Business of Being Creative with Sean Low

Your ideal project — the one that gives you the best chance of success has to be known. What this timeframe, thought process, looks like has to be known to everyone. It is from there that you leap. L…

Doing work you hate never leads to the work you love. And skill is a commodity, passion is everything. What do these things mean? Do they matter? Let’s discuss…

Original Episode Number: 41 | Original…

If you are making a change in your business, you have to have everyone be ready. If you are fortunate enough to need to hire a team or have a team, you have to understand The Goal by Eliyahu Goldratt…

Perfectionism lives within so many artists. Cliches abound: “Perfect is the enemy of good”, “Be the best”, “Profit and perfect are mutually incompatible.” Really it is a conversation about Creation v…

Creative business is built on the microscopic. For so many creative businesses, the very idea of serving more than 500 customers in a year is silly. Most are built on less than 50. And yet we speak i…

Emotional resonance is what separates you, the artist, from the rest of us.  While you have a gift at your craft, that is not why you are paid.  You are paid to be professional, to make us feel and t…

As we come to Fall, so many creative businesses are confronted with the challenge of whether it is worth it to keep going. There are no easy answers but there is a framework to think it all through. …

Transparency is not Saran Wrap. It is being secure in what you charge and then knowing how you are going to earn it. As clients get smarter, value is not about being relative to competition, it is ab…

I am going to talk about a story that is near and dear to me. I have told this story and its importance to creative business many times. I have even told it at a college commencement speech I was so …

Most creative businesses are caught in the new client trap. They take on a project and then use the success of that project to get another (and another). Very little is ever offered to the great clie…

Every business takes a risk, that is the very nature of business. The question is whether you are properly paid for that risk. If risk is being vulnerable then the choice to be vulnerable has to be y…

When we contemplate what is next, too often we want to be derivative of what has come before. Sure, we need to acknowledge the benefit of history, ultimately though we have to stretch beyond the real…

In the midst of the existential crisis we find ourselves in, all creative business is being upended.  Sure, some are busy, but most are suffering from a prolonged winter — actors, musicians, event pr…

We all might say that we want to make real change, but the inertia to change is real. We hope that yesterday will carry us forward and doubling down on the old will prevail against the new. Let’s tal…

COVID has shifted our culture and forced us to rethink what and how we do what we do. The question is what will you take with you. Let's talk Zoom, Project Management, Cash Flow and Marketing.

Origin…

Art is shaped and shapes culture. If you are in the business of creating art, what does that exactly mean for you? How are you to incorporate this responsibility into touchstones of your work? Defini…

What does the long tail, scarcity and niche have to do with your creative business? Umm, everything. Oh, and if you are not sure what the long tail, scarcity and niche even mean in this context, that…

The story of your art and your business are not the same but they rely on each other. The key components of story is trust, tension and resolution. How you hold each component is what sets the path f…

Managing the client experience is a singular challenge for every creative business. For the most part, projects are for an extended period of time with many ups and downs both for activity and emotio…

Constraints are nothing new. Creative businesses have always operated in a window. I have never met a designer who is perpetually free to create as she sees fit without regard to budget, style or eve…