Cleo Wade knows all about taking a chance on a passion, having gone from feeling unfulfilled in a corporate job in fashion to becoming a hugely successful poet. So the poet—whose seventh book, In a World of Sunrises: 365 Days of Heart, Soul, and Hope, hit shelves in April—has some go-to advice for others looking to follow their dreams and work for themselves.
On the latest episode of Marie Claire's "Nice Talk" podcast, Wade explains that she became "dissatisfied" with her fashion career, but she stuck with it because "my goal in my life was financial security." Ever since she started working in a clothing store at age 12, she says, people had reassured her: “You can do this and you’re good at it.”
"I was uncomfortable, but I didn't realize that I wasn't living in something I was dreaming for myself," Wade says.
When she "eventually left doing any type of work in fashion, because, frankly, it's too hard," one motivating thought kept returning to her: "I remember having this thought, which is like, 'What if I took everything I knew and I worked as hard for myself as I worked for everyone else?' And that's the one piece of advice I give everyone who goes independent or has to apply any type of entrepreneurship to their journey," the author says. "You'll work that hard for somebody else. I can't even imagine what you could do if you worked that hard for yourself."
For Wade, that meant focusing on poetry, something she had loved since taking a class at a childhood summer camp, and, with the encouragement of friends, getting comfortable sharing her work publicly. When she began posting her poems on Instagram, her words resonated quickly. Today, she has 747,000 followers on the platform. And while her account started with photos of her poetry notebooks, she now shares pages from her published books.
"I think you have short yeses and long nos in life," Wade reflects. "And so I think you can be living in a long no professionally or relationally ... I got out of a long relationship before I met [partner] Simon [Kinberg], and we had our first kid within a year of being together. And it was just a short yes, I guess, and now we have three kids. I think with my work, I think the idea that things feel overnight is actually just because you had a short yes, and it just happened really fast and no one pays attention to your long no."
For more words of wisdom from Wade—including advice on how to start journaling and how to stay true to yourself despite outside influence—check out this week's installment of "Nice Talk." The episode is available everywhere you listen to podcasts.