What is Creative Business Worldwide?
Creative Business Worldwide is a publication I’ve made for creative entrepreneurs to share useful lessons I’ve learned about decision-making, leadership, and mindset from 13 years as a business owner. I want to help you enjoy the rewards of building your business intelligently, so you can benefit from the same successes I’ve had, while saving you from the crushing pain of making the many dumb mistakes I’ve already made for you.
There are many parallels around the personalities of people like us who are attracted to starting what I call “creative businesses” - like creators, designers, freelancers, and agency owners. It’s plain from observing myself and other creative business owners, that we have abnormally high needs for autonomy, self-expression, and recognition.
These tendencies are often strengths, but can also lead to common problems like heightened sensitivity to shiny-object distractions, impatience or impulsiveness, perfectionism, and isolation. Learning to manage these challenges will ultimately determine whether you can sustain a successful business or not.
I’m going to share all of the scrappy hard won lessons that have allowed me to work for myself as a creative for over a decade. I’ve tried multiple business models and approaches, both successes and failures: freelance, contractor, consultant, co-op, products, services, studio, and agency.
Why?
For me, this is a practice of thinking and reflecting and giving something back that hopefully is helpful.
I’ve always been a creative at heart, I’ve always had such a powerful impulse to express myself intensely through multiple mediums: drawing, writing, music, photos, and found a particular passion for digital storytelling through interactive websites, video and motion graphics.
At the same time, I’ve had an equally strong desire to create not just digital stories and experiences, but systems. This led me to create multiple businesses over the last 13 years and take an MBA and Master’s in Educational Technology. I wanted to understand what makes a business work, internally and externally, and I’ve always wanted to share and connect with others so they can be happy too. I’ll share more on my personal story in future posts.
Between my hands-on experience and formal education, I’m at a point in my career where I feel I have been through some valuable experiences and it’s important for me to pause and take stock of them and organize my own thinking around everything I’ve gone through. Creative Business Worldwide is just a way for me to make this fun for myself and share the learning in public. I have nothing to sell you and no plans to monetize this.
Why is it called Creative Business Worldwide?
Two reasons: 1. I think it’s kind of funny to describe a tiny one-person thing as Worldwide, I always got a kick out of the meaningless names of corporate entities trying to sound big and important. 2. It’s also aspirational - one lesson I hope to get to is the value of thinking bigger. I hope that this grows and can help people globally one day!
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