Ep 167: Books Every Creative Business Owner Should Read
SUMMARY
Best Books for Creative Business Owners: The Reading List Behind Creative Work
Austin Kleon says books are born out of many other books. I'll be honest, I think he might have been quoting someone else when he said it. Either way, it's true of mine.
For the last several months, we've been writing my next book, Creative Work: 10 Systems Every Creative Business Needs, out loud on the Chief Creative Podcast. Talking it out is how I think, and it's how I work with Partners at Chief Creative Partners every day.
This bonus chapter is different. No new system. Just the shelf behind all ten.
The Foundational Four Every New Partner Receives
When a creative business becomes a Partner at Chief Creative Partners (that's what we call our clients), we send four books right away. These are the "if you don't read anything else" stack.
At the time of this recording, this is the list. It changes now and then, so treat it as a snapshot.
If you're not a reader, that line is for you. If you are, here are the four.
1. Steal Like an Artist by Austin Kleon
Ten things to unlock your creativity, simplified the way only Austin can. It's practical and witty, and I'll admit it: I stole his concept for how this book is built. If Creative Work looks and feels a lot like Steal Like an Artist, that's on purpose.
2. The Accidental Creative by Todd Henry
This one changed my life. I was stepping out of a single creative role and into creative directing, and I knew people would expect me to be brilliant at a moment's notice. I felt like an imposter. Todd's book helped me grow my confidence. His other book, Herding Tigers, is worth a look too.
3. The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber
Not the most creative book on the list, but it puts into words what I've struggled to say for years about processes and systems. If you're trying to grow your creative business to something, even a modest something, this one gives you language for it.
4. The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron
This is the artsy one. If you've followed me for a while, you've heard me talk about morning pages and creative fuel days. Both come straight from Julia's work. Morning pages is a practice I still do today, and creative fuel days grew out of what she calls an artist date. Both keep the artist inside you healthy while the business grows.
Why a Creative Business Needs Systems
Most creatives I know believe systems will box them in. I see it the other way. That's why the E-Myth made the Foundational Four.
That's the heart of what we do at Chief Creative Partners. You create. We operate.
Money, Operations, and Knowing Your Lane
If you know anything about creatives, you know we're not the best with money. We know we like it and we know we want it. What to do with it once it arrives is another story. (And how to avoid going to jail because of what we've done with it. I'm kidding. Mostly.)
My good friend Christian, who owns Core Group in Oklahoma City, wrote Profit First for Creatives. It's a creative-specific take on the famous Profit First, and it's short and easy to pick up. Core Group helps creative businesses run and manage their finances, and he knows things about money I honestly don't care to know. I trust him, and a lot of creatives do too.
Books for the Creative Soul
I love learning about creative process and how artists think. Three books I keep coming back to:
Creative Quest by Questlove. A guide for creatives who want to define and cultivate their own voice, and a beautifully designed book.
The Daily Creative by Todd Henry. One page per day. When I need a jolt of creativity in the morning, I turn to today's date and read it. It never fails. It's always on time.
The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin. Short chapters on varying topics, more guide than storybook, with a minimalistic design I love.
The last two are the only books I leave on my desk every single day.
If Self-Promotion Feels Icky
I'll end where I started, with Austin Kleon. His book Show Your Work: 10 Ways to Share Your Creativity and Get Discovered is for every creative who struggles to put themselves out there. It can feel icky. I get that.
Keep Going and the newer Don't Call It Art, which Austin made with the help of his kids, are fun additions. All of his books are small, beautifully designed, and printed on fun paper. (Yes, I'm that nerd.)
What Now?
You don't need to read all nine this month. Pick the one that matches your biggest gap right now.
Need confidence in a creative director seat? Start with The Accidental Creative.
Need language for systems and process? Start with The E-Myth Revisited.
Need to protect the artist while the business grows? Start with The Artist's Way.
Hate self-promotion? Start with Show Your Work.
Not a reader? Get the audiobook.
These 10 systems came from 25 years of doing creative work professionally, and from every book above. Now it's your turn to build your own shelf.
Resources Mentioned
Steal Like an Artist, Keep Going, Show Your Work, and Don't Call It Art by Austin Kleon
The Accidental Creative, Herding Tigers, and The Daily Creative by Todd Henry
The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber
The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron
Profit First for Creatives, from the team at Core Group
Creative Quest by Questlove
The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin
Free tools for creative business owners: dustinpead.com/free
Work with us: chiefcreativepartners.com
KEY TAKEAWAYS
⚡️ Systems are what enable you to grow. They don't hinder you, and they don't make you more corporate, rigid, or robotic.
⚡️ Know where your lane ends. Chief Creative Partners lives on the operational side. Operations runs right alongside sales and finance, but it isn't either one, so borrow expertise for the rest.
⚡️ Show your work. Letting others see what you and your creative business are about is how they find you. If that's your sticking point, start with this book.
Notable Quotes
💬 "Use them as coasters and get the audiobook. That's totally OK."
💬 "It actually frees you up to do what you do best that only you can do."
💬 "Books are written and birthed out of other books."
EPISODE RESOURCES
The Accidental Creative, Herding Tigers, and Daily Creative by Todd Henry
Profit First for Creatives, from the team at Core Group
⚡️ Subscribe to my weekly newsletter here
TRANSCRIPT
Welcome back to the Chief Creative Podcast. This show is for professional creatives who are struggling with the busyness of creativity, helping them run their business by design. I'm your host, Dustin Pead, founder and owner of Chief Creative Partners. For more information on how we can help your creative business, check out ChiefCreativePartners.com.
Austin Kleon, one of my favorite authors, says that books are born out of many other books. Honestly, he might have been quoting another author as well. But today I'm so excited to give you this bonus chapter to the book we've been writing on this podcast over the last several months. If you're new to that journey, go back several episodes and listen. We've been writing my next book, called Creative Work: The 10 Systems Every Creative Business Needs.
I've been so excited to get to this bonus chapter because I had the idea very early on that I wanted to share some of the books that went into the making of this book. They inspired me, taught me, and educated me, and they helped me put these 10 systems together for you, the reader and the listener. I want to start with what I've been calling the Foundational Four. [LULU: transcript read "foundational for"]
The Foundational Four change for me regularly, but at the time of this recording, here's what we do at Chief Creative Partners. If you become a partner of ours (that's what we call our clients), we immediately send you these first four books. Again, they might be different by the time you start working with us, if you choose to do so. But these are the four we start with. These are the "if you don't read anything else" books. Or if you're not a reader, that's fine. Use them as coasters and get the audiobook. That's totally OK.
We want every person and every company that becomes a partner of Chief Creative Partners to have the Foundational Four, because we believe these four books can change the way you think about creativity, your art, and your business. We want to give you a little insight into our crazy before we start driving you toward greater things in your business.
The first one will come as no surprise to anyone who's been around this podcast very long: Austin Kleon's Steal Like an Artist. [LULU: transcript read "Steel"] It walks through 10 things to unlock your creativity. To be quite frank, if you're holding my book in your hands now, or you've seen images of it, I hope it looks and feels an awful lot like Steal Like an Artist, because I stole his concept of how he did that book. It's extremely practical and extremely witty, probably more witty than the book you're holding or listening to right now. He's a master at simplifying something that can be so complex, like creativity. You'll hear from him again in this stack.
This next book is one I always recommend: The Accidental Creative by Todd Henry, subtitled How to Be Brilliant at a Moment's Notice. To be honest with you, this book changed my life. It came at a time when I was stepping out of a singular creative role and into more of a creative directing role. I knew that once that responsibility landed on my shoulders, there would be a lot of expectation for me to be brilliant at a moment's notice. A lot of expectation for me to be creative, and like most artists, I felt extremely like an imposter. I had very strong imposter syndrome. I didn't know what to do when they'd look at me and say, "What do you think?" or "What are your ideas about this?" What helped me grow in my confidence was Todd Henry and The Accidental Creative. Todd is an amazing person, creative coach, speaker, and author. I highly recommend checking him out. He has several books. Herding Tigers is another one [LULU: transcript read "hurting tigers"], and I highly recommend that. Definitely check out The Accidental Creative. Worth it. Worth it. Worth it.
The next book is newer in my repertoire, and it's not super creative, but it speaks to the importance of having processes and systems down and what that does for your business as you try to grow. We're small business owners, or maybe you're a large business owner. Either way, you're trying to grow your business to something, even if it's not a multi-billion dollar corporation. You have a goal in mind. Michael Gerber wrote The E-Myth, and then a revisited version of it: The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It. His emphasis on systems and processes puts into words a lot of what I struggle to put into words. I want every business that comes on as a partner at Chief Creative Partners to see behind the curtain, a little bit of our magic and our crazy, and understand that systems are what enable you to grow. They don't hinder you. They don't make you more corporate. They don't make you more rigid or robotic. They free you up to do what you do best, what only you can do.
This next one might be one of the more artsy ones, and it's the last of the Foundational Four we give away. It's a famous, older book by Julia Cameron [LULU: transcript read "Julie"; confirm audio] called The Artist's Way. If you've listened to this podcast for a while, or seen me speak or read my writing, you know I talk a lot about morning pages and creative fuel days. Creative fuel days come right out of a concept she teaches in this book. She calls it an artist date: creating a date for the artist inside you. Morning pages is a practice I still do to this day, and she teaches that too. They're a way to keep the artist deep inside your soul as healthy and thriving as possible. She has other great books as well, and a little workbook to go through. It's really incredible for the artist's soul. I highly recommend it as you grow your creative business and don't want to lose touch with the art and the artist inside you. That's the fourth of our Foundational Four.
This next one comes from someone in a group I work with for anything financial. If you know anything about creatives, we're not the best with money. We know we like it. We know we want it. But we don't always know what to do with it when we get it, or how to get more of it, or how to avoid going to jail because of the things we've done with our money. There's a version of Profit First, which is a big, famous book on managing finances for small businesses. This one is Profit First for Creatives, written by my good friend Christian Brim [LULU: verify surname], who owns Core Group [LULU: confirm capitalization] out of Oklahoma City. Core Group helps creative businesses like yours run and manage their finances. They're great people, and Christian's a great person. Super smart, and he knows things about finances that I don't really care to know. But I trust him, and lots of other creatives trust him as well. It's not a big book, and it's super easy to pick up. You've probably heard me say that Chief Creative Partners is on the operational side. We're not the sales side and we're not the finance side. A lot of operations runs parallel to those things, or perpendicular, I should say. But this is a great book for managing your money as a creative business owner.
I have a couple of books in here that speak to creativity and inspiration, things I love to soak up like a sponge. I love learning about creative process and the thought behind artists and how they think. And I love, love, love Questlove of The Roots. He wrote a book several years ago called Creative Quest, and it's really about how he and The Roots, and everything he does, is creative magic. I love reading the story behind it. He's an entrepreneur, drummer, DJ, and producer, and he authored a cookbook that's a James Beard Award winner. [LULU: verify this claim before it goes anywhere public.] It's crazy the things he's gotten into. It's a really good guide for creatives who desire to define and cultivate their own unique voice. Check out Creative Quest from Questlove. It's also a beautifully designed book.
These next two are the only two books I leave on my desk every single day. The first is another Todd Henry book. Todd did a daily podcast for years called The Daily Creative, almost a devotional for creatives, three to five [LULU: unit unclear in transcript] and a practical guide to staying prolific, brilliant, and healthy. He wrote this book after a year or so of that podcast, kind of like how I'm doing this. It's one page per day on all sorts of things: simplicity, discernment and judgment, understanding why what gets pruned grows stronger, don't give up before it gets good, how to take notes, ask what others see, what gets measured. Whenever I feel like I need an extra jolt of creativity or inspiration in the morning, I sit down at my desk, whip this out, turn to today's date, and read it. It never fails. It's always on time. The Daily Creativefrom Todd Henry is one of two books that is always within arm's reach.
The other one has come out in the last couple of years, and if you're in the creative circle you probably already know it. (And speaking of circles, there's one on the cover.) Legendary music producer Rick Rubin wrote The Creative Act: A Way of Being, a book about how to live and be creative and how to let the artist in you thrive. I can't recommend it enough. It's not the same devotional style, but the chapters are super short and cover varying topics. It's not a storybook so much as a guide. It's beautiful, with a minimalistic design, and I love it. This is the other book that stays on my desk at all times.
The last thing I want to do is end where we started, with Austin Kleon and Steal Like an Artist. He has a book called Keep Going. He has a new book out called Don't Call It Art, a super fun book he did with the help of his kids, who illustrated it. And I'm not sure if it was number two or number three along the way, but he wrote a book called Show Your Work: 10 Ways to Share Your Creativity and Get Discovered. I know a lot of us creatives struggle with that. We struggle with putting ourselves out there and self-promoting a little bit. It feels icky. [LULU: transcript is garbled here, confirm audio] Other books have inspired me along the way too, and I want to show you the work. I want to show you the books that went into the process of making this book. I encourage you to get all of Austin's books. But if you're struggling with how to get your work out there and let others know what you and your creative business are about, get Show Your Work. All of his books are small and beautifully designed, with fun paper. I'm just that nerd, right? I would definitely check out Show Your Work.
So books are written and birthed out of other books, and this book is no different. These 10 systems have all come from 25 years of doing creative work on a professional level. But they've also come out of all these other books that inspired me, equipped me, and educated me along the way. There are many, many others I would recommend, shelves of them here in my studio. These are the ones I go to the most, recommend the most, and give away the most. So check out these books.
Thank you so much for reading and listening to this book as we've been writing it through the podcast journey. We've been recording this on the Chief Creative Podcast. I know you're watching and listening, and it's kind of like a book, but it's a podcast. This is a season of these episodes where I was writing the book, because it was easier for me in this instance to talk it out, like I do with our partners at Chief Creative Partners every day. It helps me get more podcast content, and it helps me put thoughts down for this book. I'm excited for whenever this book comes out, and I'm excited to share it with you. Thank you all for going on this journey with me through the writing of this book.
Remember, systems don't limit your creativity. They support it. So get out there and support your creativity today. Thanks for joining me, and have a great week.