The Creative Entrepreneur: A Visual Guide to Business Planning

The Creative Entrepreneur by Lisa Sonora BeamThe Creative Entrepreneur: A DIY Visual Guidebook for Making Business Ideas Real by Lisa Sonora Beam is a fantastic guide for any creative type who needs a little inspiration in business planning and operations.

Often creative people get overwhelmed when it comes to the business end of starting and operating a business. Lists, charts and business plans are often presented in a very strict, logical, no frills format that scares right brain people who think in multi-color, music notes, or brush strokes.

Awhile back I reviewed The Right Brain Business Plan by Jennifer Lee. It is a similar book about business planning and operation for the creative individual. If you enjoyed that book then this one will be just as useful to you, if not more.

The full color pages, bright descriptions and inspirational ideas will help you form business plans and ideas with your own creative imprint.

You can mix up your media and use what you know to make your business real. If you paint- then paint a plan, if you scrapbook then put all your business ideas into a scrapbook. If you are a graphic artist create something extraordinary about your business. Plan and promote and make it all come to life within the context of your strengths and abilities.

This fabulous book won’t leave you bored or scared to venture into the business world or put your creative business plans into motion. The first chapter will help you set up a creative visual journal you can use with the exercises offered throughout the book.

The second chapter will lead you through the creation of a Creative Entrepreneur Mandala which will help you visualize where your Heart and Meaning, Gift and Flow, Value and Profitability, and Tools and Skills intersect.

The third chapter addresses the blocks that creative entrepreneurs often face. It offers exercises to help you get past them. The fourth chapter will help you create a visual strategic plan.

The fifth and final chapter discusses creative promotion, marketing and branding ideas and how you can discover what works best for you, while following along with tried and true tactics.

If you’ve always wanted to start a business or you already have started one but need to take it to the next level then The Creative Entrepreneur: A DIY Visual Guidebook for Making Business Ideas Realis a great resource.

2 thoughts on “The Creative Entrepreneur: A Visual Guide to Business Planning”

  1. Hi Wenona, good review. As someone who trains people how to get going in business plans (and I used to deliver a one-day business planning workshop to artists in Devon, UK) I can confirm that the thing that takes the longest to begin with is to get people to unlearn all the bad stuff they have picked up about business planning and to think of it as an original and creative activity. The title of those workshops was “Business planning as an art form” and I generally found that once you liberated people from the bad stuff and enthused them with the possibilities of what they could do – they were fine and actually needed little help to get going. You see, I believe business plans don’t have to be about bad stuff, they can make people’s worlds better too!

  2. Oo! That looks like a handy resource, could have done with that when I was starting my own eco fashion business! My business plans would have looked more like works of art and less like…well, slightly worried scribbles (but they got there in the end 🙂 !).

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