Designing Your Creative Business™

Designing Your Creative Business is a deliberate and well thought-out method for achieving the success you want by carefully selecting a business model that fits with your creative, commercial and lifestyle goals. It’s a smart process that enables us to get the best of all worlds: cool creative work, combined with financial reward, plus a happy lifestyle.

Many creative businesses grow “successfully” in terms of income and profit, yet fail to provide creative satisfaction and lifestyle rewards. After some years, the owners can feel ‘trapped’ in their businesses. They have come too far and are in too deep to turn back. To prevent this from happening, we need to build into the ‘blueprint’ for our business all our objectives: creative, financial and lifestyle. This is why its about the deliberate design of a business. It means thinking about what success really means, then constructing a business ‘formula’ accordingly. This design process means knowing ourselves, assessing external opportunities and threats, understanding competition and our competitive advantage, then selecting the right markets. We can evaluate options using the Feasibility Filter. We can make money while we sleep by generating income from the licensing of intellectual property.

The DYCB™ Process is set out in the Designing Your Creative Business ‘Toolkit’ publication, it’s used in David’s consultancy advice with businesses, and also in his ‘Designing Your Creative Business’ interactive training workshops.

– It involves understanding your creative passion, motivations, goals and values.

– It means defining all the ingredients of your own definition of true ‘success’ to ensure that the business delivers on all fronts.

– It uses the PRIMEFACT checklist to evaluation your personal and business situation in terms of strengths and weaknesses.

– Opportunities and threats are identified through an external analysis using the ICEDRIPS checklist.

– It also helps you understand your competitive advantage in relation to competitors and how to create a feasible business strategy.

– Markets and niches are selected strategically, on the basis of your strengths and competitive advantage.

– A Unique Business Formula is then devised to integrate three key elements: creative passion; competitive advantage and selecting markets.

– Once we are satisfied that these elements fit together in a realistic way, to deliver the success you want, can we proceed to a more detailed business plan.

– Further details include financial forecasting, marketing communications, intellectual property, organisational structure, employment issues, business risks and a range of other factors.

The Designing Your Creative Business process, toolkit and workshops have been designed to be particularly useful for businesses in the fields of graphic design, website design, product design, industrial design, photography, visual arts, designer makers, crafts, music, advertising, public relations, fashion design, film and video, and a range of other types of creative enterprise.

The following resources are available to help you design your creative business, with confidential advice from David, in a workshop, or independently.

Online Toolkit / Course: ‘RE-Designing Your Creative Business’ (more…)

Toolkit publication (PDF and paperback). The ‘Designing Your Creative Business’ toolkit publication (more…)

Business Guide book. ‘T-Shirts and Suits: A Guide to the Business of Creativity’ (more…)

Article. ‘Create Your Own Business Formula’ (more…)

Strategic Marketing book. ‘Chase One Rabbit: Strategic Marketing for Business Success. 63 Tips, Techniques and Tales for Creative Entrepreneurs’ (more…)

Creativity in the Studio and the Business Office. Use two kinds of creativity, ‘a-Creativity’ and ‘i-Creativity’, to build a creative business (more…)

Free stuff. A range of free business development resources are also available to build on the framework of the Business Formula devised in the process above (more…)

Video. “How to be a Successful Creative Entrepreneur” Masterclass  (more…)


SEE ALSO…

COVID-19 Business Strategy for Creative, Cultural and Digital Businesses (more…)

How to Design a Creative Lifestyle Business (more…)

Business Design for Lifestyle Success (more…)

‘Five Steps to Success as a Creative Entrepreneur’ (more…)


Designing Your Creative Business

The Designing Your Creative Business ‘Toolkit’ publication is available as a PDF download.


Designing Your Creative Business™  and DYCB™ are trade marks of David’s company, T-Shirts and Suits Ltd.