Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Betty Xie. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Betty, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Are you happier as a creative? Do you sometimes think about what it would be like to just have a regular job? Can you talk to us about how you think through these emotions?

This is a topic that I think of regularly in my own creative career, and nowadays, coaching creatives as they navigate this question on their path.

My story – I went into the creative path with passion and without knowing too much about the reality of working in creative industries. As a 1.5 gen immigrant, I had no one in my family who knew what was like to work as a creative in Canada. I just knew I really liked the arts!

After graduation, like many creatives, I hopped from contract to contract, and sometimes holding multiple contract positions all at once. For a few years, I was working at a film festival, developing my independent film-making career, and tutoring high school students SAT all at once.

Finally, I hit a point where I questioned why I was even pursuing a creative career. I was working so much and barely making means meet. Exhaustion and stress had prevented me from having consistent creative energy to produce creative projects that I truly want to. I hit a hard pause. I went back to grad school, thinking that I would pivot out from the creative industry completely. Wondering what it would be like to have a “regular job”

But what grad school (I studied design thinking and foresight strategy) taught me was that one ultimately cannot like to oneself who one is. I discovered a few things that were true about myself.
1) I still have the artist / filmmaker/ creative in me. I have so much creative potential waiting for myself to unlock.
2) I am a multi-passionate person, and I don’t need to fit myself in a box. As much as I am an artist, I am also deeply interested in helping people and organizations to thrive – an interest and skill that I’ve developed professionally while working in film festivals and arts nonprofit and studying change management and coaching later.

I looked around. I realized I was not alone. A lot of creatives were feeling what I was feeling. Having the doubt about their creative path, while holding on to the creative dream they once had.

When I was pursuing training as a leadership coach, I also realized, coaching was something that was traditionally offered in a corporate setting, but very rarely artist and creatives get offered or access to it.

So, in 2021, I launched my coaching service for creatives, initially as a side gig from my consultant job and film-making practice. As the practice grew, it gave me confidence that there is this need, and I am also finding my true calling in founding a multi-faceted creative business.

Since 2022, I run a multi-faceted creative business – As a coach and consultant, I help creative people and organizations to design intentional growth for their career, businesses, or nonprofits. I also still make films and videos with my long time collaborators. I recently just received a grant to write my first feature film this year.

Functioning in this multi-faceted way, I am the happiest I’ve ever been I’ve ever been. I have a lot of flexibility in my schedule. I am making the most money I’ve ever made in my career. And I feel like I am operating with purpose every day at work.

It’s my mission to help other creatives to carve out their paths, make their art, and make happier money too.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I think some of the answers for the part of the question related to my back story are covered in my answer for the last question. Let me add some stuff to it:

I am a filmmaker, coach, and consultant. My mission is support creative people and organizations to design growth that matter in their career, for their practice, and for their community.

I have two types of clients: individuals and organizations.

For individual clients, I have coached creatives including photographers, filmmakers, visual artists, creative entrepreneurs, arts leaders, arts consultants etc. Clients often come to me when they are looking for a pivot in their career or practice. I have two individual programs, one focuses on helping clients to shift their creative career mindfully, and one is more of a business coaching program that helps clients to streamline and gain clarity in their small creative businesses.

For organizations, I offer fundraising consultancy as well as group coaching offering. I have over 10 years of experience raising over 3 million dollars for small nonprofits. I also coach leaders of small nonprofits and arts organizations to achieve their strategic and revenue generation goals. Some notable clients who I have supported include: The Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival, BIPOC TV and Film, VIBE Arts, The Good Companions Centre in Ottawa, Aluna Theatre, Whippersnapper Gallery.

As a filmmaker, I also wear multiple hats! I have written, produced and directed works in fiction, non-fiction, and animation. My works have been showcased in film festivals around the work, including the Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival, Hawaii Film Festival, CAMFest in San Francisco, Kaohsiung Film Festival in Taiwan etc and broadcasters including the CBC. I am currently working on my first dramatic feature film script.

I also host a podcast. The Everyday Talent podcast is your go-to podcast for the latest insights and conversations about ways to go beyond aimless hustle when developing a creative career. The podcast won the 2023 Golden Cranes Award organized by the Asian American Podcasters Association.

With my multi-faceted experience and expertise in fields in coaching, fundraising, and film-making, I have developed a unique intersection of skills and perspective. This has definitely helped me to attract clients who are looking for that powerful combination of skills and strengths, and often time, my clients who work in the creative fields would note to me how seen they felt by me, and how hard it was to find a coach that understand their unique challenge and aspirations in the field.

But if you ask me when I started my career, if I would ever know that I would hone in these pillars of skills and strengths, I would never been able to predict this! When I reflect back, it has been a combination of planning, trial and error, taking calculated risks, building inner trust and clarity, and getting the right support from peers, mentors, coaches (and therapy), that allow me to continue to carve out my unique path. This self-reminder is important for me to show up everyday and support other creatives as a coach. I am a thinking partner for my clients to help them to lay out the bricks for intentional choices that will lead to beautiful possibilities and new realities on their own paths.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can provide some insight – you never know who might benefit from the enlightenment.

First of all, I must say I truly believe that everyone is creative and has creative side. So I want to be careful that when we say “non-creatives”, we just mean here people who are not pursuing the creative fields professionally. Below, I am going to use the phrase “professional creatives” to make the distinction.

In my experiences s a professional creative, and coaching other professional creatives, one thing that comes up again and gain that other might not understand, is how much creative fulfillment is an indispensable pillar in our general level of happiness and satisfaction in our life and career.

Sometimes we neglect this ourselves. I remember the time in my career when on the outside, I was working at some fo the best arts organizations in the city, I was enrolled in a prestigious film fellowship. I was producing a feature film in my mid-twenty, I was getting recognition – I was by all account on the way to “make it”. But I was miserable inside. Because I realize what I was SO BUSY running around building my name and resume, that I had so little time and mental space to slow down in my week to immense in the creative act – whether it was writing, painting, or simply daydreaming. When I realize that, I knew something had to change.

Nowadays, I meet so many creatives in my coaching room that has the similar struggle. On the outside, they have achieved incredible highs in their creative career. On the inside, they tell me: Betty, I can’t find a space in my calendar to focus on the creative things I want to. I am not satisfied.

It doesn’t matter how much we have advanced our creative career, how much money we make, if we are not creating the way we like, we are not in our happy place.

I think this is something that is so unique to professional creatives that people with other professions might struggle to understand. In my support for my clients, and in my own self-management of my practice, designing intentionally around how to consistently get creative satisfaction is a must-have topic to cover and consider.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

Like many creative or multi-passionate people, I used to dread the question, “so what do you do again?”

It’s not a straightforward question to answer when you do multiple things.

Earlier in my career, I also often get anxious by the fact that I am not a specialist. I don’t have just one job title that can define me, or one lane that I want to do forever and never change. I don’t actually remember if anyone had ever explicitly advised me “you must have one specialty” in my life, but I think I am deeply en-grained that thought as many people in my parents’ generation had one job their whole life and often succeed by being trained professionals. When I got to the film industry, I also compared myself, who is a generalist, with people who are hyper specialized in one facet of film (say sound, music, editing etc.)

As such, I gave myself a lot of pressure. I subconsciously fed myself the pressure to eventually choose one thing one day.

It wasn’t until the global pandemic happened that I completely unlearned this belief. At the beginning of the pandemic, the independent film industry in Canada was suddenly put to a halt for a few months. I still remember my film partners and I had just incorporated our company the month before the lock down, but the several projects we wanted to pursue were forced to put to a halt. I saw my peers suddenly lost work.

For me, I had multiple things going on, not just film. At the time I was wrapping up grad school, and was working part-time as a nonprofit consultant. I realized that this multi-lane career actually provided me a lot of resilience. I had the privilege and flexibility to switch lane when needed to, or when I wanted to.

We have now seen more and more literature come out that emphasize the importance and merit of multi-lane or portfolio type of career. There is nothing wrong with wanting to specialize, of course. What I learned and unlearned is just that one does not need to be boxed in by one job title or one specialist if that’s not one’s nature or passion. We can all have our own unique path or paths.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.xiebetty.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bettyxcoach
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bettyxie/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYbmZPDQ529oRkaEUTjVf5g
• Other: My podcast Everyday Talent Podcast: https://everydaytalent.buzzsprout.com/

Image Credits
Photographed by Angela Lewis 2022