A letter to my weird business

Getting out of the way

**Climbs out of a hole. Dusts self off. Blinks into the daylight**

Since December I’ve been down a hole creating The Business Course with my Good Ship Illustration pals Tania and Helen.

And it’s done! We did it! The Business Course is now fully ALIIIIIVE! It feels lovely to know that some of the stuff we’ve been storing up in our illustration business brainses is now out there, in the world, helping other illustrators.

There’s been some really incredible feedback. You forget that bit when you’re in the thick of course-creation mode. ACTUAL PEOPLE will do the things, and it will change their businesses and lives. Wah.

Anyways.

Since I had baby E 2 years ago, lots of people said helpful things to me about juggling a baby and life, and one of the most helpful things was

Yes, it’s a juggle. But some balls are glass, and some of them are bouncy rubber. You can drop them.

Substack (and YouTube)have been a bouncing rubbery balls. Thank you 😆 Glad to be back, ha!

I’ve WE’VE recently rebranded from Katie Chappell Live Illustration to….

Wheeee! It’s so exciting! It also brought up SO MUCH ✨STUFF✨ though, which has been very juicy to work through and look at closely with a magnifying glass.

I had a kinesiology session (highly recommend) and at the end Kerry recommended that I write a letter to my business.

Yes! Brilliant idea.

AND WHY NOT TURN IT INTO CONTENT TOO!? 😂

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Dear Business,

Hello. You weren’t always a business, do you remember? I do!

I loved it when you were so tiny that I could tuck you up in my pocket and keep you a secret while I did normal-person stuff like being an au pair and nanny for nice families. I kept you folded in the smallest sketchbook I could find and when nobody was looking I’d draw.

I wouldn’t even tell people I was an illustrator. It was too scary. They might expect drawings or success from us. Agh. No.

It was much easier to clean sweaty yoga studios, serve curry at street food festivals and just pretend I wasn’t an illustrator at all.

But once we finally got going properly in 2018/19 that first tax bill? It was so exciting. ACTUAL TAX! WE EARN ENOUGH TO PAY TAX!

WAAHOOOOO!

We’ve been so careful and tentative the whole way. Like a hermit crab crawling along the beach. If ever there was a gust of business-wind that freaked me out, we could scuttle back inside our shell and wait for it all to blow over. I refused to leave that last nanny job until I was 100% sure we had enough momentum and savings to keep us going for 6 months or more. I reluctantly left my lecturing job when it was completely impossible for me to keep up with the events work *and* the lecturing.

In 2020 we figured out how to make it work and survived the early lockdown days when there were no jobs, just panic. And then those other lockdown days when we scribed at 5 online events back-to-back across 3 time zones before I’d figured out how to bring a team together. Aaagh. That was so silly but I’d totally do it again 😆

I’m glad we did it that way around. I never wanted to put too much pressure on you, business.

I’ve always liked the feeling of knowing that, if we ever needed to, we (the royal we. It’s just me) could just pack up and go be a nanny again at any time. That’s still my secret weapon. If everything goes tits up, that’s the plan. I’ll be gone in a puff of smoke and you’ll find me looking after babies somewhere in the world. I’ll tie E onto my back and we’ll figure out how to make it work.

Now that we have a team there *are* actual proper salaries to pay, but we can totally handle it!

We’ve spent the past 14 years figuring everything out the hard way so that we could hang out here and have a nice time. The whole point of running a business is to create your own freedom, make your own rules, right? There’s no point putting all that effort in to create a different shaped cage. The whole reason I’m here is because of my absolute allergy to offices and my being-totally-unemployable.

We’ve stayed as small as we can for as long as we could but now I’m ready to get out of the way for you. Last year I even found myself figuring out how I could slow down the enquiries. There were too many! Handling a baby *and* a growing business at the same time was too much but now that she’s settled into the world, walking and talking it is tiiiiime.

It’s safe for me now to step out of the way and let you roll down the hill as fast as you need to go now. We have a brilliant team of illustrators. We have a brilliant team behind the scenes too. You deserve that team because they are WAY better at admin etc. than me. You’ve grown to a point where I am the bottleneck. Amazing! This is such an exciting milestone. I’m happy to SEE that I’m a bottleneck, and figure out how to remove myself so that you can carry on chugging along.

I’m very proud of you. Keep going :)

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If you’ve been doing The Business Course, I hope you’ve found it helpful so far! Say hello in the comments bit so I can wave back at you.

I know there’s a LOT in the course to get through so you’re not behind, you’re just working through it, ok? Ok.

There’s plenty time.

x Katie