How many times have you made the excuse about the carpenter’s door, or the cobbler’s shoes when it comes to your own website and marketing efforts? When we make these excuses we usually chalk it up to not having enough time. But I don’t think the problem is lack of time. I think it's because, when it comes to marketing our own services, we don’t know what to do.

In order to maintain a full pipeline of opportunities, you need to always be marketing. If you’re not continually preparing the soil, and planting seeds, don’t be surprised when your fields are bare at harvest time. Or, to change the metaphor, marketing is a marathon, not a 100 yard dash.

When creative freelancers start to become successful they often decide to hire help. But the significant step cost in hiring that first employee—can be a step right off a cliff.

The experience of most creative entrepreneurs is one of feast or famine. But have you ever had a season where you had several ups in a row—more feast than you could consume—more work than you could handle? Many creatives, in an extended feast cycle, decide that it might be time to hire help. But this big step can lead to a place you had no desire to go.

New business involves executing a marketing strategy, which will typically consist of producing content, and initiating lead generation. Your schedule needs to allow time to produce content that validates your positioning claim, and to deploy that content on various platforms such as email and social media.

Every business needs customers, or in the case of creative entrepreneurs, clients. Without your clients you don’t have a business. And so managing the client relationship is essential to running your business. And client relationships, like all relationships, can be complicated. You have to take care of client relationships—because your clients, ultimately, take care of you.

Could anything be more boring to a creative professional than administration? Yet have to face some administrative realities. Not only can managing administrative details be confusing—but as creatives, we tend to revolt at administrative minutia in general. But if we ignore these tasks, they don’t go away—they just become harder to deal with.

Over the past 16 episodes we’ve taken a flyover of the five main subjects that structure this podcast—money, minutes, marketing, management, and motivation. Creative entrepreneurs face unique struggles in each of these areas, as they strive to turn their talents and creative ambitions into profitable, enjoyable, and sustainable businesses.

Creatives tend to identify more deeply with their work than others. We also face artistic angst, and seem to have a deeper appetite for meaning in our work than other kinds of professionals. All of these tendencies can conspire to demotivate us. But there is one thing we can do to maintain motivation in our work...

The pursuit meaning in our work, while a universal pursuit, and a fitting goal, also has a universal trap—which if we’re not careful, can leave us desperately unfulfilled.