7 Steps I'd Take If I Was Starting My Creative Practice From Scratch in 2025

in Flow Chart Form

If I was starting my creative practice today, I would do things very differently than if I did when I got started in 2008. Here’s a flow chart that outlines the 7 steps I’d take to help you figure out where you might be stuck:

Here’s the list in steps:

Step 1 - Start an E-Mail Newsletter - Point everything you do back to this!

Step 2 - Focus Your Energy Online - Share work where people discover the kind of art you do, mostly ignore the rest of the platforms.

Step 3 - Posts Lots of Experiments - Create lots of different types of things, don’t commit to a direction right away.

Step 4 - Wait for a “Hit” then Blitz! - Once you make something that both feels authentic and exciting to you, but also gets the type of connection with others that you’re after, build a body of work that riffs off and responds to that piece.

Step 5 - Create a Launch - Use platforms like Kickstarter or GoFundMe or even just create a countdown in your newsletter that marks the date of a launch for this body of work to start building hype around what you do!

Step 6 - Collaborate - Leading up to the launch find ways to collaborate with others in your sphere. Remixes. Features. Collab your way to the launch.

Step 7 - Review, Rinse, Repeat - When you’ve gone through the whole process, stop and reflect on the results and figure out which step you could improve on next time!

This is not an exhaustive list or “the right way” - there is no one way to build a creative practice! BUT these ideas are the ones I would focus on executing if I was building my practice today.

Hope it helps!

What things would you add to this list?

Want to Dive Deeper into This List?

If you want to dive deeper into this process and hear more elaboration and specifics on each tip, check out the latest episode of my podcast Creative Pep Talk here:
492 - 7 Steps I'd Take If I Was Starting My Creative Practice From Scratch in 2025

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