From Unemployed to Independent Artist

So, I know a lot of us artists are waiting to take the big leap of faith to someday pursue our own thing outside of whatever other main job we have going on in life. For me, I used to work in animation, and while I was working in animation, I was pursuing my own side projects. I was experimenting a lot during my time working in animation, and eventually when I ended my last project ever, that was my signal to take the leap of faith into doing my own thing. However, that leap of faith I feel like is always a mystery to so many artists still trying to figure out their own independent career paths, if that's something that you want to do. So, today I want to talk more specifically about that leap of faith that I took, and how maybe some of you might find something beneficial out of that for your own creative journey. So, before I get too deep into it though, I do want to say that the leap of faith doesn't happen the moment that you actually quit your job, or your job fires you. I actually think the leap of faith is something that still happens while you are working your job, as that's what I did as well. There are three things that I feel like you need to have set up before you actually do take that total severance of you and that job, which includes building a financial runway, building your own community of creatives that are doing something similar to you, and also having social platforms or at least a presence online before you actually do the physical leap of faith. But by having an online presence, it doesn't always mean just YouTube or Instagram, sometimes it just means having a website that just ranks high in a Google search based on the type of art that you do, and that's why I'd like to thank the sponsor of today's video, Hostinger. So, when I first left my full-time animation industry job, one of the biggest challenges was figuring out how to present myself as an independent artist. I needed a professional space that wasn't just social media, because I needed a website that showcased everything I do in one place. That's where Hostinger comes into play, where Hostinger makes it easy to build a professional website, whether if you want to showcase your portfolio, build a community, or start selling your art online with zero coding required. Let me show you how simple it is to start. So, head over to hostinger.com slash mute tripled, and check out their plans. Now, I always recommend the business website builder plan, as it includes AI tools, SEO features, and e-commerce capabilities, which are crucial if you want to sell your art online. One good thing to note is that there are zero percent transaction fees as well, unlike most other e-commerce platforms that usually take a bigger cut from artists selling their art online. You can select the 48-month plan for the best deal and to maximize your savings, and at the checkout, don't forget to enter the code mute tripled for an extra 10% off. So, when you build the website, Hostinger's AI website builder does most of the work for you. You just have to enter your brand name, describe what you do, and in seconds, you'll get a fully designed website that you can still customize. From there, you can easily drag and drop your portfolio, shop, and press kit, making it truly your own hub as an artist. My favorite feature is the built-in shop, where you can easily upload paintings, prints, digital products, or even teaching workshops all in one place, which reduces the havoc of having to redirect people to different links to find you, and it also simplifies the ways that people can support you as an artist. A website honestly is a must these days. Hostinger is very affordable, easy to use, and helps you with focus on creating instead of struggling with tech. So, click the link down below, hostinger.com slash mute tripled, to get 10% off and start building your website today. Anyway, thanks to Hostinger for sponsoring this video, and now let's talk about the next step to becoming an independent artist. So, the third step is building a financial runway as an artist. So, as I mentioned, while I was working in animation, I was doing side projects after work or before work started to kind of be my side hustle. These things included things like my graphic novel and building a presence online. I would really recommend to not burn yourself during out this stage, and remember that the reason why you have a full-time job is to give you that space to experiment with what would work for you, and for me, that gave me a lot of trial and error to figure out that maybe some things like doing freelance for other smaller studios wasn't really benefiting what my ultimate goal was at the end of the day. Just think of it like an extracurricular for school. It should be enriching you and not be burning you out. Moving on to the fourth step, which kind of is leeching off of the previous one, is it is really important for you to spend this time exploring the different ways to make money, because here's the thing is I feel like a lot of us think that we want to do something, but once you do it, you realize it's not actually what you want to do. I remembered when I was working in animation, a lot of people were building their own small businesses via their Etsy shop where they develop products to sell. That seemed really appealing to me at first, but I think after I've spent my fair share of time trying to do it via my own merch based off of my own projects, I just eventually found that to be not exactly my jam because it relies a lot on the quantity of sales and releasing of new products, which didn't really tie in with what I really wanted to do at the end of the day. But the importance again of having a stable job during this time is to give you that space to explore without the fear of failure. Moving on to step five, saving money is important for sure. I am not a financial advisor, but I think it's common sense to not be consistently spending more than you make monthly. And honestly, I wouldn't overcomplicate this step by going out to speaking to financial advisors. I would just keep it as simple as don't spend more than what you make in a month per month. Step six is build a community with artists, which is what I think one of the most overlooked aspects of this whole journey because I know a lot of us artists are introverts. There are sketch crawls, conventions, and now art retreats that you can join one of mine in the future down in the links below if you're ever interested. This is important because it will help with not just friendship, brainstorming ways to grow as artists in our careers, connection, but also with step seven, which is your eventual social platforms that will kind of become important to you being an independent artist in this day and age. I think that avoiding social media and having a presence online will just only make this journey more difficult for you, but if that's the road you want to take like be my guest and go do that. But in the past I used to suggest posting consistently and having your own schedule to post, but I think these days authentic connections will probably aid in having a more bulletproof online platform for yourself. This is also not to say that all of your followers should be your friends, but if you have a good handful of people who genuinely support you and know you to some level, that network expands through them and they can introduce people they know to your work because while I know I have a lot of people following me who are people that don't have a single clue about who I am as a person, there's still a good percentage of my followers who are just peers or mutual people who just know of me through the animation community or the online space community. So not all of my followers are just exactly fans only. A lot of them are just peers or people that just could be my colleague in another world. So step number eight is if this is the step that you're on because you either lost your job or that you are going to be leaving your job or you quit already, filing for unemployment is important and that's something that I think you'll have to figure out based on the state that you're in. But how I knew for me when to stop receiving unemployment money because when I first finished my last animation project, you just automatically qualify for it. So I was like, I'm not gonna say no to some extra cash. But my unemployment did eventually run out. But on top of that, I also just found myself in a space where I was like, I no longer need these extra few hundreds of dollars per month because what I am doing independently with my own projects is starting to suffice for me. And filling out the form because you have to like fill out a form on a bi-weekly basis to qualify for those two weeks started become a hassle in itself and started disrupting me from my own continual plans of working on my business. And for me, that was kind of my signal to be like, okay Michelle, like you're not really unemployed anymore if you are able to survive on your own things. So I feel like when you reach a point where you're able to make enough money to support yourself and you're not scrambling for these loose change, that's kind of when I would say you're not really unemployed anymore. So as to how to actually make money when you're unemployed, this is when your exploration phase comes to play. All those side hustles that you were exploring while you were working your full-time job, you should be leaning into the ones that proved that they could make more money than the others. You wouldn't have really known what would make more money than the others if you hadn't experimented. So that's why I really say it's important to experiment while you still have a full-time job because most people make the mistake of experimenting after they finish their full-time job and you don't really know what's gonna work. So by the time I was no longer working in animation, I already had a sense of what was gonna work for me versus what was not. I knew that things like having an Etsy shop or doing freelance on the side for other small studios and selling in in-person conventions like Lightbox Expo weren't really contributing to the overall bigger vision I had for myself because what I realized that through these methods is you're kind of relying on smaller lump sums of money, which is fine, but you have to increase the number of sales that you have for these products that you offer. And sometimes it's like building that constant marketing for yourself to constantly market your work in the hopes that enough people will buy enough stuff to accumulate a large amount of money is kind of more tiring for me than just building something that could, you know, offer larger lump sums of money but might not always rely this constant everyday marketing of stuff except for maybe my art career retreats. However, I limit those sizes of the groups to be no bigger than 24 people and usually those in itself are higher ticketed types of products so I don't have to rely on like hundreds of sales just to make a living. I just need to make, you know, a few sales to make a living. And other things other than my art retreats that did work for me though is my social media platform because sponsorships do help with allowing me to continue getting paid to promote myself. So it's not just, I'm not just marketing a business but I'm also marketing myself and kind of getting paid in doing so. And over the course of a year I do make around tens of thousands of dollars via just social media. And the next is graphic novels because graphic novels are another big long-term contractual deal and even though it takes time to make a graphic novel it at least will give you large lump sums of money once again especially during your advances and milestone payments which assuming that you finish your graphic novel in the time span that you finish you shouldn't have a problem receiving those lump sums of money as you expect it to. And then lastly step 10 is being open to re-strategizing. So it's very normal for things that you thought were going to work out to end up not working out because that's just life. You will always be given breadcrumbs of thinking this certain path is going to work out for you and suddenly that could change sometimes overnight for some people. And for me I would at least give yourself one to two years of really giving it your all in the thing that you think was going to work for you before deciding that it's no longer your thing. I think some people jump ship a little bit too early and just feel like something is not for them without giving them themselves the proper time to explore but going back to my original point this is why I think it's important to explore while you do have a full-time job so that you know what is going to work for you. So much of this is not going to work if you don't explore while you are working full-time and I am not going to be one of those creators or influencers who are going to be like quit your job tomorrow if your job is not serving you quit your job. Let's just be realistic for a second. I'm taking a more practical approach and I don't think that people are all in a position to just sever themselves of their financial support overnight because we all live different lives and you don't know what everybody's needs and financial needs are. So that is why I don't recommend jumping ship without a plan in place or experimentation or a proof of concept of something that worked for you beforehand because it only protects you and allows you to chase your dreams while still having the support that you need. But I also wanted to end this video on a reality check though because I think a lot of people experience a lot of shame when they do something like this and it doesn't work out for them but I'm just here to say that it's okay for things to not work out and then go back to your full-time job if that is what ends up happening. There's no shame in trying again and figuring things out again. I think what's worse is giving up on everything 100% entirely. I would say don't let the fear of going back to a full-time job or even a part-time job be the thing that prevents you from figuring out what you really want to do at the end of the day because I think a lot of people are very quick to be like, okay, this didn't work out for me. I'm just going to go back to my full-time job and just not try for that again. If it's something you really want, use that full-time job as a tool and be like, okay, I need to figure this out but I need to be financially supported so I'm just going to go back to a job for the time being and re-strategize or rethink. That's kind of what I would tell myself if I get to a point where nothing I do is really supporting me anymore and I need to go back to animation. Like, I will, you know? So otherwise, those are my 10 tips or 10 steps to how I took the leap of faith from unemployed to independent artist and I hope that this empowers some of you. And other than that, I will see you all in the next one and thanks again for watching this video.