How the coolest creative travel business nearly didn’t launch, with Geetika Agrawal of VAWAA

Geetika Agrawal has possibly the coolest business ever. Vacation with an Artist connects artists and craftspeople around the world with curious, engaged travellers who want to immerse themselves in learning or deepening a skill.

She’d been dreaming about it for years, and a place on a work/travel programme gave the chance she wanted. But, three months into a year-long trip round the world, signing up artists and preparing to launch, she froze.

Geetika and I talk about hitting the crisis point that’s so easy to reach in a creative business, when you’ve got multiple ideas, different partners, big ideas, but you’re still only human. You’ll also find out:

• How YouTube and singing got Geetika through an immediate crisis
• How she deliberately simplified her environment so she could use her focus for the thing that mattered
• The importance of the right support system – and how it wasn’t necessarily the one that Geetika thought was important
• The headache of finding a name for her business – and what to do when everyone hates what you love

We also talk about how it feels to launch a creative business that you’ve been working on for months – and how it isn’t necessarily the big triumph it feels it should be.

If you’re thinking about setting up any kind of creative business, or project, you’ll find this a great episode for inspiration and advice. Overwhelm is an ever-present risk, so I’m always delighted when we get the chance to talk about it on the show.

Beat your own creative overwhelm

Getting out of a crisis like Geetika’s is often about finding a way to calm your brain enough to understand what it needs to do. The Creative’s Distraction Buster shows you how to cut out the noise so you can think clearly. Download it for free here – your free guide to making yourself more productive, just for creative brains. (Because we’re kind of different).