"It matters that you invest in an intersection of what you are good at and what you love.

Starting your own business is choosing a challenge where you hold all the controls. Many of us will quickly gravitate towards one of two things: what we are good at or what we love. The sweet spot, in fact, is the beautiful harmony of these two things.

In my career, I have oscillated between these two until I finally learned this lesson and found my success in the balance. My passion is art and creativity, and my strengths are in psychology. In the early iterations of my career, I focused on making money quickly, believing that I should invest in my strengths the most. My early models were to build a business as an independent clinician in psychology, working with as many creative clients as possible.

I was good at this, to be sure, but leading with this foot wore it out. I found myself tired, irritable, unbalanced, and unhappy. Though financially I was finding success, I did not find peace and fulfillment. When I was marketing my business and networking with others, I felt unclear about my messaging, frustrated, and stagnant.

My next business move was out of necessity during the COVID-19 pandemic. After an explosion of clinical work, I experienced total burn-out and took a break from clinical work to reassess. I decided to reconnect with my love of creativity and art. I pursued a certification in Creativity Coaching, spent more of my own time painting, and greatly reduced my clinical caseload to reconsider my business mission.

To be honest, while I should have recovered during this time, my business struggled financially. For about two years, I took a deep dive into branding, business structure, mission and goals, my health, financial goals, and more. I thought about the success I had in business, the balance I found in creativity, and how to combine them.

This was the realization for me: that my natural skills and abilities are only part of success in business. The rest is an equal part of investment in what you love. When I began to rebuild and reopen my business, it included sharing what I knew and loved about creativity in equal parts. I built courses to give others the information that has changed my life. Suddenly, my marketing became easy. My mission statements are clear. Networking was exciting, and I couldn’t wait to talk about my work and my projects with others."