Entrepreneurship as Art: Harnessing Creativity for Business Brilliance

When you hear the word 'creativity', what springs to mind?

For most people it’s painting, writing, or maybe even video production and social media content creation. While these are undoubtedly expressions of creativity, they barely scratch the surface of creativity’s value, especially for entrepreneurs. 

Even if you’re a bookkeeper or an operations specialist and don’t consider your services to be within the realm of creativity, I guarantee your business demands more imagination from you than you realize. 

And if you’re someone who doesn’t consider yourself a creative at all, I’ve got news for you:

Nearly everyone starts out in life as a creative genius.

But over time school, rules, and life have a tendency to squash the originality right out of us. Luckily, there are ways to reclaim your creativity so you can use it to supercharge your business. 

Building a business is, at its heart, an act of creation. You’re literally creating something out of thin air that didn’t exist before. 

That means every entrepreneur, whether they realize it or not, is a creator. 

But beyond that relatively obvious revelation, there are a few areas of business where it pays to be a little extra creative. Here are a few subtle realms in business where an extra sprinkle of creativity can give you an entrepreneurial edge.

Breathing Life into Your Business Concept

The start of any enterprise is about giving life to a vision. This inception phase of birthing your business baby is brimming with potential and there are a million different ways you can go with even one concept. 

The most successful businesses are solving a problem in a unique way, or making things easier for a particular audience, and doing it better than anyone else.

Your ability to get a fresh perspective and look at things differently can guide you into uncharted territory, giving you access to ideas others can’t even conceive of. Add to that a splash of boldness and you’ll be willing to take the next crucial step and aside feelings of vulnerability to share your idea with the world. 

After all, your ideas won’t help anyone if you lack the creative confidence to risk unleashing them on the world.

Sculpting Your Offers & Products

Once you’ve got your solution mapped out, you still need to decide how to package it. 

When I realized women entrepreneurs struggled to network effectively on LinkedIn, I knew that was a problem I could solve. But I still had to decide on the best way to deliver that solution. 

Would I create an app to help them find and connect with the right people? 
Would I create a framework they could follow and teach it in workshops? 
Or would I take the problem off their hands completely and make the connections for them?

Maybe I would create a decentralized networking community exclusively for women entrepreneurs and eliminate the need for LinkedIn altogether!

There are endless ways you can package your expertise along with your personality, talents, and end game to chisel out an offer that not only solves a problem but also leverages your strengths and honors your core values in a way that results in a superior solution. 

Tap into the depths of your creativity and you can craft products or services that aren't just effective, they’re incomparable.

Drawing Boundaries with a Twist

Ah, boundaries. Those unseen, often overlooked (or avoided) lines that dictate how our clients and customers will treat us and our business, as well as how we’ll treat ourselves. 

Boundaries don’t just happen, we have to decide how we want people to treat us and then communicate those standards in no uncertain terms. But effectively putting boundaries in place can be tricky, especially  if you’re a recovering people pleaser (like me).

This might not seem like a place where creativity would come in handy, but it is. 

Enforcing boundaries can take many different forms. You can get creative with your copy, the delivery methods you use to communicate your boundaries, and the types of consequences that occur when someone violets those boundaries.

Being able to think outside the box can make it easier to enforce the boundaries that will serve to protect you and your business as you grow.

Overcoming Obstacles 

Every entrepreneur faces challenges. But not every entrepreneur faces those challenges through a curious, open-minded lens. When you’re able to harness your creative confidence you not only have access to a greater variety of solutions, you’re not afraid to try them. 

Not all solutions are winners, having an abundance of creative confidence means you’re willing to try something knowing it might not work, and not letting that slow you down if it doesn’t. Thinking of business obstacles as puzzles takes the pressure off and then all you have to do is keep trying solutions until one sticks. 

Weaving a Web of Connection

If any function of business is associated with creativity, it’s marketing. And marketing’s job is to connect your solution with the people who need your solution most.  

But what about those behind-the-scenes connections?

What about the art of relationship marketing? 

Strategic partnerships and referrals are the unsung heroes of entrepreneurial success, and building valuable relationships in today’s digital climate where trust and attention are scarce, can be challenging. 

In a room full of cookie cutter connectors, it pays to be the most creative person in the room. 

Getting someone’s attention and earning their trust requires standing out. These days it’s not going to be enough to request a connection on LinkedIn without a note attached. And worse, sending a templated cold-pitch style intro will likely get you blocked.

So what will you say?

And after you do connect, how will you stay top-of-mind and build rapport and reciprocity without looking like a robot who schedules a ‘check-in’ email using their CRM. Nobody wants to feel like a check box on a to-do list.

Finding the right people and figuring out how to build authentic relationships in ways that nurture rapport and build trust can open doors to collaborations that are not just productive but groundbreaking.

Creativity: The Entrepreneur’s Secret Weapon

Entrepreneurship isn’t just about numbers, strategies, and analytics. It’s about painting your journey with broad strokes of imagination, crafting tales of innovation, and dancing nimbly to the unpredictable rhythm of business. 

So, the next time you tweak an offer, set a client boundary, or noodle on how to refine your LinkedIn networking strategy, remember that the more imagination you put into your strategies, the greater the ROI on the other end of the action. 

After all, in the vast landscape of entrepreneurship, creativity isn’t just an asset; it’s an edge.