When I talk to creative entrepreneurs about their business struggles, at the top of every list is how to find new clients and projects. That’s why I focus most of my content on marketing, and why I created my online course Marketing Mastery for Creative Entrepreneurs. Keeping your pipeline full of opportunities is indeed an …
Episode 104: Marketing to Find Clients and Gain Control Read More »
Today’s marketing activities are trackable and measurable in so many ways, it can be downright creepy. Isn’t that right, Daniel, from Sioux City Iowa—I know that you’re listening right now while driving down Steuben Street on your way to buy a garden hose from Home Depot. Of course I’m kidding, podcasts are one of the …
When a farmer tills his fields, plants seeds, and fertilises the soil, he’s not doing all that work just hoping, just wishing for a harvest. No, proper agricultural methods dependably result in a crop. Of course every venture under the sun has risks, droughts and blights do happen, but aside from such rare setbacks, proper …
Episode 102: Marketing Transformation Takes Time Read More »
In the introductory session of my new course, Marketing Mastery for Creative Entrepreneurs, I review the three essential resolutions that are necessary for any successful marketing program. Like a three legged stool, if any one of these resolutions are lacking the other two stop working, and your marketing efforts will fall flat. In fact, as …
Welcome to episode 100 of 5 Minutes on Creative Entrepreneurship. For podcasters reaching the 100 mark is a significant milestone. And I’d like to take this opportunity to first thank you for listening. Secondly, I’d like to mark this occasion by letting you know about a new digital course I’ll soon be releasing called Marketing …
Episode 100: A New Course on Marketing Mastery for Creative Entrepreneurs Read More »
The creative service business model is most often structured around time and materials. This means your total compensation is capped by simple math. Available time, multiplied by your hourly rate, minus overhead. But what happens when you have available time, but no billable work to fill it? Downtime for the creative entrepreneur can be deadly. …
In the last episode of 5 Minutes on Creative Entrepreneurship I talked about the maximum earning potential for creative entrepreneurs. While creatives don’t go into business to make a killing, we still want to be well compensated for the value we deliver to clients. But while making good money from our work is great, that’s …
Episode 98: Crushing the Joy Killers in Business Read More »
When startup founders launch a new business they pour themselves into it, fueled by hopes and dreams of building a new multi-million dollar company. When creative entrepreneurs launch, they don’t imagine massive cash infusions from investors, or of taking their company public. There may be, and ought to be hopes for increased compensation, but more …
Episode 97: How Lucrative Can Creative Entrepreneurship Be? Read More »
Managing time is essential for creative entrepreneurs since our services are so often sold by time and materials. Becoming accurate in estimating projects, keeping projects on track and on budget, and balancing project time with non-billable overhead time are all necessary skills in this business. The only way to improve these skills is to build …
Humans have an interesting relationship to time. While the clock ticks by at a perfectly constant rate, our experience of time is highly variable. Vacations seem to fly by. But if you’re laid up with a bad back, time slows to a crawl. There are similar perception-based time distortions in running your creative practice. Estimating …
Episode 95: Time Warps that Distort Your Business Read More »
The summer is quickly coming to a close, I hope you were able to take some well earned time off, or that you’ll still be able to squeeze in a vacation. But when you run your own business, especially if you’re a freelance creative, you might find it difficult to take time off. After all, …
Episode 94: Were You Able to Take a Break This Summer? Read More »
The majority of episodes in 5 Minutes on Creative Entrepreneurship deal with the challenges we face with the business side of creativity. Most of these struggles are external such as difficulties in marketing, in managing money, and contending with growth. But as creative entrepreneurs we don’t only face external struggles, but also the creative struggle …
Episode 93: Creativity: The Struggle and The Gift Read More »
There’s no question that being a creative entrepreneur is not the easiest path. Going into business for yourself demands considerable effort, diligence, determination, and plain hard work. A fellow entrepreneur friend of mine used to joke that the best part of being in business for yourself is that you get to choose your hours. You …
Episode 92: Must the Hustle and Grind Last Forever? Read More »
Does your company’s operating budget adequately anticipate infrequent future expenses? We can easily plan a budget based on our known monthly expenses, but are we prepared when an expensive annual software license comes due? Or, what if you had to hire a lawyer to help with a complex contract, or worse, to help resolve a …
Last time we explored the topic of creative methodologies, and how they can improve your sales and marketing. A proven methodology that focuses on solving specific problems not only boosts your sales game, but it also leads to efficiencies that enable you to increase the margins you retain from your project fees. A well-oiled methodology …
Episode 90: How Methodology Can Boost Profit Margins Read More »
If you’ve been listening to this podcast for very long you’re probably acquainted with the five motifs that structure 5 Minutes on Creative Entrepreneurship: Money, Minutes, Marketing, Management, and Motivation. Well there is a sixth motif that could be added, and conveniently it also starts with the letter “M.” Your creative Methodology can be a …
Throughout history new technologies have always had beneficial, yet disruptive outcomes. The printing press put many scribes out of work. Photographic typography ended the careers of linotype operators, and digital photography has put tons of pressure on professional photographers. Today, the Internet’s enabling of world wide crowdsourcing, is having similar effects on creative freelancers. How …
The creative service business is made up of two main parts. Creativity and service. Yeah, obvious, I know. But the path to bringing these two things together professionally is neither obvious nor simple. Providing any kind of professional service is challenging. Clients can be a touchy bunch. They can sometimes be demanding, demeaning, and down …
Very few creatives launch their practices planning to cash out with a big exit down the road. This is one significant difference between creative entrepreneurs and other startup founders. We get into our trade out of love for our craft, not so much for the financial rewards. But the very fact that we start our …
Episode 86: Manage As If You’re Going To Sell Your Firm Read More »
Back in episode 23 I talked about how marketing is a marathon, not a 100 yard dash. I’ve been thinking about that analogy recently, and I need to revise it slightly. Really marketing is more like training for a marathon than actually running one. If you want to run a marathon you would need to …
The best approach for marketing a creative practice involves PinPoint Positioning followed by a consistent content strategy. The long-term benefits of this approach pay huge dividends to creative entrepreneurs. Of course executing on a content strategy requires a significant time investment. If you make weekly or monthly deposits into your content investment portfolio, you may …
Mastering the basics of marketing your creative practice can take many years. Just keeping up with your content strategy, and maintaining the habit of regularly reaching out to prospects is a huge challenge. So you might not be thinking about what comes next. But if you stick with the program, after a few years you’ll …
When my cell phone rings, I often joke with my kids that it’s probably my good friend Potential, Potential Spam. Nine out of ten times it is indeed a robot. And every day when I check my email I have to delete multiple unsolicited messages from marketers who somehow escaped my spam filter. Even on …
As creatives we help our clients by producing ads, layouts, web pages, photos and other media for them to use in their marketing campaigns. In many cases their marketing channels include advertising, direct mail, and other mass media broadcast channels. When we spend so much time focusing on broad business-to-consumer marketing methods for our clients, …
Episode 81: The Essential Marketing Method for Creatives Read More »
Over the past few episodes we’ve charted the course for growing a creative practice. And we’ve considered growth in the light of the goal most creative entrepreneurs have to remain involved in creative work as you build your business. While this is a common goal, it’s not a common outcome. Without a carefully planned hiring …
Episode 80: How to Hire Team Members That Fit Your Firm Read More »
Last week I discussed the key decision about hiring your first overhead role—and whether that should be a client facing account manager, or a market-facing account maker. While you might want to find one person for both roles—that never works out. If you try to economize that way, you may end up permanently struck in …
When your creative practice takes off, delivering more work than you can handle, your most natural inclination will be to hire other designers to lighten your load. But this sets off a chain reaction. By the time you’ve hired one or two, you’ll find yourself consumed with managing clients and projects more than doing creative …
Episode 78: Don’t Cross the Sales and Service Streams Read More »
Growing a business is one of life’s greatest challenges. It’s not for the faint-hearted. There are millions of people, with business training, who have failed to accomplish this dream. If building and growing a business is hard for people who’s entire training was toward that end, what chance do we have, as creative entrepreneurs, without …
Episode 77: How to Remain a Creative and Grow Your Business Read More »
As creatives begin to build up a client base, and demand for their work starts to grow, we inevitably face the question of what to do when we’ve tapped out our own personal time resources. Do we simply say “no” to new clients, or do we expand our capacity by hiring help? This is a …
This past year has been tough on many small businesses. Certain sectors of the economy were entirely shut down overnight. Some have yet to recover. If you’ve been listening to 5 Minutes on Creative Entrepreneurship for very long you know how important PinPoint Positioning is to marketing a creative practice. But what if your industry …
Episode 75: Did the Lockdowns Cancel Your Creative Practice? Read More »
Delivering professional creative services involves at least two parties, the creative and the client. A successful project requires both parties to communicate well, respect each other’s goals and objectives, and enter into a project in good faith. Even when all these boxes are checked projects are still vulnerable to many pitfalls. Genuine mistakes and miscommunication …
Creatives work hard for their money. And not just in the studio. It takes a lot of work just to find projects in the first place. We have to build portfolios, market our work, make presentations, and write proposals. Only after successfully winning new business do we start pouring ourselves out to produce our work. …
Being a creative entrepreneur involves making decisions, sometimes risky decisions. Wise decision making requires having good information to guide you. And one of the best sources for good information is your money. Evaluating your expenditures, your cash flow, your equity, your balance sheet, all these sources can deliver valuable and necessary insights that inform business …
Do you maintain a budget for your personal or business expenses? One of the keys to effective budgeting is to re-evaluate them every so often. When you first set a budget you might have to engage in some guess work, not being entirely sure about what your costs will be. But learning to work within …
Episode 71: Managing and Maximizing Your Time Resources Read More »
Entrepreneurship involves risk. The possibility of failure can never be erased from the equation. Among the many points of failure in business, there is one that hurts the most. The failure to accurately price our work, so that we end up taking a bath on our projects. When we underestimate our work, we are forced …
When a creative has launched out on their own, they’ve entered the path of entrepreneurship. Being an entrepreneur is not for the faint of heart. Entrepreneurship involves risk. Even a simple solo-preneur freelance practice assumes all the risks associated with being in business for yourself. The ultimate risk you take is simply that you might …
Episode 69: Free Yourself from the Fear of Failure Read More »
Back in my art school days I took dozens of classes in drawing, painting, and design. We studied our craft intensely. And as senior year approached we all started working diligently on our portfolios, getting ready to make the transition from student to creative professional. We all felt tremendous excitement and anticipation, and no small …
Episode 68: Are You Cut Out for Creative Entrepreneurship? Read More »
Over the past eight weeks we’ve been imagining what it would be like to present our creative practice on Shark Tank. While this fantasy will never be a reality, since investors don’t buy into professional services companies, thinking like an investor can help expose weakness in our business models. Venture capital may not be available …
Episode 67: Do You Have a Prospect Education Problem? Read More »
Last week we evaluated some important issues when considering the formation of a business partnership. This is a common path for many creative entrepreneurs. But it’s also common for partnerships to fail. And so considering the kind of partner you’re looking for, what their buy in costs will be, and working out how you’ll handle …
Episode 66: Partnerships, Part 2: Ownership Versus Employment Read More »
As we’ve been running our thought experiment, imagining what it might be like to present our creative practices on Shark Tank, we’ve had to face the reality that finding an investor for businesses like ours is never going to happen. We’re on our own in business. But while the investor path may be closed, we …
Having just launched my new online course, Marketing Mastery for Creative Entrepreneurs, I’ve been reaching out to some of my connections on LinkedIn to let
Marketing automation is all the rage in our high tech, data-driven world. Platform after platform tempts us with advanced capabilities for click funnels, drip campaigns,
Running any business these days requires the use of digital platforms. Everything from basic email, to managing finances, to marketing and customer relationship management, all
Your creative practice’s growth is fueled by marketing, but in order to achieve a balanced, sustainable, and profitable practice you may need help with other aspects of managing your business.
If you need help with a single issue business problem, whether marketing, financial, managerial, or any other aspect of running your business, we’re here to help!