Figuring out your strategy to make your creative business work is much easier said than done. You might think you know how things work in your creative industry, and you might be doing all the things that should be the right things, and yet nothing is working for you. Perhaps you even see things working out for one of your creative colleagues, but it’s just not happening for you. When you feel like you’re employing workable strategies and yet you’re seeing any progress in your creative business, what’s going on? The exact, detailed answer to that question is going to be different for every creative, but I think there are some universal truths that are common to all of us. And I recently was struck by those truths in the most unlikely of places: while at the beach, flying kites. I’m excited to share with you what I learned about business strategy by visiting the beach and attempting to fly a kite.

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Hello, thriving artist, and welcome to episode 37 of the Starving Artist No More podcast! I’m creative entrepreneur and creative entrepreneurship coach Jennifer Jill Araya, and I’m so glad you’re here with me today. This episode is all about an object lesson from a recent beach vacation I took with my family. Thinking through this experience has been very impactful for me, and I hope it is for you, too.

But before we get to that object lesson, I want to make sure you’re aware of a free resource that’s available for you on my website, www.StarvingArtistNoMore.com. If you’re like most of the artists and creatives I know, finances are a struggle for you. I know they have been for me at times, and I definitely know that finances are a tough topic for the creatives I work with. I really believe that this guide can help you. It’s titled “Say Goodbye to Feast or Famine: Three Financial Must-Haves for Creative Entrepreneurs,” and that’s exactly what it is. It’s a completely free guide that presents three focus areas within your business that, if you take time to get yourself on solid footing in those three areas, you’ll be able to start the process of saying goodbye to the horrible feast or famine rollercoaster in your creative business. It’s not easy, but it is a straightforward process, and I know it can help you. To get your copy of this guide, just navigate to my website, www.StarvingArtistNoMore.com, and fill out the contact form to have it sent directly to your email inbox. Business finances are difficult for all creative entrepreneurs, but they don’t have to cause you continual problems and be a continual source of stress. You can find peace and financial wholeness in your creative work, and this guide can help.

Now that you have that bit of information, let’s turn to the main topic of today’s episode: creative entrepreneurship and kite flying.

A few weeks ago, my husband and I journeyed to the Outer Banks in North Carolina, where we met up with my parents for a lovely week at the beach. One of my family's favorite activities to do while at the beach is fly kites. Literally the very first item on my packing list for this trip was "kite bag." Arturo and I have quite a few specialty single-line kites, including one modeled after the Wright Brother’s plane, and my dad has a bunch of super fun single line kites plus a double-line stunt kite. In fact, when we got there, my parents gave Arturo and me each our own brand new double line stunt kites, and I literally squealed in excitement when I saw mine.

In short, we love beach vacations, and when we're there, our favorite activity is flying kites at the beach.

The week of our trip, we arrived late Saturday night, so we didn't have any beach time on Saturday. But first thing Sunday morning, my dad, Arturo, and I all headed down to the beach with our kites. (I was ambitious – I took 3 different kites because I wanted to try them all out.) Kite flying was the very first thing on our beach vacation agenda! We got our kites assembled and our lines connected and held up the kites to catch the wind so they'd soar aloft ....

and nothing happened. NOTHING. The kites just wouldn't fly. We spent nearly 40 minutes trying this and that, but NOTHING. We couldn't get any of the kites up for more than a few seconds.

Why? There was NO WIND. at all. NOTHING. (I know! Since when are there days WITHOUT WIND at the BEACH??? But apparently, it can happen!)

Over and over again on Sunday, we gathered our kites, ventured down to the beach, and attempted kite flying. Each time, we'd take lighter kites, thinking that maybe the problem was that we were trying to fly the wrong kind of kites. (Kites are rated for different wind speeds, so this was a valid concern.) But still, NOTHING. The problem wasn't the kites, it was the circumstances, namely the lack of wind. There just wasn't even a hint of a breeze to catch the kites and get them flying.

Monday was a little better on the wind front, but on Monday, our timing was all wrong. Several times, we saw from our balcony that the swimming flags were waving, meaning there was a bit of wind to be had. We grabbed our kites and ran down to the beach ... only to actually get to the beach and see that the flags were again hanging limply. No more wind. We'd missed the five or ten minutes of gentle breeze, and by the time we were ready to take advantage of it, it was gone. We actually saw someone else manage to get his kite up for about 10 minutes, but by the time we made it down to the beach with our kites, the breeze was gone again, and his kite was on the ground, too.

FINALLY, Tuesday, we got our kites in the air. We weren’t able to fly the heavier, fancier kites (I didn’t get to test my new stunt kite until Thursday!), but we got a few of our lightweight diamond and delta, or triangular, kites in the air. And it was glorious. So much fun! But our success on Tuesday didn't mean that our technique or our strategy was suddenly better somehow. Rather, it had everything to do with the weather conditions: we finally had some wind! It was light wind, but it was enough to get our lighter kites up and soaring.

Why am I telling you all this? Because our life as creative entrepreneurs so often mirrors my experience trying to fly kites on that beach vacation.

On Sunday, we were doing everything right. We were trying and trying and trying, but the circumstances (the weather / the wind) were all wrong. It didn't matter how right our strategy was. With weather as bad (meaning with as little wind) as we were experiencing, we just weren't going to get any success. The circumstances around us took our otherwise good strategy and made our efforts completely futile.

Has that ever happened to you in your creative business? I know it has in mine. This hasn't been a problem for me as much in my current creative business as an audiobook narrator, but it was a major issue in my craft fair business several years ago. On multiple different occasions with that business, I did everything right. I prepared, and I planned, and I followed what everyone else said *should* work, and it just didn't. Circumstances outside my control intervened, and my strategy completely flopped. My strategy was a good one, but the circumstances weren’t the right circumstances for that strategy, and I got nowhere.

But that doesn't mean the experience was in vain. I still learned from the process. I still grew as an artist and a creative and a business owner. It was frustrating and demoralizing at the time, but looking back, I can see that the problem wasn't with me or with what I was doing. The problem was with the circumstances in which I was operating. My strategies were sound, but I was trying those strategies in the wrong place and at the wrong time. My strategy, which would have been a great strategy for other circumstances, wasn’t the right one for those circumstances. I wasn’t doing anything wrong, but I also wasn’t doing anything effective. I wasn’t adapting my strategy to suit the circumstances, and so my strategy didn’t succeed. Right strategy, wrong circumstances.

On Monday, our timing was off. We were distracted by other activities (namely, playing board games on our balcony), and we weren't watching carefully enough to notice when the wind was picking up. By the time we noticed that conditions were right to allow our kite flying to succeed, we'd already missed the opportunity. The breeze was already dying down. Someone else was able to get his kite in the air, so if we'd been more observant, we could have caught the breeze, too. But we didn't time it right, and so we didn't get our kites up. Right strategy, right circumstance, wrong timing.

I see this situation all the time. So often, I and my creative colleagues look at other creatives and think, "Oh, they're just lucky." But in truth, that other person’s success doesn't really have anything to do with luck. Rather, they made sure they were in the right place at the right time and employing the right strategy so that when an opportunity presented itself, they could take advantage of it. The other kite flyer wasn't "lucky"; he was more observant than we were.

If you feel like your timing in your business is constantly "off," it's time to start paying more attention to the circumstances in which you're working. You can seize the opportunities and take advantage of them; you just need to pay enough attention to notice that the opportunities are there.

And finally, Tuesday, everything aligned. Our strategy, which was really a sound strategy all along (even if our execution was off on Monday), finally paid off. We had our kites, and we were ready to go, and we were on the beach when the wind was present, and we got our kites flying. It was wonderful and glorious, and we had a great time. Everything worked the way it was supposed to, and we had delightful kite flying success. Right strategy, right circumstances, right timing.

Being a creative entrepreneur is sometimes like Sunday, and sometimes it's like Monday, and those times are hard. But sometimes, it's like Tuesday, and those are the days that make the whole enterprise worth it.

Let’s examine in a bit more depth how you can handle each of those three situations: Sunday’s right strategy and wrong circumstances, Monday’s right strategy and right circumstances but wrong timing, and Tuesday’s alignment of all three going well.

First, Sunday. What should you do when you’re doing all the right things but the circumstances around you just aren’t allowing those things to succeed? Sunday circumstances are the times to get creative. Your strategy might be a great one in the abstract, but it’s not the right one for you, right now, in your unique situation, and so it’s time to make some tweaks. It’s time to get curious and to be a detective.

Ask yourself, how can you adjust your strategy to better fit the reality in which you find yourself? Be observant, and notice what’s going on in your creative industry around you. Track your results. Get some hard data to work with. Take time to figure out, “These kinds of marketing reach outs get me a response, but those don’t. That type of product sells well, but this one doesn’t.”

If you find yourself and your business in Sunday conditions, you might find that you have to take a little detour on your path toward living within your Creative & Financial Sweet Spot, that place in your business where you’re doing work that lights you up creatively and that fulfills you financially by paying your very best rate. (If you want more details about how to work within your Creative & Financial Sweet Spot, listen back to Episode 7.) Working primarily in your Creative & Financial Sweet Spot is one of the six components of a thriving creative business, which I talked about back in Episode 16, and working in that Sweet Spot is the goal of every creative entrepreneur, even if you’ve never called it that before. I am to the place now in my audiobook narration business that I am almost always working squarely within my Creative & Financial Sweet Spot, and it is a glorious place to be.

But no creative starts there. I certainly didn’t. Early on in my career as an audiobook narrator, and lots of times in my creative career in other creative industries, from classical cello performance to opera to musical theater to music teaching and lots of other creative endeavors over the years, I’ve done work that was far outside my Creative & Financial Sweet Spot. Always, settling into that Sweet Spot was my goal, but I knew that in order to give myself time to get there, I had to stay in business long enough so that I could actually get there. And sometimes that means finding work that pays well but isn’t completely and totally in my creative zone. Or accepting a project that doesn’t pay my very best rate but does pay well and makes up for it by being right smack in the center of my creative passion.

In the craft fair and art show business I mentioned earlier when telling you about my own Sundays in my creative entrepreneurship past, that’s exactly what I did. The strategies that were recommended by the books and the experts in that industry weren’t working for me. I wasn’t getting any traction with them. So I noticed what was working, and I ran with it. My strategies were good, sound strategies, but they weren’t the right ones for my unique circumstances at that time. So rather than remaining wedded to my not-right-for-the-moment strategies, I adapted my strategies to fit my circumstances. I accepted well-paying projects to give me the financial support I needed in the short term, searched out projects that were right within my creative passion and accepted them for a lower rate so that I could keep my creative juices flowing, and constantly was looking for ways to push my work closer to that Sweet Spot of fulfillment both creatively and financially.

Taking a little detour in my strategy like that kept me in business and gave my business the longevity I needed to be able to find that sweet spot.

In your creative work, don’t stay wedded to any one strategy. Yes, it might be a great strategy in the abstract, but you’re not creating and working and living in the abstract; you’re creating and working and living in reality. And if your strategy isn’t matched to your reality, it doesn’t matter how good the strategy is – it’s not going to get you where you want to go. Stay consistent with your long term goal of working within your Creative & Financial Sweet Spot, but stay flexible with the exact path that will get you there. Even if you take a temporary detour along the way, you can still get to your goal of working within a thriving creative business.

When you find yourself in Sunday conditions, when your perfectly good strategy just isn’t working in your present circumstances, get creative with your strategy. Stay flexible and know that, as long as you keep your end goal in mind, lots of different strategies will get you there.

Now let’s move to Monday’s situation: right strategy, right circumstances, but wrong timing. On Monday, with our kite flying, our timing was just all off. Even though another kite flyer got his kite in the air, we couldn’t because we didn’t make it down to the beach in time to take advantage of the breeze when it popped up. Our Monday problem was two-fold: we allowed ourselves to be distracted by other activities (namely by playing board games on our balcony), and we weren’t observant enough to notice the wind right when it started.

Both of those pitfalls can show up in your creative business. As an artist and a dynamic creative, I know you have lots of creative interests. I know I do! You’ve probably worked in a number of different creative industries over the years. I’ve already talked about some of mine here: professional gigging musician, orchestral cellist, music teacher to a large private studio and music teacher in a classroom setting, artisan at craft fairs and art shows, musical theater actor, and more. I even worked as a seamstress for a few years right out of college. And I have lots of additional creative interests that are hobbies for me but that could be turned into a professional pursuit. My creative interests are all over the map. Yours probably are too.

And if you, or I, let them, those many and varied creative interests that currently add richness and depth to my life could instead become a distraction that keep me from taking advantage of opportunities that come my way. Just like my husband, father, and I got too distracted by our board game to notice the wind picking up, you or I could get too distracted by this fun side pursuit over there and not be able to jump at the exciting new opening right here in front of us in the area of our main focus.

Whatever your main focus is, keep that pursuit your main focus. That doesn’t mean you can’t pursue side interests and tangents. But it does mean that you do need to stay focused on what matters most to you. In our kite flying situation, we would have been fine playing games while we waited for the wind to pick up, if we’d positioned ourselves so we could see the swim flags the instant the wind started, so that we could then use that trigger to dash down to the beach straightaway. But seeing the swim flags from our balcony required stepping right to the edge and peering down the beach. The swim flags weren’t in view while we were playing our board games. And so we missed that important signifier that the conditions were right for our primary goal of flying kites. We allowed another fun activity to distract us and take our eyes away from the opportunity we were waiting for.

As the saying goes, keep the main thing the main thing.

When I’m working with my coaching or workshop students on this particular concept, I like to have them create what I call a “Goal Green Room.” For actors, the green room is the area backstage where you wait for your turn to step onstage. When I’ve lounged in the green room during a show, usually I’m already in full costume and makeup, but it’s not quite time for me to step onstage just yet. I’m ready to go, but it’s not yet my time in the spotlight.

Imagine a space like this, a “Goal Green Room,” for your non-main-thing goals within your creative business. They are waiting there, ready for you as soon as you are ready for them. They’re not going anywhere. But right now, the main thing in your business is in the spotlight, and it needs your attention and focus. It needs to be your main thing. And those other goals will be ready and waiting for you in the meantime.

I’ve talked before, back in Episode 25, about the 1999 Invisible Gorilla experiment, conducted by Chris Chabris and Dan Simons. But the concepts we can learn from it apply here as well, so I’m going to mention it again.

In the “Invisible Gorilla Experiment,” Chabris and Simons asked study participants to watch a video of two teams tossing around two basketballs, one team wearing white shirts and one team wearing black shirts. Study participants had to count the number of times the balls changed hands. In the middle of the video, a man in a gorilla suit walks into the middle of the players, beats his chest, and walks on out. If you’re paying attention, the guy in the gorilla suit is pretty obvious, impossible to miss. But in the study, when the participants were asked afterward if anything odd happened in the video, the majority of people said that nothing strange happened at all. Even after they were told about the gorilla-suited man, most participants were adamant that nothing like that had happened. They insisted the study leaders were lying to them.

They weren’t looking for a man in a gorilla suit, so they completely missed seeing him. The gorilla guy wasn’t part of what they expected to see, and so they didn’t see.

(If you’re interested, the video used in the study is actually available on YouTube.) 

This study shows us that we miss so much of what happens around us. We just don’t see things if we’re not expecting to see them. And what’s more, we don’t realize that we’re missing it.

Even though we couldn’t see the swim flags from our position playing board games on our balcony, if we’d been paying attention that Monday at the beach, we would have seen other signs of a breeze. The sea oats rustling in the breeze on the dunes. The sound of the wind against the sand. The feel of the wind against our skin! But we weren’t paying attention to any of those signals, and so we missed them all. They were our “invisible gorilla.” The opportunities to fly a kite were right there in front of us. They walked into the frame and pounded their chest, but they walked away again when we didn’t notice them.

And when we did finally notice them as they were walking away, we were too late. We tried to take advantage of the wind, but by the time we got to the beach with our kites, the breeze was gone. We’d allowed ourselves to get distracted, and we didn’t notice the signs in time. We had the right strategy, but because the right timing was an “invisible gorilla” to us, we couldn’t actually take advantage of it.

In your creative business, keep your mind open and aware. Stay observant, and stay curious about the creative industry around you. Notice what your colleagues are doing. Notice what is working for others and what isn’t. Stay aware of trends and style developments. Become fans and consumers of your colleagues’ work as a way of learning more about the creative pursuit you share. Always continue growing as an artist and creative. Keep your main thing – your primary creative pursuit – your main thing, and notice the gorillas when they come. If your strategy is right and you watch for the opportunities, you can fix the problem of bad timing.

Which brings you to a Tuesday situation, when the circumstances and the strategy and the timing all align, and you experience the joy and excitement of holistically fulfilling creative work. If you are consistent with your strategy and watchful for opportunities, Tuesdays will come. In our situation with the kites, we didn’t have many options to “make” a Tuesday for ourselves. We needed to wait for the wind to be there. But in your creative work, you can create Tuesdays for yourself. Consistency in strategy and focus despite distractions will allow your work to align with the circumstances, and you will see the opportunities for the golden tickets that they are.

Episode 25, the episode in which I initially mentioned the “Invisible Gorilla” experiment, is all about making your own luck, that luck isn’t actually something that happens to someone, but rather something that we can create for ourselves. In truth, luck as a creative entrepreneur is the result of years of hard work and artistic growth, of careful development of creative and entrepreneurial strategies, and continual, deliberate acting on those strategies.

You are capable of that kind of work. Even if I don’t know you personally, the fact that you’re listening to this podcast episode tells me that you’re someone who is invested in the development of your creative work, that you’re willing to put in the hard work to build a creative business that works and that fully meets your needs personally, creatively, and financially. You can make this creative entrepreneurship thing happen!

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Starving Artist No More podcast. I know how valuable time is to creatives, and it means so much to me that you chose to spend this time with me today. I hope this episode gave you some food for thought as you plan your path forward in your creative enterprise. I know the object lesson that came from my family’s attempt to fly kites on our beach vacation certainly got me thinking!

If you have any questions for me or if you’d like to learn more about how you can work with me, check out my website, www.StarvingArtistNoMore.com. Information about all of my coaching, workshop, and learning opportunities is available there.

I’d like to send a huge thank you to my husband, Arturo, who not only is my kite flying companion but who also does the audio engineering for this podcast. If I sound good as you’re listening to me right now, that’s thanks to his audio wizardry.

If you found today’s episode helpful, please consider subscribing to the podcast so that you never miss a future episode, and leaving a rating or review for me with your podcast player of choice. And if you have a creative colleague who you think might be interested in this content, I’d love for you to share today’s episode, or any episode, with them. Sharing is caring!

In your life as a creative entrepreneur, Sundays and Mondays will be there. You’ll have times when your strategy doesn’t align with your circumstances, or your strategy is good but your timing is just all wrong. Those times will be aggravating, and they’ll be frustrating, but they will pass. With time, you will get through them. By aligning your strategy with the circumstances and by keeping your focus on the main thing, you’ll notice the opportunities when they arise, and you’ll be ready and able to take full advantage of them. You’ve got this, and I can’t wait to see what you create.