Creating a Difference: Business tips for creative people to be business people

By Darcy Clarke

“Creating a difference” is for creative people who have limited business skills and financial understanding, but are full of ambition and talent. In this guide you will find practical business concepts to start developing business and money know-how to complement your practice. These ideas form a collection of fantastic business and entrepreneurial concepts.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jan 30, 2014
• ISBN: 9780646916842

Book preview

Clarke

Success in business can come in many different ways and mean different things to different people. What is certain in my view, is that you’re the one who will create the difference in any enterprise you choose to undertake through; your energy; your talent; your vision; your tenacity; your decision-making and your determination to succeed. What follows is then only a matter of deciding you have what it takes and going for it. It is time to have a crack, jump on this and take the challenge to be big and be daring.

This guide is all about how you can make your venture successful. My task here is to give you information, it is up to you to take this information and make it rock. In your business life, you will no doubt eventually come to learn or experience what this guide has to offer and ideally develop an understanding beyond these concepts in the actual practise of them. I’m giving you tips learned from my experience in the creative world, practising as an artist and now building my lighting and furniture brand - Darcy Clarke. My aim is to make a difference for as many people as possible.

Let’s start by going straight to the higher vision and the following question is what you will need to answer. This really is the best starting point for any business venture.

What is your grandest vision for your business and your life?

Yes, I know it is a massive question. But don’t worry there is no right or wrong or definitive answer, there is only what you love doing, what feels right for you and what makes you happy.

If you are ready, right now is a good time to answer this. If you’re in a good head and physical space where you can focus on getting stuck into this, if not wait until you are. The process is all about you and it is a heap of fun. Take your time doing this and most importantly enjoy it!

I think it is a good idea to make this visual; write it, draw it, paint it or even cut and paste images from magazines, putting them on a canvas or in a sketch book are good ways to make this process work. Start a vision board or an ideas book, a Facebook page or a Pinterest board.

Here are my hints:

Modesty doesn’t exist here, let your imagination run wild and think as big as you dare, then think bigger than you dare. You can only be limited by the limits of your imagination. Be guided by what feels right and what you love doing the most. Challenge what you think and believe is possible.

In the future, you can use this process at anytime. No doubt it will change and grow as you do.

What you want to achieve from this process is to create a combination of thoughts, words and images you have for your vision, along with the physical action of making something and allowing yourself to feel the emotion that come from this, preferably ‘excitement’. Here is an example, consider what children do when dreaming of their future. They will proudly say, I want to be a princess or fireman when I grow up. They then get some toys and costumes and they play out the role as they see them and then live it in their imagination.

Remember, this is all about your dreams for what you want to do in your life. To help, here are a few more hints.

» What do you love doing? What human activities give you the most joy!

» What life do you want? This includes health, family, work and money. Is health important to you? Where do you want to live? Do you want a family? How much money is enough for you?

» How hard do you want to work?

» How much do you think you’re worth?

» What type of business do you want?

» How can you benefit others?

It’s important to be clear in your intentions and have fun and be playful.

Consider this:

Do you have a grand vision for your business?

Be who you are meant to be

A business becomes the vision of its founder.

This is one of the best idea’s in business and really it has a whole lot to do with using entrepreneurial thinking to drive the building of a business.

This idea and the ideas in this chapter come from and are inspired by Michael Gerber book The E-myth. The concepts he expresses are so profound and at the same time simple that it is shocking. Just imagine making all your decisions from this point: a business becomes the vision of its founder. This was a thunderbolt moment for me. If you can’t imagine this, let me encourage you to try as it is a great starting point that I highly recommend you build from. It will influence all your decision making in a positive way as you’re