Managing the Creative Process in a Creative Business

Managing the creative process in a creative business can be a challenging yet rewarding experience. Creativity is at the heart of such businesses and it is important to protect your creativity. In this episode, I am joined by Esther Knox, lead designer and creative director of Sereth Design. Together, we explore how we manage our creative processes in ways that nurtures our innovation and how we strike the balance between artistic freedom and structured productivity.

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Guest Bio

Esther Knox is the lead designer and creative director behind Sereth Design. She has seven years of design experience; four of which she spent working in large advertising agencies, one at a global nonprofit and the last two building Sereth Design. She started Sereth Design with the intention to take her talents and experience to support small and medium sized businesses that were changing the world. Through Sereth Design, Esther is honored to work with nonprofits, social enterprises, and mission driven brands all over the world to tell their stories and spearhead social impact. She's most inspired by meeting unique people and hearing stories while traveling and deep conversations around food. Esther lives in Chicago, Illinois with her partner, Jake, pup Cyrus, and her ever growing family of houseplants.

Alex: Hi, Esther, welcome to the show.

Esther: Hello, thank you so much for having me. I'm so happy to be here.

Alex: Me too. I know you know this, but I'll share this for the audience, I am a big fan of the Better podcast and you are you have been a co-host on there for some time and just getting to connect with you through that show has been so nice. I'm so excited to have another person in my design community that I really connect with.

Esther: Yeah, I feel like I've met so many people just through Instagram. As the design community continues to grow, I get to meet people from so many different spaces and connect with them. Being a part of the Better podcast as a co-host, I got to meet so many people and while I never officially interviewed you, I got to know you in the digital world. Our stories are so similar and it's really cool to hear that from somebody else and to feel like I'm not alone. Especially, getting to meet designers who geek out about the same things, even just before we recorded we were geeking out about Squarespace and it's really cool to have coworkers, especially when we run solo businesses.

Alex: Yes, I agree. I don't often get to talk to people about code with someone that actually understands what I'm saying, it's really exciting. Because so often I'm nerding by myself, so I'd love that for us.

Esther: I know, and I don't know about your partner, but mine is not a developer, creative. So, I don't get to talk about this with anybody.

Alex: Yeah, me neither. He develops code in Excel and that just makes my brain hurt.

Esther: I think they're the same, because that's what Jake does, he's always in Excel.

Alex: That doesn’t sound fun to me, but then he doesn't get what I do, either. So, it's fine, we don't have to like the same things.

Esther: No, it kind of makes it better.

Alex: I agree. But I'm really excited to talk to you because you were mentioning this on Instagram and this is why I reached out to you to be on the show. You were talking about how you've recently switched to working with one client at a time and I really wanted to talk to you about that because that is not how I do things in my business. So, I thought it would be really interesting to talk about that and explore the different ways that you can manage client workload and maintaining your creativity through the amount of work you take on to in your business.

Esther: Yeah, totally. My design process and my client process has changed so much over the years. When I first started to design, I was taking on pretty much every client that would come my way. I felt I was very much in a scarcity mindset and I was also excited about all the projects that I had going on. So if people reached out, I said yes and I hardly ever said no. I had some incredible clients during that time, but I also had some incredible moments of burnout, where I was just feeling like I was pushing myself too much. I was not creatively inspired for every single client as much as I wanted to be because I was stretched thin. I only had a certain amount of time to work on each project at a time or I was staying up super late and waking up super early and that takes a toll on you.

Then at the end of last year, or during last year, I had started to think about how do I want to pivot my business to really serve me well and serve my clients better, because at the end of the day, we're in the business of serving people. What good is it if I take on clients and make money, but they're not gonna get a good result out of it. At the end of last year, I went through a re-strategizing of my business and tried to really understand who I'm serving. When I established that, I realized I also wanted to give them the time and attention that they so deserve. So, I started testing out taking on two clients at a time and that was incredible. Going from working with six, seven, eight clients at a time to two was mind blowing for me to think about how I could even do that and sustain my business. From two, I tested out going to one and I tested that out with a little bit of a larger client.

It was beautiful, I love working with one client at a time because I feel like it gave me the space to actually fully download the information. Think of it in a way of if you're getting hired on for a full time position, you're thrown into it and you're only thinking about that job during work hours, that is your whole life, and you have to really understand it, get downloads, etc. When I started a new job, before I started Sereth design, I had to take a month to even really understand the business and then produce quality work.

So that's why I like doing one client at a time because I need to take the time to actually get into the mindset of being a team member, and then also producing quality work. While I may not be working every single hour of the day on that one client, my time when I am working is dedicated to them. I can actually think through how to serve them best, what's going to work best for them, what do they actually need, as opposed to kind of being reactionary and taking things and dumping them. At the end of the day, things always get done and they always they work well. But I felt I wanted to give more of myself and that's part of who I am and my values. I put my heart into everything that I do and I really wanted to show that for my clients.

Alex: Oh gosh, there's so many different nuggets there. Firstly, I definitely relate to what you're saying. I feel like every entrepreneur, especially creative entrepreneurs, have this issue at the beginning of their businesses where they're doing it and so excited. Then, you ended up taking a billion projects, I'm being hyperbolic, but like a lot of projects, and then experience that first burnout where you realize this is why everyone says not to do that.

I could definitely relate to that. I had a very similar experience when I was first starting out because I think we have similar values in the sense of we really want to help people, we really know that we have the skills to take them to another level that they're not currently at. That's why they're reaching out to us and being able to provide that service is really exciting. That's great and all but it you also have to learn to have boundaries and pick and choose and know what's going to be best for both you and the client like you were saying, so I definitely see where you're coming from.

It's really interesting though, because for me, I thrive on having multiple projects going on at once. I am so inspired by many different ideas. Now I don't take on clients at exactly the same time, I don't have people start on the same start dates because I've done that and it's the worst.

I don't recommend doing the same thing for multiple people at the same time. For example, brand strategy, it's a little overloading for my brain. But if I have someone in the web development phase, and then someone in the brand strategy phase, or like someone in the design phase, that works for me. I have like eight projects I'm working on right now, I love that chaos. It's not as bad as it sounds, because everyone's at different stages. I also have variable timelines which makes it a lot easier. Some people are okay with doing things slower, some people are doing things faster. So for me, I still provide that level of insight and quality that you're talking about but I do really enjoy working on multiple projects at once.

Esther: Yeah, I think you've shared a reel the other day, that said as a multi passionate creative, I love doing all of these millions of things and I relate to that to it. But I think that it comes down to your personality or human design of how you best work. For me, if I was doing what you're doing, I burn out very, very fast. I do really well for the first two weeks, and then I'm burnt out. So, it's really interesting to hear from you that more projects is what lights you up and what fuels your creativity because you get to take a break from one project and work on a different spot, like brand strategy, then working on a website design, then working on brand design. I feel that's really cool too. I feel this is just a different way to look at it and again, I think it comes down to how you personally work best.

Alex: Yes, totally and for you astrology nerds, I've mentioned this before on the show, but I have a sixth house stellium in Capricorn. So essentially that means that I am very predisposed to being organized and having my shit together when it comes to work. I know how to set those structures in place, so that I can succeed and thrive in an environment that has a lot of things going on. I also majored in biology in college and that involves a lot of planning and strategizing. It's less about the actual things you're learning, which are hard, but it's about being able to manage four different classes at once and learning them. I think my life experiences have made it easier for me to take on multiple things at once and it's determined in my chart. I'm curious what are your signs.

Esther: So I'm a Pisces Sun, Pisces Moon, and Aquarius Rising. The intensity of the Pisces in me makes me kind of hunker down and nurture what I'm doing and focus in. I can't remember where any of my houses are, I always have to go back to my apps and look through everything. So, I'm not sure where exactly work fits in but yeah, I feel my design is to nurture when I'm working on something.

Alex: Yeah and that makes sense given your Pisces placements. You're also very predisposed to diving deep into things and you have the moon and the sun in Pisces, so that makes sense.

Esther: Yes, it's a lot of Pisces going on here.

Alex: Yeah, a lot of watery energy which is great, we love that. I did want to circle back because we didn’t dive straight into things. I did want to give you the opportunity to tell us how you became a designer and how you got into a creative field.

Esther: Sure, there are a lot of different pieces to this story. Part of it starts from my childhood, I have a YouTube video about my childhood and growing up between two different worlds, I'm half Chinese and half American and that really influences my work and my creativity by getting to see the world in so many different lights growing up. But that's just a piece of my story.

I would say that design itself came natural as a child and it came to me more in terms of a career when I went to college. So, I went to school at the University of Oregon and started as an art major, because I had no idea what I wanted to do. I knew that I was creative, I loved painting, I loved drawing growing up, and I thought I gotta get into art, I guess. I started as an art major and very quickly realized there's not necessarily a lot you can do with an art major, unless you want to go into the museum industry, or create pieces of art, or become an art teacher. And I got bored of it quickly, because I liked it but not enough to go into it fully.

I transitioned into a major where I was studying advertising with a focus in design. So, I studied advertising, creating billboards and these advertisements in an art direction format, and I learned a lot about visualization through there. I realized I also could make money doing that, that's the kind of field that people get involved.

So, I interned at different agencies, I got hired at full time at agencies and I worked as an art director for a few years. Then, I transitioned into design. At one of my agencies, the last agency before I moved into nonprofit, I did a lot of branding work that was a was a big part of the design team. We were doing branding projects, rebranding different companies, and branding campaigns. I feel I got really excited about that and I realized, I can do this even more. But I got really bored of what I was doing, because I was working on companies that I didn't care about. They also felt like I was lining their pockets. For example, I worked on Oscar Meyer and I was a vegetarian. So why am I working on Oscar Meyer as a vegetarian, I do not care about this but they're a big company and they're paying us to do all this stuff.

I'm started craving more and craving more out of my talents, clearly I love design and I love branding. And I love creating campaigns and I do love the advertising and marketing aspect of it, but I wanted it to be a little bit more intentional. So, I started taking on a lot of freelance projects while I was working in agency. I didn't think I could go out on my own so, I decided I would go into a nonprofit.

I worked in the marketing department of a global nonprofit for a year and I thought, this is perfect, I get to do something that I feel is making a difference in the world. I did that for a year, then the pandemic hit and I was still working there. I had this feeling that I needed to do to start Sereth design and be able to serve smaller businesses. Those were the types of people that I was getting while I was freelancing on the side, smaller businesses, startups, who were actually making a difference. And then, I took the leap.

That's kind of the the long story short of my journey to starting Sereth design and getting into the creative field. I feel as a designer, I have gone through so many different career paths because design can look so many different ways. From art direction to branding, to now doing a lot of website design and strategy. There's so many different pieces. I have loved every era of my life and every area of my journey. It's cool to be here now and I don't know what's next, but I'm here right now.

Alex: Yeah, that's amazing. Thank you for sharing. I I love your story, particularly for those of you that have listened to all of the podcast, you know that my childhood started with growing up abroad. So, I have a very similar experience of feeling I was from a place but then I wasn't from a place, very similar experience to you and I've never met another person with a similar experience. The first time you shared that on the Better podcast I was thought I need to talk to you about this, I've never talked to someone about this because it felt so singular to me. For those of you that haven't listened to that first episode, it's there if you want to go back and hear it.

I definitely see how that is reflected in your work. It has a very worldly perspective to it. I feel I bring that to my work as well. I could definitely see how your culture is tied into it too, which is something that I take into account in my work. It's just interesting how people with similar but different life experiences interweave similar philosophies into their work. I absolutely love that and thank you for sharing the whole trajectory of your story. I wanted to ask you about your time in the agency, how did you handle, from a day to day perspective, projects at your agency?

Esther: So, in terms of the project management, what I loved about working in agency is there was a project manager. Now running our own businesses, we have to handle it all, but we would have a project manager who's scheduled out everything, meetings and deadlines. Sometimes I think, once I get a little bit more established, I should hire a project manager, because it's a lot to manage everything.

But I would say that's probably the biggest piece is that we had somebody who was doing that. There were two people in this one agency I was working on and then you also have account managers who are managing relationships with clients. So as a designer, you're just doing the design work, which is lovely. I love the entrepreneurship world where you kind of get to wear lots of different hats, but getting to just work on the design is incredible.

That's the feeling I would get because someone would say you have a branding project, here's when you need to have initial logo designs and here's when you need to have like the full brand deck ready to go to client, here's when we're going to have our internal creative review, because we had a creative director who is looking over everything to. Everything was very structured which is nice. Sometimes I don't miss that, I do like the flexibility of getting to do things when we're inspired and we have, of course, deadlines, but not as strict.

But talking about creativity and how I managed that while there is the project process. That was probably the most difficult part working in agency because you have timelines. It's a little bit more difficult to be inspired. You're handed something at 9 AM and then tomorrow at 5 PM, this has to be done. You don't have time to really think intensely about how you want it to play out. You just have to do and it's really reactionary. I had a really difficult time being creative, you're forced in the sense you have this person on your back, that's saying it's got to get done. You have the timeline against you, or for you, because sometimes people work better under pressure. I do work well under pressure but you're also forced to work under pressure.

Alex: Yeah, I can see how that can go both ways. Like you were saying, another question I have for you is because everything was planned out and strategized, were you working on, let's say you had a branding project, would you work through and complete that project and then work on something else? Or would you have like multiple projects that you're working on at once?

Esther: No. You're always working on a million different things at once.I still have friends who work at large agencies and I don't know how they still do it. They tried to make it balanced. For example, on my team, there were five designers and then a design director, so six designers. Then, you have 20 different clients that are large, they're not like in and out clients. You have them consistently throughout, you're the agency of record. So, you might be doing like campaign for Disney this month and then in two months, you'll do another campaign for Disney. But you're constantly working on the same stuff, but over time, they would split it out, like, senior designers work on this project, mid-designers work on these projects, junior designers work on these projects. Then, they try to balance it so each designer has a relatively equal amount of work. Sometimes you're working together, sometimes you're working individually. I was an illustrator and I did a lot of the illustration work. If a project came in that needed illustration, that would get handed to me. They tried to balance it a little bit but sometimes you're working on six things, and the other designers working on two and you're like, are you kidding me, but that is how it is. You can't complain, because you're getting paid full time and that's a problem but it is how the industry works.

Alex: Dang, yeah. So it's kind of how I do things, but I'm choosing to do that.

Esther: Yeah and I think this goes in line with how I'm choosing to run my business now. I liked when I had a bigger project and I was just working on one or two projects. Maybe the second project was a smaller project and then, I had the one that I spent most of my time on. I really liked those setups the most and I think that's why like having just one, two, maybe two, or like a second smaller project, at a time now because it allows me to decompress a little bit and be more creative.

Alex: That makes sense. Yeah, speaking of what you were doing in the agency versus what you're doing now, I'm curious, was it difficult transitioning from having all that structure, having someone actually plan everything out for you, to doing everything on your own?

Esther: Yeah, it was extremely challenging. I'm now in my third year and I feel I've got my process down much better.

My first year was definitely a huge learning curve, because you don't have people right there for you. If you need somebody else, you have to hire them and pay them. It's very different than saying, hey, can you write a couple lines for this. So then, you're wearing a copywriter hat if you need to, and you're also managing the project, and you're also sending out contracts, and you're having the discovery call. It still is very challenging because there's only so much time in the day. But at the same time, I do love it because you get to see the whole process through and you get to really nurture these relationships with your clients and understand them from the beginning to end. There's a lot more intentionality.

There's a lot more of a personal connection, doing this business now versus when I was just doing at the agency. There's a balance, there's pros and cons. Sometimes it's nice to just do the design, but it's also really nice having the personal and emotional connection. That's what I thrive on now is getting to meet people and hear their stories. That's something that I've carried through my whole life, especially we just talked about living in different areas and meeting people from different backgrounds. It's so cool to hear people's stories, so I don't want to miss out on that. As difficult as it is to handle all the things, it's pretty badass to say you're handling all the things too.

Alex: Oh, totally. I know exactly what you mean. Something I'll just mention, and I wasn't planning on bringing this up for for designers, or anyone that's listening to the show, something that I recently started doing so that I wouldn't have to do everything all the time in my own business is doing white label development work for other designers. The reason I started doing that was because that, one, there's so much work out there for everyone, two, a lot of people do not like development, three, if I don't have to interact with the client, sometimes that sounds amazing. So there are ways in entrepreneurship to make things work for you if you're really don't enjoy interacting with the client. Maybe you can explore options where you white label more for other people or join in someone's boutique design agency. So, I wouldn't like completely rule out entrepreneurship, if that freaks you out. I felt I needed to say that in case someone's like, oh, my God, I have to do all the things, what?

Esther: Yeah and also another thing too, is if there's a field, or if there's an area in your business that is not your zone of genius, it's okay to then hire somebody else out to do that. If you really are not great at having discovery calls, and you need to have another face, you can always hire somebody. Or if you really hate responding to emails, you could hire a virtual assistant to do certain things. There's a lot of pieces and I don't do that, but I feel you could. There are so many different people who have that as their skill sets, like an administrative assistant, to do your your back end stuff.

Alex: Yeah and that helps protect your energy so you can stay creative and doing the things that you're best at. My accountant is my favorite person because I don’t like doing my own accounting. She keeps me running a tight ship. She keeps things on the rails. That's what she does.

Esther: Yeah, it is helpful in business to have people on a roster of who you can reach out to when you need certain things. For example, I have a developer that I always go to if I need development help because it's really difficult to develop and design at the same time. It is for me, I can't do too many things at one time, because I get burnt out. So, I have him and then I'll have copywriters on my list in case I need to reach out to a copywriter or photographers on my list, or even other designers that I sometimes need to bring in. It's really helpful, again, to protect your energy, to protect your time.

There's a lot that goes into that, there's the mental aspect of bringing people on to help you out. Because I think sometimes as creatives, we hold our babies so tight, and we don't want to let anybody in. I had a really tough time, when I first started letting people in. It's really powerful to see what you could do as a team and that is something that I do miss from agency, having a team, whether it is a large team, or even a small team, to have people who are in your corner, working towards the same thing is really, really powerful.

Alex: Yeah, I have a very similar experience. I feel I’m still in that place a little bit now. But I'm slowly learning to let go in the sense of, I love doing everything. I love doing the branding, I love doing the design, I love doing the development. But like you said, there is like so much opportunity to create even more amazing things when you collaborate with other people. Just keeping that perspective as I hire on other people for certain projects here and there has helped to make it so much easier to actually do that. Which when I started my business, I said I was always going to do everything all the time and it's literally not possible.

Esther: Yeah, it's interesting too, because I've had kind of a flip flop experience in certain aspects where I thought that I should hire on a junior designer to handle my social media. But then I realized how much I like making my own stuff. It feels better when I create it and I share it and it feels more genuine and I get more excited about it. I did hire on a junior designer for a few months at the beginning of my business and I no longer work with them. Because I want to do it myself. I want to handle it all and have my creative energy poured into it and feel I'm connected versus somebody else just doing it for me.

Alex: Yeah, I had a very similar experience. We have a lot of similar experiences. This is making me realize I probably need to have this person on the podcast for a separate episode. But I started out with a junior designer helping me with social posts, same thing. And eventually I realized, I like having control over the visuals of what shows up on my social media. Then, I hired someone to do everything else. I do the design, they handle all engagement posting, get analytics, planning out what I'm going to be posting, they do all of that. Then I do all of the creative, which is the best thing ever. I'm obsessed.

Esther: I feel like that's perfect.

Alex: I know, I know. I already share her with everyone. So, if I have her on the show, we talk about that, every designer is going to say, I need to work with you.

Another thing I wanted to ask you about that, this is going back in the conversation. You said you only take on one project at a time right now, possibly, two. But the other day we were talking on Instagram and you were asking me about my template shop. I was curious, does that mean you're thinking about adding a template shop to the mix of things and what are your thoughts there?

Esther: Yeah, so I have been toying around with the idea of a template shop for a few months now. It's always been in the back of my head because I work with nonprofits and not all nonprofits have a huge budget to do a fully custom website.

I've been thinking of ways that I can serve them that still is also income for me. If I create a couple of different templates that they can then use, we could do semi-custom projects, or they can just use it on their own. I feel that would be a really cool space but I have not done it yet. I'm so nervous that it's going to deplete my time and energy.

I've been wanting to and I also am nervous about it. There's a lot of feelings there. I've been loving so much being in this space where I'm only working on one to two things at a time. I know adding that in will be a whole project on its own. I don't know, I wanted to get your insight on it because you have your template shop. I know that it is just a whole other beast, right? Because you're doing a lot of work on the back end that you see later on. How do you balance it? I want to flip this on you because I'm curious about it. I want to do it but I don't know if I can because I've been in this sweet spot of working on one or two things at a time.

Alex: Yeah, overall, I love having my template shop and I'll get into why. But I would not recommend committing to doing twelve templates for a series, I have my astrology series that I'm working on. I am on the final phase, I have six templates to develop. Then, I'm taking a break from building templates for a while. So yes, on that side of things, the actual building and conceptualizing side of things, it is a lot. But I really enjoy the process of designing a template. That's the part that takes me the longest, not the development. I like it because it keeps me from wanting to re-design my brand all the time or my website all the time because I make my ideas into a template. It makes me love and appreciate my personal business's brand even more. I can have both, so that that side of things is really cool because I get to express my creativity but I'm not like rebranding every five minutes. I didn't use to rebrand all the time, but I have gone through like several iterations of my business, especially in the earlier years.

Another thing to add, I thought going into my template shop that I was going to build out selling the actual templates to other people, like, someone would come to my website, buy the template, and then that's it. That's what I thought I was going to be doing but it's turned into me doing a lot more semi-custom projects. That has been super profitable for me. I call them template remixes, it's essentially my template, website customization, in two weeks.

Esther: So, when you say you're doing eight projects at a time, you are doing eight projects, but there could be potentially less time and less energy going into some of them.

Alex: Yeah, they vary in length and scope, which is fantastic. My fully custom projects are the whole shebang, we do strategy, we do design, there's so much involved there. But my semi-custom projects, and specifically for the templates, they're less involved. Instead of doing a full strategy document, I'll do a strategy session. Instead of doing mock ups for the website, I just jump into the template and start implementing branding. So, there's a lot of work cut out with the semi-custom option. It has become my most popular offering because people love the price point. It allows me to interact and help a lot more people without burning myself out like I used to, because I would just take them on anyways.

Esther: Yeah, totally. I like that. That's cool. It makes me more excited to dip into it, I was thinking that I might take some time this summer to work on a smaller client, and then have time to do my templates on the side. I feel it also is an investment in your time. It makes me excited to think about the possibilities of what I can do. I want to be able serve my clients better. If it takes a little bit of intensity at first to then have better products for my clients, I feel that's worth it. I also was not planning on doing twelve templates, I was thinking of starting with three and I feel like that's attainable.

Alex: Yeah, I do not recommend twelve right out the gate. I released two when I started. Three also feels like a good number. As long as you have different styles and you're using different sections in different ways on each template, I find it's really easy to customize them and make them unique for each client. Because that's kind of the beauty of being a designer, you can transform things.

Esther: Yeah, with colors and fonts and imagery. It's a whole new thing.

Alex: Exactly. So, what I'm hearing is you might start working on more than one project at a time.

Esther: Yes, but it does feel different. Because it's one client, and then me as an internal client doesn't feel as intense as multiple external clients.

Alex: Yeah. That's a really good way to tippy toe your way into possibly doing more things, if that's what you decide works for you.

Esther: Yeah, and I will say I have loved being in the space where I get to work on one or two clients, that does not mean that I'm gonna be here forever. I might, again, go back to working with a lot of clients, also depending on my team and if I bring more people on, and how much I feel I can handle at different seasons in my life. I love where I'm at right now and I love how it has given me the opportunity to focus on the clients that I'm currently working on. I love this space that I'm in now, but who knows what next year is going to hold or even six months down the road.

Alex: Yeah. I say this to people all the time. I'm working on reading minds and predicting the future. We'll definitely see what happens. I'm excited to stay connected and see how things go. I wanted to ask you one final question. And the question is, what advice do you have for anyone that's listening to this about managing their creativity as an entrepreneur, maybe they're still working in a creative field, what would you share with them?

Esther: I would say to find creative outlets outside of your work. So both Alex and I, we do a lot of digital work, digital design, website design, layouts, branding. I feel the way that I've been able to manage my burn out is by getting outside of my office space, going to garden or going to a pottery class using my hands. I even noticed that, because we're working on our keyboards all the time, our hands get really stiff, and our hands hold so much creativity in them. So getting out and being able to use your hands, make them move, that's going to make your creativity, internally in your head a lot better and stronger. Getting out of your space, doing something that's fully different. It might even just be reading a book. I know that sounds pretty lame, but doing something that's not on your screen and not moving a mouse or keyboard is really what I've learned in the the last year because the first few years, I was not doing any of this right, I was just cranking out work. So now, I've realized I really have to get out of my space in order to nurture the space when I am in here working.

Alex: Yes, a 100%. I agree with all of that. I probably will do an episode on this eventually. I really view my life and everything that I do in it from a creative lens. Even things that you might consider a little bit mundane like cooking, I view it from the lens of creativity, so I love that. Yes and I love physically getting off the computer. I feel we all know that that's good for us, then when you actually do it, you feel it is good for me to do this.

Esther: Yeah, because it's easy to stay stuck at the computer. It's easy to stay stuck just doing what you've been doing and. But you need that time away.

Alex: Yeah, I agree. This was such a fun conversation, Esther, thank you so much for being on the show.

Conclusion

As entrepreneurs, our creative minds are the lifeblood of businesses. Whether you're an artist, designer, writer, or any other type of creative professional, our unique ideas and talents fuel our businesses. In the ever-evolving landscape of the creative world, protecting your creativity is essential to ensuring the longevity and success of your creative business. It's about finding ways to run your business that empower you to thrive while preserving your creative integrity.

Connect with Esther Knox on Instagram: @sereth.design

Website: serethdesign.com