July Retrospective: Back in July 2014, I wrote a daily series exploring the realities of navigating the creative economy. Twelve years later, looking back at these entries (and my original awful hand-drawn illustrations!), I’m struck by how the core truths of a creative career remain completely timeless. Each day this month, I’m opening up the archive to share these foundational lessons—with a few modern reflections layered in.

If you’re a new creative graduate looking to find your footing in the creative economy, a Gen X looking to pivot into a creative business, a side-hustler or someone who just wants to up their creative business game, there’s something for you in this series. Just don’t judge my drawings 😉

Describe Your Offer

Now that you’ve got a clearer understanding of your offerings, you need to figure out how to describe them in a way that your customer can both relate to them and will be interested in them.

As artists and creative people we struggle to describe our work. To us it’s so obvious why what we are doing is earth shattering. But to other people, it isn’t so clear.

Most people go through life just trying to get from one crisis to the next. We all have a thousand things in our head at all times, so it’s really hard for there to be space for your wonderful, shiny, fantastic product or service. In most cases, I ain’t got time for it.

Which is why you have to sell me on the BENEFITS.

Features vs benefits

Features are all the descriptors of your goods or services. Your painting is colourful and speaks of the soul’s journey through life. Or your book is funny, witty and urbane. Or your song is catchy and full of positive messages. Or your teaching is revolutionary and affordable.

These are all features. Features are about you or about your offer.

What they aren’t is about your customer.

Your customers only cares about themselves. Their default response is ‘So? What’s it gonna do for me?’

Benefits are about the customer.

Benefits describe how your product or service is going to help the customer. Benefits should always speak to either their pain or pleasure. Your product or service should help them alleviate pain or bring them pleasure. If it can do that, they will possibly take interest.

Selling benefits might look like:

• My paintings will cheer you up on a bad day and help you feel inspired when life is tough
• My book will make you laugh out loud until your guts ache
• My song will have you bouncing in your chair, and grooving your troubles away
• My teaching will help young mums deal with their cranky babies and is priced so you can still buy nappies.

Do you see how these descriptions are about the audience and what the product or service will do for them? That’s your benefits. 

Do you also notice the word that is in everyone of those statements: you. If you are writing statements that are about how your product/service impacts someone – the you – then you are on the right track.

Action: Write a two or three line description of your freebie and your bronze/silver/gold offerings. Make sure it addresses the needs of the customer and defines the benefits (address them as you).

Congratulations, you’ve got to the end of the first week. I hope you have a clearer idea of what you are offering for sale, a range of goods or services your customers can choose from and how to go about describing them in language that means something to your customer.

Starting tomorrow, we’re going to shift our focus on to the customer – determining who your target customers are!

Longevity in a creative career isn’t accidental—it’s built on strategy.

While the landscape shifts, the core principles of thriving as a creative freelancer haven’t changed. For deeper, modern frameworks on building a sustainable creative practice:

• Read the Book: Looking for a step-by-step field guide to building a resilient career in the creative economy? Pick up my recent book The Thriving Creative: Successful Freelancing in the Creative Economy available from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and from my publisher Routledge.
• Stay Connected: Join my community and to receive the complete 31-day hand-drawn playbook as a single PDF at the end of the month. Sign up below.