Traveling And Working As A Creative Entrepreneur
May 02, 2013 Kathleen

When I worked as an art director at my nine-to-five job at an ad agency I would leave for a week of vacation with no concerns about work. (I was never what you would describe as a workaholic.) Tara, as a very important creative director, had the same policy – upper management and her team of designers and art directors, myself included, were given strict instructions to not call her while she was out of the office. Work was work, and vacation was vacation. The two shall remain separate and never meet. 

Tara and I have found many creatives work for themselves because travel is a priority – they insist on the flexibility to be able to set their own schedule and take time off without permission from upper management. But now I'm exploring the question of whether us creative entrepreneurs, myself included, have the flexibility (and balance) to travel and work – at the same time.

KEEPING WORK AND TRAVEL SEPARATE
During my first year of self-employment, back in the Fall of 2010, I took advantage of unlimited time off to trek through the Nepal Himalayas of Nepal. I used that adventure as an opportunity to completely unplug and find my breath in a new uncertain world of entrepreneurship. But it was cool, because 4 months into freelancing, doing mostly project work, I was able to completely clear my plate before departing for the other side of the world for a month. I also still maintained the philosophy that work and travel were like oil and water – never to mix.

I was chasing the same kind of unplugged adventure last summer when I went on a trek through the High Tatras mountains of Slovakia and Poland with my husband, Jeremy. I gave myself strict rules in hope to recreate my Nepal experience: no blogging, no emailing, no texting, no planning or even thinking about work. But the difference was Braid was just 6 months old and Tara and I were just starting to settle into our business vision of working solely with other creative entrepreneurs. We weren't only doing project work and branding identities for other creatives but also honing our own method, developing ecourses, and truly embracing our expertise. I was attached to my work because for the first time ever my work had a higher purpose. Forcing myself to unplug from it all for three whole weeks while backpacking in Eastern Europe felt a bit forced and unnatural. 

Work / Travel Quote

BLENDING WORK AND TRAVEL 
Last summer Tara went on a couple beach vacations and surprised herself when she felt the desire to check her emails and maybe even do a little bit of copywriting or brainstorming. She had a routine that involved going for a coffee run with her laptop first thing in the morning and after an hour or two of work she'd dedicate the rest of her day to vacation. She shared with me that it made her feel surprisingly productive. It also helped alleviate some of that dreaded "I gotta go back to work" feeling you get after vacation. (Yup, even when you're your own boss you still get inklings of that work-dread feeling. We love what we do for a living but I'd be lying if I said we didn't love lying on the beach – or trekking through the Himalayas – even more.) 

So this last week I went on my first of many summer vacations to Tulum Mexico. You can read about my picture-perfect adventures of swimming in a murky cenote and exploring the Mayan jungle here. Every morning I woke with the sun, wrote my morning pages, and downed 2 liters of water. In the afternoons I would lay on the beach and listen as Claire, a Braid client and friend, would read aloud from a book on Indian mythology. I would wear my favorite scarf as a shirt and would eat whole roasted fish for dinner every night. We sipped on cold white wine and made friends with locals and other travelers alike. But at the same time, and for the first time ever, I was attempting to kinda sorta work during my tropical time off. 

Every morning after yoga by the beach and a dip in the ocean I would eat a green smoothie, check my email, and work on a blog post in the hotel lobby – which subsequently was the only place I could plug my laptop in for electricity and get a somewhat unreliable wi-fi connection. I was committed to writing a blog post (it is a dream that blogging is a part of my job description) and would check my email to schedule life coaching for creatives and respond to client's needs. Some days I spent up to 3 hours working. Other days, maybe only 30 minutes. With an ecourse launch and our first real-life workshop coming up there were a few wrinkles to be ironed and fires to put out. But somehow, the distance from home made me feel a little less stressed, a bit more objective, and somewhat detached (in a zen way) about things that would usually have me all in a tizzy. I'm sure the ocean breeze and tropical sun didn't hurt either. And of course I'm lucky to have Tara, Kristin, Liz, and our Braid ECourse developer Emily holding down the fort in my absence. Even so, the little bit of work I could put in every day kept me feeling productive and connected to the job I love. 

MAINTAINING A WORK / TRAVEL BALANCE
I'm constantly emphasizing the importance for creative entrepreneurs to blend (and balance) who they are with what they do in order to create a dream job for themselves. I also love a routine to stay balanced. I fantasize about a day when I'm completely location independent, traveling the world, and able to work from anywhere. But I know that even as glamorous as that seems it probably comes with its own set of challenges to be navigated. So merging work and travel is a bit of an experiment in practicing what I preach, and leaning into my dream life, as I move into my summer vacations.

Work / Travel Balance

Here are some tips for work / travel balance based on my most recent kinda working vacation: 
• Set the expectation with your coworkers and clients that you will have limited availability while you're out on vacation. I told my team that my phone would be off, but that I would try to check my email when I could. If they heard from me it was a pleasant surprise and I never felt guilty when I chose not to work. 

• Let people know where you're going. I shared my travel plans with my dream customers in our wrap-up meetings and set my email auto-responder to let potential clients know that I would be kicking it in Tulum for a week. It makes my being "out of the office" response relatable and warm – and it was often received with enthusiasm with just a hint of jealousy. 

• Don't plan to do too much. Prior to this trip, I ambitiously had the idea to redesign our Braid website while on vacation. I'm really not sure what I was thinking. Knocking out a blog post and trying to maintain a zero inbox was plenty. 

• Find a time to work. While on vacation I would work at the hottest point of the day – between noon and 3PM when I wouldn't want to be out and about anyway. For Tara it was early in the morning before her kids would demand her attention. It might not be your typical work schedule, but setting a few rules for your temporary mini-routine, will keep you from dividing your attention from the fun you're supposed to be having. 

• Establish some boundaries. I couldn't help but check my email on my phone any time I could take advantage of the limited wi-fi. But when you're having a candle-lit dinner of a whole roasted fish under a full moon it's time to put the work away. I tried to keep the bulk of my work contained to a couple hours at the lobby juice bar.

• Do what you want. Sometimes that might mean working over kite surfing. Other times it may mean ditching the laptop for a Jeep and the jungle. 

We want to hear from you. Do you like to keep work and travel separate? What are some of your tips for maintaining a good work / travel balance? Let us know on Facebook. 

If you want to learn more about blending who you are and what you do check out our Personal Branding ECourse now open for registration. It's $75 (though, if you sign up for our Letters for Creative Entrepreneurs we typically send out exclusive discount codes) and will be in session from May 24 - June 2nd. In this course you'll learn how to identify and define your personal brand, blend the personal with the professional, and how to share your brand online and off.

Braid At Life & Work, Creative Business Visioning
When Your Creative Business Finally Feels Real
April 25, 2013 Tara

Kathleen and I spent last weekend way up on a hilltop in the Austin hill country in the home of artist Alyson Fox, at a workshop hosted by The Jealous Curator. Well, Kathleen will tell you, the “jealous” part worked – at least at first arrival (hint: it had a lot to do with being in a glass house an artist designed and built up on a hilltop).  But as we talked and asked and answered and laughed (and maybe cried a little, just a little) with this group of women designers, painters, authors, bloggers and photographers, the question that kept coming up around this circle of working creatives had a lot less to do with wishing we had created something jealousy-worthy, and instead was this – when do you finally feel like a “real” artist? What does it take to get to that place where you say, “okay, this is really what I do now, and who I am, and how I make a living?”

Is it when someone buys that first piece of work? Is it when you can afford to rent a studio that’s not in your home?  Is it when you have your first show? Or you first show not in your own town? Or you first show in a big city?  Is it when your design is picked up by a brand? When your work is published? The funny thing is, even as some of these “markers” of what makes it feel “real,” had been reached by some in the group already, they all had new making-it-real feelings that they hadn’t reached either. Like a mirage in a desert, feeling like you’ve finally arrived and/or become accomplished, is all shimmery and beckoning, and just keeps freaking moving farther ahead as you keep moving ahead, too.  

If you are in business for yourself, selling your talents or your creative products, you may not consider yourself an “artist” (apparently even artists have a really hard time giving themselves this title, as well) – but you can at least embrace the fact that you are a creative entrepreneur. And chances are, you are asking yourself a very similar question all the time. When does my business that I’ve created for myself, that I stuck my neck out for, that I frankly had a really hard time explaining to my friends, family, former coworkers – when does this business finally feel “real?” So I’ve listed just a few of these “make-it-real-markers” that I have thought myself, that I have heard from plenty of our creative clients, and that I really don’t have the answers for either! But see if any of them ring a bell (or conjure up a shimmery mirage) for you.

What's Going To Make Your Creative Business Feel Real

What is it going to take, for you to finally feel like what you do is real, and that the business you’ve created – is really real, too?

Is it the physical space where you work?
- finally, an office in your home with a door?
- or a backyard shedworking studio?
- a membership at a coworking space?
- a one room studio in the city you rent?
- an office space you design and build out?
- or is it simply being able to afford that new laptop and work from anywhere?

Is it the freedom to do what you want?
- to spend more time with your kids during the week?
- to stop commuting and take long hikes instead?
- to pursue a passion project?
- to be geographically independent and travel throughout the year?
- being able to take a sabbatical? or a whole year?

Is it the financial sustainability and stability?
- to be able to pay yourself a regular “salary?”
- to be able to hire an assistant?
- to be able to hire a staff?
- the ability to invest in redoing your website the way you want it?
- the knowledge that you could solely support yourself (without help)?

Or is it people just finally knowing about you?
- getting people (you don’t know) wanting to hire you because someone told them about you?
- getting comments on your blog (that aren’t your mom)?
- getting 100 “Likes” on your business Facebook page? 1,000? 10,000?
- getting sponsors who pay you to blog?
- being featured in a publication you admire?
- being asked to speak at a talk? a conference?
- getting a show? publishing a book?
- feeling a little (or a lot) famous for who you are, and what you do?

Okay, so these lists above are probably pushing a few of your “yes! that’s what it will take for me to feel legit!” buttons. But, there are probably some of your own unique ones, too. For Kathleen, it may be coaching a creative client in a video session from a completely different country, while wearing yoga pants. For me it’s getting through a full “tax” year, and everything is still possible and still standing, house, family (and our family vacation).  It’s also hearing a pretty famous client of ours saying how much she respected us sticking-to-our guns with our own Braid process and how much she got out of that process in the end.  I get emotional about our process, Kathleen likes travel and working from anywhere (wearing anything or hardly anything). You have your own thing.  And I really believe, that moment when someone else really “gets” your thing (and paid for it, yes, but also really got meaning from it), is one of the greatest markers of making it real.

What makes it all finally feel real for you? It can be small, silly, or huge! Sometimes just remembering that you were even reaching for a marker in the first place, makes it more real (before you decide you now want more). Tell us on Facebook.  

And thanks to the Jealous Curator for the workshop and all the revelations! You can see more pictures and takeaways at Kathleen’s blog here.

Our Braid Workshop: Sharing YOU and Selling What You DO is still open for registration. It’s $250, and on May 4 in Oklahoma City. Learn more and register here.

And our Braid ECourses are always open for enrollment. The Personal Branding Braid ECourse actually starts tomorrow, so today is your last day to register for this session. You can go do that for $75 here.

Braid At Life & Work, Creative Business Visioning
Shedworking On My Mind
April 10, 2013 Tara

If you work for yourself, chances are you do a lot (if not all) of your work from home. In fact if you do work 100% from a home office you probably actually have a designated office room in your house. Like with a door. I bet though, many entrepreneurs who do office in a building, “somewhere else,” still do a lot of homeworking. Except you may be doing it all willy-nilly anywhere that your laptop will plug in (or sustain a feeble charge) on dining room table, couch, floor, bed, front porch, backyard. It just comes with the territory of, well, freedom.

We are other people’s fantasy. But oh boy, do we have fantasies of our own. Or else we wouldn’t be the creative entrepreneurs (or aspiring-to-be’s). So my daydream right now is a shed. Yes, a shed. With a glass door, and a skylight, and a little slanted roof, and a little rock path from my back door and room enough for just a desk and a little space heater under my feet. Sound like a work-dream-space you could get behind?

Roald Dahl's Hut

I first latched onto this backyard “writing hut” fantasy when I was reading through the complete Roald Dahl collection of stories to my then seven-year-old over the course of a year. Every story, from Charlie and The Chocolate Factory, to Matilda, to Fantastic Mr. Fox ended with a little mini-feature on Mr. Dahl in the back of the book, complete with a typical schedule of his day: walk to the writing hut in the garden, place blanket on lap, gaze at collection of curious keepsakes on sidetable, sharpen specially ordered no. 2 pencils, write for a couple hours, walk back up for lunch with family, nap, walk back to writing shed, write for two hours, take tea with family and a chocolate bar, and so on.  Then there’s a little fuzzy inset black-and-white photo of the author sitting in his little hut, and then an exterior shot of this white brick little shed with roses growing up the side. Sold.

Okay, I was semi-sold. Still felt a bit eccentric and fanciful. Then recently I picked up this book during a library trip with my family. Shedworking: The Alternative Workplace Revolution, by Alex Johnson. And you guys, this is happening everywhere. Or, by the examples in the book (and in Johnson’s shedworking blog) – from quaint little stone huts, to grass roofed cottages, to totally modern glassy boxes – it’s at least happening a lot in the UK apparently. I live in the OK. That’s Oklahoma. And a midwestern creative who tells people she wants a backyard shed that’s not for tools or yard stuff or just to store Christmas decorations, is definitely in alternative 9-to-5 working territory. 

Alex Johnson Quote A // Shedworking

Alex Johnson Quote B // Shedworking

Psychologically, shedworking marks a clear difference between where you live and where you work – there’s no taint of work attached to any part of your home. Instead all the taint is in the shed. And going somewhere to begin your working day is important, almost a kind of ceremony. – Alex Johnson, Shedworking

Alex Johnson’s book is chock-full of fantasy fuel. Tons of sheds and little backyard escapes. Thumbing through it a couple (or ten) times with an ice tea on the back porch during one of the first sunny weekends of spring is, well, like when you were a kid plotting out your treehouse plans. But Johnson’s book also tells about so many other creatives who have worked just this way for years, and a new revolution of homeworkers or semi-homeworkers who are discovering the shedworking way of work/life... is the way.

I have to be honest I am still torn between just fantasizing and “freakin’ awesome” let’s get groundbreaking over in that corner there.  Let me add in here, that I’m not really the type to get sucked into pinning interiors, or subscribing to Dwell, or getting remodelling fever in my house. I mean, I’ve done all those things a little bit. But the more I think and talk about shedworking the less I think about the constructs of the whole thing, and the more I start wondering how many people out there right now are tucked into a shed, have turned on their space heater (it’s an unseasonably rainy, icy cold spring day here, today) and are writing, working, and forging a new way of working for themselves?

Right now my workweek “officing” routine is:
- one, maybe two “writing” days from my home office (a.k.a. the end of the dining room table that’s not dedicated to kid’s homework)
- perhaps one morning a week (like today) writing from a coffee shop
- two to three days in our Braid office at my business partner and sister Kathleen’s house, an actual working room just for us where we can work together along with our designer Kristin, while our brand designer, Liz, works solely from home, but Skypes in and chats often
- lots of meetings, about half through Skype and the other half at coffee shop
- Sunday afternoon, is yes, the afternoon I cheat and catch up on work, usually with my laptop in my bed and notes spread all around while my husband takes kids on an outing

So when would I go out to the shed? Good question. Ha. Probably in the mornings to write, then off to meetings or the Braid office. Probably in early evenings to escape the just-before-dinner craze in our house just to wrap up emails without the craze about me. And Sunday afternoon of course. Though my bedspread makes for a cozy worktable. Perhaps I don’t need it as much as I think I do. Maybe I just like the idea of LOOKING upon the shed, with the light on, glowing all cozy from within and a creative typing away from the other side of the glass door. If I’m the one in there, how can I dream about it? I can answer that. I dream about the next thing.

Do you work from home full-time, part-time? Are you actually working in a shed?! Ooh, what’s it like? Does my fantasy sound just swell... a little half-baked... or just claustrophobic and cold? Tell me more on Facebook.

Braid At Life & Work