Three ways to think like an artist as you build your business
Artist Meg Forsyth working in her Netherlands based studio
Written by Alison Gilbert
I was visiting my aunt in Texas years ago around the time I was starting my consulting company, Project AG. During the visit I had shared how I felt I didn’t know how to move forward on the business when my professional background seemed so random up until that point. If I couldn’t make sense of it all to myself, how would others buy-in to what I had to offer? And what were the right things for me to offer? During a quiet car ride one day, my aunt broke the silence and gently said, “Alison, these things take time and they have their own kind of process.”
At this same time in my life I had been reading a lot of books about the artist’s experience and the creative process. The timing of my aunt’s wise words (she happened to be an artist herself! A potter), along with the observations from my readings, empowered a thought: What if I approached my work as an artist does? Artists are the masters of the process after all.
I may not have been able to make full sense of my experiences at that moment, but I was able to wrap my mind around the belief that everything I had been doing was in some way influencing what I was yet to, and meant to create and offer. I began to adopt the mindset of an artist and it made my entrepreneurial experience feel that much more inviting and safe. Based on all that I’ve read about how artists work, and what I’ve learned from taking an artistic approach with my own work, below are three essential ways to think like an artist:
Think process
What you’re working on during the early days of your entrepreneurial journey may not seem like it’s what or where you want your work to be, but if you embrace the idea that the work you're doing now is the work of *your* process, your ideas will evolve in time.
Author and speaker, Maxie McCoy, writes:
“If you’re looking to understand what you want, look for what process is worth it to you. If you were to take the possibilities of accolades, or recognition, or pay out, or possibility for something great on the back end, what would still be worth doing because you’re so about the process of doing it? It doesn’t mean that you’ll love every minute of every day of that process, but you’ll love it more than you don’t.
That’s how you know. That’s how you can back into a decision. That’s how you can decide what to research. What to spend your time looking for. What to turn down. What to give your big yes to.
Ask yourself what’s worth the process...rather than the outcome.”
What process feels worth it to you?
My days in college as an English major gave me insight into the process that gives me the most joy--a process that involves words--writing and editing them. That process is the basis of what I do with my business. I conceive of, try out and experiment with content, services and product ideas, that, at their core, involve sharing knowledge, wisdom and stories that involve me having to work with words, edit them and share them. It’s hard for me a lot of the time but it truly is the process that fulfills me most.
Think body of work
Time will reveal how your current thoughts, ideas and experiments will influence future developments, as artist Austin Kleon speaks to in this piece--he talks about this idea of viewing your efforts as contributing to a body of work, as artists do.
I look at my background that’s led to now--I was an English major turned law school applicant, turned pastry cook, turned media executive before I started to pave my entrepreneurial path. At first glance these life and career experiences that have led to now seem unrelated but really they have all yielded knowledge, insights, and creations that have become my body of work.
The latest addition to this 15+ year body of work has been my creating The Originator Kit, the flagship offering of The Big Whisper. And while this has been a milestone that only really was possible because of the very body of work that preceded its creation, it is yet another component to this body of work that I continue to evolve and grow.
Think heart-centered truth
Artists express truth. They use their chosen medium to explore the answer to something--a question, a problem, an idea--and then share that in what they create. You know a piece of art--a song, a painting, a book, etc.--has gotten to a core truth if it moves you, if you feel something. And when that happens, there is a reverberating effect--the person who experiences that feeling becomes elevated, inspired and shifted in some way.
Business is an opportunity for the same kind of expression and connection. When you tap into the heart-centered truth of your idea, that authenticity comes through outwardly in the services and goods you offer and is the secret-sauce for how you grow--people will be drawn to the truth and intention that comes through in how your good, product or service works and in the value that it creates for others.
As you’re building what you’re building, especially in the early days, it’s about being in hyper-discovery mode to get to the truth—with yourself, with what you’re creating and with who you think you’re creating for. The more you adopt the mindset that everything you’re doing is about getting to the essence of your idea—the heart-centered truth of your idea—the sooner you will discover that very truth (even if this may be a multiyear process!).
When we adopt the mindset that entrepreneurs are artists, an opportunity presents itself--to change the definition of business altogether. Rather than business being a purely bottom-line endeavor, it can become an art form. Business can be a medium for expressing Truths and inspiring shifts--within an individual, amongst a community and throughout a system.