Changing careers as a creative is rarely a clean break, and Caroline Benefield’s story is a good example of why. She wanted to be an author her whole life. She wrote a cozy fantasy series, won best manuscript at a writing conference, and had agents and indie presses asking for full drafts. By most measures she made it. Then she decided that wasn’t the thing she wanted to build her career on, and that decision is the part of her story I keep thinking about.
Why Changing Careers as a Creative Often Starts With Grief
The writing started as a way through a hard stretch. Caroline calls it living a decade of life in eighteen months: getting married, becoming a stepmom, losing both of her parents, taking on senior leadership at work. Her therapist told her creativity is a good outlet for grief, so she wrote. Thousands of people read the books. What she learned is that she loved the act of writing and felt drained by marketing her own vulnerable work, which surprised her after fifteen years in marketing communications. Changing careers as a creative, for her, meant first grieving the version of herself that thought author was the final answer.
The Hard Part of Monetizing Creative Work
Caroline is honest about the gap between making something and selling it. Monetizing creative work changed how the writing felt: an eighty-view post about her own book stung in a way that marketing someone else’s product never did. She points out that making money from creativity is not the only reason to create. Her husband builds woodwork he refuses to sell, and a bestselling author friend took up bookbinding she will never list for sale. Selling your art can be the right call, but Caroline’s takeaway is that some creative work is meant to stay yours.
A/B Testing for Small Businesses and Marketing for Women-Led Businesses
These days Caroline runs Southern Grit Digital, where her focus is marketing for women-led businesses: coaches, consultants, therapists, personal trainers, and a few consumer brands. As a marketing consultant for women entrepreneurs, she leans on the part of her brain she ignored for years, which is data. Her approach to A/B testing for small businesses is what she calls turbo testing, changing one element every five to seven days so the winner becomes the next control. Split testing emails is where most clients start, usually with subject lines, and the same logic carries into testing marketing campaigns on a small ad budget. That discipline is how she pulled a $4,000 return out of a $300 ad spend. If you are rethinking your own positioning, that is the kind of brand strategy question worth sitting with.
Finding Your Purpose in Business After a Career Reinvention
Caroline’s advice for anyone in the middle of a shift comes down to two things. It is okay to be passionate about work that feels self-serving, and it is okay to grieve who you were before. Finding your purpose in business often means discovering what you’re good at is not what you assumed, and treating a career reinvention as a process rather than a failure. When you do, the creativity tends to show up somewhere you did not expect.
Connect with Caroline:
- Website: southerngritdigital.com
- Instagram: @southerngritdigital
- LinkedIn: Caroline Weeks
Tools I Love
Some of the links below are affiliate links, which means I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. I only share tools I actually use and believe in.
- Flodesk — beautiful email marketing for creative businesses: flodesk.com/c/LYONCREATIVES
- HoneyBook — client management and contracts: share.honeybook.com/svenja7629354
Audio Production
Huge thanks to Mike at Nielsen Audio Solutions for editing this episode. If you have a podcast and you are doing your own editing because you cannot find someone you trust, Mike is the answer. He has been editing every episode of This Might Get Creative and the difference shows. Reach out to him at nielsenaudiosolutions.com
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