HOW TO DIVERSIFY YOUR CREATIVE INCOME
Tags: Creative Life, Actors, Financial Planning

HOW TO DIVERSIFY YOUR CREATIVE INCOME

To help overcome the fallout from COVID and get back on your financial feet, Monica Davidson’s advice is to think less like an employee and more like a business. Equity Follow Dec 17, 2020 · 4 min read

Performing artists, like other professionals affected by the maelstrom of 2020, have been told that the key to survival is to pivot. As we all know, however, ‘pivot’ is a dance term. We know how to pivot, usually with a snappy step-ball-change and some jazz hands for effect. What we struggle with is diversification.

‘Pivoting’ implies that we need to stop what we were once doing, in favour of doing something else. ‘Diversification’ means we can keep doing what we were once doing, when we’re allowed to, but add some complementary activities to the mix to help us become less dependent on any one source of income (including grants). Think of this as more complex and interesting choreography than a boring stop-start pirouette.

It pays to think more like a business, rather than simply an employee, when diversification is needed. Employment in the performing arts can be a ‘passive’ way of working. We wait for someone to call and offer us a job, we are loyal to that contract until it’s over, then we wait patiently for another opportunity, and so on.

Thinking like a business means bringing a proactive mindset to the work. Rather than waiting, we seek out opportunity.

We make the first move, whether that’s a Zoom coffee with a potential collaborator or producing our own work. We are more promiscuous in our search for other opportunities and make the most of the numerous creative skills we have been gifted.

Creative industries business expert Monica Davidson.

A personal-skills audit can be a great way of establishing what those multiple offerings may be. To start, brainstorm your different areas of expertise around your core profession:

· What are your most important skills as a performing artist?

· Have you developed any extensions to your craft? These are areas you’ve focused attention on, or found talent in, and developed more than the basics — for example, dance or voice?

· Do you work in any speciality areas or genres, such as comedy or physical theatre, within your profession?

Next, think more broadly about your complementary and transferable skills.

Are you good at:

· Something from your personal life that could be useful in your professional life — for example, parenthood; cooking; living with a disability or an affinity for animals?

· Interacting effectively with other people, influencing, leading or educating?

· Understanding and improving processes, managing projects and thinking strategically?

· Providing a vision for something new or better? Analysing and synthesising complex information?

· Being entrepreneurial? Do you enjoy marketing or have a flair for business?

· Creative work outside of your core skills, in an unrelated field?

· Speaking another language, or communicating complex ideas to other people?

Think about how you could bring together your various abilities and generate income in innovative ways.

As a ‘cheat sheet’, you could also try:

· Further investigating the myriad grants, funding opportunities and financial prizes that might be applicable to your skills.

· Teaming up with other creatives to develop products, such as downloadable goodies, or merchandise that could be sold through a third party.

· Working out ways to create content over which you hold copyright, which could then be sold, licensed or used to create passive income streams, such as online workshops.

· Signing up for a subscription model of financial support, such as Patreon.

· Teaching, mentoring and generally sharing your expertise with others.

Of course, this list makes all those ideas look simple to accomplish. In reality, nothing is going to generate fast, easy money — in business, there’s no such thing.

Diversification is the process of patience, of trial and error, of testing and failure until the right combination comes along.

Diversification is also part of a bigger picture of taking professional control, broadening your financial literacy and managing your own money. That can be a terrifying prospect, but, like anything scary, it will seem much less horrible if you turn on the light. With patience, time and a little education, you can increase your financial literacy and feel more confident about money management.

By taking the first steps towards a more business-like approach to your career and skills, you could also empower your inner entrepreneur (however tiny) and move from endlessly pivoting to a purposeful stride in the right direction.

For more help with understanding business, money and marketing for creatives, visit creativeplusbusiness.com