We were lucky to catch up with Naomi Clement recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Naomi thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Being a business owner can be really hard sometimes. It’s rewarding, but most business owners we’ve spoken sometimes think about what it would have been like to have had a regular job instead. Have you ever wondered that yourself? Maybe you can talk to us about a time when you felt this way?

To be honest, I was a pretty reluctant entrepreneur—I really resisted the idea of being my own boss and running a business. I’m a pretty risk-averse person, and as a single human, it always felt really scary to run a business. But I find it suits me pretty darn well! While there are certainly times that I wish I had a regular job, and had someone telling me what to do, I definitely couldn’t go back to that. I love the flexibility and creativity of running my own business. I’ve learned to see it as another extension of my creative practice.

The last time I had that thought “wouldn’t it be nice to have a job to go to and have someone tell me what to do” was probably February. I’ve always struggled with seasonal depression/anxiety, so February in Canada can be rough. During those times it’s hard to find the motivation and inspiration that’s needed to run a business. But ultimately I realized I just need to plan differently for that time of year, so that I can take some time off, or get a hit of vitamin D. That and learning to outsource more—that’s been the biggest lesson that I’ve needed to learn of late. I can’t do it all myself, so I’m better off hiring people to help support the aspects that I either hate, or am not as good at. That frees me up to focus my energy on things that I am good at and that I love to do. It’s a big mindset shift for sure.

Naomi, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I’ve been working with clay since high school (some 25+ years ago!). Even though I’ve always loved clay, it took me a long time to admit that I was an artist and commit to a career in the arts, but ultimately the saying is true: the only thing harder than being an artist, is not being an artist.

I’m really proud that I’ve built a successful creative business and that I make a good living doing what I love, all while connecting with and helping other potters make their best work and sell more of it! My goal with my online school is to help other artists find their voices and build the creative careers of their dreams with confidence. I’m on a mission to debunk the myth of the starving depressed artist. I don’t know about you, but I make better work when I’m fed well!

Honestly, if it wasn’t for the COVID-19 pandemic, I wouldn’t have the successful business I now have. As a potter, teaching was always part of my income—before the pandemic I travelled to teach a lot of in-person workshops on my pottery techniques. I enjoyed the opportunity to get out of my studio and interact with other makers in a new environment, and the extra income stream was helpful. But the downside was a lot of travel and time spent away from home (travel for work always sounds sexy, but the reality of it is much less glamorous).

In the early days of the pandemic, I realized how reliant I’d become on that extra income (it was a pretty scary time financially). Luckily I had the teaching experience and a decent social media audience, and I was able to partner with an arts organization for some virtual workshops in the late Spring of 2020. These were a huge success and it was so rewarding to get to connect with students all over the world. In-person teaching is great, but it will always be limited by geography and needing a physical space. Plus virtual workshops are so much more accessible in other ways too: students can literally participate from anywhere, and the cost to attend is a fraction of what it would be for an in-person class.

If you’d told me 5 years ago that I’d be making a living teaching pottery online, I would have thought you were nuts!

My early success and enjoyment with teaching online was rewarding, and it led me to invest further in that side of my business. It felt great to be able to connect with makers from around the world over our shared love and curiosity for clay.

Because I’d seen how important it was to diversify my income streams I focused on building out more programs and a website where I could showcase and sell them.

While many other artists were teaching techniques and skills online, I quickly branched out to teaching professional development courses, a mentorship program, and a monthly skills-based membership.

These were all topics I’d always wanted to teach, but I’d previously thought that I needed a physical space to teach them. It was rewarding to help other artists get ahead in their careers and avoid some of the early professional mistakes that I had made.

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

Something that I’m constantly working to unlearn is the idea that artists can’t make a living from our creativity. Unfortunately, most of us are fed this shitty idea from really early on in our creative journeys (Vincent Van Gogh never sold a painting in his life etc.), and the myth of the starving artist is almost presented as some sort of twisted ideal—the word “commercial” is pretty much a pejorative in the art school and fine art worlds. Combine that with the look you get when you tell people you’re getting a master’s degree in ceramics, or the constant questions of “but what are you actually going to do for a living?” —it’s not a great recipe for success eh?

It’s been tough for me to get past this limiting scarcity mindset. In fact, in my 20’s I quit pottery altogether because I thought I didn’t love it enough to be poor doing it.

These days that fuels me more though. I want to prove to myself and the nay-sayers that it is possible. I can build a profitable and rewarding business around my creativity.

Though I was a reluctant entrepreneur at first, I’ve grown to see running a business as another creative outlet. Building something beautiful that wasn’t there before is what I do with clay after all.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

My goal with social media is always to be authentic—those are the accounts that I always resonate the most with at any rate. You’ve also got to remember that it is a long game, and it is a great place to start to tell your story, to let folks know who you are, and why they should care. Since people buy from folks they “know, like, and trust” you’ve got to let them in a bit. I try and share my personality and some of my story with folks with the hope that they’ll be interested enough to stop their scroll and eventually sign up for my email list or check out my website. I’ve always been more interested in an audience that is genuinely engaged with what I do, over just amassing more followers for my ego.

The best business advice I ever heard was “don’t build your business on borrowed land”, and any social media will always be borrowed land, meaning, I can’t control who sees my content and who doesn’t. So while IG is great, my main goal there is to get folks over to my email list. That then allows me to have more in-depth and long-term conversations with them.

All of this takes time and doesn’t happen overnight.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.naomiclement.com
• Instagram: @naomikclement
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/NaomiClementCeramics

Image Credits

Sara Bradford
Brilliant Images
Carole Epp
Naomi Clement

different photographers for different pieces