Effectively Focused: Laying the Foundation for Your Creative Corral - Part IV

Part I
Part II
Part III

The final article in the series, Laying the Foundation for Your Creative Corral. You're juggling life priorities and you know why you want to start a creative business. Now what?

Obstacles

What obstacles are in your way toward following your life priorities? I like the creative approach of writing a mind-map to anticipate obstacles that prevent me from achieving my life's priorities. When I did this exercise, it made me realize that my creative business was at the bottom of the priority heap. I know! Shocking! Yet, this revelation helped me create some boundaries:

1. Time Budget. I created a maximum weekly limit, a monthly schedule, and budgeted my blog-surfing, computer work, research, design work, production, etc.
2. Money Budget. I have some other financial goals I want to achieve before I am ready to invest in growing the business. This helped me to make some decisions of living within my creative budget and utilizing the stash I had already accumulated rather that continuing to try new things. It also contributed to the decision to slow down and become really skilled in one medium.
3. Attitude Budget. I have a tendency to throw myself at something I really like. I came to the understanding that, at this point in time, the creative business was currently an extra, a bonus, a Life Seasoning. Amazingly, doing my activities in priority order, has actually allowed me to find ways to become more efficient and effective with my regular priorities. I also approach my business in a more organized fashion, too. By letting the jewelry business flow around all of my other activities, I get to indulge quite often (a newsletter! a blog! jewelry! glass! a shop!) without guilt.

Do a check-up on your priorities every few months and make sure your activities are properly aligned with your priorities. By creating the foundation for your Creative Corral you can begin to grow your business effectively and with purpose.

Next month's newsletter: understanding your value system and how it applies to your online presence. The internet has some feelings of a modern wild, wild west. How can you translate your IRL (In Real Life) values into a principled business and online presence? Want to read the whole article on the first of June? Sign up for the newsletter over to the left.

Effectively Focused: Laying the Foundation for Your Creative Corral - Part III

So, you're lining up your life priorities, now what?
Motivation
Why are you starting a creative business? Do merely need to vent creativity? Do you want your hobby to pay for itself? Do you want to make some extra money or build a full business? Do you want to create an art empire? Your motive contributes to the focus and helping your business move forward to the goal instead of meandering and not really going anyhere. Don't make the mistake of defining your financial goal yet. Merely have an understanding of your motives. When you re-visit your priorities periodically, you may be at different points on the motivation continuum. Can you give more time to the business? Do you need to downgrade the priority to care for more urgent matters? That's okay! Your priority list helps you juggle and organize the activities that are most important at this point in time.
Next week: the final post in the series, Laying the Foundation for Your Creative Corral

Effectively Focused: Laying the Foundation for Your Creative Corral - Part II

Following up from last week's post on Laying the Foundation for Your Creative Corral, there are three questions, that only you can answer. The first one:

Priorities

What are your life priorities? Within those priorities, what are the sub-priorities? What are "must-attend" appointments for the week/month? Understanding your priorities and their relationship to each other helps you know what needs to be sacrificed and in what order. It's amazing how much you get done when working from a priority list. For me, it also a motivator to care for my priorities in the most effective and efficient way...so I can go play and do something creative (it's my creative carrot). I can then create without guilt. This habit also protects me from burnout.

Next week, Question #2...

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Effectively Focused: Laying the Foundation for Your Creative Corral - Part I

After dabbling with a creative business for the last 6-7 years, I have become very serious about glass, silver, and jewelry. As I was writing the original article on developing a mission statement, I saw interwoven in the content a foundation that was implied but never stated. This article backs up a few steps and addresses laying the foundation of your creative business by cementing the cornerstones of your principles:

1. identifying and organizing your life priorities as they relate to each other
2. your value system and how it will translate into your business practices and online presence

This article is devoted to the first step.
Every few months, I receive reminders to make sure I am approaching my life's priorities in the proper order. I need the reminders because it's so easy to let things get out of whack and pretty soon you're doing things in the wrong order and you have created unnecessary angst. When you do things in the wrong order, life becomes inefficient which swirls into a toxic tornado of stress and guilt, which then saps creative energy and joy.

Lifting a creative business is going to involve more time. If you already have a packed life, you probably wonder how you can possibly add any more without stealing from another area. I found reviewing my priorities a vital exercise in figuring out where my creative endeavors fit.

My Story

When I finally gave myself permission to indulge my creativity, it was unleashed in a blinding storm. My mind churned out a myriad of creative sprites that galloped off into too many artistic directions...stringing, wirework, photography, crocheting, lampwork beads, knitting, sewing, chain maille, metalsmithing, silver clay, website ideas, colored pencils, collage. Dizzy yet? Yeah, so was I. To complicate that, opportunities were popping up and I wasn't prepared to deal with them. I was in need of corralling my wild herd of creative sprites.

So, maybe your creativity is a continuous stream and you don't have to worry about reining the creativity in. However, you still need a foundation of principles from which to lift off and guide the business. You will be layering in new activities as they relate to a creative business. Knowing your priorities makes your decision-making efficient and effective. You focus on the activities that help reach your goals and sort the ineffective activities to the bottom. Having a focus...or a creative corral...will help you figure out whether you should say yes! or [gasp] no to an opportunity. If you do say yes, understanding your priorities helps you set expectations, direct opportunities to a version that is more in line with your goals, and to say no without guilt (isn't saying no hard for women?), then organize the resulting tasks.

It's also good to note that, unlike a herd of mustangs, creative sprites aren't bounded by gravity. They can (and should) still float up out of the corral, plucking ideas that meander across...but with guidelines that make sense in the context of the creative corral you've defined.
Part II will follow next Monday.
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