Recently I was honored to be invited to contribute a chapter to a Brian Tracy book 'Ready, Set, Go!'. Brian Tracy is by far one of the worlds most well-known motivational speakers and coaches and has been a mentor to me through is books and teachings. So when I received the invitation, I jumped at the chance to participate!
The purpose of the book was to share the secrets of success for people looking for motivation to follow their dreams, live the life they desire and find the success that they want, by drawing on our experiences and learnings throughout our own journey.
I wrote the chapter of the book with my daughter Sonya Saywell, who is not only creative and artistic, but also a "business brain" and is my perfect partner in business. In keeping with our mission to help creatives achieve business success, our chapter in the book focuses on the key secrets for artists, designers and other creatives to achieve success in business.
On the day of the release, Ready Set Go reached best-seller status on Amazon.com - reaching as high as #15 in “Direct Marketing” and #73 in the “Sales and Selling” category.
We have adapted our chapter to suit the blog for easy reading below. However, you can download the entire ebook for free by clicking below!
Learn from Brian Tracy and the experts featured in this book about how to accomplish goals and succeed in your field by drawing on each author's unique talents, experience, learnings and successes.
"Ready, Set, Go!" The 10 Success Secrets for Creatives.. by Sonya & Tracy Saywell
People who are creative have a lot to offer the world of business but they might not know it. Some of our most talented designers and artists fail because they have “no business sense.”
Yet the creative process they know so well contains many elements essential for business success.
During the years of running our own businesses, helping hundreds of students through both creative and business challenges, we have learnt that the same skills that make you thrive as a creative can help you thrive in business – if only you know how to apply them.
Come with us for a sneak peek into our creative world to see what business secrets can be learnt…
Our Number One Success Secret for creatives is “Just Get Started.”
My daughter, Sonya, and I design resort wear and decorator items and run a college for creatives. My day starts early in the morning while Sonya works late into the night. At dawn, you’ll find me in my studio mixing bright watercolors and inks, pouring them on paper and watching the colors explode into each other – bougainvillea pinks and ocean turquoises, shadowy purples and cool greens.
It’s the chemistry of my own excitement and the materials themselves that motivates me.
When you are creative and you love your art, you never have a problem getting started. Your passion drives you. Your ideas light up the world in front of you and you just start moving forwards. This creative excitement is exactly what’s needed for business.
Our Number Two Success Secret for Creatives is “Mistakes are Marvelous.”
A spirit of adventure and play where you don’t have to know everything before you start. Approach your business with the same sense of exploration and excitement you do all your creative projects.
Unpredictability is a magical part of the creative process, especially when you work with inks and watercolors. We’re never quite sure which way the water will run or how the pigments will disperse. It’s spontaneous and playful - new possibilities emerge right in front of our eyes. Not everything is under control, and that’s what makes it so fascinating.
We make mistakes but we’re not concerned. Mistakes open up new ideas, new directions. Business can also be this unpredictable. Things don’t always flow the way you were thinking but that doesn’t have to be a bad thing.
Just like in your art studio, in your business you can discover treasure hidden in the mistakes you make. The journey is meant to be surprising.
Secret Three is Easy for Creatives: “You are Your Brand”.
Sonya and I live in Australia on the Gold Coast. It’s a subtropical environment with the longest golden beach you could ever see, hundreds of waterways and canals and amazing bird life. Holiday makers come here all year round for the water sports, to unwind and relax by the pool. It’s our own backyard but we never take it for granted.
We travel a lot and each time we return home we see it with fresh eyes. It’s part of us. The resort wear and decorator items we design are inspired by the color and energy of this place. Our watercolors are the basis for our range of colorful textile designs and prints – silk chiffon dresses that flow in the breeze; active wear; bright cushions and happy furnishings that celebrate the beauty of our local experience. It’s what makes our work unique.
Everyone is looking for what makes their work unique in business as well. They want to stand out in the market place.
When you are creative, you come with uniqueness built in. You infuse your values and personality into everything you do. You are your point of difference.
It’s where you live and breathe, what you do and how you do it. Every moment is your creative business.
For creatives, Secret Four is “You can’t do it all.”
Of course, getting from an ink splash to a final product such as a designer evening dress is not always easy. It requires the help of many others to bring ideas into reality.
The designs have to be scanned and sent to manufacturing companies for proofing and printing. Adjustments must be made for different types of materials. Product patterns have to be created, finalized and sampled, photo shoots organised, websites designed, products advertised, orders fulfilled, accounts paid and problems solved.
It’s impossible to do all these jobs ourselves so we delegate and outsource. We focus our creativity on making the decisions that count and we don’t weigh ourselves down with jobs that are best given to someone else.
We see it all as our creative process only now our artistic materials have expanded to include a range of talented people who are specialists in their own fields.
Even the most solitary of creatives knows that eventually the time comes when their work has to be handed over to others in order to be borne into the world. Creative success means picking the moment to do this and making the business experience a streamlined extension of your process.
Secret Five for creatives is “Renew Your Vision.”
In recent years, our design experiments have diversified while at the same time, our underlying purpose has crystallized. It’s true to say the essence of our purpose has always been there, just not always put into words. There is a moment, however, when it feels right to articulate your mission more clearly.
The first time we did this, we were away from home and that gave us a fresh perspective, like standing back from a painting so you can see the whole instead of just the detail.
We could see clearly that our work was about being creative ambassadors for where we live and being inspiring mentors to other creatives. Now it’s an annual event to let go of our current activities for a while and regroup around what’s important. To make business an ongoing success, these moments of vision and renewal are essential.
Make a regular time for an ‘artistic critique’ of your activities as a whole. Check that you are creating your best life, then set your goals for the future with confidence and commitment.
Secret Six for creatives, therefore, is “Make Time for Completions.”
Like many other creatives, Sonya and I get excited about too many projects at once. It’s nothing to visit our studio and find an underwater scene on the watercolor desk, parrot feathers on the sketch board and half-finished fashion figures in the big canvas studio. On our schedule might be a silk scarf production run; an art kit and course; a floor rug project; a gym wear experiment; and preparation for an exhibition.
Day and night, everything we see sparks a new creative direction. It’s so engaging, yet if we followed every new idea, there would be no time for completion.
Learn to love your completions as much as your ideas.
Remember that the completion phase moves a lot more slowly than the crazy-fast idea phase. There’ll be contingency plans, painstaking adjustments, problem solving and unexpected outcomes. You’ll need patience to work through it all. You’ll need flexibility as well.
Your ideas may have to be adapted to the material world much more than you initially thought. This is where your purpose and goals can help you focus and stay on track. However, goals, are only one part of the solution. Following your work through to completion requires another important element: self-belief.
Believe in Yourself
One of the core reasons so many promising artists abandon their dreams is lack of self-belief. They never stop having ideas, but they never quite complete them either.
By staying in the idea phase and chopping and changing projects all the time they can avoid completion and the exposure to failure they most fear. To move past this, it’s important to find a much greater resolve. You need something that will see you through all the challenges that come with making an idea real.
As a creative, think about this... don’t just believe in yourself as a successful ‘artist’ or ‘business person.’ What’s more important is to believe in your ability to learn and grow. Failing is an inevitable part of every material endeavor.
You can fail as an artist and you can fail as a business person, but you can’t fail as someone who is willing to learn and grow.
You can only thrive from whatever happens. Take a moment to let that sink in.
So let’s recap here. If you’re a creative and you’ve applied the secrets so far,
- you’ve tapped into your sense of adventure and made a start,
- You’ve discovered new ideas hidden in your mistakes,
- You’ve recognized your innate uniqueness and ‘owned’ that as your brand,
- You’ve found people to help you and made them part of your creative process,
- You’ve crystallized your purpose,
- practiced following through and;
- you have developed and unshakeable belief in your ability to learn and grow....
It’s not a big stretch now to see that you can profit from your work.
Success Secret Eight for creatives is that “Profit is Creative.”
Money is one of the many exciting variables you have to play with in your creative business. It’s not at the opposite end of the spectrum of creativity. It’s an integral part of the creative process.
If you are not making as much money as you would like as an artist, then it’s time to explore your profit variables just as though they were colors on your palette.
With the same creative approach you know so well, you can try new things, talk to new people and be inspired by the examples of other artists and mentors.
The profit margin is the place where you find the win/win/win for you, your audience and your wider environment and there’s so many fun ways to work in this space.
That’s where we come to Secret Number Nine - “Prepare to Pivot.”
Unlike the chopping and changing we talked about earlier, the ability to change when you need to - even pivot 180 degrees to face a whole new direction - is a business essential.
In business, everything changes. Government regulations, industry trends, technology, competitors, the economy and buyer behavior are forever in motion. You can’t afford to get stuck on one idea. If something isn’t working, you must pivot.
What you need to know is that pivoting requires an anchor to move around. In your life, that anchor is your purpose. It’s your creative core. When you understand your core, everything else can be open to change, yet you will still get to where you are going.
Secret Number 10: Make Business Your Passion
So, now you have had a glimpse into our creative world and the insights we’ve gained both from our businesses and from observing hundreds of wonderful creatives that have passed through our doors.
We hope you’ve seen how creativity is an essential ingredient for business success, not just in product design, but in every aspect of business.
If you are now excited about the possibilities of standing out in the crowd by taking a creative approach to everything in your business from your customer experience to your systems and processes; your marketing strategies and all the nitty gritty things; even the ‘boring’ stuff, then congratulations. You’ve discovered Success Secret Ten for creatives – “Business is your Passion.” And you can be great at it.
