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Standout Creatives: Business, marketing, and creativity tips for solopreneurs launching their ideasActionable tips and stories to help your creative business thrive and stand out. Author: Kevin Chung
Feel stuck in the endless juggle of running a creative business? I'm Kevin Chung, your creative business host, and this podcast is your guide to thriving without losing your spark. This podcast is for you if you find yourself asking questions like: - Are you juggling creative work and the demands of running a business? - Do you feel overwhelmed by launching a product or course? - Struggling to find a marketing strategy that feels authentic to you? - Looking for ways to grow without burning out? - Wondering how to balance business success with your creative passion? Each episode dives into practical strategies, inspiring stories, and actionable tips from fellow creative business ownerswhether youre prepping for a big launch, scaling your business, or simply trying to sell with integrity. Learn how to stand out, grow with intention, and build a business that feels as good as it looks. (Formerly known as Cracking Creativity Podcast) Language: en Genres: Business, Entrepreneurship, Marketing Contact email: Get it Feed URL: Get it iTunes ID: Get it |
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35: Why Creative Business Coach Christi Johnson Says Your Business Should Feel Like Play
Episode 35
Wednesday, 26 August, 2026
What if the thing standing between you and your best work isn't a strategy problem? It's a permission problem.Christi Johnson spent ten years as a wedding photographer, earned a master’s degree in piano performance, and later burned out so badly as an online business manager that she stopped sleeping and had to shut her business down for six months.Now she runs the Dream Biz Playground, teaching creative and neurodivergent entrepreneurs to build businesses through creative play instead of hustle.In this conversation, Christi walks through what her crash and burn actually looked like, why she had to relearn how to sit at a piano without judging herself, and how a five-minute photo walk became the thing that pulled her back.HighlightsSuccess on the outside doesn’t mean you’re okay on the inside.Christi was fully booked. Her online business management clients were happy. From the outside, everything looked like it was working.“We were booking clients, we were successful and things were like on the outside going really, really well, but I was extremely stressed... it got to the point where I was having panic attacks.”She kept pushing past the signs because she didn’t want to let her clients down, or her team, which included family members she’d hired. Eventually her body made the decision for her. She got sick for three months straight, and the exhaustion turned into a full breakdown.Maybe the metric you’re using to check in on yourself isn’t “is it working.” Maybe it’s “how do I feel while I’m doing it.”Permission over motivation.After the burnout, Christi assumed she’d never run a business again. Her coach’s first assignment wasn’t a strategy session. It was homework to lay around and watch TikTok without feeling guilty about it.“She gave me homework like that and we really focused on tapping into what actually really is fun for me.”Christi didn’t need a better system. She needed someone to tell her it was allowed to be easy.The self-judgment shows up long before the finished thing does.Christi has a master’s degree in piano. She went eight years without sitting down to play for fun, because in her head, playing meant working toward something impressive enough to post.“I had to make a conscious choice to allow myself the freedom to just sit down and play for fun... only recently haven’t I been able to sit down and just play for fun, play for five minutes, play whatever I want.”Notice what actually blocked her. It wasn’t lack of skill. It was an audience that existed only in her head, judging a video she hadn’t even made yet.Naming the block is the first move, not the last one.When Christi missed a business goal she’d set for herself, her instinct was to perform positivity about it. It took her coach pointing it out for her to admit she was actually disappointed.“I had to recognize, you know what I’m, I’m actually disappointed... I think the first step is like admitting it. Hey, I have this block. I’m discouraged about it.”Only after she named it could she ask the more useful question: what would be fun to try instead.Dream life exercises work because they collapse the timeline.One of Christi’s favorite tools with her community is having people build a paper zine mapping out a day in their dream life, then finding pieces of it they can bring into today.“What often happens when we do this exercise is that you will find really specific ways that you actually can bring your dream life to today... I don’t have to wait five, 10 years to pull these things into my dream life.”The exercise shows you that the gap between where you are and where you want to be is smaller than you thought.Leaning into what makes you you is the actual differentiator.Christi’s brand has nine colors in it, against every piece of conventional branding advice. It came from a piece of art she made in therapy.“The more you lean into yourself, the more you will attract people who want to be around that and also repel people who don’t.”You don’t need a bigger platform or a smarter funnel. Just stop editing of the parts of you that already work.Christi’s Challenge for You“With every single piece of content that you put out there... can you just ask yourself, how can this be more me? Or how can this be more fun? Or how can this be easier?”Closing ReflectionChristi’s story isn’t really about photography, or piano, or even business strategy. It’s about what happens when you keep overriding your own signals long enough.She didn’t get her creativity back through a better routine. She got it back by giving herself permission to be bad at something, to rest without guilt, and to admit when she was disappointed instead of performing okay.What would it look like to ask “how can this be more me” about the next thing you create?Let us know in the comments.
