I’m hard at play today. Lisa Sonora Beam - author of The Creative Entrepreneur: A DIY Visual Guidebook for Making Business Ideas Real
- and I are busy helping me discover a future that has the exact shape of me. Her book rings with her strong voice and clear instructions, making it easy for me to trust her and to dig deep. And fiddling about with art supplies camouflages the delving I’m doing.
“You are not making art; you are enquiring about significant matters using art supplies.”
~ Lisa Sonora Beam
An artist with an MBA from Dominican University’s Green MBA program, Lisa Sonora Beam combined her expertise in both realms and came up with a series of prompts and visual explorations simultaneously useful and fun. The specific concepts she’s invented and developed clarify ways to combine heartfelt, meaningful work and the nuts and bolts of business.
For example, the Creative Entrepreneur Mandala combines four pathways - Heart-Meaning, Gifts-Flow, Skills-Tools, and Value-Profitability. By discovering what’s unique about me in each of those paths, guided by her instructions and encouragement, I close in on what she calls the “sweet spot” at the centre of the mandala, the place where all the pathways overlap. She describes the “sweet spot” as “the absolutely unique value you offer to the marketplace that is aligned with your innermost aspirations and ideals.”
If you yearn to be self-bossing, to create a business system that thrives, or just want to explore the possibilities, there’s a wealth of direction in this book. Please don’t let being creative get in the way of also being wildly successful.
“The processes shared in The Creative Entrepreneur
can be accessed by all, but the specifics of each are as unique as the individual. That’s why a cookie-cutter approach to succeeding in business so rarely works. The beauty of the processes described here is that you are using proven tools to create your very own road map for getting from where you are right now to where you want to be. Where and how you travel will look very different from other people’s paths.”
~ Lisa Sonora Beam
