The Sketch Effect founder & CEO, William Warren, has released his first book, The Conquering Creative: 9 Shifts to Build an Unstoppable Creative Business, available now on Amazon and other retailers.
Endorsed by New York Times bestselling Author, Jon Acuff, President of Savannah College of Art and Design Paula Wallace, and bestselling author of the Sketchnote Handbook, Mike Rohde, The Conquering Creative is a must-have for any creative looking to grow his or her career or business.
"This is a business book… but it's for creative people," says Warren. "It's for any creative who has ever struggled with the business side of things, wants to take their freelance career to the next level, graduate with their art degree with confidence, or quit that day job to pursue full-time creative work."
The book has its origin in William's own story. Having successfully launched and scaled his creative business for the last ten years, Warren wanted to create a resource to help others do the same.
Drawing on lessons learned from nearly a decade of running a successful creative business, Warren breaks the book into three sections: shifts in thinking, shifts in actions, and shifts in outcomes.
Across the nine chapters of this book, Warren tells stories and shares anecdotes from the ups and downs of his own journey, along with practical advice, tips, and tools. Topics include sales, marketing and promotion, soft skills, productivity, pricing, systems and processes, strategy and vision, and many more.
The book also features 150 hand-drawn illustrations created by Warren himself.
"My book had to have illustrations… it had to!" he says. "First of all, illustration is my first love and any book of mine would be inauthentic without them. Second, visuals help to reinforce the ideas, making them more understandable and memorable. And finally, the illustrations make the book more fun!"
And fun is one of the goals Warren is aiming for with The Conquering Creative. In order to make a business book appealing to people who don't normally like business books, there is nearly an illustration, diagram or graphic on every page.
The book also features nine interviews with a diverse group of creative professionals and entrepreneurs, each representing a different creative field from graphic design to blogging.
"One of my favorite features of the book is the interviews with other 'Conquering Creatives'," added William. "The concepts in this book are so important that I didn't want it to come from just myself. I wanted a whole chorus of voices backing me up and reinforcing the core idea, which is 'You can do it! Business is not as hard as you think!' And they really knocked it out of the park with their advice and encouragement."