Escape the Creative Constraints: Why Creative Freedom is Key to Impactful Marketing
This year, I found myself at what you could call a crossroads. After years of what has felt like never stopping to come up for air as a small business owner responsible for supporting clients and managing a creative studio, I hit a wall. Burnout knocked on my door, and I knew that this time something felt different. Like most of us, I’m no stranger to the effects of burnout. Yet, when this round of it came forward I knew that it was inviting me to look deeper into the root cause.
So, instead of just doing what I’ve done in the past to calm down these feelings, which often resulted in bandaid-type activities that don’t actually address or heal the root wound, I decided to take a different approach. In doing so, I realized that my creative expression had become stifled by trying to keep up with industry norms and the relentless pressure of capitalism. Once I was able to identify my feelings (thanks, therapy!) I dedicated the rest of 2024 to reclaiming my creative freedom and want to share my journey with you.
The Shift: Reconnecting with Values
After coming to the above realization, I made the (pretty scary!) decision to take a step back from work or business as usual. I reduced the number of clients I was taking on and downsized my team, creating a more spacious calendar. I must note that this was not an easy decision to make. When we choose to slow down business, this impacts our livelihoods and can often trigger tremendous risk. This isn’t the answer for everyone, but for me it was.
The newfound space I gained by deciding to truly commit to exploring why I continued to find myself in cycles of burnout allowed me to explore what truly mattered to me—my vision, my values, and my authentic way of expressing myself. I slowed down enough to allow myself to rest, prioritize art-making, and writing, spending as much time in nature as I could. This exploration was essential for my healing and rejuvenation. I feel like I could write a book on all of the lessons I’ve learned this year by simply hitting the pause button on growth, but the biggest thing that comes to mind that I want to share with you now is that we were not created to live our lives solely for the sake of working.
Yet, as entrepreneurs, this can be easier said than done, as it always feels like there is a relentless list of things that need to be done! One of the most precious shifts I experienced this year relates to how I broke up with a pattern of using work as a way to avoid the tougher things that were inviting me to look at. We are a society that has become so conditioned to believe that what we do for a living is what defines our worth and value in the world. And yet, I can say firsthand that this year has taught me the complete opposite. Our worth and value come from within ourselves and are directly connected to our sense of self and purpose beyond what we do for a living.
As a studio, we prioritize individual expression over predictable, one-size-fits-all marketing approaches. We believe that everyone has unique gifts to share with the world. It's our role to uncover how those gifts can be expressed in a way that aligns with each client’s beliefs, preferences, and creative style. This year, I took my own medicine and focused on exploring my own gifts without having to consider how I could share them with others or monetize them right away.
The Impact of Conformity in Marketing
In a reality that is currently flooded with trends and cookie-cutter strategies, creativity can often feel diluted or even non-existent. When marketing becomes formulaic, it creates a sea of sameness that hinders your ability to stand out. This is particularly evident in the marketing industry, where the pressure to conform can lead to a loss of authenticity. To me, it feels soul-crushing to create without authentic creative expression. At DoGoodBiz Studio, we reject the notion that marketing must be bland or conformist to be effective. And yet, here we are. Seeing the same things said a million different ways. We are in a time where we are losing sight of what makes marketing effective, and that is originality and sharing our gifts with the world in a way that can truly make a positive impact, instead of just feeding the machine of capitalism.
Your creative style is essential not just in the marketing landscape but in everyday life. It’s what differentiates you from others and allows you to connect with others on a deeper level. It’s also what makes you feel alive and purposeful and gives life meaning. When you embrace your unique vision and create from this space, you create more than just content; you cultivate connections that resonate with the hearts of those who support your creations.
“When we conform to external pressures instead of creating from a place of authenticity, we sell out. To me, selling out is a cost that I’m just not willing to pay.”
People and Planet First
As a studio, we firmly believe in putting people and the planet before profit. This principle isn’t just a tagline; it’s a commitment to ethical and compassionate practices that prioritize human connections and environmental sustainability. When we approach marketing from this perspective, we create strategies that align with our client's values and beliefs.
Choosing to prioritize people and the planet goes hand in hand with embracing creative authenticity. By developing environments where individual expression thrives, we inspire innovative approaches that are not only effective but also transformative. This is how we can make a meaningful impact in the world through marketing. What’s wild to me is that the more we conform instead of choosing to create from a space of truth and originality, the more we cause harm without even realizing it. I see this all the time when I scroll through social media.
Just the other day, for example, I saw someone state that when they see a brand with a huge following (I’m talking 20K+) yet with little to no engagement, they instantly do not trust the brand or take them seriously. This type of belief system is rooted in the thought that people’s value and worth can be attached to superficial numbers on a screen. To me, this type of belief is incredibly harmful - and yet it’s a thought that is all too commonly reinforced. Following the status quo has very obviously not lead us down the most sustainable path, and I believe that it’s time we make a conscious decision to change our course for not just the sake of ourselves but the sake of the world.
A Path Forward: Aligning with Your Unique Expression
As you navigate your creative journey or work toward unhooking yourself from the pressures of capitalism and trying to keep up with industry norms, I encourage you to take time to reflect on what truly matters to you. Here are some actionable steps to help you embrace your creative freedom:
Identify Your Core Values:
Understand what drives you. What principles guide your work? Reflecting on these values can help you align your marketing efforts with your true self. The key here is to not just identify these things but to take it a step further by examining how you can actively practice what you believe in and care about within your business. This also means considering how you can work in a way that aligns with your creative spirit. Too often we have folks who come into our Studio to work with us who are drenched in the expectations of others. They believe they have to market their business in a specific way, on specific platforms, and create content based on the rules of social media influencers. Part of our job is to help those we work with to detangle themselves from these thoughts so that they can begin to hear their inner guidance again.
Practice Rest and Reflection:
Don’t underestimate the power of rest. Allow yourself to step away from the grind and actually reflect on your journey. This can spark new ideas and rejuvenate your passion. This was something that I didn’t realize how much I needed until I started truly prioritizing a much slower pace. It looked like napping almost every day, taking longer breaks throughout the day, making sure I no longer worked over the weekends and had clear boundaries around time off, and recommitting to a daily practice that made room for inner work and dreaming. This was not an easy task for me to implement, especially considering that I’ve spent the last decade working for myself at a pace that often resembled the energizer bunny! For many of us, slowing down can activate trauma responses or crippling fear. To me, that just shows how much we need to do this work.
Explore Your Creative Style:
Experiment with different forms of expression. Create without the pressure of judgment or external expectations. The more you explore, the more you’ll discover what resonates with you. For those who may find themselves not enjoying creating content or marketing their business online, this is going to be an incredibly important part of your process. If you’re feeling uninspired or unmoved by the thought of these things, it will help you tremendously, too! What’s so cool about what I experienced in this stage is that I re-lit my massive passion for art-making. Since starting my own business, I put a lot of things that make me ME on the back burner as many of us do. We do this for a handful of reasons, but mostly because when you run your own business you have to take actions to sustain yourself financially, and often doing so causes us to have to make a trade between what will make us money vs what is authentically true and aligned for us to do. This is why exploring your creative style is so essential! It’s about reconnecting to the parts of yourself that you may have denied a place at your business table.
Connect with Like-Minded Folks:
Surround yourself with others who value authenticity and creativity and also encourage you to pursue those parts within yourself. This step had a huge influence on me this year as I have been doing a tremendous amount of trauma-healing work that largely pertains to my intimate familial relationships. In doing that work it led me to see just how essential it is to have people in your circle that you can speak to openly about what you’re experiencing and going through. Having a space where you can share your fears, frustrations, dissatisfactions, and the like can help you see the areas where you may be sacrificing your authenticity or creative expression for the sake of things like people pleasing, the need to control, or even fears around not being enough as you are. I have spent a great deal of time this year focused on cultivating community, specifically with folks that I can be fully myself around. In doing so, it has helped me build confidence in expressing myself and prioritizing parts of my creative nature that I have denied in the past. The people we surround ourselves with have the ability to either stifle our creative nature or amplify it.
Integrate Your Values into Your Work:
Ensure that your marketing reflects your beliefs. This alignment will resonate with the people your work is meant for and attract those who share your values. This was an eye-opening final part of my process this year as I came to realize that some of the decisions I made around running our Studio were not exactly aligned with my values and how I want to work. I had to take a long hard look at our operations as well as our services and consider what was bringing me joy versus perpetuating burnout. From there, we’ve spent a great deal of time this year refining and updating our services, our workflows, and our processes to better align with the type of work culture and environment we want to embed into our Studio so to protect our creativity and authentic expression.
Reclaiming your creative freedom is a journey that I believe we all could benefit from going on. I understand the level of privilege that comes with being able to do so, but that doesn’t stop me from reiterating that this is a journey that we all could deeply benefit from going on. By prioritizing your unique vision and aligning it with your values, you can break free from the constraints of conformity and capitalism. At DoGoodBiz Studio, we are here to support you in embracing your authentic expression while prioritizing people and the planet. Together, we can create impactful marketing strategies that resonate deeply with your creative uniqueness and the people you want to serve.
As we near the end of 2024, commit now to exploring how you can make the space and time to prioritize exploring your own creativity as a way to make a difference. Your unique gifts are needed in this world.
Until next time…
Natalie Brite - DoGoodBiz Studio
