“Perpetual devotion to what a man calls his business, is only to be sustained by perpetual neglect of many other things.”

That’s Robert Louis Stevenson.

I love that quote for two reasons. Not only is it good life advice, but it’s also a word of warning.

To be perpetually devoted to something does require perpetual neglect of many other things. This is one of the huge themes throughout The Focus Course: finding clarity about what to focus and also what to let alone. (In the words of David Allen, you can do anything, but you can’t do everything.)

Stevenson’s quote is also a cautionary one. Among the most common regrets of the dying is having worked too hard and, in turn, neglecting relationships, values, and even their own happiness.

May devotion to our business not be sustained by neglect of our health, relationships, values, and even our own happiness.

* * *

I’ve got an “all in” type of personality.

When I’m working on a project or an idea Iget very single minded. I focus in on that project and I can hardly think about anything else.

It’s why I spent an inordinate amount of time trying out clickey keyboards.

It’s why I took 10 days off of work to move my family into a new home.

And, since building a business is a project in an of itself, I discovered early on that because of my “all in” personality my business had the potential to take over every other area of my life.

I want my business to add to the quality of my life. Not only is it something I’m building with long-term goals in mind, but it’s also something I enjoy working on today — right now.

While I’m a firm believer in the importance of showing up every day to do the work, after so many hours worked in the day there is a point where time spent at work is pretty much just wasted time.

How pitiful and ironic would it be if our creative work took over our time and attention so much that it suffocated the creativity right out of us?

* * *

For the past few years on my birthday, I have been writing down a retrospective of sorts into my Day One journal.

I write down what highlights I remember from the past year, what projects and events I was proud of, what things I regret having done (or regret having not done), and more. I also write down what I want to do more of in the future.

Examples of things from the past year I’m glad I did:

• Building and launching The Focus Course
• Putting energy into building a thoughtful approach to content “marketing” and “strategy” through my email newsletter. (Something I plan to write much more about.)
• Taking a week-long vacation in Steamboat Springs with my wife to celebrate our 10-year anniversary.
• A last-minute trip to Atlanta to connect with a new friend.
• Attending and speaking at Circles Conference.
• Attending game 6 of the ALCS before the Royals went on to win the World Series.
• Reading more books

These are just a few things. And they remind me that the day-to-day minutia of running a business is necessary, but it’s not nearly as urgent as it often feels. And that I’m happiest when I’m on a memorable trip or event or else creating something of substance with a long-term shelf life.

Choosing something until it chooses you back

Last July, on my birthday, I wrote this in my Day One:

Life is almost entirely a series of small, nearly-inconsequential choices and moments. All the little things that I do (and don’t do) are what paint the picture of my life. If I want a different life, make a small change to sone thing and stick with it.

It’s a choice to live a life with healthy boundaries. It’s a choice to give our time and attention to the things that matter most.

And, probably the best way to learn how you best balance work and life is through trial and error.

Life will zig and zag. It will ebb and flow.

Something I can’t unpack right now is the idea that margin in your work schedule can actually give you the strength to take risks and have fun in the process.

Don’t let the boundaries between your work and family life be dictated by social expectations. Rather by authenticity to your goals, visions, and values.

P.S. The podcast interview I did with Havilah Cunnington was awesome. We discussed balancing family with creative entrepreneurship.

As I type this, I’m surrounded by cardboard boxes.

My desk is temporarily crammed here in the corner of the guest room.

The Monument Valley soundtrack is playing (as always), but this time it’s via my iMac’s not-so-great, built-in speakers.

You see, we just moved.

I feel like the above photo sums up my life pretty well right now: a bunch of stuff packed into a bin; mostly construction tools plus my Baron Fig notebook and trusty pen.

Here in my “office” (a.k.a. the guest room), I see boxes of kids toys and books we haven’t yet unpacked. There are all of our picture frames and paintings leaning against the wall. Even a couple of lamps sitting on the floor.

To my right: more boxes! Pretty much my entire office is in those boxes. Cables, podcasting gear, even the books I’m currently reading (or at least was reading before we packed them up two weeks ago).

And all this is after I spent the past 3 days ruthlessly unpacking what was in this room. It’s a miracle we’ve slimmed it down to just the 10 boxes here right now. (Whatever you do, don’t look in the garage.)

* * *

It was a little less than 12 weeks ago that my wife, Anna, and I first had a conversation about moving. Now, three months later, we’ve sold our old house, bought a new one, and are moved in (ish).

It was a sprint. But we also had incredible fortune along every step of the way…

The first day we went out looking for houses with our realtor, we found the home we wanted. A few days later we put in our offer, and, despite it being a seller’s market here in Kansas City we were able to buy our new home for less than market value.

To sell our old home, the only fixing up we had to do was refinish the hardwood floors. When we listed it, we got 3 offers the first day and sold it for asking price in less than 24 hours after putting it on the market.

Despite everything going so smoothly, the process itself of moving has still been incredibly time consuming.

I completely underestimated how much time it would take to move.

I also underestimated how many boxes we’d need, how much would be left over to pack up or throw away after we got the obvious stuff taken care of, and how much time it would take to unpack.

Friends warned me about all of that. And I thought I had a pretty good grasp on the scope of work. But I was wrong.

And, the way things landed, we closed on our new on April 4th. The very same day as the 5-year anniversary of when I began writing at shawnblanc.net full-time.

I had a series of articles I had written out for that week to share what I’d learned after 5 years of being an indie writer and running a small business.

But the events surrounding our closing completely took over my time.

Our scheduled closing on the new house was delayed by 72 hours.

And the delay in closing had a whole slew of challenges that came with it, and it ate up all the margin I had in my work schedule.

I had to choose to take some unexpected time off of work in order to focus on moving and being as present as I could with my family during the transition.

Though I had planned ahead for my writing schedule, I clearly didn’t plan ahead enough. I ended up not writing for 10 days in a row. Which is why it’s been silent here for so long.

My apologies for the extended period of silence.

This morning is the first time I’ve been able to sit down and write in almost two weeks time. It feels great to be writing again.

Now that we’re past the craziness and things are slowly returning to normal, so too will my writing and podcasting schedule.

This week I’ll be picking back up where I left of with my series about creativity and entrepreneurship. You can catch the first three articles here, here, and here. And the timing is actually pretty great — on Wednesday I’ll be sharing about work-life balance and always keeping family first. Something I literally just walked through.

* * *

Also, on the nerdy side, I’ll soon be posting an update to my Sweet Mac Setup. Right now we’re still in the middle of building out my office space here at the new house. Though it won’t quite be my dream workspace, it will certainly the best so far.

A few days ago I asked this question:

Is there a path to creative success?

As I’m sure you know, the answer is yes.

Now, the definition of success varies wildly. But I like to define creative success like this:

The ability to do creative work we’re proud of and to keep doing that work.

By that measure, most of you reading this are already creatively successful. You just might not know it yet.

If there is a path to creative success, what is it?

Here’s part of it: Consistency.

Choosing to show up ever day.

Choosing to do the hard and frightful work, day in and day out. Not waiting for permission. Not waiting for inspiration. Not waiting for a faster, fancier, more expensive gizmogadget.

Whatever it is you want to do with your art, you have to show up every day and make something. Failing to do this will be your single biggest roadblock to doing your best creative work.

As you know, I’ve been at this full-time writing racket for 5 years now. And still, day after day, for 5 years, one of the biggest challenges is to get my butt in the chair and write.

Once I’m here, typing, the second biggest challenge is to be honest.

Because — as I mentioned yesterday — when it comes to creativity and entrepreneurship, I consider the most important advice I to be this: focus on consistency and honesty.

Consistency and honesty are, I believe, the backbone for how you can make a living as a creative entrepreneur / artist.

Consistency is important for two reasons:

• First off, the internet thrives on patterns and regularity; showing up every day lets people know they can rely on you to be there. It also keeps things moving and is the “machine” you use to build your business assets and stock and flow content.

• Secondly, even if you’re a talentless dweeb like me, writing (or doing anything) every day will help you become better at that craft.

Honesty is important because it’s how you build trust with others. (Obviously.)

Do you want to earn the respect and long-term attention of your audience? Be honest. Always seek to provide at least 51% of the value between you and your readership.

Regardless of how you serve your audience, always give as much as possible. It’s not about you, it’s about them.

Do this and you’ll be signing up to play the long game. By building trust and providing “preeminent” value, you’re proving to folks that you’re the real deal and you have something to offer.

Five years ago, when I first announced that I was quitting my job to write here for a living, I asked people to sign up for a subscribing membership at $3/month.

400 of you signed up the first day.

As much as I like to think you signed up because my sales pitch was awesome and heart-felt, the truth is that it was awesome and heart-felt… No, seriously, those of you signed up for a membership back in 2011 did so because I’d been writing consistently on my site for several years. Over those years I built up trust you guys — with my readership — and so when I asked for your direct support, it was an easy decision for hundreds of you.

A few years later, when I launched The Focus Course, 600 of you signed up in that first week. And it wasn’t because The Focus Course has an awesome landing page (Though it certainly does. Thanks, Pat!). It’s because I’d been writing about focus for so long that you guys trusted the course was not just snake oil.

* * *

To sum this all up:

• People want to connect to the artist as much as (if not even more than) they want to connect to the art. That’s why a signed book is so much more valuable than the Kindle version; a live concert more memorable than listening to an album on iTunes.

• Consistency means relationship building. Remember from 1,000 True Fans? This is where you connect with your readership, audience, customers, and provide ongoing value to them.

• Consistency is also means doing the work every day. Never wait until you’re inspired to do the work because quantity leads to quality. (Which is a whole other topic we’ll dive into later.)

• Honesty means making the choice to be transparent and genuine. Have fun.

Showing up to do the work every day isn’t easy. And there’s more to it than just putting your butt in the chair and writing for an hour.

You’ve also got to think about how you’re spending your time and energy when you’re not in the chair. Up next, I’ll be sharing about keeping life in balance.

Quitting my job to blog for a living was so embarrassing.

It didn’t seem like a “real job”.

People would always ask me questions like: “So what exactly is it that you do?” And I never knew how to answer them.

(Actually, I still don’t know how to answer that question.)

It’s been five years now, and I’m so glad I took that dorky risk.

As I reflect on these past five years and share what I’ve learned, my default is to focus on the creativity aspect. I love talking about how to show up every day or how to build an audience of awesome and smart people. I want to dive in to to the topic of doing our best creative work.

But over these past five years I’ve also learned about bootstrapping and running a business. I’ve learn the ins and outs of starting and building a business through experience, trial, success, and error.

There is so much involved with being an independent creative entrepreneur.

For one, you have to have the creativity side. This includes:

• Finding own vision and voice for your creative work;
• Showing up every day to do that work;
• Being focused with your time and energy;
• Staying inspired;
• Having fun.

Creativity is critical. And, as we’ll get to another time, it’s so important to show up every day to do the hard, creative work.

But just as important as creativity is the entrepreneurial side…

• You’ve can’t be so romantic about making money that you never get around to earning a dollar.
• You have to be willing to take risks and experiment with new ideas.
• You have to get good at making money.
• You have to learn how to budget, project, save, invest, make a return, and live well beneath your means. Otherwise your business will never get the financial root system it needs in order to thrive.

Creativity and business chops. You need both.

Later this week I’ll be sure to share some of the things I’ve done over the past five years to make money. But first…

Knowing that both the creative aspect and the business aspect are so important, I want to dive into what’s I think is needed to write on the internet for a living.

(This could go for just about anything, really. Writing is what I know best, but this stuff goes for podcasts, newsletters, photography, etc.)

Basically, if I were brand new and starting out fresh… if I were giving advice to my past self… these would be the highlights of that conversation.

• Show up every day: I’m going to touch on this more, but showing up every day is vital. This is how you strengthen your own creative muscle, it’s how you improve your skills, and it’s also how you build your audience. (Recommended reading: Show Your Work.)

• Plan ahead: It took me years to figure this one out. You’ll do better work in less time with less stress if you know where you’re going. (Not sure how to have a plan for your creative work, The Focus Course will get you there.)

• Invest in mentorship, learning, and courses: Because you don’t have all the answers, you have blind spots, and you need someone to cheerlead for you and help you figure things out.

• Celebrate your progress: When you’re able to recognize that you’re making progress in your work, it helps you stay motivated. Also, journaling about your business and creative endeavors as you go through them today is an asset you can use in down the road as a sort of “advice to your future self”.

• Sell stuff: You get good at making money the same way you get good at anything else: practice. So, sell early and sell often. This will help you learn about pricing, sales, and providing value to others. It also helps you to get comfortable with charging money for the work you do. Something many of us aren’t naturally comfortable with.

• Automate / eliminate / delegate as much as possible: It seems everyone know says they waited too long before learning to delegate. This is a great way to break your broken workflow habits and free yourself up to spend your time better. And it’s not just for the sake of being more “productive” at work — it’s also so you can have more down time to rest, think, and be with friends and family.

• The tools you have are almost certainly good enough: This one applies to the nerds in the room. I’m an incessant tinkerer. While it’s fun to always be looking for the next best thing, it’s also a huge distraction. Maybe it’s my old age, but I’m far more content with the tools I have today that I ever have been. If it works well and helps me do what’s important, then I’m not going to try and replace it just for the sake of change.

• Always be honest and sincere: This is critical because the best way to build an audience is through trust. Being genuine and telling your story is how you build trust.

• Work hard, but don’t work nonstop: Easier said than done for many of us. The ideas and action items are never-ending. That’s why I schedule my time off and even plan ahead for how I’ll spend that down time. Otherwise my tendency is to work on just one more thing.

• Have an ideal reader / customer / client / fan: When I first began writing, there were two specific people who I wrote for. I would always gauge my articles and topics through their eyes, making sure I was writing something that would be interesting and helpful to them.

Now that I’m working on building The Focus Course website, we’ve spent a ton of time defining what our ideal customer looks like. We’re using surveys, personal emails and conversations, and more. It’s a much different approach than just guessing or making stuff up, and it means we’re actually able to help people with what’s most important to them.

• Take risks: Every time I’ve felt out on a ledge, not sure if something would work, it turned out pretty great in the end. This is not an advocation to be reckless, but it is permission to try something new.

• Trust your gut: I don’t know about you, but I spend a lot of time second guessing myself. I question if I’m doing things right; if I’m missing something; if I’m even making progress. Other people can give advice and input, but to do your best creative work you’ve got to follow the dream in your heart.

Not to go all Mr. Rogers here, but it’s true. If you’ve got an idea or a hunch that just won’t let go, then focus on it.

Which is why, if I had to boil it all down to what I consider to be the most important advice I have for creative entrepreneurship, it would be this: focus on consistency and honesty.

We’ll dive more into that one tomorrow.

It was Monday morning.

My first day on the job. And I was completely underprepared with no idea what to write about.

I felt terrible.

That was exactly five years ago today.

What I did end up writing about has turned into a piece I return to often:

“Writing should be about standing behind your work and truly caring about what it is you have to say,” I wrote. “If you happen to be good with words then congratulations. Dispassionate beautiful prose, however, is still dispassionate. Or, as Anatole France put it, ‘a tale without love is like beef without mustard: insipid.'”

It has always been a challenge for me to write with honesty and passion.

When you put your heart into something and then get criticized for it, that hurts. And so, in a way, we shy back a bit and put just enough transparency into our writing to give it a hint of breath and no more.

To make it worse, once the economic success of this site hinged in no small part on the continued growth of a strong membership base, there was a sudden pressure to write for everyone all at once.

Not only did I feel a great expectation on my work, I had no clue what I would publish on that first day. Or what would come the next day or the next.

(I’ve learned that this is just one of the who-knows-how-many roadblocks there are to doing your best creative work. And that’s something we’ll definitely dive into more later this week because it’s so important.)

In that article from 5 years ago, I shared that though the pressures and expectations were new, I was intent on staying steady in my writing pursuits. I planned to continue doing the same writing with the same focus that had brought me the opportunity to write full-time in the first place.

Five years of that day-in-and-day-out work, here we are today. And things certainly look different.

Back then it was just me with just one website: shawnblanc.net. Now there is a small team of us and a small network of websites: shawnblanc.net, Tools & Toys, The Sweet Setup, and The Focus Course. (Hi, Bradley, Chris, Stephen, Jeff, Josh, and Isaac!)

Yes, the scope of the writing has certainly grown. But I believe the focus of the writing has not.

That focus is still two-fold:

1. To help you, the reader.
2. To have fun in the creative process.

If you care about doing your best creative work, you’re in the right place.

I continue to look forward to iterating, improving, and generally upping the overall awesomeness of our humble network of websites.

Perhaps you’ve been here since the very first post. Or perhaps you are brand new to this site. Thank you! I am grateful that you’ve chosen to show up, sign up, and be part of this journey.

This week and next I’m going to be sharing stories and more about the past five years. We’re going to talk about the creative side as well as the business side.

After being in this racket for 5 years, I want to share what I see as the most important things about writing on the internet for a living. How to improve your craft. How to balance work life and family life when your work life is tied to the internet that’s in your pocket.

And, the elusive question I’ve been wondering about most for the past half-decade: Is there a path to creative success?