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How To Start Your Own Business

You have a creative mind, the willingness to work hard, and perhaps exceptional talent. Make Your Mark offers inspiration and practical business tips from more than 20 successful entrepreneurs and experts, all designed to help you turn your creative gift into a brand that resonates in the modern world.

Build A Business From Scratch

• How to create an impactful business that allows you to fulfill your creative purpose while solving a real problem for your customers.
• How to build a product that works like magic, recruit your "army of allies," and welcome your customers into your brand story.
• How to create the company culture you want while building a team of leaders and embracing innovation as your business grows.
• To find your personal purpose, brainstorm ways to make a positive change in the world while utilizing your unique gifts. How can you leave a mark or help others while doing what you love?
• Identify that group of people who fully appreciate, want, and need what you have to offer. Identify what you want to accomplish in the world. Then simply let everything flow from that foundation. Make sure every decision you make is rooted in those people and that mission.
• Don't settle for a generic overview of what your product does when establishing your brand. Reach for something far deeper. Your brand should tell the world why your product resonates far beyond its basic function.
• Never stop asking and answering questions about your business. Those questions will guide you toward developing a business that resonates and impacts, but they will also help you grow and remain profitable once the company is established.

Make Your Mark Book Summary

The idea of quitting your day job and becoming your own boss has intrigued creative thinkers for many years. With massive developments in technology, that dream has become reality for so many people that it's no longer shocking when someone says they work from home or work for themselves. Another great book on this is the The Million Dollar, One Person Dollar Business.

What many people find out is that entrepreneurship is much harder than it seems. It's not all about lounging on the beach with your laptop while watching the waves roll in. An amazing book on this is The Entrepreneur Roller Coaster.

If you have a creative spirit and excel in any form of art, you may have dreamed about starting your own business and taking on entrepreneurship. Make Your Mark was written to inspire and educate people just like you. Whether you're still in the dreaming stage or you've already launched your creative business, this book is packed with tips and tricks that will show you how to develop a strong brand, attract your tribe of supporters, and create a professional culture that is rooted in innovation. Another great book on this is Building A Storybrand.

By the end of this little book, you'll have a more realistic idea of what it means to start a business and become your own boss. You'll understand that the journey is hard at times and is only worth the struggle if you truly believe in what you're doing.

That means you can't just start any business. You must start a business that fulfills your creative spirit and a vital need in a targeted market. Billionaire Peter Thiel has more rules for creating a product in his wonderful book Zero To One.

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Take the time to ask the right questions of yourself and any partner you may want to bring into the business. Your answers will help you determine what problem you want to solve for your customers and why you want to solve that problem. It will take you on a deep dive into your personal purpose and the authentic roots of the brand you want to build.

This internal work is important to creating a strong business that will survive no matter what happens in the world around you. We live in turbulent times, and it may feel intimidating to think about building a new business in the midst of unrest and chaotic markets.

This book will help you think through your potential stumbles and obstacles to determine how you can structure your business to survive no matter what. Another book to recommend on this subject is Antifragile.

Make Your Mark shows you how to find the intersection between what you love to do and a real problem that customers will pay to have solved. If you know you're good at your art but don't have the expertise needed to operate a successful business, this book will help fill in some of the gaps of your knowledge.

It's not a comprehensive resource on any aspect of business, but it will help you size up your business idea or explore new ideas based on your creative outlets.

Think of this book as a starting point if you would like to make your creative art your livelihood. It will help you determine if the entrepreneurial lifestyle is right for you. The exercises and questions asked may also help you view your art in new light.

You may discover that what you do could solve more problems than you ever realized. That means you have a niche business idea that could bring in much more than income. For more thought on a niche website read How to Blog for Profit.

The collection of essays in this book will help you build a brand of substance that stands out from competitors in any field. You want to create a brand that has meaning beyond its functional purpose. Just like Nike sneakers are more about performance than protecting feet from the ground, you want to create products that mean more than what they do. That's how you create a brand that resonates so deeply with your target market that they can't help but support you. If you enjoy this book, definitely read The Messy Middle by the founder of Behance (now owned by Adobe), Scott Belsky.

About The Author Scott Belsky

99U isn't an individual author. It's a catalog of career resources designed just for creatives who are ready to bring their art to the business world. The resources are created by Adobe, but the end goal isn't to sell the company's products. The goal is to energize and educate innovators who have the talent to make money from their creative pursuits.

Creative souls don't always have a natural command for business, so Adobe offers the "missing curriculum" needed to bring these two worlds together. Make Your Mark is part of a three-book series produced by 99U for creatives thinking about or ready to launch their own businesses.

The book was edited by Jocelyn K. Glei, and the forward was written by Scott Belsky. The book is a curated collection of essays and Q&A sessions completed with the help of more than 20 highly successful entrepreneurs and business experts.

99U books allow you to learn from the collective mind and spirit of modern innovators. Rather than hearing from just one person, you learn from a variety of people who have been where you are and have succeeded. Similar to the book Tools For Titans by Tim Ferriss.

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