If you’ve been following me for any length of time, you’ll know that I balance being a creative and being an entrepreneur, wearing many hats in-between. Becoming a creative entrepreneur can be an interesting clash of two worlds. On the one hand, you have a creative skill that you want to market, whether it's decorating people's homes, producing music or making jewelry. On the other hand, you need to put your business hat on, and get to work promoting your creative skills or products. Growing a business while also carrying on with your creative work can be tough, and require a lot of work. So how can you balance your creativity with your need to grow your business? Take a look at some of these tips.

Delegate Work to Someone Else

Turning your creativity into a business usually means spending less time being creative and more time taking care of the business side of things. It's important to consider that this is the reality of starting a business, but you don't have to completely give up being creative. One thing that you can do is hand some of the work you're not so keen on to someone else. If you don't want to spend all of your time doing admin, you can start outsourcing or looking into hiring people who can help you. Virtual assistants may be a good way to start and can offer you flexible hours while being budget friendly.

Work on Marketing and Sales

Even if you want to spend all of your time being creative, starting a business means you need to concentrate on sales. Whether you're selling a service or physical products, you need to put time and money into marketing and sales. The right management of your sales and creation of sales content should help you to streamline your sales process and build your brand. If sales and marketing aren't for you, it's an easy thing to outsource. Alternatively, maybe it's time to start building your own sales and marketing team so you have people who you know you can rely on.

Have Separate Business and Creative Spaces

If you're trying to get down to business but can't help responding to the call of creativity, you might end up neglecting some of the important stuff. One trick that you can try is to have separate spaces for being creative and for doing business. While not everyone can do this, it's a good way to keep your two roles more distinct. You might have a creative workspace and a separate desk so one thing doesn't distract you from the other. If you work from home, you might consider finding a desk, office or studio elsewhere.

Apply Creative Thinking to Business

Even when you're taking care of all the business stuff, you can still be creative. Being able to think creatively can help you to solve problems and take an interesting approach to your work. It might not be exactly the same type of creativity that you use when you're doing other creative things, but it still gives you an opportunity to use your creativity to your advantage. Creative people can make great business people too.

Balance your creativity and business skills to run your business and you can have success without giving up on being creative. The balance won’t always be even, but can be a refreshing break when you feel like you need to change your focus.

I hope these tips helped give you some insight into how balancing creativity and business as a creative entrepreneur is doable and rewarding too!