Build Stability in Your Creative Business: Two Key Strategies

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A creative business can bring immense freedom, agency, and fulfillment into your life. But that flexibility and independence also brings a lot of uncertainty and instability as well. Trends shift, markets change, economies fluctuate, making a small creative business on its own feel at times like a small boat adrift on a huge ocean.

The real reason you begin a creative venture is definitely not to stay stressed and uncertain or just on the whims of chance and luck. It's to nourish and support you, whether that's to support you financially or to supplement your income, to connect with your creativity, to build community, or to really step into and serve your purpose. Maybe it's a little of all of those things.

Having effective strategies to help you build stability and resilience into your creative work can make all the difference.

In This Episode, We Cover:

Why creative businesses need resilience
How diversification helps protect from uncertainty
The importance of specializing without siloing
How streamlining helps you go deeper instead of wider
How to know when to increase, delegate, decrease, or release
Why financial success and personal fulfillment both matter
A reminder to listen to your body when making business decisions

Episode Summary

In this episode, Jen shares two practical strategies for building stability, resilience, and sustainable success in a creative business: diversifying your offerings and streamlining what no longer serves you. Drawing from her own journey in floral design, education, online courses, and product creation, she explains how to expand thoughtfully, then refine with clarity so your business supports both your income and your well-being.

Key Takeaways

Diversify your offerings to build resilience — Don’t rely on just one income stream or one type of service. Expand in ways that make sense for your skills, your audience, and your brand so your business can withstand change.

Streamline to protect your energy and focus — Not every idea or offering is worth keeping. Use a simple filter: what supports your business, what supports your soul, and what needs to be increased, delegated, or released.

Balance financial success with personal fulfillment —The goal isn’t only making money — it’s building a creative life that feels sustainable, aligned, and nourishing. The strongest business decisions support both profitability and well-being. A resilient creative business evolves with you, supports your energy, and lets you do more of what truly matters.

Mentioned in This Episode

Details From Sponsors:

This episode of the Called to Bloom podcast is brought to you by Nectar & Bloom Mentorship.

Explore a multi-day Studio Mentorship for an in-person immersion tailored to you that combines floral design, business strategy, and holistic creative entrepreneurship, or a Remote Mentorship for strategic coaching from wherever you are.

Use code CALLEDTOBLOOM at checkout for 10% off your first Remote Mentorship session purchase.

Resources:

Explore Mentorship — deepen your floral artistry practice one-on-one

Join the Poetry of Flowers — holistic floral artistry online courses to empower your creative practice from anywhere in the world

Discover Tarot of Flowers — a gift of abundant floral wisdom for any flower-lover or seeker
Use code CALLEDTOBLOOM for 10% off your first Remote Mentorship session

Keep in Touch:

Thank you so much for being here, and for being part of this radiant community as we step deeper into our creative callings together.

If you enjoyed this episode:

I would love to hear from you! Connect with me on Instagram: @nectar_and_bloom or @calledtobloompodcast.
Please leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Your words help other creatives and seekers like you find the show!

Episode Keywords

creative business resilience, how to diversify your business, streamline your business, sustainable business growth, creative entrepreneurship tips, business strategy for creatives, increase income streams, reduce burnout in business, align your business with your values, what to release in business, what to delegate in business, move the needle in your business, business audit for creatives, purposeful business growth, flower business strategy, floral business tips, creative business success, balanced entrepreneurship, build a resilient creative business

Sound Bites

"Build resilience through diversification"

"Streamlining helps you go deeper, not wider"

“If you can't enjoy your life, what is the point of the financial success?”

"Make your offerings move the needle of both finance and fulfillment"

Chapters

00:00 The Freedom and Challenges of Creative Business

02:10 Strategies for Stability and Resilience

02:44 Diversification: Navigating Change in Creative Ventures

11:14 How to Apply Diversifying Your Offerings to Your Business

16:45 Exploring Diversification in Creative Businesses

18:30 The Importance of Streamlining for Growth

23:27 Identifying What Moves the Needle

31:51 Aligning Offerings with Fulfillment and Financial Success

37:33 Creating Stability and Resilience in Your Business

Full Transcript

The real reason you begin a creative venture is definitely not to stay stressed and uncertain or just on the whims of chance and luck.

It's to nourish and support you, whether that's to support you financially or to supplement your income, to connect with your creativity, to build community, or to really step into and serve your purpose. Maybe it's a little of all of those things.

Having effective strategies to help you build stability and resilience into your creative work can make all the difference.

Welcome to the Called to Bloom podcast. I'm Jen Cavender founder of Nectar and Bloom, and your host as we explore tools and holistic methods that empower you to craft an inspired career and a fulfilling creative life.

I am a floral artist and educator who left an academic career to build my dream floral design studio. Now I empower flower lovers, florists, and creative entrepreneurs like you to find your aligned path and to build your dream.

Together we go deep into topics covering creative entrepreneurship, health and well-being, sustainability, personal transformation, the art and business of working with flowers, and practices for manifesting a life you love.

If you are ready to feel inspired and empowered as you build your next aligned creative chapter, you are in the right place. Now, let's bloom.

In this episode of Called to Bloom, I am coaching you through two of the strategies that have been the most impactful for me in bringing stability, resilience, and sustainable success to my business.

And they are strategies that are going to help you make big positive shifts as well.

First, I'm going to walk you through each of these strategies, and I'll share with you how I've applied each one in my own business. And then we'll look at how you can apply these strategies to your own creative venture as well.

The right strategies can help you reduce your vulnerability to changing markets and trends, release commitments that have you spread too thin, and discover how to diversify what you offer and niche down to really attract and serve your ideal audience.

Let's dive into the two key strategies to help you build stability and resilience in your creative business.

The two strategies that I'm sharing with you today that have helped me the most in building stability and resilience in my own business center around diversification and streamlining.

First, we're going to look at diversification, as in diversifying your offerings to build resilience during times of change.

Then we're going to look at streamlining, as in streamlining your offerings to niche down so that you can more easily and effectively attract and serve your ideal clients and customers.

So in this strategy focused episode, I want to keep things clear and simple and accessible so that as you listen, you're able to really digest and apply these two strategies. So we'll focus on diversification first and then streamlining.

When we talk about diversification, I'm talking about diversifying your offerings to navigate change. It's important to specialize, but not silo yourself. Markets change, circumstances change, and you need to be nimble.

And it's not just in creative entrepreneurship. Diversity is stronger in gardening, where you have different varieties of crops that are going to help create an ecosystem together. In finances, where you have a more diversified portfolio so that all of your finances aren't in one place in case things change, which they always do. And it's the same in creative business.

If you have only one offering and something happens in the world or life circumstances change, that can make it very challenging to continue to have work or to continue to create an income or to continue to have the creative outlet you are seeking because you only have that one outlet.

So this will get a little more clear as I share my own experience as a specific example, and then we'll look at how you can apply this strategy as well.

In my own business, when I started Nectar and Bloom, I was making this big pivot out of academia as a professor of English and literature, having come from my MFA in creative writing. My plan was to be a writer and a professor. And that's what I was doing until I discovered floral design. And I kind of had this whoa, huge pivot and shift. I had been searching, and I've talked about this in a couple of episodes,

including the first one, which was "How to Build a Floral Design Studio From a 180 Career Pivot," which is what I did, and also in the episode titled "How I Transformed My Floral Business to Align with My True Calling," so have a listen to those.

But in a short nutshell here, I was searching for something that would allow me to have my own business, to be creative, to be building and creating with my hands that would bring me closer to nature and that felt more aligned for me,

The point of sharing that here is that I began as a wedding florist. That was a great way to get started in floral artistry. I realized that there was an ongoing market for weddings. People are always getting married, which helped a creative career jump feel a little safer because it felt like this is not just something I'm going to end up doing on my own and not sure if it will sell. So I felt more stable and confident beginning a creative business with that as an offering.

And once I got that started, I was so thrilled to be able to focus on that one thing, to have that main central offering. And this is what I'm talking about when I say it's important to specialize, but not silo. So specializing, especially in the beginning, is really important. You don't want to be all over the place with a lot of offerings and no focus because it's harder for a client to find you and book your services because they're confused about what all you offer. So it's good to start with a single offering in the beginning.

But things can happen, things can change, events can happen, life changes. For me, two things happened. One was

I'm the kind of person who needs to grow, who needs space to evolve. And I think a lot of listeners are this way as well, where you might start with one thing and do it really well, but then you need to grow.

So the first thing I did was start to diversify by offering mentorships and workshops. I am an educator at heart. I love to coach and teach and mentor people. I love to empower you as you grow and step into new callings So it was a natural step for me to make space in what I offered to start teaching floral design as well.

So first I started with those weddings and events, and then to expand my offerings, I started to teach one-on-one mentorships and group workshops.

Additionally, the pandemic, which we all went through, and suddenly events were on hold.

And a lot of us that were already in the events industry really had to think, what can I do? Especially being a small business owner during that time without necessarily any guarantee of income while this was going on, it was important to diversify and come up with different offerings that could keep my business afloat while this was going on.

The second thing I did was start Poetry of Flowers, my online floral education courses.

And in doing so, that was a way for me to pivot during the time when the world was closed from my weddings as well as teaching workshops and mentorships. I could put those online so that people could attend from anywhere

And without restriction, it didn't matter where you were, what was going on in the world, you can attend an online course.

And that actually has ended up being a wonderful asset continually because having the Poetry of Flowers online courses available gives people a chance to get floral education from wherever they are.

So people who want to come for a mentorship often will start with an online course from Poetry of Flowers. Or if people come for a mentorship or workshop and they want to follow up, they can take a course as further support.

So that is an example of diversifying the offerings in a way that served me to help my business be more resilient and also helped better serve my audience.

And as another example of diversifying my income streams for Nectar and Bloom using myself as an example, over the years I developed and then eventually released Tarot of Flowers.

Tarot of Flowers is a full original tarot deck based in the wisdom of flowers, pulling from folklore, pulling from my experience in working with flowers and my studies in Ayurveda and Reiki and Yoga to create an oracle deck that is full of flowers and a way to have flowers be a gift that keeps giving.

So these three examples are ways that I started to diversify my income streams so that my business was more resilient and stable, and they're based in and rooted in what I love to do and am skilled at doing, which I think is really important as we get into how you can apply this to your business.

Today's episode is brought to you by Nectar and Bloom Mentorship.

One of the things I love most about this podcast is getting to share ideas that can genuinely help you build a more sustainable, fulfilling creative business. But of course, in a podcast episode, we can only go so far.

If you are looking for more personalized support, I would love to invite you into one of my one-on-one mentorships.

If you're craving an immersive hands-on experience, my studio mentorships here in San Diego combine floral design education with business strategy, giving us this holistic and dedicated time together to clarify your vision, refine your skills, build on your dreams, strengthen your business, and create a path forward that is both inspiring and sustainable. These are completely tailored to you, to your goals, and wherever you are on your journey as a floral artist or creative entrepreneur.

And because lasting transformation happens through continued support, every studio mentorship also includes a complimentary follow-up remote mentorship session to help you integrate everything that you've learned once you get back home.

Or if you're working through a pivot, a new project, or a challenge in your business, or you simply want thoughtful and strategic guidance tailored to you from wherever you are in the world, my remote mentorship sessions offer you focused one-on-one coaching to help you find clarity, make confident decisions, and move forward with intention.

If you'd like to learn more, you can visit the mentorship page on my website at nectarandbloomfloral.com

And as a thank you for being a Called to Bloom listener, you can receive 10% off your first remote mentorship session with the code CALLEDTOBLOOM at checkout. That's C-A-L-L-E-D-T-O-B-L-O-O-M. One word at checkout.

And now back to our episode.

So now you have a few examples from my own experience in Nectar and Bloom, and I give that as an example again to illustrate how this is possible, but let's dive into how you can actually apply this in your business.

Maybe you're thinking, okay, I've started with this one offering or I've been doing this one offering for a while,

And maybe you've felt that pinch or that pivot or that strange moment where you realize circumstances are shifting and now you feel a little vulnerable to the market changes or the circumstantial changes in your life.

So if we can diversify your quote unquote portfolio of offerings, that way you have something for more people in your audience. That way you have different streams of income.

And that way you have more stability and resilience in your business.

You're also expanding who you serve and how you serve them under the umbrella of your business and what you offer.

So while you may have felt that pinch or that need to expand or diversify, or you might have felt that vulnerability to the shifts that can happen in markets and trends, you might be wondering, well, okay, how do I actually build different offerings?

And also, how can I build something that I know will serve my audience and be something useful and worth my while to build and promote?

So here's my advice.

First, as you're working on building diversification into your business, get strategic. Look at what is missing from what you offer that your people, your audience, your customers and clients will love and benefit from.

Who do you already serve now and in what way? Think about what other pain points they have or what other needs they have that you're actually really well equipped to serve.

It might be a very simple expansion off of what you already offer. Many people working in weddings and events in floral design, for example, might have a main service of event floral design, but then they add on wedding coordination as a package, or they add on other types of services. Maybe you want to offer a class to your brides if they want to learn with their bridesmaids how to create bouquets.

Maybe you just want to diversify by adding that you can flower for baby showers and birthdays and bridal showers.

The point is you can get strategic about what is missing from your offerings that your current clients could benefit from and would love. So do a little soul searching and journaling or brainstorming on that as you start to diversify.

Secondly, remember that you are good at more than one thing. Explore your passions. Draw from your background and your past chapters.

You've heard from my example and how I drew from my past as an academic professor, as a writer, as a yoga teacher, as well as a love for healing arts and transformative experiences. Everything I do pulls from those passions as well as those skill sets. So think about what you are good at. Think about your passions, think about your background in past chapters. And I guarantee you can create another offering based in that knowledge.

With those two in mind, a third suggestion brings them together. How can you better serve your people? What else might they love that you can uniquely offer and that you would enjoy creating or providing?

So that's where you bring together your awareness of your clients or your audience. Expand your understanding of what they need and what they would love to experience. And then pair that with what you love. This is your skill sets and your passions.

Next, get guidance and support. You can poll your audience. You can test and iterate with friends or a beta group. You can build your new offering slowly. You can join an entrepreneurs or creatives group for accountability and support. And you can get coaching and mentorship as well.

Let's say you have your idea, but you don't know how to begin to bring it into the world, or you don't know if your audience is going to like it. Don't be afraid to reach out and ask for thoughts.

Now, there's a caveat to that. That doesn't mean any old idea you have you should throw out to your audience and say, Would you like this? Because sometimes sharing an idea makes us feel fulfilled in a way because we get support and responses from sharing it and then we feel actually less motivated to do it. So don't let sharing and reaching out for feedback be a replacement for taking action.

And then lastly, assess your calendar year of sales and bookings. Look at your books. Look at where you are busiest in your year typically and where are you the slowest? What kind of time do you have in your slower stretches right now? And ask yourself, what could you do with that time?

What are your ideal clients doing during that season? What do they need that you could offer? Or what could you develop and offer during that time because you have the space?

Keep in mind as you diversify your offerings or as you explore how you might begin to diversify by identifying a first next offering — keep in mind that you want to keep things consistent and making sense under your business and your brand.

If you are a yoga teacher, you might not want to make your next offering be a woodworking class. That could be a passion of yours and that could be very interesting to you, but it doesn't necessarily make sense under your umbrella as a yoga teacher.

Things that might make sense as a yoga teacher would be offering workshops outside of your classes, offering retreats, offering sound baths or other wellness activities that you might be trained in.

Or maybe if you have a background in dance, you bring dance fusion into your yoga classes. If you have a background in writing like I do, maybe you create some kind of resource or a book for your students.

If you're a floral designer and you're already doing weddings and events, maybe look into your skill set, your background, and your passions to see what else could you offer within that world of flowers and floristry.

Let's say you had a background in nursing, but you moved into floral design. Could you create workshops in the healing power of flowers for people working in healthcare? Then you're focusing on an audience that you know well and personally that's giving a service to them that they would love and benefit from, and that you are uniquely skilled or experienced to create an offer.

Many photographers I know will diversify their photography business for events and weddings by offering brand shoots for small businesses and brands, or by offering engagement shoots or family photography. And there are also many photographers who offer to sell to other photographers. They sell their editing presets or they sell their proposals and guidelines. So there are many things to think about. And as you diversify,

I also suggest that you consider how you are serving your customers, business to customer, and how could you serve your peers business to business? Who is in your industry and what could you serve that you've learned? Often as you become an educator, if that's the path that calls to you, you'll be teaching what you have mastered and learned that people who are just a few steps behind you want to know so they can keep growing.

Stay tuned, by the way, for an upcoming episode that I am so excited to share with you in this season about how to become an educator and how to start teaching in your creative field with confidence. I am so passionate about this.

And a lot of people ask me, how do I start teaching workshops? How do I start teaching classes? And am so excited to empower you in that interest. So stay tuned.

So now that we've looked at diversification, how to diversify your offerings, or begin to think about and strategize what other offerings within the umbrella of your business and brand you could offer uniquely to your clients and customers — let's take a look now at the other strategy, which is:

Streamlining.

When it comes to streamlining your business, it almost sounds like the complete opposite of diversifying and opening up new streams. But in fact, it's complementary.

When I say streamlining your business, it is in order to help your business grow, to go deeper instead of wider. So instead of having so many surface things that start to spread out in different streams, you're actually going deeper in what you already offer.

This is a refinement from diversification. So you want to diversify your streams of income and your offerings so that you have a more resilient business, and then you also want to streamline what those offerings are or make sure that they make sense in a way that allows you to go deeper in what you're good at and what really moves the needle, instead of spreading you too thin.

So the first sign that you need to streamline your business is that you are feeling scattered and strapped for time, and spread too thin. And so many creative entrepreneurs and so many of my mentees have expressed this. And I've been through it too.

Streamlining in order to grow means letting go of what is too much of a stretch, what isn't actually working, what's not bringing in income in a way that's worth the effort it takes to make it happen, and what is not filling your cup or nourishing your soul. And that's really important.

In my own experience with Nectar and Bloom over the past decade, since I founded and created and then went through pivots and growths and shifts and came to where we are now, I've had to be able to identify that certain ideas were a great idea, but in reality, not a great offering within my business. Or certain initiatives or offerings that I came up with or began weren't something that I needed to continue with or keep.

I remember it was back in 2019 where I was really having this kind of renaissance of excitement and new creative ideas. I had the wedding and events side of my business up and running and flourishing, and I suddenly had this great desire to diversify. I wanted to try new things. I had already started my mentorships and my group workshops, but I really wanted to keep growing.

A few of the ideas were wonderful, including, as I mentioned, Tarot of Flowers. That was an idea that came to me to create an Oracle deck based on the wisdom of flowers.

But a few of my ideas were not great. One of them was to create floral confetti and have it be in cute little jars and sell that as a product. And I mentioned this one because it was related to floral design. So it made sense under my business. It was fun and a cute thing that you could have for sale to any customer, including wedding clients who might want it as a party favor or a gift for their bridesmaids, or just something for my business to be able to reach the public.

And having floral confetti is a fun, biodegradable way to bring flowers into a celebration. I personally love confetti. So it was so many things I thought this would be a great idea.

In reality, I realized several things. The first was that the price point for the amount of work was not going to work for me. I did a lot of research. I was looking at different kinds of glass bottles and containers, labels, packaging, as well as what kind of space it would take to process and dry the petals and pieces of flower that I was going to use as the confetti.

So I found pretty quickly that the price point for what it was going to take was not going to work very well for my business. And upon iterating, I realized it was a lot more complicated than just drawing petals and putting them in a jar and putting a cute label on it and selling it. Because the first set I created, I gave as gifts, and I sent one to my parents and some of the types of flowers that I chose to dry and use as petals didn't dry enough.

So one of the jars had kind of molded after time had gone by. And that was a sign to me that this is more complicated than I have the time to do. This is outside of the bandwidth of what I want. This was a fun idea. This could work for a different business. This could work for a different person. But for me, this is an idea I need to let go. I can do this for fun.

I can dry my rose petals when I prune my roses out on a big tray and I can use those in a bath or I can give them to friends as a gift to use in their bath or to scatter as confetti, but having it be prepared and optimized and regulated to be able to package and sell as a product was a much bigger project than what I was interested in at the time. So we had to let floral confetti go.

And if this gives you an idea and you want to do it, do it. It's such a fun idea. And people do it. There are other companies that have created floral confetti, but you could put your spin on it. Just know that it's going to take a little bit more complex dehydration process, packaging and storing, and making sure you have the space for that whole operation when orders come in.

Over time for me, as my business grew and became more about transformative floral education and immersive experiences, I also needed to let go some of the quantity of the events and weddings I was taking. My work became much more about creating resources and experiences for flower lovers and floral designers and creative entrepreneurs because that was true to me. And I needed to make enough space for that. So I had to also streamline and let go the quantity of events I was doing.

There are so many fun things you can do with flowers. It's almost intoxicating. It can go from weddings and events to having a pop-up flower cart to doing editorials and marketing with brand partnerships, to having a brick and mortar shop with florals and gifts.

So many things you can do. And that's only scratching the surface. And as I mentioned, you can also create products that are based in flowers from books to cards if you're into painting or graphic design, greeting cards. There's so many things. So you really have to take this step of streamlining if you're an excitable creative like I am to put the blinders on and allow yourself to assess: is this actually worth my time? among the offerings I offer and is this moving the needle.

I mention the needle because I want you to consider how there are actually two needles, so to speak, that we want to make sure what you're doing moves.

When we say move the needle, of course, we mean it makes an impact. It's worth its while. The needle is like when you hit the gas in your car and the speedometer goes higher. So is this actually moving the needle?

Does it create a noticeable, measurable change?

And my point in using it for us is to talk about how there are actually two needles:

There is the needle of finance; it moves the needle for your business, and the needle of fulfillment; it moves the needle of your soul.

This is so important. It sounds a little woo, but it's very easy to overlook whether or not something is worth your time to you, whether or not it actually fills you up. Because as you know about me, and if you've listened to other episodes or you've come to work with me in any way, you know that it's really important to me to encourage you to make this life, this one beautiful life that you have to live, this one space of time that you have to create and share and thrive and be the person that you're meant to be, to make that aligned, to make it something you enjoy, and to make it something that when you look back on your life, hopefully many, many years from now, you look back and feel thrilled about what you did and you feel proud and you feel fulfilled.

And that can even be on a small scale. Day to day at the end of each day is the end of each little daily lifetime. How do you feel at the end of your day?

Do you feel agitated and empty and drained, or do you feel excited and fulfilled and in alignment? It doesn't mean every day is going to be perfect, but to be pursuing that, to be moving toward that kind of feeling in what you do is really important.

There's a famous speech that Steve Jobs gave to graduates that mentioned if you look in the mirror at the end of each day and you're unhappy with your life over and over and over, you need to pay attention to that. It's not just a mood, it's not just a bad day. There are changes that you need to make in order to have a fulfilling life.

So it's very important to me for you that as you look at your offerings and you want to streamline what

is actually moving the needle for your business and what is actually moving the needle for your soul. They both need to be considered because at the end of the day, you could have all the money in the world.

Maybe something is making you tons of money and it's great, but you could be very unfulfilled. You could be unhappy with your life. You could feel empty and drained and frustrated and completely out of alignment.

So it's important to notice and acknowledge those two things because if you can't enjoy your life, what is the point of the financial success? We want to make sure your offerings move the needle of finance, but they also move the needle of fulfillment. They have to go together.

On that note, I recently hosted a floral designer for a studio mentorship, And one of her greatest struggles was that she was overcommitted. She was starting to feel burnt out. She was starting to feel drained and starting to feel like something's gotta give because what I started out to do that I love is starting to be really difficult to sustain. And so what I had her do is an exercise that I invite you to do as well. I'm going to walk you through it.

So I had her open up my big sketch notebook and write down all of the things she was doing for her business, all of the offerings, each of the commitments and streams that were requiring her energy,

her attention, her creativity, and her time on a big pad of paper in my studio. I really like analog things that help us slow down and make things tactile and tangible. It's really helpful in our super fast digital age.

The second step I had her do was to highlight each item to create categories. So grab some highlighters, which is what I had her do, and use a different color for each of these things.

Choose a color for what is moving the business needle and the soul needle. These are the offerings that you want to increase, that you want to keep, that you want to focus on because they're not only feeding you financially, they're feeding you in fulfillment. That is what we are after.

Then choose a different color to highlight what is good for the business, but not good for you. Something that feels like it brings in good income, but it's draining, it's frustrating, you don't feel very good at it. That's important to assign a different color. And that's going to be something that we will delegate or we will shift or we will make a size or a commitment level that's not huge, but we're not going to get rid of it.

And then choose a color for what is not moving the needle for the business or for your soul. What is frivolous? Maybe it was a fun idea. Maybe it used to be fun or it used to be fulfilling for you, but it's not anymore. Think of the offering that is irritating to you, that feels really difficult, and that doesn't really bring in significant income. That is the one you want to release.

So you have three colors for your three categories.

The first is going to be what moves the needle for your business and for your soul. That's what you want to increase. You have the second color for what is good for the business, but is draining for you. That's what you want to delegate or decrease in size or commitment level. Maybe you still offer this, but you don't offer it in such a big scale.

And the third is the color for what is not moving the needle for your business or your soul. This is what we want to release.

Now it's very scary to say no to business, to turn down something that you've been doing that has brought in income or that other people want you to do or that you get support for doing in some way, even if it's not earning very much and even if it's not filling your cup.

I've worked with so many creatives in my mentorships and workshops. And this is always a very scary point. What are we going to release? What can we let go to streamline, to make what we focus on in the business more worthwhile and moving both those needles, fulfilling and supportive financially.

But actually letting something go, letting an account go, telling a client you're no longer going to create for them on a monthly basis, whatever it is, it's scary. We have this wired sensibility that we need to keep the work we have, that we need all income streams open.

But the reality is if it is not earning a significant amount and it is not something you enjoy, it is something to release. And when you do release that kind of obligation or that kind of offering that's no longer fitting, you actually free up more of your creative energy, more of your physical energy, your vitality, and you're more available to pour into the things you want to increase, the offerings that actually move the business needle and the soul needle.

And you have more bandwidth and more space to think of new ideas, to diversify in a way that's more aligned for you.

Doing this exercise with this mentee I'm talking about was really effective. And it helped her to notice and really see visibly the things that were pulling her away or spreading her too thin that were scary to let go, but that she could really let go.

And on the same page, she could see the things that are really working, that are fulfilling and financially abundant, the things she can double down on and be more available for to the benefit of the business and her clients and herself.

When you make your business and your offerings aligned for you and manageable for you, so they're diversified in a way that gives you resiliency and they're streamlined in a way that gives you stability and that is nourishing for you, you make your business more sustainable.

You say yes to building a career and a life that is supportive for you, that nourishes who you are and that is aligned so that it's something that is less of a misery and more of a flow. The work that you do is still work, but it's aligned. And one of the beauties of having your own creative venture or your own business is that you can shape it to what interests you and what is important to you and what works for you.

So I give you these strategies so that you can be empowered in that awareness and in that agency to shape this business so that it supports you and nourishes you, which is the whole point, which is why we start a creative business.

So, in applying this method or this strategy of streamlining to your creative business, you have this exercise to identify and clarify and assign different categories to the types of offerings you have so that you can see what you can increase, what you need to delegate or decrease, and what you can release. Those are your three categories.

This process also helps you identify what you are leaning on that may be inconsistent for you or that stresses you out or is making you bored or feel burnt out or spread too thin. Knowing that and feeling that in your body is what we want to identify and trust. That is going to be the where you evaluate: is it all those yuck feelings? But it makes a lot of money. Maybe we find a way to delegate or decrease.

If it's all of those yucky feelings and it doesn't really make significant money, we're going to let it go. We're going to trust that reallocating that energy and creativity is going to bring abundance and fulfillment in a different offering. When you are in alignment and full of joy and full of purpose, when you feel supported and nourished in what you do, you do your best work. So it benefits your clients and your business as well.

One last piece of advice on streamlining and diversifying your business to create stability and resilience that I want to offer you today comes from an experience I had when I was in Sedona earlier this year.

I had a very cool opportunity to go on a little gals retreat with one of my girlfriends who's very spiritual and open to the energetics and possibilities when we make space. And she and I often have very cool synchronicity experiences. So we made a little space to go to Sedona, hike, relax, and just be open to the messages.

And while we were there, we laughed so hard. I felt like we released so much energy and made space for creative nourishment and new ideas. I had many downloads side note about creating a retreat in Sedona where we could do creative well-being experiences with flowers and yoga and intention setting and dream building, so stay tuned for that.

But the experience I want to mention to you here that has a nugget of advice in it for you was that on our last day, I felt called to go to a Vedic palm reader who was about abundance and career specifically. And I thought, that's interesting. I feel kind of a physical energetic draw to that. I feel a little ping inside me to go explore that. My brain, of course, was also like, palm reading, whatever. Maybe it's too woo for me. I don't know.

So I let myself go into another shop and see if that desire stayed with me. And it did. It didn't go away. I kept feeling like you should go do that. You should go do that.

And so I did. I followed that instinct, which I think is really important that we can tune into when we have those kinds of instinctive messages come through, there's an experience that needs to happen.

So I go to the Vedic palm reader about abundance and career. And through the little session we had, I think it was only about 15 to 20 minutes, told me lots of things about my palm things about me, things about my career. But the lasting nugget, which I want to share with you here, was that he said so beautifully and so simply, he looked at me and he said, In your career, where is the money coming? Go there.

So, my question for you as well: if any of this feels complicated or you're not sure where to start, look at your career as it is now, look at your creative business as it is now, and ask yourself: where is the money coming? Where are people reaching out and booking and supporting you with ease? Where is the most income coming through for you? Go there. Build that, trust that there's a reason energetically that people are coming to you, and paying you happily for whatever that offering is.

Because you are good at it, you are meant to do it, you have a skill set there.

Now, the one caveat is what we just talked about, which is is it something that fills you up? Is it something that brings you joy? If it's not, but it is bringing people to you and it is bringing financial abundance, what can you shift about it so that it would be more aligned and fulfilling for you? Is that a decrease in how often you do it? Is that bringing in support so that you can delegate some of what that task or that offering requires of you? Or is that letting something else go that is draining you or depleting you of your creativity, your energy, or your time that isn't moving your needles?

And could be freeing up energy for you to do more of what this offering seems to be showing you, which is that this is the path, this is where you're meant to go.

So I want to keep this episode manageable especially since right now it's summer, things are super busy, it's hot, pitta season, and what we need is less intensity and more ease, So I want to keep this to what I've shared with you and we'll wrap it up for today.

Each of the strategies we've talked about today will help you build more stability and more resilience in your creative work and in your business. Keep in mind that you can diversify what you offer so that you have a more diverse portfolio that's less vulnerable to changes that happen.

So that you have other options and other streams of income other than just the one. Make sure that those are aligned with who you are, your passions, your background, your skill sets, and that they make sense among the offerings that go under your brand.

That means be discerning. Sometimes a passion is just a passion. Sometimes a different interest or a different offering really belongs in a separate business. Maybe you want to start a second venture. Maybe you want to transition out of what you were doing.

But in general, diversification of your offerings can allow you to have more streams of income that keep you steady and keep you supported throughout the changes of the seasons and the years, the trends and the markets.

And then you want to apply the streamlining strategy, where you actually evaluate what all those offerings are if you have more than one.

And identify which of them really supports you financially and supports your soul and your sense of fulfillment. That's what you want to increase. And what drains you, what doesn't really pay what it's worth, and what makes you feel unfulfilled, those are the ones to release and let go.

As you make these small intentional shifts, you're going to start feeling so much better in your energy, in your creative stamina, in your bandwidth, and in your confidence as a business owner.

So mark a space off in your calendar to do a little journaling or a little meeting with yourself where you can have this kind of audit or assessment of your business. It's going to be such a helpful and simple investment of your time to help you streamline and diversify and have more of that stability and resilience as you move forward.

My goal for you is to be able to do what you love and evolve and grow and pivot along the way in ways that feel fulfilling, that bring you more success, and that fill you up and nourish you.

The world needs your creativity and needs you to shine. So take that moment, make a plan, set up a date with yourself, take that time to do a little audit of your business and build stability and resilience so that you have more sustainability, longevity, and joy in doing what you are here to do, and creating and sharing what you are here to create and share.

And remember, if you want to go deeper and really personalize this advice to your business, your creative venture, or your creative practice, reach out. I would be so delighted and honored to create a mentorship experience for you to support you as you move through it and as you step into more alignment, abundance, and ease.

Beautifully done. You just completed another episode of Called to Bloom, another step forward on your creative journey. Finishing any resource that nourishes your growth and makes you feel more connected is one of the most empowering things you can do for your business and your creative calling.

Now, to expand your experience, hit follow so you never miss an episode. And also please take a moment to rate and review. Your words are so powerful in helping other creatives like you to discover this podcast. Then head over to calledtobloompodcast.com to find show notes, resources, discount codes, and details from our sponsors.

If you're ready to deepen your practice with classes and immersive experiences in flowers and well-being, head over to NectarandBloomfloral.com, and explore my workshops and retreats, my one-on-one mentorships, the Poetry of Flowers holistic online courses, and my original Tarot of Flowers deck.

You can also find me on Instagram @nectar_and_bloom for more inspiration, tools, creativity, And like-minded community.

For now, keep blooming. The world needs what you are here to create.

Cover image by Sposto Photography.