THE BUSINESS OF CREATIVITY
Creativity is the biggest asset to humanity, Its is the fuel that drives the world forward, yet so many creative people find themselves at the bottom of the chain because they lack the ability to turn their talent into a business.
Let's start from the basics.
What's a business?
A business is an organisation that offers a product or service that solves a problem/ adds value to people/ make their lives easier in exchange for money.
Creativity is an art of acquiring ideas, breaking them down and rebuilding them into new ideas. Ideas are the biggest asset to a creative mind, but the asset is worth nothing if it is not executed upon.
In business there has to been an exchange of product/service for money and in the creative economy your products are your ideas. Now, although some people do sell ideas alone, most creative people need to learn how to express their ideas as a skill.
THE BUSINESS OF CREATIVITY
We have to admit selling an idea is quite hard, especially because its intangible and sometimes people dont see the value in them. but we have to remember that the world runs on well executed ideas.
The biggest thing creative people have to do is show that their ideas are valuable and can solve people's problems, and that involves picking what problem you want to solve and turning that idea into a skill that can solve the problem in exchange for money.
How valuable are your ideas?
Well ideas are actually worth nothing, execution and delivery is key to determining how valuable the creative mind is. The problem sometimes with creative people is they dont go out of their way to learn a skill or two, to enable them execute on their ideas.
Stop creating for yourself and start creating to solve a problem
This is the classic mistake most “artist” make, they are creating what they want to consume and not focusing on solving a problem.
Your ideas are as valuable as the value of the problem you are able to solve with them.
How do I charge?
So you have learnt a skill and you are ready to go into the world and takes people's money :) so how do you put a price on your ideas?
The simple method I use it this. Do not charge based on how much time you took to come up with the solution but charge based on the value of the solution to the third party. Now this would be hard to get around and you would meet a lot of people that may not be able to meet your pricing but thats OK. You just have to find a balance between the value of the work you are providing and the people that can afford it.
But before you start taking money….
You have to know how to work for free. Now im sure a lot of people may hate to read this bit but it's the cold hard truth, when you are starting out as a creative, people would ask for a lot of free stuff from you, not advocating spec work, but sometimes you learn a lot more from some jobs and gain more experience and most times the jobs that give you this opportunity are free and if done right the free job would land you your first paid job.
Basically free jobs are done to show your value to people, and if executed with excellence it would lead to paid gigs :)
The line is very fine between free jobs for exposure and spec jobs so you have to be very mindful that you are not being used for free talent.
This is all I have for now on the business of creativity. if you have any question let talk in the comments
