A full-time artist who teaches others how to make a career out of their work has revealed her story of leaving two six-figure businesses behind to live out her dream.
Amanda Heath, from North Manchester, left behind a fashion store and then a pilates teaching studio to found Thriving Artists Business School (T.A.B.S) and become a full-time artist – teaching others to follow in her successful footsteps.
Expression has always been in Amanda’s blood with a background in dance and even some professional work under her belt. Eventually, she stopped and pursued new horizons. She said: “When I stopped dancing, I started to work at University of Salford as a PA – eventually working my way up to the business department.
“While I was there, I heard many ideas people had. Some were forgettable but some were worth getting behind – so I helped write bids to get these ideas European funding. I must have done hundreds in total.”
Amanda, 46, went on to do her master’s degree in business before she set up her own firm – a fashion store that did incredibly well. Despite the success, travelling became an issue and Amanda decided to shut down the store. After this, she started to look for new outlets of passion – eventually training to become a pilates teacher. Within six months she had nine full classes and a full-time income.
Amanda explained that even this drastic change of profession didn’t seem to fulfil her. She said: “While I was delighted with how quickly the classes were filling up and how engaged I was with the work itself, I always had this empty feeling inside despite clients being lovely. You try to fill this empty hole with a fancy car and a big house – but with more development comes less happiness.”
After an incredibly busy period she became ill because of the burnout – finally admitting she was unhappy in her daily life. With this began her journey to find a creative outlet that could give her the same chance of expression – trying everything from horse-riding to pottery classes. It wasn’t until she visited a two-hour art class when she fell back in love with the art process.
“It was this spark I just hadn’t felt since dancing,” she recalled. “It instantly captured my mind. The problem was I questioned how on earth I could leave a dependable job to become what I assumed to be a starving artist – it was all I knew. Successful artists usually have to have support from a gallery and have an art degree to back them up – neither of which I had.”
Despite this understanding, Amanda used the internet to market her art pieces through social media. In the first seven days, she was able to sell over £5,000 worth of commissions from just a few posts on Facebook. Discovering that she could indeed make a career out of her art, she studied and studied, did every course she could to learn how to grow further. She realised that she must not be the only one thinking like this. She said: “If was scared to open an art business, there must be others who have no business experience but want to make their dreams become a reality – I could pass on my knowledge to help them.
“The main thing that’s got me through this is the tenacity and discipline to not perceive failure as the end of the line. You have to keep problem solving and coming up with new ideas. Art and business are intrinsically linked in their creative demands and the drive to achieve what you want – problems don’t get solved without creativity and this is what art relies on.”
T.A.B.S first piloted with six students before accepting nine and then 15. Now Amanda is looking at turning the business evergreen.
