32: How a Simple Question Can Transform Your Approach

You know, maybe it's an instant yes for you, but I thought it was interesting that it wasn't an instant yes for me. It was an entirely new level of maturity as a designer for me that I didn't tap into for the first several years of my experience. 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 all over the world, but also teaching others how to design their creative life and experience the same success. 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. Now, I've been doing a couple of shorter episodes because if you've been in my world, you know that this has been the busiest month of our entire year. We just opened and closed enrollment for the Surface Design Immersion course, and the class of 2023 officially began this week. So we are very excited. But I have just a simple episode with a simple question for you today and several episodes that are a bit more tactile or have more strategy in them coming up. The very next one is this Thursday and it's all about how we hire alumni for what we call the Love Squad. So I can't wait to share more with you about that. For now, let's dive into today's lesson. Something that you hear me say all the time is create the beauty that you want to see come alive in the world. In fact, it's the sign off for this podcast, right? But I thought I would tell you a little bit more about how I came about that phrase, because there was a time in my life where I actually wasn't creating the beauty that I actually wanted to see come alive in the world. So let me tell you about it. I was working on a new fabric collection and I don't know if you've ever worked on a collection of things that go together before, but in doing so, you kind of get lost in the if this then that you know mode, especially when it involves color. You want to really balance out the Color from one pattern or piece of art to the next. And so I was kind of in this design hole, if you will, making decisions based on previous decisions. And I finalized this collection and I felt really good about it. I thought it was well balanced. It had, you know, pulled all the right colors into the right direction. And then something about that day just had me. Me step back and look at it and say, but would you buy every piece of that art that you just created? And the answer was, actually, no, I wouldn't. And it was a brand new way of looking at my artwork, meaning how come I just designed some things that I wouldn't necessarily want to use in my very own life. And so I think about my artwork in a completely different way now. I, of course, still go into the this collection driven, you know, mode where everything has to be balanced, but at the forefront of every decision is, is this the beauty? Is this the thing that I want to have brought into the world? Do I want to give birth to this particular piece of art? And it's changed everything for me. It's changed my approach to work. It's changed how I feel like a piece of work is finished and how I feel about it at the end. And it has made it feel like I don't create artwork for the sake of creating artwork. I create it with real intention behind it. And it ends up meaning that I absolutely love the work that I do now as well. But one thing that has come from viewing my work in this way that has been especially helpful is that I think that it has very much strengthened my signature style. Because now I can't just make work work that I'm capable of making, but I have to make work that I truly want to put my name behind that I want to be the person who brought this to life in the world. And I think that this perspective is really helpful for any creator. You know. If you are a musician, are you writing songs that you would love to listen to? If you are a potter, are you making pieces that you yourself would love to use in your home? If you're a writer, are you writing pieces that you. You yourself would love to sit down and just devour? You know, maybe it's an instant yes for you, but I thought it was interesting that it wasn't an instant yes for me. It was an entirely new level of maturity as a designer for me that I didn't tap into for the first several years of my experience. So even though it may seem obvious, I want you to ask yourself the next time you've finished a piece of work that you're doing, then evaluate the quality of it and the value of it and ask yourself, would you buy it if you saw it out into the real world? For me, this is typically in the form of fabric or wallpaper. Would I use this wallpaper in my home, or would I use this fabric? Now, this begs the question, what if you really aren't the type of person who uses wallpaper, but you love to design wallpaper, and of course there's room for that there' for that. So maybe this question changes to, would you buy it for a friend? You know, would you appreciate it if you saw it out in the wild? By creating the beauty that I want to see come alive in the world, my work becomes more personal. And it feels like it's very much a reflection of my stories and really my very soul. Now, this can make it feel more vulnerable and scary, but also more beautiful. It can help your work feel undoubtedly you. And that's why your style will grow along with it. And now, of course, it feels more vulnerable to put work that feels really personal out into the world. But I promise you, it will be worth it. So this is just a simple episode with a simple question. Would you buy your own work? Consider shifting your mission as a creative to creating the beauty that you actually want to see come alive in the world. Because the world truly needs the beauty that you are ready to put into it. Always remember, there's room for you.