Getting started sounds so easy – but for millions of aspiring artists and creatives, the uncertainty of the path forward presents a very real challenge. So, we wanted to gather some artists and creatives we admire to open up about their experience and how they think about whether they should have started sooner or waited for a better time.

Cristina Montiel

I started my content creation journey right after a global pandemic started. It took me a full 6 months of boredom and idle to realize I had to take the leap. I was always passionate about fashion and beauty. My free time was often looking through red carpet looks and makeup/skincare tutorials. But I was too camera-shy to actually show some of what I did to my social media following. But something clicked during the pandemic, and being inside made me want to have more human connection, it was much needed during that time! Also, I was working from home and perfected my #wfhoutfit. Read more>>

Pisceze

I believe I started at the best time. I started songwriting for artists in 2019 and would record music for fun here and there. Seeing the process of how an artist made music inspired me, how songwriting was healing in what I was going through and saw how it helped others. Music was an inspiration of passing energies to an audience to feel good and feel like you could be there for them through the music. Pisceze came about as I’m super into astrology and I’m a Pisces – being highly intuitive and sensitive are traits of myself that I feel led me to the original music meant to touch my fans.  Read more>>

Babi

Well, I always say I started for real in 2019 when I got into SAE Institute to study Audio Technology, I was 28 years old and the way my life was turning around during that time was giving me the courage I needed to finally go for it, I definitely had that moment of “if I don’t do it now…” and honestly, I want no “what if” in my life. Read more>>

Sal Tinoco

As someone who has done art my entire life, I sometimes feel silly making the choice to monetize it later in my life(34). While I understand that I am not old, I do of course ask myself why did I allow fear of failure, or fear of not being accepted by the masses hold me back in my twenties. However, things happen for a reason and as an eight year active duty service member, I have tools that were gained over the years that I would not have without the experience that life brings. I worked in retail sales for six years before joining the US Army in 2016 and both gave me confidence in talking to people but the Army has given me both the discipline to establish a good schedule and a much more fearless attitude about needing to appeal to anyone specifically. Read more>>

Stephanie Neville

I have always wanted to be an artist. From a young age it was my dream to go to the Art Music and Dance high school (probably romanticised a little by too many episodes of the TV show ‘Fame’ ) but my parents couldn’t really afford it and the logistics of getting to the opposite side of the city was too difficult. The compromise was to take art as a major in the local high school. When it came to choosing university, the same issue arose – art was not deemed as a proper choice to secure a decent future. I settled for studying Marketing and PR which do come in handy sometimes. Art / painting remained a hobby for a long time. After a few years of traveling, I settled in the United Arab Emirates, and it was during 2005 when I got involved in the local arts and crafts scene. Read more>>

Carley Rangen

I grew up in the era.. you can’t make a living as an artist. I do wish I would have taken lessons, possibly gone to school and see where the road would have led. But, I am also grateful for the unexpected ways art has found me over the years. The benefit of using your right brain is not only bettering your art skills, it relaxes your brain. I took some watercolour courses when my first child was born. I loved them. The discovering and possibilities. I didn’t keep them up as I was a bit overwhelmed as a new mother. I swore I would get back to it later in life. Three kids later, I started to play in the art world again. Taking different lessons, trying different styles I wanted to learn more about painting. I absolutely love when someone sees a piece I have developed and they fall in love. Www.carleyrangenart.com Read more>>

Ivy Mcconnell

It sounds like a cliche, but I have been an artist my entire life. My parents always tell me I could spend an entire day along in my room just drawing. I graduated The Moore College of Art and Design with a major in Fashion Design. My first career job was as Technical Designer at Abercrombie and Fitch. I went on to a Technical Designer for various companies from 2008 to 2016. Let’s just say I was not a good Technical Designer, basically a clothing engineer. While I didn’t like my job, it did lead me to meeting my husband by way of a coworker and a college party in 2009, so I am grateful for that. We have a wonderful life with two amazing daughters. However, career wise, I wish I would have found what I am doing now, years ago. Read more>>

Kim Abels

Being an Artist has always come natural to me. I was raised in a household where my creativity was encouraged, yet for some reason I hid a lot of my natural talents and capabilities. Everyone is in artist, in my perspective and now more than ever do we have to ability to full express our creativity and be able to monetize from our unique passions. I would have encouraged my younger self to start earlier and not compare myself to other artists… to just have fun and be myself. Read more>>

Jonae Michelle

Well, there are times when I reflect on my journey and wish I had started my creative career earlier. In college, I began as an art major but switched paths after my first semester. I sometimes wonder what could have come of that decision if I had continued, though at the time, I felt discouraged. I remember my brother telling me that graphic design was undoubtedly my strength, and he was a bit surprised when I made the change. However, I also believe that life unfolds as it should, and perhaps stepping away from that path was meant to be. I only began seriously pursuing art two to three years ago, and my first year involved a lot of trial and error. Even now, I’m still experimenting with different mediums. Looking back, though, it’s been over ten years since I was in college, and I sometimes think about all the skills I could have developed during that time; I might have mastered my craft by now, but life has its own timing, and I’m embracing where I am in the process. Read more>>

Helen Dent

I started writing novels mid-career. Technically, my life as a creative began in preschool (when creativity really starts to blossom for most of us, I think), but in college, all my ideas seemed second-hand, based on the creativity of others. Looking back, I can see that I was simply in the process of finding my own voice, but at the time, it felt fatal. So I taught overseas for a few years, then worked with books in various capacities, and then, finally, had a fresh story idea. Once I dusted off my old composition notebooks, I couldn’t stop writing! In a way, I wish I’d continued writing creatively during those “gap years” to develop my writing muscles, so to speak. But also, it wasn’t wasted time. I was filling the storehouse of my imagination, and when the time was right, the ideas overflowed. Read more>>

Laquinceya Wilson

I feeling like I started my career perfect timing. Read more>>

Serena Morrigan

I wish I had started my creative career sooner since I had always been creative, but depression and anxiety kept me from doing so. I started writing poetry when I was ten or eleven years old. My parents had bought our first computer (yes, I know I’m old) and for some reason, the first thing I wanted to do was open a document and write poems. I remember they were mostly about nature. At thirteen, I started writing song lyrics and at seventeen I joined my first and only band as the singer and songwriter. But that’s when it slowly went downward. I had suffered from complex trauma for all these years and it started to take a toll on me. I just couldn’t get out of bed anymore. It took me six years to get out of that slump, during which I, of course, did not write anything at all. After all that time I thought my creative vein had dried up and I wouldn’t be able to write songs or poems again. Read more>>

Andy Schaner

I definitely wish I had started earlier or rather kept up with the practice I had as a young kid. I didn’t genuinely start painting/creating visually until almost 4 years ago. I had just moved to Pittsburgh and in the throes of difficulty between an ongoing pandemic, global unrest, and a messy breakup. My long-time friend and then roommate, Al, suggested we take a few mushrooms on a day off for an attempt at therapeutic release. He decided to get all of his art supplies out and I haven’t been able to put the brushes down since. We had a large studio space mere days after the experience and I’ve been churning out paintings ever since. Read more>>

Courtney Quickstad

Creating content and starting my own Instagram page has been something I have been toying with for years. It wasn’t until this year that I decided to take the plunge, rebrand my IG, and go full force into content creating. My one regret is definitely not starting sooner. I often wonder why I didn’t just take the risk and start doing this years ago? I think the market can get very oversaturated, so that’s where my regret sets in. Creating content takes lots of time, patience, and tons of practice. So the sooner you start, the better ;) Who knows where my content creating journey may have been at this point in time had I just started sooner! I am learning to get out of my own way and do things for myself rather than worry about what others might think. Read more>>

Thea Lissi

Sometimes I think about how cool it would’ve been to kick off my music career earlier. I was 29 when I first decided to try singing & creating music. At that time I was going through a pretty rough patch with my divorce and trying to rediscover who I was again, on top of being a single mom and running my dance studio business that I opened in 2015. Music has always been a big part of my life, but being on the creating end? That was new territory for me – and I never imagined I’d be doing it professionally. But God had other plans:) I would have loved to start learning these skills at a younger age just to have a bit more experience under my belt now. The music world can be intimidating because you are always surrounded by insanely talented artists. But that also pushes me to up my game and I have learned so much from being surrounded by people who are better than me, which is pretty awesome! Read more>>

Mariana Budal

I always knew that music is part of myself and is one of my biggest passions in life. I grew up singing, dancing and writing songs even tho I didn’t knew nothing about it. It came to me naturally. But now that I am in LA, I decided to put my first song out in a month or two. I have so many songs I’ve been working on and I’m so excited to finally release it. I often think about why I haven’t started sooner, but looking back I feel like I wasn’t prepared mentally and emotionally enough to go for it and be true to myself and the person I became. Being an artist is very hard. You need to keep in mind that there’s lots of passionate people out there trying to make it. And the most important thing for me is authenticity. I wanna be my own person, of course I have other artists that inspires me but I wanna find my own sound and I am finally comfortable enough on my own skin now to finally be the artist I always wanted to be. Read more>>

Sofia Gamiz

It’s always a bittersweet feeling to think about “what if I had started earlier” because I fantasized so much and berated myself so much for not doing it that part of the creative process is accepting how it was. So, answering this question “Yes, I would have loved to start earlier”, the paradox is that I couldn’t have because I needed to learn a lot about myself. I think artistic expression was always in my life; I had diaries, wrote stories, illustrated in notebooks, went to painting classes as a child. It was always there. But it became more real for me during the pandemic. I had time to take classes and practice, to take it seriously, and so I started drawing in my notebooks and designing earrings with polymer clay. Read more>>

Gracie Brooke

I was a shy child – bossy, but shy – and when my two younger siblings bulldozed onto the scene, I definitely retreated into my shell even more. It didn’t help that I was chubby, ginger, four-eyed and gap-toothed, because school was also, fundamentally, not the place for someone like me to venture out of their shell. You probably know why. So, I definitely never expected to be pursuing an acting career later in life. But, a lot’s happened since then and here we are! Thankfully, as a teenager, I slimmed down, got braces, lost the braces, got contacts, lost the glasses and discovered the brilliance of make-up. Read more>>

Ned Dehan

I started my YouTube channel in 2017. Prior to that I had made some content in 2010 and 2011, but it had been very small. If I could change something, I would have bought the right camera in 2006 and started making YouTube videos from the beginning. Having more years and time to allow my channel to grow would have benefited me greatly. There is no time like the present. Start now. Read more>>

Xaveriya Hobbs

My creative career started when I was about 13. I would watch short film videos about barbie dolls and I really enjoyed watching them and wanted to create my own! I loved barbie dolls , especially Monster High! My mom had an old camcorder she stopped using and I would prop it up on some books and make stop motion videos! I loved creating action scenes of my dolls fighting or things throwing , or even live action shots of my dolls driving lol. As I grew older and entered high school, everyday I would ask my sister to take pictures of me of my outfit. I really enjoyed doing my hair and dressing up! I loved how the sunlight bounced off my skin. Read more>>

Geraldine Ysselstein

It has been almost two years since I began my artistic career and I wish I had started earlier! While I have always been involved in the arts, it is only now in my early 40s that I feel brave enough to explore, express, and share my emerging artistic practice. I think that I always knew that someday I would begin exploring an artistic career, but I have hesitated for a long time. Questions kept bubbling up for me like what kind of artist do I want to be, what medium do I want to use, what ideas do I want to share, where can I have space to create, how can I afford to be an artist, can I be a self-taught artist, how do I have time to be an artist and a mom, do I need to get a degree, does the world need another artist, and how can I be aware and respectful of the materials I use and its impact on the land, sky, and water? Read more>>

Chichi Mejias

If i could go back in time and started my creative career sooner, i would definitely do so. I would say i started actually pursuing my creative ideas 3 years ago, 2021. I say that for multiple reasons. One being I’m constantly seeing ideas i thought of a while ago become a big thing after someone else started it or pushed it and I’m stuck thinking “ damn it , i should’ve went for it! “ Another reason being I honestly think the younger you are when starting out gives you a little more advantage as your more receptacle in gaining information and it also gives you more time to learn and master your craft. I think i definitely would have been a little farther with my talk show had i embraced my creativity and started sooner. Read more>>

Latesha Roche

If I could go back in time, I definitely would have started my creative career sooner. I started my creative career in 2020 during Covid, which was a prime time of us not being able to interact with anyone in person and everything resulted to being online. At this time in my life, I was working at a retirement home and had taken a stress leave due to caring for my mom and fear of me bringing home the virus. During that leave, I decided to look for ways to potentially make money on the side, but as well as learning to be more creative in my spare time. I think that if I had started my creative career sooner like when I was in high school making a little videos that could’ve been YouTube videos, I could’ve had the chance to start building my platform as a influencer or content creator from years ago, and just showing my talents and my skills and what I have to offer and also making myself a household name a lot sooner than later. Read more>>

Matt Tripodi

My first instinct is to quickly answer “sooner.” I’ve got a pretty random story of how I ended up here. I was always into artsy stuff growing up as a little kid and into high school – more than your average kid. My mom would have me in different classes here or there for acrylic and watercolor, or pottery, ceramics, and other crafts and I loved it. I like to think I was really talented for the groups I found myself in, and I straddled the artist/jock/nerd lines until I graduated. But after high school it felt like my involvement in art hit a brick wall – I just stopped drawing and painting altogether. The backstory being that I grew up in and around the military (my dad was a Blackhawk pilot) and I wasn’t exposed to much art in my daily life at all- which is to say I was absolutely ignorant to any of the artistic career paths out there, and having been a good all-around student, went to college with no direction – I just figured I’d find my way eventually. Read more>>

Robin Griffin

Looking back at my career, I feel pretty satisfied with the way that all of my different professional roles have merged together in order to bring me to this point in my life. The concept of divine order provides a profound framework for my understanding the interconnectedness of all things. My belief in a higher, universal order fosters a sense of purpose and deeper meaning. Throughout the years I have steadily gained invaluable first hand experience working behind the scenes in the hospitality industry executing functions and special events for people inspiring me to continue to build upon an inherent passion to provide intentional means for purposeful connection. Read more>>

Sameer Shajahan

I don’t believe so. I feel like everything leading up to this point in my life has helped me become more capable person. I feel that I am better equipped to handle pressure situations, improvisations, handling artists now better compared to say if I were in my early twenties. I feel that I am at the right time & age to take my creative journey to the next stage. Read more>>