I run two businesses on purpose. One pays me. One protects me.

I run two businesses on purpose.

One currently pays my bills. The other protects my ability to keep sane so I can keep earning now and in the future.

For the past 7 years, I have run a boutique inclusive high performance consultancy and executive coaching business, High Fifteen, that generates my income, in high-pressure and fast paced environments. I get to train teams and coach senior leaders from global companies such as Nike and LVMH and also work with boards and teams of charities, who tackle big issues such as homelessness or domestic violence.

I truly love this work. I am a certified executive coach in positive psychology and emotional intelligence, who is obsessed with finding ways to get people to perform at their best and enjoy their workplace every day. 

While this work is fabulous and a true privilege, it also requires constant clarity, a lot of emotional regulation, strategic foresight, critical thinking and the ability to hold complex human dynamics at all times.

In a nutshell: it can be a lot. 

I also run an abstract art and doodling practice that, right now, does not generate any significant revenue by design. I do not actively push to make sales from my paintings or prints at present. On paper, that second business can look indulgent. But to me, taking my time to transform this practice into a profitable business is one of the most strategic decisions I have ever made.

It is important to mention now that this art practice is not a hobby. It is built with intention, structure and future economic potential. I am developing a distinct creative philosophy around doodling, emotional expression and creative wellbeing work. It is simply at an early stage of its commercial journey.

Yes, I could rush it! But I choose not to. Because not everything has to generate income immediately to be considered a business. Yet, I am setting it up as a business because I truly believe in its commercial potential.

The part very few talk about when you run a business

Entrepreneurship is often framed as freedom. Even though I was an ‘accidental entrepreneur,’ freedom was very attractive to me at first. It sounded glamorous and pretty rebellious vs. the corporate world I knew. 

Yet, for many entrepreneurs there is a very heavy mental load too. 

You are delivering high stakes work—without the resources of bigger businesses.

You are negotiating credibility ALL THE TIME. 

You are absorbing emotional labour that very rarely shows up on an invoice. 

You can love your work, yet often in order to perform at your best, you need more than just focussing on traditional KPIs and hustle culture. 

You need to be ultra resilient.

Because of my ‘corporate conditioning,’ I believed resilience meant always pushing through tough times, negative thoughts and experiences to generate revenue at all costs.

As a business owner, I quickly realised that resilience is something you intentionally design, which cannot only be about pushing.

I realised that revenue is not only about output. It is about capacity—emotional, mental and physical. And capacity has to be protected at all costs.

"The equation is simple and sensical: better regulation leads to better strategy. Better strategy attracts clients who value depth and long-term partnership."

The decision to separate, not merge

Many people ask why I did not simply merge my art into my consultancy and executive coaching business. I always find this question interesting. 

High Fifteen ltd, the consultancy and executive coaching business, exists to deliver measurable outcomes. It is structured, commercial and very performance focused. It is the outcome of 2 masters degrees, over 14 years of corporate work and insights.

My art practice at Beautiful Water Studio is entirely self-taught. I discovered last year that I am a freestyle contemporary artist when a gallery spotted me at the third exhibition some of my paintings featured in. Most of the time I do not know what I am doing, which feels weird to admit as an overthinker and high achiever. And it actually does not really matter because I get a huge amount of emotional regulation from painting or doodling. It is a deliberate act of mental release, calm and nervous system regulation. 

The abstract doodling and painting process allows my mind to wander without needing to justify itself. This same process helped me to heal my burnout a few times in the last 3 years alone.

You see, I do not need a commercial strategy and forecast, chemistry calls or feedback forms when I paint or doodle. I just give myself permission to be in the moment, fully. 

In a world where business owners are expected to be constantly ON, doodling gives me a space where I do not have to perform or have all the answers. 

That is true freedom in my eyes. A freedom I do not get as often from High Fifteen if I am really honest.

Doodling enables me to resist to pressure

Painting and doodling make me feel like me—Vanessa, a 40 something French Black Caribbean woman, who is quirky, bold, kind, sassy, a social butterfly and also an outgoing introvert, who loves her own company.

It frees my mind from societal expectations and the invisible, often negative narratives that follow Black women into professional spaces. When I doodle, I am not translating my identity into anything. I am simply creating and that feels so so good. Sometimes the lines feel messy. Often the colours clash. Every single time what comes out surprises me.  When people see the final work, they often describe it as joyful. This always makes me smile because I know that my thoughts or feelings when painting are not always screaming joy!

In my TEDx talk ‘The art of choosing joy - a daily act of resilience & self-love,’ I mentioned the concept of ‘joyful resilience’ as the ability to hold both complexity and lightness at the same time. Doodling is one of the ways I practise that philosophy daily. Overall, my art practice is a creative outlet that helps me cope with the pressure of having my own business.

How my creative outlet improves my performance

When I doodle and paint regularly, I notice shifts in how I show up in my consultancy and executive coaching work. I recover faster after intense delivery cycles.  My thinking becomes more expansive.  I make clearer pricing decisions instead of reacting from an empty energy tank.  I enter negotiations grounded rather than rushed.

These are not abstract or small benefits. 

I know that they affect my bottom line directly.

The equation is simple and sensical: better regulation leads to better strategy. Better strategy attracts clients who value depth and long-term partnership. 

Because when my mind is freer, my work becomes sharper. When I feel more like myself, my leadership becomes more authentic. Clients sense that. Opportunities expand from that place.

My art practice does not significantly pay me yet, but it protects the quality of the decisions that do. And I am very thankful that I thought to embrace my creative talents, even without a fine art degree.

An unpopular opinion maybe but I truly believe that not everything has to generate income immediately to contribute to long-term success. By giving my art practice room to evolve, I am building future optionality while protecting the purity of my creative process. I love that for me.

A different vision of sustainability

I want to be in business for a long time. That is my wish for all small business owners.

Yet, I know that we will only be able to sustain viability if we focus on commercial performance AND emotional protection.

Running two businesses on purpose is my way of designing for both.

Because generating revenue is not just about effort, systems and optimisation. It is also about intentionally protecting the internal conditions that allow us to keep performing at a high level without ‘killing’ ourselves and most importantly our souls. Too many of us forget that too often and this costs us.

It’s a journey, which requires a lot of unlearning and adjustment, yet net net it’s worth it. 

My art and doodling practice may not pay me today. I know that it will one day. Yet for now, every doodle, every line drawn without expectation, protects the person who generates the revenue, a.k.a. me. And so far, having this creative practice as an emotional outlet has been one of the most profitable investments of time I have made.

The real revenue rule I follow now is simple: protect your capacity first and you will have a sustainable business.

Voila.

Vanessa Belleau is an inclusive high-performance culture consultant, executive coach, educator, TEDx speaker, who helps leaders and teams build healthier, more human workplace dynamics through emotional intelligence and positive psychology. She is also an artist painter, who advocates for doodling as mental release. Learn about her consulting and coaching at HighFifteen.com and her art practice at BeautifulWaterStudio.com.