HOW WILL YOU MAKE MONEY AS A CREATIVE?!

So with fine arts majors having the worst job prospects in the US the music industry continuing to decline, and employment in design and arts occupations expected to grow by only about 3% from now until 2028, which is slower than average for all occupations. It may look more and more like your grandmother or your mom was right that it's just time to think about a plan B. So in high school, all I ever wanted was to make a living doing things that I actually love to do. And what's crazy is that I get to do that every day. And when I'm telling people what I do, whether that's playing music, working with YouTubers, or helping do brand strategy for people like yourself, the follow up question to that is always, so how do you actually make money? Well, I sell drugs, of course.

And while I don't actually sell drugs, people probably think that that's a way more lucrative job possibility than trying them my creativity. So as a creative that's just dipping their toe in the water on trying to figure out how to make some money doing the things that you love to do, how to find jobs that you actually enjoy, you might be sitting in front of the screen and saying, is it actually worth putting time and effort into this thing? If these jobs actually exist, then how do I even find them? And how do I do it the right way? So let's start by taking a bird's eye view of the job market and what's currently happening. The Bureau of Labor Statistics recently put out this article late last year saying that the average pay for these listed art careers was around $50,730. So what's interesting for me here is how job openings are actually really low. But the percentage of self employed people is really high, coming in at about 60%. So is that a good or a bad thing? And I really think it depends on your mindset. One thing I've learned as a guy that just likes to make his career doing a lot of different things that are creative in nature, is that it can be really good to have multiple skill sets. I personally have made a living being a drummer, a brand strategist, a YouTube strategist, a musician, a producer. I taught marching bands, and I was even engraver at a trophy shop when I was younger. And while most days I probably just wanted to get out of that job, I did actually like that I was able to be creative, even if it was just simple math and basic design layouts. And just like that job for me, what we're seeing more and more is that it's not so much about the skill set you have as it is about the mindset and the things that you're learning by making your own stuff. In this video from Adobe Creative Cloud, Jenny Borelli, who is the primary talent acquisition for LinkedIn, talks about what she's looking for when she's looking to hire somebody new.

Any talent that we bring in, I've kind of bucketed in three categories. I have skills, we have knowledge, and we have mindset. And I always, when I coach, hiring managers and businesses, just hone in on the mindset because the skills and the knowledge you can teach.

So obviously your skills are still important. It's not just the mindset, but it's the skills that you're gaining from having this mindset. It's these skills that you're putting together in a creative way that are really going to hold the test of time. As more and more stuff becomes automated, the CDC published an article stating that one of the seven surprising things that could change the job market by 2030 was mandatory creativity. Creativity is no longer regulated to the worlds of art and design. In fact, it's a skill that business schools are embracing in order to turn out workers who can innovate and solve problems on the fly. The Brookfield report says creativity could soon be the most in demand skill sought by employers across all industries. Where creativity was once thought of as an innate trait that you were either born with or not, what we're finding now more and more is that creativity is a skill that can actually be taught. So how does this relate to the art that you're making now? Should you just be working on Rubik's Cubes and playing Trivial Pursuit and doing some outrageous left of center creative problem solving exercises? Let's go back to Jenny.

You know, I think about this one person. She worked with metal and she was able to connect metal. And is it called solder? Not called solder. It's weld the metal together and every piece that she puts in will make another piece move. And what she is learning is like this piece affects that piece and then that piece and that piece. That's user experience design right there. And although she's using metal, she's learning this way of thinking that is incredible.

So as you're creating your own work, you're actually doing three things. Actually probably more than three things. But for brevity's sake, we're only going to go over these three. Number one, you're building a mindset of confidence. You're starting to build more and more confidence to publish and share the work that you are making. Number two, you're learning creative problem solving by executing on doing the work that you actually like to do. And number three, quite possibly the most important is that you're building a portfolio, a brand and a reputation of somebody that's actually willing to put in the time and work. And these three things are the things that we're noticing are not going to be able to be replaced in the future.

Creative professions As I mentioned before, a lot of jobs are getting automated. All of the creative professions are going to thrive because, yes, we have AI, but it's not that developed yet. It cannot create awesome photographs, it cannot create awesome videos, it cannot edit videos, it cannot write text for you. Yes, it can do some kind of stuff, but it is not yet on a human being's level. So, my dear photographers, vloggers, content creators, video editors, you're going to have a lot of future. And also, like designers, architects, there's a huge future for those professions as well.

So you can see how these skill sets that you're building could not only generate an income for you by getting you some job, but you could also be putting this stuff out there and building a fan base at the same time. And that's going to allow you to monetize on other ends as well. And we know that the more you can diversify your revenue streams, the more likely you are to be able to fully make a living as a creative. And we haven't even touched on social media as a whole and the growing opportunities that we're seeing on these networks and these platforms. And now that you're feeling a little more optimistic about the creative field, There are three things that I think creatives should be doing right now in order to treat themselves more like a professional so they can grow their business and brand. And you can click on this video right here to watch those three things. I think they're really, really important. And until then, remember, there's no better time to be an artist and a creative than right.