How to Hire a Creative Business Coach
Have you ever considered working with a creative business coach?
Do you even really understand how they could help you?
I want you to think about your craft business.
No matter what shape it’s in right now…maybe you just have a pile of sticky notes and you’re still figuring out your niche, or maybe you’ve been in business for years.
Now tell me honestly: Have you ever felt stuck at any point?
Stuck wondering whether to sell product A or product B?
Stuck deciding what your pricing is?
Stuck deciding if it’s worth it to continue selling wholesale in that shop?
Stuck figuring out how to get more traffic to your website?
As you can see, there are a million and a half little places it’s easy to become stuck in this journey…and the questions will never end, trust me!
Wouldn’t it be awesome to have someone who’s done it before give you their thoughts to help guide you, likely saving you money and more importantly, time??
The reality is, if you’re an ambitious artist or crafter wanting to make a consistent part time or full time income from selling your art online (and/or in person)…you’re probably going to need some help at some point.
And that’s where a creative coach comes in.
I can hear you now:
“No, no, I can do this, I don’t need any help.”
Girl, please.
I’m the queen of “I can do this myself”. I stem from a mother who took a downhill header off her triathlon bike, broke her collarbone, DROVE HERSELF HOME despite offers for help, then waited THREE DAYS to go to the hospital because she didn’t want help.
So believe me when I tell you that I tried EVERYTHING I possibly could and spent years building my craft business and working on my own before I realized that I was going to need some personalized help to get any further.
Here’s the thing. You can get to a certain point on your own, yes! But you’ll quickly find that “what got you here, will not get you there” as the saying goes.
In fact, one of my most successful craft artist clients originally came to me because after finding a lot of success, she still ‘felt that she had exhausted her current Instagram audience for sales’ and she didn’t understand what she needed to do to increase her income.
She’s now selling out $10k+ product drops every few months with ease and can’t make more product fast enough.
She knew she need another pair of expert eyes, and wow did that pay off!
And although she was able to do quite a bit on her own, she was smart enough to get out of her own way and ask for help so that she could level up even more.
This is just one case in which one artist has benefited from the guidance of a creative business mentor, but I have my own version of that story.
My experience working with a business coach
I’ve worked with my fair share of coaches over the past 10+ years.
Unfortunately none of them were a creative business coach, (not many of us around back then), but I did learn a LOT from each coach I worked with, even if it wasn’t exactly what I had anticipated. Working with these individuals 110% changed the course of my life and business.
The first person I hired was actually a pricey Facebook Ads specialist - talk about jumping the gun! (please don’t ever put ads on something until it’s already selling well and your price is high enough to cover ad costs, you’re welcome).
At this point I had been selling my textiles, art prints, and teaching my block printing workshop for years. I wanted to become more mobile so I turned my extremely popular live workshop into an online course…and then realized I had no online following and no idea how to sell it!
Facebook ads were getting bigger at the time, and this guy had reached out to offer some help in a Facebook group where I had a question.
He asked for nothing in return for his advice, so of course I got curious/suspicious and looked him up. He was also an amazing copywriter (aka persuasive sales writer).
(don’t lose me here, I’m bringing it back around to crafts)
Eventually, I asked him about his services and we hopped on the phone and he explained how he could help me grow my business. It was a big hit financially, but I knew I was ready for the next level, with….ads?! Lol.
Years later, I still barely understand how to navigate Facebook ads (my fault), but his influence made a HUGE impact on me because he caught something in my business that I didn’t - my writing skills.
He took one look at my blog and a few analytics he found online and said, whoa, you know this post is doing really well, let’s expand on this. Me - ‘huh?’
He told me I had gift. He was able to see what I couldn’t and then helped me nurture that skill into a growing a profitable blog that has become the top income stream in my creative business (and I now teach this to other artists!).
So although I went in with the intention of selling the sh*t out of my block printing course with Facebook ads, I came out with something so much more amazing - confidence in my writing skills, strategy on how to implement that into my craft business, and clear direction.
…oh plus I made all my money back many times over, AND his business was also the model that inspired my own creative group coaching business years later. So yeah, it was worth it!
Ok, so once you decide you’re ready for a creative coach, what are the things you should look for?
Well funny you should ask because I just happen to have a breakdown of that exact question right he….
3 THINGS TO LOOK FOR ONCE YOU DECIDE YOU’RE READY FOR A CREATIVE BUSINESS COACH
In all serious-ness, once you’re ready, you need to do your research (nobody talks about this!)
I mean I’m sure you do a little Google searching around, but do you really know what to look for when hiring?
Back to the list:
1. Hire a creative business coach with similar beliefs
Are you going to enjoy working with me if you are currently selling on Etsy, love Etsy, and refuse to get off of Etsy instead of moving to your own website?
Hell no.
If you’ve been following me for any amount of time (especially if you’re on my email list!), you’ll know that my whole mission for helping other artists and crafters sell art online is because Etsy and other marketplace sites took major advantage of me in the past, and I worked for years to escape their algorithm.
I mean I LITERALLY wrote an entire email with the subject line:
“Etsy raised their fees again, and here’s why I’m laughing”
Which got me about 7 hilarious responses from angry old ladies scolding me because they clearly didn’t realize they were in the wrong place (still laughing about this).
Now inside of my group coaching for artists and crafters, I teach artists to create their own online platform and following, so they have full control of their sales, income, content and online presence…without Etsy.
So, if you’re not ready to let Etsy go, we’re not a good fit.
*I would also never let you pay me knowing this information, as any ethical coach should do. I’m not going to waste your time or mine trying to convince you to uplevel when you’re not ready to!
2. Hire a creative business coach that has experience doing what you want to do
If you were to invest with a creative mentor so you could learn how to grow traffic to your online shop and sell more of your crafts, you’re probably going to want to find someone who has grown traffic to their own online shop…and also…sold their crafts.
It sounds obvious, but most people don’t pay attention to this.
They get caught up in the flashy marketing or sucked into a sales funnel, but what they should really be worried about is:
Did this person already do what I want to do?
You want to sell at big craft shows and also sell in shops? Find a coach who’s done both.
You want to create an online course to share your craft and process with the world? Find a coach who’s done it.
You want to take your craft the high end route and sell your product to designers for $$$? Find. a. coach. who’s. done. it.
You get the point.
(ps I’ve done all those ;))
There’s too many people out there mentoring online that don’t have the receipts. Do your research!
Moving on to point three…
3. Hire a creative business coach that you trust and like, and that LISTENS to you
Oooof, this one is important. Working with a creative coach is personal. If you don’t enjoy speaking with or learning from that person, then you’re in for a long ride of disappointment.
That being said, I have hired coaches that I didn’t entirely love, BUT I really respected their approach, methods, and attention to detail. In cases like that, it’s ‘good enough’ to get the job done and worth it in my opinion and experience.
Here’s why this is so important.
You probably have an idea of what you want your ideal craft business to look like. You are also probably extremely aware of what you are, and are not willing to do in order to achieve that end goal.
On top of that, you definitely have a preferred way of creating and a few ideas of how you want to run your business.
So, it’s not realistic for any creative business consultant to expect you to come into their program and not have a few opinions!
Yet those people are out there and are ready to push you into doing things ‘their way or the highway’ and claim that, ‘this is the only way to do things’.
Not true. There are 700 bajillion ways to do things, and only you can decide what’s best for you.
Coaching needs to be a balance between the artist and the mentor. The mentor has seen and done a lot more, and knows what works, but the artist still wants to have a say in how things are done and implement in a way that feels good to them.
Here’s a real life example of when this happened to me in 2023.
I jumped into a coaching relationship knowing exactly what I wanted to learn and what I wanted to get out of it. I also knew exactly HOW I wanted to do that.
At this stage of business, hiring coaches gets a little more tricky because you know so much, you have so many strong opinions and experiences, and you’re usually just fine tuning.
I messaged before I signed up to make sure I was going to be able to do what I wanted to exactly how I wanted, and was met with a resounding YES.
So I joined. After our first call, I felt very meh about it. I wasn’t excited like I normally was, and I wasn’t sure why. I kind of felt like I learned nothing new.
I waited for the next call, and came out of it even more confused - and I finally figured out why.
She wasn’t LISTENING to me!
I told her multiple times how I wanted to do things and during both calls, she smoothly swayed me into doing tasks that I had done years before in my business that yes, work, but I had moved on from.
She gave me a plan that I knew would work (because I had done it before), BUT I could have done that on my own. That’s not why I signed up for creative coaching.
I signed up for help with more advanced systems which she was subtly trying to talk me out of because SHE didn’t believe it was the right way to do things.
Once I realized that, I quickly signed up for a call with another small business coach who was running the exact systems that I wanted to implement in my business.
Within 30 minutes, he had validated my ideas and clearly explained how those systems could grow my business massively. He listened to what I wanted to do and believed that that was the next best step for me (just as I did).
I finally felt heard and validated, what a relief! This is why finding someone who will listen to you is so important.
When you work with a creative business coach, they should have some kind of framework of how to get you from point A to point B.
They’ll have their opinions and should guide you in the right direction as well as call you out when you’re going off track, BUT they should also take into consideration how you want to run your creative business.
This is exactly why I always tell my craft clients, ‘if you hate writing, I’m not going to force you to blog! But I will give you the tools to do so if you ever decide to because it is so powerful.’
Same with social media. Hate Instagram? Guess what, you don’t have to use it, we’ve got other options for getting your crafts out into the world :)
I want you to build a business you LOVE! Not to wake up and dread your marketing (which you have to do anyways, you may as well enjoy it).
So that’s the beauty of working with a creative business mentor…you’re getting so much more than strategy. You’re getting that of course too, but also:
getting introduced to new ways of doing things, new resources, etc
being held accountable to someone for your progress
seeing things in a new light
and above all, gaining confidence in your work and learning to trust yourself and the actions you take
In Handmade & Paid, my group coaching program for artists and crafters, I’ve seen this happen with every artist that comes through:
Caitlyn didn’t believe she could actually build a hand dyed yarn business. With the right support, she did. Now she hasn’t looked back and makes moves confidently!
Apryl didn’t think she could pick one niche. With the right support and some experimentation, she found her niche and is now killing it with her craft shows and making a name for herself.
Emily didn’t believe she could raise her prices. With the right support and a little push, she wiggled her price up from $600 to $4k for her most extravagant wall hangings. Now she doesn’t think twice about it and is working as a full time, in-demand artist.
My absolute favorite part of working with artists is right after they enroll in the program and we do our first 1:1 Kickoff call together.
It’s an opportunity for them to put ALL of their ideas out on the table, so we can sift through each one and find the most fun, most practical, and most profitable craft business to start, while getting all their questions answered.
Ok ok, so now that you know all that, let’s state the obvious:
Am I business coach for creative entrepreneurs? Yes.
Are you the right fit for what I offer? Possibly.
Am I the right fit for you? Idk….maybe.
The thing is, we won’t fully know until we talk, so let’s get together!
You can book a zero-pressure Creative Clarity Call with me here, and we can talk about your current craft situation, your goals, and how I can help get you to where you want to be.
