How to sneak in a creative project to your business

Have you ever felt a bit uninspired by your business? And maybe ready for something new? Without jumping both feet first into a new venture, it might be time to sneak a creative project into your business.

Let me explain.

A client, let’s call her Sarah, told me that she wants to see her business as her creative project. At the time she doing some associate work which was well inside her comfort zone, and she was bored. Sarah has ideas for new services which would force her to develop new skills. And some of these ideas will also help her to charge more money. But she’s not sure exactly how it will all work yet, and she has this strong desire to be more creative in her work.

All good, but how to get started?

1. Decide what you mean by creative project

Creative means something different for everyone. And to get started with a creative project, you need to decide what ‘creative’ means to you.

Sarah and I chatted about what she means by a creative project. And it turns out that Sarah finds writing is a great way to express herself.

We agree that she should start by setting up a blog and writing her ideas down. The blog would be public, but she can do whatever she wants on it because it isn’t linked from her website or LinkedIn profile.

She is free to flex her creative muscles because no one from her current world sees it.

2. Develop your skills

Having a creative project is a great way to help you develop new skills. This means you can have fun learning new things that you can use in your business.

For Sarah, creating a blog means she can think about her ideas. I was keen on this because it gives her a space to develop some articles which she could use later in a proper website or on Medium.com.

And she’ll have a chance to gain new skills, which is great because copywriting is one of the most valuable skills you can have in business.

You might want to develop a new skill that you can sell as a service. Or use your creative project to hone a new way of marketing your business like getting better at copywriting.

3. Get started with your creative project

Here’s the great thing about sneaking in a creative project: it’s exciting and shiny and new so it’s easy to get started right away.

About four hours after we spoke, Sarah emailed me to say that she’d set up a simple blog and has two posts ready to publish right away. And that she feels inspired and enthusiastic now she has a home for all her creative ideas.

Your creative project might not be a blog. It could be learning illustration, photography, data visualisation. I’ve been learning how to do little animated videos like this one just because I thought it would be fun. And someone wanted to charge me £500 for one which seems like a ripoff. You can see the end result of my creative project here:

While I’m unlikely to start selling my services as a video animator, I did learn new skills and had fun doing it. And if I fancy it, I have a new way to illustrate my stories and ideas in the future.

If you want to sneak a creative project into your business, what would it be? And can you learn some new skills and create new assets at the same time?

Want more helpful stories like this?

I send out little nuggets of advice like this over email. I call them Business Stories because they are stories that I’ve collected over the years with small actions you can take in your business. You can sign up here – I save the good stuff for these emails.