‘Designing Your Creative Business’ (DYCB) is a toolkit publication, written for creative entrepreneurs, to help them to design a successful creative business, and to help established enterprises to grow in a focused way.
This 20-page publication takes you through a practical process of understanding your motivations, goals and values so as to achieve success in your own terms. It’s a practical workbook for you to write your own answers to a series of questions and develop your own Unique Business Formula.
It also helps you understand your competitive advantage in relation to competitors and how to create a feasible business strategy.
Characteristics are evaluated in terms of strengths and weaknesses using the PRIMEFACT checklist.
Opportunities and threats are identified through an external analysis using the ICEDRIPS checklist.
A Unique Business Formula is then devised, taking into account organisational structure, market segmentation, financial forecasts, business risks and a range of other factors.
‘Designing Your Creative Business’ toolkit
Free to download now.
Read more about ‘Designing Your Creative Business’ workshops.
The DYCB Process
The DYCB process is useful for established businesses, start-ups and entrepreneurs currently assessing the feasibility of new business ideas.
It is a practical guide for Designing or Redesigning Your Creative Business to deliver both commercial AND lifestyle success.
This can be about altering the ‘Work-Life Balance’, or even better, to achieve Work-Life Integration.
Read more about How to Design a Lifestyle Business and Business Design for Lifestyle Success.
David uses the DYCB process and toolkit in his training workshops with creative entrepreneurs.
This DYCB toolkit is included in the online course ‘Redesigning Your Creative Business’.
The DYCB Toolkit is published as a companion to the highly-acclaimed book T-Shirts and Suits: A Guide to the Business of Creativity. It takes the reader through a process of designing a successful creative enterprise, taking into account both creative passion and business realities.
Read more about T-Shirts and Suits.
Here are just a few comments from creative, cultural and digital businesses about the Designing Your Creative Business toolkit publication:
“T-Shirts and Suits is a great mixture of theory, practice and inspiration. ‘Designing Your Creative Business’ is the ‘Do It Yourself’ version of the book.”
Fiona Shaw.
Capsica Publishing.
“This practical publication could also be described as a “sketchbook” or “drawing board” for creative entrepreneurs like us to use to get our heads round what we need to do to make our design businesses work better.”
Matt Houghton and Tom Downing.
Sauce Multimedia / Loaf Creative
“David’s workshop was a great help when I was starting my business. If you can’t attend one of his workshops, this toolkit is just what you need instead.”
Darren Ratcliffe.
RedStar Creative Ltd.
“This toolkit takes you through the process used when we attended one of David’s workshops. It asks the right questions in the right order and prompts you to think about the fundamentals of your business then take the right decisions to get you where you want to go.”
Andy Cooper and Glenn Maguire.
Sparkle Media Ltd.
“T-Shirts and Suits is a thoroughly enjoyable and essential book for any creative business. This companion publication helps creative entrepreneurs to put together their own plan for success using the ideas and information in the book.”
Alison Coward.
Enterprise Centre for the Creative Arts. University of the Arts London.
Explore all David’s creative business training workshops.
Watch the video below with comments from client Creativity Zentrum and workshop participants about the DYCB workshop delivered by David in Bilbao, Spain.
‘Designing Your Creative Business’ toolkit
Free to download now.
Designing Your Creative Business:
A Toolkit for Creative Entrepreneurs
By David Parrish
Copyright © David Parrish 2008-2026
ISBN 978 0 9560744 0 9
Designing Your Creative Business™ and DYCB™ are trade marks of T-Shirts and Suits Ltd.