How To Successfully Start Out On Your Own When You’re Self-Taught
When you know that you’re a creative person deep down, you may have always wanted to pursue a creative career. However, this doesn’t always happen for us all. You may find that, as much as you love the idea of being a writer or designer or anything else, you just didn’t pursue it in school or right when you graduated. Maybe you had other ideas, or your parents did. Maybe you went down the law path or medicine or finance – or something else entirely different – because you knew it was reliable and secure. However, at the same time, it’s not all that fulfilling when you truly believe that you should be doing something else! When you want to be an author or go freelance or start your own design firm. So, you don’t, and you just keep on going.
However, if you don’t act on that, you may find that it never leaves you. And when you are always haunted by your desires, you’ll find that you do give in eventually. This is often why so many people start creative side hustles. Or they study in the evenings. Or they just start something new. And it’s why you should too. You can absolutely just get started, teach yourself the skills you need, and learn as you go along. However, you may also find that you experience imposter syndrome because of this. And it can make you terrified of starting out or publicizing what you do. Let’s take a look at how you’ll overcome that.
Just Start
The very first thing that you can do here, is just getting started. Don’t worry so much about it, or panic that you can’t do it. Just start. If you want to do it enough, you need to just begin. Start writing, practice your designs, just spend some time creating. First thing in the morning or at night. Just create, and then, you can start to take it somewhere!
Learn What You Can
Then, you’re going to want to learn what you can. Now, you may not be able to get formal education here, nor may you want to, but you will probably need to learn some things. So learn by getting online. Do some research. Speak to experts in the field. Network. Join online classes held by experts you respect. Just try to learn what you can so that you are best equipped to make this happen!
Do
Now, something that you need to embrace is the art of learning by doing. Yes, you can learn by reading or via instruction, but you will learn so much more by doing. If you just try, you’re going to have a much better chance at understanding how something works. So don’t panic so much, and don’t spend so much time researching, just have a go and see what you can learn that way.
Read Up
But then also, something that you may find really helps you to learn what you can, is reading. The more than you can read, the more you will learn. This can be online and learning specific things like how to access iCloud photo library, or books. Even reading lots of books can help you to learn so much about your creative field and business in general. And this will add more value to your career than you will know!
Create A Website
Now, you’re going to want to have your own website. No matter what you do, this is your promotional tool. And you can create it yourself with little investment to. Just make sure that you’re showcasing what you do, and you’re able to put your experience on there, and to land work with it.
Ask For The Experience
To help with that, you need experience. And you need to ask for it. Work for free at first or knock down doors. It’s scary, but if this is going to work and you’re going to be able to make it a full-time thing, you have to put yourself out there. And then, you can build upwards from it.
Be Yourself
It’s easy to feel as if you have to pretend to be more professional, or experienced, or like the other people that are in your niche. But this isn’t going to help you. Instead, you need to be yourself. When you’re being yourself, you may find that you’re more comfortable with your work and other will relate to you more too. And you can build your audience and customer base around this.
Focus On How You’re Helping
Now, when you’re self-taught, you often feel imposter syndrome more than others. You don’t always feel as if you’re qualified enough to sell a skill or ask for money for what you do. And this can make you terrified of sales! Yet, instead of worrying about ‘selling’, focus on how you’re helping. Because when you’re thinking about helping others, you’ll find that you can push your sales and reach out to help others.
Set Goals For Yourself
Then, when it comes to driving the business forward, you need goals. Yes, you may be doing okay now, but okay is just not enough. You want to make this your livelihood, your future. So, to do that, you need to be goal setting. Because when you can work out what you want to achieve, it can act like a driving force for you to actually make it happen. Because to find success, you often have to plan the right steps towards it!
Decide When You’re Ready
Finally, when it comes to taking your creative career full-time, and walking away from what you’ve been doing up until this point, you have to know when it’s right for you. First of all, it should be the right time financially. So you need to be earning enough (ideally what you already earn), and have money in savings. But also, you have to know that your work is flowing, you have customers, and that you know it will be sustainable. And then, you’ve done it!