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chris guillebeau

creativity inspiration & influence planning & productivity

Creative and connected #6 – how to be a creative entrepreneur

July 21, 2017

 An entrepreneur creates value from ideas.

Joanna Penn, The Creative Penn

creative portfolio

Inspiring resources to keep you creative and connected – this week with a focus on being a creative entrepreneur and portfolio careers.

Here’s a round-up of what I’ve enjoyed and shared this week on various social platforms with a focus on how we can make a living from our creative skills.

I’ve been listening to podcasts and reading about being a creative entrepreneur and making a living from creativity for years now. It’s been part of “the long runway” – as Elizabeth Gilbert calls it in one of her Magic Lessons podcast – or preparation for this transition I’m now more actively embracing.

In this post, I share recent podcasts, books and posts on this theme as well as resources and contacts I have found valuable over time. A key focus is how we can work as multi-passionate people on portfolio careers with a number of income streams. These streams can include activities such as writing, coaching, speaking, self-publishing, workshops and online courses.

Podcasts on creativity and money

Real Artists Don’t Starve. Creativity and Money with Jeff Goins – on The Creative Penn

I loved this recent chat with Jeff Goins on my favourite podcast, The Creative Penn. It focuses on Jeff’s new book, Real Artists Don’t Starve: Timeless Strategies for Thriving in the new Creative Age. Jeff summarises key themes around creative success: showing up, discipline and taking a portfolio or multiple streams approach.

Key takeaways:

  • Jeff’s writing practices – his goal is “to write 500 new words every day”. He has a writing routine called the three bucket system. Each day, “I start something new, I finish something old, and I publish something. And so the three buckets are ideas, drafts, and edits. My work is every day, to move something from one bucket to the next.”  I’m so inspired by this idea of structuring work into a pipeline of action!
  • portfolio ways of working as a successful model for creatives and the benefits of having multiple streams of income. These streams include writing, workshops, online courses, speaking, coaching, as well as other revenue sources like property.
  • timeless strategies for creative success – the focus of his new book – about 12 things thriving artists do to achieve success.

How to be a Badass at Making Money – Jen Sincero on Your Kick-Ass Live Podcast with Andrea Owen

This podcast chat is about limiting beliefs around making money. It’s based on Jen Sincero’s latest book, You Are a Badass at Making Money: Master the Mindset of Wealth. This is a fun, energetic conversation that explores mindset issues that can stop us taking action.

Books and reading notes

I’ve continued reading David Whyte’s Crossing the Unknown Sea: Work as a Pilgrimage of Identity. It’s becoming heavily underlined as each page speaks to me around work and identity. We’ll be exploring this book in more detail here soon on Quiet Writing.

I’m nearly finished Joanna Penn’s Business for Authors: How to be an Author Entrepreneur which I’ve been enjoying as an audiobook. This is recommended reading/listening for anyone keen to learn more about operating as an author and business person.

Joanna is a creative entrepreneur who has built up income over time from multiple sources. She generously shares her tips and experiences via her books, blog and podcasts. Her recommended books and resources on creative entrepreneurship include:

  • How to Make a Living with your Writing – where Joanna shares practical tips based on her ability to earn a six-figure income through blogging, writing books and marketing ethically. I listened to this as an audiobook and it made fantastic learning.
  • Making a Living with your Writing – a page full of resources based on Joanna’s experience including practical tips and lessons learned on her entrepreneurial journey.

In terms of creativity and money, my thinking over time has been stimulated by Chris Guillebeau. Chris’s work is full of practical, grounded advice. His books on creative entrepreneurship include:

creative entrepreneur

Blog/Twitter/Instagram posts and interactions:

In 7 Reasons Creative People Don’t Talk about Money, poet and coach for creatives, Mark McGuinness talks about the love/hate relationship creatives often have with money. The post includes resources about money and creativity, especially around banishing some of the stereotypes.

Turn Your Creativity into a Career provides a guide for creative professionals interested in turning their creativity into a career. The perspective is around mapping your future as an independent creative entrepreneur and shaping your body of work.

How to Launch a Successful Portfolio Career, an article by Michael Greenspan in the Harvard Business Review, is targeted at corporate and executive level leaders and argues for a pragmatic approach to professional transitions. He advises: “The more specific and unique your skill set and experience, the more valuable your portfolio will be.”

In The idea of  “one true calling” is a romanticized lie, Emilie Wapnick explores the myth of the true calling and whether you might be a ‘multipotentialite’ or “someone with many interests and creative pursuits“. Emilie talks about the spectrum of being a multipotentialite and provides some models for managing multiple portfolios and career strands. She also has a book, How to be Everything, which explores this issue in more detail.

My post on Quiet Writing, How knowing your authentic heart can make you shine,  looks at the power of finding the thread that connects through your passions and career journey; in my case, writing. It also provides suggested strategies for finding your golden thread or authentic heart to guide you.

My Tarot Narratives on Instagram have been a rich source of inspiration and insight for my creative journey and I hope they are connecting with you too. This has been a consistent daily intuitive practice since 1 June now and I haven’t missed a day! Thanks for all the creative interactions.

And here’s the beautiful orchids coming out in my garden. Have a fabulous creative weekend!

Creative and Connected is a regular post each Friday – previous posts below. I hope you enjoy it. I would love any feedback via social media or comments and let me know what you are enjoying too.

Feature image via pexels.com

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You might also enjoy:

How knowing your authentic heart can make you shine

6 Inspiring Podcasts for Creatives and Book Lovers

Creative and Connected #5 – being accountable to ourselves and others

Creative and Connected #4 – the wholehearted edition

inspiration & influence

Seeing stars

February 3, 2013
Orion Nebula

Orion Nebula – by the Smithsonian Institute via flickr

These words are running around my head…

Look at the stars,

Look how they shine for you,

And all the things that you do.

Yes, they are from a song from a while ago, “Yellow” by Coldplay but it’s suddenly on high rotation in my head and I woke up to these words running through me in the middle of last night. They are beautiful, speak of possibility, potential, opportunity. They are sad and make me think of my brother and what I didn’t get to say to him when he couldn’t see the light shining any more. They are words of encouragement to continue to see the light and positives ahead.

These words sit by my desk…

Perhaps they are not the stars but rather openings in heaven where the love of our lost ones pours through and shines down upon us to let us know they are happy

This is an Eskimo proverb apparently. Even before I came across this quote, it was how I liked to think of the stars. I found myself in my deepest moments of grief looking up into the stars with some sense of connection and comfort. It’s something I still do.

These stars shine for me…

I wrote about my seven stars a few years ago when I was just starting out here. These stars still shine for me. Weekly, daily, their words and projects influence and guide me. Here are some recent thoughts on their influence:

Shanna Germain wrote a brilliant post ‘Do the Words: On (Writing) Productivity‘ based on sitting and writing in a cafe while overhearing a conversation about all the barriers the speakers faced to writing. She tweeted:

People at next table spent 2 hrs kvetching about writer’s block. In that time, I wrote 827 words, edited 2 stories. Shut up. Do the words.

Shanna cuts through, does the words, gets on with it and through the resistance and is such a great example of writing productively. This is a message I will be remembering this year: stop talking (or blogging) about it and just get on with it!

Susannah Conway. What can I say, I am a huge fan and cannot capture just how influential Susannah has been to me. This recent post, ‘From the Heart‘ just floored me as Susannah reflected so openly on both the personal toll of her work effort and her sense of being alone; my heart and many others went out to her in return. This post demonstrated, in the deepest way, the sheer vulnerability and honesty that is ‘Blogging from the Heart’, why it is so valuable and how the online community of the heart can provide so much support to each other.

Danielle LaPorte’s ‘Desire Map‘ project and current posts continue to cut through to new thinking. Elsewhere, I was reading about email overload this morning and rules about managing this in the workplace in terms of redefining when people can/can’t email and should/shouldn’t read emails. Part of me is thinking, ‘good idea, we need to manage this better in my workplace‘ and another part of me is thinking, ‘well, what about personal choice and the customer, who might want an answer now?’ Shortly after, I read this post from Danielle, Bag your Boundaries. Wham! Love that fresh, pure, direct thinking.’ You can have both, Danielle says:

You can protect yourself and be open-hearted.

Cool! So I am now thinking about how I can do this in my workplace from a different perspective altogether.

And then there’s Chris Guillebeau who probably started all this; through him I linked up with Danielle and then through to Susannah. He has helped me make so many connections – people, thoughts, plans – and is still out there building empires, fostering world domination and writing posts that, like Danielle, make me look at things from a non-conformist standpoint. Take for example, ‘Changing the System’:

If you want something to change, therefore, show us an alternative. Show us a new way of life.

You are the role model. Not the politician, not the celebrity, not the evangelist. Don’t throw up your hands in resignation, and don’t look for another leader.

It’s all on you, in other words. No pressure.

Whew! No pressure indeed! But it’s so true. It’s easy to complain; it’s easy to give up or to look for someone else to lead but the solutions come from taking responsibility and working through to find another way. My work role as a leader is about making a difference. This is the exactly the way I need to lead: finding the alternatives and being the role model, helping us to work through them.

So, I am seeing stars all around me, a constellation of words, thoughts and song that gather and cluster to propel me to also shine.

What stars are you seeing? What’s making you shine?

creativity poetry transcending

Gems #9 Shining light on yourself

September 27, 2010

Some gems about shining a little light back on yourself…

Just at the same time as Chris Guillebeau is enjoying great popularity with the publication of his book, ‘The Art of Non-Conformity’ , he writes an excellent post shining the light back on his readers. That’s one of the reasons I love Chris and his work: expect the unexpected. I always get such a wonderful blast of fresh thinking and often the reverse of current trends; hence his specialty, ‘nonconformity’, I guess.

In his post, What’s your message? Why not share it? Chris starts by referring to the current trend in social media of talking about others more than yourself. Chris turns the spotlight squarely back:

..ultimately people will follow you because you are doing something interesting, not because you are good at passing on other people’s messages.

A point very well made with much relevance for blogging, tweeting and much of life really:

Be interesting. Be yourself. Do something worth talking about.

Chris then encourages readers to comment about their message. There is much to learn and enjoy in the responses as people focus back on their message and reflect it out again.

Danielle LaPorte’s post on ‘The initiated woman’  shone a light on a very deep place and I knew exactly what she was talking about. It starts with bleeding, vulnerability and giving of the quintessential:

she’s bled from poor decisions that sliced her esteem wide open; and from unguarded boundaries being obliterated; and she’s bled willingly because that’s what you do when people you love are anemic or have been hit by life — you give them your blood. Here, I have lots, it’s fresh and warm. I’ll make more.

And it moves from there to describe a place where the outcomes of experience become a wisdom and strength that can help others. Read it – it is the most beautiful piece of writing. It reminds me of the wonderfully understated words from the song ‘You’re a Heathen of Love’  by Marian Bradfield:

‘Cause experience in a woman never goes astray.

And because Chris says ‘tell us your message’ and ‘be yourself’ and because Danielle says:

She’s so tender she prefers to whisper about her true nature, or write a poem. Abstract. Protected.

…here’s a poem from me. It was written and crafted during my time in Sage Cohen’s highly recommended ‘Poetry for the People’ classes and was featured along with the work of my fellow students on Sage’s ‘Writing the Life Poetic’  blog.

Narrative

She starts up high, facing north

towards slow mist,

watching the sea wash

into the rain’s drift below.

She is called to the beach

as if to a baptism, bride-like,

white as the air, stepping

down the rough rock stairs.

She narrates her life,

writes as she walks,

as if the sand and shells are

the bones of her story.

And the pieces connect her:

an imperfect white oval shell,

a fig leaf from a canopy,

the sketched black lines

of a creature’s moving home.

Cool and tight limbed,

she ends in another place,

as if washed by waves,

her contours, clear and shell-lined

as the Borromean grottoes

of Isolabella,

her white shining lights

coming home.

 

Image, Inishowen Mirror by Janek Kloss from flickr and used under a Creative Commons license with thanks

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blogging creativity writing

Gems #3

June 27, 2010

Some gems shining a little light this week:

I absolutely loved Chris Guillebeau’s recent post, ‘Free Advice’. Talk about challenging things you generally accept without thinking and turning them on their head! This post does this in a fabulously thought-provoking way. I have been reflecting on the thoughts therein for the past week and have certainly found myself challenging some common concepts that are often blindly accepted. Like ‘the customer is always right…’ Are they? Equally fascinating was the stream of comments that emerged from readers with waves of fresh thinking. Like ‘you can’t have your cake and eat it too.’ As one wise reader, Patrenia, comments, ‘Why have the cake if I can’t eat it?’ Indeed. Some great fresh perspectives on all manner of things – customer service, checking emails in the morning, twitter, projects and team – in this post and its flow on comments.

I thoroughly enjoyed Joanna Penn’s podcast interview with Scott Sigler on ‘How to be a NY Times Best-selling Author’. It was another ‘blow your mind’ moment in terms of shifting my thinking about publication, especially self-publishing and podcasting as ways to get written work out there. The world of publishing has changed radically in recent times with technology and it is fascinating to hear the stories of writers such as Scott and their success across different platforms. Joanna Penn’s podcasts at The Creative Penn are full of such dynamic and inspiring stories of innovation in all genres of publishing and social media. Scott Sigler’s newest novel, Ancestor, has its own book trailer developed by him which is amazing and perfectly geared for other visually based media such as YouTube.

Loved this post from literary agent, Rachelle Gardner, on ‘Resources for Writing Memoir’ (via Twitter, Joanna Penn). Not only does it have great  tips and resources for writing memoir, it also has an excellent list of memoirs to read, some of which were familiar and loved and others that were new and endorsed by many – so a great list to delve into. I also love Tristine Rainer’s, ‘Your Life as Story’ about writing memoir and highly recommend it if this is an interest.

Image by Opals-on-Black.com,  from flickr and used under a Creative Commons license.

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blogging creativity planning & productivity writing

Planning to be fluid

June 14, 2010

I have a plan for this blog and where it’s going, and part of the plan is to be fluid but focussed. It’s open; open to intuition, influence and the flow of other thoughts. I have a sense of structure, of where it might lead. You can see this in my category headings  on the right and also in the first post explaining its raison d’etre. All this I will explain and probably understand further in time as it evolves.

The planning underpinning this involved many months of reading, writing, brainstorming, mind-mapping, researching, learning about the blogging process itself and also engaging in the experience of reading blogs and and connecting through social media. I’m still learning so much but it was all about reflecting on my key message, what I felt I had to tell and contribute and learning how to do that in practice, at least enough to begin. Then, getting the courage to start.

But it all needs to remain fluid, to be able to evolve and to take in the constantly new perspectives and thoughts from reading including those from online sources. It is an infinitely fascinating space, the online space, especially influential in how it can shape your thoughts in a positive way.

The other day, I caught up with Chris Guillebeau’s recent post, ‘Transitions‘, a very powerful and beautiful thought piece about holding onto the space of transition before moving on. He encourages focusing on the moment of transition rather than rushing to move on, be it in the sphere of work, travel, relationships or anything else…‘hold on to the moment as long as you can…’, the sheer poignancy of it and what it means.

Somehow from this, I started thinking about the space between planning and intuition. How you need to plan, schedule, have a strategy, know what success looks like, set objectives and set the measures for how you know you have arrived, but that you also need to remain open to intuition, what the stream of consciousness delivers, the post that asks to be written despite your original plan for the day, the work project that needs to be messy and possibly get worse before things can be resolved and moved on.

Allowing a space for openness and  intuition within a plan can only enrich it in the long run, as long as you know where you are heading. The plan is important to keep your overall direction intact but it’s also critical to avoid being rigid and immune to influence once you have a plan and are on your way.

For setting goals in the first place, I have found the following posts and processes useful:

Chris Guillebeau’s annual review process

Chris again and the importance of strategy vs tactics and the need for clear strategy – love the quote in this one.

Paul Myers’ ‘A simple system to achieve your goals’ – great for identifying your contacts and resources amongst other things

Carrie McCarthy and Danielle LaPorte’s book, ‘Style Statement’, I absolutely recommend for understanding your authentic self as a tool for life choices

Shanna Germain’s  musing on goal-setting as a writer – she sets high goals for output and achieves much in the process

The communicatrix’s take on her experience with the goal setting process and what it brings up in its wake

It’s fascinating to see how all the stars who have influenced me are working on goals and strategy. It seems once the direction is set, it’s easier to engage with and reflect on the journey wherever it takes you; easier not to get lost in the important sidetracks or paths that might come up; and easier to assess if a new direction is required.

What’s your take on planning vs intuition?

Image: Fluids’s reflection, by Sergio Tudela via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license

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blogging creativity poetry writing

Being a work in progress

May 26, 2010

Image, La felicità – work in progress by stefozanna, via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

I am reminding myself it is okay to be a work in progress: to begin, to carve and craft as I go, to collect and synthesise, to draft and revise, like forming a poem. It is worse not to begin.

With writing a poem, you capture the image, the association, the string of words that comes in the middle of the night. And from that, you start, draft, craft and revise again. Miss that spark of ignition and you might miss the critical association that could begin your poem. Then, you might hold back from developing it for fear of not achieving the illusory perfected whole poem in your mind.

In a recent inspiring post, Starting with what you have, Chris Guillebeau provides a valuable way to break the feeling of paralysis around starting something: ‘Don’t look at what you think you lack, look at what you have and find a way to make it work.’  He provides some excellent examples about how and where to start for business, writing, art and travel and they are mostly small, focussed, like a kernel, something obtainable or possible.

So I am reminding myself,  it’s okay to be a work in progress, starting with a piece, a step, a chunk, an idea and learning from there. You might need to do some planning, preparation, reading and research to guide how you start and where it leads, but make a start from that essential spark.

Take this blog, for example. I have learnt from reading and watching others and their blogs, from listening to podcasts and reading blogging experts. I have the spark of a connecting idea. I’ve worked it over time, mined it, mind-mapped it, associating and gathering ideas. But starting here each time,  there is more. I am engaging with writing, blogging, flickr, posting, comments and generally putting what I have learnt into practice. Already the connections and response have been beyond my dreams. I have talked about stars and their shining light and I feel very illuminated. Where the light goes and what it illuminates is another thing, but it’s out there, into the dark, an offering.

Not starting is about a lot of things: a desire for perfection, what Danielle LaPorte in an article in fear.less calls a fear epidemic: ‘Everyone is struggling with the same thing: ‘fear of being his or her true self’, a lack of authenticity and all this becomes a form of resistance that can develop a perfectly normal appearance that absolutely freezes you. Creative work suffers from this incredibly and can seem unnecessary or frivolous. You wonder why you would do it and undermine your own creative thoughts and plans.  

Apart from finding a small way to chunk your start and become a work in progress, Steven Pressfield, in the final words of his wonderful book about resistance ‘The War of Art’, suggests that starting is a responsibility: “Creative work is not a selfish act or a bid for attention on the part of the actor. It’s a gift to the world and every being in it. Don’t cheat us of your contribution. Give us what you’ve got.”

So let’s get that work in progress. Before you know it, the posts are connecting around a theme you can stitch together into some larger work; the poems you are posting could become a self-published book and in any case, you realise, more people are reading them this way; you find you are writing a novel or a memoir through what you post; getting your photos up there makes you start thinking in images again; you find a  reason to write and that breaks the hiatus of many years; you find a business idea developing from the responses coming back to you; you create a creative course to get people writing or moving through something. Suddenly you are moving, not frozen.

So what are you considering starting? And what happens if you don’t?

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