Over the coming days, I’m running a blog series to accompany the Go Creative! workshops.

This series will take you through the stages of setting up, or gearing up, a successful creative Business. Downloadable scorecards, maps and logs won’t just explain, but will take you through the process.

As you follow the blog series, day by day, you will be doing work that is vital to developing a Successful Creative Business.

The exercises, maps and logs are designed to steady you, to bring you, wave by dependable wave, through the seven stages from stating your intention (Stage One: “I intend to create a business that enables me to make a living doing what I love”) to being up and running successfully (Stage Seven: “I am a successful creative entrepreneur, making my living doing what I love.”).

NOTE: For the purposes of this series (and the Go Creative! books) I define creative business as a business built around passion, mission and values, and run from creative principles.

Being a creative business owner is triply challenging:

• Understanding your passion, mission and values, and living from there, is challenging.
• Building a business is challenging.
• Running a business from creative principles is challenging.

Doing it well will require you to wear three hats: to be Creative Crafter, Creative Director and Creative Entrepreneur

This series will guide you through the process, wave by wave, so you understand a) what’s needed to generate flow, creatively and commercially; b) how to find a core offering and micro-niche that will sustain you, creatively and commercially; and c) how to run your business well.

One of the main reasons creative projects stall or stop is the tendency to mix up the steps of the process. You do a bit of preparation, jump into drafting, then start correcting this isolated part of the draft, trying to improve it, going back to the beginning, moving forwards and backwards through various stages of the process, without understanding those stages and what they ask of you.

Everything gets all mixed up and you muddle your way through by trial and error.

You can create something meaningful this way (I did!) but it’s much slower and can be emotionally and creatively draining. The danger is that you can get disheartened, and give up.

What the Go Creative! method offers is a way to be carried through the stages, wave by wave, by the process. To largely focus on the stage you are in and largely finish one out, before moving onto the next.

I say largely because the process is never cut and dried, logical and linear, but it definitely does have its own logic and a wave by wave motion.

The best image is that of the sea. There are swirls and undercurrents and backwashes but under the guidance of the moon, the tide inexorably flows, wave by wave, to the shore.

Under your guidance, the creative process behaves just like this. If you keep your attention focussed, it cannot fail.

We start tomorrow with looking at your truest wants. This helps you to establish your core offering, the product or service that will most delight the people you will serve — and you too.

Go Creative! It’s Your Native State, the first book in the Go Creative! series is publishing soon. If you’d like to be the first to hear when it’s out, you can get an alert by signing up here:

I’ll also send you my free Monday Motivator and my Compendium for Creativists ebook.

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