How I’m navigating failure in my creative business
Failure is an inevitable part of running your own business. A launch gets crickets, a workshop has no signups, a client falls through, a product doesn’t sell in the way you hoped; these are all part and parcel of the daily running of a creative business.
Anyone who has been self-employed for any significant length of time will be intimately acquainted with failure, and yet it’s still not something that really seems to be talked about that much.
Social media invites us to share the picture-perfect version of our lives and businesses, and more widely than that, society I think encourages us to celebrate our success more than the messy journey we’re on. But the daily reality of running a creative business is mostly the mess – and the mess is beautiful. The mess is where we learn, where we grow, and where we find truth and authenticity.
By only celebrating and sharing the successful moments in our business, we run the risk of creating an unrealistic image of what’s really involved. And the damage this can do is to make other people trying to run a creative business think that navigating failure is - in itself - a failure. It creates a perception that a successful business is one which does not experience or navigate failure, and that’s simply not true.
Everyone navigates failures and things that don’t go the way they’d planned in their business. This does not make your business a failure, it just makes it normal.
I’ve been navigating a lot of failure this year in my own business, and I won’t lie, it’s been tough. But I realised I’ve not really been sharing much about this. I’ve been guilty of everything I’ve written above, mainly talking about what’s gone well without acknowledging what hasn’t. So I figured it’s time to change that, and to share what hasn’t been going to plan for me this year, and how I’m navigating this to keep moving forwards.
You’ll find some questions to gently guide you through the process as well further on, which I hope will help you navigate any feelings of failure of your own in your creative business.
4 things that haven’t gone to plan in my creative business this year
There are four things in particular that haven’t been going the way I’d hoped in my creative business this year:
I had a failed launch
My first creative group programme, The Play Space, didn’t get any signups at all when I launched it back in June. I started the year full of enthusiasm and plans for a whole range of different group programmes for each season of the year, and while I was prepared for a low enrolment rate, I didn’t expect none at all. This really threw me, and has made me do some serious re-thinking about where I need to devote my energy in my business at the moment.
My client work stagnated
For the first half of this year, my regular 1:1 client work was worryingly quiet, and I made very little income. I ended up relying on credit cards and borrowing money to tide me over, and I felt incredibly financially stressed for a while.
My mailing list plateaued
While I’ve had a steady stream of signups to my mailing list this year, I’ve also had a steady stream of unsubscribes, and my mailing list hasn’t actually grown at all. I’m not one for growth for the sake of growth, but I do need a larger mailing list to sustain the business I’m trying to build, and my mailing list hasn’t felt like it’s moving in the right direction.
My Arts Council grant application was rejected
I applied for a Developing Your Creative Practice grant with the Arts Council, and it got rejected. Admittedly I got my hopes up way too much for this one as grant rejections are standard, but it would have made such a huge difference to my life that it really hit me hard.
The reality is that things don’t always go the way you’d planned or hoped, and sometimes an accumulation of things you perceive as “failures” can really knock you sideways. Feeling defeated by it is natural (heavens know I have many times), but you don’t have to stay feeling that way. When you learn how to navigate feelings of failure, you’re able to keep moving forward… and step by step, you build a business you’re proud of.
Photo by: https://unsplash.com/@lilartsy
5 ways I’m navigating failure (with journal prompts)
Thankfully, after a decade of working for myself I’ve become fairly practised at navigating feelings of failure. That doesn’t mean I don’t find it hard or feel it deeply – I do, I’m still human – but at the end of the day, I’m finding ways to keep moving forward.
Here’s how I’m doing that, along with a few journal prompts to support you to do the same if you’re struggling to navigate failure yourself at the moment:
Feeling the feelings, noticing the thoughts
Sadness, grief, shame, anger… a lot of feelings come up when I feel like I’ve “failed” at something, and they need to be listened to. When a strong emotion is knocking at the door, I try to find some space to acknowledge it and simply feel the feelings.
Along with that, I also try to notice what thoughts and beliefs have been triggered and are swirling around my head. Something only feels like a failure because I am telling myself it is, and it helps if I can spot negative thought patterns before they get out of hand.
It always amazes me how quickly I can spiral from “this thing didn’t go as I’d hoped” to “I am a failure as a person/ creative / business owner”, so noticing this is important. Often things going wrong only become a real problem when we let it undermine our worth, and that’s where we can get stuck.
To try this out yourself, reflect on the following:
What am I feeling?
How do I feel I have failed?
What am I telling myself this means about myself and my worth?
Giving myself a large dose of compassion
I’ve learned that I often expect an awful lot of myself, and so I make a point of trying to show myself the same compassion I show easily to other people. That just means giving myself a break really.
Part of this includes reminding myself that I’m also navigating some significant life challenges alongside trying to run a business. I’m still grieving from the loss of my mother two years ago, as well as adapting to nomadic life - all while living with chronic illness. And that’s not even touching on the impact of the cost-of-living crisis and general state of the world.
Life can be hard, and it’s important to recognise that we are usually navigating other challenges alongside trying to run a business. Don’t underestimate the impact of that.
To reflect on this yourself, try asking:
What else has been going on in my life lately?
Am I expecting too much of myself?
Asking myself what went well
Sometimes it’s possible to become so focussed on what didn’t work, that we forget what actually did go well from the experience, and what else we accomplished. For example, I am celebrating:
I created the content for the group programme. Now I have the programme ready to run again at any time
The work I’ve been putting into improving this blog & its SEO is paying off, as I am getting signups (I just need to work on making sure these are the right people)
The fact that I consider myself an artist to put in a grant application at all, which would not have been the case a year ago
That I now have a well-formed grant application I can re-purpose for other applications (which I have already started doing)
Seeing what has gone well helps to see that perhaps the “failure” isn’t a failure at all.
To reflect on this yourself, try asking:
What actually went well?
What do I want to celebrate achieving here?
Acknowledging other successes
Similarly to recognising what went well about the perceived “failure” itself, I find it also helps to acknowledge other successes in my life. Because it’s more than likely that there are other accomplishments I am proud of, and it helps to remember those.
My other successes this year include:
Living nomadically full-time, something I had in mind for a few years before I made it happen
Taking part in an artist residency for the whole of January, which led to new work, new ideas, finding my voice and me starting to write poetry
Being awarded a funded in-kind artist residency for next September at Cromarty Arts Trust
Being asked to write an article for The Happy Newspaper®️(out in December 2026)
Once my client load picked up, working with some really wonderful people
Now being close to reaching my income target for the year, despite the slow start
Pivoting my entire business towards a more creative angle, and re-designing my entire website and free resources library
That’s a lot, and none of it is undermined by the things I struggled with. We normalise our successes quickly, and are wired to look ahead to the next thing, but it helps to remember and celebrate what you have been doing well - not just focus on the losses.
To reflect on this yourself, try asking:
What other successes in my life and business do I want to celebrate?
Asking what I’ve learned from the experience
Arguably the most helpful thing I’ve done to help me move forward after failure has been to ask myself what the experience has taught me. There is always a lesson to be learned, and clues as to what might have contributed to the “failure”.
With my group programme launch, I used up so much energy in creating the programme that I couldn’t do the amount of marketing I wanted to. In future, I would create a more comprehensive launch plan.
I also recognised that my mailing list plateau compounded this problem, and so I learned that I need to spend time focusing on growing my mailing list before I return to group programmes again. This means showing up more, sharing more, and focusing on my marketing.
Marketing has always been something of a challenge to me in my business. So I decided to invest in some marketing advice and support with Laura McMahon of A Bookish Season, and my blog is already looking the better for it. I’m going to be experimenting with a new strategy this next season in my business thanks to Laura’s advice, and I’m hoping this will help my business get to where I want it to be.
Every “failure” had a lot to teach me, and I am trying to use that information to guide my steps moving forward.
To reflect on this yourself, try asking:
What have I learned from this experience?
What might have contributed to this not going the way I had hoped?
What do I know now that I didn’t know before?
What might I do differently in future to prevent this from happening again?
Where might I need to invest time or money?
Deciding the next steps after a setback
After reflecting on the failure in this way, I’ve been feeling much calmer, and better able to plan ahead.
Sometimes, that means simply picking myself up and trying again, sometimes it means deciding what adjustments need to be made before trying again, and sometimes it means completely changing the parameters of what I’m doing. The decision about what to do is always entirely individual to each “failure”, and there is rarely a clear cut right or wrong answer about what to do - simply the best decision for you.
It can be hard to make these decisions on your own sometimes though. I know I can get tied up in knots sometimes, and that’s when I lean on business coaching from someone who also runs their own solo business. It offers a space where I can air my thoughts, worries and confusion, and have someone help me untangle it all, offer support and encouragement, and gently guide me to find my own path again.
I would have found it so very much harder to navigate all these feelings of failure and stay on the journey if I was completely on my own - and my best advice to you is to do the same. If you’re feeling brought down by feelings of failure in your creative business, try to find a supportive community space or business coach who can support you through it all.
And if you’re on the lookout, do check out my Creative Business Coaching. I offer 6 and 12 week packages to support creatives to bring their ideas, projects and businesses to life through weekly Voxer voice notes. I would love to be there by your side to help you navigate the ups and downs of creative business, and help you find a path forward that honours your values, your capacity and your natural rhythms.
Keep exploring
If you’re currently navigating feelings of failure in your creative business, you might also like:
🌈 Exploring this post on how to identify your emotions using an easy colouring activity
✏️ Reading this post to try out mindful doodling to find calm during stressful times
✨ This post on making time for your creativity as a business owner