How to be brilliant at business

You start your own creative businesses because you have innovative ideas, great products, and a burning desire to ‘do things your way’. You have a strong vision of the work you want to create.

Written by Liz Wren – Business Mentor & Coach, co-creator of Be Brilliant at Business

And guess what: you do have wonderful freedom, inspiration and challenges to relish. You no longer have a ‘boss’ to justify yourself to. How brilliant is that?

At the same time you discover you don’t have all the business skills that you need to match your ideas and creative motivation. Truthfully, it’s very similar to that old idea about being ‘promoted out of your area of competence’ – you become a 'manager'.

Mentoring for creative businesses

In my mentoring work with creative business owners, I have a number of clients who want to come to grips with business functions such as strategic positioning, business development, people management, finance and ‘doing things the accepted way’.

I also have a number of creative mavericks who refuse to look at a bank statement, and cannot and do not ever write a word on a personnel review.

Whatever your view, it is about recognising your own strengths and preferences, and finding creative ways of harnessing them to make your business a success.

Generally, the more vision, focus and skills you can apply, the more satisfying the outcome will be.

Business skills for creatives

Running a small or medium sized creative business can be a lonely place to be. The current harsh economic climate can create great opportunities - if you have the vision, courage and resilience to grab them and make them happen.

Be Brilliant at Business has researched a list of topics that are hot issues for creative business owners at the moment. How many of these do you know you do well?

• Big picture focus
  What are you aiming for, and what will make you happy?
• Standing out from the crowd
  What is your message, and how do you make it pay?
• Valuing yourself
  Do you know, communicate and stand up for your true worth?
• Priorities, focus and juggling
  Finding time to work on your business
• Finding your voice
  Becoming a true leader
• Investing in yourself
  Falling in love with what you do all over again

We ran a workshop programme for experienced business owners, targeting the issues above. Some of the experiences were transformative.

These were already successful business owners and, by focusing a small amount of time on each topic, they created laser-beam focus on the issues important to them. They developed clarity around what they thought and said. They increased motivation and confidence in what they could achieve.

Imagine if your focus, performance and confidence increased even a few percent on these topics... what would that do for your business?

Online resources for business

We have taken those experiences and transferred them into an experiential, online programme which means that many more people can find out for themselves the hidden power they have within themselves.

Find out more about our 6 week online programme: Be Brilliant @ Business – Ready for 2012

One thing that shines through about creative business owners; they take action! And when creativity, focus and action are combined, it is a formidable force!