Following Your Artist Dream: Don't Quit Your Job Yet!

Good morning, I hope you’re doing well.. What happens when you quit your job and follow your dream to be an artist. Today I want talk about my experience, what I’ve learned from quitting my job and pursuing life as an independent musician. I am very happy that I made that decision because I learned so much from it. But when I look back, there are a lot of things that I would do different now. And I’m using these insights from my mistakes in the pursuit of my true independence as a music entrepreneur. If you’re thinking about quitting your job to be a full-time artist or creative entrepreneur, here’s some stuff that might be worth thinking about. And thank you for giving me your time today, I hope you enjoy this blog.

What I’ve Learned After Quitting My Job

Pro’s: Mindset, Freedom of Location & Time To Grow

I’ve always hated someone telling me what to do. I have had a lot of different jobs, As a waiter at different places, in a hardware store, as a graphic-designer, as a copywriter. I tried many things, but I always ended up leaving because I knew I just wanted to be free. I didn’t like someone telling me where to be at what time and then what to do. Also, I don’t enjoy being around a lot of people, it drains my energy to have small talk and to hear people gossip at an office. So when I started to have just a glimpse of success with my music that I was releasing. I almost immediately quit all my jobs. And that felt great. So what was the first thing I did? Enjoy that freedom, I partied, I traveled, I started to live off of that money that was seemingly just pouring in. And I really enjoyed this time, I had a lot of experiences and it brought me a lot of personal growth too because now I had time to discover who I was and who I wanted to be. But that’s another story. Another very important thing that happened to my mindset because of this is that I started believing that you don’t have to conform to the norms of society and you can live the life you want. This was big for me, because before that I didn’t believe that at all. I just thought successful people were either freakishly talented or privileged or had a crazy amount of luck. And I guess I was just kind of jealous of successful people and didn’t believe I could be that.

So it was a great realisation for me. But after this honeymoon phase, the decision to be a full time independent artist started to bring some struggle. And I think it’s important to talk about that, because people don’t usually do that. Because everyone is always successful it seems.

Business: Are You’re Living Off A Fragile Business?

I didn’t look far ahead when I started living off my music income. What I didn’t realise at the time was that my business was more fragile than I thought, and it wasn’t actually a stable business, it was still a job. My success relied heavily on the popularity of the type of music I was making at that time. And also on the platform that I was releasing it on and if my music would be selected by curators to get in big playlists. It wasn’t about me as an artist specifically. And quite quickly the market started to saturate with people who were great at it.. a lot were better at it than me. I didn’t really have a steady base of supporters that would stream my music because they were my fans. They would stream the playlist and the amount of streams I’d get relied on if my music would get selected for a playlist. All of this is fine, and I am super grateful for all those streams I got from that. But looking back, starting to live off and freely spend that uncertain source of income wasn’t smart. Here’s why:

Numbers & The Hype: You Can Start Doing It For The Wrong Reasons

When you start to have little bit of success it’s quite normal that you try to repeat the thing that brought you that, right. Well this is what happened with my music as well, because all of a sudden, it got really big amounts of streams every time my song got playlisted. And that came with a huge dopamine rush. Really, I remember the first couple times it happened, it felt like I was on drugs. And every time I would look at those numbers growing bigger I felt like I won the lottery. So this created a situation where I didn’t make music anymore to express myself, but to try to get it in a big playlist. Which kind of made me drop my artistic vision, and make music that I thought would do well. And upload song after song in chase of that dopamine rush. And because the competition was growing, and I didn’t change my strategy, my attempts would be successful less and less often, but it would happen often enough.. and that would keep me hooked. It reminds me of a slot machine or Skinners box. Which is an experiment of a professor called Skinner who put a mouse in a box with a lever and first taught the mouse that if it would pull the lever it would get rewarded with food. And then after the behaviour was learned the mouse would just keep pulling that lever even if he didn’t get the reward. The uncertainty of the outcome even made the behaviour more addictive. I was that mouse. So now I wasn’t really living my purpose as an artist anymore, I was now trying to get in the playlists. Why am I rambling about a psychology experiment? Probably because I want you to think I’m smart. Let’s move on.

Taxes & Investments: You Can’t Invest Money You Live Off

Before I quit my job I never had to worry about paying my taxes because my employers would do that. So the first time I had to do that myself at the end of the year, I was surprised by how much of the money I didn’t get to keep. So then I got an accountant who could help me out, and that helped a lot. Then I learned that money that you put back in your business, you don’t have to pay tax over. Because investments lower your profit, and you only pay income tax over your profit. But because I was paying my rent, my food, my utilities and my lifestyle with the money from my business. There was no way to invest that, which kept my profit higher than it needed to be. And because of that I had to pay more taxes. Which made me realise that the money coming in wasn’t that much money after all. If I would’ve waited with upgrading my lifestyle, kept a job and lived off of that while I invested the money from my music back into my business, that would’ve been wise. And that’s what I would do if I started over.

Stress & Quality: The Work Has To Succeed

If you pay for your lifestyle with the income from your art, your art can’t fail because then you die. Just kidding, but if it fails then you can’t live the way you do anymore, especially if you already upgraded your lifestyle. And that creates a lot of pressure. And that pressure doesn’t necessarily improve the quality of your work. For some people it might, some people perform better under pressure. But for me, that’s not necessarily true. Especially when we talk about creative work. Overall, in my option, my work dropped in quality because I was too dependent on it being successful. Which caused me to make more rushed music and it did not do well. And that caused disappointment and more stress.

Shame: You Don’t Want People To See You Fail

When I first escaped the 9 to 5, I thought I really made it. And I celebrated that publicly, people would see my instagram page and would see me drinking champaign, this was when I was still drinking, going on trips all the time. I would post about my achievements and kind of identify with the image of being successful. Like many people on instagram do, I want to talk about that sometime too. But then when my income dropped. I didn’t want people to see my lifestyle drop, because I already showed everyone my great life. So now I kind of had a secret, and that made me feel ashamed. But let me tell you, there is no shame in taking accountability over your life and living more modest to save money so you can use that for something later. And it is dangerous to identify with a successful lifestyle. That’s what I’ve found.

Inspiration: You Will Lose Your Passion

I sort of touched on this already. But because I was doing it to maintain my life, and not for the love of music. I lost the fun of creating it. It became a job as well, but now it was a job at the expense of my creative energy because I was using all that creative energy for something that didn’t inspire me. And now, that I don’t depend on streams to make my living, that has gotten way better. It’s probably going to take some time before I’ll create music with the same passion as before the numbers, but now when I do it, I do it without stressing about the outcome. That enables me to create more freely and you know what’s funny. My output isn’t even that much lower than when I only lived off streams.

My Advice

Am I saying you shouldn’t quit your job to follow your purpose? No, if you feel like you’re ready to make that jump, you should do that. Some pressure does create diamonds and I am sure that you are going to learn very valuable lessons if you go for it.

But I’m starting to see that what I was doing wasn’t following my purpose, I just switched jobs. I still wasn’t the business, I made the product for someone else’s business. So I kind of was an employee still. Or a freelancer.

And to be fair, if I would’ve spent my money and time differently than I did. Like on investing in my music more, looked for other ways of making money, partying less and connecting more with other musicians. This could’ve brought me good business and less stress, but I only see that now in hindsight. I just think in my case, I should have waited a little bit longer before making that music my only source of income. Also, I would’ve been way more confident in making the art that I actually wanted to make if my lifestyle didn’t depend on it, and I could’ve made better investments with my music income if I didn’t have to spend it on my rent and everything. But all in all I am happy that it happened the way it did. Because I needed to learn this. And now I’m working on my business to make it a truly independent and sustainable business. That provides multiple streams of income that are not so fragile because they rely less on factors that I have no control over.

How To Combine A Job With Your Passion-Business

So if you don’t want to quit your job yet. And I recommend you don’t immediately quit your job yet. But you do want to build a business from your passion, this is going to require some discipline and dedication. What I would do is try to find a job that doesn’t need your physical presence, like a remote job that you can do from home. That will save you so much time because you don’t have to commute, and you still have quite a bit of freedom in where you are and when you work. Then structure your day so that you can work on your music business first. Use your first, best energy for your purpose. Wake up super early if you have to. Don’t do it in the evening after you are already tired from your job, then you’re giving yourself the scraps of your time. Do 3 to 4 hours of work on your passion every day, first. And then make your money at your job and then in the evening, you relax, maybe see a friend and then go to bed. Can you really go out and party all the time if you want to do this? Maybe, but I doubt it. You have to ask yourself if this is a sacrifice you’re willing to make.

And then when your business starts to generate income, I would recommend you stay at your job just a bit longer and invest all of the business money back into the business. You can do this because you don’t need that money to survive. This will grow your business a lot faster and then later, when your business is thriving, and you don’t rely on one source of income and you saved a bunch of money for a rainy day. Then I’d say it’s time to make the jump. This is what I would do if I started over.

So this was my experience and advice on quitting your job to following your artist passion. Thank you for giving me your time today, I know you can do many other things with it so that you decided to give it to me means a lot. I hope you found this interesting and enjoyed reading this. If you have some additional thoughts about this or some feedback. Let me know. I’m trying to learn and make this as interesting and valuable as possible. My WhatsApp number is on the website. I hope you have an amazing day, much love!