I’ve had my own business since 2006 and learned many lessons over the years. I thought I’d take a moment and make a list of advice for other creative professionals/entrepreneurs on their own journey. Here are the first 21 things that come to mind:
- Figure out who you are and always be yourself in work and life.
- Never abandon your values, avoid working for people whose values don’t align with yours, and beware people who either don’t have values or can’t articulate them.
- It’s all about serving your customers, clients, and audience.
- Learn to have difficult conversations.
- A lot of things don’t pay your bills: free work, saying yes when you should say no, being a jerk, and missing your deadlines.
- Volunteering is a great place to start, an opportunity for reinvention, and a place to connect with new ideas and people.
- Support the people and projects you care about.
- Save money.
- Avoid debt whenever possible.
- Pay your taxes.
- Build your network every day.
- Passion/side projects are effective ways to create the work you want to be known for.
- Working for friends is great until it’s not and you find yourself out of work and with less friends.
- Be a resource whether you get paid or not.
- Whether you are a generalist or a specialist, don’t waste time wishing you were what you aren’t.
- Reject the advice that doesn’t make sense to you, but give yourself the freedom to try it out when it comes back to teach you a lesson later on.
- Embrace the cycle of creation: pick an idea, bring it to life, share it, iterate and evolve.
- Feedback is neither good nor bad; how you respond to feedback is what matters.
- Focus on the people who are paying attention instead of worrying about the people who don’t know you exist.
- Spock’s Beard says it all in Crack the Big Sky: “Let’s make stuff we can’t live without.”
- Never stop being curious, trying new things, learning and unlearning, and being in a perpetual state of wonder.
What would you add to the list?