Starting a creative lifestyle business shouldn’t be complicated. You should be able to goto the internet and search for how to start a creative lifestyle business. The challenge is that you will not receive any relevant results — nothing that will aid you building a subscription service.

What is a Creative Lifestyle?

A creative lifestyle is one that embraces the use of one’stalents. For our conversation, you can think of talent as something you can dowithout much effort, without really thinking about it. Talent is something thatyou were born with, not something that you had to be taught.

A lot of people go their whole lives without developing their talents. They are tempted by low hanging fruit or by the influence of others. This is not to say that these people are searching for easy money. Many of these people are simply responding to economic pressures.

How to determine what your talents are?

The most scientific way is to take the Clifton Strengthsfinder 2.0 assessment. I know this assessment is marketed as a way to identify your strengths.  The untold story is that talents provide the foundation for strengths.

You start with talent then you work on them every day until they turn into strengths. Talents are like muscles. They have to be exercised before they become usable. It’s not simply enough to identify them.

What is a lifestyle business?

A lifestyle business is started with the sole purpose of supporting you the business owner. It’s not something you start to sell someday. It’s not something that requires a significant amount of capital to start. Generally, you can start with the discretionary money that you normally use to fund pizza night or a weekend trip to the movies.

Lifestyle Businesses are not startups. They are not small-big businesses. You actually have to produce something. You can’t simply spend all your time analyzing your situation or planning and expect to get paid. You have to worry about whether your customer succeeds.

What is a Creative Lifestyle Business?

A creative lifestyle business uses your talents to guide your efforts to build a business. There are a lot of lifestyle businesses that don’t require much talent. Forexample, cleaning services don’t require a significant amount of reflection torun them well.

For the sake of conversation, you can think of a creative lifestyle business as a way of manifesting your worldview. Assuming that you are willing to exercise your talents and turn them into strengths.

How to start a Creative Lifestyle Business?

Step 1: Take a Strengths Assessment

Strengths assessments are generally taken to identify which strengths you should be using to guarantee your success. However, when it comes to creative lifestyle businesses you can take them to identify which talents to concentrate on as you build your business.

Starting a business  is a learning process. Nobody gets it right the first time. You start with a theory of the case then economic reality sets in, and you have to change. It doesn’t mean that you are stupid. It just means that you are paying attention.

Step 2: Identify a Niche

Identifying a niche is the most stressful decision you will face as you start your business, apart from choosing a logo. You can spin your wheels trying to identify who to serve. And how to go about serving them.

You can think of finding a niche as a right of passage. Nothing is ever set in stone especially in the beginning. However, you shouldn’t take it lightly. You may want to take a month or so to kick the tires on your niche.

Step 3: Build an Audience

The most important thing you can do i to ensure your success in the short-term is to build an audience before you build a product or service. Finding people who are interested in what you want to start is the key to success in business.

People buy products and services. Finding the right people to serve will reduce the effort required to sell your product or services. This step also requires that you find out where the people in your niche hang out.

Step 4: Niche down so that you can target the most engaged.

You can think about placing an explosive charge when you think of the phrase “niche down.” In the beginning, you will not get much bang for your buck. No matter how much you are willing to spend on ads. 

You greatly enhance your efforts by finding out what challenges your most enthusiastic audience members want you to solve. Success as a subscription maker is all about helping your customers use your products and services to be successful.

When you niche down, you ensure that you can help your customers accomplish their goals. Generally speaking, there is always a group of people that share similar problems. The challenge is finding those people, and not over-promising.

Step 5: Launch your product or service.

The final step is like lighting the fuse. You open the doors to your new creative lifestyle business, and you see who shows up. Next, you get the word out to all your friends.

Bonus Step: Prepare yourself to be underwhelmed.

You can work for months before you officially launch your creative lifestyle business. And it’s possible that no one will show up the first day. It may takemonths before you start to get a steady flow of customers.

Rember that it may not be you or your product or your service. It may simply take time. The Internet allows you to change on a dime. However, it may take real people a while to catch up. Your potential audience may not be fully formed.

Give it some time before you pull the plug. Firefly, the cult TV show, only lasted a single season. However, everyone responsible for canceling the show wishes they had taken a little longer make such a drastic decision.

Conclusion

Creative Lifestyle Businesses shouldn’t be complicated to start. They are! However, following the steps laid out in this blog post will get you there sooner rather than later.

Zachary Alexander