Building a successful and fulfilling creative career takes:
- Dedication
- Perseverance
- Strategy
While it may seem daunting at first, focusing on a few key areas can help you build a thriving creative business doing what you love.
Here’s 4 simple ways to build a thriving creative career:
1. Develop Your Skills and Build Your Expertise
The foundation of a strong creative career is cultivating your talents and abilities. Make developing your skills an ongoing priority:
- Take workshops and classes to expand your capabilities in new directions. Look for opportunities both online and in-person to level up your skills.
- Practice your craft daily through creating new projects and working on passion pieces. The more you use your skills, the stronger they become. Set aside time each day to create.
- Learn business, marketing, financial, and strategic skills that allow you to work successfully as a creative professional. Understand how to sell your work, promote yourself effectively, and manage the business side of a creative career.
- Consider obtaining formal training through degree programs, certifications, or intensive workshops to deepen your expertise. Setting yourself apart with education and training can help attract more clients and customers.
- Continually push yourself outside your creative comfort zone and grow your abilities. Avoid complacency.
2. Build a Compelling Portfolio That Shows Your Best Work
Your portfolio is one of the most vital elements for launching and growing your creative career. A strong portfolio not only demonstrates your talents, but acts as a marketing tool to attract new opportunities.
- Curate only your best and most relevant work. Cut anything that doesn’t truly represent your skills and creative vision. Quality over quantity.
- Showcase work that aligns with your professional niche and specialties. For example, don’t dilute an illustration portfolio with photography projects.
- Organize your portfolio to highlight your unique creative perspective and style. Help viewers understand who you are as a creative professional.
- Update your portfolio frequently as you complete new projects. This keeps your work fresh and engaging.
- Make your portfolio easy to view and share online by creating a dedicated website. Allow visitors to download materials or contact you directly.
3. Network and Collaborate to Build Your Industry Connections
Expanding your network is critical for identifying new opportunities and gaining visibility for your work. Make connecting with others in your field an ongoing habit:
- Attend industry events, conferences, and creative meetups. Introduce yourself to attendees and follow up with new connections. Exchange contact info and build relationships.
- Reach out to professionals you admire for informational interviews. Ask for their advice to learn from their experience. Stay in touch by sharing relevant articles or sending occasional updates.
- Partner with other creative professionals for collaborations, cross-promotions, or sharing leads and opportunities. Support each other.
- Find one or more mentors — respected professionals who can provide guidance and advice. Schedule regular check-ins to discuss your career questions and challenges.
- Give back by mentoring newcomers to help strengthen the broader creative community.
4. Promote Yourself and Your Work Actively and Consistently
To build your reputation and find new opportunities, you need to actively promote yourself and your creative work. Make self-promotion an ongoing effort:
- Create an online presence with a personal website, blog, and active social media accounts. Share examples of your work, post news updates, and promote your portfolio.
- Develop an elevator pitch — a short, compelling statement about your work that you can use to introduce yourself quickly and memorably.
- Reach out proactively to potential clients, customers, and collaborators. Look for ways your skills might help them and suggest working together.
- Distribute press releases and announcements regarding major achievements, new projects, awards, or upcoming events. Make it easy for media outlets to cover your news.
- Consider paid advertising to reach new audiences who may not find you otherwise. Test small campaigns on platforms like Facebook or LinkedIn.
The Takeaway
With focus and effort in each of these 4 areas over time, you can build an engaged audience and thriving creative business doing work you love.
Follow this blueprint for your best shot at the fulfilling career of your dreams.
Whenever you're ready, here's how I can help you:
1-on-1 Creative Career Coaching: A 90 minute call to help you get unstuck in your creative career and reach new heights. Think of it like a therapy session...only we're working to turn your passion into an even more successful profession.
