there’s no one golden formula when it comes to running a small creative biz. a lot of business resources will tell you to focus on one single product, one message, and then once you solidify that you can expand to something else. others will say you can do it all (as long as you give up xyz, which usually comes out of your personal life). i would say that my biz falls closer to the latter than the former - my aries ping-pong brain likes to jump around from different projects. it’s honestly why designing was so attractive to me in the early days - i could make money from my knitting without getting bored with whatever was on my needles. i could feed my creativity and make a business from it.

my business requires me tossing on a lot of different hats on any given day, with each different set of tasks requiring basically the same amount of work (ongoing admin maintenance, marketing, etc.) for each stream. that works best for me and the way that i work. currently my business includes the following different streams, which ultimately all fall within the same umbrella:

digital patterns
yarn & tools sold directly to makers
those same products (both digital and physical) sold wholesale to partner shops around the world
online courses
teaching for 3rd party organizations both in-person and online (such as vogue knit live, knit city, fibre retreats, and others)
designing and writing for 3rd party publications (such as laine, making stories, and amirisu) as well as in collaboration with yarn companies and stores (such as twist festival, manos del uruguay and circle of stitches)
providing yarn support at wholesale prices to other designers and publications

what it all boils down to is offering the same things in multiple ways to different people - i’m a natural dyer and pattern designer who also teaches those skills. i work directly with the public and also in collaboration with other organizations. and then, y’know, i (over)fill the rest of my time with community organizing, fibreshed advocacy, and running a podcast.

for my design students, i make a point of letting them know that they are in the driver’s seat as far as determining what they want their design career to look like, and to also anticipate scaling their workload up or down according to those goals. making a bit of side income for the holiday gift budget will require a different level of hustle than replacing your corporate income and retiring your partner. both are completely valid and entirely personal decisions (which, by the way, you can change at any time as you need/want because again, you’re in the driver’s seat). even if you just wanted to design the occasional pattern, there are still multiple ways of diversifying your income from that, including self-publishing it yourself and selling through multiple online platforms, partnering with a local yarn store or indie dyer to sell kits, and selling limited rights to it for a publication to include in their next issue (to hear more about that, have a listen to my snort & cackle interview with françoise danoy).

ultimately, i’m an advocate of diversifying your small biz income streams for two main reasons:

so you never get bored
so one stream can pick up the slack/fill in the gaps if another one goes quiet for a chunk of time, which helps to reduce the stress on your biz/wallet

what about you? can you think of three different income streams from your own dream biz?

if you’re ready to step into your own #bosswitch boots and create your dream life with confidence, join me in the creative coven online design course! this self-paced program will take you from casting on and writing your first pattern to running a long-term sustainable and supportive creative biz with knitwear design. with pre-recorded videos that you can return to whenever you need, to 24/7 access to my favourite tools and resources for running your online biz, you’ll be able to take the pattern ideas in your head and put them out into the world AND make money while you do it. check it out here. if you’re not sure if you’ve got the creative confidence yet, try out the creative coven challenge in the creative coven community to see just how many ideas are waiting to pour out of you. not sure if this whole fibre witch thing is even your cup of whiskey? take the free fibre witch quiz to double check.

money matters - diversifying your income