By Jana Lyn-Holly

By Jana Lyn-Holly

What if your creative career looked like a visual metaphor. Sometimes, when we consider the big picture of our enterprise, new insights can emerge. It also helps to think about our current reality in a slightly different context, hence the use of a metaphor or analogy.

Here’s a MINDesign I've drawn to frame some of the questions I think are important when considering the influences, challenges and success of an artist entrepreneur.

* * * Map your Story * * *

When you map your story it might challenge you to consider how the different parts fit together.

Try to map it on one page, keep it brief and focus on the big picture.

You might choose a different metaphor for your visual narrative, use whatever works to inspire you to take action!

Artist? Entrepreneur? Some inspiring examples

I have profiled David Helfgott and Anita Roddick below because their lives are well documented in public. They may inspire you to do this exercise utilising their stories to map what happened for them, or you may wish to do this exercise to map your own career.

Flow

I was inspired by the metaphor of flow, used by musician David Helfgott, when he described what it was like to play the first movement of Liszt’s Dante Sonata.

It is like the river.  Like the river or the sea.
It just flows. Nothing could be simpler.
It is the hardest piece In the world, but it’s actually simple.
That’s the secret.

I met David when he married my friend Gillian, and the first time I heard him play I was awestruck by his sheer genius for music. Later, worldwide attention was focussed on David’s life as a result of the success of the film, Shine.

Refer to the MINDesign and map his story: Is he a successful artist and/or entrepreneur?  Is talent enough?  

Business and Arts

Anita Roddick, founder of The Body Shop,  is one of my all time favourite entrepreneurs who really exemplified business and the arts and more.

She came to New Zealand, where I saw her, to launch her book Business As Unusual. She was gorgeous and fiery and a magnificent ambassador of beauty. She saw her business and products as social change agents, her shops as ‘action stations’. She called on her employees to ‘bring their hearts to work with them’ and her customers to recognise the communities at the source of her ingredients.  She engaged the art of storytelling; legends, myths, and stories that connect us and give us a sense of global community.

Refer to the MINDesign and map her story: Did she find the balance of left brain/right brain integration? How would you meet the challenges of setting up a global brand?