Be an Artist CEO: Exerpts

Interview with Ronelle Coburn, Handworks International

What does it mean to be an artist CEO and why would you want to be one?
Well, I guess I’m in my ninth year of being an “artist CEO” and the bottom line is I get to create every aspect of my life, no one can fire me, and the sky’s the limit! Of course, “doing my own thing” has immense challenges and I’m never bored. Finding clients, improving my sales communications skills, doing my own “paperwork,” creating public lectures and multimedia presentations, expanding my business (balancing what I’d like against the mandates of reality), traveling to 9-12 cities per year, handling the constant changes in technology, and keeping an eye always on the big picture requires a lot of juggling. But it all comes together and is worth it when a client, or student, or lecture attendee thanks me and earnestly wants me to know that I’ve helped them understand themselves in a way that is life changing for them. Also, I get to meet so many people from so many different walks of life–I get to peek into the creation that is their lives and experience the worlds within worlds that all exist simultaneously here on planet earth. It’s thrilling.

What is like to live creatively in your business?
Messy at times as witnessed by my office! I am relentlessly creative in my work and life. Whether it’s solving problems, tapping just the right story to tell someone to help them understand themselves better so they can grow, writing my book last summer, formulating the promotion plan now, creating a lecture, calling prospects, it’s all just one monstrous work in process that never ends. It feels extremely gratifying to know I am constantly taking my intangible ideas, feelings, and hunches and bringing them into form in the world and then “paying the rent” with the results. My creativity is a renewable resource! I am continually offering what I have, that is unique, and leaving something behind that ultimately belongs to the world. And I get to be the conduit for it as long as I am disciplined enough to keep engaging it as it wants to be engaged. Discipline is freedom. It doesn’t get much better than that as far as I’m concerned.

To view the rest of the interview with Ronelle, click here.