Business as a Creative Process?
Several months ago, I wrote about stopping yourself from engaging in life. In that little blog post, I talked about allowing past experiences to stop you from doing activities that you wanted to do. Recently, I spotted how that had happened with me. I was considering starting a new business; I was looking at business as a creative process.
What is Business?
As I was exploring many of the creative avenues that were before me, I started to see that one of the barriers that I had allowed to stop me was an idea that I had had about business. What do you think when you hear the word business?
Some thoughts that came to mind for me were “distasteful, less than honest, money-focused, materialistic, untrustworthy . . . ” you get the idea. Somewhere along the way, I had accepted these ideas as true. However, I had also always loved beautiful, natural and handmade items from around the world. How would anyone get any of these items except through business?
When I became aware of the negative ideas that I associated with business, I looked at them, looked at businesses of people I knew and was familiar with and realized that, of course, businesses did not have to be this way! In fact, when I began looking into businesses that interested me, I found a few (not all) that gave SO much value for what they asked in return that I couldn’t help but admire them. This changed everything for me and made me WANT to start a business.
Solitary Creating
In fact, my ideas about business in general have dramatically changed. I want to try to explain it, but you may have to be patient with me as I try. If you have read any of my other posts, you know that I am enthusiastic about art and creativity and everything with a high aesthetic. And, of course, you can create alone. And for many artists, especially visual artists, creating is a solitary thing. And I DO LOVE that aspect of creating!
Business as Communication
However, there is another way of creating and that is creating connections between people. And along those connections, things flow. Many, many connections with things – ideas, feelings, items, many things – flowing among people along those connecting lines. So, at that point, business can be something that positively effects many people. I tried to find an image that concept and found one that I have always associated with communication of ideas.
Art as Communication
So my picture of art as communication has expanded to encompass business as communication. And the importance of that, for me, is the quality of that communication. Which I will go into in another post.
And that is what I find exciting about business. That’s what I think is fun, exciting and if it is done in a way that is good for everyone, hopefully profitable.