Life As An Artist: Interview with Jess Stuart, Writer

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A new focus of this blog is to look at the economic lives of artists and writers, and how they sustain themselves, develop their talents and artworks in a changing market. This week we talk with Jess Stuart, Writer and Founder of Inspire Your Life, about her unique balance between work and life; the development of transferable skills and living techniques that go hand in hand with a modern writing life.

Balance Transfers: Can you tell me a bit about the projects you’re involved in?

Jess: It’s twofold really. My books power the business my business powers the book sales. Off the back of what I write about, I have a blog. I also write for other magazines and platforms on the same subject. I do coaching and also run a series of events and online courses as well. There are a varying degree of forms that my writing then takes.

Balance Transfers: One of the topics I’d like to cover on this blog is the economic life of writers and artists. How do you structure your life to give you the opportunity to write and to create?

Jess: It’s been an interesting one, it’s been kind of a work in progress over the last four years. Initially, I had a corporate job in HR, and how the book came about was that I was unhappy in my corporate job and unhappy in life in general, and I took 18 months off with blogging, travelling and research in order to find out just what it would take to help us create a life that we love. Part of that was that I had 18 months off to discover and travel, and then obviously having time to write. That was off the back of having finished a corporate career, and having a reasonable amount of savings. So that was kind of a once in a lifetime thing. After I did that I wrote the book I realised I loved writing, and I wondered, how do I do this as a career? So I thought, I’ll just write a book, it will sell loads of copies, everyone will love it, and then that’s it, I’ll be rich!

And then after about a year or so you realise that that’s not probably going to work. And the issue for me that year was, I was still loving what I did, but I wasn’t earning any money, my savings had run out, and then the question “how do you make this lifestyle sustainable?” really kicked in. And in the last few years from that point to now, it’s been very much falling back on my HR career through contracting so that my bills are paid, so that I then allow myself to do the writing. And I found that the pressure that year when I was earning no income (one it wasn’t very profitable because you can’t put food on the table or pay your bills) (but two I didn’t want to put pressure on writing to earn me money: you know, I’ve got to write X amount of blogs this month and be published in X amount of magazines in order to pay my rent). I was doing it for love, not rent, and I found that that personally stifled some of my creativity.

So I flipped that around and said “right ok, if my income has been taken care of and I’ve put food on the table, then I write for love and it doesn’t matter whether it sells or not.” In order to do that I had to change the way I look at my life, pare things back considerably, and start living very simply. So that the amount I earn, or the amount I need to live off, I can earn in 50% of my time, versus 50% of my time off to write. Whereas if I worked full time, I would never get a chance to do that.

It’s that balance: the more I earn, the better I can live, and I’m trying to make sure I have enough time for writing.

Balance Transfers: Sure. So how long have you been following that plan for?

Jess: Probably the last two years.

Balance Transfers: What led you to create this plan?

Jess: It was pretty much wanting to make sure I had the time to write, but going through that process of “if I rely on my writing for the money, 1) I’m not going to have that much, 2) it’s going to stifle my creativity. So I took a close look at my income and figured out “what could I live off?” So sometimes that might mean that I work three months full time on a contract, and then I don’t work at all for another three months. Other times it’s a little different: I do two days per week contracting, and then the rest of the time is my own to write.

Balance Transfers: What has been your experience overall?

Jess: It works really well. I am quite happy to continue.

It certainly worked a lot better than the year I had where I was aiming to make a living out of it. I think I felt that once I flipped the switch and left my corporate job, that that would be it. I didn’t anticipate that there would be three to four years of forming a business around writing. I also had to get my head around different types of social media. It was a real learning curve. I think that it will eventually take me to a position where I can write full-time. That’s still the plan, but it’s going to take a lot longer than I had originally anticipated.

Balance Transfers: So do you find that employers are sort of accepting when you want to re-enter the labour market?

Jess: Yeah definitely. I must admit that when I was in the UK three years ago, that was a different story, they were a lot less accepting, but mainly that was because I had lived in NZ for the last six years. But apart from that – never been a problem, particularly with contracting work. I think that because I’m from an HR background, that lent itself very well to contracting. I think we all have transferable skills, and employers are looking for those skills. I’ve found a very close link between some of the things I go into contract for, such as leadership development, and then some of the work I end up doing that relates to my book.

The last contract I did was a great example: I went in to talk about leadership development work – we ended up talking about mindfulness. There was a whole chapter in my book on mindfulness, and I ended up doing the whole mindfulness programme with their Australian offices, and their US offices. That was how one thing led to another.

Balance Transfers: It’s funny how one opportunity just seems to link to another and another. So at what point do you decide it is time to jump back into the labour force?

Jess: Mostly it’s quite natural. If I’m doing a 3-6 month full time contract, then I will tend to focus on that contract.

Balance Transfers: Depending how much time you have, do you plan your projects around that? I’m just trying to get a feel for project planning. If you’ve got twelve months of income saved up, is that the time to write a novel?

Jess: Yup. Definitely. I think that writing blogs, you can kind of dip in and out of it. The same as when I’m running events and coaching, you can spend an hour here, an hour there. But when you’re talking about a book, I’ve found that I’ll need four hours at a time or eight hours at a time, to get into the flow.

Balance Transfers: Can you tell me a bit about how your typical day breaks down?

Jess: I try and treat it like a normal work day, so I get up at 7am. I try to meditate and do some yoga in the morning. The beauty of doing full time writing is that I don’t need to get dressed – once I’ve done my normal routine, I’ll sit down at the laptop. I find that I’m more creative in the morning.

And then other days it’s not as productive – some days I’ll end up looking on Facebook, seeing what the weather’s like – and then some days I’ll need to get away from the laptop, just to flip my brain, basically, so I might cook a meal. Some days are more successful than others. I’ll come back to the laptop in the afternoon and do two or three hours, but I’m generally finished by about 4pm.

Balance Transfers: Do you have any particular targets or expectations that you’re trying to meet in a day of writing?

Jess: No, I’ve never done this. I always wonder whether I should – I know that some people will set themselves the target of ‘x’ amount of words per day. Some days I might write three or four thousand words in a day, other days I might write 200. Always conscious that every day I try and write something.

Balance Transfers: Are there any specific strategies that you use to market your work?

Jess: Yes. This is all branding for me. I naively thought that once I had written the book, that that was the hard bit done.

(I soon found out that) there was this whole other world of the business of writing and marketing that I knew nothing about. And all of a sudden I was having to learn all of this stuff myself, because I didn’t have the money to pay someone else to do it. It was interesting, and also quite time consuming.

I built my own website on WordPress. I got into social media. I’ve used Facebook in the past for keeping up with family and friends, but nothing else. So I learned Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, all of the array of social media, and I’ve used that quite consistently over the last three or four years and that has given me not just a presence, but also a platform to present quotes from the book and articles that I’ve written.

When I launched the book, I made a video trailer. I’ve also started to learn how to use video blogs, based on the same concepts presented in the book, just because not everybody reads. I built my own Youtube channel. There are links there to all my social media stuff as well.

When I came to Wellington I didn’t know anybody, and nobody knew me. So I set up a Meetup group, so that 250 people can live their best life, and that’s where I host my events through.

I tried various marketing strategies around key dates, so when the book was one year old, one of the events I held was an anniversary of the book. I also gave books away at that event and as prizes.

I sort of assumed that if I was giving them away, people wouldn’t buy the book, but I actually sold more at that event than at other events. I left business cards on seats at the events (probably another marketing strategy), and I left a red dot on five of the business cards. I said ‘if you’ve got a red dot on your card then you’ve won a free book.’ And it was at that point that everyone else who hadn’t won a book decided that they’d buy a book as well!

One of the best strategies, and it kind of doesn’t make sense when I say it out loud, is just giving stuff away. People believe that you don’t make money if you give stuff away. But I’ve found that particularly being new, and unknown, putting stuff out there for free to magazines who have 2 million followers has resulted in people buying the book. I’ve done a lot of that, and it also provides a bit of a showcase for my work, so that anyone who wants to pay for the work can go out there, look online and see what it’s about.

Balance Transfers: That’s amazing. That’s actually probably the most rigorous marketing strategy that I’ve ever heard from an author. Do you find that there’s a strong market for the book itself?

Jess: Many of the principles in the book, for example mindfulness and that, have taken off, not just in the community but in the corporate world as well. Particularly I think I talk about the busy-ness of life, and I think that in this day and age, people feel as if they are over-stretched and busy and life is a bit chaotic and overwhelming, and I think that general thing that everyone seems to have is being too busy.

It appeals to the market for my book. I talk a lot about change and resilience, I talk a lot about how we slow down in order to speed up and be more effective. I talk about meaning and purpose and there are quite a few people, particularly who don’t enjoy their jobs, and they are looking for something else from life, but are not really sure where to start. So the book was a combination of my personal experiences going through that myself, also the people that I spoke to, that I learned and traveled with. I think that yeah, particularly in Western society, it is something that people are reaching out for.

Balance Transfers: Has the book opened up any doors, or created any opportunities for you?

Jess: Yeah, definitely. I didn’t coach before the books, certainly the events I run, I didn’t cover those topics before the books, so yeah, it has led to opportunities. But it also works the other way around because writing is my passion and I hope it will become my full time job.

Balance Transfers: So tell me a bit about your other business. What does that involve?

Jess: All the principles that we go through in the book, a lot of that is based on life coaching skills.

Balance Transfers: A blog can organise your thoughts, help you discover your passions. It sounds like blogging has been quite instrumental in developing your personal brand?

Jess: Yeah, definitely. And I’ve found a lot of the services have been not just blogging on my own blogs, but blogging for other outlets as well, who may have a much bigger readership or who have much more exposure.

No matter how good what you write is, if nobody knows about it, nobody’s going to read it. (The blog) has just opened up the doors to everybody.

Balance Transfers: This is the flipside of having a strategy to take off a year to write and living off savings. Are there any negative side effects to alternating a work/write lifestyle?

Jess: What I’ve found, and this is where I’ve found the balance quite nice, with six months here, six months there, or two days here, three days there, is writing can be quite a lonely occupation. When I work in an office I get to chat with people. It’s like with anything, when you do it for too long, the novelty can wear off. And then there’s the obvious practicalities around finance.

When I was living over in England and trying to make it as a writer, with no payments, no backups or anything, I couldn’t actually afford rent at the time, so I was pet-sitting. I would pet-sit for people’s houses, and I got to stay in some beautiful houses, but I’d be moving house every three or four weeks, and kind of living out of a bag. So there were those kind of downsides.

Balance Transfers: Does that work, for a writer, do you think?

Jess: There was nothing I had to, in terms of work around the house, or being at a certain place at a certain time. Once I’d walked the dogs, or fed the cat, I would sit down at the desk and write.

I’m the sort of person that travel has always inspired me, and when I’m travelling I’m a bit more creative. Being around different environments and different people gives me more ideas as well. But equally, it has a downside of not necessarily being able to settle anywhere, not being able to plan too far ahead.

Things like that are all predicated on: what can I live on in ten months? And therefore, what does that leave you?

Balance Transfers: It is amazing how creative you can be when it comes to saving money.

Jess: Yes. (Laughs)

Balance Transfers: That’s great. Do you, or your partner, have a mortgage, or own a property or anything?

Jess: No. I don’t own anything. I don’t own a car – I used to, when I was in my corporate job I had a company car. When I quit my job I found it was a lot cheaper for me to take a bus or walk everywhere. So I haven’t had a car now for about 3 years? 4 years? I don’t miss it.

Balance Transfers: The economy goes through different cycles of boom and bust. Do you ever worry that you may choose to re-enter the market at the wrong time?

Jess: Yeah, it’s high risk, in terms of not having that sort of financial security long term. And there might come a time when I think about having a family, that that’s a risk I’m no longer willing to take, and I want some more stability. But I hope by that point that all the work that I’d put in over the past few years has gotten me to the point where my business funds my life.

But I think that’s true of any business, or any job, these days, particularly with an HR background, I’ve made a lot of redundancies. In the UK, I was working in the construction business. It was at the time that the global financial crisis hit, and I basically became full time, making people redundant. It was not particularly pleasant. But there were guys there who had been working for 40 years who were being laid off.

I don’t think in this day and age we’re ever as secure as we think we are. A lot of people cling to the security of a full time job even if they hate that job. But nobody’s sure because you could be made redundant tomorrow, or your company goes bust, or gets shut down or bought out. There’s just so many variables in this day in age.