn't even feel like yours anymore. I think the sweet spot is somewhere in the middle. It's looking at the thing you naturally love to create and the thing that feels most like you and then asking yourself how that could be positioned, packaged, or showcased in a way that actually lines up with what people are searching for, what they're desiring or collecting or actively looking to solve. Because whatever it is you love making, I would bet there is usually a way to present it that makes more more sense commercially without losing the heart of it. And I think this is where some creatives get stuck because they hear make what you love and then they stop there and then they wonder why people aren't buying. go too far in the other direction start making things they don't really care about just because they think they'll sell. And then the business starts feeling forced and just totally disconnected from them. I've definitely learned that it's not enough just to make something you love and hope that the right people somehow understand why they need it. You have to meet your audience halfway. You have to understand what they're actually looking for, what kind of language they're using, and what would make them stop and think, "Oh, I need that." But, that doesn't mean abandoning your style. It doesn't mean becoming generic or making soulless products just for the sake of it. It means being willing to look at your work through the lens of a buyer as well as the maker.

The second thing I would learn much sooner is sales and conversion, because this is where so many creative businesses struggle, and I did, too. A lot of people assume that if you can get more eyes on your work, then the sales will follow. And yes, visibility matters, but traffic and sales are not the same problem, and that was a huge lesson for me. You can have people finding you, watching you, following you, liking your posts, and then still not make the sales you expected if there isn't a clear path between this is nice and I want to buy this. And now, it's not easy. I'm not saying there's this secret magical formula, but I think there is a process to learning this stuff, testing, experimenting, and looking at your data. Because all of that is what made me really start to research sales psychology and conversion much more seriously, because I realized that posting nice content and having nice products was not enough on its own. I really needed to understand what actually moved someone from casually consuming your content to feeling ready to buy from you. Because a lot of the time, visibility isn't the real problem. The real problem is that your followers don't yet know how to move from liking what they see to actually becoming a customer. And once you understand that, you start thinking much more carefully about the buyer journey, the emotional triggers behind a purchase, and the calls to action that you're using. You start to stop obsessing over how to get more views and start paying much closer attention to what happens once people actually land on your page. Do they instantly understand what you sell? Do they understand why it matters and who it's for? Do they trust you? Because it's all very well blowing up and having loads of views, but if that doesn't translate into sales, then it's just vanity metrics.

The third thing I would do differently is get honest much faster about what drains me. Not every profitable thing is worth building your whole business around. And that's quite a hard truth sometimes because when something is bringing in money, it can feel really irresponsible to question it. You think, "Well, it pays, so I should keep doing it." But I don't actually think that's always wise. For me, commissions are a really good example of this. I used to do commissions way back when, and I had to be really honest with myself that even though custom work can have its place, for me it wasn't something that I wanted taking over my business long term. It takes a lot out of you creatively. It ties up a lot of your time, and it can make the business feel much more labor heavy than you might want it to be. Also, the amount of pressure I would put on myself was just crippling. And I think this is where it's really worth looking beyond whether something makes money and asking yourself what kind of life it would create if it started taking up a bigger part of your business. Now, if that thing is currently paying a lot of your bills, I'm not saying you need to cut it off overnight, but I do think there's real value in asking how you could gradually build more of the work you actually want to be known for so that the draining thing it doesn't keep taking quite so much of your energy.

So, the fourth thing I would do differently is hustle in much shorter, more intentional bursts. I'm really not anti-hard work, but I truly believe that you do not have to hustle yourself to success. I think sometimes these conversations get flattened into hustle is bad and rest is good, and that's just not how real businesses work. There have absolutely been seasons in my business where I have worked really, really hard. There have been launches, product builds, channel building seasons, and more recently my software building season, which has required a lot of focused effort. But the difference now that I'm much more aware of, and I hope you can be, too, is what that hard work is building towards. I'm not hustling because I think my business should permanently rely on me being switched on every second of the day. I'm hustling in shorter bursts to create things that give me more breathing room later on. And that's a really important difference. A launch season might be intense, but if it brings in new customers, content, systems, products, and assets that continue helping you afterwards, that's very different from being in a state of constant reactive hustle when you're always trying to catch up and starting from zero again. And my software is a really good example of that. Building it and launching it was not a small task. It took a lot of work, a lot of learning, and a lot of mental energy. But now I'm in a completely different phase where I'm refining it, improving it, adding features that current users really want, and showcasing it. I'm not building the thing from scratch all over again every single week. That is the kind of hustle that I believe in. It's the sort that creates a better next season, not the sort that becomes your whole operating system.

So, the fifth thing I would do differently is stop trying to be everywhere. And I know this sounds really obvious, but I genuinely think it's one of the hardest lessons to live out because the pressure to be visible everywhere is so intense now. You feel like you should be on Instagram and YouTube and email and Pinterest and TikTok and your website and all of the things. And if you're not doing all of that, you're somehow missing out or holding yourself back. But if your time is limited, like mine is, trying to do everything can quickly mean that you stop doing anything well at all. That was definitely true for me. There were seasons where I was trying to keep up everywhere, and the result was not more growth. The result was that I became half consistent everywhere and brilliant nowhere. And that's a really frustrating place to be because you feel busy all of the time, but it's not necessarily effective. So now I think about it very differently. I'm not nearly as focused on where else I should be, and much more focused on what is actually worth my energy.

So the sixth thing I would prioritize more is channels and assets that keep working after I log off. Now, to be fair, this is something I did tap into fairly early on, and I actually think a lot of my growth came from this, but I didn't fully understand the potential of it at the time. And hindsight is 20/20. So at that point, I was posting studio vlogs really consistently every week, and they did well. They got decent views. They helped people get to know me, and they built a really really lovely loyal audience around my work. But one week, I did not have time to do my usual vlog edit because I spend ages editing. So I switched things up, and I made a notebook tutorial instead. And looking back now, that was a ranked video. It was something people were actively searching for, and over time, that video just kept growing and growing. So my studio vlogs were often sitting at around the 5,000 view mark, which is still great, but this video ended up reaching around 200,000 views. And I think it's I don't know what it's on now, but And the exact same thing happened with one of my draw with me's. Again, I didn't have time for my usual vlog, so I tried something different, and that video is now at over a million views. And I think it slowly dawned on me that this kind of evergreen searchable content was where the bigger long-term reach was for me. And if you do it well, that can also be where the longer-term sales come from, too. I really wish I'd paid closer attention at the time to what was actually working. Now, I'm not saying I should have stopped doing studio vlogs because I honestly don't think that that would have been the right move. They were brilliant for building trust, connection, and a real fan base. Those were the people who wanted my products because they were invested in me and my artwork. But, evergreen content does something different. It keeps finding new people long after you've posted it. It keeps working in the background, and it has the potential to keep earning, keep growing, and keep bringing new people into your world without you having to start from scratch every week. And you might be thinking, "But, you said earlier that views weren't the goal." But, if you've done the research into the sales and conversion side, like all of these points put together, and you pair that with an evergreen video, you've got long-term visibility and long-term sales. But, it's not that one type of content is good and the other is bad. It's that when your time is limited, it really helps to understand which parts of your business build trust in the moment and which parts have the ability to keep working for you later. I think if you have limited time, you really need to ask yourself, "What in your business can continue doing something useful once you've stopped working for the day?" That could be YouTube videos, it could be your SEO, maybe a really good email sequence, or a digital product, or more evergreen content like Pinterest. But, the point is some things expire quickly and some things keep helping long-term. And if I'm choosing where my energy goes now, I care much more about that distinction. That's one of the reasons I went all in on this new YouTube channel. Within 12 uploads, I got monetized, and none of that was because some random video exploded. It was because I've put in consistent effort into creating content that has a chance of continuing beyond the day I uploaded it. I researched it. I've learned. I've paid attention to what my audience needs, and I started to build something with intention that would keep doing a job after I posted it.

I used to think that if I made better artwork or posted more consistently, my creative business would naturally grow. I thought that growth would be this steady upward thing. More orders, more momentum, more confidence. But instead, what I got was inconsistent sales, busy weeks followed by quiet ones, and long stretches of creating, posting, sharing, and then wondering why nothing seemed to stick unless I was constantly online. That was exactly where I found myself a few years in. I was trying everything, watching other creatives grow, and thinking to myself, "What am I missing?" In this video, I want to walk you through what actually helped me grow my creative business. Not as an overnight success, but in a way that became sustainable over time. So, I'm sharing the shifts that mattered, what I stopped doing, and what I focused on instead so that you can take these lessons and apply them to your creative business.

If you're watching this, chances are you're not starting from zero, which means that you've already done the scary part of putting yourself out there. You've likely had some sales, and you've had people find your work and love it. And you don't have to beg people to buy from you. So, you've likely had that moment where you've thought, "This could actually work." Like this could actually become something legit. But right now, it just feels heavy. You know it's possible, but you also know how unpredictable it can be. Sales can feel unpredictable because they spike when you're actively showing up and posting and emailing and talking about your work, and then they go quiet the moment you step back or take a break or just need some time to breathe. And that is exhausting because you can't be switched on all of the time. You've got a life outside your business. You might have kids or a job or just other things going on that means you can't constantly feed that algorithm.

So when I first started my art business, this stage felt overwhelming because I had too many ideas bouncing around in my head and no clear sense of where to focus my limited time and energy. So I was constantly chasing the next thing, whether that was the next product I should be making or the next platform I should be on or maybe the next strategy I should try. And I was convinced that this one thing would be the thing that finally made it all click into place and start working consistently. I also felt really confused by comparison because I would watch other creatives do something and it would work brilliantly for them and I'd try the same thing and it would just fall flat. So Patreon is a good example of this for me because it actually grew really well at one point and I had around a hundred paying members, which I was so proud of and I still am. But I kept measuring it against creators who were hitting these five-figure months with their memberships. And instead of asking myself whether Patreon actually fit my life and my capacity and what I actually wanted to be doing, I tried to copy what they were doing and push myself to match their results. And that's when it started to feel draining rather than exciting. So this phase of your business is about deciding what actually deserves your energy and where to put your focus because you can try and do everything and be on every platform. You can make every type of product and try every strategy, but doing everything will burn you out faster than anything else. And before we talk about systems or platforms or any of that, there's one mindset shift that has to happen first because what helped me wasn't posting more. It was changing how I understood growth in the first place. So, let's get into it.

For a long time, I thought that the issue was effort. Like if things weren't growing the way I wanted them to, it must be because I wasn't consistent enough or I'd ruined my momentum by not showing up perfectly every single day. And I was terrified that any inconsistency would break everything I'd already built. And if I took a week off or posted less frequently, people would forget about me and I'd have to start all over again. But nothing bad happened when I took breaks. What mattered more than perfect consistency was my ability to bounce back and to do it without apologizing profusely for being away. So, early on, if I disappeared for a bit for whatever reason, I'd just avoid coming back. Like I didn't even open the app because out of sight, out of mind. I put so much pressure on myself and I felt like I had to explain or justify why I hadn't been posting. And ironically, that avoidance did far more damage than the break ever did. So, people didn't care that I'd taken time off. They were just happy to see me like show up again. And that was a big reframe for me. Understanding that growth isn't about never dropping the ball or being perfect all the time. It's about how confidently you pick it back up when life happens. I've also learned that more isn't always better, even though we're constantly told to do more and be everywhere and post more consistently, but more platforms did not help me grow. It just meant that I was spreading myself too thin and doing everything badly. What helped was research, paying attention to what people were already responding to and what was actually working and then double down on that instead of constantly chasing something new and shiny. Finally, growth stopped being about hitting certain numbers or getting more followers and it started being about audience alignment, making sure that the people who were finding me were actually the right people who genuinely wanted what I was offering.

So, let's talk about what shifted. I think a lot of creatives struggle with the fear of feeling stuck in maker mode. I don't know if this is something that every creator is aware of. We didn't necessarily get into this to be business owners. We got into it because we love making things, but at some point I had to acknowledge that I couldn't just be a maker anymore and if I wanted this to grow into something sustainable, I had to step into the role of business owner and not just manufacturer of my products. So, early on I sold these monthly calendars and I remember selling 40 during the launch, which felt amazing at the time. That is until I had to print every single page myself and then glue them all together by hand. My printer was painfully slow, like ridiculously slow and each notepad took around 3 hours or more to make from start to finish, which meant I was spending entire days just printing and gluing and cutting when what I actually wanted to be doing was creating new artwork. And I remember sitting there late one night in my studio with glue all over my hands and thinking, "I wanted to be an illustrator. I didn't sign up to be a print house or a manufacturing company." And that is when I decided to start getting them manufactured properly, which was scary because it meant investing like money up front, but it freed up my time. And that time mattered far more than the satisfaction of doing everything myself or having slightly higher profit margins that I got from making them at home. That was also when I stepped into another role that I hadn't really planned for, which was content creator, learning to film and edit. And then, most importantly, what I think a lot of creatives don't necessarily do is review my own work. Not harshly, but just in a constructive way to help me improve and get better over time. So, if you're exhausted right now and feeling like you're drowning in all the things that you're trying to do, this might not be your lack of discipline or consistency. It might just be that you're working in the wrong role. You're trying to do everything. You're trying to be the maker, the business owner, the marketer, content creator, and the customer service person. And something has to give because you can't do all of those roles well at the same time. So, for me, it was the manufacturing. For you, that might not be the thing that has to give, but something does. And you need to figure out how that would look for you and your creative business. If your effort is going into the wrong places, no amount of discipline or hard work or hustle is going to fix that.

So, next I want to help you work out where your effort actually belongs, which platforms are worth your time, and which ones are draining it. Not all platforms are equal. And this is something that I wish someone had told me earlier. Although, if they did tell me earlier, I wish I'd listened. Because I spend so much time trying to be everywhere and do everything. Some platforms compound over time, meaning that the work you put in today continues to bring value for months or even years from now. And then some platforms just expire immediately, and your content disappears into the void within a couple of days. And at some point, you have to stop asking, "Where should I be showing up?" and start asking a more useful question, which is, "Where does my effort keep working even when I step away?" And that answer is not universal. It really depends on your capacity, your season of life, and what you actually need your business to do for you, not what looks good on paper. So, Instagram is great for community and connection. It's where relationships deepen, and I personally love chatting with people in the DMs to build those like genuine connections. You can't really get that on other platforms, I don't think. Maybe on Threads, but I'm not really active there. But Instagram's not really where sales can be running in the background, because the content just doesn't get rediscovered in the same way. Instagram is great for real-time connection, for sharing product drops, updating your audience, and optimizing posts to convert when people are already paying attention. But if you want sales coming in without you constantly posting, then Instagram isn't the place to build that.

YouTube is different, and this is where I started to see the real power of compounding content. Over on my main channel, Fizz and Flourish, I have videos from 3 years ago that still get views every single day. They still bring people into my world, onto my mailing list, and they introduce them to what I do, which allows them to still support my business without me having to do anything extra. That is compounding, and that is when it finally clicked for me. So, when you're trying to decide where your effort belongs, it's not about picking the trendiest platform, and I'm not saying you have to do YouTube. That just worked for me. There are plenty of evergreen platforms that you can utilize. You just have to work out what fits for you and what you actually enjoy doing. It's about noticing which places reward your depth over your frequency, which ones keep sending people back without needing that constant input, and which ones demand more and more from you just to stay visible. And don't get me wrong with YouTube. Yes, there are compounding videos, but it takes a lot of work to get to that stage. So, if you are thinking about starting a YouTube channel, you really have to be committed to staying consistent and putting the work in. But that hard work can really pay off.

When I understood that, I had to think really hard about my capacity. I am a mom of three small humans, including twins, and I don't have endless hours in the day to be creating content for seven different platforms. So, recently, I made a scary but intentional decision to start a brand new YouTube channel, even though I already had 57,000 subscribers on my art channel that I've been building for the past few years. Now, why would I do that when I'd already built that audience? And it's because that channel was categorized as art. And every single time I tried to post business content there, it tanked and performed terribly because the audience wasn't there for that, and the algorithm didn't know what to do with it. So, starting fresh felt really risky, and it felt like I was throwing away everything I'd built, but it also meant alignment. And that meant that my main channel could go back to being about creativity and art just for fun. And my new channel, The Creative Juice Club, the one you are watching right now, could focus specifically on growth, structure, sustainability for creative businesses, which is a subject that I could talk about all day long. When you're feeling overwhelmed by all the platforms and all the places you think you should be showing up, remember you are just one person, and unless you have a team of people helping you, you cannot do seven different roles across seven different platforms and do them really well. So, something has to give, and it's better to choose intentionally what you're going to focus on rather than trying to do everything and just burning yourself out in the process.

Now, choosing the right platform helps, but it still doesn't solve your real problem, that everything only works when you're actively pushing it. Because even on the right platforms, if your business falls apart the moment you step back, it's still fragile. So, next, I want to talk about how to build a business that doesn't fall apart when you step away, and the kinds of things that can keep sales and momentum ticking over even when life happens. My capacity dropped almost overnight, and I learned something really important. The only parts of my business that didn't fall apart were the parts that I'd already built to run without me. The first thing that broke after I had my kids was my consistency. And that's because I had zero energy, and I kind of lost the joy of it. Everything started to feel like a chore rather than something I actually wanted to be doing. But the systems I'd already built before that happened, those things that I'd set up held the business together during that season. For example, my evergreen YouTube videos kept working in the background, and they were bringing people in, and that visibility naturally supported my digital products, which I didn't need to be there to fulfill orders or ship anything. And at the same time, my email systems were doing their job, welcoming new people, sharing value, and building trust without me having to sit down and write something new every week because it was all automated. And this is the part that I really want you to pay attention to. Not so that you can copy what I did, but so you can look for the equivalent in your own business. For me, this system was creating content around topics that people were already searching for, and then guiding them either towards a product that solved a specific problem or into an email list where I could continue the conversation over time even when I wasn't showing up. The details of that will look different for everyone, but the principle is the same. Build at least one path in your business where effort today keeps paying off tomorrow instead of resetting to zero every single time. If email automation isn't your thing, and I think it should be, but if you're not ready for that yet, there are other things you can do to help the streamline-ness of your business. For example, if launches are part of your growth plan, but they've always felt chaotic or last minute, then putting a system into place here would be a great way to start applying this to your business. You can just post and hope, but that's not really a strategy. Plus, you'll likely end up burnt out from all the constant decision-making. So, to get you started with implementing some systems into your creative business, I've made a free pre-launch checklist for this part of your business. It's been so popular that I've totally revamped it. I've added more detail, clearer timelines, and a proper breakdown of what to do and when, so you're not scrambling in the final week of your launch. It's completely free, and it walks you through building a launch that feels structured instead of stressful. You can grab it from the description below. It's these small changes that can compound over time and allow your business to run so much smoother and streamlined. So, that is what systems do. They don't have to be complicated or require you to be any kind of tech wiz. They're just step-by-step processes that you build once, and then they run in the background.

I desperately wanted to earn a living from my art, and I thought that being good at drawing would be enough. Spoiler alert, it wasn't. If you're anything like me, you didn't get into art because it was a strategic business move. You went into it because you loved it. Something about making things with your hands or drawing or illustrating just felt right, but at some point, you realize that if you want to turn this into something sustainable and it supports your life, it has to be more than a hobby. It has to work as a business, and that's where most creatives get stuck. So, today, I want to take you behind the scenes of how I built my creative business from scratch, not through a viral moment or with a big budget or some magic secret, but slowly and steadily over time. And I'm going to walk you through the different phases of my journey, what I focused on each stage, and what I wish I'd done differently, and how I'm thinking about structure now in a way that's actually sustainable. So, this video isn't a blueprint, but a zoomed out view of what it actually looks like to grow a creative business over time, especially if you're doing it during pockets of your day, around your family or a full-time job, or from a place of just wanting more freedom. From the outside, my business might look like one continuous thing, but when you zoom in, it's clearly four distinct phases, each with its own focus, its own set of lessons. So, I'm going to walk you through each one. And as you listen, see if you can recognize your own journey in there, too. And if you do, take what resonates and just leave what doesn't, and borrow anything that might help you shape what you're building next.

I did not grow up thinking that I would run an art business. At school, I loved art. I mean, my GCSE art teacher actually traveled to Scotland to be at my wedding. So, I've always had someone rooting for me. But after she left the school to pursue her own creative business as a ceramicist, I was told two things that really stuck with me, and not in a good way. One, I was warned that going from being the top art student in my school to art college would be a really harsh reality check, that I'd go from this, and I remember the quote, they said, "a big fish in a small pond to barely average and that I'd struggle and that really crushed my confidence. Remember, I was like 17 at the time and two, at the time I wanted to study animation and I was just really drawn to it, but someone told me I just didn't know enough about computers to pursue it. That I'd be out of my depth and I'm not telling you this to be negative. I'm telling you because I should never have let those comments stop me. And if you've ever had someone make you feel like you're not good enough or like your dream's too far out of reach, I want you to know that you don't have to believe them and I really wish that I hadn't. At that age, those comments were enough to push me away from art altogether and I didn't have the confidence to push back or prove anyone wrong. So instead, I studied costume for film and theater. It was creative, but it never lit me up the same way that art did and it felt like I was doing something adjacent to what I actually wanted, but wasn't quite hitting the mark. So fast forward a few years, I was working in China in 2020 on one of the biggest shows in the world. It was a dream job on paper, the kind of thing that people would hear about and go "Wow, that's incredible." But I felt completely unfulfilled. I loved the people, I met some incredible people and that isn't part of this, but it was the job itself. I was good at it, I was good at what I did, but it didn't feel like I was creating anything that mattered to me. And then lockdown hit and I was still in China. So like everyone else, I was stuck in the house and during that time I discovered studio vlogs on YouTube. If you can't tell by the way, I'm getting over a cold and a cough, so I sound a bit husky, a little bit like Phoebe from Friends. But, anyway, people were filming themselves drawing, painting, working in their studios, and I just fell in love with that whole world. I started watching digital illustration tutorials. I bought an iPad. I started playing around with Procreate. And for the first time in years, I felt that pull again. And that's when I started taking it seriously. I'd been sharing my artwork online, not with a big plan. I was just posting what I was making and drawing, and people started to connect with it. People were commenting, following along, asking questions. And it's like I discovered this whole world with communities and strangers online supporting each other. And that gave me the confidence I needed to keep going when I eventually got back to the UK. So, once I started showing up with a bit more consistency, not just in making the work, but actually sharing it, things started to shift. Not overnight or dramatically, but enough for me to notice. And maybe that's where you are, too. You're showing up, building something bit by bit, but not totally sure where it's leading to yet. And by the way, if you're in that stage of building and figuring it out, and you'd love a space to feel a bit more connected, then I have started a Substack. I'm sharing deeper thoughts on creative business, what's working behind the scenes, and chatting in the comments, too. So, I am brand new to this space, but if you love reading and absorbing, you will love Substack. I can't believe I've only just started diving into it. And I'd love to be growing a little corner of the internet for creative people who want more than just quick content. So, I'd love to see you there. You can find the link in the description, or just search The Creative Juice Club on Substack. And this is how it starts. If you're starting to get questions from followers you don't know or names on orders that you don't recognize, not just your family, then that is a signal. That's a clue that something's working. And at this point in my business journey, I wasn't thinking about products or income just yet, but I could feel it shifting. And once I started showing up with a bit more consistency, not just in making the work, but in sharing it on a regular basis, people started to pay attention.

So, the next phase is where things started to shift because I wasn't just sharing for fun anymore. I was starting to make real sales, build products, and understand what my audience actually wanted. So, like most artists, I started with what I could make myself. Stickers, bookmarks, notebooks, prints, anything I could manufacture myself. I was running everything from home, designing, printing, cutting, packaging, shipping, the whole lot. And I also started sharing my journey on YouTube with studio vlogs. So, I wasn't chasing numbers or trying to go viral or build some massive platform. I was just showing up with the process, filming myself working, talking about what I was learning, and being really honest about the fact that I had no idea what I was doing half the time. And by my third vlog, I'd made 14 sales. Now, 14 might not sound like a lot, but it felt massive to me. Some of those were international orders, people in different countries finding my tiny shop and deciding to buy from me. And I only had about 100 subscribers at that point. I didn't have fancy packaging or a beautiful brand aesthetic, but it was real and people were connecting with that. And I think that is something that a lot of creatives miss when they're starting out. They think that everything needs to be perfect before they can sell, that they need professional photos and fully designed websites and thousands of followers, but actually people just want to connect with something real, especially in today's world of AI. They want to see the person behind the work. And when you let them, when you show them the process, the mess, the figuring it all out, that builds trust way faster than any polished feed ever could.

Over time, as my life shifted, I started to shift what I was making. So, I moved into manufactured products. So, although I was designing everything, I wasn't also being the production company, which gave me more time to create. So, I tried subscription boxes for a while, which sold really well, but it took a huge amount of time to create. So, eventually, I landed on digital products, which just worked so much better for my life once I became a mom of three, twins included. And I think that that's something people don't talk about enough. Your business is allowed to evolve and you don't have to stick with the first thing that you made forever. Pivoting your product line is just you adapting to where you are and what actually makes sense for your life right now. So, the more I experimented, the more I started to realize it wasn't just about making things anymore, it was about making it work, not just creatively, but sustainably, because I didn't have time to chase every single idea anymore. I had very limited hours, so I couldn't afford for it to be guesswork. So, that's when things started to shift again. I wasn't just testing ideas, I was starting to think about structure, about how I could keep building this without burning out. So far I've talked about my shop, but I didn't build my business around one income stream because I couldn't afford for that one thing to stop working. I started to daydream less, although I think daydream is just the creative person's way of like strategizing. Either way, I stopped fixating on what might blow up and started focusing on what could grow with me. What could be ticking over in the background, building momentum over time, and actually support my life. And that shift shaped what came next.

Life at this point wasn't like it is in the movies. I didn't quit my job one day and suddenly replace my entire income overnight with a booming business in a fancy warehouse. There was no big breakthrough moment where everything just clicked. And that's because I built gradually, one income stream at a time. Behind the scenes, I was figuring out what actually could support my life, not just what I wanted to make, but what people were already buying. And more importantly, what could keep working even when I couldn't. So YouTube ad revenue started trickling in as soon as I hit the monetization threshold. Then came brand deals. Small ones at first, then gradually bigger names. The kind of collaborations I used to dream about in the early days. And it's funny how things shift though, like looking back. I now turn down pretty much all brand collaborations to focus on my own stuff. I'm never going to say never, but at the moment I get emails constantly about brand deals and I'm saying no to them. So it's really interesting to see how your goals change over time. So, at that point, shop sales were starting to become more predictable, and then digital products started selling, too. Over time, those income streams started working together, and eventually, they were enough to sustain me through maternity leave. And that was huge because I'd built a business that could keep going even when I step back. Even when I wasn't actively creating or posting or showing up every single day. And that wasn't luck, that was structure. I had systems in place, evergreen YouTube videos that kept bringing in traffic for months, even years, after I posted them, digital products that people could buy at 2:00 a.m. without me needing to be awake, although at that stage of motherhood, I probably was awake. I had email sequences that nurtured new subscribers automatically. So, I set things up to work for me in the background. And that is what made it sustainable because although consistency is super important to growth, sometimes life gets in the way. And when that does happen, structure is what makes your business resilient. There's a quote, I think it's from the book Atomic Habits. It's, you do not rise to the levels of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems. A creative business should support you, not depend on constantly showing up and performing just to keep it alive. And I know that sounds obvious, but so many of us build businesses that completely rely on us being on all of the time, and that is just not sustainable long term. When we had our twins, my capacity dropped basically to nothing. And if my business had required me to be actively creating and posting and engaging every single day to make money, it would have collapsed. I'm able to stay consistent now the twins are two and you know, I've got things in place to allow myself to work a little bit in pockets of time, but during that newborn period, I didn't

Have that, and that's what I'm talking about here because I'd built those systems, those evergreen pieces, and automated parts that kept it ticking over. And don't get me wrong, not to the same level as when I was fully active, but enough.

So I used to think that the whole point of being an artist who makes content was just to sell more art. Like, if I showed my work, shared my process, and posted consistently enough, the sales would just follow, and that would be that. Like I'd be able to build a sustainable living from making what I loved. Simple.

Now, I know some people will say, "Just learn SEO, or make a product, rank it on Etsy, and done." Yes, that is a path. For some people, it genuinely works, and if that is you, then brilliant. But, and I suspect I'm not alone in this, SEO is basically a foreign language to me that I've been meaning to learn since probably 2020, and I'm still on lesson one.

But what I've actually discovered after years of making content and building an audience from nothing, and watching the patterns in how money actually flows into a creative business, is that I had it completely backwards. The art was never the problem. The art was good, but sales from artwork alone, even consistent ones, almost never add up to a full living, not without something else sitting underneath them. And that something else wasn't more products or better listings on Etsy; it was the content itself. The content was the business. I just hadn't built it that way in the beginning.

So I want to walk you through the five income streams that content can actually build for your creative business, and I'll share my own experiences with each one to give you a realistic picture of what those numbers could actually look like for you. Because if you are a product-based artist who's making content or thinking about starting, I want you to understand what content can actually do for your income beyond just driving people to your shop.

And stick with me till the end because the last income stream is the one you've probably heard talked about the most, like a thousand times, but I want to go really deep on this one because I think most creators are leaving serious money on the table with it. And it's simply because they're only ever being given surface-level advice.

So, if you're watching this, chances are you're already making things: physical products, things that take time and skill to create, and then you price them and put them out into the world, and you hope that people buy them. And some of them do. Maybe you're getting pretty regular orders. You might have had brilliant launches, repeat customers, or a product that sells in the background, maybe through your email marketing. And that feels so good because it feels like proof that it's working.

But, and I say this as someone who has been there, there's often this moving goalpost feeling that never goes away. Like the more you sell, the more you make, it just doesn't feel like enough. Income is there, but it also feels really fragile. One slow month, and the whole thing feels like it could fall apart, and you start wondering if you're just not working hard enough or not promoting enough.

And I want to offer you a different diagnosis because even without knowing your situation, I don't think the problem is you. You. Not me, not Hermione. You. Should I leave that in? Okay, moving on. I don't think the problem is you, or your art, or your pricing, or your audience size.

You've probably heard a hundred times that you should build multiple income streams, but hearing it and actually having streams that are substantial enough to take the strain when your product sales are slow, that is a very different thing. And that is where most people trip up. Now, I'm not saying you need five streams that each pay a full wage, but if you're doing affiliate marketing, is it actually tiding you over in a slow month? Or are you just [clears throat] making pennies from an occasional Amazon recommendation and calling it a passive income stream?

So, most artists use content to sell their art. Makes sense, right? I've made thousands of sales from one single digital brush pack off the back of a YouTube video that's slowly growing in views over the last three years. That evergreen sales model is genuinely brilliant, but it's only one layer.

So, the shift I want you to make is to stop thinking about your content as a funnel that leads to your shop, and start thinking about the content as the product itself. Because when you build a channel, or a podcast, or a newsletter, or a combination of those, and you build it properly with consistency, strategy, and an understanding of what your audience actually needs, the content becomes its own engine. It attracts brand partnerships, it earns AdSense revenue, and it becomes the foundation for potential courses, memberships, digital products, and that can really compound.

So, I have monetized this channel, the Creative Juice Club, in 12 uploads, like 12 videos, and that didn't just happen. It wasn't luck. It was years of learning what works, taking feedback, understanding why things didn't land, and applying all of that to something new. So, every video that flopped on my art channel, Fizz and Flourish, every thumbnail that nobody clicked, that was all me just building the skill set that made monetization in 12 uploads here possible.

And that is the thing I really want you to hear because if you're in the early stages and it feels slow and difficult and like nothing is working, that isn't failure. That's you building your skill set to go on to the next chapter faster. You just can't see it yet.

And regardless of where you are right now, whether you're just starting out or you've been making content for years, these are the five layers that I want you to think about because understanding them changes how you build. And this is not a to-do list; it's for you to look at and go, "Okay, I see all the options." And then you make a really intentional choice about which ones you want to focus on and which ones you don't.

So, number one is product sales. This is where most artists start, and for good reason. It's a really solid foundation. So, physical products, digital products, print-on-demand, commissions. You're using the content you make to softly sell to the people who want it. And when your content naturally leads people there, it can work really well because it's a very natural process. So, for me, I shared my process on studio vlogs, and people were invested in my journey, and those people then joined my journey and supported my shop. And it doesn't have to be studio vlogs; it might be a tutorial that showcases something you sell or a process video with a shop link. That's your content doing exactly what it should. But the problem with relying on this alone is that the moment you stop making content, the sales tend to stop or slowly decline, which is why it shouldn't be your only income stream. Otherwise, you're just going to totally burn yourself out.

So, number two is platform monetization. So, this could be AdSense on YouTube, podcast ad slots, that sort of thing. It usually kicks in once you hit certain thresholds. So, for YouTube, that's 1,000 subscribers plus 4,000 watch hours based on the last 365 days, like a rolling year. And I'm going to be totally honest with you based on my own experience. AdSense is really life-changing on its own, but it's compounding. So, I've had a video over the years that's made me over £3,500 just from one video. So, when you divide that over the years, it's not a massive income stream month to month, but it's £3,500 on one video I made 3 years ago, and it's still making money today. So, when I was renting my studio space back when I was regularly posting on Fizz and Flourish, that income stream covered my rent, and it was running in the background. I didn't have to do anything. So, AdSense isn't as glamorous as a lot of creators make out, but it can cover some of your bills, and the more you post, the more views you gain, the more it compounds.

So, number three is brand partnerships. Now, this is where it starts to really feel exciting because once your channel has a really niche and a real audience, even if it's a small one, like a specific one, brands will reach out to you, and a single brand deal can pay more than an entire month of product sales. So, I've never shared these numbers before, but for my first ever brand deal on YouTube, I maybe had less than 2,000 subscribers, and I was paid £800 for one video. That's probably about $1,000 US dollars, and it felt unreal at the time. Now, the more you grow, the more valuable your audience becomes to a brand, the more they'll likely pay. One partnership can really take more pressure off than 30 orders that you spend weeks making and packing. And I don't say that to dismiss the products or the work you're doing. I say it because that pressure relief makes such a difference to your creativity because when you're not in survival mode with your income, you stop showing up in sales mode. You start showing up creatively instead. And in my experience, that is exactly when the artwork sells more naturally, anyway. People can feel the difference between someone that's creating because they love it, and someone creating because they need the income.

Be very careful who you say yes to. And in the beginning, it feels really exciting when brands get in touch, and that excitement can cloud your judgment. And I know because I've done it. I once promoted a designer handbag because, honestly, I wanted the handbag. I'd never owned anything designer. I got swept up in it, and looking back, I couldn't care less about designer things, and I don't think my audience did, either. So, it just didn't really sit right. And that is no shade to the brand, but I shouldn't have said yes. So, now I'm very selective because your audience trusts you, and that trust is worth way more than a one-off brand deal.

Number four, uh, your own digital offers, things like courses, memberships, templates, guides. But I don't think people realize this until they're in the middle of it. But your content is the longest job interview for those offers. In most cases, by the time someone buys your course, they've watched 20 of your videos. They know how you think. They trust you. They know how they're going to learn from you. So, that sale is already half made before they ever click buy. So, I don't really buy into these massive claims where people say, "I posted one digital product and made £7K a month in passive income for all eternity." And maybe some of these stories are true. Maybe someone had a video blow up and hit millions of views, but that's not most people's reality, and it wasn't mine, either. So, from my own experience of selling brush packs and other digital products, the sales can absolutely be consistent, but you still need to show up. They're one of the most passive parts of my business, and I genuinely think that digital products can change the shape of your entire business, and I wouldn't be talking about them if I didn't think that. But, it's not a one-and-done situation like a lot of people want you to think, and usually those people are selling you a guide on how to do exactly that. So, I'd rather give an honest picture than a really exciting one that doesn't actually hold up in real life because the real version is still really good. It just takes a bit longer than a viral reel would have you believe.

So, layer five is affiliate marketing. Now, let me tell you the truth about affiliate marketing that nobody seems to talk about because most creators mention affiliate marketing as an option, move on, and I actually want to go a little deeper here to give you as much value and insight as possible. So, if you don't know, affiliate income is when you recommend a product, a tool, or a service that you genuinely love, and a company pays you a percentage when someone buys through your link. It sounds simple, but most creators leave money on the table at the percentage. So, not all affiliate programs are built the same. Let me explain.

So, you'll hear a lot of creators talk about Amazon, and look, I am in the Amazon Associates program. I can't remember what it's called. It's Amazon Associates, and it's brilliant if you're already using products in your videos, and you just want a low-effort bonus. But, Amazon's commission rates are tiny, like pennies, a couple maybe. For me, Amazon worked out at around £30 a month. Now, if you're doing full step-by-step process videos showing people how to make something very specific that requires a lot of tools and materials, then Amazon commissions can genuinely add up, and I know a creator personally earning around £700 a month just from Amazon alone. So, I'm not saying that it's impossible, but if you're only sharing products now and then, it's not going to earn you that kind of money.

So, for most of us who aren't making Amazon their whole thing, the bigger money lives somewhere else. Software and artist collabs. And actually reading the fine print before you sign up to anything. So, for years, the standard commission I came across was around 6%. Now, that does sound small, but it really depends on the types of products you're promoting. So, on a low-ticket product, it is going to be a small commission. You'll maybe earn a couple of pounds per sale. But, I was also getting 6% on a high-ticket item, which was a hundred pounds in my pocket for every single sale. Same percentage, completely different payout.

Then, there are the collabs. So, I once partnered with another creative company on a project where I designed a keyboard and they produced it. And they offered to split 50% of the profits with me, which was a great deal and unlike a lot of partnerships that I'd had in the past. And that kind of arrangement becomes possible by building real trust with your audience and a genuine relationship with another business. So, apart from that one deal, all of those years of low percentages shaped exactly how I wanted to build my own affiliate program when the time came. Because when you've been on the receiving end of putting so much effort into sharing a company, filming, editing, promoting, you want to be rewarded for that.

So, when I sat down to build the affiliate program for October, the software that I talked about earlier, I chose to do it differently. So, I went with a really generous commission rate, and not because that's the industry standard, because it's definitely not. I did it because I'm not a big corporation; I'm a creator, and I want to grow with the people that are supporting me. And by the way, if you have tried October and loved it and want to be an affiliate, you can apply to become one, get that generous commission. I shall leave the link in the description.

So, it's not about chasing every affiliate link you find. It's about choosing the programs where the audience aligns and the maths actually works for you. There are so many other streams of income that you can build into your creative business, but I don't want to overwhelm you and give you this huge long list. So, I've just chosen a few of my favorites.

Now, I've mentioned Artlogo a few times in this video, but I haven't actually told you all the exciting news around it. So, if you don't mind, I just want to share that with you briefly because I am bursting at the seams about it. So, as I said earlier, Artlogo used to be called My Creative Hub, but this isn't just a fresh coat of paint in terms of a rebrand. It is a whole new chapter, a new dedicated website, loads of new features, deeper workflows, and a system built around this idea that your creative business should feel like one connected home, not a bunch of scattered tools that don't talk to each other.

So, if you're anything like me, your business is probably living across 10 different places right now. You've got ideas scattered everywhere: notebooks, tabs, the notes app, random scraps of paper you swear you're going to come back to, or you're consistent for a week, and then life happens, and it all falls apart again. And the tools out there that are meant to fix all of this are almost always one of two things. They're either too corporate, like they're designed for big teams, or they're a blank canvas, which means that you've now got to spend your time building a system from scratch before you can even start using the thing. And neither of those work when you've maybe got an hour to your day of actually running your creative business.

So, it's a workspace designed specifically for creative business owners. Your product launches get broken down into clear steps, and your numbers aren't this scary mystery you keep avoiding. So, if you fancy having a look, there is now a a free trial with full access to everything. So, I shall leave the link in the description below, or just go to artovr.io and have a look around at the shiny new website. Okay, thanks for letting me share that exciting news. Let's go a bit deeper on the topic of this video.

You're not an artist making content; you're a content creator who makes art. If you're ready to make content the real income engine for your creative business, not just a shop window for what you already make, but a proper compounding, multi-layered income stream, then you really do have to be willing to step into the role of being a content creator, not an artist who occasionally records a process video or someone that posts on Instagram when the mood strikes, but a content creator who happens to be an artist.

And look, I already know that some of you are going to hate this idea. The words "content creator" might have just made you flinch, and I really get that. There are other routes. If SEO is a skill that you have, you're willing to learn, then go all in on that. But if SEO isn't your strength, and markets aren't enough to pay the bills, and you want to turn your art or craft into a full-time income, then this is the way.

So, you might feel like it's taking away from your artwork or your creativity, but content creation is creative in itself, and it's a great way for you to share your work with the world. Now, I'm definitely not saying hustle and post every day on Instagram until you burn out, but there are ways to make this sustainable. And if you want to learn more about that, then go ahead and subscribe because I'm sharing so much value and behind-the-scenes on this channel.

When I made that shift in mindset on how I approached content creation, it became an enjoyment, not a chore. And that's because I wasn't trying to squeeze content out of my artwork as an afterthought; I was making content that happened to feature my artwork, and that is a completely different feeling with different pressure and a completely different outcome.

So, the thing I really want to challenge you on here is whether you're genuinely willing to be a content creator first and an artist second. Because what you decide on that one thing is going to shape everything that happens after it. And if your head is spinning with all of this, that is exactly why I built Artful Agenda. It's the system I use to keep my goals, ideas, content, and launches moving forward, built for how creative brains actually work, not corporate teams.

A few years ago, I started building multiple income streams in my creative business. Some of them are still making me money today without me touching them, whereas others completely died. And the difference between what lasted and what didn't has taught me everything I know about building a sustainable income. And that's exactly what I want to share with you today.

So, over the years, I've built income streams that have made thousands of pounds in sales in a matter of weeks, and others that have quietly ticked away in the background for years without me having to do much. And then there are the ones that I made a conscious decision to walk away from, even though they were making me money. Because what they were costing me in time and energy just wasn't worth it anymore. And today, I want to walk you through what I'm focusing on now. Like, the things that are actually building my income in a way that works around my life and not against it.

It's very easy to talk about passive income and evergreen systems like they're this magical, effortless thing that you set up once and then you disappear off to a beach somewhere. But the reality is a bit more nuanced than that. And unless you understand exactly how to build it, then passive income just doesn't work the way those YouTube videos would have you believe.

So, I'm going to walk you through an actual framework for deciding what's actually worth building, what to walk away from, and what the income streams that are still working for me years later all have in common. Because you're watching this, I'd guess that somewhere in the back of your mind, you're trying to figure out how to build something that doesn't require you to be switched on and showing up every single day just to keep the income moving. Maybe you're exhausted from constantly creating new things or showing up and chasing the next launch, or the next post, or the next sale. And you keep hearing people talk about passive income and systems and evergreen content, but you're not entirely sure what actually works.

And I completely get it because I spent a really long time in that exact place, trying things, investing time and energy, and sometimes money into things that looked brilliant on paper but didn't quite deliver what I'd hoped. And for some of those things, I genuinely thought they were going to be the thing that finally gave me breathing room. But what I've learned is that income streams still working years later all have the same thing in common. And the ones that died also have the same thing in common. And once you can see that pattern clearly, it changes how you think about where you put your energy, which is especially important if your time is limited, which for most of us who are building around real life, it is.

What declined? I want to start with the mistake because I think understanding what went wrong is actually the most useful place to begin when it comes to building income that genuinely lasts. So, my art channel, Fizz and Flourish, was really working. I built it up over the years. I was making regular AdSense income. My brush pack was selling consistently off the back of all of that. And at its peak, I was getting at least 10 orders a day just from people finding my videos. That's a real compounding income stream doing exactly what it's supposed to do.

But this is what happened. After I had my kids, my capacity dropped significantly and suddenly. And my Fizz and Flourish channel was the thing that suffered most because I built it in a way that demanded a lot of time and energy to maintain. The editing was heavy, the production standard that I'd set for myself was high, and it just wasn't compatible with the season of life that I'd suddenly found myself in. So, I started posting less, and then less again. And then when I missed a few weeks, nothing catastrophic would happen, so I'd tell myself that it was fine because the sales were still coming in, the AdSense was still ticking over. I thought, "This is it. This is what passive income looks like. It just keeps going." And for a fairly long time, it really did, which I think is actually what made the lesson so slow for me to learn because the decline was gradual enough that I kept thinking it was fine right up until it wasn't.

Over a couple of years, the sales that had been 10 a day became five a day, then two a day, then a couple every few days. But, but what I didn't fully understand at the time was that the channel had lost momentum, and when I did eventually start posting again a few years later, the views never really got back to where they were when I was showing up consistently. The algorithm had moved on. More importantly, the audience had moved on, and the gap I'd left was just too long for me to pick up exactly where I'd left off.

And the thing I had to sit with is that I think I confused "it's still earning" with "it's sustainable." And those are not the same thing. The channel was still earning because I'd built enough there that the momentum carried it for a while, but I hadn't been building anything new, which meant there was nothing to replace what was slowly fading. I was just coasting on the old effort without adding to it, and eventually, old effort runs out.

The lesson, and this is the one I really want you to think about because I don't think this gets said enough, is that passive income is not truly set and forget it forever. The income streams that compound still need enough of your presence to keep compounding. Not constant, and not in the same intensity as the building phase, but consistent enough that you're adding to what exists rather than just watching it slowly wind down. I still make sales from Fizz and Flourish today from videos I posted years ago. That part is genuinely remarkable, and I'm so, so grateful for it. But it's not what it was. And the reason it's not what it was is that I stopped building. And then I told myself for too long that stopping was fine because nothing had broken yet.

The second time around with this channel, I built it differently. I thought much more carefully about what was sustainable for my actual life, not my ideal life. And that difference between building for the life you have and building for the life you wish you had is probably the most important thing I've learned across all of it.

So, what still works and why? The email sequence attached to my digital brush packs is probably the best example I have of something that genuinely runs without me. When someone buys a brush pack, they go into an automated email sequence. I set that up once, and I haven't touched it in a few years. So, those emails keep doing their job week after week, introducing people to what I do, building a relationship, and supporting sales without me having to sit down and write something new every time I need a boost in sales. And the reason it works is because it's automated and it's attached to an evergreen product. So, the brush pack doesn't expire or run out of stock, therefore the email doesn't expire. Someone can buy that pack tomorrow or 6 months from now, and the same sequence kicks in and does the same job. That's what compounding looks like in practice, and it's not glamorous, but it works.

If I had to point to one thing I'd encourage any creative business owner to prioritize early, it would be this. Not necessarily a brush pack specifically, at least one automated pathway in your business where you put the work in once and it keeps paying off over time. And what I love about this is how it connects to everything I just said about YouTube because YouTube is what finds the person in the first place. Someone discovers a video, they buy the brush pack, and then the email sequence takes over. So even if that person never watches another video of mine, they're still in my world. And the same applies for blogs or Pinterest, wherever you're showing up on a more evergreen platform. They're still hearing from you, and they have multiple opportunities to buy again without having to do anything to make that happen. For me, YouTube brings them in, and the email sequence keeps them. And together, those two things work in a way that neither one of them fully could on their own.

The second thing that kept working was YouTube, but I want to talk about it a bit differently here because I've already shared what happened on Fizz and Flourish. So this channel, The Creative Juice Club, is where I took those lessons from Fizz and Flourish, adopted them, and actually put them into practice. So the first thing I did differently on this new channel was get clear on the niche. Fizz and Flourish was an art channel, but it was really broad. There was studio vlogs, tutorials, business content, draw with me videos, and that meant that the audience was a real mixed bag. Some people were there for the art, some were there for the process, and some were there for the business side. And when your audience is that varied, selling anything becomes really hard because you're never quite sure who you're talking to. Whereas this channel has one clear focus: helping creatives who are building a business around a full life, and that changes everything because when I recommend a product or talk about a tool or launch something new, I know exactly who I'm speaking to. I'm not hoping that the right person is watching; I know that they are. And that focus makes every income stream work harder because the person on the other end of it is already the right fit. And this isn't just a YouTube thing. It applies wherever you're building your audience, whether that's a podcast, a newsletter, an Instagram account, a blog. The more clearly you can define who you're talking to and what you're helping them with, the more naturally everything follows. Because when someone finds your content and immediately thinks, "Yes, this is exactly for me," they trust you faster, they buy more readily, and they stay longer. A niche isn't a limitation; it's the thing that makes the whole business more efficient.

So, the next thing I did differently on this channel is that I built in searchability from the start. I researched before I filmed. I asked people what they were actually looking for rather than just what I felt like making that week. And the result was monetization of this channel in 12 uploads. Not because something went viral, but because I was making content that had a chance to keep working after I posted it. And because of that, I'm starting to build a library of videos that people are actively looking for. And some videos have done better than others. That's just the reality of any content strategy. But the ones that hit, they really hit because the audience is so aligned. And that distinction between content people scroll past and content people search for is probably the single biggest shift I made between building Fizz and Flourish and building this. Same platform, completely different approach, and completely different results.

The third thing that has kept working, and I think this is genuinely one of the most powerful things that a creative can build, is digital products. And I want to be honest about this in the same way that I try and be open about everything because I think there's a lot of noise online about digital products being this miraculous passive income solution where you make one thing and then you never have to work again. And look, I wouldn't still be talking about digital products if I didn't genuinely believe in them because I've made thousands of sales from mine over the years, and they've absolutely changed the shape of my business. But, they're not a one-and-done situation. You still need to show up and you still need to make content that leads people to them. The magic isn't the product existing; it's the product existing with a system that brings the right people to it. So, the reason digital products have been such a sustainable part of my income is because once the product is made and the systems are in place, there's no fulfillment, no packaging, no shipping, no customer orders eating into my energy. Someone can buy something while I'm asleep and get it delivered straight to their inbox, or while I'm doing the school run, or in the middle of a week where I haven't posted anything. And to me, that sale is the best way to describe my version of passive income.

Okay, let's get into the framework. So, having watched all of this play out over several years, the things that worked and the things that didn't, I found myself thinking about how could I actually show you a way to apply these lessons to your own business. And what I kept coming back to was this really simple framework, which is essentially about effort versus return. And more specifically, about whether something compounds over time or whether it expires. And I think it's worth being really honest about all four parts of this because I've seen people, and I've been one of them myself, who avoid looking at this clearly because they're attached to something that isn't actually serving them.

So, number one is high effort, low return. So, try and avoid this where possible. Commissions are a really good example of this for me. It's actually how I started out, and I quickly realized that as much as I wanted it to work, the reality was really difficult to sustain. Every commission was a huge amount of effort, and by the end of it, that piece of work served one person and one person only. You can't resell it, you can't repurpose it. It gets sent to that one customer, and that's it. And then there's the pressure of it: creating something to someone else's brief, the back and forth, the weight of getting it exactly right. And underneath all of that is the ceiling. You can only ever make as much money as the hours you physically put in. Like, whereas an art print, you design it once, and you could sell it thousands of times. It's the same effort but a completely different return. And that's the difference between this category and the ones higher up in the framework.

So, number two is high effort, high return. These are worth doing, but you want to keep them short. So, this is something like your launch season, or live workshops, or high-ticket services. The key thing to understand about this category is that it's supposed to be temporary. A launch is intense, but you want it to create customers, assets, content, and momentum that can then continue to do something useful after the launch is over. And if your high effort work is creating something that lasts, that's brilliant. That is the version of hustle that I really do believe in. But if it's not building anything, and you're just back to zero again the week after, that's worth examining.

So, number three is low effort, low return, which is likely not worth your limited time. So, this is the category where the effort is low, but so is the intention behind it. So, for example, showing up somewhere just to tick a box, or posting something because you feel guilty rather than because it serves an actual purpose. Like, you can't do the minimum version of something and then wonder why it isn't working. And to be honest, almost anything can live here in this category if you're doing it half-heartedly, which means that the fix isn't always to stop doing the thing; it's to either commit to it properly or just let it go entirely.

So, number four. This is the category that we want to be building towards: low effort, high return. And I just want to be clear by what I mean by that because I'm not talking about cutting corners or throwing something half-hearted out into the world and then like hoping it makes money. I mean building something so well and so intentionally that it keeps working for you over time. So that your income becomes sustainable enough that you can keep doing the thing you actually love without burning yourself out in the process. So that's things like email automation, the evergreen digital products, the searchable content, and the systems that convert in the background without you needing to be there every single day. Not because you never want to work again, but because we want the work you put in now to keep paying off later instead of resetting to zero every single week because that is how people burn out.

So how do you actually start building these? So let me give you one concrete starting point for the low effort, high return because it's one thing to understand why something compounds and another thing entirely to know where to actually begin. So let's start with the email sequence. The starting point is so much simpler than most people think. You do not need a complicated funnel or a huge list. You just need one product or one lead magnet to bring people in, and one sequence of emails that goes out automatically after they sign up. Even three or four emails written once that introduce who you are, share something useful, and point people towards what you offer. That's it. That is the version that's been working in my business for years. Start there and then build on it.

For evergreen content, whether that's YouTube, a blog, Pinterest, or any platform where content gets searched for and then discovered over time, the starting point is research before you create. Before you decide what your next piece of content is going to be, just spend 20 minutes looking at what people in your niche are actually searching for. What questions are coming up again and again? What problems are people trying to solve? Make that piece of content instead of the one you just feel like making that week. One searchable evergreen piece of content that keeps finding new people for years is worth 10 posts that peak the day you publish them and then disappear.

And for digital products, the starting point is the question you get asked the most. In your DMs, your comments, by people who are a few steps behind where you are now. That question is almost always pointing towards a product worth making. It doesn't have to be a big online course; it could be a simple guide, a template, a resource pack. Just start small, validate that people want it, and build from there.

I think the reason all of this matters so much, especially if you're building in limited time like I am, is that there are really only two types of effort in a creative business, and they can feel almost identical in the moment, but they lead to completely different places. There's effort that creates things that keep working, and there's effort that just maintains the current level of things. And I've spent more time than I'd like to admit in that second category, working really hard, constantly showing up, constantly creating, but building very little that would keep working if I stopped for the week. And it was only when I started asking myself whether the things I was building would still be working for me in a year, that decisions about where to focus became much clearer. And that is what I want for you. Not necessarily my specific income streams, because that part will look different for everyone, but that feeling of building something that gives back over time, rather than something that demands more and more from you just to keep things afloat. And you don't need 10 income streams to get there. You need two or three that actually compound, and the patience to build them properly, rather than chasing everything all at once.

And if you're at that point in your business where you know you want to build something sustainable, but you want a regular moment to zoom out, refocus, and actually reconnect with the business you're building, that is what the Working Progress Club is for. It's a monthly letter that I send out to creative business owners, a proper physical letter that lands on your doorstep every single month filled with creative business charts, actionable prompts to help you work out what actually needs your attention, and a monthly challenge to keep you moving forward. It's the kind of thing that gives you permission to slow down for a moment and think about the bigger picture, which I think is something a lot more of us need. So, the link is in the description if you want to find out more. It's open worldwide, and all shipping is included.

And if you want somewhere to actually plan and organize what you decide to build, income streams, the launches, the goals, the content, all in one connected place rather than scattered across tabs and notebooks, Artova is the workspace that I built for creative business owners. There is a 7-day free trial with full access, so I'll leave the link in the description if you want to check it out.

Most creative businesses don't struggle because the work isn't good enough. They struggle because the business only works when you're having a good week. Tip one: design your business for your worst weeks, not your best. Here's something that most creatives don't think about until it's already a problem. It's not that your business breaks when things go badly; it breaks when you're just not available to put your all into the business every day. Any business owner is on top of their game when they're well, they're rested, they're motivated, and they're firing from all cylinders. You can be consistent when your life is calm and stress-free, but that is not real life. The question that actually matters is what happens to your business when you're not at your best, when you're tired, you're sleep-deprived, or something unexpected comes up, when you don't have the energy to create and post and launch or show up the way that you usually do. If everything in your creative business grinds to a halt the moment you step back, that is usually a sign that you're not utilizing your systems to the full potential. A scalable creative business isn't the one that performs best on your best weeks; it's the one that still functions on your worst weeks. And this is where a lot of creatives get stuck because they're unknowingly building a business that only works when they're constantly pushing. Their sales only happen when they're actively promoting. So, momentum only exists when they're visible online constantly. And if your income drops the second you slow down, then that's exhausting because it means the business is always asking something of you. Scaling starts when you flip that around and ask, "What parts of my business could still work even if I had to step away for a bit?" Once you start designing your business for your lowest capacity seasons, everything gets easier because you stop relying on constant output and you stop tying your progress to how much energy you have that week.

Now, this is where a lot of creatives go wrong next. They hear that and think, "Okay, I need to create more things that work without me." But, that's not what I'm suggesting. The next shift isn't about making more; it's about using what you've already made but in a smarter way. So, next I want to show you why scaling doesn't need to come from creating something brand new and how most creatives are sitting on far more growth potential than they realize just by reworking what already exists. So, let's talk about it in tip two.

Stop creating from scratch and scale what already exists. This is the point where a lot of creatives hear the word "scale" and immediately think it means making more things: more products, more launches, more content, and more ideas. But most of the time, scaling doesn't come from creating something brand new; it comes from using what you've already made just more intentionally. If you run a product-based business, chances are you're already sitting on untapped potential. Maybe you've got products that sell occasionally, but not consistently. Or you've got content that you spend hours creating and then posted once and then never looked at again. And you've likely had feedback from customers that you've read, replied to, and then moved on from. So instead of asking, "What should I make next?" a far more useful question is, "What do I already have that could work more for me?"

Because if you've listed a product and then just left it to run, you're probably missing a huge opportunity. An opportunity to optimize how it's positioned, clarify the messaging around it, and make sure you're actually getting it in front of the right people at the right time. For example, if you have a product that already sells, even if it's not flying off the shelves, that's still proof of demand. And scaling that doesn't mean replacing it with something new or quote "better"; it means finding out why people buy it, how they use it, and what else would make that purchase easier or more obvious for the next person. Think about whether it could be bundled with something else or framed differently so that the value is clearer. How could you bring it back into the spotlight instead of just sitting on your shop gathering dust?

And the same goes for your content. If you've ever explained how a product works or answered a common question, you've maybe you've shared why you've made something or shown it being used. That's not just done content; that's material that you can build on. So, instead of constantly trying to think up new things to post, you can ask, "How many jobs could this one product or piece of content actually do?"

Now, it's one thing to say, "I should reuse what I've already made," and it's another thing to actually know how to talk about your products in a way that helps people understand the value and want to buy. So, I've put together a free toolkit for you: five plug-and-play post ideas that sell. And this isn't about coming up with random new ideas. It's about taking the things that you already have, your products, your process, the content you've already made like in the past, and sharing that in a way that's actually convertible, not just visible.

can repurpose what you've already made and use the prompts inside the post pack to highlight the value and the buying decisions behind your work instead of just posting for the sake of posting. So, if that sounds helpful to you, I'll leave it linked below. It's yours totally free.

Scaling, especially in a product-based business, isn't just about adding more inventory. It's about optimizing your best work to increase conversion. And once you start thinking this way, something interesting happens. You stop feeling like growth depends on your ability to endlessly create, and you start seeing how much momentum can come from simply organizing, reusing, and optimizing what already exists. A lot of your time is going into the wrong kind of tasks, and that's where the next tip comes in because scaling isn't about doing more work. It's about knowing which work actually moves the business forward.

Separate working in the business from working on the business. One of the hardest shifts to make when you're scaling a creator business is realizing that being busy doesn't automatically mean that you're growing. A lot of the work that fills your day can feel really productive, like packing orders, replying to emails, restocking products, the stuff that keeps the business running, the maintenance. And those tasks matter because you can't run your business without them, but most of that work is just maintenance, not momentum. And the tricky part is that when you're in the middle of all of that, it all blends together. You finish a long day, you've done a lot, you've felt productive, and yet the business hasn't really moved forward in any meaningful way. And that's usually a sign that most of your energy is going into working in the business, not on the business.

So, working on the business is the stuff that gets pushed to the later pile because it doesn't feel urgent. It's the actions and the decisions that don't give you that immediate dopamine hit, but it's also the tasks that can change how the business performs over time. Things like looking at a product page and asking, "Is this actually clear? Does someone understand who this is for and why they'd want it?" Or noticing that something sells reasonably well and then asking, "What would happen if I improve this by 10%?" Or setting aside time to research what people are already responding to instead of jumping into making something new. None of that feels exciting or urgent in the moment. I really get that because there's no notification on your phone when you increase a conversion rate by 1%. No one sees you rewriting a product listing or a description or simplifying an offer, but those small changes compound and this is where scaling actually happens. Not by doing more, but by making what you already have work harder for you. And I think this is especially important for product-based creatives because it's so easy to default to I just need to make more things, more products, more variations, and more launches. When sometimes the most effective move is to pause, step back, and improve what's already there. And if you never give yourself time to work on the business, you stay trapped in a cycle where the only way to earn more is to do more, and that's just not scalable. It's exhausting.

Now, once you start spending time working on the business, you need a way to tell whether the work is actually helping. Otherwise, it just becomes another thing that you feel busy doing. So, in the next tip, I want to talk about the one metric that actually matters when you're scaling and why obsessing over the wrong numbers can keep your creative business stuck.

Look at the data that actually explains what's happening. For a long time, I thought I was being really diligent with my business because I was always checking my numbers. I knew how many views a video had in the first hour. I noticed straight away if a post was doing better or worse than usual, and I was paying a lot of attention to likes, comments, and engagement because those were the numbers right in front of me. What I didn't realize at the time was that I was mostly looking at numbers that made me feel good or bad rather than numbers that actually helped me understand what was going on in my business. So, I stopped asking myself whether something performed well and started asking more useful questions like whether the piece of content actually sent anyone to my website and what people did once they got there. Did they click through and leave straight away or did they scroll, read, and then leave? Or did they end up buying and if so, why? Something I've learned over the last few years of actually running a creative business is that the only way to really understand why one product page converts better than the other is to test it with real data. Guessing doesn't work and neither does constantly comparing yourself to other shops.

So, instead of redesigning things based on feelings or assumptions, I started using AB testing, which is basically just a way of letting real people show you what works and what doesn't. In simple terms, an AB test means you create two versions of the same product page and you change one small thing between them. So, that might be the title, the main product image, the first line of copy, or what someone sees above the fold. Half of your visitors see version A and the other half see version B. And over time, the data shows you which version actually leads to more people buying. So, there's a few ways to do this depending on what platforms you use. I personally use system because it lets me test pages and offers in one place without overcomplicating things or bolting on like different third-party tools, which you often end up needing to do with other platforms. So, I'll leave a link in the description if you want to explore it because I genuinely think it's a really underutilized tool. It's where I run all of my marketing from inside my business and I think there's a free version you can get started with. And like anything, it does take a bit of time to learn, but that time is you working on your business as discussed in the last tip. What I like about this strategy is that you're not guessing or overhauling everything at once. You're making small intentional changes and letting buyer behavior, not your opinion, tell you what's helping someone move from interested to purchase. And you would be surprised what converts. Quite often, the thing I think is going to be the lower converting option ends up outperforming my personal favorite. And that is something I never would have known without testing it.

So, once you start looking at the right data, something else becomes really obvious. Not everyone visiting your shop is equally valuable to your growth. And that leads to the next shift that most creatives make when they're trying to scale.

Scale by serving repeat buyers, not chasing new ones. One of the biggest shifts that made scaling feel lighter for me was realizing that growth doesn't actually come from constantly convincing brand new people to buy from you. If every new sale depends on someone discovering you for the first time, trusting you for the first time, understanding what you do for the first time, or deciding to spend money with you, your business will always feel like it's asking a lot from you. What changed things for me was putting more attention on the people who already knew my work, who already bought something, and already trusted that what I made was worth paying for. Because the easiest sale is almost always the second one. Not in a manipulative way, but just a human way. Someone who's had a good experience with you doesn't need convincing in the same way that a new person would. They don't need as much context because they're not wondering whether you're legit or whether your product will actually be worth it. That trust is already there. And this is where things like email become really powerful. Not because it's a marketing trick, but because it gives you a way to stay connected to people who already have raised their hand to say that they want to hear from you. If your only focus is always getting new eyes on your work, you end up neglecting the people who are already paying attention. And those are often the people most likely to buy again, to recommend you to others, or to stick around long term. Once someone's bought from you, the question shifts from will they trust me to how are they using what they bought? What do they tend to need alongside it or after it? Am I actually showing them those options or am I expecting them to just figure it out on their own? Because when your business starts serving repeat buyers well, growth doesn't rely on constant visibility anymore.

So, don't forget to download the free plug-and-play post pack. It's for makers and artists who crochet, sew, illustrate, make ceramics, any type of creative business that wants to see how to structure your posts in a way that leads to sales. And it's yours totally free. I'll leave it in the description below.

If you don't have endless hours to throw at your creative business, don't worry. You don't need more time to scale. You just need to think differently about the hours that you already have.

Stop asking what should I make next? One of the easiest ways to get stuck in your creative business is by constantly chasing the next idea. You end up in the cycle where you're always asking yourself, "What should I make next?" or "What's trending right now?" And it feels like you're always trying to keep up rather than put your time into improving something that you've already got that's already really great. When your default is to jump to the next thing, it's exhausting even if the shiny thing fills you with excitement for the next few days. And when you can feel that happening, ask yourself this question. What do people already come to me for? And when you zoom out, you might notice that people aren't just buying a product, they're responding to something deeper. Maybe it's the feeling of calm they get from your work or the way your words help them feel a little bit more understood. Maybe they see themselves in what you make. It might even be as simple as your content helping them make a decision or feeling part of something or just finding joy in the small things. Not every product or piece of content has to solve a big, urgent problem. Sometimes it sells because it offers a sense of comfort or belonging, and that's still value, which is still demand. So, rather than jumping into the next thing and trying to invent what people might want next, try playing paying closer attention to what they're already telling you, not just in their words, but in what they're buying, saving, responding to, or asking questions about. Scaling gets a lot easier when you're not guessing all the time because the signs of what's working are usually already there. We just don't always slow down long enough to spot them. We're too quick to move on to the next thing.

Build at least one boring product that sells quietly. You probably feel that everything you create in your business needs to be exciting. You're passionate about what you do, so of course you want to only share the stuff that has like a fresh concept or it's beautifully packaged and buzzworthy. But some of the best performing things that I've ever made are kind of boring. I've sold a paper pack that's generated thousands of pounds in sales over the past few years, a steady income stream, and it's a paper pack. And I'm not even talking about my beautifully textured paper packs that add depth and texture to your digital work, I'm talking about lined, dotted, and squared paper that you print off and put in notebooks. Boring, but a huge part of my income. They don't get loads of comments, they're not the thing that people rush to share or post about, but it solves a clear, simple need, and people know exactly what it is, why they need it, and how they'll use it. And they don't have to think too hard about buying it. Now, I'm not saying you should rush off and make this exact product. To be honest, there are loads of people selling this type of download on the marketplace, but I showed people how to use it in a YouTube video that I created 3 years ago, and it's still getting views today, which is driving sales. And that's why creating these sorts of boring products and pairing them with an evergreen searchable piece of content is a really great strategy for growth. So, that's what I mean when I say every creative business needs at least one quote boring product, because boring isn't a bad thing. It just often means that the value isn't obvious, and there's a low friction between discovering it and deciding to buy. We often associate excitement with success. If it doesn't feel big or bold, it must not be working, but actually the most scalable parts of a business are usually the ones that are very quietly consistent. So, if you're always trying to create the next big thing, pause for a second and consider this. What could you offer that's really useful even if it's not that exciting? Because building a business that scales isn't about constant novelty. It's about having pieces that keep working in the background. And sometimes those products, the ones that don't need hype to sell, are the ones that give you the most freedom.

Niche by who you serve, not what you sell. When we hear the word niche, most of us immediately think of a product, like what we're making. So, you end up saying things like, "I sell art prints." Or, "I make illustrated stationery." And whilst that's technically true, it's not always the most helpful way to think about if you want your business to grow in a focused, scalable way. The problem with niching by product is that it limits your options. It makes it harder to know what to make next because every new idea has to somehow fit within a really narrow label. But, when you flip that and start thinking about who you're creating for, the person on the other side of the purchase, everything starts to shift. It's no longer about being a print shop, it becomes a place where you create artwork for people with social anxiety and they want their space to feel calm and safe. That tiny change from product to person gives your business so much more room to grow. And once you know who you're talking to, it gets so much easier to figure out what to offer them. You can create multiple products for one audience instead of trying to make one product work for everyone. And if you want a deeper dive into niching down, go listen to episode one of my podcast, The Creative Juice Podcast. I started this YouTube channel at around episode 30, I think. But, if you only discovered me via this YouTube channel, then you won't know about the treasure trove of past episodes. Just search wherever you listen to podcasts, and the episode about niching down is the very first episode. So, go listen to how cringey I sound. So, instead of worrying that niching down will limit your creativity, think of it as making your decision-making easier. Niching doesn't narrow your options. And when you niche by person, your product ideas multiply.

Treat marketing like an asset, not a daily obligation. One of the biggest mindset shifts I had to make when I wanted to grow my creative business was how I thought about marketing. So, for the longest time, I treated it like a never-ending to-do list. Film, edit, post, email. It felt like something that I had to keep up with every single day, or everything would stop working. And that gets exhausting really fast. When your marketing resets to zero every morning, it starts to feel like you're constantly treading water, and you'll always be showing up just to stay visible, rather than building anything that lasts. But, your content shouldn't just exist for the sake of being seen. It should actually do something. Great marketing guides people through a journey. It builds trust, answers questions, and removes hesitation. Sometimes, it's the thing that helps someone make a choice that they were already leaning towards, or it gives them the clarity that they didn't know they needed. And when you create content with that kind of intention behind it, it doesn't just get views, it resonates with people. That's when your marketing becomes an asset, not just something that you post and forget, but something that continues to bring interest, sales, or connection long after you've created it. And it doesn't have to be complicated. Sometimes it's as simple as creating one really clear product video and putting it on the home page of your shop or turning your best performing email into an evergreen email sequence. You could repost your top performing content or repurpose it to a new platform. And even better if you can make that content on an evergreen platform, you can create ranked videos or blogs or pins and let it compound over time. It doesn't expire, not quickly anyway, and that just stops you creating something that drains you. And it allows you to focus on creating the types of content that actually support you.

Read your data before you change your strategy. When something isn't working the way that we hoped, the natural response is to change it. You might start thinking that you need a brand new product or a bigger presence on yet another platform. And while those ideas can sometimes help, they often come from a place of panic, not strategy. So, what most creatives skip over in that moment is the step that matters the most. Actually looking what's already there. Your data tells a story. It shows you how people interact with your shop, your content, and your products. Like, are they clicking but not buying? Are they spending time on certain pages and then bouncing off others? Are they adding things to their cart and then disappearing? These aren't just numbers, they're clues. And growing your creative business isn't about throwing mud at the wall to see what sticks, it's about stepping back, asking why something's behaving the way it is, and making small strategic adjustments based on what real people are doing. You don't need a new strategy every time you feel stuck. You need a better understanding of how the current one is actually performing. And when you stop guessing and start truly observing, growth becomes less of a mystery.

All right, I promised you a bonus tip. And to be honest, I probably should have done this one first. That is know your numbers. And before you click away, don't shy away from this. Ignorance is bliss, but it won't serve you long-term. Now, it's not the fun shiny part of business, but knowing where your income's coming from, what's generating sales, and what's actually costing you time and money with very little return, is something you should be very aware of. When you understand your numbers, you stop trying to fix things that aren't broken or ignore the things that are. So, getting to know your numbers, even if it makes you feel uncomfortable, is how you start making decisions with real intention. And that's where growth starts to feel a lot less like scrambling and more like building something that actually works. If you don't know where to start with this, I have made a free worksheet called the creative income checkup. It helps you get a clear picture of what's working, what's worth improving, and where your energy is actually paying off. You can grab it from the description below and it'll instantly take the guesswork out of what to do next.

You can be working on your creative business every single week, posting, making, trying things, and still nothing feels like it's actually moving forward. And it's not always obvious what needs fixing either. Most of the time, it's that you're missing the bigger picture of how it's all meant to fit together. None of it's put in the right order for us, and that is what I wish I'd understood earlier. So, today, I'm sharing my road map, the four phases of launching a creative business this year, and exactly what I would do if I was doing the whole thing over again today. So, this video is the no-fluff version of what I've spent the last 6 years learning the hard way. Two YouTube channels, one rebrand, three kids, and a lot of stuff I genuinely wish someone had told me sooner. To me, there are four phases, and each one builds on the last, and each one does something different for your business. And stick with me till the end because phase four is the one that most creators skip, and it's the one that actually decides whether your creative business is going to last long term.

So, if you're watching this, chances are you're an artist or a maker, or someone who just really loves creating, and that's probably why you've started this in the first place. You wanted to spend your days making things, not performing online or strategizing, just making. You'll know that I talked about the shift that we have to make from being an artist who happens to post online sometimes to being a content creator who happens to make art. And I know for a lot of you that reframe is really uncomfortable or unwanted because you didn't get into this to become a content creator. You got into this to be an artist, but honestly, things are really different now than they were even 5-10 years ago. The gallery-only path doesn't work like it used to, and if you want this to be a proper career, not a hobby, but an actual career, something has to shift. You have to be willing to show up online. And look, I am not talking about hustle, post every day until you burn out type of content creator. I'm talking about building content into your workflow in a way that genuinely works with your life, with your family, your creative time, and just juggling the day-to-day. So, that is the road map that I want to show you today.

Start showing up. So, phase one, this is the get your stuff together phase. And it's the simplest one, but it's also the one that trips most people up. Here is all you need to do in phase one. Pick a platform and start posting. That is it. Not all the platforms, maybe just one or two to begin with. Once you've become consistent and feel good about the workload, only then should you expand to other platforms. And then, you just start. No doubt the first videos that you make will feel cringey. Like, you'll likely get just a handful of likes or views, but the goal isn't to be good yet. The point is to build that habit of showing up and taking messy action. So, my art channel, Fuzz and Flourish, actually grew fairly quickly once I got going. But the Creative Juice Club, this channel you're watching right now, is growing even faster. I'd already spent years making content. And this time, I actually put everything I'd learned into practice. I took messy action, I improved, I listened to my audience, and I doubled down on what worked. And that is what's made this channel grow, and that is what I recommend you start with, too. Taking action. So, if you're in that stage right now, where you're posting and nothing's really happening, please hear me on this one. The reward for phase one isn't sales. It's the skill set that makes phase two, three, and four possible. And here is the little secret about phase one. If you can use your content as an excuse to work on the actual art itself, like a process video that forces you to finish a painting or a vlog that gets you into the studio when you don't really feel like it, to me that is a win-win. Creating content is a form of accountability. And when it's done right, phase one pulls you towards your craft, not away from it. I don't know if you can tell, but my voice is really crackly. It's been the school holidays, there's been a lot of noise, and I need a coffee.

So, phase two is finding your edge. Okay, this is where a lot of people get stuck. You might be sat there thinking, "What is even the point? There's already a thousands of creators doing what I'm trying to do." And you're right, there are thousands, but there's only one you. So, phase two is where you stop copying and start choosing. You work out what makes you specifically worth following. So, there's a thing they say in marketing, you can either be the first, the best, or different. First is basically impossible now. The best takes years and is really subjective, but different is actually achievable because everyone is unique, especially when it comes to something like creativity. For me, different looked like this. I didn't want to just post process videos and studio vlogs like a lot of people in the art space. I wanted to talk about the actual business of being a creative, the numbers, the systems, the strategy. And my art channel, Fuzz and Flourish, wasn't really the space for that anymore, which is why I ended up starting the Creative Juice Club podcast, and then eventually this channel. But let's say you genuinely do want to focus on process videos and studio vlogs. There's nothing wrong with that niche. Your uniqueness is going to show up in your art style, in the way you film, and the stories you tell. Your voice, your pace, your opinions, your sense of humor, all of those things that make your journey yours and nobody else's. And that's your job in phase two. It's working out what makes you unique, not by having to figure out a gap in the market, but understanding that your art style or your angle only has your unique way of doing it. Because once you can see your own edge clearly, you stop trying to be like everyone else and you start growing the thing that only you can build.

Now, before I get into phase three, I want to mention something very briefly because it becomes really relevant the moment you hit the next phase. So, phase three is when you start layering income streams on top of each other, like product sales, brand partnerships, digital offers, affiliate income, and you genuinely need a system that can hold all of that together. And every system that I tried building before I made my own was either way too corporate, too spreadsheety, or just a blank canvas that expected me to build the whole thing from scratch. And none of them were built for how my creative brain and visual way of thinking actually works. And that is why I built Artful Agenda. So, most platforms give you the tools and then leave you to build the system. Artful Agenda gives you that system already built, ready to use, and designed for visual thinkers and creative brains, not for spreadsheets. So, it just works from the moment you log in. And there's now a 7-day free trial with full access. I shall leave the link in the description below if you want to have a nosey.

Okay, back to phase three. Build the income layers. This is the money phase. I do want to land on the mindset shift because this is when most creatives get stuck. So, most makers treat their art as the primary income stream and then everything else, things like ads, affiliate, digital products, brand deals, they're like the little nice extra on top. So, when product sales drop, which they do at different points of the year, people panic. They work harder, they make more stuff, and they burn out. So, phase three is where you flip that thinking. You start treating your content as the income engine, and you let it unlock the layers of income underneath it. So, product sales, platform monetization, AdSense, ad slots, brand partnerships, your own digital offers like courses, memberships, templates, guides, affiliate income from the tools and products that you genuinely use. There's so many different layers to content creation, and you don't need all five at once. You need two or three doing real work with the others ticking over in the background. So, that is how you get to the point where one slow sales month doesn't send you spiraling. So, this phase is about building the kind of infrastructure on purpose, slowly and sustainably with a system that holds it all together. So, if phase three is where you're stuck right now, last week's video partners really well with this phase.

So, phase four, expand and compound. This is the one I really, really don't want you to skip, because this is the one that actually makes the whole creative business last long-term. The hard truth about where we build our audience is that you don't own these platforms. You don't own YouTube or Instagram. They can change their algorithm tomorrow, change the rules, change the monetization rates, change who sees what. So, phase four is about cementing everything you've built in phases one, two, and three into something that lasts. And the single most important piece of that is an email list. I know everyone bangs on about email lists, and it probably sounds a bit boring, and you're probably tired of hearing about it, but please hear me out on this. An email list is a direct line to the people who genuinely care about your work. It moves with you. So, if YouTube is down tomorrow, I could email my mailing list, and they would still be there. Every single person on that list is someone that you can reach without relying on a platform. That's really valuable, and it only gets more valuable as you grow. If I could go back and tell past me one single thing, it would be to start my email list on day one. Not in phase three, but on day one. And before you switch off, phase four isn't just about the email list. It's also about expanding out into your wider creative community. So, this is when you start collaborating with other makers or pitching yourself interviews or features or the media. You start showing up in places where you can reach new people who'd never find you on the main platform that you've been posting to. You stop thinking of your career as one thing, and start thinking of it as a proper ecosystem. And what I love the most about this phase is that the creators who make it here almost always have more time for their actual creative work than they did in phase one. Because they've got systems running. Their email list is warming new viewers up every single week without you having to do anything or be posting every day because you've built something that no longer relies on you being available 24/7. And to me, that is the whole point. That is what we're building towards.

So, that is my road map. Four phases. Start showing up, find your edge, build those income streams, and expand and compound. So, please don't think that you need to be doing all of this by next Tuesday. You don't. I'm all about building sustainably, and this road map works best over years, not weeks. And everyone moves through at their own pace. Some of you are already in phase two and hadn't even realized. So, pick whatever phase you're in right now and just take one next step. That's how this actually gets built. One intentional move at a time, stacked over years, until one day you look up and realize you've built something incredible.

If you made it all the way to the end of this video, thank you so, so much for watching. I hope it's given you some clarity on what to focus on and what to build next. Everything mentioned across the video will be linked in the description below, so you don't have to go hunting for anything. Or, if you want to explore the other freebies that I have for you, whether that's worksheets, checklists, or resources to help you get started, you can find all of those at the creativejuiceclub.com. And if you're ready to actually run your creative business in one place, come and try OctoMember for free at octomember.io. It's the workspace I built specifically for all creative business owners, and there's a free trial waiting for you. So, if this video has helped you, please subscribe. I put out new conversations every single week, and I shall see you in the next one.