Threading the Needle: Balancing Creative Passion with Entrepreneurship

In the new season of Measure Twice, Cut Once, I'll be delving into the behind-the-scenes of building a creative business. The season features personal experiences and guest interviews about navigating creative entrepreneurship. I'll shares my creative journey of turning a quilting hobby into a thriving business, sparked by the challenges of the 2020 pandemic. Despite the demands of the business side, I'll emphasizes maintaining the joy of the craft, balancing creativity with necessary online presence, and learning new skills. This season is designed for those dreaming of starting a creative business or interested in the intersection of passion and profession.

00:00 Welcome to the New Season

00:29 A New Direction: Creative Entrepreneurship

01:29 Reflecting on My Creative Journey

02:09 From Hobby to Business: My Quilting Story

03:33 Building a Digital Presence

04:56 Balancing Hobby and Business

08:49 Social Media: A Double-Edged Sword

11:45 Looking Ahead: Prioritizing Joy

13:14 Final Thoughts: Finding Your Balance

Want to try free motion quilting but don't know where to start? Here's 3 simple steps to get going.

Transcript

0:48

Welcome to a brand new season of Measure Twice, Cut Once. If you've been listening to the podcast for a while, you might notice something a little different this season. Over the episodes, I've shared so many incredible stories from crafters who've poured their hearts and souls into their quilting journeys. And those conversations have been magical. Hearing about the challenges, the breakthroughs, and the pure joy of creating something beautiful with our own hands. But this season, I'm taking a slightly different path. I want to dive a little deeper into the behind the scenes of not just quilting, but building a creative business that truly lights you up. As someone who's navigated the exciting and sometimes bumpy world of turning a passion into a profession, I'm excited to pull back the curtain and share my own experiences. Some episodes will be just me diving deep into my personal journey, while others will feature guests who are also navigating the world of creative entrepreneurship. We'll explore the nitty gritty of building a creative business with its lessons learned and the unexpected challenges that come with transforming your craft each day. Into a thriving enterprise, and don't worry, I'm not leaving storytelling behind. Instead, I'll be weaving them into the conversations about what it takes to grow a business while staying true to your creative spirit. So whether you're dreaming of starting your own business, or you just love hearing about creative entrepreneurship, this season is for you.

Susan: 2:13

As 2025 opens up before us, I've been reflecting quite deeply on my creative journey. What it is, what it isn't, what I want to change, and what I want to do more of. And you know, I'm seeing these same thoughts and evaluations and introspection circulating on social media. This evaluation of priorities and of time and of how we express our creativity. And I've been so touched by those who've shared openly from their hearts. And today I'd like to do a little of the same. Each of our stories is so very different. And so we each approach this differently, but let me share just a little of my story with you. I've been making quilts all of my life. Um, I learned traditional methods alongside my mom. Again, with other traditional crafts like knitting, crocheting, embroidery, things like that. And it wasn't until about 10 years ago that I discovered machine quilting and then the quilting industry itself. Because growing up I knew absolutely nothing about fabric lines or brand deals or pattern publishing. It was purely about the joy and the creativity and the frugality of making quilts from scraps or from whatever fabric we had on hand. So that's my background. But as I was into machine quilting along came 2020 and the pandemic and everything changed for me that year, my husband lost his job. Quite suddenly it dried to a trickle and. At that time I was essentially semi retired. I was spending much of my time machine quilting, and I did have a small business quilting for others at my long arm, but it was purely for joy. I had no expectations of it, and frankly no need for it. But suddenly, jobless and income less, I faced a choice. We faced a choice. I chose to explore and see what I could do with my quilting. Could this thing I loved actually create a living? And for those of you who have followed my journey, you know where this led. For those of you who might be new here, perhaps you don't. It led to digital courses and an online presence. A monthly membership and a YouTube channel because we were limited for that 2020 and the year or two thereafter as to how much we could get together and the opportunity for traveling and teaching wasn't there. I had to look elsewhere, so I chose the digital platforms and that has turned out to be a wonderful, wonderful blessing. Being able to stay home, create the content. Um, connect with the people and still help other quilters all while earning a living from it. It's a win win, but there are a few things that I've learned over the past five years and I'm pretty sure there are other creators that are going to relate to this. There is this constant high wire act between getting caught up and driven by the business side of things and on the converse, letting your love of the craft be what drives you. Some days, sometimes even hour to hour, I swing between"I'm so lucky to get to do this" and"I have to produce. People are expecting things." However, I have discovered too, and it's a beautiful thing, that you don't have to choose between a hobby or a business. You can have both. And I thought I would explore just a little bit today of Uh, what I think of as the defining characteristics of both of those things and how for me, I've gradually grown into some level of balance. I hate to use that word, honestly, because it's not that you're trying to find a balance. It's that you want to have both. You need to have a living. You need to have a means of supporting yourself and or your family, but you also need the creative expression of a hobby. The trick is, of course, when the two things are so closely interrelated and how to find, um, health and creativity and joy in both of them. So here's what I kind of see as the defining characteristics of both. As a hobby, when quilting was only my hobby, it gave me complete freedom to explore. It gave me permission to try any project, any craft, anything that caught my eye or interest. Pinterest is a deadly thing in that frame of mind. And it also gave me the ability to stop. Whenever I wasn't feeling inspired, I just didn't need to keep going with a project or with a commitment or with a thing that I was making. I had the ability to just drop it. Forming it into a business brought Some contrast, and some of them turned out to be unexpected gifts. One of them for me, honestly, was focus and organization. It actually helped my creativity. The fact that I started drilling down into what's all the stuff in my studio and do I want to keep it all? The fact that I let a whole bunch of things I'd had for years and years and wasn't interested in anymore go gave me the freedom to find space to work and clarity to create in. And it also gave me the freedom, the permission, if you will, I gave myself that to invest in some new things that I was interested in and loved. And because this is making me a living, I felt the freedom to, um, not have to finish everything I've ever started. I let them go. And I started some new and some fresh things. And that was very good for my creativity and the focus too, of not being surrounded by a million different projects and even a million different crafts helped me to zero in a bit on my quilting and get very much better at my skillset and the craft and the art of quilting also forming this into a business. Um, kind of corralled my thoughts because I wanted to teach. I love teaching and explaining. I needed to create some structure in my thoughts. I needed to analyze a little bit. How do I do what I do? And therefore, how can I teach what I do to others? And that I found, um, very helpful, honestly, to think of it more as a business. It just helped to, get my thoughts a little more organized and get me a little more systematic about what I was doing. And it also forced me on a personal level into learning a lot of new skills that I didn't previously know. And most of those had to do with the technical aspects of, getting into the digital and online space for teaching. That was not my comfort zone. It still isn't, quite honestly, but I've gathered competencies. I've learned to be reasonably efficient at things like, uh, file storage and data and media storage or, um, editing of videos or creation of podcasts like this one. Five years, six years, seven years ago, I did not know how to do those things. They were all brand new to me. It has been, um, certainly a stretch and a challenge to learn new things like that, but it is also incredibly rewarding. There were challenges too, in taking what I loved and making it into a business. Social media became less about sharing my life and my personal things and my personal enthusiasms and more about considered content. And mind you, that's not all bad. For example, I teach best by using examples. So here's one. On my quilting page, at one time I was just posting whatever caught my eye at the moment, whatever I was thinking of or doing at the moment. And it might have been the walk with the dog, and it might have been the cool recipe that I made for dinner. But as I was intentionally trying to grow my business and clientele and visibility, I started thinking a little more about what I post. And again, I'll underline this is on my business page, my business content. And I started thinking through things like, Okay, what I love is free motion edge to edge quilting. So that's actually what I want to show and highlight and talk about and encourage in my social media rather than the occasional very elaborate, very intricate custom quilting that I sometimes do. I still do that kind of quilting sometimes, but usually just for myself. The clientele that I want to attract is free motion, edge to edge work. So I learn to think through, okay, how do I want to represent myself? And what kind of people do I want to be pulling into my circle? And what kind of people do I want to work with? And that's the kind of thing that I want to post that is of interest to them. So using social media as a way to, um, express who I am and what I teach and my style of quilting became very considered. And that was a good thing that really, again, narrowed my focus and produced focus, always a good thing. But on the flip side of that coin, Social media can also be a great gaping black hole and it always wants more and there's always an algorithm that you're trying to satisfy if indeed you are trying to grow your numbers, grow your visibility, etc. And this is one of the things that I have really thought about coming out of 24 and into 2025. What are the things that I love doing and that bring me joy And what are the things that are a time suck that feel like a have to, and I have to be really honest, for the most part, producing content for social media feels like a have to, to me. Do I love getting on YouTube live, sharing my quilting project that I'm working on in my Friday episodes? Yes, I do. Do I love? Every time I sit down to sew thinking, Oh, I should have a camera on this. I should be filming this. What kind of tip could I be teaching with this? And then after that, I've got to go and add captions to it and choose my colors and choose my font and add my music. No, I don't love that. So, I've decided going forward, I'm going to do more of the things that I love, make more of the connections that I love, grow that feeling that I love of connection, of sewing with my friends, of sharing what I love, and less of the have to. So these are some of the things that I'm going to do differently in this upcoming year. and they may pivot again as time goes on and I think through them some more. But what I'll be doing is scaling back on what I post on social media or at the very least scaling back on the amount of time and thought and energy that I put into thinking about what I'm going to post on social media. So you might see a little less of me there, but I'm absolutely keeping the things that I love high on my list are my unscripted YouTube shows where Frankly, we're all learning together. Those of you who watch, give as many tips as you get. We have some great times on YouTube where I'm puzzled or stumped and a viewer chimes in, and I love those times. Those are great moments, and it is so rewarding to quilt together. So there's going to be more of that. I love writing my newsletters and blog posts. that are stories mixed with tips, mixed with encouragement. I love doing that. So I want to do more of that. There's real joy into it. So here's what I want you to take away from my rambling today. You can, and I can, find fulfillment in both the hobby and business aspects of our craft. Some of you have chosen only to keep it as a hobby, and that's absolutely lovely. Some of you have chosen or are going to choose to build a business, and it can be helpful and rewarding, and it can absolutely not suck the joy out of what you love to do. I do consider myself incredibly fortunate that my hobby and my business overlap, that I get to share and teach the thing that I love the most. It has taken time to find this level of balance, and I'm pretty sure going forward, there will still be work involved and there will still be pivots and changes and periodic reevaluations. And I'm okay with that. Whether you're creating for joy or for profit or for both, the most important thing to protect is what makes your creative heart sing. So for me, that means protecting the things that I love to do in my craft. And it also means protecting my life outside of my business and my craft. That is so, so important to me. It means keeping some of my quilting projects just for me. It means exploring some of the other crafts that I've let go in recent years. In fact, As I talk into the microphone, I've got some brand new balls of yarn and a knitting pattern sitting beside me. I'm going to break that open later today. And I'm so excited about it. And that's, that's the wonderful thing about being a crafter. So I hope that sharing a little of my journey has helped you to find a little bit of your own perfect balance between hobby and business. I hope that it's encouraged you to. whatever time you devote to it, that you find the joy and keep the joy in what you're doing. I don't think it has to be about choosing one or the other, but about knowing what it is that brings you joy and keeping on with that thing, more of that thing, expanding and magnifying that thing. So until next time, keep creating and keep exploring. And as always, may your sorrows be patched and your joys be quilted.