"Lisa Canning's "Build a Blue Bike" is a must read for all young artists. 
From it, they will all learn that artistic excellence is a necessary but not a
sufficient condition for success, while gaining exciting new insights into the
development of entrepreneurial imagination and the possibility of a much
broader new role for the arts in America's future."

Robert Freeman
Susan Menefee Ragan Regents Professor of the Arts
Director, Bryce Jordan Arts Entrepreneurship Incubator
The University of Texas at Austin
 

Excerpt from Build a Blue Bike  

Imagine yourself on a stage with thousands of people in the audience watching your every move. In front of you is a box. On the box is a label that says "Blue Bicycle." In front of your audience, you have been asked to put the blue bicycle together. At first you are not sure what to do; should you try and put it together or not? After all you have never put a blue bicycle together before.

You decide to try, and so you dump the blue bicycle parts out onto the floor of the stage without any idea in that moment where to begin. As all the moving parts of the blue bicycle surround you, you seek reassurance, and look out into the eyes of the audience starring right back at you. You feel a twinge of panic but you decide to proceed anyway to build the blue bicycle.

It takes you longer then you imagine to see, amongst all those parts, the most obvious the handles that you quickly attach to the frame. You make mistakes assembling the gears and feel like you are spinning your wheels; going nowhere fast. When the chain won't properly engage the gear you wonder if you will ever have a bike to ride at all.

Thank God the wheels go on easiest and the lug nuts attach without a problem. But then, in your haste, you put the seat on backwards, the audience laughs, and you feel really foolish. Oh, and the pedals, you almost forgot to attach them entirely; but you do.

In the end you step back, and before your eyes, and the eyes of all of those watching, you have built a blue bicycle, which you are now free to ride anywhere you wish to go.

About Build a Blue Bike:

In the emerging new world economy, creativity has been declared a key ingredient for financial success. In fact, creativity is being honored and recognized as the fuel that can grow revenue like never before and catapult our largest companies and newest start-ups to new levels of international competitiveness and profitability.

But who is teaching our future business leaders creativity? And who is teaching those with the most creativity our artists, musicians, writers, and other creative types to lead? The intersection of creative pursuits and business training is still an emerging trend. My name is Lisa Canning and my book Build a Blue Bike has been written to provide a bridge for this gap.

Build a Blue Bike will help you understand how to assemble the components you need to produce financial freedom while learning how to sustain your own unique creative process throughout your life.

As a professional clarinetist and a self-taught entrepreneur, I have learned the hard way to blend creativity with business. With more than 20 years of working with artists, in a variety of capacities, while building four successful multi-million dollar businesses founded on artistic passion, I spent 10 years developing and teaching creative career development to artists at DePaul University in Chicago. Through teaching other artists how to turn their creative passion into a productive and financially profitable enterprise, Build a Blue Bike was born.

In Build a Blue Bike you will learn how to direct your personal creativity into an entrepreneurial venture, thereby developing the economic muscle your creativity needs and deserves to thrive financially. Build a Blue Bike is for artists and those who wish to be employed full time using their artistic talents. It is also for anyone who seeks a passionate life supported by the economics of an occupation that isn't necessarily a nine-to-five job.

If you are interested in being notified when Build a Blue Bike will be available for sale, please email me.