School of Creative Business - Creative Entrepreneurship

If You Had $2000 to Spend on Your Creative Business- What would You Buy?

If I gave you $2000 to spend on your creative business – what would you buy?

I did this hypothetical exercise around 9 months ago (with $1500) and it was a lot of fun and I thought that  many of us are now researching for Christmas presents for others, why not have a little fun and do a little Christmas business shopping for yourself. 

And because I’m feeling generous this year I’m going to increase your hypothetical cash to $2000 instead of $1500 (you can thank me in comments).

So here’s how it works.

• Lets use Amazon's Office and Electronic area as a guide so we’re all talking the same prices.
• Surf through around and identify what office and electronic supplies (software, tablet, printer ) that you’d get if you had $2000.
• Tell/and or show (with a link) what you’d get in comments below. Tell us why you selected what you did.

What would you order?

• Perhaps the 2010 Microsoft Office Professional software (I need a upgrade) the 2010 version is wonderful - love the new Power Point features.
• Or maybe a HP TouchPad Tablet  (672 Facebook Likes for this product) - this also a great ebook reader
• Or perhaps you want to use the opportunity to purchase a Flip UltraHD Video Camera. This is the one I have. I use it to create all of my creative business solution videos.
• Or buy the one thing you been lusting after – like the ViewSonic DLP Projector (this makes my mouth water- I could really use this for off site presentations)
• With the extra few bucks left - I would add a few marketing books to the shopping cart - to later download to my tablet.

Don’t get overwhelm with the details – I’m really just curious and thought it would be fun to play!

Looking forward to seeing what you ‘order’ (hypothetically of course).

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Looking for more solid tips on business ideas, internet & social marketing, and personal branding? Check out the School of Creative Business free email newsletter,Creative Business Ideas. It jumps off with a Social Marketing Tips E-course. Sign up here. If you know anyone who might like this post- pass it along to other creative entrepreneurs by clicking below on Tweet This or Facebook Like buttons

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Blogging Tip for Beginners: Learn SEO

Blogging Tip for Beginners- Learn SEO

Learn and apply SEO to your blogs. SEO is search engine optimization. You are going to find that if you want your blog to go anywhere, you need SEO, and you need to know how to use it to the advantage of your blog. Just like a website, a blog will be better off optimized.

Resources to Get You Started...

• What's SEO and Does my Creative Business Need it?
• The Beginner's Guide to SEO
• The Beginner's Checklist for Learning SEO
• SEO for Artists
  
• Keyword Targeting for Artists: A Simple Yet Comprehensive Guide for Beginners

 

Start your SEO training today! It really is a must if you want your blog to be found by other readers.

Share this article with other creative business owners.

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Looking for more solid tips on business ideas, internet & social marketing, and personal branding? Check out the School of Creative Business free email newsletter,Creative Business Ideas. It jumps off with a Social Marketing Tips E-course. Sign up here. If you know anyone who might like this post- pass it along to other creative entrepreneurs by clicking below on Tweet This or Facebook Like buttons

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Expressing Your Sincere Gratitude

Once a year, we take time out to be thankful. Make this Thanksgiving less about food and more about expressing your sincere gratitude.

Here are 12 + people to be grateful for in your life.

1. The family members who love and support your creative journey.  Tell them how happy you are to have their love and encouragement.

2. The journalist ,gallery owner, or event manager who took a chance on you.  Send them a thank-you note or even better homemade cookies.

3. The co- worker who puts up with your bitchin’, who drives every time you go out for lunch and who laughs at your jokes – even when they aren’t funny. Give them a candy bar

4. The waitress at your favorite diner - who knows your name when you walk in.   Tip, and smile.

5. The guy who holds the door open for you. Look him in the eye and thank him sincerely.

6. The neighbors who wave as you drive by. Don't take friendly neighbors for granted. They make life much more pleasant.

7. The men and women who risk their lives to serve in uniform (military, police, and fire). Thank them for their service.

8. The author of the book that changed your life.  Send her an email, tweet, or write a nice note on her Facebook page.

9. The creative entrepreneur you met at a networking event or on a social networking site who has now become a kindred spirit. Tell her how much she means to you.

10. The clients who purchased your  work. Send them thank-you notes and keep them in mind for future gestures of generosity.

11 Your followers on Facebook, Google+, and Twitter. They followed you because they wanted to keep up with you. What a gift!

12. The people whose years of effort resulted in the technology you're using right now. Kiss that beautiful piece of machinery. Never have we had such power at our fingertips. As much anxiety as it causes you when it's not working, consider the alternative. It's not pretty. Update your systems, clean up virus- take it to be service.

Who are you thankful for and how do you express it?

I  listed 12, but there are many more!   Tell us who you appreciate!

 

How To Get An Extra Ten Thousands Hits A Year

Offer an Award,

I've seen this actually work for many creative entrepreneurs. Most of you have seen those little award graphics on web sites. They are given to the blog site by another blog site owner to reward the web site for a specific reason. They usually link back to the site that has given the award.

These acknowledgment award are drawing tons of traffic to a website. The reason is because all the sites who get the awards are linking right back to them by posting the award on their site.

So, what is stopping you from creating an award for website?

1. You could easily create an online form for your site so other people can enter to qualify for the award. Then judge all the entrees and pick a winner. You send them the award graphic with a link included. So they can post it on their web site. Now they're linking your web site.

2. Give an award for any reason you feel is suitable to your business. Your website might offer outstanding and original content award, or best marketing techniques used.

Easy Right?

This unique marketing technique can bring in thousands of hits a month- try it out and let me know how it works out for you.

 

Examples of Blog Awards

Blogger's Choice Awards

Bloggy Award

Edublog Award

Creative Blogger Award

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Looking for more solid tips on business ideas, internet & social marketing, and personal branding? Check out the School of Creative Business free email newsletter,Creative Business Ideas. It jumps off with a Social Marketing Tips E-course. Sign up here. If you know anyone who might like this post- pass it along to other creative entrepreneurs by clicking below on Tweet This or Facebook Like buttons

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Creative Entrepreneur Interview with Bryan K Osburn

Creative Entrepreneur interview with Fashion Designer Bryan K Osburn http://bryankosburncollection.com/

Our creative entrepreneur interview of the month is with Bryan K Osburn. Bryan has always been interested in fashion; as a kid he attended a Roman Catholic grammar school, where he would get in trouble with the nuns because he would draw inside of his school books of fashion ladies with long legs and high heels- needless to say, the nuns did not like this.

His parents later brought him sketch pads, and ever since then he have always carried one. He got his start in fashion... on May 25th, 1985 -The night of his very first fashion show at Ray-Vogue College of Design and the night of his first sale - a black and silver brocade jacket with a black silk satin pencil skirt, which sold for $300.00.

Bryan K Osburn is originally from Chicago. His first job in the bridal industry was with Vera Wang. Soon after, he went on to work for: Galina, Jim Hjelm, Lazaro, Paula Varsalona, and Alvina Valenta. He has a ball gown on permanent display at “The City of New York Museum” for “The History of Fashion Exhibit”.

In 1993, Bryan went on his own to design under the name “Bryan K Osburn Collection”. Designer Bryan K Osburn lingers mostly in the European tradition of couture. His passionately designed collection have clean, classic lines.

He sold bridal gowns to high-end specialty boutiques throughout New York City, made custom designs for private clientele and designed for celebrities: Miss America (1994) Kenya Moore, Natalie Cole, Phyliss Hyman, Patti LaBelle, Diana Ross, opera singer Kathleen Battle, actresses Sheri Headley, (Coming to America,) Valerie Pittford (Half and Half), and Erica Alexander (The Cosby Show).

The Interview

What inspired you to become a creative entrepreneur?

My mother and father inspired me to be a creative entrepreneur, my mom was always so supportive, and my dad owned his own business.

What would you say contributes to your success?

Hard work, determination and never settling all contributes to my success in business.

Share one business goal:

My one business goal, to sell a lot of dresses to my new store account in Virginia.

 

What is a typical working day like for you?

Typical work day: Get up around 10am. Check and respond to emails and text messages. Head to my loft space downtown, get in prepare work, I make patterns, cut and sew samples. Order fabrics if needed, and on Thurs and Friday, work with my intern. Work till about 9pm, home by 11pm, check other emails, and text. After I eat late, and catch some t.v, I then head to bed by 2:30am, to start all over gain at 10am.

 

 

What has been your biggest struggle as a professional artist?

Biggest struggle as a professional artist, keep dresses sold.

What has been your biggest accomplishment with your business?

I have been fortunate enough to have several accomplishments with my business..one of my last... my past collection being requested on the road, in several states.. I love traveling for shows.

What piece of advice would you offer to someone wanting to follow in your footsteps?

Advice to someone who wants to do what I do...Stay focused, determined, work hard, and never letting anyone come in the way of your goals.

What resources would you recommend to help other creative people stay organized?

Resources I recommend for other creative people to stay organized. Keep a large calender to write date, appointments and events down. Get a small note book that can fit in your bag, I write everything down, I write down my thoughts, my ideas and I sketch my new designs. When you write things down that you need to remember, I find out that it helps me stay not only organized, it helps me stay in my zone.

What are you currently working on?

Currently I am working on furnishing up orders for my new account, after this, I will start my new bridal collection The Black and White Collection..which I hope to debut in April 2012.

Bryan currently lives in Chicago doing what he loves – designing custom made bridal gowns and evening wear. Returning to Chicago has reignited his love affair with the people and places that originally inspired his dreams of becoming a designer. His current collection may be found at “Soliliquy Bridal Couture” in Herndon, VA. (www.soliloquybridal.com). His “loft” studio is located in West Town-west of Chicago, IL

 

"Fashions fade..Style is eternal"

.....Yves St. Laurent

Creating Online Business Opportunities with Postcards

Creating online business opportunities with Postcard marketing is a popular means of sending customers directly to your creative business site.There are many reasons why you should use postcard marketing for your business. It effectively works as a marketing method for all types of creative businesses -from providing sales leads to generating website traffic, postcards can easily help do the job. What makes postcard marketing so attractive is that designing them can be fairly simple and cheap. You can easily design and print 250 postcards from Vistaprint for $30.00.  A very inexpensive investment in your business.

A simple postcard can help "soften the effects" of  online marketing rather than actually directly reaching out to prospects through social media. What makes postcard marketing quite effective is that they nearly always get read by the people who receive them. The reason for this is that postcards are "ready to read" once people receive them. There are no envelopes to open or any other covering to open up.

Another advantage of postcards is that they are likely to be passed on from one person to another.. This can help add up to the number of people you could reach. As a direct marketing approach, postcards can also be used to target a specific niche that you might want to focus on, in terms of geographical reach or by age bracket.

There are many ways that a postcard can be used for marketing purposes.

• send to your marketing contacts in order to ask for business referrals or Likes on Facebook.
• send out announcements of certain events to customers.
• let people know that you are conducting an online seminar or webinar
• can be used as a preliminary means to reach out to new prospects.
• use postcards to make a discount offers

Postcards can help spread out the word by mailing them out to the homes of your customers and prospects. A postcard can also be a more endearing way to say thanks to people for their help, for information or for referrals. Postcard marketing is an effective way to help bring out better results for your creative business.

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Looking for more solid tips on business ideas, internet & social marketing, and personal branding? Check out the School of Creative Business free email newsletter, Creative Business Ideas. It jumps off with a Social Marketing Tips E-course. Sign up here. If you know anyone who might like this post- pass it along to other creative entrepreneurs by clicking below on Tweet This or Facebook Like buttons

 

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Optimism- A Creative Entrepreneur's B12

When I  heard  that Rapper Heavy D died.- it was a shock and sad day for me, because I truly loved me some Heavy D. I meet him once while in college - he seem to be the most down to earth guy I had ever met. Every time I hear Heavy D's music or see Heavy D on TV- I smile. His presence brings optimism to my life. I can say a lot of his fans would say the same thing.

I believe that living a life with with optimism is about looking forward to the brighter things in life. Positive thinking means to look at life from a more colorful perspective - a view of the world as a positive place- a place and a life worth loving.

Research shows that optimism can greatly affect not only ones way of thinking but also his or her way of life, which is closely associated with a positive outlook. Thinking positive is strongly connected to one's self-esteem. Positive thinking helps improve a person's psychological and mental well-being.

 It is all a matter of choice - to think positive - optimism is a habit. Just being in the presence of Heavy D - brought about an optimism vibe. It takes practice to become more positive- making positive thinking a habit can be done through positive affirmation. Affirmation is a means to try and reinforce a certain state of mind through various means. And in the case of positive affirmation, one tries to affirm certain positive beliefs and reinforcement in such the way as to influence one's behavior as well as state of mind.

There seems to be an association between thought and action. What one thinks can actually influence what he or she will be doing. The mind is a powerful thing. Thinking can also extend to influencing our behaviors and state of mind. This means that by trying to change one's way of thinking, one may also be able to influence and change one's behavior as well as outlook.

How can a Creative Entrepreneur be more positive?

Regular positive self talk using positive affirmations can help influence your subconscious level. As the subconscious gets accustomed to the positive affirmations, it is then used to influence the behavioral patterns that respond and react to certain events in your life. What positive affirmation does is challenges and undermines the negative beliefs and replaces them with positive ones gradually.

What is important in the process of loving life is that positive affirmations should be used as often as possible to be able to work. Its work on the subconscious level that spreads through our behavioral patterns. The positive reinforcement builds up and builds up until the mind perceives it as an inner truth and eventually it is used to influence external behavior and reaction to certain situations.

Although I didn't know Heavy D personally- I do know that his music and tv appearances brought about a certain positive situation into my life. I will always smile and think positive when I remember "The Overweight Lover in the House"!

  

Do You Know The New F-Word Dear Entrepreneur?

^{Guest Post from Happy Health Writing Group}

Are you as an entrepreneur newly exposed to the phenomenon of social media being used as a marketing tool?You have suddenly discovered or at least heard of the solid promotion platforms provided by social networking sites and micro-blogging websites?

Well, it is absolutely true. They are there to provide leverage to all kinds of businesses. Small businesses also gain huge profits from them. Social Media these days have become the most important factor for small businesses to scale up.

F-Commerce and its potential If you still have doubts about the power of social media as a marketing platform, check out some statistics on Facebook, an immensely popular social networking site.

•  25% of user posts on Facebook mention brands, products or services
•  40% "like" a brand in order to receive special promotions
• 51% users claim they are more likely to purchase a product after "liking" them.

F-commerce is a new word for most of us. Some of you may have been flirting with it.The term stands for Facebook Commerce. It is actually an enormous platform situated within Facebook. It has a huge number of stores which work exactly like any other e-commerce website available on the net.

Many of you may wonder: Does it really work?

Lets take a look at some statistics provided by Social Commerce Today. 

• F-stores have a conversion rate of 2 to 4% while traditional websites represent an average of 3.4%.
• Click-through rates on links posted on Facebook Walls are as high as 6.5%.
•  Facebook users spend 1.5x more time on the net than the regular Internet user.

A question that comes to mind is that is it time to shift from websites to Facebook pages as far as commerce is concerned? In my opinion, both have significant roles to play as of now. But going by the trend, the shift is definitely in favour of Facebook.

The F-store There are several applications like Payment that makes it very simple for you to turn your business into an F-store. Big brands are already making full use of it. Its only a matter of time before smaller businesses go the same way. Experts are already of the opinion that Facebook has the potential to catch up with online commerce giants like Amazon.

If you are a businessman thinking of using social media as a vehicle for the growth of your business, ask yourself these two questions:

1. Does that little Facebook "like" button have cash value?

2. Is it a valid recommendation for a product?

Once you have sorted out the answers to these questions, your understanding of the new F-word in commerce and the immense marketing potential that social media carries will help you take your business from one stepping stone to another. It would also help your brand reach its desired customers easily.

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This helpful post is brought to you by the Happy Health writing group. Our site is the home of helpful information about which hearing aids are best suited for you and other first-rated products. Additionally we provide a review of hearing aids, related info and a lot more!

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An Extra Hour of Getting Things Done

This weekend I met with a good friend and client of mine on how to implement social media into her daily work life. Well once we started talking we quickly realized that what she really needed was a schedule to help her get things done instead of working on a social media plan we worked out an 5 day - 6 hour schedule to help her organize her time.

So how does a Creative Entrepreneur Get Things Done?

I suggest...

1. Create a work environment that supports your work style. Do you need to listen to music, or are you easily distracted by the television, do you need to work away from home? Pay closer attention to what type of work environment relaxes you and creates a more productive life style.

2. Identify all the things in your life that shouldn't be there. Create a stop doing list. Write down all the things you need to stop doing. One of the biggest things for me - was taking phone calls after 6pm. Now I just turn off my phone - and allow voice mail to catch the calls.

3. Put your stuff in the right place. This requires setting up a filing system both on line and offline. For creative people- just can be very hard. but I suggest you start slow. Start with papers on your desk- file them away and then maybe tackle your computer desktop- remove files that you no longer need, and create a desktop folder for the files you open often.

Basically- I am saying you have to take control of your creative life - get rid of things that hold you back. Everything in your life should have a reason for being there. These simple steps will give you an amazing kind of confidence and a clear understanding of what's on your agenda for today.

So, What are you doing with your extra hour of time?

 

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Looking for more solid tips on business ideas, internet & social marketing, and personal branding? Check out the School of Creative Business free email newsletter, Creative Business Ideas. It jumps off with a Social Marketing Tips E-course. Sign up here. If you know anyone who might like this post- pass it along to other creative entrepreneurs by clicking below on Tweet This or Facebook Like buttons

 

 

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How a Creative Business Can Benefit From Social Media Marketing

More than 60% of buying decisions are made before the buyer interacts with you or your company, so a lot of your marketing efforts are not being seen. This is a business tragedy and a waste of money.

 

Change your focus: use social media to empower your community to help you gain visibility, leads, and ultimately, sales. Drive your sales and awareness by cultivating a community around a topic relevant to your business. Social Media  is the best way to engage authentically with your existing and prospective communities.

Please join me for the November 8th for a complimentary webinar series, to learn how to benefit from Social Media in a way that engages your community hyper-socially: help your community help you.


Register today to gain access to "How to Benefit from Social Media," streaming live on November 8th, 2011, from 8:00pm - 9:00pm ET.