Tips for honing in on a vision for your soloist creative business
Having a vision for how you want your soloist creative business to look, is a lot harder than it might seem. It’s not something many of us spend time looking into, in my experience, but it’s a creative time well spent. We’re not necessarily going for a crystal clear vision for our business, but a little more clarity can save us headaches down the line. So, here are a few tips for getting started.
My creative coaching clients often come to me with a dream of making a living from their creative passions. Either they have started a business, or they are overwhelmed by where to start building a creative business.
Many of us, myself included, tend to skip right to the fun and creative parts that feels a little easier. Things like creating social media posts, building a website, playing around with a colour palette.
But there is some important deep feeling, thinking and strategy work to be done before that.
I have dived into a few business adventures without ever really having a clear vision of what I wanted the business to be like. Maybe that was a good thing when I was younger, but knowing what I do now, and coaching creatives for 10 years, I now believe it’s a really good idea to spend time honing in on a vision for how you want your business to be, especially as a soloist creative entrepreneur.
It sounds good to hone in on a vison, but how exactly do you do that?
These are some tips for a process I am going through at the moment. I thought it’s about time I do some fine-tuning to Creators Process.
Honestly, there is no right order for these tips, I just had to start somewhere.
Tips for honing in on a vision for your soloist creative business
I’m deliberately writing a vision, as that’s what we’re going for. The vision for your business is not set in stone, and will likely change in time. I know mine does. You’re honing in on a vision for how a creative business could look for you at this stage in your journey.
This is the loose bigger picture stuff.
Tip 1: how do you see yourself working in your business?
This is the bigger picture
Can you imagine yourself running a business? What are you doing? Are you running around or sitting at your desk every day?
Maybe you can see yourself working with others down the line, but have to start alone. That’s great clarity to have. We all have to start somewhere
Things like that.
If you allow you imagination and feelings play together, you may come up with a vision for a business you didn’t even know you’re attracted to.
If you’re out of practice turning down the sound of your rational brain, you can try and put “what if…?” in front of any image and see what happens.
What if I did ……….?
What if I could……?
What if this was true…?
Although we can never predict everything that’ll happen on a day-to-day basis, focusing our vision on the daily work means we set ourselves up for a realistic vision based on the work, and not on a filtered Instagram version of what a creative business looks like.
How about working hours?
You get to be an empowered entrepreneur, which means you get to create a business that’ll work around your life, a business that feeds your inspiration, creativity, and works around your energy.
For example, it’s hard for to have coaching clients from the West coast of America because of the time difference. I don’t like working later than 4 pm Danish time. There are exceptions to that rule, but my energy takes a deep dive in the afternoons, and it’s just not the best time for me.
There is this myth that you has to work all hours to start your own business, but as you’ll see in the next tip, this is not actually true.
You get to set the hours, and whatever hours you have available, are the hours you’ll work. It just means less scrolling social media. (talking about myself ;))
Tip 2: Find 3 small businesses you admire
It’s so important to have role models whose energy and inspiration you can draw from, when you’re trying to create change in your life. It can be a person, business, attitude, sense of style, it doesn’t matter. In this case, of honing in on a vision for the kind of business you’d like to create, let’s focus on businesses.
See if you can find 3 small business you are inspired by. Be specific in what exactly it is about these businesses that inspires you.
I’ll share 3 of mine.
From listening to different podcasts, including her own, I find Fiona Humberstone, and how she runs her super successful business incredibly inspiring.
Apart from her deep knowledge and experience, probably the biggest thing I admire about her, is that she’s super boundaried and charges her worth.
She has 3 children, like me, and she only works while the kids are at school, and during school term. This means she works approx. 3/4 of the year.
She’s excellent at showing behind the scenes, and document her working process.
She talks about the importance of being clear on the difference between being The Brand Stylist, and Fiona, the private person. There’s much of her in her business, but not all of her.
I find this interesting, and an important distinction to make.
I also watched her, during the Pandemic, adapt her business by creating affordable seminars to help uplift her community during a very difficult time. She became like a Lighthouse on the shore, and even though I’m not her target customer, I appreciated it.
My take-aways :
Clear boundaries and charge appropriately.
Separate Creators Process from my private life.
Focus on what I’m good at.
Protect my creativity.
Muse Wear is a Danish clothing brand for women with a BIG focus on sustainability. Sustainability in the clothing industry is a bit of a contradiction, but knowing Muse Wear as I do, I am happy to say they are a sustainable clothing brand.
Muse, as we call them, is one of the brands of Anbimode.dk, the shop I’ve been bringing online over the last couple of years, and so I’m lucky enough to know them well.
Not only is the clothes incredibly well made, the quality is some of the best out there. It’s made to last, if looked after.
It’s a small family business, now run by super lovely daughter Maria, and they are based in Thy, in the North of Jutland.
The landscape in and around The Western Sea and National Park Thy is wild, and it’s with inspiration from that nature they design their collections, as well as their aesthetics.
Apart from the quality and aesthetics of their clothes, I admire their investment in, and dedication to creating sustainable clothing throughout the whole cycle from design, production, to delivery.
They produce very little, and it tends to sell out quickly. They encourage to buy less, and buy better.
My take-aways:
Buy less - buy better
Focus on quality
Take inspiration from my surroundings.
Embrace my Danish surroundings
Ok, so Mary Portas is both an incredibly inspiring person, a business person, and has a business, the creative company Portas. She’s a TV personality, author of books, and all-round force of nature. Literally. She’s doing work for a better planet too.
Mary Portas is the advocate for The Kindness Economy, and beautiful business, where the focus is on People, Planet, and Profit. In that order.
There is sooo much I could write about why I think Mary Portas is phenomenal, but I’ll here focus on the specifics that inspire me about her.
My take-aways:
“Kindness Economy is an economy with businesses that makes a profit, but with a heart and a conscience.”
Yes, to that!
Tip 3: Separate the work with clear boundaries
I believe in protecting your creativity, and protecting your creative work, space and voice. As a creativity coach, it would be a little weird if I didn’t. Lol.
There are different types of work connected with working in your business, and working on your business.
As a creative entrepreneur, I also recommend you separate those two “hats”, so you protect your time and space as a creative, to do creative work, and the work that will come under the entrepreneur “hat”.
From own experience, and the experience of some past clients, having everything muddled up in one pile, is a fast lane to overwhelm.
It may be useful to think of creative entrepreneurship as having two roles:
The creative
The entrepreneur
You, the creative
When you put on your creative hat, your focus and time is spent on creating.
This is when you do your work, deal with creative blocks, go through the creative process.
You protect your creative time, and space. Whether you end up with a business or not, your creative time is everything.
You, the entrepreneur
Wearing the entrepreneur hat is where you step into business related work. It can be posting on social media, working on your website, SEO, admin, and all the different bits and bobs related to a business.
You get to decide how these different hats look, and how you approach the work. Not all work is going to be the same fun, let’s be honest.
If it helps, you can create characters for each hat. Maybe a London Bowler hat for social media, a cowboy hat for doing admin, and one of those massive hats ladies wear at Ascot for writing. LOL
This is to say, a soloist creative business is a job with multiple hats, and it is probably useful to compartmentalize the work. No one can do everything all the time.
It’s worth considering how you want to feel while doing the work. Both the creative work and business work. You get to decide, which is wonderful.
Tip 4 (proceed with caution): Create a mood board
I LOVE mood boards and vision boards, and I think they are a fantastic tool for getting clarity of so many things.
They are useful for redecorating a room, planning things in your garden, parties, branding, style, so many things.
But it can be a deep rabbit hole to go down, where you get lost in all the tunnels.
I know I said in the beginning that there is no order to these tips, however, I do recommend you wait with the mood board until you have done some deep thinking and feeling by yourself and a journal, or something, before you let yourself get pulled in by the fabulousness of Pinterest, or magazines.
Just watch out for comparison and feeling of self-doubt if you do go on Pinterest.
Rightio, a few tips for you, if you´re in the process of trying to hone in on a vision for how a soloist creative business could look to you.
Best of luck!
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