How to Steer Your Creative Drive
Inspiration may drive creativity — but you still have to steer.
Creative drive come from a lot of places… random inspiration, focused brainstorming, personal and professional goals, etc. but creative drive doesn’t realize its fullest potential useless you’re steering it in a productive direction.
If you have creative drive, but you’re not behind the wheel doing the steering, your results could be downright disastrous.
Are you just hoping to randomly run into some problem that your creativity can help solve?
What are the odds of that happening?
If you have a great idea to solve a problem in the retail industry, you need to direct your efforts to reaching that audience and the decision makers within it.
If you have written a book about a zombie outbreak, you want to direct your promotional efforts to fans of horror novels — not romance novels (unless it’s a zombie love story of course).
Here are some ways to steer your creative drive
- Think about which industries, companies, and individuals would most benefit from putting your ideas into action
- Verify those entities have a legitimate need for your idea by reading industry articles, company blog posts, and following social media feeds
- Conduct outreach efforts to connect with these groups and strike up a conversation (don’t start out pitching and selling your idea — just make a personal connection)
From here you strike up a conversation, keep it going until you build a relationship. Earn trust by giving value before you start asking for favors. Spend more time asking questions about them and their business than droning on about yourself.
If you can successfully steer your creative drive, you’ll have a better chance to getting where you want to go (in business and in life).
