The real truth that all the #handsandhustle memes gloss over

On this episode of the Art with Soul podcast, I deconstruct a meme that hypes up starting a business versus working a regular job. We touch on what it really takes to run an art business, the fallacy of tying up meaning and life purpose with a career, and the validity of creating art for the love of it. This is a juicy episode, on a subject that is very close to my heart. Tune in!

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There’s a narrative that is so pervasive that many of us have unintentionally internalized it. And that’s the thrust towards “passion to profit”. Got a hobby? Great, monetize it! What’s worse, is the hot takes that that extoll running a business over holding down a job.

Here’s a recent tweet that exemplifies this trend {I’m not linking to it or putting it in as a screenshot because I’m not calling out a particular individual here}

“In 2022, most 9 to 5 jobs are not worth working. All you get is a commute, inefficient income, no control over your time, pay that does not scale with effort. This made sense before the internet, it doesn’t now.”

I’m pretty sure we’ve all seen variations of this theme in online memes and shareable quotes. There’s something fundamentally flawed with the whole push towards monetizing everything that you do because the internet has made it possible — it feeds into toxic productivity and capitalism and is designed, mainly, to keep the “business coaches” in business.

This isn’t to say that turning your art into a business is somehow wrong — it isn’t. It is simply to highlight a dominant narrative that pushes many people onto a path that they aren’t really prepared for and sometimes don’t really want.

Tune in as we talk about:

• The pros and cons of holding down a job vs starting a business

• The reality of running an art business

• The fallacy of finding your life purpose in your job or career or business

• A little thought experiment to help you determine if you truly want to start an art business or if you’ve brainwashed into thinking you should

• And much more!

“We all want different things, but the messaging that we are often bombarded with — from people who want to teach us how to quit our jobs and get into business to keep them in business — doesn’t always let us think for ourselves. I’ve seen so many creatives caught up in that conundrum. They try multiple times to put themselves out there only to realize it isn’t for them. And then they wonder if there’s something wrong with them. And there isn’t! it’s just this dream we are sold, like it’s the only dream worth having or the only life worth living.”

Resources mentioned on this episode of Art with Soul Podcast

Here are the links to the things I mentioned on this episode:

Episode 23: Becoming your own patron

The wooden purse that my husband built in collaboration with a ceramic artist.

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