In today’s episode, we’re talking about a topic that I’m very passionate about and quite frankly I think more entrepreneurs need to be talking about, and that’s the importance of prioritising your mental health as a creative. I’m breaking down 10 simple yet life-changing tips to help you better prioritise and manage your mental health whilst marketing your creative business. No more feeling overwhelmed by to-do lists, societal pressure or trying to do everything yourself… It’s time to learn how to thrive in your creative business without burning out, and taking care of what’s really important… YOU.
There’s no denying that marketing your creative business can at times be overwhelming and stressful.
And as the sole person taking care of your business, you’re not only responsible for the health of your business but YOUR health too.
In today’s episode, we’re talking about a topic that I’m very passionate about and quite frankly I think more entrepreneurs need to be talking about, and that’s the importance of prioritising your mental health as a creative.
I’m breaking down 10 simple yet life-changing tips to help you better prioritise and manage your mental health whilst marketing your creative business.
No more feeling overwhelmed by to-do lists, societal pressure or trying to do everything yourself…
It’s time to learn how to thrive in your creative business without burning out, and taking care of what’s really important… YOU.
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If you or someone you know needs mental health support, please check out these resources:
New Zealand: mentalhealth.org.nz/helplines
Australia: healthdirect.gov.au/australian-mental-health-services
United States: apa.org/topics/crisis-hotlines
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Read the accompanying blog post.
Tag me on Instagram @makerandmoxie and let me know you're listening.
And sign up to the Moxie Musings newsletter for more goodness like this.
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Any amount is appreciated, as is sharing the episodes or recommending the show to your creative friends!
Want to sponsor the Brand Your Passion Podcast? You can view the options & book in here.
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Ready to join the creative branding lab for artists and makers who are ready to grow their audience, attract new customers, and get business-building opportunities on repeat? Check out The Next Level Creative™ today!
Marketing is a huge part of running your creative business. But if you think about any other business in those cases, sometimes running marketing for one social media platform can be one person's entire job. So as the sole person in your business, you have to accept and recognise that doing. All of the marketing on all of the platforms and all of the places and all of the ways is a lot for one person, both mentally and physically, all of the energy and effort and thought and pressure that goes into that is a lot.
So you have to look after yourself and. Make sure that you are caring for yourself in all of that process. So how do you prioritise your mental health and your well-being while marketing your creative business? That is what we are going to talk about. In today's episode. So let's dive in. Okay.
So whether you are marketing your business online or in person, whether you're doing like networking or social media stuff or email marketing or whatever it is, there is a lot that goes into doing all of that stuff, whether that's.
Mentally, whether that's physical, the time and the effort and doing the thing, whether it's like the pressure of showing up and being yourself and, making sure that you tick off all the right, doing the right things and that you get the, you're hitting the right milestones and that you're getting the right amount of reach.
Doing all the things that everybody online tells you have to do and that you are making sales from what you're doing and, doing all of those things. That is a lot. There's, yeah, it's a lot mentally. It's a lot physically. So we want to make sure that when you are doing all of that, you are doing that.
In a way that is looking after yourself. We want to do that because we want to grow your business. We want to make sure that sales are coming in, that you are reaching new people, that you are getting your work out there into the world. Marketing is a really powerful tool and we want to use that tool powerfully.
A useful effective way, right? But we want to make sure that we do it in a really good way. It's not going to be harmful. It's not going to lead to burnout. That is not going to hurt you in the long run.
So what boundaries can we put in place? What things can we do to help ourselves as artists, and as creatives to prevent this.
Burnout to prevent our mental health from hurting or to prevent ourselves from just getting tired and hurt by this hamster wheel of marketing that can happen sometimes. So if you have found yourself struggling with marketing or, hitting the point of burnout. Finding yourself feeling your mental health hurting a little from social media or from marketing or from just constantly having a lot to do when it comes to marketing, then hopefully this episode will help you with that.
So today I have.
10 tips for you to help you with prioritizing your mental health when it comes to marketing your creative business. And I am not a therapist. I am not a mental health expert. So if you need that help, please go and get that. I am a brand and marketing coach, so I can help you on that side of things.
But if you need help, otherwise, I will leave some links in the description for you to go and get that help, please go and do that, but let's dive into some of the tips that will help you prioritise your mental health when marketing your creative business.
So first things first you want to use your strategy. If you've listened to any other episodes of Brand, your passion is that I am a proponent obviously of having a brand. Strategy, but I'm not telling you to do this for no reason. I'm telling you to have a brand strategy because it will help you when it comes to marketing your business, it will make things a lot easier and a lot less stressful because it helps you to make decisions.
It helps you to narrow down the things that you need to choose and narrow down. The shiny object things that can come along with marketing right so say you're getting stressed out or overwhelmed because the world and the internet and society is telling you that you have to do this and you have to be doing it in this way and you have to be, taking all of these boxes
Social media platform is coming out and you have to jump on it because everybody else is doing it, you have to use this new feature on this platform because that's how you're going to get views or, whatever it is that the internet is telling you, you have to do your brand strategy is going to be the tool that will help you to decide whether you have to do that or not, because what you can do is look to that brand strategy and say okay.
I know who my audience is. And so I know whether my audience is going to be on that platform or not. I know who I am and what my brand is all about. So I know whether that platform or that feature is aligned with who I am and who my brand is. So I know whether it makes sense for me or not.
So I can easily say I don't need to do that. Actually, yes, that is a good idea for me. And so it helps you to make decisions and to rule out things that are not aligned with you at all. There are lots of other parts of your brand strategy, like your goals and your brand voice and so many other parts that will help you when it comes to, yeah, making decisions, deciding what to say yes to deciding what to say no to deciding what's aligned with you and your brand and your business that will help you.
You're welcome. Make decision making and overwhelm easier because you can say, okay, that's not for me. I can shut all of those things out. I can say no to the noise. And so use your strategy. Have that document and, anytime anything feels overwhelming or it feels the pressure is coming in and you're having, you have all these voices nattering in your mind, you can look at that strategy, open that document, refresh yourself on your vision, your mission.
Your people, your voice, your personality, and re-center yourself on what matters, where you're going, and what you are trying to achieve. And that will help you focus on what matters.
Number two, which is related to that, is to stick to your values. When you are marketing your creative business, it is really important to remember what is important to you and to remember what rules you have for yourself your business, and your brand.
So if you have set values for yourself and you know what is important to you, it is so much easier to again, shut out what doesn't matter. And what. Isn't aligned with you and your business. So when you are marketing your brand or, if you have an opportunity come up or if there's a trend going around and you wonder, should I jump on that?
Should I say yes to this opportunity? Should I post this kind of content? It's a lot easier to decide whether to do that or not when you know your values. So I recommend it if you haven't done it already. Make sure you know what your values are, have those written down, and have it clear. Not just what is my value in one word, but what is that value as an action statement?
And what does that value look written down in a description? I have Blog posts articles and resources on how to do that. So I'll link that as well. Because it's so helpful in making those sorts of decisions and knowing, yeah, should I get involved in this or not? And it will make marketing your business and.
Getting overwhelmed and not getting overwhelmed is a lot easier.
Number three is to be selective and don't do it all. So that's tied into what we are doing, talking about in a lot of this, but when it comes to marketing, your business is a lot. Better and a lot more freeing when you realise that you can be more powerful and more productive with your marketing when you do a couple of things well.
So this is me giving you. Explicit permission to pick one or two platforms or strategies for marketing and go all in on that. So instead of trying to be on all the social media platforms all at once and trying to do all of the marketing tactics. I would recommend picking maybe one online strategy or one social media strategy and one other strategy So maybe you're like I want to be on Instagram and have an email list or I want to do TikTok and in-person networking pick two and go all in on those two and see how you can do that well, and how you can get those two to work together really well.
that will be so much more powerful than trying to do all of the things. And when you choose those two, It will be so much more freeing than trying to do all the things you will realise in your mind, in your creativity, you'll feel like you'll have so many more creative ideas.
it'll be so much more fun when you have the constraint of okay, I have these two platforms or these two strategies. What can I do with those two strategies? you'll have so much more fun doing that, I think. And then once you master those two and you have a process and a system down and it's working well, you can expand to more platforms and more strategies and expand how those add into your current system.
Be selective, don't try and do it all. And that will help you with your mental health, not trying to do it all, not trying to burn yourself out by trying to post everywhere all at once, all the time. If just try and post in one or two places that will help you.
Number four is to know your strengths. This will help you in deciding which of those strategies you are going to choose. Because there is nothing worse, in my opinion than trying to do marketing strategies that are not tied to your strengths as a solo creator. Because if you are the one doing everything and you hate doing that thing, it is such a slog.
Figure out what your strengths are, lean into those strengths, and find the marketing strategies that align with them. So for example, if you love to speak and you love editing videos, then maybe you should make TikToks or long-form YouTube videos, or maybe you should record a podcast. If you love to write, then maybe you should be a blogger or a newsletter writer.
Or, think about what it is that you love to do and that you are good at and make that thing and do that as your form of marketing, because not only will that make it easier, but that will make it. Easier to be consistent with because if it's hard, then you're not going to want to keep doing it and it's going to be easier to give up on.
But if you love it, you're going to want to keep doing it. It's going to be easier to keep doing it. You're going to want to keep showing up and doing it. And so that means you're going to be consistent and that's what we want. And that's what's going to be best for your marketing. So pick something that you're good at.
And do that and you will be more consistent, which is great.
Number five is to know your limits. So sometimes it's just too much and you have to learn to acknowledge that. And it's hard as a solo person when there is so much to do and there's always more you can be doing. And. Sometimes we feel guilty about that and especially, we have bills to pay and lives to live and other people to look after maybe and ourselves to look after and, a lot is going on and so it's hard to give things up or to stop doing things or say, I can't do that thing, or it's too much, or I need help, or, whatever it is, but you have to know your limits and you have to know when it's too much and you can't do it anymore. Or you can't do all the things I've been in business full time for over six years now. And there are so many times that I have had to tell myself, I cannot do all of the things.
However. Hard it is for me to tell myself that there are times when I've taken a break. Like I took a break from this podcast because I couldn't do it all and I had to figure out how I could change it. Because I loved it and I still wanted to do it, but I had to figure out how to make it work.
I had to figure out a way to bring back joy into the process because I loved it, but I didn't love the process at the time because it was too hard. And so you have to know your limits and know when it's too hard or when it's too much or when you need help. And it's hard to accept, but you have to figure out how to accept it and how to know your limits and how to let other people help you or to, yeah how to let things go when it's too hard.
I know that's a hard one but yeah, number five is to know your limits.
Number six is to set some boundaries, whether that is with yourself or with other people. So this is one that I'm always learning as well. So I'm with you on this one. But with yourself, that can be, boundaries with your phone with social media, with your devices, with like timeframes, things like that.
So it might be like setting time limits on social media apps or not answering DMs or comments after certain times or not on the weekends. Maybe like only answering emails. It's one time a day or only creating marketing stuff one day a week, or only working on the weekdays, or whatever it is.
It's going to work for you. That is going to protect your mental health, whatever it is. That's going to help you and make things easier and make things. Gentler on your brain. You have to figure out what those things are for you, but those are some things that might help you. It might be, yeah, putting your phone away, setting those time limits.
I have the thing on my phone on Instagram. That's like the nighttime mode. So people know I'm not going to reply until the morning and just little things like that sitting boundaries with other people as well. So if you have clients, if you have customers on your customer service emails, you might have like a signature or an Autoreply that says I only reply during these certain times so people know that you are not available all the time.
That is a good thing to do. Setting boundaries that set yourself up for success and don't set yourself up for burnout. Think of what boundaries could help you. When it comes to looking after your mental health in terms of your marketing and what things have been making things difficult and maybe have been leading to burnout.
And then what boundaries could you put in place to prevent that? That could help. And I know it is hard to put those boundaries in place, especially when it comes to other people and buzz. They are worth doing. And when you do it, it sets an example for other people as well. So it's good practice to do, and you never know who might learn something from you.
So definitely worth doing.
Number seven is to delegate if, and when you can, I know this is a privilege and a luxury when you have. Built up the income to be able to do this, but if and when you can, it is a worthwhile investment to delegate some tasks to other people.
I have done this in the past. I am starting to do this again, especially with my podcast. I'm so grateful for my podcast producer, Rochelle, if you're listening, I love you. She will be listening because she's editing this podcast but it is so valuable to have somebody help you.
As I mentioned at the beginning of this episode, you are one person. You are doing the job of probably 10-plus people in your business right now. And if you are listening, I know that you understand what that feeling is like. You have the brain of probably 10-plus people running around in your brain right now.
And so you need to, when you can Take that little segment of your brain and hand it to somebody else so that they can take that off of you. And then you can just focus on those nine little other people who are in your brain and worry about them and so If and when you can, take some of the parts of your marketing that either you're not good at, or that you don't like doing, or that would just take some weight off your mind or that would allow you to focus on the other things that you do love, or that you are great at, or that would bring in some more money for you, this is what I, how I think about it, is that My business, my job, and my business is to bring money into my business, right?
And the more time I can spend on that, the more money my business makes, and the better my business does, right? And not that my business is just about making money, but it needs to succeed, right? And The more time I can spend on that's great. That's better. It's a better use of my time to spend my time on money-making activities.
And so I should do that than to do some of the other things that I could delegate to somebody else who can do some other still important things, but things that I that They can't do that. I need to do right. So such as delivering services and working with my clients and thinking up the ideas for the marketing and like stuff like that.
So the same will go for you. You need to make your products and make the art and do all the things that you need to do as an artist. So if you can. Get somebody to help you with the marketing side of things then that will free you up to do the art side of things and do the business side of things that you need to be doing think about what parts of the marketing you could and would delegate and then see if you can work towards delegating some parts of it doesn't have to be all of it maybe it's just like The actual scheduling part of it and publishing, or maybe it's writing some captions or maybe you want somebody to help you with some ads or just some Pinterest marketing or some email marketing, for example, or whatever you want.
Some parts of it might be helpful. So I recommend delegating if and when you can.
Number eight is to only pay attention to the metrics that matter or not at all. So obviously with marketing, with social media, it is so tempting to pay attention. How many people are following you, how many people like each post, how many people comment on each post, how many people save each post, all of those things?
And that's satisfying when you do get a bunch of watches, or views, or a lot of reach, or a bunch of people following you that's amazing, and it is really good. But the downside of that is that it's depressing when that doesn't happen, and when you pay attention to those numbers too much, that can be harmful and can hurt your mental health, especially if you're comparing yourself to other people.
And the truth of the matter is, those numbers don't matter. Followers and likes and saves and things do not have an impact on your bottom line when it comes down to it. Unless you are an influencer and you need those numbers to convince people to be a sponsor or do a partnership with you.
Then maybe that does matter a little bit, but even still it might not matter as much, but I'm guessing as artists, like those numbers don't matter to you. What does matter is how many people are buying from you. So how many people are? Coming from those posts and are clicking through and buying from you.
How many people are finding your ads and are coming to buy from you? My recommendation to you is to think about what of those metrics, how many of those numbers matter. And do any of them matter? Because I will be honest with you, I don't look at them. Anytime I get a follower, I'm like, amazing, cool.
Welcome to the family, I am so happy to have you. Come and hang out with us and learn about branding. Let's do that. And I'm stoked about that. And like, when I post something, I'm not worried about how many people like it. I am just like, if anybody learns from this, I'm stoked, but I do not care really how many people that is.
Yeah, sometimes I have the same feelings as everybody else. When I have a down day I start looking at other people, but in general, I try not to look at them because what I'm more worried about is people learning from me. Am I impacting people? Are people finding me and reaching out to work with me?
Am I getting opportunities to be on podcasts and to, do cool things as a brand? That's what's more important to me. So what I would love you to do is to think about what's important to you. Is it sales? Is it wholesale orders? Is it like branding opportunities like that, that I just said, like being on podcasts, like that sort of thing?
What is it that matters to you? And think about those rather than the other metrics, like likes and views and all of that stuff, because does it matter? Maybe not. Okay.
Number nine is to be authentic. And I know this is a buzzword the buzzword to end all buzzwords. But when you have like really gone to know yourself and uncovered who you are and what makes you, and what makes you special who you want to be online and as an artist what your work is, and how you want to share that with the world.
It is so much easier to market yourself and to show up and create content and share that with the world than when you are trying to be someone that you're not and when you are trying to follow trends and follow other people and, yeah, to pretend to be someone else. As much as you can. And again, I know this is hard and I know that is easier said than done sometimes, but go through the brand strategy process.
Learn about your personality, uncover who you are, and get in touch with yourself a little. And figure out like, what does it mean to me to be authentically myself? And how do I want to show up? And how do I start doing that? And what would it mean if I just said, stuff it, I'm just going to be myself and try to share who I am and see what happens.
And say, yeah, I'm just gonna show up and if people don't like it, they don't like it, but I'm going to see if I can find the people who do. I'm hoping you will find that will be, it might initially be a little difficult as you will learn to, just be yourself and not be afraid to do that. But over time you will discover that it's a lot easier to stop, pretending and trying to fit in and trying to do what everybody else is doing
Easier to just be yourself and be authentic and just be who you are.
Last but not least, I think a great way to prioritise your mental health when marketing your creative business is to find your community because having A group of people, whether it's one person, a few people, or a group of people who are also doing this, also creatives, maybe trying to market their business as well, who understand what it's like to be in this position, helps so much in, When you are, putting yourself out there, you are sharing your work with the world, you are doing your best to reach new people and to get sales and to get opportunities and to make your dream a reality, it makes a huge difference to have people around you who get that and who.
Can share their experiences of doing that and can give you feedback can tell you about their experience when they've done certain things and tried certain things. And can give you a pep talk when things are hard. Cheer you on when things are going and all of that stuff.
Whether it's like reaching out to people who you've admired online and, Reaching out to them to talk to them or finding a community like mine, The Next Level Creative™ or other ones online. There are so many local ones in your community, whatever it is, whoever it is, find a community of people who you can have around you to support you.
Will make a huge difference for sure.
Okay, so those have been 10 tips to help you prioritise your mental health when marketing your creative business. So they have been Using your brand strategy. So making sure you are referring back to that all the time using it to help you make decisions and cut out all the things that are not aligned with your brand.
Sticking to your values. Being selective, so don't be doing everything all at once. Following your strengths. Knowing your limits. Setting boundaries. Delegating if and when you can. Paying attention only to the metrics that matter or not at all. Being authentic and finding your community. I hope that one, or many, or all of those have been helpful for you this week.
If you have any more tips that you would love to share with the community, please let me know and I will share them on social media, that would be great. Other than that, I hope you have enjoyed this one. And as I mentioned, if you would love a community to help you with stuff like this, please check out The Next Level Creative™.
It is a branding lab designed to help you get more customers, grow your audience, and get branding opportunities on repeat. And we have a community that's designed to be a community that can support you with stuff like this. So I would love to have you in there. You can check it out. The link in the show notes or you can just go to thenextlevelcreative.com to join that.
And I mentioned a lot of other episodes in this episode. So those will all be linked in the show notes as well. So you can keep listening, and keep learning. Otherwise, I will see you in the next one.