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The Creative Entrepreneur: A DIY Visual Guidebook for Making Business Ideas Real
The Creative Entrepreneur was voted Winner, in two categories—Craft and Business, of the 2009 IBPA (Independent Book Publishers Association) Benjamin Franklin Award which recognizes excellence in publishing.
This book is for the large audience of artists, crafters, and creative individuals from all walks of life who desire to make a livelihood from their creative work, or who possibly have achieved some success, but don’t know how to replicate it or move to another level of accomplishment. These crafty DIY artists are everywhere--they are holding alternative craft fairs, they advertise in the pages of Bust and ReadyMade and Craft, they are selling online by the thousands at Etsy.com, and are blogging at Typepad, LiveJournal, and Whipup.com. But many of them do not have the skills needed to take their business ideas to the next level.
The Creative Entrepreneur takes readers on an inner journey of creative exploration to discover how to make their dreams of creative livelihood real, as they craft their own Artist’s Business Journal. The Artist’s Business Journal is a visual, project-oriented, step-by-step approach to business development for artists from all walks of life who are mystified and possibly frustrated by how to make a business out of their creative work.
This book is for the large audience of artists, crafters, and creative individuals from all walks of life who desire to make a livelihood from their creative work, or who possibly have achieved some success, but don’t know how to replicate it or move to another level of accomplishment. These crafty DIY artists are everywhere--they are holding alternative craft fairs, they advertise in the pages of Bust and ReadyMade and Craft, they are selling online by the thousands at Etsy.com, and are blogging at Typepad, LiveJournal, and Whipup.com. But many of them do not have the skills needed to take their business ideas to the next level.
The Creative Entrepreneur takes readers on an inner journey of creative exploration to discover how to make their dreams of creative livelihood real, as they craft their own Artist’s Business Journal. The Artist’s Business Journal is a visual, project-oriented, step-by-step approach to business development for artists from all walks of life who are mystified and possibly frustrated by how to make a business out of their creative work.
128 pages, Paperback
First published November 1, 2008
47 people are currently reading
914 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 30 reviews
December 9, 2010
This is one of those books that seems like it was made by someone like me, for me, and I found it at just the right time. I'm a writer that's working on a t-shirt line, and I don't know why I never thought of creating a visual business plan for my apparel company...when I created one for my book outline. I suppose when it came to shirts I was all business, like, "Okay, gotta get a business plan, gotta set deadlines..." and now I realize why I felt so stuck. I sucked ALL the fun out of it!
I was so afraid of spending and wasting money with so many bills that I became scared of making any bad decisions, and then I started procrastinating. I think once I mix up all the inspiring pictures, business ideas, etc. into a notebook, like I did for my other hobbies, I'll be motivated to go through the next steps of obtaining a trademark, business license, etc.
This book may not be for everyone, but if you know anyone who can't seem to make the next logical steps forward--tell them to put the business plan books aside for a moment, and start a journal.
I was so afraid of spending and wasting money with so many bills that I became scared of making any bad decisions, and then I started procrastinating. I think once I mix up all the inspiring pictures, business ideas, etc. into a notebook, like I did for my other hobbies, I'll be motivated to go through the next steps of obtaining a trademark, business license, etc.
This book may not be for everyone, but if you know anyone who can't seem to make the next logical steps forward--tell them to put the business plan books aside for a moment, and start a journal.
May 15, 2009
This book outlines a great approach to thinking about business, whether it's one you're already running or just thinking about. Notice I said "thinking about business." This book isn't about the mechanics of starting or running a business. So, no checklists, no discussions of branding or legal issues, and no marketing tips. This book is far more esoteric than that, which is helpful if you've lost your way in your business or you just know you want to strike out on your own but you're not sure what's at your core, creatively. Although the book is aimed at "creatives" (right-brainers, essentially), analytical types like myself will find the journaling prompts very helpful as thinking exercises. I'd probably go as far as to say "meditative" given the level of introspection that's required to answer each prompt.
I've read through it once and found it delightful. I'm going to read through it again later, and do all the exercises, to give things some time to percolate.
I've read through it once and found it delightful. I'm going to read through it again later, and do all the exercises, to give things some time to percolate.
May 23, 2011
This was an excellent resource for writing a business plan. Many of the exercises were geared toward visual exercises that could then be left for further introspection later. The key is to get the ideas down on paper which I was hindered by anytime I approached the idea of writing a business plan.
Highly recommend! I actually worked through it with a group of artists and we blogged about it over on http://www.creativebizmarathon.blogsp...
Highly recommend! I actually worked through it with a group of artists and we blogged about it over on http://www.creativebizmarathon.blogsp...
March 22, 2011
At the beginning, this book says it's not a self help book but it is. On the surface it's a bit touchy feely but if you actually sit and read it, it poses some very thought-provoking and insightful questions. I really enjoyed all the accompanying artwork and inspiring quotes. A really good tool for the creative person, whilst aimed at business a lot of it can be applied to personal goals too.
November 1, 2010
Mixed thoughts on this book - it's beautiful - but not a big value-add for those with a business or analytical background as the concepts are fairly straight-forward. The journal pages are gorgeous, and I like that they are about concepts that we don't always see in art journal pages.
February 14, 2011
It's not for me at the moment, but this is a guide to helping creative people visualize and carry out the "hard facts" of business creation and marketing. It gives tools to help them basically access the left side of their brain. :)
May 16, 2011
A creative approach to business. I got new insight into my goals, business vision, and skills through the gathering of images. I don't think I could've realized these things through a classic writing approach.
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May 18, 2025**Overview**
*The Creative Entrepreneur: A DIY Visual Guidebook for Making Business Ideas Real* by Lisa Sonora Beam is an interactive, visually-driven workbook designed to help artists, makers, and creative thinkers turn their passions into structured, sustainable businesses. Rather than relying on traditional business planning, the book emphasizes journaling, mind-mapping, and visual thinking as tools to uncover purpose, align values, and build strategic direction. It bridges right-brain creativity with left-brain planning to empower creatives to confidently launch and grow their ventures.
**Key Concepts and Actionable Ideas**
**1. Business as Creative Expression**
* The book reframes entrepreneurship as an extension of creative identity—not a departure from it.
* Owning a business is presented as a personal art form, shaped by passion, values, and meaning.
**Action:** Reflect on your creative mission. Journal about why your work matters, who it serves, and what impact you want to create—beyond just profit.
**2. The Visual Journal Approach**
* Visual journaling is central: combining writing, collage, drawing, and color to externalize internal clarity.
* This method allows creatives to bypass linear thinking and discover patterns, obstacles, and opportunities more intuitively.
**Action:** Begin a dedicated business journal. Use images, sketches, and keywords to explore your ideas visually—especially when you feel stuck.
**3. Mapping Vision and Purpose**
* Beam emphasizes identifying your core vision and aligning business goals with personal purpose.
* Clarity on why you create helps prevent burnout and builds resilience when challenges arise.
**Action:** Create a vision map: in the center, place your ultimate creative dream. Around it, list values, motivations, and real-world goals that support that dream.
**4. Understanding the Entrepreneurial Self**
* Self-awareness is critical—understanding your strengths, limiting beliefs, and patterns of sabotage.
* The book includes prompts for assessing fears, inner critics, and self-sabotaging habits that hinder business progress.
**Action:** List the thoughts that most often stop you from moving forward. Flip each one into a constructive statement or action you can take.
**5. Building a Right-Brain Business Plan**
* Rather than spreadsheets and rigid projections, Beam introduces a flexible, creative model for planning.
* This includes pages like: Vision Statement, Mission Statement, Goals, Marketing Map, and Action Steps—all developed through art journaling.
**Action:** Fill out each element of your business plan using color, images, and metaphor. Focus on making it engaging and emotionally resonant for you.
**6. Marketing from the Heart**
* Marketing is reframed as storytelling and sharing, not selling. The goal is to connect authentically with your audience.
* The book encourages identifying your ideal customer through empathy and connection rather than demographics alone.
**Action:** Create an "ideal client" profile using images, keywords, and journal prompts. Write a letter directly to this person explaining how your work helps them.
**7. Financial Planning Without Fear**
* Financial clarity is important, but Beam encourages a non-intimidating approach.
* She introduces intuitive tools to assess needs, price offerings, and plan for sustainable income.
**Action:** Visualize your ideal income scenario, then work backward to set prices and income goals based on the lifestyle you want—not arbitrary industry standards.
**8. Creative Problem Solving**
* Obstacles are inevitable, but they’re viewed as creative challenges, not failures.
* The workbook format helps users shift from frustration to solution-oriented thinking through visualization and narrative.
**Action:** Next time you hit a block, use collage or sketching to express the challenge, then create a visual representation of your ideal resolution.
**9. Integrating Personal and Professional Life**
* The book discourages rigid separation between “work” and “life” for creatives.
* A sustainable creative business supports your whole life—emotionally, spiritually, and logistically.
**Action:** Assess how your business idea supports your life goals. Journal about how it contributes to your health, relationships, and personal fulfillment.
**10. Taking Inspired Action**
* Action doesn’t have to be overwhelming. Small, aligned steps matter more than grand plans.
* Beam stresses the importance of following intuition while being grounded in purpose and clarity.
**Action:** Each week, choose one small, concrete action that brings you closer to your creative business goal. Reflect on what you learn, not just what you achieve.
**Conclusion**
*The Creative Entrepreneur* offers an empowering, holistic approach to business-building for creatives who resist conventional business thinking. By combining intuitive tools with strategic clarity, it enables artists to design businesses that are not only profitable but also purpose-driven and deeply personal. It is a reminder that creativity doesn’t stop at the canvas—it’s a force that can shape systems, careers, and lives.
*The Creative Entrepreneur: A DIY Visual Guidebook for Making Business Ideas Real* by Lisa Sonora Beam is an interactive, visually-driven workbook designed to help artists, makers, and creative thinkers turn their passions into structured, sustainable businesses. Rather than relying on traditional business planning, the book emphasizes journaling, mind-mapping, and visual thinking as tools to uncover purpose, align values, and build strategic direction. It bridges right-brain creativity with left-brain planning to empower creatives to confidently launch and grow their ventures.
**Key Concepts and Actionable Ideas**
**1. Business as Creative Expression**
* The book reframes entrepreneurship as an extension of creative identity—not a departure from it.
* Owning a business is presented as a personal art form, shaped by passion, values, and meaning.
**Action:** Reflect on your creative mission. Journal about why your work matters, who it serves, and what impact you want to create—beyond just profit.
**2. The Visual Journal Approach**
* Visual journaling is central: combining writing, collage, drawing, and color to externalize internal clarity.
* This method allows creatives to bypass linear thinking and discover patterns, obstacles, and opportunities more intuitively.
**Action:** Begin a dedicated business journal. Use images, sketches, and keywords to explore your ideas visually—especially when you feel stuck.
**3. Mapping Vision and Purpose**
* Beam emphasizes identifying your core vision and aligning business goals with personal purpose.
* Clarity on why you create helps prevent burnout and builds resilience when challenges arise.
**Action:** Create a vision map: in the center, place your ultimate creative dream. Around it, list values, motivations, and real-world goals that support that dream.
**4. Understanding the Entrepreneurial Self**
* Self-awareness is critical—understanding your strengths, limiting beliefs, and patterns of sabotage.
* The book includes prompts for assessing fears, inner critics, and self-sabotaging habits that hinder business progress.
**Action:** List the thoughts that most often stop you from moving forward. Flip each one into a constructive statement or action you can take.
**5. Building a Right-Brain Business Plan**
* Rather than spreadsheets and rigid projections, Beam introduces a flexible, creative model for planning.
* This includes pages like: Vision Statement, Mission Statement, Goals, Marketing Map, and Action Steps—all developed through art journaling.
**Action:** Fill out each element of your business plan using color, images, and metaphor. Focus on making it engaging and emotionally resonant for you.
**6. Marketing from the Heart**
* Marketing is reframed as storytelling and sharing, not selling. The goal is to connect authentically with your audience.
* The book encourages identifying your ideal customer through empathy and connection rather than demographics alone.
**Action:** Create an "ideal client" profile using images, keywords, and journal prompts. Write a letter directly to this person explaining how your work helps them.
**7. Financial Planning Without Fear**
* Financial clarity is important, but Beam encourages a non-intimidating approach.
* She introduces intuitive tools to assess needs, price offerings, and plan for sustainable income.
**Action:** Visualize your ideal income scenario, then work backward to set prices and income goals based on the lifestyle you want—not arbitrary industry standards.
**8. Creative Problem Solving**
* Obstacles are inevitable, but they’re viewed as creative challenges, not failures.
* The workbook format helps users shift from frustration to solution-oriented thinking through visualization and narrative.
**Action:** Next time you hit a block, use collage or sketching to express the challenge, then create a visual representation of your ideal resolution.
**9. Integrating Personal and Professional Life**
* The book discourages rigid separation between “work” and “life” for creatives.
* A sustainable creative business supports your whole life—emotionally, spiritually, and logistically.
**Action:** Assess how your business idea supports your life goals. Journal about how it contributes to your health, relationships, and personal fulfillment.
**10. Taking Inspired Action**
* Action doesn’t have to be overwhelming. Small, aligned steps matter more than grand plans.
* Beam stresses the importance of following intuition while being grounded in purpose and clarity.
**Action:** Each week, choose one small, concrete action that brings you closer to your creative business goal. Reflect on what you learn, not just what you achieve.
**Conclusion**
*The Creative Entrepreneur* offers an empowering, holistic approach to business-building for creatives who resist conventional business thinking. By combining intuitive tools with strategic clarity, it enables artists to design businesses that are not only profitable but also purpose-driven and deeply personal. It is a reminder that creativity doesn’t stop at the canvas—it’s a force that can shape systems, careers, and lives.
August 31, 2021
I will read it over and over again.
August 3, 2017
I love many of the exercises in the book. And it's lovely to look at! The deeper I go into my creative business, the more helpful this book becomes.
February 28, 2021
Good for thought process and interesting prompts. A good push when feeling stuck.
April 13, 2020
Motivating
This is a highly motivating book that gives wonderful directions and inspiring photos that guides one to developing their business in the best possible way. Super excited about getting started
This is a highly motivating book that gives wonderful directions and inspiring photos that guides one to developing their business in the best possible way. Super excited about getting started
December 14, 2017
lots of fun...
January 8, 2019
Great visual journal for creatives and their businesses.
Read
June 12, 2019Excellent for visual thinkers.
February 2, 2019
Regular reading. Carl jung, creativity page 40.
April 16, 2009
I am really interested in visual journaling now and have read a handful of books on the topic. This book is different than most. Beam has a biz background so she uses business strategies and art journaling to help cultivate your business plan. It's very different to what's out there for collage and artist's sketchbook-type books. This is NOT a book for those wanting to use visual journaling for hashing out personal issues. There are plenty of other books out there for that.
Beam is very selective of where she is guiding you and what her objectives are. Furthermore, there is no real collage how-to like in many other books. She really is just using art journaling as a method to help you make your business ideas become tangible and grow into real (or more productive) businesses.
Beam is very selective of where she is guiding you and what her objectives are. Furthermore, there is no real collage how-to like in many other books. She really is just using art journaling as a method to help you make your business ideas become tangible and grow into real (or more productive) businesses.
June 11, 2012
Started out very different. Using visual business planing, creating drawings and pictures to represent were you want your business to go. Then the second half starts to get into the nuts and bolts of working your business. Which means using those artistic documents you put together in the first part of the book. In the end weather you use your Franklin-Covey 7 habits stuff and add pretty flowers and stuff to the pages or you use the ones Lisa has you create, you still must be organized and use the materials correctly and often or it just wont work. For most creative types discipline and consistency are not high on our lists of personal goals outside of the per suite of our art itself.
January 26, 2014
I really enjoyed this book. Ms. Beam provides an alternative to the traditional written business plan via visual journaling. Her template follows the traditional categories of a written plan but she demonstrates with many pictorial examples of visually demonstrating the content (her examples and those of other individuals). If you don't like writing, you will love this approach!
I have longed to begin my own business. I found this book, not looking for anything in particular and loved the idea of visually journaling/writing my business plan. I began my visual journaling following her format. Then I gave my copy to my sister to read and use with the caveat I wanted it back, so I could finish. But, haven't seen it. Sigh!
I have longed to begin my own business. I found this book, not looking for anything in particular and loved the idea of visually journaling/writing my business plan. I began my visual journaling following her format. Then I gave my copy to my sister to read and use with the caveat I wanted it back, so I could finish. But, haven't seen it. Sigh!
January 3, 2010
This book helps guide through the process creating your ideas to bring your business through fruition. Of course I recommend that a person who thinking about starting a business to read this book. You can always get detail information of starting and running your business through the Nolo series and Entrepreneur Magazine online site. I happened upon this book through an interview on Craftcast with Allison Lee interviewing the author, and purchased the book to help with the creative and ideas of the business. Creatiing a visual journal is a great idea.
February 7, 2013
Great book! I read it first and then waited a few days to do the exercises. A lot of fun. Great right brain/left brain tip: grow mentally and emotionally as you develop your non-dominant side of your brain. I had never heard of that before. It makes sense and opens you to more creativity. The book also has some great business advice and exercises.
June 3, 2015
Perhaps I'm not the right creative for this book. It invited the reader to take standard business terms and journal it. Adding collage materials and pretty pens didn't help me think differently about this very linear, constrictive business model. I so hoped for an alternative model.
September 23, 2009
Reading right now....
June 23, 2009
Pretty good info in the book. I will def. be renewing this one for the remainder
of the summer. I will need this time to follow this process and get ready for SUCCESS
of the summer. I will need this time to follow this process and get ready for SUCCESS
June 21, 2009
A visual journal process. The book has creative prompts. It gives help on what to write in your journal too.
February 9, 2012
fluffy
March 28, 2010
Would recommend it to any right-brained person who is thinking of starting a business. An excellent resource.
July 15, 2010
Fantastic! Grab a napkin when you read this book, because the creative juices will flow!
Eagerly awaiting a second book by the talented lisa sonora beam.
Eagerly awaiting a second book by the talented lisa sonora beam.
January 23, 2011
I took Lisa's workshop in Mexico in November 2010 - I cannot recommend her book and especially her workshops highly enough!
May 11, 2011
Fun book.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 30 reviews