Drawing by Hugh MacLeod

If you’re an artist or creative person of any kind then ‘creating’ is a lot higher on your list of priorities than ’selling’.

One of the great joys of pursuing your creative passion is the sheer pleasure of writing, painting, making music, acting, taking pictures or whatever you do — without any ulterior motive, and without needing to show any kind of ‘return on investment’. You do it because you love to do it. Amen to that.

On the other hand, even if you don’t want to be a millionaire, I bet you wouldn’t mind a little fame. Not vulgar Hello! Magazine celebrity, but maybe the respect of your fellow artists, and some critical recognition. A few adoring fans probably wouldn’t hurt either.

You don’t have to be rich as well as famous, but all of us have bills to pay, so I’m guessing you wouldn’t mind earning a decent living from your creative work. Getting paid to do what you love has to be one of the greatest gigs on earth.

We are now living at a time of unprecedented opportunity for artists and creative professionals. Once upon a time, if you wanted to get your work in front of an audience, you had to submit it to an editor, agent, manager, curator, talent scout, whoever. A gatekeeper who had the power to open the gate and usher you through, or slam it in your face.

They called the shots, so when they said “Jump!” we jumped — and when they said “10%” we agreed to 10%. What else were we going to do?

Now, the Internet gives you the chance to gatejump, to build your own platform, find your own fans and sell your work directly to them. And it won’t cost you a fortune. Most of the software and tools you’ll need are either free or very low cost.

And that’s not even the really good news — it gets even better …

Your Creativity Gives You an Unfair Advantage

One of the biggest trends in internet marketing at the moment is something called content marketing. In a nutshell, it means creating and giving a way original media content that doesn’t look like marketing — but functions like marketing.

For example, Matthew Inman creates hysterically funny cartoons and gives them away for free on his website The Oatmeal. And because they are so cool and funny, lots of people send their friends to look at them, via Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites. When you visit his site, he offers to send you more cool cartoons for free. What’s not to like? I’m just one of thousands of people who have signed up for his free cartoons.

As a result, Matthew has a mailing list of people who want to hear from him. He also has a shop on his website, where you can buy posters and mugs of his cartoons. And he has a book coming out soon. Not everyone who visits his site or signs up for his mailing list will become a customer — but enough of them do to create a nice income stream for Matthew. So Matthew gets to be a professional cartoonist, his website visitors get a good laugh for free, and his loyal customers are even more thrilled with their purchases. Win-win-win.

Not only that, but people like me, with audiences of our own, start doing his marketing for him, by writing about his website and recommending his stuff.

Is Matthew highly creative? Yes. Is he generous? Yes. Does he have a smart business strategy? You bet.

Matthew understands the fact that what people are looking for online is original and remarkable media content. In his case, he’s producing entertainment. But others have succeeded with art, news and particularly education. He is a visual artist, so obviously he uses images. But others are using text, audio and video just as successfully.

You see, even when Matthew gives away his cartoons for free, he’s not really giving them away for free. He’s giving them in return for visitors to his website and subscribers to his mailing lists. In a nutshell, he’s giving his work away in return for attention. Now that he has an audience paying attention, he’s in a very strong position to sell products, services, advertising or whatever else he wants.

Matthew’s success (ahem) illustrates one of the central paradoxes of Internet marketing: the less your media content looks like advertising, the more effective it will be as advertising.

If he had started a website that was nothing more than an advert for his books and posters, how much traffic do you think he would get? Not much. But because he is giving away something genuinely valuable and making it easy for others to copy and share it, he’s created a business that virtually markets itself. Welcome to the future.

In my own case, my business was transformed the day I added a blog to the Wishful Thinking website. Before that, I had a nice-looking brochure website that told people what a good coach and trainer I was — and which hardly sold a thing. When I started the blog, my website traffic took off — and so did the new business enquiries. My version of content marketing is to write educational articles with practical tips for creative people. Over the last four years, this has become my main source of new business, and has led to some amazing business opportunities I’d never have dreamt of when I started out.

Internet marketers have known about content marketing for years, and some of them really do earn millions of dollars a year with little more than a laptop, a network of trusted associates, and some very large mailing lists.

Nowadays, companies in all kinds of industries are starting to cotton on to the fact that they need to start thinking like media companies, and producing original articles, videos, podcasts, educational resources and news updates, if they want to command attention and generate online buzz and business.

And you know what? Lots of them are tearing their hair out. You don’t go into the frozen food business because you want to work in media. But now they are faced with having to create entertaining and engaging media content, or be left behind.

Even their marketing departments are confused. Remember the paradox: the more your media content looks like advertising the less effective it will be as advertising. If you’ve been working in a traditional marketing department — categorising and ‘targeting’ people and treating them like ‘consumers’, bombarding them with advertising and marketing-speak — this is a hard lesson to learn.

You of course, don’t have that problem. Creating original, engaging, remarkable images, sounds, text, music or video is what you do best. You’re already a one-person media company. Even if you hate the very idea of marketing, you should know that when it comes to Internet marketing, your creativity gives you an unfair advantage.

If you’d like to know what you can do with that advantage, read on.

Option 1: Build Your Own Audience

The first and sexiest option is to do what Matthew did and build your own audience online, creating a remarkable website that you love to work on and people love to visit and tell their friends about.

If you do this smartly, it means other people will send you potential customers, you’ll be found easily on the search engines and you will gradually build up mailing lists of fans who are prepared to pay good money for your work. Kevin Kelly famously estimated that a creator needs only 1,000 true fans to make a living via the Internet. The number obviously varies depending on what you are saying and how much you can charge for it, but the basic principle still holds.

This is the route chosen by artists Natasha Wescoat Hazel Dooney, Hugh MacLeod and John T Unger, graphic designer David Airey, musicians Steve Lawson and Tobias Tinker, craft artist Emily Martin and writer Justine Musk.

If you’re reading this thinking “That’s all very well for those people, but I work in such a non-commercial medium that I can’t imagine earning enough money from it”, then hold that thought for a moment. For one thing, who would have thought that solo bass playing could be the foundation of a viable career?

And for another, even if you would struggle to earn a living from your primary creative passion, maybe there’s something related to it that could provide you with a viable and fulfilling business.

For example, I write poetry, and not even the trendy hip kind of poetry at that. Old-fashioned stuff like sonnets, blank verse and sestinas. I’m not banking on it making me a millionaire any time soon. But I’ve discovered that people are willing to pay me to teach them about creativity, productivity and other professional skills for creative people. The result is that I love my work so much that it doesn’t really feel like work. And thanks to the wonders of content marketing and the Internet, I even love the marketing side of things.

What could be more fun than writing about your favourite artists, writers, films and rock stars? Nice work if you can create it — and I’m glad I did.

Option 2: Partner with Others

Remember those company owners tearing their hair out at the prospect of having to start producing media content? To them, it’s a nightmare — but for you, it’s an opportunity.

You have the ability to write the articles, draw the images, record the music and produce the videos they need. What’s to stop you teaming up with them – to help them create the online presence they need, and to allow you to learn a decent living doing something you enjoy?

I’m not suggesting you go out and start composing odes to frozen peas. (Not unless it really blows your hair back.) Pick a company you really admire, whose products or services you use and recommend. Have a look at their website — how does it compare with Matthew’s? Could you help them do better? Can you see yourself writing about them, or building them a website, or helping them make educational videos that genuinely help their customers? If so, what’s to stop you getting in touch with them?

I’m not talking about freelance gigs either. You have an unfair advantage, remember? That’s worth more than an hourly rate. Look for companies who are willing to partner with you, for a share of the profits or even a stake in the business. That way you reap the true rewards of your efforts, and both of you have a real investment in making the venture a success.

Have a look at the English Cut blog. It’s written by Savile Row tailor Thomas Mahon. When he started it, he was in need of new clients. Now he has a long waiting list of people who want to spend thousands of pounds on one of his suits — which he attributes directly to the success of his blog.

Now have a look at the Stormhoek wine blog. Stormhoek is a small South African winery, which was in need of new customers before it started the blog. And thanks to the blog and various other initiatives, its sales have skyrocketed in the last few years. And for some reason they’re doing very well in places like Silicon Valley and Texas.

In both cases, that “some reason” is cartoonist Hugh MacLeod. Not only does he run his own successful business by his Gapingvoid website, he’s the mastermind behind English Cut and Stormhoek’s online marketing. He showed them how to use blogging to command attention and attract new customers, and it worked out very well for all concerned.

I also use partnering in my business. As well as running Wishful Thinking, I’m a partner in Lateral Action with Brian Clark, one of the most successful Internet marketers on the planet, and Tony Clark, who is also Brian’s partner on hugely successful ventures such as Teaching Sells and Third Tribe.

Now why would a couple of ‘big shot’ American entrepreneurs want to partner with an introverted poet from England? One reason is that I love writing about creativity, and I’m prepared to write and edit the Lateral Action blog which powers our content marketing strategy. Meanwhile, they get to work on the bits of the business they love doing. Win-win-win again.

Here’s the Bad News

You knew there was some bad news, right? Whenever I run my workshop on Web Marketing for Creative People, I can sense people getting excited when I tell them about the opportunities of the online world. But it’s not long before someone raises their hand and asked the following question:

But doesn’t this take an awful lot of time?

And the answer, of course, is “Yes”. If you really want to succeed online, it will take a lot of time. Let’s face it, if you want to succeed at anything worthwhile, it’s going to take a lot of time.

If you feel discouraged by that, think about how you feel when somebody admires your skill at writing, drawing, playing music or whatever. “I’d love to be able to do that,” they tell you, “but I bet it takes a lot of time to learn, right?”. And what can you say?

Of course it takes a lot of time — but you do it anyway, because you love doing it, and because you want the results it gives you. You know there are no shortcuts, but you’re happy to accept the challenge.

Finding and nurturing your thousand true fans is hard work, make no mistake. It takes a lot of time, not to mention creativity and sheer persistence. Only you can decide whether the potential rewards are worth investing your time and effort. Or whether it would be easier to go the traditional route, and catch the eye and win the favour of the gatekeepers in your industry.

Technically, it’s not rocket science but there is a bit of a learning curve involved. You can get help with that, but unless you already an active internet user, you’ll need to be prepared to learn a little about the technical side of things. I should point out that I’m not a programmer or web designer. I am a wordsmith and a ‘people person’ with a background in psychotherapy, coaching and training. If I can do it, so can you.

Probably the biggest hurdle for many creative people is the very idea of putting yourself out there and selling things. You might worry that it feels like ’selling out’. Or that it’s just plain scary. I’m afraid I can’t sugarcoat this bit: if you want to earn a living from your creative work, you need to learn how to sell.

Even if you opt for employment, you’ll still need to ’sell’ yourself to an employer, and ’sell’ your work to your manager, your teammates and your clients. If you’re a freelancer or entrepreneur, you’ll have to takeaway those inverted commas and learn how to sell full stop.

On the plus side, if you adopt the content marketing approach, you get to produce fabulous work that functions as advertising because it doesn’t look like advertising. Which makes it a hell of a lot more fun to create.

“OK, Where Do I Start?”

“Build it and they will come” is a nice idea, but even in the brave new world of the internet, I’m afraid it’s a myth. There’s more to content marketing than simply posting your pictures or writings on a blog and waiting for the world to beat a path to your door.

If you really want to succeed using your creative talent, you need to combine your natural creativity with knowledge of what really works in online marketing, so that the time you spend creating and publishing content online becomes a worthwhile investment.

The first thing you should do is download Brian Clark’s free e-book Authority Rules: the 10 Rock-Solid Elements of Online Marketing and devour the contents.

For more free advice from people who understand creativity as well as internet marketing, check out my selection of 10 Essential Blogs for Creative Entrepreneurs.

One of the places I learn the most about internet marketing these days is Third Tribe (affiliate) which has regular seminars from leading experts, as well as a lively community for mutual support and learning. Check out my review of Third Tribe to see whether you’d like to join us (and to read about the special bonus I’m offering to Wishful Thinking readers who join).

And I’ll have plenty more to say about artists and internet marketing, both here and over at my Lateral Action site, so sign up for those free updates if you’d like more in the same vein!

What Do You Think?

Do you agree that artists and creatives have an unfair advantage at internet marketing?

Have you successfully used creative content to promote your business?

If you haven’t started internet marketing yet – what’s holding you back?

Mark McGuinness is a writer who has been coaching creative professionals since 1996. If you’d like more articles about creativity and business, sign up for free updates via e-mail or RSS. And for bite-sized inspiration, follow Mark on Twitter @markmcguinness.

If you only read one book about creativity, I tell my clients, make it The War of Art by Steven Pressfield.

It contains the distilled wisdom of a bestselling novelist and Hollywood screenwriter, who has both the scars and trophies of a life spent wrestling with creative challenges.

This book has been an inspiration to me for years, so I was delighted to have the opportunity to speak to Steven and record an interview with him for Lateral Action. In the course of an hour, we covered a range of topics relating to creativity, work, entrepreneurship and life in general, including:

• Why is it so hard to pursue our dreams, and get started on the creative challenges that mean so much to us?
• How can we overcome our inner Resistance to doing the things that matter?
• What rewards can we expect from persevering in the face of difficulties?
• What are the creative opportunities — and pitfalls — of social media and digital publishing?

As you’d expect from an accomplished novelist, Steve is a great raconteur; I was spellbound in his company and I think you will be too.

You can listen to the interview with Steven Pressfield over at Lateral Action, as well as download the audio file and a transcript of the entire conversation.

Make sure you check out Steve’s website, StevenPressfield.com, which should be very appealing to Wishful Thinking readers.

Finally, ‘conversations’ plural wasn’t a typo in the title — Steve has very graciously returned the favour by interviewing me about creativity, productivity and entrepreneurship. It’s a slightly surreal experience being interviewed by one of your heroes, but Steve asked me some very stimulating questions that made me think about things from a fresh angle, and I hope you’ll find the interview of interest.

Many thanks to Steve for his generosity and inspiration.

My friend and colleague Sonia Simone has just published a free e-book over at Lateral Action which is essential reading for anyone who wants to be successful AND happy – not either/or.

8 Reasons Rich People Hate Their Lives

Money Can’t Buy You Love

One of the biggest myths of modern life is that money and external rewards will make you happy, so it’s worth sacrificing fulfilment, fun, family, friendships and even health (sorry, I ran out of ‘f’s) on the altar of success.

Sonia’s e-book does a comprehensive demolition job on this myth – specifically, she looks at 8 dangerous behaviours that lead not to happiness but misery. She even shows that far from being the best recipe for career success, these behaviours can actually harm your business and career prospects in the long-term.

I’m guessing this is a story that will resonate for many Wishful Thinking readers, as those of us who pursue our creative passions instinctively understand that happiness and fulfilment come from making and doing, not buying and accumulating.

But did you know there’s another myth about money and success, which can be just as dangerous as this one?

According to the second myth, rich people are by definition greedy, selfish, ruthless, nasty – and invariably miserable. So nice people don’t dream of riches and success – and even if they do, they unconsciously sabotage their best efforts to succeed in their chosen career.

And you know what? Money can’t make you happy, but neither can poverty.

It’s OK to Live a Rich Life (in Every Sense)

Sonia also does a great job of demolishing this second myth. She shows that happiness doesn’t come from being filthy rich or virtuously poor. It comes from your mindset, from devoting yourself to meaningful work and important relationships.

Sonia shows that happiness, success and riches are not incompatible – as long as you get your priorities right. She gives examples of happy individuals who also happen to be extremely rich – in every sense.

That’s why she says she could just as easily have called the e-book 8 Reasons (Some) Rich People Love their Lives.

Here’s the direct link to download your copy of the e-book.

The e-book is completely free, with no need to give an e-mail address. So you’re welcome to share it with anyone who you think would find it valuable.

I’ve just added a Guest Articles page to Wishful Thinking, where you can find all the guest articles I write on other blogs and websites. I’ll keep updating it as I publish new articles.

One piece I’d particularly encourage you to read if you are a freelancer is Build a Business, Not Just a Client List, published at The 99 Percent, where I’m a regular(ish) columnist. It sums up my current thinking about the business of being a self-employed creator.

Another piece I like for completely different reasons is Remember Yourself, commissioned by one of my all-time favourite bloggers, Hugh MacLeod of Gapingvoid.

My most recent guest piece is How to Stop E-mail Killing Your Creativity, for the Cockpit Arts blog ahead of my upcoming workshops for creative people.

And if you still want more, remember that I write every week on my other creativity blog, Lateral Action.

Following the success of my Creative Momentum workshops last summer, I’m pleased to announce two more public workshops in central London this July:

Time Management for Creative People — 7 July

Manage the mundane – create the extraordinary. Essential skills to maximise your creativity and minimise your stress levels at work!

From people who attended last year:

“Clear, intelligent and genuinely useful material.”
Thomas Heath, thomasheath.tv

“I liked the way the ideas for managing time were uncomplicated and realistic enough to start fitting them into your everyday life.”
Candida Bradley, candipops.com

“The content was clear and can be easily applied.”
Jacob Sam-La Rose, jacobsamlarose.com

Full details + booking here: http://www.wishfulthinking.co.uk/time-management-creativity

How to Motivate Creative People (Including Yourself) — 14 July

Motivate yourself to overcome obstacles and create amazing work – and a sustainable career.

From people who came last year:

“This was nothing like I expected and much better than I expected. Made me look at how I work and why I work, in a completely different way. Mark has a very laid back style which is great.”
Sarah Turner, turnerink.co.uk

“The group size was just right. The distinctions worked well, and gave me a different way of thinking about motivation. The material is interesting and well presented. An enjoyable and worth-while workshop!”
David Stevens, musicforspecialneeds.com

“I really liked the way you related the issues of the talk with stories which you almost acted out! It was interesting relating problems which you experience yourself to other people who have succeeded – it made it seem more achievable! I really enjoyed it, a really comfortable atmosphere was created and the group seemed to get on well. Thank you!”
Candida Bradley, candipops.com

“I liked your presentation style. I think it was the first time in a long while when I actually was captured by a presentation and the content and listened to what you had to say.”
Kim Robertson

Details and booking here: http://www.wishfulthinking.co.uk/motivate-create/

The workshops are designed for creative people of all descriptions — artists, creatives, freelancers, entrepreneurs, and anyone else who takes their creativity seriously.

As before, I’ll be tailoring the workshops to the specific needs of each group – when you book your place, I’ll send you some questions about what you want to get out of it, which will help me target the issues that are most important to you.

The workshops are designed to work equally well as standalone sessions, or to complement each other if you take both. There’s also a special offer if you book both workshops together.

Places will be strictly limited to 25 per workshop and allocated on a first-come-first-served basis. Last year they sold out well in advance, so early booking is a good idea if you want to be sure of your place.

Here’s the booking page (with secure payment via credit card or Paypal):

We had a lot of fun last year and I’m looking forward to more of the same this time round. I hope you can join us!

PS — I may be running some more workshops later in the summer — you can join my mailing list if you want to be first to know when they are announced.

Drawing by Leonard da Vinci, via Wikimedia Commons

Nobody wants to be boring.

It’s not exactly the done thing to say “I want to be interesting”, but the enthusiastic response to Russell Davies’ article How to Be Interesting suggests that it’s something we aspire to. And with good reason. Over three years before Seth Godin told us in Linchpin that being remarkable (and therefore indispensable) is the key to a successful career, Russell said essentially the same thing:

the core skill of any future creative business person will be ‘being interesting’. People will employ and want to work with (and want to be with) interesting people.

If you work in the creative industries, this is pretty much a no-brainer, but now that we’re living in the age of the creative economy, when more and more businesses are being urged to think like media companies, it starts to look like a recipe for survival and success in any industry.

So how can we do it? Russell offers some great tips, but I want to draw your attention to the two basic principles that they follow from:

The way to be interesting is to be interested. You’ve got to find what’s interesting in everything, you’ve got to be good at noticing things, you’ve got to be good at listening. If you find people (and things) interesting, they’ll find you interesting.

Interesting people are good at sharing. You can’t be interested in someone who won’t tell you anything. Being good at sharing is not the same as talking and talking and talking. It means you share your ideas, you let people play with them and you’re good at talking about them without having to talk about yourself.

Jonathan Morrow offers more good advice in his own piece titled How to Be Interesting, where he lists 21 techniques writers can use to be more interesting to their audiences. And of course his advice applies to all of us, not just writers. Here’s one of my favourites:

11. Unleash your inner dork: Many blog posts are like miniature textbooks; they’re instructive, well-organized, and put you to sleep with their lack of enthusiasm. If you want to become famous on the web, stop trying to sound like an all-knowing teacher and unleash the “inner dork” inside of you — the part of you that’s so enamored with your topic that everyone else thinks it’s funny… but they pay attention anyway. More on dorkyness here.

Russell and Jon are both very interesting fellows, doing interesting stuff. They’re very different characters, working in different fields, for different audiences. But they share two principles, that are critical to what makes them interesting (and therefore successful):

1. Follow Your Interests

I agree with Russell that “the way to be interesting is to be interested” but I’m going to qualify his advice slightly. I don’t think most of us can “find what’s interesting in everything”. Russell is a confirmed creative generalist, so he probably can, but I think most of us have a more limited range of interests. Which is no bad thing. In fact, I think it’s the key to a lot of happiness and fulfilment in life, let alone simply ‘being interesting’.

Rather than try to find what’s interesting in everything, I suggest we pay attention to the things we genuinely find interesting — no matter how obscure, silly, embarrassing or irrelevant they might appear.

Because when you feel curiosity, interest and fascination, you bring your whole self to whatever you’re doing, you give it your full attention, and you have all the energy and persistence you’ll need to do something amazing.

“It’s a reactive thing, like a Geiger counter; you click whenever you come close to whatever you were built to do.”

Stephen King

I’m not exactly a paragon of interestingness, but I have noticed people are frequently intrigued and occasionally bemused by my own range of interests. I’ve had my share of funny looks on mentioning poetry in a corporate setting. Conversely, some of my fellow poets have been shocked to discover my interest in business. Audiences sit up a little straighter when I mention that I’m a trained hypnotist. A friend once told me she didn’t understand how I could “write such sensitive poems AND be obsessed with football”. The other psychotherapists in my peer vision group think my interest in ‘internet stuff’ is a bit odd. And so on.

It all seems perfectly normal to me. I don’t see why being interested in one thing should mean I’m not interested in another. And apart from the intrinsic interest of each topic or activity, it makes for a pretty creative mix, when you start to find connections between them. Frans Johansson calls this The Medici Effect:

When you step into an intersection of fields, disciplines, or cultures, you can combine existing concepts into a large number of extraordinary new ideas.

To take a genuinely interesting example, Leonardo da Vinci is often revered as a universal genius, equally at home in the arts, sciences and engineering. (He was also a dab hand at organising parties and making mechanical toys, but those accomplishments tend to get glossed over.) But as Donald Sassoon points out in his book Mona Lisa, such a wide range of interests was fairly typical of his era:

In his time … the conventional separation between disciplines had not yet developed. Universalism was an attribute common to all gifted men of the Renaissance, not a unique trait of Leonardo’s…

Leonardo moved easily from science to art and back again. Only in a culture in which there were no rigid boundaries between the two could this take place…

He was in good company. Machiavelli not only wrote his famous treatise on politics (The Prince), but also a history and a play (La Mandragora) still frequently performed. Albrecht Durer studied mathematics and geometry, wrote treatises on measurement in 1525 and on military engineering in 1527, and was a supreme master of woodcut and copper engraving as well as a major painter. Nicola Angelo, unlike Leonardo, managed to excel in four distinct fields: architecture, painting, sculpture and poetry.

These days, we’re in a culture where “the conventional separation between disciplines” is breaking up, or at least becoming more permeable. As Russell says, “The marvelous thing about tinterweb is that it’s got great tools for being interested and great tools for sharing”.

There are plenty of people holding up their hands in horror at the lack of single-minded focus among the ‘butterfly minds’ of today’s Internet generation, but perhaps this is not a hideous modern aberration so much as a return to the world of Leonardo, where it was considered normal, even admirable, to flit from one thing to another. Leonardo’s notebooks are full of half-baked projects, and flying machines that quite literally never got off the ground, but nobody seems to complain too much.

Whatever interests, enthusiasms or idle curiosities drift through your mind, you have the tools to follow them up, learn more about them and connect with people who share them. I suggest you take full advantage.

2. Commit

The word ‘interest’ has its roots in the Latin verb ‘interesse’, meaning ‘matter, make a difference’. And another of its meanings, apart from ‘fascination’, is ‘ to have an interest in’ something, i.e. a stake or investment in it.

Real interest is not passive. Dilettantes are boring because they have many ‘interests’ but don’t do anything with them. Critics are boring because they sit on the sidelines, carping and moaning. Or as Teddy Roosevelt put it in more elevated language:

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or whether the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, and comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and short coming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be without those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.

I came across this passage in a book by my friend Raj Setty, who follows it up with a friendly challenge:

Who do people want to follow: someone who was on the field playing or someone sitting on the ringside seat commenting on how to play?

Play!

Upbeat, by Rajesh Setty

These days, we have more than opportunities than ever to play, to get going without waiting or asking for permission. Write a book and publish it yourself. Start a business. Learn an instrument. Run a marathon or climb Everest. Go on a mission to see the entire world. Start a movement.

The internet gives you the tools, the information and the connections you need. If you can’t do it all yourself, there are plenty of places where you can find like-minded people with complementary skills.

Things only get really interesting when you commit to doing something. When you have skin in the game. When you take a risk, do your best to succeed, accept that things will probably go wrong — and do it anyway.

What Interests You?

What are your interests?

What have you learned or gained from pursuing an interest that seemed silly or irrelevant at the time?

What interest are you going to follow up next?

Power of culture – how to inject culture into business strategy from Arts & Business on Vimeo.

Supposing you sent a group of artists, actors, musicians and poets into a corporate business – on a mission to entertain, provoke, inspire, teach and challenge people to experiment with new ways of thinking, acting and communicating.

How would the staff respond?

What difference would it make to the individuals who took part?

What impact would it have on teams and departments?

How would it affect the organisational culture?

Could you measure an impact on the bottom line?

These are some of the questions that went into a research project on Using the Arts in Business that I was pleased to manage for Arts & Business over a period of 18 months. I worked closely with Simon Cronshaw, who was then head of Research, Evaluation and Information, and the research was conducted by Professor Giovanni Schiuma, an expert in organisational culture and change who is a Visiting Research Fellow at the Cranfield School of Management.

The research had a solid academic foundation, but was certainly not restricted to theory — we spent a lot of time in the company of artists who work with large corporations in exactly the way I’ve outlined above. They lead workshops, interactive drama productions, training events and even major organisational change programmes. Their work falls under the heading of arts-based initiatives, and is a fascinating cross-fertilisation of creative and commercial cultures.

We were also fortunate enough to speak to senior managers from organisations who had commissioned arts-based initiatives, and were keen to discuss the benefits to their business.

Some of the research findings have just been published in the form of a report which you can download from the arts and business website: Mapping Arts-Based Initiatives by Giovanni Schiuma. You can also watch a video of Giovanni presenting the research findings.

If you visit the Arts & Business website, you can listen to a series of interviews with the arts-based practitioners who took part — including two interviews I recorded myself.

The first interview was with Tom Conway, Managing Director of the market research agency Spinach, and Martin Gent, an artist and actor who is Director of Creativity at Spinach. The two have been working together for several years, in a very unusual arrangement whereby an artistic practitioner works at the heart of an organisation, not as a consultant or visitor. Interview explores the dynamics of their working relationship, and what each has learned, as well as the business benefits to Spinach.

The second interview was with Sam Bond of tradesecrets, where he discussed his extensive experience of delivering arts-based interventions across a range of organisational settings. Sam is a lovely guy, with an engaging and dynamic presence; he’s one of the few people I’ve met who seems equally comfortable and authoritative when discussing fine art or corporate culture.

Thanks to Sam, Tom and Martin for their generous help, as well as to the other arts practitioners and organisations who took part — do check out their websites, they feature stories, images and videos that paint a vivid picture of this fascinating area of creative business.

Sam Bond and Aidan Elliot, tradesecrets

Paul Bourne, Menagerie Theatre Company

Duncan Bruce, The Brand Conspiracy

Geoff Church, Dramatic Resources

Peter Feroze, The Creative Knowledge Company

Martin Gent, Spinach and The Map Consortium

Richard Hahlo, Dramatic Resources

Chris Higgins, The Map Consortium

Martin Holme, Spider and Givaudin

Piers Ibbotson, Directing Creativity

Tom Morley, Instant Teamwork

Tim Stockil, CI: Creative Intelligence

I hope you enjoy the interviews — and feel free to download and share the research report, which contains a new model of interventions and organisational change which I believe will be valuable to any company looking to do things differently.

Many thanks to Arts & Business for inviting me to manage the project, and to the organisations who shared their experiences and learnings. And special thanks to Simon and Giovanni for being such good fun to work with.

(Click here if you can’t see the Clangers video.)

If you grew up in the UK from the late 60s onwards, The Clangers will need no introduction.

These charming knitted creatures who lived on the moon, in caves covered by saucepan lids, were probably some of your most beloved childhood companions. Even now, I bet you can’t listen to the sound of a Swanee whistle without hearing the voice of a Clanger.

The Clangers’ voices were perhaps their most endearing characteristic — while they never uttered a word, as you listened to the rise and fall of the Swanee whistle, you were absolutely convinced you could understand everything they said. The Clangers were so animated, they seemed so intent on what they were saying, that the sense of a real conversation was utterly convincing.

The illusion was so powerful that children from different countries all said the same thing — they could hear the clangers talking to them in their own language.

Truly, the Clangers had the gift of tongues.

How was this possible? A recent BBC documentary about Oliver Postgate, who created the clangers in partnership with Peter Firmin, shed some light on the matter. Postgate’s son described how, on sifting through his father’s papers after his death, he came across the original scripts for the Clangers programmes — and made a magical discovery.

The script contained not only stage directions and the words of the narrator, but the actual words spoken by the clangers in every single scene. Apparently these had formed the ’score’ that the musicians followed, with instructions to reproduce the rhythm and intonation of every word in the script. So the Clangers’ conversations sounded real because they were real. We’ve all heard about the research that says body language and tone of voice make up a far greater proportion of communication than the words themselves, and the clangers seem to be living proof of this theory.

So What Did the Clangers Say?

I don’t have the scripts, and we just had a tantalising glimpse in the documentary, so I can’t say too much about this. And to be honest, for me it’s enough to have confirmation that, just as I knew all along, the clangers were really speaking to each other. It would spoil the magic to have it all spelled-out.

But I can’t resist sharing one particularly choice titbit of Clanger-speak:

when the BBC got the script, [they] rang me up and said “at the beginning of episode three, where the doors get stuck, Major Clanger says “sod it, the bloody thing’s stuck again”. Well, darling, you can’t say that on Children’s television, you know, I mean you just can’t.” I said “it’s not going to be said, it’s going to be whistled”, but [they] just said “but people will know!” I said no, that if they had nice minds, they’d think “oh dear, the silly thing’s not working properly”. If you watch the episode, the one where the rocket goes up and shoots down the Iron Chicken, Major Clanger kicks the door to make it work and his first words are “sod it, the bloody thing’s stuck again”.

(An interview with Oliver Postgate)

Swearing Clangers! Priceless. (Here’s the evidence. And there’s plenty more Clangers goodness on DVD.)

Creativity Tips from the Clangers

So what can we learn from Oliver Postgate’s method of composition?

Do More Than You Need to

Postgate didn’t need to go to all the bother of writing out dialogue for the clangers. He could have got away with writing stuff like “Major Clanger sounds frustrated”, or “Clangers have heated argument”, and then just twiddled the Swanee whistle in the appropriate places. No one would have complained. But the results wouldn’t have been as good. The all-important illusion of reality would not have been as compelling.

Obsessive perfectionism is the hallmark of many great creators. Like the builders of Notre Dame Cathedral, carving away at intricate details no-one would see but God. Or J.R.R. Tolkien writing up the history, geography, ethnography and even languages of Middle Earth, none of which were published in his lifetime, but which provided the backdrop for his novels The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

If you’re a writer, think hard about your characters, their personal history, the culture they come from, and the events that happen ‘off stage’, that influence the ones you actually write about. If you’re an artist, get to know your subject intimately by sketching it from every conceivable angle, even if you only use one in the finished picture. If you’re a musician or composer, practise playing all kinds of music beyond your ’stage repertoire’. If you’re an entrepreneur, study businesses that are very different to your own, to see what you can learn from them.

To the casual observer, this might look like wasted time. But it will add a richness and depth to your work that you can never get by limiting yourself to the superficial, the obvious or the bare minimum.

Leave Things Out

It might seem counterintuitive to do all of that work and then leave most of it out, or conceal it from the audience (e.g. behind a Swanee whistle or up on the roof of a Cathedral). But if you give the audience everything, you leave no room for their imagination.

By adding an extra dimension and then editing it out, you suggest to the audience that the work contains something more than meets the eye — but crucially, you don’t spell out what that something is. And so the audience is compelled to fill in the gaps with their own imaginings, their own meanings. Only then do they really engage with the work, and become co-creators with you.

And that’s where the real magic happens.

Over to You

What difference does it make when you know the clangers’ dialogue was real?

Can you think of any other examples of creators enriching their work by adding ‘unnecessary’ hidden detail?

Have you ever done this yourself?

If you enjoyed this article, there are plenty more where it came from – sign up for free updates via e-mail or RSS. And for bite-sized inspiration, follow Mark on Twitter.

I’ve recently written a couple of guest articles on other blogs that you might enjoy.

RSS Creativity – Routines, Systems, Spontaneity

A summary of my recent thinking about how to manage creative workflow without stifling your inspiration.

The 99% is an online magazine for creative professsionals – if you like Wishful Thinking you should feel very much at home. The 99% is produced by Behance, the company behind the Behance Network – a great place for creatives to network and showcase their work. (Here’s my Behance profile if you want to connect over there.)

Four Questions You Must Ask Before Starting Any Creative Project

Image by kaibara

A look at the different types of motivation – financial and otherwise – creative people have for taking on a new project. Clarifying your motivations and checking others’ expectations before you start a project can save you an awful lot of misery later on.

The MyCake blog is full of financial advice tailored to the needs of creative professionals. Sarah Thelwall and her team understand that book-keeping is probably not your favourite activity, and offer tools and guidance for sugaring the pill of updating your accounts and managing your finances.

Image by Hugh MacLeod

UPDATE: We’ve now sold out. Thank you and welcome to all our charter members!

We’ll be running a second progamme early in 2010 – if you’d like to hear about it when we open up again, you can sign up on this page to join the e-mail notification list.

We’ve now started taking enrolments for the Lateral Action Creative Entrepreneur Course.

The course is designed for:

• Artists and creative freelancers
• People looking to set up a home-based business
• Bloggers looking to build a business around their blog

(If that doesn’t include you, you may want to skip this post — there are plenty more articles about creativity and related topics coming up on Wishful Thinking, plus the free e-book I’m working on …)

If you’d like to be one of our charter members, with lifetime access to the course (including all future updates) at a 50% discount, you can head over to Lateral Action and sign up.

The course gives you a detailed roadmap for succeeding as a creative entrepreneur – a small, creative business consisting of one person or a very small team. It will show you how to research and develop products that people actually want to buy, market yourself on the internet, and build a business without spending a fortune on advertising or employees.

The sign-up page on Lateral Action outlines the course content and format, and we’ve also published a free report about it, so I won’t go into that here. I’ll just say a few words about why I’m launching an e-learning course, and introduce my fellow teachers.

Why I’m Providing an E-Learning Course

The great thing about blogging is that it has connected me with a wonderful network of people around the world. It’s created the opportunity for me to work with inspiring creative people who I’d never have met otherwise. At the same time, I’ve discovered there are certain limits to the coaching, workshop training and blogging that are my core activities.

In some ways there’s no substitute for a live, face-to-face learning experience, either one-to-one in coaching sessions, or in groups for workshops. The logistics can be a bit challenging though — it was great that my Creative Momentum workshops sold out over the summer, and I’ll definitely be doing some more of them before long. It was also a bit frustrating to hear from many of you who said you’d love to come, but couldn’t fly all the way to London for a two-hour workshop. And even when I run a full day workshop, I often wish it could be longer, as it feels as though there’s so much more to teach.

Coaching is a bit different. It’s about facilitating someone’s learning in a way that is highly focused and tailored to the individual. So it’s not the best use of a coaching session for me to spend a lot of time explaining things and conveying information. But with many issues, such as web marketing and entrepreneurship, there is often a lot that the client needs to know before we can get started.

In the past three or four years, I’ve found I can use the Wishful Thinking website to add a lot of value to my coaching and training. I often give clients e-books and blog articles to read before for coaching sessions, so that they have the essential information when they arrive, and we have a much more productive session as a result. And for my recent workshops on Web Marketing for Creative People and Creative Presentation Skills, I created an online version of the workshops, which attendees access in the Members area of Wishful Thinking. The feedback I’ve received about this has been terrific — people have told me it really helps them to learn at their own pace, and they can keep referring to the materials as they put their plans into action.

I’m now taking this a stage further by launching a full-blown e-learning course, featuring audio lessons (handy for listening on an iPod, iPhone or other MP3 player), transcripts of all the lessons, and practical worksheets. Later on there will be a members forum and Q&A calls, all included in the charter membership package. It means we can cover the topics in much greater depth than a normal training workshop — and you’re free to learn at your own pace, repeating lessons and referring to the training materials whenever you need them.

It also means you get the benefit of an extended training at a significantly lower price than you would pay for live training or coaching. We’re talking around 18 hours of audio lessons (plus the transcripts, worksheets etc) for less than the price of a couple of coaching sessions.

And you may have noticed that a couple of paragraphs back I said “we can cover the topics…”. That’s because I’m not teaching the course on my own. I’m delighted to be working with Brian Clark and Tony Clark — two highly successful creative entrepreneurs — so you’ll be getting the benefit of not one but three teachers on this programme.

It’s a good deal for me too, of course. As well as the satisfaction of creating a programme that I’m proud of, it means I’m practising what I preach about entrepreneurship, creating my own product and adding an extra revenue stream to my business.

Sounds like a win-win situation to me.

OK, But Why Entrepreneurship?

If you’re like me a few years back, you probably don’t readily associate entrepreneurship with creativity. But I’ve gradually come to the conclusion that they are not only highly compatible, but creative entrepreneurship is the path that offers creative people the greatest amount of financial independence and personal freedom to pursue their dreams.

Over the past 13 or so years of coaching artists and creatives, I’ve noticed that earning a living from your creative passion is one of the most cherished dreams – and often one of the most difficult to realise. That’s the core challenge we’re going to address with the Lateral Action programme.

So what is a creative entrepreneur? It’s someone who takes a slightly unconventional approach to entrepreneurship — we’re not trying to emulate empire builders like Richard Branson and Bill Gates. Good luck to them, if that’s what they want to do, but it’s not my cup of tea.

The Lateral Action definition of a creative entrepreneur is someone who builds a thriving small business around their creative talent — but without hiring any employees or investing large sums of capital. He or she could be an artist with a studio, a freelancer with a laptop, or a micro-entrepreneur operating from a home office.

For a fuller description, read my article The 3 Critical Characteristics of the Creative Entrepreneur. And for an inspiring vision of what it’s like to be a creative entrepreneur, watch the Lateral Action videos Everybody Loves Marla and Marla Mentors Jack.

And if you’d like to hear about my own journey towards creative entrepreneurship, read my recent article The Story of a Reluctant Entrepreneur.

Who Will Teach the Course — and How Do We Know What We’re Talking about?

This next bit is slightly awkward, because Brian and Tony are much better known than I am, so it feels a bit odd introducing them. But I know that some of you are new to the world of Internet marketing and entrepreneurship, so I’ll do my best to do them justice with a brief introduction.

Brian Clark

Brian is best known as the founder of Copyblogger, a hugely successful blog about copywriting and web marketing. I’ve been telling my clients for years that Copyblogger is absolutely indispensable reading for anyone who wants to sell things on the Internet. Brian gives away an enormous amount of free advice on Copyblogger, but unlike most bloggers, he has used his blog as a platform to build a multimillion-dollar online business, releasing e-learning programmes such as Teaching Sells, Partnering Profits and Freelance X-Factor, and the popular website design theme Thesis (which I use on Wishful Thinking).

Brian isn’t just a very successful internet marketer. He’s also a highly talented writer who really understands creativity and creative people. He turned to entrepreneurship when he became disillusioned with his prospects as an aspiring Hollywood screenwriter – and the screenwriting bug hasn’t quite let go, as you can see in the Lateral Action animated videos, all scripted by Brian.

This is what artist and creative entrepreneur John T. Unger has to say about Brian’s gifts as a teacher:

My first career was poetry, and for fifteen years all I did was read, write, perform live and study with luminaries like Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs. I learned more from Brian in the first year of Copyblogger.

You won’t be surprised to learn that Brian will be taking the lead on the marketing modules on the Lateral Action course, and showing you how to approach web marketing, not as a ‘necessary evil’, but as a highly creative extension of your core work.

Tony Clark

I think of Tony as a kind of Swiss Army Knife for creative entrepreneurs. For one thing, he’s got an incredible range of talents – illustrator, animator, programmer, blogger, teacher, entrepreneur. And for another, he’s got an encyclopaedic knowledge of creativity, business, software and productivity systems. I first ‘met’ Tony online a few years ago, when he was dispensing advice for home-based entrepreneurs on his blog Success from the Nest. More recently he’s partnered with Brian on Teaching Sells.

Tony likes to keep himself in the background, but his fingerprints are all over Lateral Action. He does all our design and website development. He drew the cartoon characters Lou, Jack and Marla – and brought them to life in the aforementioned animated videos. And he also serves as a one-man IT suppport department for Brian and me, when (as frequently happens) we reach the limits of our technical capacity.

Whenever I encounter a technical problem at Lateral Action — I ask Tony.

When I’m stuck for an example to use in an article — I ask Tony.

When I want a recommendation for software to perform a particular task — I ask Tony.

You get the picture.

Tony will be teaching the module on business systems, a.k.a. how to automate or delegate the ‘boring bits’ of running a business, and stay focused on the interesting creative work which is the reason most of us got into a creative profession in the first place.

Tony would like to point out that he’s not Brian’s brother.

Mark McGuinness

Well, if you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time, you’ll have a reasonable idea of who I am! As you know, I provide coaching and training for creative people and innovative companies.

But you may not be so familiar with another side of my work, as I don’t write about it much online. I’m a psychotherapist, registered with the UK Council for Psychotherapy, and in practice since 1996. In that time I’ve worked with all kinds of people facing challenging problems and situations, including anxiety, depression, fears and phobias, addictions, trauma, work-related stress, relationship break-ups, bereavement, homelessness and stress-related illness.

In my coaching work, I’ve also helped a lot of freelancers and small business owners deal with the stresses and strains of self-employment — which can be a very lonely place at times. And having been self-employed myself for almost the whole of my career, I know exactly what a rollercoaster ride it can be!

So it’s fair to say I’ve seen a lot of stressful situations up close, at first and second hand. I’ve also seen what works — and what doesn’t — when it comes to handling pressure and staying motivated and effective. On the Lateral Action course, I’m taking the lead on a module called Succeed (Don’t Stress) which is a distillation of everything I’ve learned about emotional intelligence and stress management for self-employed people. We’ve included it in the course because we want to give people a holistic toolkit for dealing with all aspects of running a small business — the personal as well as professional.

Most of the other modules of the course will consist of interviews/discussions between Brian and me. I’ll be asking Brian lots of questions to draw out the most relevant advice from his vast store of knowledge, and complementing this with my own perspective on creative entrepreneurship. And I’ll be asking Brian many of the most common and urgent questions I hear from coachees and workshop delegates, about how to apply the principles of creative entrepreneurship to their own career and business.

I Know This Stuff Works

Those of you who have attended my workshop Web Marketing for Creative People know that my websites are my main source of new business. When people ask me how I manage to get my sites so high up the search engine rankings, and actually convert visitors into clients, I tell them “by following Brian and Tony’s advice”. As well as reading Copyblogger for the last four years, I’ve taken several of their e-learning courses and devoured every lesson (many of them two or three times). And since we launched Lateral Action together, I’ve had the benefit of a hands-on education in how to create and promote a successful web venture.

In a nutshell: I’ve tested Brian and Tony’s advice first-hand, and I know it works.

(I drew the line at changing my surname to Clark though! )

If you’d like the benefit of our combined experience, and to apply it to your own creative business, you’d be well advised to sign up sooner rather than later. UPDATE: Enrolment for the first programme is now closed. We’ll be running a second progamme early in 2010 – if you’d like to hear about it when we open up again, you can sign up on this page to join the e-mail notification list.

For this programme we’re offering a charter membership deal of 50% discount on the 2010 price, to include all future updates and features. On the sign-up page Brian says the price will never be this low again, and I know he’s true to his word about this. Whenever Brian and Tony have launched a new course, I’ve signed up for the charter member deal — and a few months later, I’ve seen people happily paying several times the fee I paid. It’s great to see people are satisfied with a course at the full price, but it’s even nicer to know I got the whole thing a lot cheaper!

We also offer a 30-day guarantee on the programme, so if for any reason you decide not to continue, we’ll happily refund your fee, no questions asked (but feedback welcome).

OK, that’s enough about Lateral Action from me. I’m excited about the programme as it’s on a bigger scale than any of the trainings I’ve delivered before, in terms of both the content and the number of people we’ll be able to help. If you’re interested in joining us on the journey, head over to the sign-up page, where Brian outlines the roadmap.

Next up on Wishful Thinking, we’re back to our usual programme of articles about the business of creativity and the creativity of business. (Including that free e-book I mentioned earlier …)