Whenever you make a significant step - or even a great big jump - towards what you want to do next, you have to leave something behind. There just isn't time and energy for it all. Sometimes it even involves moving away from the way you identify yourself - or the way others identify you.

For many people, I suppose I am "that woman who does those tarot decks". But right now, we are thinking seriously about whether we will do any more decks, after the couple that are in the pipeline already. Oddly enough, we always intended, when we began, only to do ten in all, and somehow that still feels right.

You know, I actually want to do more of the Bohemian Cats work - but in a much weirder, wilder way. And that means really focusing on it for a while, finding where it needs to go next. I have a feeling that this means that in another few years I'll be, "that woman who used to do those tarot decks". In a way it makes me very sad. I love tarot, I enjoy all sorts of aspects of it, not least the people we've met through it.
But I want to get back to the Cats - and so does Alex.

It's become conventional wisdom - hardly even questioned - to tell anyone starting a business of any size that one of the first things they need to think about is the "exit strategy". Some advisors say that this should be done when you do your initial business plan. You're supposed to decide if you plan to sell the business, give it to your children, IPO it or simply close it down. Then you're supposed to focus the business towards that eventual exit. Of course.

My reaction? How the **** should I know what my exit strategy is? Look, it takes five long hard (see post below) years on average to even get a business to the point where it makes a profit. Another five probably to establish it to the point where anyone would remotely want to buy it. Another five - at least - to get it (assuming it's big and ambitious, which most non-IT, non-financial services businesses are not) to gear it up for going public. I once had the reality of IPOing explained to me by a very likeable client - who did indeed sell and make a lot of money eventually, but who said that the years leading up to it were at times hellish in their sheer stress. Okay the truth is that I was very impressed and a little intimidated to find him on the front page of the Financial Times around the time we were having this conversation. I assumed that for him the years of hardship were worth it. And the exit must have been welcome. But then again, he was in one of those classical IT businesses that does this kind of thing.

The reality of the world right now is that things are changing - and changing faster, less predictably and in a more volatile way than ever before. In the six and a bit years I've been here, the Czech Crown has moved from being only 42 to the US dollar to being 15. That alone has shifted a lot of things hugely. Flats in the centre here have moved from being cheap to being - even in the trendier outskirts - at not that much under London prices of a couple of years ago. They now look like moving back to relatively cheap again. Streets that used to be quiet are now choked with traffic. Little local shops in the centre are vanishing and being replaced by chainstores. Marks and Spencer is everywhere and Starbucks (OMG) is moving in.

Those are only local changes. In the bigger, badder, wider world look what's happening. In 2000 did you read constantly in the media about Islamic fundamentalism? Did you imagine oil heading towards $200 a barrel? Did you expect to find out that we've killed off 25% of our world wildlife in a few short years?

I'm not trying to be doom-laden about this. In fact, on good days I feel perversely optimistic about the world. But I find the idea of planning what I'm going to do with the business when we want to get out of it (and as Alex is considerably younger than me this is indeed a long way off) just a waste of time and effort. Exit strategy? I am in this business because I love what we do and couldn't think of anything more fulfilling than doing studio work. Even if I wanted to think about exits, I'm in no position, until I learn to use my crystal ball a good deal more accurately, to imagine where an exit might be in years to come. Exit? I'll plan it only if and when I can see that the need for it is both imminent and clear.

The post below on embarrassment mostly covered this one. Except it gets more so when your first one is in something esoteric, decorative, fantastical and/or "not cool" (I'll be saying more about coolness).

It would have been so much easier if I'd come here to Prague and said I was starting another corporate consultancy. I could have said that we were specialising in emerging markets and change management. No-one would have batted an eyelid. But instead... "Tarot?" Even someone I like back in the UK couldn't say it without a small snigger.

But then he didn't know - because I'd never found it relevant to tell him - that I spent about a year obsessed with ouija boards as a small girl. "Don't break the glass, will you dear," was my mother's remark on this constant need to commune with the spirits via an upturned tumbler and an alphabet written on small scraps of paper. (It seems that you'll inadvertently find out quite a lot about my bizarre upbringing by the time we get through all these points.) Or that I then went on to study traditional yoga in an ashram in Belfast between the ages of thirteen and fifteen - ? - Yes, really, there was such a thing, started by an idealistic Austrian man who was my first yoga teacher. While others at school were working on Latin, Geography, Maths and the usual stuff, I was also taking classes - once they decided I was serious and needed some real training - in levitation and traditional Hindu spell-casting. Of which more sometime. So all in all I took to tarot, all those years later, a bit like a duck to water. Actually more like a duck that had spent years in dry dock that suddenly saw the opportunity of paddling in a lake again.

But my old friends and colleagues in the UK - such as are left - mostly find it laughable. While I suppose deep down I find the idea of them still giving earnest advice on "brand differentiation" or "leveraging your brand assets" pretty hysterical too. Let's just say we agree to differ about what's humorous.

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Do what you've always been interested in. Because only a genuine passion will sustain you during those 80-hour weeks that are going to be necessary when you start a business. Follow your true long-term interests however odd or absurd they may seem to anyone else.

"They think you're mad," a friend of mine said when I left London to come here to do... something. I laughed. There was a pause. "No really, they're not saying it in front of you but some of them do think you are mad." I realised he meant mad as in insane. I poured some more wine and took a stiff slug of it.

I used to do consultancy. My clients included Reuters (never ask me about Reuters) the BBC, Diageo, J&B Whiskey (ask me about them any time - lovely clients), BT, British Airways and many more. Now I run a tiny company in a backstreet in Prague and we, as my mother said vaguely recently, "Make handbags or something?" Which of these has proved more exciting, worthwhile and given me a higher sense of esteem and achievement? No contest.

When you leave something "proper" to do something far less proper - and let's face it, most creative endeavours are seen as pretty improper unless you're very established and have a bodyguard and an expensive outfit to prove it - people will be taken aback. Unable to understand it, and perhaps feeling even that it's a bit of a comment on their own very different choices, they will tend to make fun, sneer, and even tell you you're mad. Though with any luck not to your face. If you let this shake or upset you, or to dent your confidence, you'll never get past that first step. You'll quickly be scurrying back saying, as someone else in my family is apt to say whenever she even thinks momentarily about anything vaguely adventurous, "I must have been having a little nervous breakdown."

You're not mad, you're not having a breakdown. You're awake, aware and you just saw a break in the wall and beyond it a beautiful garden with flowers and bees and hedgehogs and ickle fairies and... okay, so you just maybe saw a glimpse of a life in which you didn't have to dread going into work. That's not madness, that's hope - and optimism.

So ignore the laughter - it comes from misunderstanding and maybe a little bit of fear. You may well have to begin with something very modest and it won't look impressive and no, you probably won't be attracting VC funding in your first year (and thank your guardian angel for that). You will most likely have to be content with small achievements to begin with and they may look like next to nothing to outside observers. We hardly even talk about our first project together here (Tarot of Prague was the second one). But building anything involves taking steps. The first ones are tiny, but later they get bigger.

And you know what? If you're at the very beginning and almost embarrassed to show people what you've done so far, enjoy it. I've built businesses twice now (kind of three times) and it's that first crazy, dreamy, "here we go" period at the very beginning that's one of the very most enjoyable. (Almost) anything's possible.

Hints and Tips
Do NOT borrow or in any other way raise money merely in order to make what you're doing look more convincing and of higher status to other people. If you're embarrassed by starting off in your own flat or in a teeny back room somewhere just get over it. Money thrown at glitzy premises that you don't need, or at equipment that won't get used is just money thrown away. The worst of all is money thrown at employees that you won't really be fully employing (employees are, as my accountant once explained to me, THE most serious and scary expense on a company's books - I mean, you can't resell them can you?) If you really can't stop yourself from doing this because your own ego screams for it - get yourself an Alex. One of the first things Alex did when we began working together was ask endlessly, "Do we really need this?" If you don't have a real person asking that then invent an imaginary friend.

Basically, if you don't need it, don't get it. Because every bit of money saved will buy you time - and what a new creative business needs above all else is time.

If you're anything like me, you'll have been brought up with a strange mixture of messages about risk. Sometimes parents behave as if they want to protect you, other times they can seem unbelievably lax. Mine constantly used to tell me that I should not take drugs, yet they let me stay out until 4.am when I was fourteen years old. Off I went to pick up boys at the local amusement arcade in a dodgy seaside town armed only with the interesting advice, from my father, that there was no such thing as rape, and all women had to do was keep their legs together.

This sort of contradiction made me extremely cautious and cowardly - by sixteen I really had seen a lot - including, by the way, the aftermath of an attempted rape on a friend - and scared myself quite a bit. At the same time it made me inclined occasionally to take quite large and impulsive risks. The biggest one being, I suppose, to pack up my entire life and work (and identity - more of that later) in London and head to Prague in 2001, where an odd experience had lead me to believe that if I hung around a certain street long enough, I would meet a man with whom I would find the perfect working and living partnership. This crazed conviction turned out to be true. And we now live on that exact street. Sometimes visionary moments are not merely illusions it seems.

The moment when you step away from what feels safe and step towards what feels exciting and fulfilling is going to feel impossibly risky. It's that "Fool" moment in tarot when you step blithely off the roof and your guardian angel has a good laugh. Unfortunately, there's no other way. If you want this, you'll have to step out into thin air in the belief that you won't plummet to earth.


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Something to do if you feel inclined.

Write down something - that would affect your work, not just a personal thing - that you really, really want to do but haven't so far. It might be left to one side because it seems silly, expensive, awkward to organise, pointless, self-indulgent, too ambitious or just plain weird. But write it down and stick it on a post-it on your computer monitor for a day or two. Or hide it in a drawer where only you can see it. Or just stick it firmly in your brain. Think for a while about the risks involved in making this happen.

Mine reads "Go to Grasse and do a perfume course" - because at some stage I very much want to add perfumes to the mix of things we do. I know it's a long way off in the future but maybe I can get there. The risk? On the surface, just time and money. Deep down though, I am slightly afraid that I wouldn't be any good at this. For me, I hang back from risking that disappointment. Only one way to find out though.

This is how this blog started - with a post in my LiveJournal Blog . As I began to expand these points I realised that they might be better in a more focused context - the LJ blog is generally quite visual and chatty and disorganised. So - here is my current list. The expansion of each point will follow. For those who got up to point 10 on Livejournal - there are a few changes. Change is good. Mostly.

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How to be Creative (with a big C) and Survive and be Successful

1. Take risks – even big ones.
2. Don’t worry about starting in a small, modest and slightly embarrassing way.
3. Accept you’ll be laughed at. Welcome it as a good sign.
4. Work hard. Then work harder.
5. Forget the “exit strategy”. If exiting is that important to you, maybe you shouldn’t have gone into it in the first place.
6. Don’t moan, don’t blame.
7. Let some things go - that might include your own sense of your own identity.
8. Think. Even a little bit, but regularly.
9. Don't cling to your day job. Those shackles are holding you back, not keeping you safe.
10. Don’t confuse creativity with novelty.
11. Don't expect someone to save you from the big, bad world. Protectionism has never worked.
12. Find a few people you trust. Use them mercilessly - and let them use you just as much.
13. Avoid all the people who would rather pull you back. If you can't avoid them, hum loudly while they're talking to you.
14. Don't believe other people’s hype and spin unless you can see clear evidence.
15. It usually takes years – don’t merely accept that, welcome it and love what time brings.
16. If you find yourself nodding off while talking about your work – either you’re up far too late or you’re doing the wrong thing.
17. Look to the future constantly. But understand that you can’t predict it.
18. If it’s cool and fashionable – run from it before it eats you up.
19. Don’t worry about what happens after the current project. Long before you get there, you’ll know.
20. You remember that silly, unrealistic dream you had when you were twenty-one? Now just might be the time to chase it.
21. Get a “feel” for recognising clearly what your best work really is – regardless of what others think.
22. Don’t buy (with your few pennies) into the starving artist myth. Unless, that is, you really, really want to starve.
23. Talk to people. Listen to customers. Then make your own decision.
24. Know that you can do it. You can do it.

Let's get one thing out of the way. This is not going to be a "happy, happy, smiley, feel-good" blog. I am bored with the way that "inspirational" blogs and books are relentlessly positive.

However...

I've been on the brink of starting a blog like this for quite some time. But for the last four/five years I've written a book a year - nothing very enormous, but enough to make me put all my writing focus elsewhere.

This year is different though. Not just because I don't have any writing deadline looming but also because we seem to be right on the brink of some huge changes in the 'global economy" (more of that concept at some point). So all in all it seems a good time to discuss what I know about setting up a creative business that works - in terms of giving satisfaction, excitement and security and income to those who run it.

I am not a consultant, although for some years I actually did make my living from consultancy. This blog isn't intended as a "front" for a consultancy or a coaching business - our studio produces imagery which we put on a variety of our own products (mainly paper and textiles so far) and I have no time or inclination to do anything else - or to work for clients. It's more a way of me collecting my own thoughts about what I've learned, and maybe also a way of articulating my strong belief that you have to live your life now, without putting it on hold.

Many of the opinions I'll voice will be wildly irresponsible in some ways, and won't by any means work for everyone. But if you're also on the brink - just about to ditch the "day job" or to take a risk in your work or just to make a first step - then some bits of what I have to say may resonate.