Today on the show we're talking about the creative process and how to use this to develop your style. We’re going to talk about why your creative process is so important to develop your distinct and salient brand assets so that when people see a piece of content from you they immediately recognise that it is yours because of your unique you-ness.

Key discussion points:

1. Recap of the 3 aspects of developing your style
2. What is creativity
3. What does it take to be creative?
4. Why creativity and innovation are important for brand and business growth
5. The 3 Cs to Developing your creative process

Today's questions:

Dexter Roona in London asks: 

"How do you find the perfect name for your company that is both professional, catchy and easily branded?" 

Mike Lynch asks: 

"How do I position myself as an artist when doing business and using a business name instead of my own? Should I state that I am a studio and refer to myself as "we"? Should I be transparent and state that my business is me and me alone?"

(Remember, each Wednesday I run a post on LinkedIn for question submissions to get audience votes on their favourite question for each week's topic!)

A quote to share

“Everything we know and everything we do comes from a combination of our genetic predisposition - nature, and the world out there - nurture. The creative process isn't about cutting ourselves off from the world, it is the very opposite, it is about standing on the shoulders of giants and bringing our unique combination of inherited traits and lived experiences to contribute to developing and evolving ideas.” - Lauren Kress

Next Week's Episode:

Next week for part 3 of this Develop your style series we’ll discuss how to create your style guide.

Links for resources and getting in touch:

Highly recommend checking out Austin Kleon and his bestselling books “Steal Like an Artist”, “Show Your Work” and “Keep Going” here: https://austinkleon.com/

Lynda Barry has also done some amazing work in this space - find out more about her here: https://thenearsightedmonkey.tumblr.com/ my favourite book by Lynda Barry is “What it is”.

This video on the creative process with Terence Kellemen is inspiring: https://youtu.be/oyPLp8l9gsE

James Taylor talks about the 5 steps of the Creative Process which will help you to further understand how to put some more structure around your activities: https://youtu.be/Zl0R1uJ62xo

Tweet with Lauren: @laurenkress89

Connect with Lauren on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurenkress89/

Or you can also come and say hi on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/laurenkressconsulting

Send Lauren an email: lauren.kress@thechangemakers.org.au

To access other episodes, show notes, resources and more head over to: www.laurenkress.com/grow-your-brand

Full Transcript:

G'day everyone and welcome back to another episode of Grow Your Brand, the podcast show that provides you with your step-by-step guide to unlock your potential so you can get more out of your life and change the world for the better. 

I'm your host Lauren Kress, The Business scientist and today on the show we're talking about the creative process and how to use this to develop your style. 

And this continues on from our last episode on Style, Part 1, where we discussed the definition of style and the different aspects of style. Just to recap, the 3 different aspects of style that we discussed were:

1) Style conventions 

2) Style schemas 

3) Your unique "youness"

You may remember I mentioned the creative process in relation to the example of a photographer. So the photographer learns about the different elements of photography that they can work with to produce a type of composition and then by understanding this and the works of others in the world they can begin to learn how to bring themselves into their work. 

Today I want to dive into why this process is so important to develop your distinct and salient brand assets so that when people see a piece of content from you they immediately recognise that it is yours because of your unique youness. 

Today's questions from the audience come from Dexter Roona in London who asks: "How do you find the perfect name for your company that is both professional, catchy and easily branded?" and Mike Lynch who asks a great style question which is: "How do I position myself as an artist when doing business and using a business name instead of my own? Should I state that I am a studio and refer to myself as "we"? Should I be transparent and state that my business is me and me alone?" 

My answers to that at the episode but to begin with, I want to make clear that, as always we're going to be talking about our topic today in relation to building both a personal and business brand perspective. However, speaking from personal experience of growing both types of brands, I have to say the journey ahead for personal brands with this is one that requires more introspection and curiosity about yourself than when developing your business brand. 

And actually just quickly on that note, some of you may have seen that I've updated my LinkedIn header which now features a cover of my soon to be released book! And when I say soon, I mean this year - I haven't got a date on this yet but I will keep you posted on the launch date as soon as I know what it is. 

The book is called "Make Your Mark: How to grow your brand, unlock your potential and change the world for the better" and it builds on some of the discussions we've had on this show and will have on this show and also ties in expert insights that I've gathered over the past couple of years from visionary leaders and thinkers who I've worked with and interviewed. 

So yes, more to come on that but the reason I mention it is because the book starts by explaining the importance of curiosity of self when building your business and brand. The commitment I ask readers to make from the outset is to be curious about themselves, to question the things they've been told about who they are, about their role in society about what others think of them, about what is right and wrong what is good and bad and what the world needs from them. 

Today I'm going to ask you to do the same. Before we embark on this next stage of developing your style, I want you to make a commitment to get curious about who you are and how you show up to make your mark in the world.