Increase Your Surface Area

Why getting out and going quiet are the two most underrated things you can do for your creative business

The Weekly Edit

1. Updates: What’s going on with my different ventures…

   1. My Artist Intensive one day event in Alabama is filling up! Snag your spot here. (P.S. only 3 spots left for the full day mastermind!!)

2. Reading -

3. Wearing and Wanting-

   1. Just purchased this swim shirt (that’s actually cute) because living in the lowcountry and boat weekends are taking a toll on my skin.

   2. debating getting these sunglasses too from a new-to-me brand…

   3. Currently obsessed with these sets!

   4. I️ have a photoshoot next week and have been exploring stripes! Which is your favorite - these pants, this dress, this dress, or this dress?

   5. speaking of stripes…obsessed with this beach tote ($35!)

   6. The everyday tank that you can style with anything this summer. I️ might buy it in every color!

4. For Your Home

   1. Looking for a new bath mat to add some color to our bathroom (and that is a step up from our cheap, Amazon one)

   2. Also a doormat, because it’s a place to add a little personality!

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Dear Creatives,

I want to talk about something that has nothing to do with your content calendar, your email list, or your conversion rate, but likely is the most important factor in growing your business… bear with me.

Last week I had coffee with a friend. Then later in the week, coffee with an artist. Neither of those meetings was scheduled with a specific agenda. Nobody was pitching anybody anything. We just sat down together and talked. One of those conversations sparked an idea I had not been able to get to on my own. The other gave me energy and excitement about the week ahead. Both of them reminded me of something I keep having to relearn.

Getting out into the world is a business strategy and not in a networking/LinkedIn kind of way. I’m referring to getting out of your studio to increase your exposure to the right people, the right conversations, and the right moments of accidental clarity.

I have said this before and I mean it every time: the people I have met along the way have done more for my business than almost anything else…and you do not meet those people in your home office. Your home office is useful, productive, and where the work gets done, but it is almost never where the luck happens.

I have started thinking about this as surface area. (Not networking, not intentional relationship building, not any of the phrases that make it sound more calculated and less fun than it actually is. Just surface area.) The more of the world you are in contact with, the more likely you are to stumble into an idea, a person, a conversation, or an opportunity you could not have planned for. A few examples of “increasing your surface area” include

• Going to the library instead of ordering online.

• Calling the friend you have been meaning to call for three months.

• Making actual plans with the person you keep saying you should see.

• Emailing the person who has been quietly on your mind.

• Working from a coffee shop once a week or packing up and painting outside in a park

• None of these are grand gestures, but all of them open a door of some kind.

I am committing to one intentional surface area activity a week. One thing that gets me out of my routine and into contact with the world in a way my home office simply cannot replicate. I am telling you so I actually do it and also to invite you to do this “challenge” with me. (reply if you are in!)

The second thing I want to talk about is the opposite of that, and somehow equally important.

Silence.

The kind of quiet where you turn off the podcast on your walk. I know, I know. I am a podcast person too. I allow music because I can genuinely zone out to it, but if you are someone who also zones out to music, then true silence is probably what you actually need.

A few examples include a bath with no phone, a walk with no headphones, or sitting in a chair after work and just existing for a few minutes, which my husband does naturally and which I have had to learn to do by watching him like he is some kind of advanced human. These are not productivity hacks, instead they are the conditions under which your actual brain gets to show up.

I keep my Fridays intentionally and protectively open. I don’t allow calls or scheduled obligations, only margin. Recently, in that open space an idea arrived that I have not been able to stop thinking about. I am not ready to share all the details yet, but there is an event in the works for artists and it came entirely from a Friday morning where I had nowhere to be and nothing demanding my attention.

The idea did not come from a brainstorm session or a prompt or a research rabbit hole or a conversation about what the market needs. It came from silence and an open calendar and a brain that finally had enough room to think something new.

I do not think that is a coincidence. I think that is how it works, and I think most of us are too scheduled and too stimulated to let it happen very often.

So here is what I am actually suggesting, practically speaking: One surface area activity a week and one real stretch of silence somewhere in your days. Not because either of those things will magically produce something, but because the home studio, as much as I love mine, has a ceiling and the world, and the quiet, do not.

Xoxo,
Hayley