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In my
opinion, to be a Creative Business there are only two things you need to get
right:
1
Creative
2
Business
Obvious?
Ridiculous?
Pretty
much all creative businesses are born from an incredible creative talent,
passion and an earth shaking moment of inspiration. And pretty much all of the
people at the heart of these amazing startups don’t have a business degree or
even any experience of running a business. But this doesn’t matter. At least initially
it doesn’t. It’s their passion, excitement and determination that gets things
moving. No business theory or text book gives you this.
But
then what? 6 months in, the work is drying up or never really happened in the
first place. Or two years in and the staff, the studio, the endless regulations
or the general lack of organisation and control has impacted on your motivation
and the creativity.
I have
worked with many creative business owners who’s initial objection to anything
resembling ‘structure’ or ‘processes’ is that this will kill their creativity
and culture, that they don’t want to become number crunchers, form fillers, or
data-enterers. A system would be claustrophobic and stifling. We want to keep
fresh and keep our identity.
My
point is this. You might have the best offering in the creative world, you
might have the best people working for you. But if no-one knows who you are, or
you mess up your staff’s pay, get hit with an unexpected tax bill, realise too
late you are trading insolvently or fall in to any number of potential business
pot holes, the creative element immediately goes with it. You have to
aggressively protect your ‘offering’ and culture but importantly make the
business element work for you. If your top creative needs to go on a 2 day
drinking bender or spend a day at The Tate or wandering round the Natural
History Museum for creative inspiration, build your systems around this. Cost
it. Plan it. Give them that freedom with the knowledge that you have accounted
for it and that they won’t be constantly plagued with calls of ‘where are you
up to with this job’ or ‘who’s meeting the client today because you’re not in’.
I don’t know any Creatives who are able to be creative when surrounded by chaos
(the stressful kind, not the fun kind!).
How
many of our most admired artists died without a penny? Imagine going back in
time and developing Van Gogh’s marketing campaign, negotiating with art
dealers, establishing distribution channels etc. Allowing the great painter to
focus on doing what he did best (well, he did many things well, but not all
were legal or lucid). Who knows, with a decent business plan, would he have
felt the need to pick up the gun…
Blog written by Nancy Dykins of The Launchpad
Detail from Vincent Van Gogh, 'Self Portrait with Bandaged Ear', 1889
London, Courtauld Institute Gallery
© Photo: Bridgeman Art Library, London
Detail from Vincent Van Gogh, 'Self Portrait with Bandaged Ear', 1889
London, Courtauld Institute Gallery
© Photo: Bridgeman Art Library, London
