The Creative Entrepreneur
This February marks a year since the publication of The Creative Entrepreneur and it's been such a joy to be part of this book's journey from inception to publication and beyond.
The Creative Entrepreneur: A Guide to Building a Successful Creative Business from Industry Titans is an award-winning, bestseller book authored by Caroline Dailey featuring the hard-earned lessons in business and creativity of ten legendary leading creative entrepreneurs. It is published by DK Penguin Random House Publishing.
Inside, along with these heart-to-heart conversations unwinding their creative journey, you will also find overviews of business essentials and key takeaways. So if you ever wished you could have a mentoring session with one of the below creatives that have put their mark in their creative field, grab your copy!
Nile Rodgers, Co-Founder, The Chic Organization
Roksanda Ilincic, Founder, fashion label Roksanda
Yinka Ilori, Founder, Yinka Ilori Studio
Andy Harries, Founder, Left Bank Pictures (The Crown)
Priya Ahluwalia, Founder, fashion label Ahluwalia
Thomas Heatherwick, Founder, Heatherwick Studio
Matthew Slotover, Co-Founder, Frieze
Ruthie Rogers, Founder, The River Cafe
Strauss Zelnick, CEO Take-Two Interactive (Grand Theft Auto)
Nick Jones, Founder, Soho House
Apart from the warm welcome from readers, press, like AirMail, Monocle and Forbes, the books has also received endorsements from people in the industry I love and admire:
“This is a handbook of incalculable brilliance. You’ll instinctively know the lessons that resonate with you.”
Nile Rodgers
“When you are an entrepreneur you have to prepare yourself for the unknown which is one good reason to invest in this book and absorb the positivity and advice it offers from people that have already done it successfully.”
Wendy Hammett FSRA, former director of the Center of Fashion Enterprise.
I’ve had the honour and pleasure to contribute in this labor of love for the creative community in the editorial but also in the book launch and it was one of the most rewarding projects I’ve ever worked on.
It reminded me of my great times working as a magazine editor and the joy of producing physical work. Being constantly online and delivering things that are not tangible can be soul-drenching at times— one of the many reasons practising art is so important to me.
It was also a deep dive and intense learning experience in what it takes to bring a book to life and connect it to readers in the digital era we live in. And of course understanding the central role Amazon and its algorithm especially for self-published authors. As well as the challenges that presents with the rise of AI. I was recently reading an article about an author that self published 200 romance novels in a year with the help of AI and although not incredible successful in sales individually they did make her a good amount of money due to volume. She now teaches other authors that want to copy her success. This story and many similar challenges us to think: Will one algorithm produce a book to be marketed by another algorithm and then maybe even read by yet another algorithm that will then send us the low-down in bullet points in an email? And what’s the point of all that other than consumption for the profit of few? Will Amazon turn into a huge spam folder and would that then breathe new life in the corner store bookshops that come along with human touch, connection and curation?
I still remember the day I went to my go-to bookshop in the island as a teenager not knowing what to buy and after a little chat the bookstore employee put in my hands a copy of the first book of The Lord of The Rings smiling knowingly. Boy, what an amazing adventure, a new world, did he open for me in that moment. That was in the past. But maybe it’s the future?
