Creatives and Business is about helping creatives become more successful in the world of business.  I will provide you with tools and techniques to help make your creative enterprise more successful and sustainable.  I will also let you know about new ideas and resources in the creative business sector so you can learn about what other successful creatives are doing.

I am a supporter of the Creative Economy and feel that business has an important role to play.  Artists and other creative professionals need business skills and the help and support of the business community.  Likewise the business community needs the creative economy to help in its economic development efforts, make our communities more enjoyable and viable and to provide a source of creativity.  Here is a recent article which appeared in several venues in the Denver area.

Neil McKenzie Pounding the Creatives and Business Drum

In Business Planning Basics – Your Mission Statement, the need for a Mission Statement as a starting point in developing your business plan was discussed. Now I want to introduce the concept of the Vision Statement. The Vision Statement is different from your Mission Statement and for some businesses they may be the same but in any case they should complement each other.

Mission Statement

The purpose of the Mission Statement is to describe the business at a high level. It serves to help guide the organization’s strategies and communicate it to the stakeholders such as employees, shareholders, suppliers and customers. Generally the Mission Statement is more short/mid-term in nature(3 to 5 years). The Mission Statement should answer three basic questions:

1. What do we do?
2. How do we do it?
3. For whom do we do it?

Vision Statement

Conceptually the Vision Statement helps you describe why it is important to achieve the Mission, the overall reason(s) the business exists, and what you are trying to accomplish. This is big goal stuff, as my friend David Sandusky would say, “It’s what gets you out of bed in the morning ready to go”. By its nature, the Vision Statement is long term goal and to some “lofty” ideal. Some examples of a vision statement could be:

• Ford (Old)
  • “Democratize the automobile.”
• Heinz sample vision statements
  • “To be the world’s premier food company, offering nutritious, superior tasting foods to people everywhere.”
• Sears
  • “To be the preferred and most trusted resource for the products and services that enhance home and family life.”
• Stanford University (Old)
  • “Become the Harvard of the West.”
• Sony (Old) sample vision statements
  • “Become the Company most known for changing the worldwide poor-quality image of Japanese products.”
• Anheuser-Busch sample vision statements
  • “To be the world’s beer company. Through all of our products, services and relationships, we will add to life’s enjoyment.”
• My Art Business
  • “To have every art gallery that specializes in modern art want to represent my art.”
• My Non-Profit Art Business
  • “To eliminate women’s poverty in the _____ region of _______ by providing the women with an outlet to sell their arts and crafts on a worldwide basis.”

What Do I Need – Mission or Vision

You definitely need a Mission Statement. Depending on the nature of your business and your “big world saving/changing” idea you may also need a Vision Statement. If you are just starting out you probably have a “vision” – think about it! My advice is to combine the two and call it a Mission Statement and leave the semantics and finer points to the MBAs and business professors. What is your vision for your art business?

The first few steps in developing a business plan for your art or creative enterprise are to identify your overall direction after careful consideration of you external and internal business environments and capabilities. Before you develop your Goals and Objectives you should have a good feel for your:

• Mission / Vision
• Values/ Beliefs
• Internal Strengths and Weaknesses
• External Opportunities and Threats
• Competition
• Your Products, Customers, and Markets

The next step in the planning process is to create a framework to accomplish your mission. The process is actually quite simple.

Goals  –>  Objectives  –>  Strategies  –>  Action Plans

In Colorado, the creative sector is the fifth largest part of our economy in terms of employment.  The South Metro Chamber of Commerce where I am a member is starting an initiative to help promote the creative sector in our part of the Denver Metro Area.  As chief instigator of the the effort I have been fortunate to be able to talk to our community’s top political, business and arts leaders to garner support.  In a recent article for Colorado Biz Magazine I discussed the difference two organizations are making in our local economy.  I encourage you to start a similar effort in your part of the world.

Read more of the article: The creative economy in bloom

One of the many things that is necessary to have a successful art or creative business is to build your brand. For many artists and creatives the brand is you! OK, you need to develop a business and marketing plan, you need to surround yourself with people who can inspire and help you. Where are all of these activities leading? – To build a brand which is sustainable, authentic, and memorable.

An important part of your brand are the images you use on your website, business cards and becoming increasingly more important, your social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin etc. Your headshot is perhaps the most important image of all.

When I am not teaching Artrepreneurship at the Center For Innovation (MSCD), conducting workshops, writing articles for Creatives and Business or Colorado Biz Magazine, my other day job is photographing people at Neil McKenzie Photography. I specialize in business and personal brand photography; I don’t do weddings, pictures of flowers or scenes of the mountains. I combine my marketing and market research skills to get to know my clients and then create images which support their brand.

I recently had the opportunity to photograph Gina Schreck who runs a company called Synapse 3Di based here in Colorado. Gina is nationally known for putting technology to work for organizations to help them to communicate, collaborate and perform better. She has written several books on social media under the “Gettin’ Geeky” title and is recognized as a true expert.

We spent some time prior to the photo shoot to come up with some ideas on how best to portray her brand – I think we accomplished our goals. Funny thing about the photo shoot is that Gina is about as far away from my idea of a geek as I can get – more like a fashion model shoot!

After the shoot she decided to do a “Getting’ Geeky” episode with me using one of the gadgets she brought along. Check it out; there are a lot of tips on creating a great image to portray your brand.

If you are in business you need to understand three basic financial statements, the Income Statement, the Balance Sheet and the Cash Flow Projection – artists and other creative entrepreneurs are no exception. This article will discuss the Balance Sheet or sometimes called a Statement of Financial Condition/Position.  You can find out more about the Income Statement here:  Financial Statement Basics – Income Statement.

Balance Sheet Concepts

 Unlike the Income Statement which covers your financial activity over a period of time, the Balance Sheet describes your financial condition at a point in time. Make sure you grasp this concept – “at a point in time”. The point in time could be the end of last year, the end of last month, or as of yesterday.

The Balance Sheet is made up of three main items: assets, liabilities and equity (sometimes called owners or shareholders equity). The math behind the Balance Sheet is simple – Assets less Liabilities equals Equity. When I was a student in business school taking my first accounting class I used to remember this by the mnemonic “ALE”: Assets – Liabilities = Equity.

Creating a Mission Statement for your art or creative business is one of the most important and perhaps most difficult tasks in developing your business plan. In a sentence or two you describe why your business exists, what you sell and to whom, and a bit of your “secret sauce” – in short it is what gets you up in the morning! Your Mission Statement should guide your strategies and everyday actions so that you can achieve your business goals.

Before you start on your Mission Statement I have found that it is a good idea to determine what success means to you. Take a look at this article The Creative Economy: Define Success To Achieve It to get some ideas on the things you should be asking yourself about what success means to you. After you have completed this exercise you are ready to start to develop your Mission Statement.

If you are an artist or other creative entrepreneur you are involved in the world of intellectual property whether you know it or not. Intellectual property deals with the things that are created and gives them certain rights and protections under the law. These include rights for artistic, musical, film and literary works, the creation of symbols, designs and phrases, inventions and processes. In general, these types of intellectual property fall under the categories of copyrights, trademarks and patents.

In working with the creative community it never ceases to amaze me how little understanding and how much misinformation there is on the subject. Recently I asked my students what they have been taught about copyrights – “Well you can copy up to 30% of someone else’s work to create your own”. Really, let me get this right, you can copy up to 30% of a portrait I created?” “Which 30%, the bottom, the top how about the middle 30% with the face?” Trust me, if you copy the middle 30%, the part with the face, there will be trouble and you may lose.

I come from the business world. In over thirty years of business planning, marketing and research I have had the opportunity to work with successful (as well as my share of not so successful) startups to some of the world’s biggest and best known brands. These successful companies had a lot more in common than you might think. What they had in common was a grasp for the basics of marketing, consumer behavior and a good plan of action with the management to execute it.

When I was first asked to develop and teach the course Artrepreneurship at the Center for Innovation (MSCD) to teach business to students in the arts I was excited but a bit apprehensive – I went to business school not art school! So here is my premise – selling art (or anything for that matter) is like selling potato chips, you do the basic things, you do them right and you have a chance to succeed. Don’t do them and you are set for failure.

If you are in business you need to understand three basic financial statements, the Income Statement, the Balance Sheet and the Cash Flow Projection – artists and other creative entrepreneurs are no exception. This article will discuss the Income Statement also known as a Profit and Loss or Revenue and Expense statement.

Income Statement Concepts

The first thing to note about the Income Statement is that it covers your financial activity for a period of time. Make sure you grasp this concept – “for a period of time”. The time period could be a month, a quarter, a year or any period you choose, even a day.