5 Stellar Creative Entrepreneurship Blogs To Inspire You In 2018

Because we need some of that ol’ magic sometimes.

Yay, it’s a new year! It’s 2018, our fresh start!

Time to sit down, focus, make things, and…

and…

… you know what, sometimes we need a little inspiration.

Or a lot.

It’s a hard world to be a creative entrepreneur. There’s so many distractions! Plus, life demands just as much from us as it does ordinary workers, with the added bonus of everyone thinking our work is “easy.”

Riiiiiiight. Like I didn’t spend hours marketing my business, writing for clients, negotiating, pitching, and dressing up my newsletter last week. #okaysure

But thankfully, there are people out there who get us!

Even better: They’re writing blogs about their journeys.

This is my personal list of the 5 best creative entrepreneur blogs out there. Reasonable people may disagree with my picks! But if you have more ideas for more blogs we should be reading, please comment and tell us about them. There is room enough for everyone’s creations. Let’s just follow what inspires us most!

But here are my top picks going into 2018, in no particular order of quality:

1. Joy Cho/ Oh Joy!

Let me start by admitting something: I am a Pinterest fiend. As in I spend hours on it, offer specialized Pinterest packages for clients, and generally spend a lot of time curating stuff on Pinterest. It’s so much my jam that it’s also my jelly.

So naturally, I adore Joy Cho. She’s an interior designer and blogger and officially the most popular person on Pinterest.

On her blog, she breaks down her life and struggles trying to run a business while also raising a family. Joy works incredibly hard and talks about it. It was definitely a process to become the pastel diva we see on Instagram.

But she believes in making beautiful things and makes an effort to make that a reality in her business. She’s feminine, but also deadly serious about her own life and purpose. It’s definite inspiration for people feeling the squeeze of being true to themselves but worried about if people will take them seriously.

Overall, Joy Cho’s blog is a really healthy mix of pretty-things inspiration and OMG-I’m-exhausted inspiration. The occasional tutorials may boost your creative juices for an added bonus!

2. Red Lemon Club

So when I was researching for this list, I was looking for a mix of “pretty” blogs and “actual inspiration” blogs. This one definitely crosses over into both categories.

First of all, I’m in love with Alex Mathers’ aesthetic. It feels like a throwback to the early 2000s with it’s black lines and coloring book-like sketches. He’s a “nomadic creative” type for sure. But he doesn’t seek to make us feel weird or less-than if we don’t live that lifestyle.

The sparse look of the blog also helps us really take in what Alex is writing about: Being serious about your creative business and your life in general.

He wants to succeed, and he wants everyone around him to succeed. But he won’t mince words. He’s not interested in fake motivation.

I particularly fell in love with his post about getting off track. It’s a really good read. But more than that, I was so struck by how vulnerable Alex was willing to get about skipping his own routine. He admitted he was imperfect! He was fine calling himself out!

Best of all, at the end, he brought himself back and honestly talked about how he’s going to keep on being imperfect… and work anyway.

Are you not hyped to go out and make art now?!

3. Smart Passive Income

It’s a scary business podcast, raaaawr!

Don’t freak out, cool cats. Yes, Pat Flynn is a big name online entrepreneur. He makes a lot of products and sells a lot of stuff every year. Definitely #goals for a lot of us.

But he’s also a really cool and open dude. He’s more than willing to talk about his processes, his stress, and even things that flat-out did not work. He’s the nitty-gritty person we all probably wished we knew early on in our early days as entrepreneurs.

Pat also interviews a lot of super-interesting people. Often, it’s people who are experts in things like crowdfunding and human-sounding selling. Stuff we need to know, of course.

Be warned: This is a mixed media blog. Lots of posts are straight-up players for episodes of Pat’s podcast. Transcripts are available if you still want to “just” read.

4. Freunde von Freunden

This blog. Is. A. Beast.

Freunde von Freunden is built around the idea of artist highlighting artists. All well and fine! But they go way beyond interviews with artists and entrepreneurs making things happen (which they do very well).

They’re interested in getting you into the ZONE.

In addition to occasional link compilations, FvF is all about highlighting locations that inspire people. There’s sooooo many articles about cool companies, workshops, and retreats that creative people are participating in right now. You can even filter out articles by city to read about what’s happening near you (or very far away!).

FvF’s bend toward design means there’s a lot of beautiful building porn here. They even have a special FvF space we can drool over. It makes me want to pack up and live in Berlin for a week.

5. SwissMiss

If you haven’t heard of Tina Roth Eisenberg, I’m about to blow your mind.

This awesome entrepreneur is the big force behind the TeuxDeux list app, Tattly, Friends, and Creative Mornings.

Yes, that Creative Mornings. I have no idea how and when Tina sleeps.

But what I do know is that she loves inspiring and sharing the work of other creatives. It’s what drives her.

That’s what makes her blog so delightful—it’s all for us. The reader. The person searching and scouring the Internet for something that will inspire us. Or, sometimes, for a little bit of wisdom that tells us that we can indeed make our business work if we’re looking to learn.

Unlike a lot of blogs, Tina curates her blog (and the wonderful accompanying newsletter) to have a very gentle voice.

It’s not #brandinspo on Swiss Miss. It’s just inspiration. It feels like your friend who knows you’re a creative entrepreneur emailing you art every once in a while because they thought you might like it.

Tina’s a massively successful creative, as her blog and resume show. But she’s also a genuinely encouraging presence. That’s someone we could probably all use in 2018.

Have any blogs that keep your creative juices a-flowing? Let us know about it in the comments! Perhaps it will end up on the list for 2019!