My Creative (Side) Business: Turning your Side Projects into a Full-Time Creative Business

"Yeah. I really like this book. It doesn’t look like a book that’s been self-published, if that makes sense. It’s really, really brilliant. I think it’s an interesting time for self-publishing because you can make the same amount of money as in traditional publishing. There’s a project that’s just won an award in the UK called The Pound Project . Basically it’s a model like Kickstarter, where you pledge a pound for a book. Fine, it’s only a pound. But what happens is so many people put money in because ‘it’s only a pound’ that a book recently raised £12,000 in a few weeks. That’s not actually that far from, say, an unknown debut author’s advance. So it’s an interesting time: if you can get the right editors and the right marketing team, who’s to say you can’t put an idea out that is just as valuable, and just as good? I really think Monika is someone who has done self-publishing brilliantly. Not to say she might not do it more traditionally in the future. “It’s an interesting time for self-publishing because you can make the same amount of money as in traditional publishing” What I like about this book is that has lots of interviews with people who have made their side businesses into their main business. They’re not famous people. I think, and I’m probably guilty of this because I interview a lot of well-known people on my podcast, that there are so many lessons to be learnt from people who aren’t always shouting about it, or sitting on social media every day. This book has really opened my eyes, and I’ve discovered so many interesting people who do interesting jobs. It’s full of tips, and I love books that have interviews. It’s quite meaty, this book. There’s a lot in there. There are chapters on building multiple income streams and passive income. When I look back at the last decade or so, there are times where it’s been so hard because I’ve had a full-time job and was trying to make a side business. That is quite horrific in terms of time spent working. But I think it’s the antidote to the ‘quit your job and follow your dreams’ narrative, which I don’t like. I could never have quit my job. There was no way in a million years I could just have quit my job to start my side business. It’s about transition, doing both for a bit, and saving enough money by doing both that you can then slowly do less of the full-time job and jump across. I mean, that’s the strategy that seems to have worked for a lot of people in this book; there’s always a crossover point when you feel like you’re going to burn out. But then, without that bit you don’t get to reap the reward. Every single interview is so different, and I guess maybe that’s the point of the book. There isn’t only one way to do any of this. So many books say ‘here are the three steps to make your life easier.’ But there’s no such thing as an overnight success. I get frustrated by that approach—sometimes when I’m doing events it’s almost like people are sat there with their notepad and pen like, ‘just tell me in one word how I can be successful.’ Or, ‘tell me in one short sentence what the answer is.’ Get the weekly Five Books newsletter The answer is that you keep going and over time, build something. This can take a year, or years, to kind of get right. Everyone in this book has learnt by doing. I think that we like to reward starting things in society: it’s very easy to caption an Instagram post, “I’m starting this side business.” You get all the likes. Or even when people get engaged—people love people getting engaged! We want to reward people who are starting things. Then what happens, I think, is you get such a buzz from telling people ‘I’ve started my novel’ that you end up not really finishing it. I love this book, but it’s very granular and it’s not romantic, and some of it is kind of boring. Some of it is talking about finances and how to save, how to do a spreadsheet so you know exactly how much money you need each month, because maybe you’re reaching burnout and you need to turn down a project. Can you afford to say no? How do you not go mad when you’re spending so much time on your own? It’s all these things. They’re hard, and it’s hard to keep going. Well, this is why I’m so passionate about flexible working. What happens is that we feel so trapped and we feel so tired and we feel so exhausted when we have a full-time job, because when you don’t like something your mental energy is being used up. You’re spending so much time and energy hating it and being upset and exhausted and frustrated that when you get home, the last thing you want to do is work on a side project. But it’s about flipping that narrative: the side project will be your saviour. In my book, I wrote about how nurses have actually prescribed to patients to go do something artistic as a way to try and help some of the mental health problems that they’ve been going through. We all need something that we can get lost in. Finding the time shouldn’t be seen as a chore. It should be seen as the opposite. This is why I really want a lot of people and a lot of companies to kind of take on the four-day week. I think the world would be a better place if everyone had one day or even one afternoon to use their time in a way that might help themselves or the world. Sometimes people act like I sound crazy when I suggest that. I feel like we’re so ingrained in the way things have always been done, that making any suggestions on how to do it differently is just met by, ‘no, we can’t do that, that’s not the way it’s been done.’ But I don’t think that it’s crazy to think that more people should have more time to be happier."