Why creativity coaching is useful for creative solopreneurs
The crossover from creativity coaching to business coaching for creatives is a natural match, as the tools learned in creativity coaching are incredibly useful for solopreneurs.
I trained as a kaizen-muse creativity coach in 2014, but it wasn’t because I had a big dream of becoming a coach. I wanted to learn about the creative process, and get tools to understand myself.
The training was incredible. I hesitate to use the words “life changing”, but for me, it was.
As well as hoping to find out more about myself as a creative person, I also hoped to get more clear on figuring out how to “do” business as a multi creative.
I learned a huge amount about myself, hence the life-changing experience, but the training wasn’t business focused, so I didn’t learn much there.
My interest in business, in good business run well, and doing good, began in my late teens.
I’ll get back to that, but first I want to present my case for why creativity coaching is useful for solopreneurs.
Why creativity coaching is useful for solopreneurs
Kaizen-muse creativity coaching honors and celebrates the non-linear process of creativity and doing creative work.
This coaching looks at your specific process, the imperfect and messy bits that trigger creative blocks, and then you get tools to help you work through them.
That’s two good reasons right there!
Starting and running a business is as much a creative process with ups and downs, as starting and finishing a piece of music, painting, or such.
In my experience, the reason we don’t get the results we are “promised” from online courses, and the like, is because many of us have blocks that gets triggered at different stages, and those courses don’t help us through us that, in the way creativity coaching does.
Before we’re any of the titles we like to wear like funky hats, we’re just people. People with hang-ups, insecurities, triggers, hopes, dream, and intentions.
Going through a creative process will naturally bring up fear because it will expose who you are.
Writing blog posts, designing a website, letting ourselves be seen on social media, workshops, courses, and a million other creative acts related to your business, involves a process for creating it. Cue feelings of self-doubt and and whole rainbow of fears.
Working through those creative blocks, is the work of a creativity coach.
The solopreneur’s alone process
Solopreneurs are a special kind of brave people, in my book.
It takes a lot of courage, learning, discipline, knowledge and creativity to run a one-woman shop, and make it sustainable financially.
Choosing to live knowing you don’t have a secure paycheck coming to you at the end of the month, is vulnerable at best, and downright stress inducing at worst.
Brave is what it is.
Your creative process is your best friend as a solopreneur. It’s the work you wake up to every day, and it can feel comforting, interesting, and joyfully meaningful.
It can also be your worst enemy, if you let procrastination and perfectionism be the boss of you. If your self-criticism is driving the process, work can quickly feel like a chore.
This is where creativity coaching is useful, essential even.
I hope I’ve been able to articulate clearly enough how creativity coaching is worth thinking about, if you’re a creative solopreneur.
The secret business interest of a blond Dane - a little back story
Like I wrote, my interest in business started in my late teens, and I kept the interest to myself for a long time. It would have been like saying to my parents I would like to go to the moon. It would have received about the same reaction.
In the Sunday papers (remember those?), it was always the business and culture sections that interested me.
When I lived in Dublin, in my early 20’s I got really far in trying to start a business selling Danish ice cream in 1/2 liter tubs to newsagents, and at a unit in the - then being build - Blanchardstown Shopping center.
In the end, the lack of funding, and support from the company, meant I didn’t succeed (so stupid on their part), and I had a couple of “almost made it” business adventures over the years.
Not only was I up against my own lack of experience, but I was also stepping into a male arena filled with discrimination. I was tall, pretty, blond and Danish, and that was not the type of business person that was taken seriously.
However, I always got promoted in the jobs I had, often becoming manager, because I knew how to run a better business, and I could increase the bottom line, and decrease waste.
I was, and am, interested in doing business in a good way, meaning with decency, kindness, honesty, transparency, and humor at the core.
Selling products and services that creates better conditions for people and planet.
I cannot for the life of me understand, how companies still don’t understand that being dodgy and bullying won’t work in the long run. You wouldn’t believe the amount of douchebag, bullshitting big ego people I have come across over the years. Some would happily sell their own grandmother to get ahead.
Not getting on with these types of people, has either gotten me fired, or meant I’ve left jobs.
There is a better way, right?
I started a vintage clothes shop online that did ok, but cost a lot of money. I made some highly costly website and graphic design mistakes. Knew nothing about online business, which took me on a steep learning curve.
Over the years I’ve done #allthebusinesscourses, online and in Business College. Enough to confidently say, I’m building my pivot into business coaching on a solid foundation.
Maybe you have a similar story?
Creativity coaching is your rescue for creative business processes too
I makes perfect sense to me to seek creativity coaching to your creative business process struggles. At least a creativity coach with a massive passion for running good businesses, and what Mary Porta’s calls “The Kindness Economy.”
Next time you get stuck doing projects in your good business, maybe a course, writing blog posts, or getting clear on how you can specialize your doing-good business incorporating several interests, you now know, that creativity coaching is what can help you get through your process.
And not just get your through with gritted teeth, but give you tools that will make your personal creative process more enjoyable going forward.
Did I manage to sway you? :)
If you found this post useful, I’d love for you to get my emails too. That’s a place I share most of what is going on in front and behind the scenes. .)
