Turning Your Handmade Business Into a Work of Art

I started my first handmade business when I was nine.  I made shell creations from the shells I collected on the beach near my Florida home.  It was short-lived, and my mom was my only customer.  But still, it cemented the connection between the act of making and the possibility of earning an income.

Flash forward 2 decades… I walked into my MBA-level accounting class and asked the professor if I could color the books instead of balancing them.  He said I was in the wrong class for that.

But I refused to believe him. I did both.

My two-thirds of an MBA degree kept trying to tell me business planning had to be relegated to 80 pages of dry crusty strategy scaries.  I eventually became an MBA dropout on a mission to prove so much more is possible.

You don't grow a creative dream that nourishes you by shaving off parts of yourself to do it.  

Hi, I’m Michele. I get it. I’m an artist, a relentless margin-doodler. Writer with a pencil almost always tucked nearby. A lover of blank canvases, empty pages, and wild spaces. Lived 7 years in an African conflict zone. 

I’m also a business strategist who puts her stake in the ground on the understanding that your business should be just as much a creative work of art as your craft is.

You deserve a creative business that functions and feels like a work of art. 

And in this article, we are going to dive into practical ways to make that happen.

By 2018, I had built a nationally recognized luxury wedding stationery business and was consulting full-time.  Then in the blink of an eye, a car accident left me with a traumatic brain injury and a broken wrist that could no longer create calligraphy.

In short, I watched everything I built crumble around me.  Overnight, I became a writer who lost her words.  But I knew I had to get the ideas in my head out somehow.  What if I could doodle and draw my way to a workable business plan?  What if instead of creating a wall of words, I could translate the key parts of business planning into art journaling exercises? 

I didn’t know it then, but I had stumbled into something much bigger than myself: the realization that business planning doesn’t have to be boring, scary, or overwhelming.

It can be just as much art as the beauty you create. And it can and should feel like you.

So if you’re an artisan, maker, or solopreneur who feels stuck—especially now, in a world reeling and reshaping itself daily… this article is for you. 

It’s a guide to reclaiming even the administrative part of running a handmade business as a creative act. Not another rigid to-do list, but a doorway into discovery and growth.

Why Planning Feels So Hard When You’re Working Alone

Many of you have run or are building your business as a team of one. Some of you are growing a full-time creative business. Some of you are tending side-hustles alongside caregiving, chronic illness, or another job. 

Here’s the honest truth: it’s easy to get stuck in our own heads when we are the team. Whether it’s a doom loop or overthinking every little detail, getting unstuck can take more energy than we feel like we have.

You aren’t making it up. Running your own creative business is brave, vulnerable, hard work.  The fatigue factor is real.

But having the right business and mindset tools in place, can make all the difference in the world.  

Tools that translate traditional business language into formats that feel familiar to our creative brains. Structure that honors the way we think, process, and see the world. And carte blanche complete and total permission to play again.

The Brain Science Behind Doodling Your Way to a Business Plan You Love

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