I spent year’s sort of hating the industry I was in as it didn’t feed my creative soul. In facts it’s only truthfully in the last 10 years or so I appreciated that the ‘art’ of being an entrepreneur was creative enough to satisfy the money maker as well as the creative person in my psychological profile.
Who’d have thought commerce was so creative? I urge you in this week to embrace and indeed feed your creativity as an entrepreneur to help you find innovative ways to help your business to grow.
As entrepreneurs – regardless of industry – whether we are creating new content, or creating marketing information, tasking different markets or looking at different problem solving strategies it takes alternative perspectives and different ways of thinking to find great solutions or indeed stand out for the crowd. And this creativity has to be fed.
You all know I am a bit of a culture vulture – theatre, movies, art, opera, live gigs, festivals, art galleries, museums etc plus reading, reading, reading. Well the reason for this is undoubtedly pleasure but it has a massive impact on my output as creative director in my business. Creativity breeds innovation. It breeds different way of tackling problems, it breeds originality in your field. And this uniqueness helps what I have to say and do stick in the minds of the target audience because it’s different – and helps me find ways of thinking and problem solving that are more than the instinctive. This creativity drives innovations.
What I am trying to say in a very round about way is this creativity needs to be fed. So for every business book I read fiction, for every audible book I listen to some great music, for every business course I accompany that with a creative one.
I was told by a very serious data analyst the other day that he didn’t read fiction as it was pointless when there was so much knowledge to learn. But facts are bereft without cultural perspective – and the culture bit of that needs positive feeding.
An awesome project for you to increase your entrepreneurial prowess – time to review your cultural input. I challenge you all to include at least one cultural activity a week to open you minds, expand your thinking and open up different ways of thinking. What a lovely time you’ll have planning all these legitimate and super enjoyable activities.
My favourite quote is by Andy Warhol – “Making money is art and business is the best art” – life and business imitating or indeed becoming art. Now that my kind of creativity!
Have good week.