On The Value of Taking a Break: Eun Barron of Nole Creative
What does it look like to pursue your creative side-hustle full-time? As we gear up for our fall craftHER Market Week, we’ll touch base with a few of our vendors to share their stories on how they scaled their small business to support themselves.
Today, we’re spotlighting illustrator, graphic designer, and Nole Creative founder, Eun Barron. In our interview with her, Eun chatted with us about how collaboration with her community made her business thrive, drawing inspiration from her travels, and how taking a year-long career break sparked the idea behind her business.
MEET THE MAKER: EUN BARRON OF NOLE CREATIVE
Nole Creative is independent artist Eun Barron's store featuring her travel-inspired illustrated art on framed canvas. Being born in Seoul, having dated NYC, Europe and Asia, and now married to Austin, Eun’s illustrated art is vibrant, minimalist and soothing.
We’d love to hear a little bit about you and your business. :) Who are you, and what do you make?
I'm Eun Barron, an artist and founder of Nole Creative. I share stories of places around the world through illustrative art, inspired by the simple beauty of nature. I mainly offer wall art pieces and illustrated books about our family's one-year travels.
When did you start your business? What motivated you to start?
Nole Creative actually started as a graphic design studio in 2015. As my business grew, so did burnout. So my husband and I decided to stop everything and travel for a year. During our travels, I started drawing the places we visited, which planted seeds for the new direction for my business. Nole Creative is now transformed to focus solely on art.
My family’s one-year career break opened my life to new opportunities and truly sparked my creativity. I wanted to share my stories through art to inspire people to go on adventures and awake their inner creativity.
Looking back, what were some challenges you experienced that you weren’t expecting?
I was too naive to think that when my site goes live, people would fall in love with my art and start buying. Not true at all! I learned quickly that I can’t build something amazing all by myself. Without help from friends, family and local creatives, my business wouldn’t exist now.
Describe your creative process. How do you make things and get in the headspace to make things?
I get inspired by any cultural / nature stimulus, and they are abundant when I travel. Mostly it's not the big, out-of-this-world stuff, but I rather find inspiration in the uniqueness each culture has for common things. For example, Stockholm really impressed me in so many ways, and when we visited the Vasa Museum, all these small, impressive cultural details were captured in this museum. It was so impressive, but when I learned of the ship's fateful story, I found its fantastic failure in a culture that does so many things well oddly inspirational.
As for the actual drawing process, I usually go straight with my digital pen to start sketching as it's the most familiar medium with my background of being a graphic designer. The act of drawing itself is a big part of my creative process—just like one would write not to write, but to think.
Let’s talk about time management. How do you find work/life balance as a creative business owner?
I feel guilty about this subject as I'm a bit of a workaholic myself and work hours easily eat into family time.
What helped me is to have a schedule. I’m not a planner so I tend to go with my gut, hence I work on whatever needs to be done that day without any schedule. The problem with that is there’s no end to it. There’s always something to improve on your business and we know that little thing can take up a couple of hours.
Having a clear agenda each day and general plan for each week is very helpful for knowing when to stop and have quality time with family, which is why we work to begin with.
What are some of the key advantages and disadvantages of working on a side-hustle versus working on your business full-time?
Advantages: You’re building something that you truly stand for, and your attention is 100% on your business, so you’re able to pour your entire soul into it.
Disadvantages: Financial insecurity. Not only do you not have the security of receiving a monthly paycheck, but now you have to deal with full healthcare costs and it being much more difficult to get loans, mortgages, etc.
What experience made it possible for you to pivot into taking your creative business full-time?
It was one year off with my family to travel the world. That trip put things in perspective. Things I used to care about in the corporate world seemed silly, like getting upset about a 2.4% raise when I heard someone else received a 2.8% raise, always worried about my job title, etc. It made me realize that there are bigger things that I was made to do than working for someone else.
What’s been the most rewarding thing about owning your own business?
That I get to do what I love to do! And it's even more rewarding to see other people enjoy my art. My business is not going to change the world, but if I can lift someone up by doing what I love to do, this gives me enough purpose to persevere through the emotional rollercoaster and self-doubts created by owning my own business.
How have you pivoted or adapted to the current changes happening in the world? What did this pandemic bring up for you?
Like a lot of other creative makers, I connect with people at pop-ups and markets. With all events being canceled, I'm putting an extra effort online. Participating in digital pop-ups like craftHER Market has helped. It made me realize once again how important it is to be part of a like-minded community to know we are all in this together. Also I'm using this time to build content and experiment.
Is there any final advice or lessons you’d like to share with other creatives that are looking to start their own business or taking that leap from side-hustle to full-time?
The perfect time to make a transition is not going to present itself to you. Life is too short to delay what you want to do or to do something others feel you should do when you know deep down it’s not what you want.
Somebody said, "Easy choices, hard life. Hard choices, easy life.” This is what I say to myself whenever things are difficult and I miss my corporate paycheck.
