How To Build a Creative Career That’s Healthy, Profitable and Purposeful

You don’t have to sell your soul, drown in debt or wreck your body to build a meaningful career.

People ask to meet with me every week to learn more about how I built my freelance career. I do creative projects with diverse partners like Talking Heads’ frontman David Byrne, design firm IDEO and U.C. Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center. Our work has reached millions of people. I get to be creative everyday.

“I really want my life to look more like yours,” they’d tell me on a call.

“But why?”

It revealed a deeper insight about how our careers intersect with our lives: so many of us are yearning for more creativity, financial freedom, meaning, ownership over our time, and deeper relationships.

Today, I’m doing my most creative and impactful work. Even though many of my clients are nonprofits, I’m not drowning in debt or eating beans and rice everyday (at least, not anymore). I paid off my credit cards and student loans, saved up an emergency fund and continue to bring in hundreds of thousands of dollars in work.

I’ve also learned to grow my career without jeopardizing my health. I’ve prioritize my relationships and body. I feel spaciousness in my life and ownership over my time.

I didn’t have to sell my soul to achieve this. I don’t need to push consumerism, market unworthiness, or destroy our planet in the process. My projects all have some kind of social or environmental impact. (I’ve said “No” to many projects because they didn’t meet this criteria)

And then last year, I made a ten-year commitment to focus only on work that heals the social fabric of our country and bridges our divides — further clarifying my purpose in the world.

This is what people want in their lives: a joyful and creative career path that allows them to make time for the things that matter.

Don’t be disillusioned—I still have difficult days and struggles. I make plenty of mistakes too. However, I’ve managed to do something right in the past ten years: I’ve built a creative career that’s healthy, profitable and purposeful.

I want to share what I’ve learned with you. This knowledge and wisdom should be accessible to anyone who wants to manifest this kind of life.

That’s why I wrote this post. I want more people to take on creative and impactful work while still thriving financially, emotionally, physically and spiritually.

I’ve distilled my insights into three distinct themes:

• Health
• Profit
• Purpose

I’ll break down each one-by-one. Take what you need. It’s long because I wanted it to be exhaustive, meeting you wherever you’re at.

You might be further along in one category (let’s say “Profit”) than in another (such as “Purpose”). Feel free to skip around. I hope after reading this, you’ll have more clarity and motivation to build a creative career that’s healthy, profitable and purposeful.

Health: Caring For Self & Others

Caring for Self

Every elder I’ve spoken to who has a vibrant creative career emphasizes this point: take care of your body and mind.

If you aren’t healthy then your time and energy will be focused on healing, instead of creating. If you don’t take care of yourself, it’s hard to care for those around you.

An elder friend had a booming career. He always said “yes” to projects and kept landing more creative, soul-nourishing and impactful projects. He was in top newspapers. He worked with Oprah. But he was working around the clock and his body was taking a hit. Then, at a way too young age, he had a stroke. He told me it was a wake up call.

He took the time to heal and, when he recovered, he learned two important lessons: to say “No” more often and to let go of some of his responsibilities. This transformed his life for the better — he had stronger relationships, took more time for his health, and he worked on the stuff that really mattered to him. By giving up responsibilities, the people around him could step up and enter positions of leadership.

I won’t go into too much detail because you’ve likely heard many of these things before — but they’re critical. Building simple habits to take care of yourself is the only way to build a foundation for a long-lasting and thriving creative career.

• Drink water. I invented a game — whenever I notice my water bottle, I take a sip from it! I found that the more water I drank, the more my body and mind cooperated. My sluggishness, feeling of illness and body aches go away when I drink enough water. I feel more creative and productive. It’s ridiculous how simple this is, but it is magic.
• Eat well. I‘m not militant about what I can or can’t eat — that doesn’t work for me. So instead, I use mindfulness. After eating, I check in with my body to see how I feel. Through this process, I realized dairy makes me sick, so I swapped out whole milk for oat milk. I ate less meat. I learned: greens make me a better copywriter, and fruits enhance my design skills.
• Exercise. I take a 45-minute walk each day. I hike and do yoga. I take dance classes on Instagram (Ryan Heffington, anyone?) and do body-based strength exercises.
• Mental care. I journal every day and do artwork that has nothing to do with my work. I find times to do things that matter most to me — like being with people I love, or out in nature. I also create ‘me’ time. Also: get a therapist! (Don’t think you can afford it? There are plenty of platforms that offer sliding scale payments like Open Path).

For some of you, this might feel completely unrelated to building a career, but trust me — when this is dialed in, your best work will get done.

Caring for Others

Our careers are also tied to our sense of belonging. When you feel connected to your family, friends and broader community — it nourishes your soul and, as a secondary effect, drives your career to new heights.

Intuitively, I knew it was important to connect with people. But for most of my career, I couldn’t find the time. Yet, when I didn’t prioritize my relationships, I felt more isolated. This, in turn, had consequences on my career.

For some of you, it’s about making more time and learning to prioritize your relationships. But for others, it’s about finding the time.

The key is building meaningful relationships. These aren’t single interactions you have every few months with people. It’s about forming consistent, proximate and intimate connections with others.

Consistency

Staying in consistent communication with people is key. You can do this in small ways: If you read an interesting article that reminds you of someone, go through the extra step of sending it to them. Set calendar reminders to call loved ones regularly. Invite others into your life, and recognize that not every activity needs to be done solo. For instance, a walk is a beautiful act of solitude, but it can also forge community. So put out the invitation for loved ones to join you. (If you’re reading this and we’re still in a pandemic — be smart about it—wear a mask, maintain distance and reduce risk factors.)

The key to being consistent is about finding time not creating it. Instead of mindlessly listening to Spotify on shuffle during your drive to the grocery store, could you call a loved one? If you’re eating a meal — even in this pandemic life — could you Zoom with someone instead of checking your emails? You don’t need to fill your entire calendar with moments of community — in fact, solitude and alone time is critical! — but there’s likely ways to coordinate more consistent contact with others.

Proximity

Proximity means maintaining close (and often in-person) contact with others through real conversations. In a pandemic, this has certainly gotten harder, as many of us are quarantining to protect our communities and abide by public safety guidelines. One way people are bringing proximity into their lives in safe ways is by forming a pandemic ‘pod’ — a group of people who all agree to engage in safe behaviors (masking up, social distancing, limiting travel, getting tested, etc.).

Proximity allows for emergence in ways that you couldn’t get when connecting with someone for an hour over Zoom. We show up differently. We leave room for those “in between” moments where the magic of relationships happens. When we’re through this pandemic, proximity will become even easier for many of us.

There’s also the benefits of proximity when applied to people who are different from us. We learn from the divergent directions of their lives, and become more empathetic and compassionate. This expands what is possible when we think about who could make up our community.

Intimacy

Courage and vulnerability are key to building depth in your relationships.

Courage invites you to show up to others with bravery. You might hide certain aspects of your life to protect yourself or show a facade, but this ultimately prevents you from building intimacy. Courage helps you share these parts of yourself that reveal imperfections and embrace authenticity.

Vulnerability allows you to let your guard down, get off scripts, and connect with people in a more genuine way. Vulnerability helps you express emotions, needs and concerns to others. Ask yourself: What feels scary to share with someone? How can I invite others to see that part of myself?

Profit: Budgeting, Your Story of Money and Valuing Your Worth

Most of us want a new economic system that works for all of us. Yet, until then, capitalism is what we’ve been forced into. And you still need to find ways to pay the bills.

The goal of being profitable is to build a creative career that is financially sustainable so you don’t have to work on things that don’t matter for you or the world because “you need the money.” This frees up time that you can spend on other important parts of your life. Financial independence creates ownership over your time, and secures your future. It also means I’m closing the wealth gap—as someone who didn’t come from money, a profitable creative career means I have a chance to break a generational cycle.

This section is divided into three categories: Budgeting, Your Story of Money and Valuing Your Worth.

Budgeting

If you haven’t already, you need to make a budget. Work through your resistances and do it — you will be on a better path to financial security.

I use YNAB (You Need a Budget), which is worth the monthly fee to me. But if you can’t afford it, use a free service like Mint (I’ve also used this and it’s great). They’re both reputable and safe, and they’ll help you understand how much money is coming in and how you’re spending it.

Once you make your budget, you’ll need to embody certain financial principles:

• Live within your means. Don’t spend more than you earn, period. It’s much better to spend less than to earn more. Your first thoughts before buying something should be: Do I really need that? Do I need it now? Could I get this second hand? Will it bring me long-lasting joy? You gotta Marie Kondo your budget.
• Pay down your debt aggressively. Nothing is more liberating than being debt free. Having debt for most of my life, it is not only a financial burden but an emotional one too. It made me anxious and stressed in ways I didn’t even realize! Make a plan to pay down your debt, starting with the ones with the highest interest (these are typically your credit cards).
• Don’t carry a balance on your credit cards. Credit history helps us get jobs, housing and loans for big purchases. Plus there’s rewards like cash back and points. However, the key is to pay off your credit cards each month. If you’re carrying a balance that means you’re not living within your means, and you need to reduce your spending.

Once you start developing good money habits, you’ll also want to get a good overview of your “net worth” — how much you have total to your name (assets and investments minus debt). I use Personal Capital, a free app, to track this. It compiles everything into one place and makes it much easier than the alternative: logging into each individual account and using a calculator.

Your Story of Money

Everyone grows up with their own story of money. This comes from the ways our parents treated it and what we saw in our environment. Our relationship to money can be toxic and hold us back. You might give your money away without ever using it on yourself (the story of self-sacrifice), or spend it recklessly on things that do not serve you (the story of devaluation), or put self-imposed barriers on what is even possible to earn in a creative career (the story of limiting beliefs). There are many other stories too.

There’s plenty of free resources online that can help you understand your story of money. You can also talk to someone you trust about your finances too, or even journal about it too. This is where a therapist helps.

Whatever you do, you must understand your personal psychology and relationship with money. It will be difficult to achieve financial security and comfort if you don’t. We all have a story of money, and we all have the opportunity to re-author those narratives and write new ones too.

Valuing Your Worth

Research shows that women, people of color, and the LGBTQ+ community don’t get paid as much as their (more privileged) counterparts. We tend to under-ask when negotiating — let’s say when we’re getting a new job. We can under-charge and under-value our work, which feeds into this cycle of inequity and under-compensation.

It’s difficult for us to change broader systems that perpetuate gender or racial inequity in our careers (unless we’re in a position of power or work in, let’s say, Human Resources). But what you can do as a creative is value your worth and charge competitive market rates.

There are a couple ways to achieve this:

• Understand what others get paid. More data points will help you right-size your ask when you’re negotiating pay. It will also give you more confidence because you’ll know you’re worthy of receiving a specific amount — because others do too. Talk to others in your field and ask, “How much do you charge for your work?” Help break the taboo around ‘money talk.’ I’ll start! For my high-level creative consulting work, I typically don’t take projects at less than $150/hour. If projects are complex or require more resources, my fee goes up.
• Charge fixed fees, not by the hour. It’s in you and your client’s best interest to charge a fixed fee. (There are some exceptions) For a client, the logic for hourly doesn’t make sense: If you’re getting paid by the hour, then you could take your sweet ass time on a project and get paid more. Hourly also means budgets get out of control for the client—too much risk. By charging a fixed fee, you’ll protect the client, and it benefits you too: you’ll charge for the value you’re bringing and not for the time you’re spending. You’ll eventually earn more this way, and projects will take less time as you get more experienced and efficient. Everyone wins!
• Build in margins. We aren’t always accurate at tabulating how much time a project will take. Things will also come up unexpectedly. That’s why you build in a “margin” — adding an additional charge on top of your rate as a safety precaution. This will cover costs that aren’t related to the project per se — like accounting, those random phone calls, software and electronics…the list goes on. I typically build in a 10–15% margin in every contract. Don’t forget to also factor in your taxes if you’re self-employed! (This is a whole other topic that warrants its own Medium post.)
• Practice builds courage. At the beginning of my career, I remember how scary it was to ask for $40,000 for a 4-month project. It was more than I made in my first year out of college. Yet, they accepted my offer without batting an eye. This gave me even more confidence and courage to ask other clients for what I was worth.
• Learn to say ‘no’. This is possibly the hardest lesson, but it’s crucial. Saying “no” more allows you to say “yes” to the things that really matter. I remember when I said no to a full-time job offer, even though it was a pretty sweet deal, and a month later I got offered a dream freelance gig.

Purpose

Money isn’t everything. If you get wrapped up in the chase for money, you’ll miss out on why you got into a creative career in the first place: to have control over your time, to invest in your relationships, and to be creative and do meaningful work.

The major selling point to a career you own—rather than one that owns you—is the ability to be more purposeful in your life. This means using your time on your own terms. It also means contributing to something greater than yourself.

If your career only serves you, you’ll eventually burn out or feel unfulfilled. To avoid this, you must create a career that’s in service of something beyond you. You do this through purposeful work.

Finding your purpose is not easy though. Big companies go on year long journeys just narrowing down their purpose statement — sometimes only a sentence long or a simple tagline. These branding exercises are facilitated by huge teams and take lots of resources (money, energy and time). Why would it require less from you? Discovering what your purpose is and then distilling it into clear and compelling language takes time.

Here are three ways to be more purposeful in your career: discovery, alignment and commitment.

Discovery

What does the world need? What do you want (e.g. what gives you energy)? What are you good at? You’ll likely find purpose at this intersection. Draw a Venn diagram with three circles overlapping, and each of these questions in them. Is there anything that is right in the ‘sweet spot’—in the middle?

When I was trying to figure out my own purpose, I would try to find people who were already leaning into theirs. Then, when I met them, I asked them to do a ‘disco call’ with me (disco: short for discovery)

At first, I would come up with a short list of questions and then bombard them with it: “How did you get to where you are?” “Any advice for me?” “What’s the secret?” They would usually agree to the conversation because people typically have a spirit of generosity.

However, even though I’d walk away with new insights, these conversations often felt one-sided and extractive. There’s little they walked away with. So I created a new way to do disco calls. I made them playful (instead of serious), energy-filling (instead of taxing), and interesting (instead of boring).

I started a call with a 5-minute art exercise. I played a song and had us dance. I asked them to bring an older photo of them, and talk about how they’ve changed since. After I listened to someone tell me their story, I’d send them an email with a custom poem that reflected what I learned. In this new disco call format, both people walked away getting something out of their time.

Alignment

When you have a strong purpose statement, you’ll want to test this out to see if it feels in alignment with yourself, others, and the world.

• Self Alignment. When you say your purpose out loud, how does it feel in your body? If you’re an intuitive person, do you feel a sense of vigor or certainty when you connect to your purpose?
• Align With Others. Test your purpose with others. Say it out loud when you participate in your next virtual event. Talk about it with a friend the next time you check in. The important thing is to ask for feedback: Does it resonate? Was it clear? What questions do you have? Do you see an alignment between my purpose and who I am?
• Align With Others (Part II). You can also find people who are living a similar purpose as you. Through these conversations, understand what worked for them and what didn’t. You’ll start to see the kinds of projects that are really taking off, and who is funding them. You’ll build relationships with people who not only make you feel good, but are working towards a shared purpose.
• Alignment With the World. Is this what the world really needs? In order to test this, meet the people you’re hoping to impact and figure out if this is what they want/need. Get proximate with them. Even better, partner with them to sharpen your purpose and co-lead your work. If it isn’t impactful for them, then you’re not living your “purpose” in the truest sense.

Commitment

The final step to lean into your purpose is a lesson from nuns. I met them through a group of friends, Millennials, who lived with nuns in convents across the country. The Sisters taught me about the vows they take — long-term commitments that serve as a direction for their lives.

We don’t need to make a life-long commitment, but we do need to devote ourselves to at least a long-term one that helps us root into a sense of purpose over time. (Note: your purpose might change as your life evolves, so it’s important to always check-in with yourself and engage in active reflection.)

These Sisters offer a lesson to all of us about purpose: making a commitment that lasts, say five or more years, means there’s more opportunities for both struggle and meaning. (I don’t think it’s a coincidence that parents feel a deep sense of purpose with their children. It’s a life-long commitment!)

Connecting this concept to a creative career, this showed up for me when I decided to make a ten-year commitment to heal our country and bridge our divides. No matter what happens or how hard it gets, I thought, I’ll continue to invest my time and energy into this single pursuit.

Making this long-term commitment made it so much easier for me to say ‘no’ to projects that weren’t central to my purpose in the world. In turn, this opened up a spaciousness for the work I do that I hadn’t felt before when I was a consultant moving from topic to topic. This deep focus allows me to be more consistent, proximate and intimate in my relationships with people, especially those who share my purpose. I landed interesting projects, created wealth, and developed a more nuanced point of view. I was able to create stronger partnerships due to the trust, credibility and relationships I’ve built (and continue to build) in the space.

Final Words

If you put effort behind these three aspects of your life — Health, Profit and Purpose — then you’ll see the rewards. You’ll forge a deeper sense of belonging, create financial security and independence, and devote your life to something meaningful. You’ll build a creative career that’s healthy, profitable and purposeful.

Like learning the piano, this all takes time. You can’t just read one article or watch one YouTube video and develop the ability to perform an entire song on the piano without practice and skilling up. The same is true for building a creative career. If you work on these three things, slowly but surely, you’ll get closer to creating a creative career that leads to a more nourishing and abundant life— which really is music to my ears!

Learn more about my work and follow me on Instagram @scottshigeoka!