Wealth generation is not just about getting rich. Wealth means an abundance of a valuable thing. This could be financial, and yet it could equally be emotional, social, or educational. Tying these things together to filter into a financial reward is the only way of keeping it sustainable, and sustainable wealth is the only kind that really matters long-term. By working together, creating, funding, paying for, promoting, and supporting, we can elevate sustainable wealth in all parts of our community, across the world. The cycle of profit and innovation will turn as always and if we can get on board, we can play a part in what it will look like in days, months, and years to come. Getting involved is how to boost the wealth of the community in your own way, and finding ways to make it work for you is how you boost wealth for your own family. The balance is struck in the models you apply to your efforts and communication.  
 
Sustainability means that for as long as there is demand, you can supply. Not only that, but it also means that the rewards you receive account for the cost of delivering the service and a wage for everyone involved, including yourself. This can be reached when the customer begins to rely on your product or service and are prepared to do what it takes to have it on supply. Finding something to offer that is important enough, either practically or emotionally, and offering it in such a way that benefits everyone, is how to best position your skills and talents. When this has happened, and it happens all the time with brands and businesses across the table, sustainable wealth is created.  
 
Of course, breaking into the world of innovation and business is not as simple as having a few good ideas. It is a long process and one that requires us to take many risks. We must be confident in our abilities and skills but not arrogant or narcissistic. We need to know we are good enough but appreciate that plenty of other people are also good enough. Once this emotional hurdle is behind you, you can set about beginning an honest and well-made business. To get on the radar, you need to tick some mental boxes. People only pay attention to something they are interested in. People only buy things they want or need. If no one is interested in your service or the work that you do, then you’ll not find anyone to sell it to.  
 
What matters a lot in the marketplace are things that change the marketplace. Things that have not been done or offered before are what interest people the most. Things that have a clear benefit to the customer and society that you can justify your profit margin with are defensible business models. A solution to a problem that a customer has that is more efficient and more suitable is disruptive and new. These things are what people look for when choosing to spend money or even stop blocking ads for a particular site like this one. (Google wants to pay me for offering a service to them and in return readers like you get free and easy to read education like this). 
 
A lot of businesses tick these boxes and only get so far, they don’t make it past the small turnover or semi-professional status. Reaching out to the wider world involves appreciating that the wider world is a complex and unfamiliar place. As an authority in the terms of your creative business, people will have their own emotional baggage that makes it hard for them to connect with you. Everything that people “know” about business leaders and salespeople stands in your way like a black knight who just won’t listen. To expand your work and reach further than your own arm span, it’s necessary to plug into other businesses and services. When you plug in to a business or service as a business or service, you must be able to reverse the connection at the same time, resulting in a mutual benefit for a mutual sharing of work. It is in the power of networks that we can grow even further. This means the insecurities that lead to feelings of competitiveness need to be addressed before you can move on. 
 
For the plug to connect in both directions, and for your use of business to equal use for your business, your product and service needs to become a platform for other innovators to use to their benefit. This leads to a natural expansion that brings more potential customers and further reach. Creating a natural cycle of work that results in wealth creation and service improvements for all is how to build a business model that is truly sustainable and defensible. Finding the right needs and the correct level of priority is how to become profitable and necessary for other businesses to utilise. The process of building dependencies involves becoming reliable and trusted as well as efficient and necessary. 
 
Identifying a need for a solution requires an understanding of certain processes and workflow systems that others go through. Having the opportunity to identify pain points in a particular aspect of life and work requires an experience or an instruction on something that you’re interested in. By playing a part in your area of life you will have the option to look for certain pressure points and pain points that you can find solutions to and get rewarded for applying. A business model that finds a repeating problem and offers an efficient and reliable solution for a price that outweighs the alternative in attractiveness will find many footholds in its chosen industry and beyond.  
 
Needs come in a variety of shapes and sizes. The priority level of a need depends on how the lack of its fulfilment affects the future and the present moment. If a person needs something right now, it is a high priority, rather than if they need something at some point, when it is a relatively low priority. Positioning yourself in the right now bracket is how to make your service or product immediately attractive. We assign needs according to how urgent they are, critical needs are the ones that make a significant difference to us if they are not met. Nice needs are needs that we’d like to be fulfilled but are prepared to put off for another day. A lot of things are nice to some but critical to others. Hunger, for example, defines how critical a food purchase would be. We all have moods and external circumstances that change what we consider a priority at any given time. Positioning yourself in a way that finds people when you are their priority is about understanding who you are selling to and why.   
 
Needs can be urgent, latent, or aspirational. As mentioned, urgency is often relative however some products are always considered urgent. Municipal services and healthcare services are needed all the time, a lot of people have complete dependencies on other services that they’d be vulnerable and isolated without. A latent need is one that could be considered urgent but only if it suits you. The new perfume that you must have, for example, may seem urgent to you and it might well be, however it’s more about desire than anything else. If given the choice between the perfume and life-saving care, you’d choose the care.  Aspirational needs identify a person’s desire for the future and help them feel more able to fulfil it. These can be financial, educational, or some other personal investment. All these needs are opportunities to create wealth by adding genuine value. By taking responsibility for solving the problem identified, you are in your right to take payment for that service.  
 
Having a foothold in the market is a great first step however the market doesn’t stay the same for long. New technologies emerge, and they present new opportunities for business. With new applications of new technology there comes new problems and efficiencies that can be utilised. To save time and resources by providing efficiency the customer finds the resources to offer an effective return. This balance is met when the product or service outweighs the need to hold onto the return. Finding the needs that markets have and determining what your solutions are worth to them can be difficult, however when you talk to potential clients these things can be pinned down over time.  
 
To be able to command a price that looks attractive to yourself and those who are invested in your progress, your product or service must meet a need with a degree of urgency that presents as an opportunity rather than a chore. In this way you’re providing a genuinely valuable resource to those who want to become customers. Because we all have unique skills and abilities, our needs vary across departments and social circles. One department is usually specialised into one or two aspects and so other aspects need an outsourced flow to satisfy the need. By connecting yourself as a departmental expert in a situation that has a strong demand you can become an essential tool for business. Honing this into a service that can be defined and sold is all about delivery and positioning.  
 
When you deliver your creative idea in a setting there are a lot of things you must be aware of. To get any interest in your hard work you need to connect with people who don’t know you and have no real social contract with you. Your offering is supposed speak to them on a level that cuts through the automatic busybody routine most of us are in these days. Positioning requires an understanding who your ideal customer is. By focusing on the ideal customer, we can reach the most potential with what we have to offer. Like the bullseye of a target, the whole circle of potential radiates from this central spot.  So, you need to decide who this ideal customer is.  
 
Is your creative idea meant for other businesses, like internet services, so they can do their job better? Is your solution meant for the public, like jam, so anyone can make use of your offering? Or is your solution meant for society, like a free further education initiative, so the benefits reach beyond that of the user? If you can identify one or two main customers and define them as people, in a non-intrusive yet definitive way, you can design your delivery to meet their needs. If the problems can be defined and the solutions can be offered in a way that identifies with the one who experiences them, the service will seem attractive. Then, by operating in a way that provides a solution, efficiency, and reliability, your service will be able to provide value and create wealth for the whole community, including you.  
​
​Essential reading: Entrusted: Stewardship For Responsible Wealth Creation
​​

Everything changes, the world never stands still. Human society, as an extension of the world, is also in perpetual flux. The way we do things and the things we do change all the time, over the decades new technologies and new motivations produce new behaviours. With all of this undiscovered mental landscape, there is an infinite space to grow, explore, expand, and dissect. We can be pioneers on the edge of development, assisting humanity on its journey towards tomorrow. Creative leadership takes the power of this continual change and finds ways of making all of our lives better through novel applications. The arts and the sciences work together to bring about fresh experience and utility that strengthen our communities and improve our personal lives.  
 
What does exploring the landscape of human innovation and social evolution look like? It’s not the same as setting off on a journey to unknown mountains. It’s only when we use this example as an analogy or a metaphor that is begins to make sense. We can draw new maps and mark them with descriptions of what we can expect, here be dragons, only we do it through experimentation and application. Making little changes to one thing at a time is how it begins but this looks much like walking out of the door and to the garden gate. A real explorer goes much further than this, and they will risk getting completely lost for a while. Knowing how to get back to where you started is a necessary tool for any adventure, but you also need to lose sight of the shore.  
 
It begins with a little experiment; we ask ourselves what would happen if I did this. We notice the effect that we cause, and we try to understand the dynamic observed. This can be with making art, with the effects being aesthetic and communicatory, or with technology and the effects of new devices in new situations. Once we have discovered a little change in a little place that we think is beneficial in some way, we can begin putting it into practice. Honing the technique and preserving the philosophy that motivated the idea, we can create a set of instructions that produce the desired change without any need for experiment. Fool-proofing these instructions and making plans for every contingency takes a formulative effort in the initial exploratory and adventurous stage.     
 
It is only once we have explored the options and mastered the process required that that act of expansion and implementation can fruitfully take place. The formula is not a secret recipe we can write down, but a certain mindset and routine that ensures the results are as the process requires. When the experiment is over and the outcome is lucid, it’s simply a matter of making it happen. Now the adaptation to the process, the idea, the application, is ready to meet the world. Putting something into positive action is the next stage of applying your creative problem solving to the given situation. A creative leader isn’t content with one application in one setting for their idea, they see value in providing solutions to a raft of individuals who have a similar problem or desire that they want to be fulfilled. It’s good for them, for other people, and it’s good for the economy.  
 
The world at large is made up of human networks. These networks are governed not only by legal and social rules but by the emotions of everyone involved. To collaborate with others, it is important to always be mindful of all these things. A blockage in legal terms, social terms, or emotional terms can be fatal to your project and the positive benefits it could have provided. To build on our idea, solution, brand, creative piece, we must be able to communicate effectively with the networks necessary for this to happen. Positioning and presentation work together with personality to create an over-all public facade that symbolises the true big picture behind the image. If there are incoherencies or crossed wires, then the social and emotional rhetoric will not be effective. If you forget the legal side and do not make room for this then others will be wary of you as they don’t want to be involved with things that break the law. Finding creative ways to implement the necessary requirements and presenting yourself and idea in a true to life branding is another instance of trial, error, technique building, and application.  
 
The aspects of creative leadership often branch off into three distinguishable areas. Resourcefulness, reactivity, and inventiveness. Resourcefulness is not just making the most out of what’s available, it’s about expanding what’s available in creative ways. Finding new solutions to new problems in the cheapest and most effective way on the way to implementing a larger solution is how creative resourcefulness becomes important. Using tools in ways that work safely regardless of their original intention is how we apply things in creative ways and increase our level of resource. Reactive creativity is all about how we solve immediate problems with immediate answers. Often, we can partially or even completely solve an issue with a snap decision that uses what is immediately available. If we can do this in creative and useful ways that becomes a resource for others, then we become very useful to have around. Inventiveness, of course, is all about seeing new ways to do things with what we have around us. It is about seeing the uncommon but never-the-less correct answer in the equation of many answers. To do this we need a level of confidence in our own ability to perceive, understand, and digest relevant information and disregard the irrelevant information that may be tied into the original yet now obsolete purpose.  
 
Making use of these aspects of creativity is how we can relate well with all the different types of people that will stand on our path to development. To become an effective leader with a positive toolset to bring to the table, we need to be influential, useful, and safe. In the grand scheme it is not enough to be a unit, we need to be a conductor of the surrounding environment, making positive waves and bringing about clarity within the settings given to us. Because we are all individuals, we all have different personalities that need to be worked with and not against. Getting along with people is an artform on its own, considering the way others feel, think, behave, and want. To implement creativity to the social scene, we need to be able to relate to others in such a way that leaves them feeling good about themselves. If we make people feel negative, then they will associate us and our ideas with that negative feeling. We don’t want that.  
 
Because people are all unique and complex systems, the art of human interaction is never to be taken lightly or for granted. Art is about the blend of creativity and technique in each situation that presents the most appropriate outcome. Pure creativity pays no attention to rules and systems, and pure technique pays no attention to novelty and little changes. We need to be able to find a balance between these two extremes to relate with others on a level they feel safe and confident with.  It is only when others feel safe and confident with us that they will seriously investigate anything we have to offer. Every person is different and we will have to adjust our balance of creativity and technique to effectively govern our relationships. Formalities and playfulness all play their part in our social relationships and to make the most out of those in our networks, we need to be able to find the correct approach for the people around us and the market we intend to build into. A sense of empathy and an ear for genuine listening are your most important tools, rather than second guessing and over-ruling, we must be able to address individuals on face value, like that of a genuine coin, if we are to ascribe genuine value to our relationships.  
 

A lot of us are struggling these days. If it’s not with the fast pace of career and family balance, it’s the far-too-steep slope that we must climb to reach it. The paths laid out for us are many and yet they each require a particular mentality that we may be unsure of. Sometimes we find that we are unsuitable for many or even most of the opportunities that people have provided us with. Maybe we can sense a bad deal when we see one and we see them everywhere. A creative person may feel compelled to work on things in their own way which can be problematic in the modern workplace. Finding opportunities that suit a creative person can be difficult as novelty always starts off small. Even if we mass produce a novelty idea or item, the public opinion will be small.
 
Communicating the value of creative ideas requires us to have a fundamental understanding of the problem we are solving. If we use what we have at our disposal, be it time, material, knowledge, mental ability, or any combination of these things, to solve known problems that benefit the wider community, then a business model can work. The necessity of any business is to fulfil a need for a price that is competitive with society at large. We need to think creatively to redefine solutions and problems that suit people more accurately than other services. Not only do we limit current competition, but we also provide unique factors that can change the industry over time.
 
When going into business, the thing to remember that happiness and contentment are what you are selling. The services and items on offer are tools for us to bring that about. We exchange contentment for contentment, so the object is to be rewarded in kind. We ask for money if we need to, or a fair provision of service that we would otherwise not receive. Sometimes the largest issues in a community are based on a lack of money and a lack of social leverage, meaning that those perhaps we are best to serve are unable to respond in any kind at all. This means we require a third party that does provide financial or social rewards. The most obvious example of this is a charity. This is how business is done in the modern world. 

​

To achieve authority status in your chosen area of problem solving, it’s necessary to dedicate your whole mind to the problem. A lot of information is likely already available about your chosen problem and the methods in which is has been solved before. If the problem is new, then we can find similarities in other solutions that we can use as metaphorical tools to explore our own example. Having the right solution is only part of the equation as well. To have people be willing to give us a chance, being an authority will only get us so far. We must be easy to talk to, interact with, and a pleasure to spend time with. When you can make your time worth rewards, either financial, social, or both, then you will find making progress natural.
 
A solution that people can understand means making it simple to apply. If we are a learned expert on a subject, it may become more difficult to see the hurdles in the thought process you’re offering. When choosing solutions to problems and finding ways to provide for us in other ways, people generally choose the easiest and most rewarding option. In general terms, the higher the cost, the higher the quality of service and item. This is because to provide excellence and ease of use, a lot of work is done, and the best ingredients are used. When we pay more for something we generally expect to have a better product because of it. Sometimes sellers use this logic to make products appear better than they are.
 
When establishing yourself as a legitimate source of business and therefore solutions to people's problems, its important to not leave people feeling cheated. This means that using psychology to sell things that people don’t want or at a price that is out of balance will ultimately result in unfriendly feelings and mistrust towards you. When a community loses trust in you then they will no longer feel your services are of any value. The advert and the assurance will mean nothing to them because they don’t know if they should believe it. We can see this in action when politicians draw rosy pictures of rational and functional society when in fact it’s crumbling around them. It’s not long until their narrative no longer makes any sense when compared to reality and the population loses trust in them. 

​

To build trust from a community that doesn’t know if you deserve it, it’s necessary to show that you are present not only to serve yourself but to serve others too. To become trusted and accepted by the wider ecosystem of finance, service, and production, it’s important to be of real benefit to others as much as you are yourself. If a person is unable to look after others or themselves, it becomes unattractive for business. They offer services that do not match the market because the effort and intention to provide is missing. If a person can’t look out for your interests or their own interests, then the service they provide can’t be guaranteed to be adequate.
 
Business must be beneficial to society, not just for the customer and the seller. If the solution to a problem creates more problems, then it’s not a good service. The nature of modern business gives rise to the need to be socially responsible as well as profitable. Making a profit means more jobs for people and more money sent to governments for public services. Provided the money is made fairly and without causing harm to those around it, it’s a good thing. Our creative solutions and abilities are the tools we have to apply ourselves in wealth generation for ourselves and those around us.  
 
Wealth isn’t everything, it’s not the goal. Our problem is in security and in desire. We use money to enable security for ourselves and our loved ones. We also use it to get what we want in life. This is the experience of ownership or time spent. The attraction of money is because of the ability it has to get what we want. It’s power, and in the right hands, it can provide for everyone. When used wisely and creatively, we can use our financial ability to make life better for the community we work in and live in. Making a fair wage is how we get along in society, as the world is prepared for us, and we are prepared for the world. Our ability to solve problems for people and provide genuinely positive experiences is a valuable resource that we can use to fulfil our obligations.
​

To do this properly, we must accept that we need education. We’re not born into any skill and even highly talented people spend a long time practicing and learning how to do what they do so well. If we want to stand among the talented ones, then we must strive and work as hard to be as reliable as they are in the field we choose. This is why choosing a field that we enjoy working with is essential because to make work for you in your own way then it will take a lot of time, most of which will be unpaid. Doing things in the way other people want it done will earn you money faster, so only follow your creative path if you are prepared to take that route. Sometimes, though, it’s the only route we have. Only when we’ve learned the skills and practiced them until they become a talent will our ability be worth paying for.
 
Making people happy is what problem solving is all about. If we can make people happy with our skills without making other people directly unhappy, then we have a great business. What is directly unhappy? Some people will just not like you. They might see you as a threat to their business, or a threat to their social status. Overseeing a business is not a job that comes without its pitfalls. Some people have predefined assumptions about businesspeople and those of us who have studied marketing. If you are in the business of selling products, services, or both then marketing is essential reading. Directly making people unhappy involves action that is inconsiderate of their freedoms and rights to thrive. Antisocial business is not good marketing.
 
A service mindset with a creative attitude and a willingness to look after yourself and others in equal amounts will be the foundation to your creative journey. Once you’ve established trust, authority, a genuine solution to a genuine problem, and a way of benefitting from it personally, your business model is ready to go. Naturally, we need continual maintenance, an eye for new growth and necessary cuts, and a continual process of grounding and reassessing the situation. A creative life is well within reach.
 
If you want to learn more, why not try Principles and Practice of Marketing by Professor David Jobber and Fiona Ellis-Chadwick
​