We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Colin Wright a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Colin, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Earning a full time living from one’s creative career can be incredibly difficult. Have you been able to do so and if so, can you share some of the key parts of your journey and any important advice or lessons that might help creatives who haven’t been able to yet?

There are many benefits to working for yourself, but figuring out how to do things you love and which you can sustainably, healthfully, growthfully do over time is tricky—that’s where a lot of people get stuck (or decide, not irrationally, to return to a paycheck-earning employment situation).

This is part of why my career since 2009, when I closed my branding studio in LA to start traveling full-time and focus on other sorts of work, has actually consisted of several different careers, all stitched together in awkward and bizarre ways.

You have to always be honing your existing work, trying out and learning about alternative, adjacent fields and tools, and making sure you’re in a good spot to flesh-out your offerings with variations, upgrades, and alternatives in case the world shifts around you and you’re forced (or choose) to move on to a next-step option, if you want to do independent, creative work professionally for any amount of time.

I personally find this process of iteration and evolution exhausting and fulfilling in equal measure, and though it doesn’t become any less stressful with experience, you do (by necessity) tend to figure out ways to cope and to focus on how interesting and fulfilling this sort of work can be, rather than spending all your time worrying about the ever-present potential for failure.

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

Until recently I was traveling the world full-time, moving to a new country every four months or so, each new home voted-upon by my readers (that ended pretty suddenly with the pandemic, at which point I set up a home-base in Milwaukee, from which I now travel).

While on the road I write, make podcasts, shoot videos, and run a double-handful of online publications and other properties. I’ve published a few dozen books and speak to crowds around the world on a variety of topics.

I love that I get to follow my interests and build little pop-up businesses around them, and I love having free-use of my time: I set all my own deadlines, decide how I invest my days and my energy, and that’s allowed me to build and enjoy something truly me-shaped over the past 14-years or so.

I also feel fortunate that I’m able to connect with readers/listeners/viewers from around the world, and that the majority of my income is derived from sales of and subscriptions to my work that people are willing to pay—that feels good, and is aligned with how I want to build those relationships and earn my living.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

I want to make sure I’m aligning the work I do with my values and beliefs so I can feel good about how I do businesses and sleep well at night.

I also want to put things into the world that I feel uniquely qualified to create and that I think would genuinely benefit other people (even if only a handful of them, which is sometimes the case with my more niche offerings).

It can be a significant challenge figuring out how to honor those goals while also making sure the money side of things balances out each month, but for me and my ambitions, it’s worth the effort and the tradeoffs.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

At one point in my life I believed that money was everything and the pursuit of money was the ultimate, best path one could walk.

At another point, I believed the exact opposite, feeling money should be ignored, and was purposeless and perhaps even oppositional to the creative process.

I’ve since found a middle path between the two, and now see money as an enabling force (within the current global economic paradigm, at least) that—if approached and managed thoughtfully—can sustain the work I want to do and even amplify its impact, but which if over-prioritized can dilute and distort everything else I do (often negatively).

Arriving at this equilibrium hasn’t been easy, and it’s been the consequence of a lot of lived experience, at different times having a bunch of money, having no money, and ultimately realizing that my time and energy are the most valuable finite resources I posses, and that both are more firmly in my control when I have precisely the right amount of money, no more, no less.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://colin.io
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/colinismyname
• Facebook: https://facebook.com/colinwright
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/colinismyname/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/colinismyname
• Youtube: https://youtube.com/@colinwright
• Other: Substack: https://substack.com/@colin