Everything you need to know about starting your very own creative business from your creative idea – and becoming a creative entrepreneur.
You have a great creative idea. You may even think of it as a passion. As you work at, or apply for, a “proper job”, every chance you get, you think about your creative idea. You can’t wait to spend time on it when you can, but only when you can fit it in around your job. After all, it can only ever be a hobby, not your real life. We’re here to tell you that you can make your creative idea your “proper job” and become a creative entrepreneur.
What is a Creative Entrepreneur?
An entrepreneur is defined as a person who starts a business that offers customers something they need, taking the financial risk that this business will earn a profit. In the case of a creative entrepreneur, that ‘something customers need’ is the output of their imagination and original thinking. For example:
- a fashion line
- a digital publishing breakthrough
- a furniture collection
- an advertising campaign
- a TV series
- a Youtube music concept
- a theatre production
- a building
- a film
…and many more creations that creative people are just bursting to share with the world. If started and operated well, these are businesses that could not only support your own needs, but also earn enough to grow and keep getting better, letting you make more and more of those unique creative products that people love and want more of.
How To Start Your Creative Business
You’ve already started – you have your big creative idea! So, what now? The idea of starting a business can seem daunting at first, so Creative Entrepreneurs was created with you in mind. Creative Entrepreneurs is a movement that says “creative people can do this for themselves” and for the first time, brings together all the resources you need to start your creative business, in one place. No jargon, no being ‘blinded by business science’ – just the basics you need to know in order to let your creative idea take flight.
Creative Entrepreneurs: How We Can Help You Achieve Your Dream
There are actually lots of resources available out there, but until now, they hadn’t been collected together in one place and organised in a user-friendly way, making these excellent tools largely inaccessible.
This was compounded by the fact that creative people don’t tend to be trained or interested in business, so there was even less of a chance that they, as opposed to people in other sectors, would find the necessary information to start up their own businesses. We saw this as a huge wasted opportunity in the highly talented British creative world and wanted to help fill the gap as soon as possible. So we launched the Creative Entrepreneurs website where we collect links to all of these resources and organise them in the logical order you need to think through when starting up a business, finally giving you the ‘lay of the land’ and all the tools you need to start up, including:
- how to write a business plan
- raising money
- advice & mentoring
- finding work space
- hiring people
- protecting your creative works
- guidance on building websites and social media
- promoting your business
- courses and training
- communities and going international
- legal aspects
- accounting and tax (don’t worry, you’ll learn to love it).
We also organise these resources by the following 14 creative sectors as they each have their own specialised resources:
- Advertising
- Architecture
- Art and Photography
- Craft
- Design
- Digital ENT and Media
- Fashion
- Film and TV
- Marketing and PR
- Music
- Performing Arts
- Publishing
- Theatre
- Video Games
Creative Entrepreneurs brings you these resources in a down-to-earth, user friendly and enticing way. The mainstream business press seems to be aimed only at major industrial and tech conglomerates, the Davos set or accountants and CFOs.
Creative Entrepreneurs are creative people talking to creative people, so we tell you about business in terms that propel your entrepreneurial expertise, while realising that the creative output is your ultimate prize. We cut out the jargon and complication, giving very simple explanations of each resource category and why they are directly relevant for you.
Insider Views and Launching The Creative Startups Conversation
To get you in the know, we have interviews with experts like creative industries investors, lawyers, and leadership gurus. We showcase think pieces, to both give you a window onto what the wider community is saying about creative entrepreneurship and to kick-start a bigger dialogue on why creative entrepreneurs are so important and their businesses so valuable.
Learning From The Best Creative Entrepreneurs In The Business
Finally, the starting point for all of this is you – a person with a creative idea. So we will bring you the stories of some of the most exciting creative people around, creative entrepreneurs who tell you about their ups and downs, their failures and successes and most importantly, their motivations and inspirations. From household names like our launch Ambassadors to the up-and-comers who are just starting to break-through, we’ll have inspiring interviews right here.
If you empower yourself to chart your own course by driving your own creative business, you’ll put yourself in a position to be more creative, more enriched (in every way, not just financially) and more free than you ever dreamed. And you are not alone. You are part of the most exciting, fastest-growing, most globally successful part of the British economy.
Simply put, if you have a great creative idea, you can make a great business out of it. And you now have a place to start and people to learn from.