If you are a Creative in business for yourself, you probably got into business so that you could spend more time creating (instead of having to go to a… yuck… job.)

Now, if you are in business, there is one thing you HAVE to have in order to stay in business… indeed, to be in business: revenue. You can have the greatest product or service in the world, but if you can’t (or don’t) sell it….

(I am not saying you can’t give your product or service away. Lots of people do that every day. But if you are always giving it away, you are a charity, not a business.)

And, most Creatives don’t really like selling… if they did, they would go out and be a salesperson instead of what they do.

And that is the irony. We don’t like selling, but we have to sell our creations in order to be able to afford to create more. (For some, it is more than irony… it is immense frustration. Perhaps you have felt it was unfair of life. Perhaps you raged against it. Perhaps you wished for the old patronage days when a rich benefactor would subsidize a Creative’s work. Haven’t we all, at some point or another?)

And still, in today’s society and culture we have to sell our work… or get a job (becoming, in a sense, our own patron. But that carries its own resentments and frustrations.)

So, accepting that we have to sell our creations, are there things that can help us do that? Are there things that can make it more fun? Surprisingly (and for many Creatives, it IS a surprise), there are.

Let’s explore those in the next few posts. (And for those who follow me on Twitter or Facebook, these posts are a partial fulfillment of the promise I made to share some of the great stuff I got at Kevin Hogan’s Influence Bootcamp 2010 (IBC10).)

Have you found ways to make selling your creations fun? Or at least, easier? I would love to hear about what works for you. Just use the comments and tell us about it.

I have a workshop called Turn Your Mission Into a Business. The end result is the discovery of a business that you can do… doing things you love to do… in a way that makes money for you. (If this sounds like something you might be interested in, pop on over to the website (www.careerandbusinessmentor.com) and check out Working with the Mentor.) In the course of working with a participant, I said some things that I think you might find useful, as well.

Remember to keep the end in mind… a business that you love, that you love to do, and that will make you money (at a level that you find acceptable… whatever your definition of that is — which may change over time.) If you aren’t already loving what you do to make money (at least 70 percent of the time… higher is better), then you aren’t there, yet.

One of the reasons for finding/describing your business in terms of how it relates to your mission, is that your mission energizes you. There are plenty of things in a job and in business that drain you and drag at you. When your job or business is generally in alignment with your mission, the energy can transfer from the one and provide the impetus to help you get through the parts that drain and drag.

Are there parts of a business (or even a job, for that matter) that you won’t enjoy? Yes, certainly. Almost all small, startup business owners have to do almost everything related to the business, at the first. And, down the road, the goal is to be able to farm out all the parts that you don’t want to do, keeping the fun parts for yourself. Part of this process (of finding a business that aligns with your mission) is to help you figure out in advance what the fun parts are so you aren’t outsourcing 90 percent of the business… because some of the leftover will be administrative stuff, not the fun stuff. (And if you find the administrative stuff fun, then open a business just doing administrative stuff.)

Another side benefit of turning your mission into a business is that your mission statement is already written (almost). Since the business will be a subset of your personal mission (life purpose, aim in life, calling, whatever words you choose to call it), the business mission and statement will be a subset, as well. (Check out the article Do You Have a Mission Statement? on my website for more about mission statements and what they can do for your business.)

Have you found your mission? Is your business a subset of your mission? Tell us about it (use the comments box.)

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