Want to be more specialized in your creative business? Try this.
Where do you even begin to figure out how to make your multi passions, skills and interests into a small business that will sustain you creatively and financially? Here’s a great suggestion, and it’s free!
I find the process of digging deeper and deciding on a specific solution super fascinating. But only once I changed my mindset around the whole highly-creative-multi-passionate-entrepreneur-struggle narrative, and began to see how natural, and often essential, it is to be able to do several things.
You know how you can hear something being said over and over , but it doesn´t resonate? You understand what’s being said, but it doesn’t do anything for you. Then one day you hear someone say the same thing, but in a slightly different way, and suddenly you get it!
Listening to David C. Baker on different podcasts, talking about his book The Business of Expertise, he somehow explains the benefits of narrowing your focus in a way I understand.
A great way to begin specializing your creative business
Select the deep knowledge topic and the surrounding topics
The topic you’ll dive into, to get deep knowledge about, will be something you have experience in already. This topic will be your specialty.
See if you can select one area where you can go really deep and specialize, and what other topics can remain on a more superficial level.
Write it out, paint it, journal on it, mood board it, mind map it. Whatever you find inspiring.
If it helps, you can think of the main topic as the tree trunk that has deep roots, and the other topics as the branches.
You don’t have to give up any interests, you may even gain new ones. Some of your interests has to be saved for your private free time, because we want an interesting private life too, don’t we?
We work and we play.
The multi-passionate entrepreneur challenge
From 10 years of creativity coaching, I have noticed some similarities between my amazing clients, patterns if you like:
Good at learning.
Not so good at making money/charging well and justifiable.
Good at finding solutions that others don’t seem to see.
Not so good at having bosses (being told what to do).
Need help, but want to do it all themselves.
Good at focusing, it’s just a little hard to stay focused on the same thing for a long time.
Believe in holistic approaches, processes, and doing good for people and planet.
Good at many things, one being helping other people. It’s harder to help themselves.
It’s a little black and white, of course, people are way more nuanced. What’s not exaggerated, is that every single client has been incredibly smart, professional, accomplished, creative, and with a desire to do good.
My guess is, the same can be said about you, dear reader.
Here’s the bugger…
You are the ones that should be running successful businesses.
Many of my clients have that dream, including myself, and here is where we get stuck:
The pattern shows (in various degrees):
That we get stuck at the beginning of where to begin to figure out how our knowledge and interests can become a business.
We skip steps to more fun parts, often social media and website building, but end up getting overwhelmed by #allthethings. Because there’s not enough clarity.
2. In our search for answers we get sidetracked by more lovely learning and new delicious ideas, and we might mistake that for new business ventures.
And so the circle continues. #overwhelm
Being your own best friend and look within
The beginning of where to begin honing in on what it specifically is that you can help your best customer with, is a process of deep research into yourself. It’s turning some lovely, and well deserved, attention on yourself.
I truly believe the most important work is with ourselves. The best job in the world is to become an expert and specialist in yourself first.
What is the work you can imagine happily doing for next few years?
And then…
Who do you enjoy helping and hanging out with?
It’s ok to be moving away from one thing, and moving towards a direction more in tune with what you believe in.
That work is what people often skip, simply from not knowing how important it is, and how to go about it.
Specializing your business is not about having 1 or 4 interests. It’s not a case of either you’re someone with 1 skill and interest, and therefore have no business problems, or you’re an overwhelmed multi-passionate, and that’s why you don’t have a business.
Examples of ways you become specifically good at something:
Specialize in solving a specific problem.
Ex: solve a specific business problem through design.
Specialize in helping a specific group of people.
Ex: help a specific group of young students with maths and physics.
Helping a particular group of people learn a skill.
Ex: Teach photoshop to women solopreneurs.
It’s my belief that the best place to start is with yourself. The fire has to come from your belly. Not anyone else’s.
Decide on the work you think is interesting and important. Then who you wanna help. And begin. One small step after another.
There’s no perfect solution, there’s just beginning.
To recap:
A good way to begin at the very beginning, as a multi creative wanting a small creative business is:
Find the deep knowledge specific topic, you’ll base your specialized business around.
And then find the surface knowledge topics that will support the specific deep knowledge topic.
If you’re a soloist, a company of one, a solopreneur, doing several things is the world you live in. So, you have to make the work work for you. No hack, no bs, just good old fashioned work.
If you found this post useful, I’d love for you to get my emails too. That’s a place I share most of what is going on in front and behind the scenes. .)
