I Scaled My Handmade Business and Became a Stranger to My Craft

From the Embers & Ashes advice column: Wisdom for the Quietly Disillusioned

How do you reconcile building a thriving business with the grief of no longer doing the work that once gave you life? What if growth isn't always the goal? Is it possible to find your way back to the joy of your craft when achievement has led you away from creation?

Dear Chandra,

Seven years ago, I turned my ceramics hobby into a business. What started as me selling mugs at farmers markets has grown into a studio with eight employees, wholesale accounts across the country, and features in major design magazines.

I built what I thought I wanted. I've scaled a creative passion into a sustainable business. I should be proud, right?

But the truth is, I haven't touched clay in almost a year. My days are filled with spreadsheets, emails, and managing people. The parts I loved most about ceramics – the quiet focus, the direct connection with materials, the meditative quality of throwing on the wheel – have been completely lost in the growth.

When I walk through my studio now, I feel like a visitor. My employees create pieces based on my original designs, but I'm completely removed from the process. Sometimes I find myself envying them, with their hands in the clay while I'm stuck in my office handling the business side.

I know I should be grateful, so many artists struggle to make a living. I know I should feel good about the fact that I've created jobs for other creatives, and built something sustainable. But some days I fantasize about burning it all down just so I can start over. Just me and a wheel again.

How do I reconcile this success with the growing emptiness I feel? Is it possible to find my way back to the joy that started all of this?

— Missing the Clay

Dear Missing the Clay,

There's a particular heartbreak in realizing you've succeeded your way right out of your own passion. The business grew exactly as it was supposed to, but no one thought to ask if that growth would still hold space for your hands in the clay.

What you're experiencing isn't failure. It's the shadow side of a specific kind of success, one that follows the capitalist blueprint of scale, efficiency, and removing the founder from the "production line."

But a creative practice isn't a factory. And your connection to clay isn't just a manufacturing skill; it's a relationship, a conversation between your body and the earth, a dialogue that's been severed by spreadsheets and management meetings.

The longing you feel when you see your employees with their hands in the clay isn't just nostalgia, it's your body remembering its rightful place in communion with material. It's your spirit recognizing the meditative portal that first called you to this work. It's your soul's quiet insistence that some things should not be delegated at the expense of profit and progress.

You haven't outgrown the messy, physical work. You've been promoted away from it by a system that values management over making, scale over intimacy, and growth over depth.

Here's the truth: You don't have to choose between burning it all down or continuing as is. There's a third path, one that honors both the business you've built and the artist being silenced within it.

Ask yourself might it look like to reclaim one day a week, or even one afternoon, as sacred making time? Not for product development or content creation, but just for the quiet communion between your hands and the clay. What would it be like to have time when you're unreachable, when your only task is remembering why you started all this in the first place, and doing what you love.

Or what if you created a small, separate line that's still made entirely by you? These could be limited edition pieces that honor your need to maintain a direct connection with the craft, not as a marketing gimmick, but as an essential practice of remembering who you are beneath the title of founder or CEO.

The more radical question is this: What if the business stopped growing? What if, instead of expanding further, you stabilized where you are and redesigned your role to include more making? Our culture treats this as failure or stagnation. But what if it's actually wisdom, the recognition that bigger isn't always better, that success without joy is its own kind of poverty?

I wonder about that fantasy of burning it all down... listen to what it's really asking for; rarely is it total destruction. More often, it's a desperate call for transformation, for something essential to be recognized before it's too late.

The deeper invitation here is to question the inherited definition of success that pulled you away from your hands in the clay. To ask not just "how can I get back to making?" but "what would a business designed around the needs of my creative spirit actually look like?"

This isn't just about scheduling studio time, it's about excavating the beliefs that made you think success meant removing yourself from the very practice that gives you life. It's about remembering that you get to write the rules of your own enterprise.

The path forward isn't about balance, the worn-out word that suggests your soul's needs and your business demands deserve equal weight. It's about alignment to your true values and building a business that serves your life, not a life contorted to serve your business.

Your hands remember the clay, your body remembers the wheel. Trust the longing that pulls you back toward what makes you come alive. It's not childish or unprofessional to need that direct connection. It's the most human thing about you.

The wild in me recognizes the wild in you,

Chandra

If you're carrying questions too heavy to hold alone or wrestling with uncomfortable truths that don't fit the narrative, send your letter to contact@chandranicole.com with "EMBERS & ASHES" in the subject line. 

Your submission may be selected for a future column. All letters will be kept anonymous, with identifying details changed to protect privacy.

For those seeking more personalized guidance on the journey of undomestication and liberation from gilded cages, private mentoring offers a deeper dive into reclaiming what's truly yours.