Creative Careers

When Marcus Whitney moved to Nashville in 2000, he was a college dropout with a one-year-old and a baby on the way. He waited tables and lived in a week-to-week efficiency hotel. From the outside, Marcus looked like the furthest thing from a budding entrepreneur. But inside, he knew entrepreneurship was his path to a better life. Two decades later, Marcus has founded two innovative companies in the healthcare space, exited a tech marketing company, and co-owns Nashville’s new Major League Soccer team. Marcus walks you through his unlikely journey from waiting tables to building companies.

Are you ready to "make a dent in the universe"? As a creative, you no longer have to take a backseat. In fact, stepping up and embracing entrepreneurship is the fastest route to impact. But where do you start? And what sets the businesses that succeed apart? To find out, we asked the bright minds behind companies like Google X, Warby Parker, Facebook, O’Reilly Media, and more to share their startup wisdom.

There is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all productivity plan. The tricks that work for your colleague may not work as well for you. Or perhaps they don’t work at all. The fact is that everyone has their own productivity quirks to make them work efficiently and effectively. They just don’t know how to crack them.

You're here because you're driven, and you know that deep down within you, there's a powerful force waiting to be unleashed. You're here for one reason: to manifest your reality using creative visualization (law of attraction). Imagine what it would be like behind the wheel of your dream car, the purr of the engine, the grip of the steering wheel in your hands. Picture the moment you swing open the door to your freshly acquired home, the rush of excitement flooding in. Feel the weight of a stunning ring on your finger, placed there by the love of your life.

At the age of just 19, JW Murphey didn't have access to large amounts of private security industry experience, a bunch of cash, an audiobook, or the Internet to help him start his security guard company. But, he didn't want to spend years as another cog inside of a large security corporation. Instead of staying employed with a big corporation, he struck out on his own and started his own security agency. How to Start a Security Guard Company book includes Murphey's creative strategies for building a private security agency with a minimal up-front investment.

In a world desperate for a glimpse of authenticity, Nobody Knows What They're Doing is a breath of fresh air that reveals the truths hiding between the lines of Instagram-friendly aphorisms and behind the words of the most inspirational TED talks. An honest look at the reality of creativity and the joy and difficulty of crafting good (and bad) art, this book is a must-listen for every exhausted creative, every starry-eyed dreamer, and every artist who is trying to make their way in the world - and keep a roof over their head while they do it.

Are you a creative person? An artist, cook, crafter, quilter, designer, web developer, or musician? Have you ever wished that you could quit your 9-5 job and work in your passion full time? Well, it's possible. In the past few years more and more people have been trying their hand at making a business out of their creative talent. But it is not as easy as it seems. Just because you can design a logo, or play a guitar, doesn't mean you can run a business.

Starting a creative company needn't cost you everything. If you agree, then you'll find wit and wisdom in this book for creative entrepreneurs. Author, artist, and graphic designer Patricia Arnold presents her best tips for starting a handmade business with this initial volume in her Creative Entrepreneur series. After starting a decade-old business with a shoestring budget and then founding a second business six years later, Patricia Arnold has a lot to say about building creative businesses from scratch.

To think critically is to use your brain strategically to understand, analyze, and make decisions based on the information you have available to you. It’s about being able to find that information from what you hear, see, and experience, and use it to come to a firm conclusion. This is something you can train yourself to do… and this comprehensive beginner’s guide to critical thinking is here to show you the ropes.

Derek Sivers was a professional musician before he started a music distribution company that helped 150,000 musicians sell their music to over four million people. So after years of living the problems, he was able to learn the solutions.

The Pop-Up Pitch is a radical new approach to help you create the perfect presentation, combining three key elements of persuasive storytelling - simple pictures, clear words, and powerful emotions - that together motivate audiences to pay attention, learn something new, and make effective decisions. The Pop-Up Pitch weaves together the latest insights on visual cognition, behavioral economics, and classic story structures in an easy-to-learn and inspiring storytelling algorithm.

Many of our experiences are compounded and complicated by the challenges of our fast-paced modern world, which can tempt us to compromise what we value most. Have your challenges overwhelmed you with anger, fear, and doubt, such that you have somewhat lost your confidence? Is your drive and determination not enough? Do you find yourself focused on the trivial and invaluable, rather than focused on what matters?

Do you ever sense that you're not using your mind to its fullest potential? Being "stuck" means your brain is repeating the same neurological firing patterns again and again. It happens in business, relationships, personal goals, and mental health, over and over.

The Art of Making Sh!t Up combines the lessons learned from a personal journey with the teachings derived from years of honing valuable skills through performing and presenting to thousands of people to demonstrate how working together has helped others found and grow several multimillion-dollar companies. By focusing on topics that serve as pain points and detailing the tools and techniques of improv, this audiobook helps people and organizations utilize new skill sets to be more productive, more accepting, and more "all in" to create a stronger teammate and team.

In this sequel to Creative Writing Career: Becoming a Writer of Movies, Video Games, and Books, Stephan and Justin continue to bring you industry advice as well as interviews with screenwriters, video game writers, and authors of books and comics. These writers' credits include such amazing titles as: Big Fish; Batman; Game of Thrones; The Crow; Divergent; Brave; Yesterday's Gone; Sandman Slim; Jurassic World; and many more!

Everyone wants to be a writer, and they want to know what they can do to make that dream come true. However, most aspiring writers do not understand how to position themselves so they are ready when presented with an opportunity. They identify themselves as writers but have no writing samples, or their websites and social media talk all about their paintings or music but say nothing of who they are as writers.

Do you want to write stories that catch your readers and never let go? Have you ever wondered how to create a book as magical as Ella Enchanted, as touching as Dave at Night, as captivating as Fairest? Well, now you can find out! In Writing Magic, Newbery Honor author Gail Carson Levine shares her secrets of great writing. She shows how you, too, can get terrific ideas for stories, invent great beginnings and endings, write sparkling dialogue, develop memorable characters - and much, much more.

Too many companies limit their strategic thinking by focusing on what they already know how to do. Executives are expected to set concrete objectives and create detailed, step-by-step plans to reach them. This approach may satisfy short-term considerations like quarterly earnings reports, but it produces modest innovation and evolutionary development at best. As a result, the business can find itself in a performance plateau that it cannot seem to break out of.

Do you enjoy being alone? Prefer keeping your personal life to yourself? Hate small talk? Wish the people you do business with would stop yakking and get to the point? If so, you may have been sold a bunch of malarkey when it comes to bringing in customers. Contrary to the stereotype in our culture, introverts can excel at marketing. This audiobook describes dozens of ways in which introverts can approach networking, publicity, getting published, speaking in public, social media, promotional videos and other common marketing activities while being true to their personality.

If you're a creative writer interested in a freelance income stream, want to work from home, and need help selling your skills to small business, this inspiring book will get you launched with confidence. Ideal for creative writers, journalists, students and bloggers with great writing skills. Get these gold tips and strategies, and hit the ground running!