501: Introduction to Season 5—How Creativity Transforms Your Business
Before I jump into the content around this season’s topic, I want to set context. When I use the term “creativity,” I don’t mean artistic creativity. The context I want you to have as you enjoy this upcoming season is that creativity in your business—and in life—is about bringing into reality something that is completely new and uniquely yours. It could be a tweak on something pre-existing, or, something completely innovative and out of the blue. This is what true creativity is to me. It’s innovation. It’s invention. It’s uniqueness. It’s active, alive and it builds. It opens new doors. It stimulates new ideas, new perspectives and new results.
As a solopreneur, creativity is vital to your success. Why? Because when you work by yourself in somewhat of a silo, you have to be intentional about being creative with your business, your clients, how you market, sell and engage with your business community. Whether you’re getting out and doing this from the stage, in a networking group, as you deliver training, when you work with a coaching client or as you’re serving a client one-on-one, being creative will keep you interested, engaged and invested in your work.
My intention for this season is to have conversations with other solopreneurs about creativity, how they incorporate creativity into all aspects of their work, and what they are doing to be more purposeful about creating, innovating and keeping their business relevant and fresh. I also want to share my own struggles with creativity, starting with this true confession: my innate creativity has gotten in the way of me being a more successful business person.
Yup, that’s right: my innate creativity has been a stumbling block to my business thriving.
From when I was a little kid I have always had easy, natural creative and artistic talents. I loved to draw, imagine, make stuff and play. I lived in a constant state of imagination and tactical creativity. Family and friends would comment, “Terry, you’re so artistic! You’re so creative!” Of course, this fed my ego and made me become more prolific at demonstrating my creativity by making crazy stuff out of benign items around the house and being crafty, but writing and drawing were the two areas that drew most of my attention.
I felt my energy was unlimited when I was in a creative state. I could work on things and design and write for hours on end. The act of being creative was fuel for my heart and mind, and I couldn’t get enough of it. It was like a drug, and while I was on this drug, I felt on purpose and invincible.
I pursued art and writing classes whenever they were offered, and after I graduated high school I went right into college at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh. “You want to go to art school?” My dad said. Much to my his dismay, I succeeded in selling him on the idea that I could be successful with an education in commercial art,” not fine art. Going to college to learn advertising, commercial art and graphic design was a sort of an uncommon major for kids growing up in rural Pennsylvania in the 70s. But I had attended a “college prep school” program between my 11th and 12th year of high school at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh and my eyes were opened. For four weeks I got a small sampling of classes that a full time art student took at AIP and I knew I had found my place. So even though my dad was tempting me with trips to Manhattan to court Parsons School of Design and RISD in Providence, Rhode Island as well as Tyler School of Art in Philly, my heart was set on the Steel City school.
I’m not going to give you my whole resume, but after graduating college, every job I had, I used my creative talents and what I’d learned in school. The variety of jobs and employers I worked for touched every point of the spectrum of commercial communications, from strategy and ideas to design, branding and advertising to printing and distribution. This enabled me to understand the entire lifespan of marketing and advertising, and my expertise grew and grew.
Fast forward to today, I’ve been in business for a decade and a half being creative and using my knowledge, talent and expertise to help businesses look more professional, be more engaged with their customers, grow in size, brand awareness and revenue.
So here’s my point about how creativity has been a stumbling block to my business thriving. I am an idea factory. This is best utilized when I’m working with my clients, because the greatest value (they say) that I provide is my creative engine and how I can see the solution for their business through my experience and objectivity. However, when it comes to my OWN business, I am lost and blind to the obvious because, as they say, “You can’t read the label of the jar you’re in.”
I’ll explain more, but before I do, I want you to think about this: How has creativity been a stumbling block for you in YOUR business? How have you dismissed your creativity because you view it as simply trying to solve problems and grow your business? Make it more simple? Find new ways to stand out in your market? I want you to look at how you run your business, how you think about your business strategies and tactics and how you brainstorm for your clients to bring about solutions for them. Do you just write it off as “doing the work” or “taking care of clients” or do you see how you ARE being creative? How you ARE using your innate creativity, ideation and imagination to make things better in your business and for your clients?
So here’s why I think creativity is a stumbling block for me in my business.
I get bored in my business because I get so much fulfillment out of creating and innovating my own stuff. When I don’t do that, I’m bored with it and think that it’s not working. So when I get bored with my business, I think I need to create an entirely new “thing,” and that gets me excited. I justify it as a way to grow my business, reach more, better quality clients, and have an easier path toward sales and growth. The justification is a mask for the real reason I go off in these new directions, aka rabbit holes. The real reason I take on these new things or directions is that I love the creative process! I love the state of planning, imagining and bringing something out of my head and into the world. It’s that simple. So I end up convincing myself that I’m doing something good for my business when in fact I’m diluting what I’m doing and taking myself off strategy because I want to stop the boredom.
How’s that for an in-your-face realization?!?!! In many ways, the title of this season, “How Creativity Transforms Your Business,” can be looked at as a positive AND a negative. Interesting, huh?
An example of this was my Compass Playbook. I had this creative vision to write a book designed to help people use creative problem solving to achieve important aspirations in their life. It was all based on interests, experiences and training I’d had, and how I’d used writing, drawing and imagining to focus and attract things into my life. It was a form of “how-to” book for self-identified non-creatives. I designed and published a workbook version, a companion version and a Kindle version. I facilitated live workshops to teach people the Compass Playbook framework. Then, I spent months creating four online courses based on the framework and advertised them on Facebook with moderate success. This was a three-to-four year process of working this creative idea into a business, but it never really took off or yielded big profits for me. I got more enjoyment out of thinking, creating and bringing it into reality than I did once it was completed. So the act of creating is what was fulfilling to me, not the act of turning what I created into a business and running it as a business. That was an entirely different energy and skill set.
This is a classic challenge of a true creative. (By the way, if you ever do Steve Cockram’s 5 Voices assessment, it’s amazing by the way, I’m a Creative - Nurturer. Probably the two weakest voices to be running a solopreneur business. But when it comes to providing my client’s value, OH EM GEE I blow it out of the water for them because my creativity is unleashed on their problems and I find it so easy to solution for them.)
Another creative distraction was my Confident Entrepreneur brand. I wrote two books, intending to do a series of books, and branded them “Confident Entrepreneur guides.” My strategy was to write CE guides on specific aspects of marketing and communications, my area of expertise, while using the Compass Playbook framework to help the reader not just learn but apply. The first was “the CE Guide to Logo Design,” and the second was, “the CE Guide to Selling,” which was so ironic because I’d always been challenged with sales. I also created a series of videos that I spent a LOT of time producing each week that provided a lesson based on the Confident Entrepreneur model. I did that for 33 episodes plus 5 “Magnets” which were visual affirmation movies with music that were companions to the CE brand. Little results came from all of this work, and I burned out. It became a chore of production and no longer held the creative juju that I loved. I had planned on doing ten, twenty, maybe thirty more CE guides on a variety of marketing and business topics, but after those two and the flop video series, I quit creating because it wasn’t yielding dollars, only enjoyment in the creative process.
And when you’re in business, you need to have both dollars and enjoyment to be truly successful.
That’s been my problem with creativity. I’ve spent so much energy, money and time building these brands and products, but once they’re manifested, I give up on the business side of making them a profit center in my business. Meanwhile, during all of these creative initiatives, I still kept my agency running and helping clients with their marketing and business development efforts. Thank God, too, because that has consistently been the mainstay of my business and the dollars AND enjoyment are always present there.
Are you hearing the glaringly obvious “duh,” here? The, “Hey Terry, stick with what works—just add more creativity doing WHAT WORKS in your business!” Hell-o! Well, I’ve recently come to the realization that I’ve had this tendency over the years and it has kept my business at its current level where I could have had substantially more success had I stayed focused on growing what was already working (my marketing agency) instead of rushing off into these rabbit holes that satisfied my need for creative self expression.
You live and you learn, and here I am offering my story to help you avoid similar missteps and save you time, aggravation and dollars in your business.
My question to you is, where are you distracting yourself with divergent directions in your business? Or are you solid at staying on track with your strategy and working the business to grow your income and client base? Here’s my point about this season on creativity: I want you and I to take a look at how and where we can supercharge our creativity into something that supports, grows and invigorates our business, not derails it into wasted time, energy and money like I’ve let happen in my business.
Let’s take a look at where creativity can be the strongest, sharpest and most powerful tool in our toolbox at elevating our brands, helping us bring better results to our clients, and making our businesses more satisfying and rewarding than ever. THIS to me is what true creativity is—the ability to use our minds to intentionally make our lives and the lives of others BETTER.
Are you with me? Let’s do it together.
Make your brand stand out
Want to talk with Terry Pappy and learn how you can make your brand stand out? Just click the BOOK NOW button and let’s talk!