What Does Your Success Look Like?
Envision this with me: You are an archer preparing to fire. Wherever your arrow goes, your career path will follow. All of your skills, talents, experiences, and connections give you the power to draw back the arrow, and they will propel your arrow towards your future. Where are you pointing it? What are you aiming for?
While there are many of us, being a professional artist is still a bit of a nontraditional career. It is important for us to pause, look beyond our immediate needs, and evaluate what success means to us personally. While the day to day grind of getting our bills paid can take up a lot of headspace, we benefit from being intentional and setting our course towards our vision of success with actionable and measurable goals.
The Self Guided Path
On a hot May afternoon in my second year teaching at a K-8th grade school, I sat in my office with my head in my hands feeling a bit choked up and helpless. All year long we had been told that every teacher would be getting a pay bump for the following year. Having just left my principal’s office, apparently I was the one exception. I was already being paid above what the new pay scale said was my worth. In addition to that, our health insurance package was increasing, so going into my 3rd year of teaching, my take home pay was actually a decent bit less than my first year. I was single and the apartment that I could afford was growing increasingly dangerous. I had taken what money I had and bought a house that Spring in a quiet area. Everything was wrong with it, but it was all I could afford. I was drowning in costly repairs, the stress of which caused me to have a Shingles outbreak at the age of 38.
I knew that the course I was on was not sustainable, but I did not know what to do. I felt stuck, and frustratingly lied to by the path of progress that I had been sold. You know the one: work hard, do good, get a raise, afford a life, blah blah blah… looking back, I feel so naive. In education, like many professions, there are hierarchies and pathways in which you can advance yourself. Go to college, get a degree, get a job, continue your education for a specialty, advance to your specialty, continue your education for leadership, go into leadership… and so on. I loved my students and the nature of my job, but piling on more education debt only to advance to a place outside of the classroom and away from my students, did not sound enticing.
Not knowing what else to do, I had begun work on my Masters degree, thinking that my only chance of being in a better situation financially would be to leave the classroom. I spent years unsure of my path. Eventually, I met my husband, and together we built our art business up from nothing. Our small business was a life raft that arrived just as inflation skyrocketed. Despite my skeptical co-workers, I didn’t hesitate to leave teaching when our business was strong enough to hold me up. On our old salaries, we absolutely would have sunk without it.
There were a number of life changes that came with this transition which were eye opening. Now my husband and I were in control of our success or failure. There was no pay scale putting a limit on what we could earn, no set path that we had to follow to a destination we did not want to go. It was liberating, and it begged the question: where do we want to go?
I knew that with the restraint of a capped salary removed, our potential was limitless. Already, painting murals part time on our nights and weekends was outpacing our old salaries. If we played things right, we could transform our lives, but what did we want our lives to look like? What was the goal?
I would guess that many working artists find themselves in this position. Removing yourself from the traditional workforce to a self-employed path forces you to rethink what advancement in your career looks like, perhaps to a more authentic and meaningful trajectory. You are no longer set on a track of standardized advancements that have been set before you as a goal by your employer.
The art world is thick with side quests that look like opportunities, but oftentimes are costly roads to nowhere. You have to decide for yourself what growth looks like, and it all starts with determining what success means to you. If we fail to pause and define what success is to us individually, we are much more likely to once again fall into the trap of the endless pursuit of perceived success…achievements or the appearance of achievements that others hold in high regard, but may not be meaningful or impactful in our own lives, and ultimately leave us stuck in place.
What is Success?
When thinking about what success means to you, a good place to start is by zooming waaaaay out to the big picture. Think 30,000 ft out. Picture what you want your life to look and feel like beyond the bounds of your work and the phase of life you are currently in.
Do you picture yourself living a certain lifestyle in a dream location?
Are you surrounded by people or prefer solitude?
Are you connected in a meaningful way with your community?
Are you able to provide for your loved ones?
What would a typical day in this ideal life look like?
Once you have a picture in your mind of your ideal life, start working backwards. What choices in your art career will take you there? An example might be:
Success for me would be…being able to provide for my kids and have a schedule that allows me to be there for their big events in life. I’d like to be able to retire comfortably, and take care of my aging parents. I would like vacations to not feel out of reach, and I would like to live somewhere near water.
In analyzing this definition of success, you can work backwards. Calculate what you need to make each month to pay your bills and store a certain amount of money away for the future. Think about what kind of schedule and commissions will give you the freedom and flexibility with your time to be there for your kids. Figure out a route to achieving these goals with your art business. Is money the defining indicator of success, or is the messaging and impact of your art important to you? Do you want to be well known broadly, or are you happy to work solely within your community? No shame either way, as you can make a living and find your success through many routes. Knowing your values in your art career is going to be helpful in reaching your version of success.
Now, consider what moves in your career will get you to where you are wanting to go. Decide what matters to you in your art practice. What steps along the way are going to feel meaningful to you? What actually makes money in your field? How important is creative freedom? Are you passionate about placemaking? Do you enjoy helping businesses brand and market themselves? Do you have a distinct art style that you want to be known for? These types of questions will help shape your path.
I come from the perspective of a mural artist. My husband is an artist and I manage our business. While being a muralist is a niche profession, there are sub-categories within it that help shape our business decisions. Defining our values has helped us move towards our goals within a niche and recognize when we are progressing in the direction that we want to go.
Defining your goals is important. So important that I wrote an entire separate article about it, which you can fin here:
Minding Your Own Success
It is no secret that social media can have a negative effect on users’ mental health. With so many artists making good use of social media to try and get their artwork in front of an audience, eventually these platforms are going to take their toll on us as viewers. It seems that someone is always doing something bigger, cooler, or more impactful than whatever I’ve got going on. Viewing others' success can be inspiring, but also intimidating or even at times demoralizing. I think when we are feeling these sorts of things, it is important to step back, and mind our own success.
What I mean by that is, keeping in mind that the success of other artists does not move me further from my own goals and successes. If anything, seeing other artists succeed in public art is a signal to me that the industry is strong and that I have room to keep growing. It is a mindset shift, which I am thankful for because I never want to lose sight of being happy for my peers. We have to decide what kind of energy we want to carry with us into our careers, and while it may take a little adjusting, I am always much happier when I am staying focused on my own goals.
If I see a group of my peers all being accepted into a festival that I really wanted to get us into, but we did not get accepted, naturally, I am going to be a little bummed. I have to remind myself that as long as my own schedule is full of things I am excited about, I am succeeding as well. If it is not full of things I want to be doing, then I need to put my phone down and get to work on minding my own success. This would look like shifting my focus to filling up my schedule in other ways that don’t involve that festival. If I am local to that festival and around for the dates that it takes place, I’m going to show up to show support, and I’m likely hauling my cooler full of Gatorades and snacks to hand out. Being a helper feels good.
This Fall (2026) is very full with arts events I’d love to be a part of. There’s at least three shows in Orlando that we have been invited to and one in Atlanta. I applied for 3 festivals, with a fourth I would apply to if I thought we’d be a round for it. If I were to attempt to have us participate in all of these things, Christian would be worked to death and stressed out about deadlines. We would make a bad impression. I don’t want that. Thankfully, we have not been accepted to everything that I applied for. The rejections still pinch a little, but I am happy to stay focused on the thing that we committed our time to already, which is a big festival out of state that I have had my eye on for years. It would be silly to stay focused on the rejections, when I am so happy to be going where we are going. For all those that got accepted (or will soon), I am so excited for you and I can’t wait to see what you make!
To Wrap Up
I am feeling much less stuck these days. The career shift to being self employed full time artists has been a liberating one, and with that, we have had to evaluate and re-evaluate what success means to us and what direction we want to go in. In knowing our values, we’ve been able to work within niches that have served us well and are taking us to where we want to go. Knowing your values and your goals will help you find and recognize the advice that is right for you, and ultimately help you to move forward to the version of success that is authentically you.
All the best!
Jessica Stanley
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