Artist or problem-solver—which kind of creative studio should you build?

Steph and Ben approach their Solo Studios from very different directions. Ben is drawn to business, systems, education, products, and creatively solving problems. Steph wants to make personal work that creates emotion, conversation, and human connection.

In this candid episode, they challenge each other’s assumptions—and confront the temptation to believe that someone else’s studio is more legitimate, profitable, meaningful, or enjoyable than their own.

They also explore the opportunities hiding inside personal work. What if the concept in your portfolio became a real product, event, or business? What if you stopped apologizing for making something “silly” and started asking what it could become?

In this episode:

• Artist-led versus problem-solving studios

• Why creativity doesn’t always have to produce “art”

• The insecurities that exist on both sides

• Why teaching isn’t the only path to a Solo Studio

• Identifying the advantages and superpowers you take for granted

• Balancing creative expression with serious business decisions

• Promoting personal work without making everything about yourself

• Why copying another creator’s studio can lead you in the wrong direction

• Turning portfolio concepts into real products and experiences

• Building a studio around who you actually are

The goal isn’t to decide which studio model wins. It’s to recognize your natural strengths, interests, experiences, and obsessions—and build from those instead of constantly looking at someone else’s paper.

Explore Maker Division:

https://www.makerdivision.com/

CHAPTERS

00:00 What should your Solo Studio look like?

01:49 Why some creatives don’t feel like artists

02:46 Does creativity have to mean art?

05:04 Artist or problem-solver?

07:46 Two very different studio models

09:02 How Ben built a problem-solving studio

14:11 Is “silly” work still valuable?

16:28 Teaching isn’t the only path

20:00 Why Ben wouldn’t recommend following his path

23:00 Experience, repetition, and hidden advantages

26:12 Take inventory of your superpowers

27:41 Stop comparing your studio to everyone else’s

30:08 Balancing creativity and business

32:46 Making room for play

34:51 How Steph’s studio evolved

43:01 The courage to make—and promote—personal work

48:04 Accepting a business-focused studio

49:40 Building differentiated income streams

52:29 Shape your studio around what makes you different

54:56 What if your personal work became real?

57:46 If you can’t stop thinking about it, do it

What kind of studio are you building: artist, problem-solver, or something in between? Tell us in the comments.

Interested in joining Maker Division’s next Las Vegas retreat?

[https://www.makerdivision.com/m/maker-vegas]

Learn more about the Solo Studio:

[https://youtu.be/dZEd0l9zU8E?si=LlEJS3rsNgshPPc1]

You don’t need a huge audience — or a famous name — to create an in-person experience people will value.

In this episode, Steph and Ben pull back the curtain on planning profitable, small-group retreats and workshops for creatives. They share what they learned from Maker Division’s Las Vegas events, why intimate gatherings can be more transformative than large conferences, and how a retreat can become another income stream for your Solo Studio.

They also get honest about the work involved: choosing the right location, setting attendance thresholds, vetting participants, designing an experience around what people actually need — and preparing for those last-minute food allergies.

In this episode:

• Why five to twenty attendees may be the ideal retreat size

• How to validate an event with a small audience

• Retreats versus conferences — and what each does best

• How to make a small event financially viable

• Why teaching should be 20% delivery and 80% support

• How to lead a workshop without positioning yourself as a guru

• Turning your existing creative skills into an in-person experience

• Starting small, learning from the first event, and improving as you go

If you’ve ever thought, “I’m not big enough to do this,” Steph and Ben want to challenge that. You don’t need to rent a hotel ballroom, hand out lanyards, or plan trust falls. Start with something useful, invite the right people, and see who shows up.

Interested in joining Maker Division’s next Las Vegas retreat?

[https://www.makerdivision.com/m/maker-vegas]

Learn more about the Solo Studio:

[https://youtu.be/dZEd0l9zU8E?si=LlEJS3rsNgshPPc1]

Should every creative pick a niche — or has that advice done more harm than good?

In this episode, Steph and Ben put their decade-plus experience helping creatives build and grow their practices on the record. They break down the important differences between specializing, niching, and positioning — and explain why treating them as interchangeable can lead to what they call the “niching nightmare.”

They also share their own experiences falling into profitable niches, why they eventually chose to leave them, and how niching can pull creatives away from the craft they originally loved.

Maker Division is coursework, coaching, and community for creatives building a business around their craft. Big fall ahead, including our retreat in Vegas on scaling your studio beyond clients. Everything gets announced to the newsletter first: https://www.makerdivision.com

Creatives go into business to create... and then resist creating unless somebody else is paying for it. Ben and Stephanie get into why.

They break the resistance into four camps: the ROI camp who won't spend an unbillable hour, the identity camp who don't see themselves as artists, the people for whom making is genuinely painful, and the perfectionists sitting on an idea they're too scared to ruin. Then they hand over the receipts. The internship Ben landed with a portfolio he faked overnight. The Chewbacca illustration that turned into Star Wars, Marvel, and DC licensing deals. Five figure lettering work that started with free online workshops taken for no reason at all.

The honest answer to "how do you know it will work" is that you don't. The alternative is a sure zero.

Maker Division is coursework, coaching, and community for creatives building a business around their craft. Get on the newsletter at makerdivision.com. Everything about this fall, including our Vegas retreat on scaling your studio beyond clients, goes there first.

Not every project needs a case study or a cap deck. Some of your best work just needs to be seen.

Ben and Steph break down the three ways creatives show their work to clients: the lookbook, the capabilities deck, and the case study. When each one wins, when it costs you the job, and why it all comes down to who's hiring you and what they're really buying. Two very different careers, one shared conclusion: there's no single right way to do this.

You just need the work to prove it.

Off-Season, our 8-week summer accountability cohort, is open now. Doors close July 11, cohort runs July 22 to September 9. → makerdivision.com/off-season

FREE WORKSHOP: Design Your Lookbook
Join us this Tuesday for a free workshop, Design Your Lookbook, taught by Stephanie Owens:

https://makerdivision.myflodesk.com/lookbook

This episode is brought to you by Maker Division, our community for creatives building real businesses around their craft.
https://makerdivision.com

Ben Burns and Stephanie Owens kick off a conversation they've been circling for a while: the solo studio. The idea is simple. You put your craft at the center and build a handful of income streams around it, client work, products, licensing, teaching, events, sponsorships, so you get to keep making the work you actually care about.

This one's a little rambly on purpose. Ben and Steph are both running their own solo studios right now and figuring this out in real time, so you're getting two creatives thinking out loud, changing their minds, and pulling from recent examples in their own careers. If you've ever felt like your personal work matters less than your client work, this episode is for you.

You'll hear us get into:

• Why your "personal work" is really studio work, and why that reframe changes everything
• The income streams that support a craft instead of replacing it
• Why client work is a one-time payout and studio work compounds
• How nearly every good opportunity comes from sharing the work and staying open
• Why focus, one project at a time, makes or breaks the whole thing

Chapters

• (00:00) The solo studio, defined
• (01:55) Why client services is the easiest first stream
• (04:27) Reframing personal work as studio work
• (06:15) One-time payouts vs. work that compounds
• (08:15) Studios we admire and steal from
• (10:05) Why sharing the work attracts the opportunities
• (12:27) Show what you make, not just what you think
• (14:23) Ben's "client work desert" and staying in the game
• (15:35) Hobbies vs. craft: protecting the joy
• (20:31) Stop stacking services, dig deeper into one
• (22:02) Not wanting employees and the shadow artist trap
• (24:00) Inside Ben's studio: design, Maker Division, Watson, speaking, Circle
• (27:44) Inside Steph's studio: physical work and her rock-song cocktail project
• (33:16) Focus: why "one at a time" matters
• (35:08) Getting comfortable with content when you make what you love
• (39:48) Make cool stuff, show people, share the journey, stay open
• (40:49) How the Adobe and Show It opportunities actually happened
• (50:27) Stop measuring everything by ROI
• (51:08) Meaningful work, meaningful money

Mentioned in this episode
Matthew Encina, Young Jerks, House Industries, Hoodzpah, DKNG, Invisible Creatures, Aaron Draplin, Chris Misterak and Show It, Adobe, Circle, Domestica, and Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way (the shadow artist idea).

Welcome to the first episode of the Maker Division podcast.

Ben Burns and Stephanie Owens decided to start a podcast on Friday and hit record on Tuesday — which makes "starting before you're ready" the only honest topic for episode one.

In this conversation, they get into why creatives stall out: the baggage we drag into new projects, the fear of being seen, the websites that don't need to exist yet, the capabilities decks that don't get sent, and the "good idea fairy" that inflates every project until it dies in the personal projects inbox. They share what's held them back personally — from cruel YouTube comments to expertise becoming a curse — and the actionable shifts that helped them ship anyway.

What we cover:

• Why "knowing better" can make starting harder
• The real reason you haven't finished your capabilities deck
• Why your website isn't the bottleneck you think it is
• Sales as a "noble obstacle" — and why it's less scary than you think
• Defining your Minimum Viable Perfect
• The 15-minute rule (borrowed from Neil Gaiman)
• Why your first version doesn't have to be your best version

Mentioned in this episode:

• John Acuff, Finish
• Neil Gaiman's MasterClass
• Chris Voss, Never Split the Difference
• Mary Shelley, Hitchcock, and Crumbin all going back to revise their "finished" work

If you've been sitting on a project, a portfolio, or a piece of content waiting until it's ready — this one's for you.