Business for Creatives
An Essential Guide for Building a Thriving Creative Practice
Showing how traditional ways of growing, strategizing, and preparing for financial stressors can be applied to arts professions, Business for Creatives is an educational career guide.
Joe Sherbanee’s insightful career guide Business for Creatives outlines the tools, strategies, and mindsets that artistic workers need to thrive.
Written for creatives and entrepreneurs, this is a crash course on economic, business, and financial strategies, covering topics ranging from the theories of supply and demand and value production to financial literacy in navigating income statements and business structures including limited liability companies, C corporations, and 501©(3)s. Expanding outward, it dives into marketing and the practical applications of economic principals in creativity-driven businesses, the value of engaging with communities as an artistic professional, and the ways in which jobs markets are being reinvented by the emergence of AI and other technologies.
The book does an able job of showing how traditional ways of growing, strategizing, and preparing for financial stressors can be applied to arts professions. Simple models like the SWOT analysis chart, a concise way of tracking a business’s strengths and weaknesses alongside market threats and opportunities, are highlighted, embellished by insights into how artistic practices, personal growth, and financial success are intertwined. In one instance, the book asserts that creative confidence can be bolstered by having a clear grasp of market strategy and business direction. Here and elsewhere, it articulates well the synergies that emerge when a creative worker invests time and energy into the business side of their work.
While the connections between artistic work and business acumen are made apparent throughout, the book’s early sections read as more general than tailored to creative professionals. Indeed, its first two sections are not organized around particular areas and industries; rather, they include broad explanations of rudimentary financial concepts that are unlikely to be of use to seasoned professionals and are also without sufficient detail to be fully edifying to those encountering their ideas for the first time. Further, the prose, though it is assertive and fluid, is quite dense, and the chapters run long and are sometimes unapproachable. Graphs and pull-out quick tips, such as to “envision your ‘why’” before starting a creative project, or “what you want to achieve and how you will feel when you get there,” provide intermittent visual relief, though, as do infrequent narrative shifts to bring in the insights of outside professionals like Joanna Garner, a creative who interjects useful dos and don’ts based on her own career experiences.
Applying entrepreneurial theory to artistic work, Business for Creatives is an informative guide for creative professionals.
Reviewed by
Willem Marx
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book and paid a small fee to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. Foreword Reviews and Clarion Reviews make no guarantee that the publisher will receive a positive review. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
