Check out these 5 great lessons any small business owner can learn from artists
1. Don’t Take Yourself Too Seriously
This one’s HUGE! In business, being serious and reliable can make or break your business. After all, no one’s going to want to fund you or partner with you if you don’t look like a professional and act like one, too.
Now we’re not going to advise you to put on a clown costume (unless you want to), but it is important to poke fun at yourself and your business every once in a while.
By taking yourself or your business too seriously, you lose the flexibility and fun that you had when you originally started your business. This means: you’ll either burn out quickly or you’ll turn customers away with your way-too-serious attitude.
Key Takeaway: Be serious about your business when talking with your accountant; have fun with your business when you’re with clients.
2. Small Business Owners: Get Creative When Brainstorming
You probably have one way that you’ve rocked your brainstorming sessions in the past. It may have worked wonders for your business then, but maybe lately you’ve started to see it’s not working so well. What do you do?
The solution is to get creative and change it up!
Try out different ways of brainstorming. Here are three to get you started:
Use flipboards – Using flipboards allow you to place different thoughts and ideas on a big scale throughout your office, living room, garage, wherever you work. With flipboards, you’ll keep yourself active and engaged.
Draw – You don’t have to be a Van Gogh or Picasso to get this brainstorming strategy right. Keep it fairly neat, but make sure to spread out to allow different connections and new ideas to pop up and be added to your drawing.
Role play as a customer – What better way is there to get in the mindset of your customers than to act like one of them! Get into the role and let your “customer” lead you to new ideas and more growth for your business.
Key Takeaway: Small business owners – change up your brainstorming ways to let new ideas and ways to do business bubble up to the surface!
3. Small Business Owners: Get Visual
Is your workspace visually stimulating?
An artist’s studio or workroom has inspiring pictures and new sketches all over to keep their creative juices going. You can use visuals similarly to energize your business and make you more creative.
If you’re not sure what kinds of pictures you should look for, think of your business and where you want to be.
Visuals could include:
Inspiring quotes
Sketches of future products
Photos of what inspired you to start your business in the first place
Photos of your role models or sayings from them
Key Takeaway: Getting more images, pictures and sketches in your workspace will shift your thoughts and inspire more creativity for you in your business.
4. Small Business Owners: Inject Fun into Your Day
If you’re doing the same thing, day in and day out, you’re going to get sick and tired of it, not matter how much you love it. Make sure to take breaks (like one to increase your productivity with these quick, easy stretches) and work fun into your daily schedule.
Now to start, don’t break your whole schedule – you still need to get stuff done, right? Start to set aside chunks of time each day to do something you’ve never done before. If you have a meeting, how about having it at a coffee shop that you’ve never been to?
Key Takeaway: Your routine could be holding you back from thinking in a new way and trying new things, which could make you EVEN MORE successful.
5. Small Business Owners: Be Open to New Sources of Inspiration
Artists don’t just sit in the same office, isolating themselves from the rest of the world. Their inspiration comes from the world outside and abroad. And yours can, too!
You created your business to satisfy some need that’s out there, right? Well, how are you going to know what your clients want (or will want next) if you’re not out there? You’ve got to do it to stay ahead of the curve!
Try out these ways to find new inspiration for your business:
Take your work to a coffee shop where your target market would hang out in. Listen and watch (without being creepy) to get an idea of how your target market really works.
Have a mini-research group with some friends who are in your target market. Ask them questions about their lives, common problems, what their typical day looks like, etc., to get a better idea of what their lives are like. Once you know that, you can get a better idea of products or services that could appeal to that group.
Look at your product or service like you’re seeing it for the very first time, just like your customers would. What do you truly think? Do you wish it could do more for you as a customer? What would make it even more awesome so that your customer couldn’t resist buying it? Don’t let yourself come up with reasons not to make changes to your product or service. Just let the ideas flow first and then think up ways to make it work later.
Key Takeaway: Get inspired by new thoughts and activities that you might not have made time to do before.
So, what do you think?
Are you going to put these lessons to practice in your business?
Care to share this to all of your friends. |