Growth as a small business owner and as a creative is an obstacle that needs to be leapt over. After all when we start a small business we generally enter it doing the thing we love, or why would we do it?
So when the time comes and it's time to adapt, move on ... grow we tend to feel a little like a traitor to that thing. It's easy to sit in your chair reading this saying to yourself ..
Jules, mate. You have it all. You left the City office life and now get to do the very thing you love. Take photos of people.
So much so in fact that an acquaintance of mine actually wants to speak at my funeral, which we all hope is a long long way away and get to speak about how I changes my old life to a new one and stands in awe of the fact that I now spend a lot of time in a photo studio pointing my camera lens at scantily clad, often naked, ladies all in the name of work !!
The truth is that if you look at me in 1995 as a fresh faces, pimple ridden youth fresh out of University I'm way way way different. Hell I'm a wildly different person to the one I was just 12 months ago, and I hope that I'll sit down again this time again next year and feel the same.
I remain hungry, passionate, artistic and unsatisfied. I remain competitive but now the competition is way different. At the beginning we compete with others, as we mature we compete with ourselves.
Side note : I hate when business owners use the word passionate about what they do when there are so many better words. More of that in a different post soon.
If what you are creating doesn't light you up, if your artistic flame has turned into a dull glow, change things. It's only you that can do it. Change your inspiration, change your daily habits, change the surrounds where you work. Change some of the people in your life. Change your stinking attitude. Don't do it all at once, that's a sure fire path to confusion and failure. Change things bit by bit see what happens.
Running at the same wall expecting anything other than the same results we all know what to expect. The same outcome. Bitch about others, hate on them for success, sure an afternoon bitching is actually good for the soul. That said, notice the recurring theme in that conversation, jot it down and move the fuck on.
Growth is a topic I'm going to return to over time but until then .. go grab a glass of something and ponder the things you have done over the last 12 months, and the things you want to do in the next 12 months. The only person responsible for making them happen is YOU ...