037: Creative Entrepreneurship & Kite Flying

Starving Artist No More

Figuring out your strategy to make your creative business work is much easier said than done. You might think you know how things work in your creative industry, and you might be doing all the things that should be the right things, and yet nothing is working for you. Perhaps you even see things working out for one of your creative colleagues, but it’s just not happening for you. When you feel like you’re employing workable strategies and yet you’re seeing any progress in your creative business, what’s going on? The exact, detailed answer to that question is going to be different for every creative, but I think there are some universal truths that are common to all of us. And I recently was struck by those truths in the most unlikely of places: while at the beach, flying kites. I’m excited to share with you what I learned about business strategy by visiting the beach and attempting to fly a kite.

In this episode, you will learn:

• What kite flying can teach us as creative entrepreneurs.
• How to adjust your strategy when it feels like you’re just not getting anywhere, even though you’re doing everything right.
• Why timing matters in our creative businesses, and how we can play a hand in making sure that the timing is right.
• What it means to notice every opportunity that comes your way, and how you can take advantage of those opportunities.

In this episode, I discuss the "Invisible Gorilla" experiment conducted in 1999 by Dan Simons & Chris Chabris, and you can watch the original video from that experiment here.

I also refer to previous episodes of this podcast:

• 007: Working in your Creative & Financial Sweet Spot
• 016: The Six Components of a Thriving Creative Business
• 025: Make Your Own Luck

A full transcript of this episode can be found here. Full transcripts of every episode will always be available at the Starving Artist No More Blog.

Thank you for listening. Please feel free to reach out to me at www.StarvingArtistNoMore.com, with any questions, comments, or feedback. I'd love to hear from you.