#25: The Weeds & Seeds of Growing a Creative Business

When pursuing big creative dreams, we all tend to struggle with so many of the same troubles, yet we often feel alone in them. I'm Bonnie Christine and this is where all things creativity, design, business and marketing unite. I'm a mama living in a tiny town tucked right inside the Smoky Mountains, running a multi seven figure business, doing the most creative and impactful work of my life. But when I first set out to

become an entrepreneur, I was struggling to make ends meet and wrestling with how

to accomplish my biggest dream of becoming a fabric designer.

Fast forward to today.

I'm not only licensing my artwork all

over the world, but also teaching others

how to design their creative life and experience the same success. This I'm here to help you spend your life doing something that lights you up.

I'll help you build a creative business

that also creates an impact, changes people's

lives, gives you all of the freedom

you want, and is wildly profitable.

Welcome to the Professional Creative Podcast.

After teaching for years and honestly having a front row seat to literally thousands of student journeys, I began to notice a few trends. Something that was surprising to me is that really when pursuing big creative dreams, we all tend to struggle with so many of the same troubles, yet we often feel alone in them. What this did was it led me to developing something that I call the weeds and the seeds. This is something that we use in all of our programs, but I'm so excited to share it with you today here as well. The weeds are things like overwhelm, fear, imposter syndrome, perfectionism, not feeling like we have enough time or technology learning curves that all love to stop our progress and stall our ability to see with clarity. These weeds, as we call them, can quickly take over and they love to choke out our creativity. Weeds pop up all the time, but as we learn to identify them, we can quickly learn how to pluck them out and replace them with seeds. Now, seeds are the solutions that help us continue to make progress on our goals and sustain our growth. They are abundant and beautiful and they help us embody practices like slowing down to take things one step at a time, or researching when we feel overwhelmed and letting our unique perspective shine. By identifying the weeds in our life, we can learn how to turn them into seeds so that we can continue growing in our creative businesses. Does that sound good? So we've identified eight weeds and seeds that I want to share with you today and they all reference gardening and plants because that is what I love so much and so just go with me. Of course I am also giving you a beautiful download for today's episode, where all of these weeds and seeds are illustrated for you, they're not only illustrated, but they're actually printed in a way where you can turn them into cards where the weed is on one side and the seed is on the other side. And so I literally keep a deck of these by my computer because these are all things that we struggle with at different times in our career, no matter how far we get. And so anytime I'm feeling a tech thorn or I'm feeling overwhelmed, I can grab this and just remember that I need to pluck it out and replace it with the seed.

So are you ready to dive in?

The very first weed that we all struggle with, no matter who we are, no matter how far along we are in our career, is what we call the orchard of overwhelm. This is when it feels like we are just walking through, through an orchard full of overwhelm. We can't see through the other side. We are stuck. The seed that helps us overcome this overwhelm, we call step by step sage. This is the wise one that reminds us to take a deep breath and just take things one step at a time. Knowing how to break things down into systematic steps will help us make progress slowly and steadily. Weed number two is something we call the grass is greener. The grass is greener is a syndrome that we all have, which means, you know, we're really looking at someone else and feeling like their grass is greener than ours. Have you ever felt this way? If so, it's time to change your focus to the seed that we call watering willow. Of course, you can admire other people's work and celebrate their successes, but when it comes to action, embodying watering willow will help you tend to your own garden. And then you will be able to see all of the magic that you're growing right where you stand. Number three is the fearful fern. This weed loves to see us just coil up in the feeling of fear. And this shows up for us in places where we're afraid to show our work or afraid to let people see us for who we really are. It's where we're making fear based decisions. The seed to this one is called Shining Sunflower. And so we named it this because sunflowers always face the sun. And so we want to encourage you, if you're feeling fearful, to turn and face the sun. Take record of your accomplishments and how you got to where you are today. Meet each day and each decision with a mindset of abundance. And most of all, embrace your unique perspective. And remember, while it may have all been done before, it has not been done by you. Dear Sunflower Number four is something we call the Tech Thorn. I've never met anybody who wasn't very familiar with this one. The Tech Thorn means that we're having tech issues. It embodies all of our tech woes and our software learning curves. The hesitation and frustration can cause us to freeze. It is something that we all work through. The seed is called Research Rose because we know that blooms come above the thorns and it knows that technology is here to stay. It makes our life easier in so many ways and it's absolutely worth slowing down and doing our research. And it's by way of research that we'll be able to simplify tech and learn it step by step. Number five is called Tight on Time. It's easy to feel like we don't have enough time to do what we need to do. Like there aren't enough hours in the day to work on our creative dreams. Watch out for the voice that says I don't have time, because the truth is you're just spending it doing something else. Not having the time to work towards your goal is the number one excuse for not making progress. The seed for this weed is called Nectar Nook. Your Nectar Nook is that sweet time that you can claim to work on your craft by finding time in the nooks and the crannies. We all have the same amount of time every day and just 15 minutes a day adds up to over 90 hours in a year. So learn to focus and don't be afraid to ask for help even with the simplest of tasks. Just find a nectar nook of 15 minutes every day to work on your creative dream.

I am so excited to share with you a brand new project we've been working on. It's called 60 by 60 because there are 60 incredible artists who have come together to share with you one way that they create income from their artwork in under 60 seconds each. Which means that it's 60 minutes of incredible knowledge and wisdom being shared by some insanely talented artists that I know you're going to love. Our hope is that it not only shows you what's possible, but it also encourages you and helps you get clarity on the very next steps you want to take in your own creative endeavor. And it's entirely free. We've also created an interactive directory with all of the artists included so that you can go dive into all of their worlds and get to know them a little bit better to watch the Video. Head on over to BonnieCristine.com Income again, that's BonnieCristine.com Income. You'll be able to watch the 60 by 60 video right away and we cannot wait to meet you there.

Number six is the Perfect Poppy. This one is all about perfectionism and even though it's virtually unattainable, we love to let it slow us down. If you are trying to achie perfection, chances are you'll never get to where you want to be. Watch out for things like making countless revisions and second guessing yourself all the time. The Perfect Poppy uses analysis paralysis to end our progress. The seed for this weed is called Forward Ficus. Forward Ficus knows that it doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to be moving forward. As long as you keep moving forward, even if it's little tiny consistent steps, you will continue to make progress on your goals. Number seven is dormant days. Do you ever feel like you are just lying dormant, like you're waiting for the right nutrition and the sunshine to come sprout you? I think that we all feel dormant from time to time. And the thing about dormant seeds are that they are completely viable with enormous potential for growth. But they don't germinate because they're waiting for steady internal or environmental conditions to start their growth. So the seed for this is consistent cosmos. This seed knows that it's by daily meeting needs that will lead to slow and steady growth. With this steady stimulus, dormant seeds will begin to germinate and slowly grow from a seedling into a beautiful flowering plant. Dormant plants can awake from a season of rest and get back into growth at any time. Number eight is a weed that we call Isolated ivy. This is one that pops up for us when we're feeling very alone in our creative endeavors, which I think is something we all need to talk more about. Creative entrepreneurship can be so lonely. You may be moving through all of the stages by yourself. You may feel like no one understands your work or what you're doing. No one knows how to support you, and isolation will slowly stifle your creativity. So the seed for this one is something we call Connected Clover. Connected Clover finds community and support by intentionally connecting regularly with like minded creatives. This is all about community, an essential part of growth. And the power of a community of like minded supportive friends will help propel you forward and keep your creativity nourished. That is a wrap on our weeds and seeds. I'm going to name them again quickly and I'd love for you to think about what weed are you currently struggling with? I have a hunch that there's at least one because there absolutely is always at least one for me. The weeds and seeds are orchard of Overwhelm to step by step sage. The grass is greener and watering willow. The fearful fern and shining sunflower. Techthorn and research rose Tight on thyme and nectar nook. Perfect poppy and forward ficus. Dormant days and consistent cosmos. An isolated ivy and connected clover. I hope that this just gives you a way out when you're feeling those weeds. I actually love that this weeds and seeds process kind of takes the weed from feeling like something that you are and it places it over beside you. I like to give them names because it helps me almost villainize them. Like rather than saying I am overwhelmed, I can say something like, oh, the orchard of Overwhel is visiting. I'm gonna kick it out with the step by step sage. And so it really helps me separate the things that I'm feeling and struggling from the feeling of who I am. And I also think that it's really life giving to just know that you're not alone if you're going through any of these feelings. They're so popular that they made it onto the weeds and the seeds. There are things that we all struggle with so much, yet we can all work through to go back to connected clover. It's always better to work through these things together because, my friend, we are better together. Thank you for tuning in to another episode of the Professional Creative podcast. Be sure to hop on over to professionalcreative.com where you'll find today's download this beautiful. I wish you could see it right now. This stunning download of all of these weeds and seeds illustrated for you. You can also find show not all of our other episodes over there as well. It's professionalcreative.com friend work to create the beauty you want to see come alive in the world. And remember, there's room for you. I'll see you next time on the next episode.