The Entrepreneurial Way
Art class was scary for me. I didn't consider myself an artist — my skills didn't go much beyond stick figures — and yet there I was, required to draw or paint or sculpt. As a young girl, that was terrifying. Showing your work when you're not sure it's good enough is always terrifying.
I don't think being an entrepreneur is much different. We're required to show our work too.
When potential clients call and say "I need a website" and immediately confess "I don't know anything about it" — at that point, I become the teacher. My job is to respond in a way that alleviates their fear of stepping into the unknown, just like a good art teacher does for a kid who can only draw stick figures.
That's really the question at the heart of the entrepreneurial way: Do we have the courage to show our work? And are there people around us who will become our teachers — helping us navigate the unknown waters rather than leaving us to figure it out alone?
After 20+ years of running a creative business, I've found that the entrepreneurs who succeed long-term aren't necessarily the most talented or the best connected. They're the ones who keep showing up. Here's what that actually looks like in practice.
You Build Before You're Ready
Entrepreneurs don't wait for perfect conditions. They build, ship, adjust. The act of doing generates more clarity than any amount of planning. The first version of anything you make will be imperfect — and that's exactly right. Launch it anyway.
You Own Your Mistakes
In a traditional job, mistakes often get minimized or explained away. As an entrepreneur, your mistakes are yours completely. That's uncomfortable — and freeing. When you own what went wrong, you get to actually fix it.
You Stay Curious About Problems
The best entrepreneurs I know are genuinely curious about the problems their clients face. Not curious in a sales-funnel way — actually curious. That curiosity is what drives the insights that lead to better work.
You Treat Constraints as Creative Fuel
Budget limits, time constraints, client requests that feel impossible — these aren't obstacles to the work. They often are the work. The entrepreneurial way means getting comfortable with working inside tight parameters and finding the creative solution anyway.
You Keep Going
Perhaps most simply: you persist. Every creative business hits long stretches of uncertainty, doubt, and slow periods. The entrepreneurial way is not giving up when things get hard. It's keeping one foot moving forward even when the path isn't clear.
None of this is a formula. The entrepreneurial way looks different for everyone. But it always starts with the same question — do you have the courage to show your work? And the answer, even when it's scary, has to be yes.