Sheltering from the wind

It's blowing a gale over here. 

Winds of 90 mph in places, our bay tree was sent flying last night. 

 As the wind whips through the eaves and round the house, I am holed up in my attic office working away on my new creative business venture which I will share with you here very soon.  

So very exciting - I hope you will be inspired to get involved!

Exciting creative business news

Sometimes great things seem to drop from the sky just when you need them.  This is one of those times.

With huge good fortune I have been chosen as one of around 15 young female entrepreneurs to be part of a groundbreaking business mentoring programme run by a leading national glossy magazine here in the UK.  This awesome opportunity partners us with some of the country's most inspiring and successful businesswomen.

Kanya King (photo courtesy of MOBO)

I have been gifted the most amazing mentor - Kanya King, founder of the MOBO Awards, the largest urban music awards in Europe with a television audience of 250 million.  Kanya is a creative entrepreneur of quite astonishing energy, talent and courage.  She founded the awards 15 years ago, remortgaging her house to pay for it.  Since then Kanya has won over the music industry, negotiating major TV and sponsorship deals along the way, to turn MOBO into one of the high points of the annual music calendar.  Not only has it been a huge commercial success, but it has also become a shining light for social responsibility within the industry. 

I am so excited that we will be working together on branding and expansion of my creative business - and there are some seriously cool things in the pipeline which I will share with you here soon.  I will also use this space to share the many things I know I am going to learn from Kanya, so stay tuned, and get yourself some mentoring by proxy! 

***
This year's MOBO Awards will be held in the music mecca of Liverpool on October 20

Do What You Love interview: Suzanne Woolcott of Gorjuss™

image used with kind permission of Suzanne Woolcott

This week I am delighted to share a conversation with Suzanne Woolcott, the inspiring creative brains behind the Gorjuss™ empire. Some of her fans are so crazy about her work, they have had her designs tattooed on their bodies! Suzanne’s Gorjuss™ Girls are licensed by Santoro, a brand creator, design and publishing company with distribution in over 50 countries around the world.

33 year-old Suzanne runs her company with her husband Grant, from their studio in Glasgow, Scotland, where they live with their three children. Her work has been exhibited in galleries across the globe, but most regularly in Hollywood, LA , New York, NY, and Hong Kong (how cool is that?!)

image used with kind permission of Suzanne Woolcott

Can you tell us a bit about Gorguss™?
Gorjuss™ is about bringing beautiful emotional art into everyone’s lives. I love to play with words, especially taking things literally, but I also think that love runs deep within all my art. I choose to paint only Girls, as I can only paint what I’ve felt, experienced and imagined. I couldn’t put so much emotion into something I haven’t felt myself.

I have always been a fan of portraits, and the scope of what can be captured in a moment, the stillness of the figure, the stare looking out at you and the placement of the objects around the subject, everything is there for a reason, to accentuate the meaning behind a portrait. I would always rather hand a portrait on my wall than a nice landscape !

image used with kind permission of Suzanne Woolcott

Where did your girl designs come from? What inspired the first one?
The style of my girls really came naturally, as I was learning to draw, I always wanted to show my emotions and to do that you have to concentrate on what makes the viewer feel emotion, it doesnt always have to be a facial expression, and I think my art proves that!

image used with kind permission of Suzanne Woolcott

What has been your greatest challenge on your journey to here, and how did you tackle it?

I’ve recently become disabled, and now can’t walk. This has made a huge difference to my life, and I think I may be going through the greatest challenge of my life right now. After many months in hospital, I’m now trying to work out how to keep working. I’m sure we will get there eventually but everything is taking twice as long ( or more!) to do right now, so I’m grateful for my fans’ patience and support through this very difficult time.

Art-wise, it has to be just learning and learning, to create what’s in my head. Getting the ability to create exactly what you want to can take time. I do remember how frustrating it was. Now I’d say “Don’t panic, but do keep trying and learning.”

I love to learn and I’m constantly learning new techniques to help my art be stronger. Learning should never stop, or there can be a great risk of staleness in your artwork (eek!)

image used with kind permission of Suzanne Woolcott

What are you most proud of?
I’m proud of what I’ve done – everything - sometimes I have to pinch myself to believe it is real! I’m very proud to be working with Santoro. They are such a warm welcoming company. They don’t just look after me, they also love and care for my Gorjuss™ Girls with so much respect, I couldn’t imagine anyone better to look after them.

I’m extremely proud of my paintings, I always tell people to paint what they would like to see. If you love it, then someone else will too!

And I’m very proud of my fans. They are such a wonderful bunch, and always surprise me with their love, loyalty and support!

image used with kind permission of Suzanne Woolcott

What do you wish you had known when you started out with your creative business?
I wish I’d know it would be all okay ‘in the end. It’s very scary in the beginning, and not knowing what the future held for us was terrifying.

image used with kind permission of Suzanne Woolcott

 How do you juggle creating with managing your creative business?

People have an absurd idea that being self-employed, and particularly in a creative business, means you spend all day doodling away dreamily. But the reality is that creating is only about a third of the work to be done daily. It’s important to have a head for business, not just a great product or brand. If you think you don’t have the knowledge then take some free courses. You’ll find them everywhere right now as the economy tries to support start-up businesses.

Everyone finds their own way about this, but I have no time to play on Facebook, sometimes I feel like the only person who doesnt!!, and often can work til 2am daily, you HAVE to put the hours in to see a result!

image used with kind permission of Suzanne Woolcott

You have a licensing agreement with a major manufacturer in the UK (Santoro). Can you tell us a bit about how this came about, about your decision to license your designs, and what freedom this gives you?

My goal was always to license, right from the start. As I get older it will take a lot of the workload off myself. I won’t always be able to work until 2am every night! I was very lucky to have it happen with Santoro, who stumbled across me, we like to call it fate!

image used with kind permission of Suzanne Woolcott

What is the best piece of advice you can give to artists aren't sure if they are ready to start making money from their creations? What should they consider?

I’d say making money only comes when you have a product that is unique and which people want. If you haven’t got that then you will waste your time, so spending time on your product is just as important as trying to sell it. Also, think about how to present yourself. You have to come across as presentable, and if your products are cohesive it will help keep customer loyalty.

image used with kind permission of Suzanne Woolcott

Where is your favourite place in your city (Glasgow) to go when you need time to think, recharge or get inspiration?
Glasgow is a great place, full of culture. The music and art scenes are vibrant here. We love going to live music gigs, visiting galleries and eating out. Glasgow is known as the ‘Green green city’ because it has so many parks, so we have visited those a lot too. I’m not able to sit in my wheelchair yet, as it’s still early days, but as soon as I can, I’ll be wheeling back to these places !

Thank you so much Suzanne!

***Check out Suzanne’s magical Gorjuss™ Girls on her website, in her main shop or etsy shop. You can also keep up with her on her blog, on Facebook or Flickr, follow her on Twitter or join the Official Gorjuss™ Fan Group.

***

For more inspiring interviews with people doing what they love see here

***

Still a few more days to go until completion on our house (and my brand new studio)... 

Please keep wishing for us and help our dream come true!

Waste not, want not: creative business tips from a leading social entrepreneur

Do What You Love interview: Kresse Wesling
Meet Kresse Wesling, young sparky British creator of unique accessories for Hollywood superstars. Kresse is not your average fashion designer. She is one half of the very cool ‘Elvis and Kresse’ brand which took London Fashion Week by storm and has recently announced a collaboration with apple. She is one of the British Prime Minister’s Ambassadors for Social Entrepreneurship and a champion of responsible business practices. And the belt she made for Cameron Diaz to model in a Mario Testino shoot for American Vogue used to be a piece of fire hose.

Kresse takes what others throw away and makes beautiful high end fashion goods from them – handbags and belts from hose discarded by the London Fire Brigade, purse linings from parachute silk rejected by the military, and eco-friendly shopping bags for a major UK supermarket chain from old coffee bean sacks. Not only does she reuse and recycle what would otherwise go to landfill, she ploughs a chunk of her profits back into charities which support the people who have contributed the ‘waste’ in the first place, so 50% of the profits from her fire hose line (see picture below) go to The Firefighters’ Charity. Although the company is still quite young (launched in 2007), it has already taken London Fashion Week by storm, and unveiled the 2010 collection at legendary auction house Sotheby's.

I had the good fortune of being invited to do a job swap with Kresse as part of the Social Entrepreneurship programme, and was so inspired by what I saw and heard, I wanted to share her story with you.

Tell us a bit more about how you came to be up to your elbows in old fire hose?
I have always had a keen interest in the environment in general and waste in particular. I met the London Fire Brigade over a year before we launched the business in 2007 but I knew immediately that I wanted to tackle the hose problem. Running a company that makes honest, quality, practical pieces is the best way that James (my business partner) and I can help to solve the hose problem.

How would you describe yourself?
Mostly I call myself an environmental entrepreneur – or an environmentalist – or waste obsessed…


What is your advice for a successful creative business partnership?
James and I work very well together because we tackle different aspects of the business. James is our designer and logistical mastermind, I focus on finding new wastes, collaborators and business opportunities. Because he focuses on the internal aspects and I focus on the external and we trust and respect each others’ judgement things run fairly smoothly. That said, when there is chaos, and in our business there is a lot of chaos, we both immediately drop everything and roll up our sleeves; no one is left to deal with problems on their own.

Kresse and her business partner James
 

What are you most proud of?
That we have reclaimed around 100 tonnes of waste.
What you are doing is pushing boundaries and accepted wisdom about fashion. What do you do when you come up against obstacles?
This depends on the obstacle. Most of our hurdles have been technical, so there is a lot of research, trial and error and innovation. When we stay focused on the core mission of the business, reclaiming waste, we can overcome most of what is thrown at us.

You have had some awesome PR coverage for your products. Do you have any tips for people trying to promote their creative business in creative ways? We love what we do, if we didn’t I don’t think the press would be as keen to cover us. We love that our work is messy, complicated and that the end products and all of our packaging have an incredible history. Some people love our design, others that we are committed to reclamation on a grand scale and probably everyone loves firemen. Having so much to talk about is why we love doing this and why lots of people want to talk about it. We are also incredibly lucky in that we have stakeholders, like the London Fire Brigade and the Fire Fighters Charity, that are also constantly promoting what we do. Working closely with your stakeholders and making your passion for the business as obvious as possible to everyone else is the best advice I can give.

What is your favourite part of your working day?There is no real repetition in what we do, no two days are the same, so my favourite bit is that I wouldn’t be able to answer this question!

What is your big dream for Elvis & Kresse?That we can scale up – take on more waste, donate more to charity and start to really challenge the idea of waste.

Elvis + Kresse has recently launched ‘The Elvis + Kresse Arts line’, a joint venture between Elvis + Kresse and ISSI, dedicated to bringing together creativity and care for the environment. They have produced a range of products in collaboration with award-winning artists who have accepted the challenge to create beauty from waste. The Elvis + Kresse Arts Collection is a collaboration with an international group of outstanding artists – Lothar Götz, Olivier Millagou, Paul Morrison and Simon Periton. They worked together to explore the possibilities of new materials, innovating in both design and manufacturing, to create bags and accessories.

For more information check out their beautiful products here.

***
To be inspired by more Do What You Love interviews see here

Making your creative business fly (part 2)

This is the second part of the Do What You Love interview with Kathy Heslop (see here for part 1).  Kathy is an incredible woman who has lived many lives already, as professional musician, nautical globetrotter and serial entrepreneur who has seen multi-million dollar success for her creative businesses. We share a love of good wine, good food and good chat. She also happens to be one of the funniest women I know.

What spontaneous thing have you done that seemed random at the time but made sense later, or was instrumental in putting you on the path you are on today?

Moving to New York. The opportunity came about suddenly at what was actually a blissfully happy time in my life and made no personal sense whatsoever. Only three months earlier we had bought our first apartment and I was enjoying creating my brand new home. But off we went to set up the US office of our UK business, ultimately to live in one room above that first office for over two years! People tell us we were brave. I say more naive and gung ho. We knew no one out there. That we survived and went on to create a successful business is testament to the tremendous capacity New Yorkers have for welcoming and encouraging young entrepreneurs. It lead to eight incredible years of living in Manhattan and a raft of amazing experiences; building the business, working with some truly wonderful people, meeting others, travelling, learning new skills. We acquired an archive of global business experience from investment raising, to recruiting, running an interactive production team, negotiating licensing deals, dealing with approvals processes, organising manufacturing in different continents, dealing with shipping logistics and running three offices worldwide, all of which has lead us to the point we are at now - operating our little boutique management consultancy and helping clients who are trying to achieve results in similar disciplines. We also learned how to really order coffee. “I’ll take a skinny, wet, single shot, soya, decaff latte to go, with extra foam on the top. And make that extra hot please.”


What is the most insightful or inspiring thing anyone has ever said to you, and who said it?
There have been several…
• I was once described as “talented but needs taming” by a contemporary British composer who shall remain unnamed. This comment was fed back to me by one of his highly amused fellow panellists after they had been judging my final recital towards my degree. I had performed the dazzling E major Bach violin Partita (fun), the ethereal Debussy violin sonata (gorgeous) and the maddeningly fiendish Saint-Saëns’ Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso, (do not try this at home!) all dressed in, well let’s just say my own inimitable (flea market) student style and for my piece de résistance had I transcribed a beautiful Pat Metheny composition to play with a Jazz pianist. Evidently my technicolour musical ‘cabaret’ was perceived as the Classical equivalent of having red wine with chicken! Nonetheless his comment provided great amusement and I have to confess it only fuelled my creative spirit more. I was flattered. Follow the herd? I think not.

• Always make time for silly,” Humphrey Lyttleton. (Humph was another of life’s polymaths – Jazz trumpeter, cartoonist, BBC broadcaster, calligrapher... and utterly hilarious guy).

• A business owner once told me “your troubles start once you have staff.” I couldn’t relate at the time, but for some reason it struck a chord and I never forgot it. Nowadays I know that with strategic hiring and a good company ethos, your workplace should be a happy and rewarding place for staff to be. However in spite of a kind and nurturing culture at her company, she had some incredible horror stories. So don’t be naive in business and especially now. We are living in exceptional ‘get rich quick’ times, (fuelled by the economic downturn and especially endorsed by the popular media). There are people in business who will try to fast track their careers via unethical methods, rather than cultivate a path and enjoy the process of gaining valuable business acumen and skills along the way, people who think kindness is a weakness in business and presume that you’ve had it easy. They don’t see or comprehend the hard work and sacrifice that has lead a business up to the point of actually being able to create their employment. So warning! If you do recruit, mine for diamonds.

• “You won’t recognise your business in 12 months time” – my husband. The message being - be open to change. Revenue can come from sectors that you don’t always anticipate. You will be amazed how you can unveil hidden profits in previously untapped markets. (He is one of those entrepreneurs who has the phenomenal ability to zoom out and take a 35,000ft view of a business).

How do you keep believing in yourself when things go wrong, or don't turn out how you wanted them to?
I’ve always been self employed, so I’m used to having to ‘eat what I kill’ and therefore have no other point of reference. But I’ve also had to learn to toughen up along the way too. In my experience, when the chips are down there’s always a solution, you just have to get into a good head space, ideally surround yourself with positive, smart people and then get problem solving! Employing other people is also massively motivating - if you’ve got to make pay roll, you have no choice but to crack on! (We had a million dollars of overheads a month before we even switched a light bulb on in New York...)

I do have a personal point of reference though that gives me a sobering context when things have gone wrong. And that is 9/11. I was in Manhattan that day and those horrific events have gone on to amplify just how lucky I am and they can always be used to trivialise any kind of work headaches. Nothing can ever compare. And after the shocking attacks, no waaay were we going to abandon New York or fail! I’m proud that we dug in and went on to raise over $60M in investment and create jobs during our time there. So my advice would be to find some similar point of reference that is close to your heart and that works as a motivating reality check whenever you need a jumpstart. Or feel free to borrow mine.

When you believe in what you do, real failure isn’t an option. Instead position yourself to succeed, persist and to quote Winston Churchill; “never never quit.” Maybe this concept was indoctrinated in me as a by-product of a rather intense musical training from a young age, because actually you never ever stop learning a instrument, even when you get to a professional level. So keep sharpening that pencil. Create change. Never stagnate. Be resilient. Reinvent. And embrace the process, “the journey is the reward...” (Tao saying).

If you had no fear, and if money was no object, what would you do?
I play the piano and if I had no fear I would be *brazen* enough to ask Diana Krall to teach me and if money was no object, I’d be *rich* enough to pay for the lessons! With financial freedom I would also love to have a gîte in southern France and divide my time between it and London. I speak decent French, but it would be great to get so fluent that I can actually dream in it! Then plenty more of the nice stuff: cooking and feasting with friends, travel, going out and about in London, reading, surfing (web), Yoga, silver smithing, (my latest challenge!) I love stimulation. People who sit back and miss out on their lives baffle me. Oh and I’d love to work part time, and be able to have a dog, but currently there isn't a self sufficent breed that can cook, clean and walk itself.

Where is your favourite place in London for sitting and dreaming about stuff?
I have a few…
• My roof garden. Specifically at night with candles, a glass of wine and Tony Bennett’s album, (one of the ones with the incredible Bill Evans accompanying) drifting on the night time air. If you get chance to see him perform live just do it, it’s an incredible honour. I have never known a performer radiate such tremendous warmth and sincerity, (as well as world class musicianship) from the stage. Tony has a really neat foundation too that works to transform the lives of young people through arts education. He’s truly one of life’s wonderfuls on so many levels, including being an exquisite painter as well! Also check out his gorgeous album: Playin' with My Friends: Bennett Sings the Blues and I defy you not to be impressed when you learn who the other worldly voice belongs to on track four. Whilst we’re on it, here’s another breathtakingly album whose delicacy just knocks me out and I would like to also evangelise about: Sandrine Piau - Debussy Mélodies

in the roof garden

• Tom Toms cafe my friendly local which makes THE best coffee outside of Milan. It has a rustic communal table where neighbours can sit around helping themselves from a gargantuan bowl full of enormous pillowy croissants, dogs at their feet. The cafe also hosts book club meets and dinner party nights, when locals pile over and one of them plays chef in the kitchen. The owner Tom (go figure), is another of life’s wonderfuls. (Wonderfuls: {noun} - people who make the world a sweeter place to be. Just for the hell of it).

• The rose bushed and lanterned churchyard of the Actor’s church in Covent Garden, with its fabulous park benches and deliciously worded tributes to long-gone luvvies. A beautiful space for relaxing and people watching. It’s just a stone’s throw from the hustle and bustle of the crowds and the street performers in the Apple Market, but you’d never know it.

• Any of the Royal Parks. A staggering 25% of London is made up of parks, (the city’s lungs). And they are all beautiful. Green outdoor space is so important to me. When we were in New York, we rescued the neglected backyard at our first office, decked it, put a lovely water feature in and planted it. It became a little garden oasis in the hub of noisy, concrete Manhattan, a place where our staff could lunch and we held some magical candlelit parties too. I think we were also the only office in Manhattan to have eccentric ‘English country garden’ floral hanging baskets dangling outside our front door!


• Spitalfields Market- colourful, creative, vibrant and Dickensian. You can just sense the history here, (it’s also in the heart of Jack the Ripper territory) and it’s a fabulous seed bed for exciting, young, design talent and fun community activities. There are a few neat restaurants and bars there too.

l’m evidently rather loud and proud of my soulful city, with its many diverse neighbourhoods, their bewitching nooks and crannies, and its eclectic arts scene. London is such an exciting, creative melting pot to live in!
Thank you Beth for this opportunity to meet your ever-expanding tribe of wonderfuls. I hope I’ve helped a little. Good luck everyone.

Check out Kathy's companies: Knowledge MGI and VE Interactive 

***
Be inspired by more Do What You Love interviews here

Making your creative business fly (advice from a woman who knows)

Today’s Do What You Love interview is with Kathy Heslop, an incredible woman who has lived many lives already, as professional musician, nautical globetrotter and serial entrepreneur who has seen multi-million dollar success for her creative businesses. She also happens to be one of the funniest women I know.

British by passport, half Scandinavian and a NYC/London girl by heart, Kathy was once a professional violinist, working with UK orchestras, theatre and opera companies. She was the first female electric violinist to perform at Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club and co-wrote the trailer music for the movie Notting Hill. In 1998 Kathy co founded the digital recording studio Serious in London with her polymathic husband David. Within a year it had morphed into a digital publishing company and by the summer of 2000 they had moved to New York City to open a sister office. Serious went on to win multiple awards and employ over seventy staff with three offices worldwide, (London, NYC & Singapore). In late 2007, Kathy and her husband sold their stake in the company and moved back to the UK. They have since founded a boutique management consultancy in London and also operate a software development company. They consult to clients across the entertainment, sports, technology, food and beverage, celebrity and lifestyle sectors, and Kathy specialises in helping companies establish brand identity and market position.

Here Kathy shares some very valuable insight and practical commercial advice for those of you trying to start or grow your creative business…

What is the most important thing for entrepreneurs to remember if they really want their creative business to fly?
Well, firstly, if this is you dear reader – congratulations, you have the privilege of having a vocation. Lucky! Even more so if you have mastered flexible working hours to achieve a good work-life balance too. And what great timing you have. Many consumers are returning to an appreciation of quality workmanship and individuality over the mass produced and manufactured, and are rebooting their values and choices in life. So crafting can now become a career. Plus we are living in this amazing networked ‘global’ village with its opportunities and new markets. You no longer need retail real estate, your brand can be virtual and if you’ve got something unique on offer too - you can potentially transcend all borders. On top of this, social media has also created the open source movement, so it’s now easy to join or build communities that share creative information and expertise, and these types of like minded communities are all potential ecommerce customers for you.

... However, drunk as it is easy to be on the fantastic opportunities available today, sober consideration needs adding to the mix too, because if you are serious about making the leap from hobbyist to professional ‘doing the thing you love,’ a leap of faith alone will not be enough. I don’t need to touch upon the sources for creative inspiration here, (ideas, self-belief, listening to and caring about your audience, finding support etc), because this blog is all about the concept that you can build positive relationships whilst doing something you love, and it is already attracting like-minded souls, cruising by full of ideas and encouragement. However, may be where I can proffer help is to add some science to your art, to help you monetise your dreams. 

Whether you’re a sole trader or thinking of starting a company, creativity needs to be twinned with enterprise if your ideas are going to be viable. Building and running a business, be it a boutique independent or a multi-million pound retailer, demands organisational control. It also takes patience and dedication, so if you are a start up, you are going to need other means of financial support during this period because most businesses don’t bear fruit for a long while. Then factor in that we’re all still bruised from the global recession, which is mooted to turn into a depression before the year’s out (SHEESH!) so it's looking like further battening down of the hatches and 'frugal innovation’ might be ahead. 

So my advice to any creative entrepreneurs is: if you want your business to support you and ideally fly, you’re going to need to keep your feet on the ground first and address some key business skills. With this in mind I’ve made a potted 'practical' list below based on my own personal experiences. This could be modified and translated across any kind of business, so take from it what you need and I hope that it brings a little bit of insight and guidance:

  • Observe the current market place. Credit is tight and access to funding is tough, this could be a growth barrier to certain types of business.• Refine your business plan and don't lose track of your main goals.
 • Test the market to see if there is demand for your kind of products, if not, rethink, modify and re-test.
• Adopt key performance indicators (KPIs) to make sure that everything is on track (eg. how many jobs need to be being pitched on and worked on at once, what’s in your pipeline, what’s the level of enquiries you’re getting?)
• Build a financial plan – start with the end game in mind and identify stages to get there.
 • Make sure you have a cash base to cover a reasonable period of run rate.
 • Know your P&L (profit and loss). Figure out your time management to pricing policy ratio, (but not solely on how pricing impacts your bottom line, but also think about the perception that your pricing gives about the quality of your products too).• Keep admin costs to a minimum (always!)
 • Make sure you are in the right role and if not, partner with, or hire people to cover those areas. (For example, if you’re not financially minded, get help there so that you can focus on other areas of the business that you are better suited to. And don’t just hire nodding dogs either, hire better than yourself!)• Work out your branding and messaging, how does this reflect your business’ ethics and authenticity, customers care nowadays
 • Think about whether you need to protect your intellectual property and if so, how?
 • Plan how to promote to, acquire and then retain customers.
 • Think about potential lateral revenue streams that can help support your business – could you teach, write for example? Start building your profile so that new eyes are always finding you so and you can begin to establish yourself as an industry expert. This may give you the cachet to attract commissions, speaking engagements, press or even spin off opportunities to contribute to or write columns and articles. So think about the kind of supporting content you can be creating alongside that will help get your presence and brand equity across all promotional platforms; online, print, radio, TV. Especially think about how this content can be syndicated across online mediums: (blogs, podcasts, webinars, video). It’s so easy to distribute nowadays and content is king!
• Get advice. A business will drown you if you don’t get the technicals and fundamentals right.

 However if you think that any of this means selling out as an artist, then seriously don’t do it! Keep your passion as a hobby. Once you have skin in the game and your income is dependent on your creativity, stress can be one helluva passion killer!



What do you wish you had known when you were 20?

• I think I would have been amused to have known that New York would eventually play a big part in my life. I already had a huge passion for Jazz and for some reason I always felt a tremendous magnetic pull across the pond. It would have made utter sense to me.

• Yoga. It took me reaching the end of my twenties to try it and I was hooked immediately. Many musicians suffer with repetitive strain injuries and back in those days, tuition revolved solely around the sound you made, but with little thought as to whether the technique involved might be causing potential long term damage to one’s body. I took Alexander Technique lessons which helped, but I think Yoga would have been a highly beneficial counterbalance to the long hours of playing that have subsequently lead to some permanent knots in my left shoulder worthy of a Baden Powell badge!
• I wish the Internet had existed. Oh to have had this amazing asset then! My fellow Generation X-ers and I have been so cheated.

• That Scandinavian straight hair is best left au natural. Acid ‘corkscrew’ perms are called acid for a reason

• that life is a blank canvas stretching out in front of you at that age, so crack on with making it super colourful and interesting. My canvas has been, but could probably have done with some sketching of ideas first. It’s definitely been a Jackson Pollock so far; colourful, random and in a myriad of directions!

In the next post, Kathy answers the following questions:

• How do you keep believing in yourself when things go wrong, or don't turn out how you wanted them to?
• What is the most insightful or inspiring thing anyone has ever said to you, and who said it?
• If you had no fear, and if money was no object, what would you do?
• What spontaneous thing have you done that seemed random at the time but made sense later, or was instrumental in putting you on the path you are on today?
• Where is your favourite place in London for sitting and dreaming about stuff?

Read part two of this interview here

***
Be inspired by more Do What You Love interviews here

***

Have you signed up for The Great Big Stitched Postcard Swap yet? If not, check it out, sign up and get spreading that love!  Closing date for signups is this Wednesday June 2

We've already got people signed up from three continents, and you could have a lovely piece of handmade gorgeousness dropping through your mailbox soon...