The Design Business Show 141: Unlocking Creative Practices with Mara Belzer

Mara is a Creativity Coach who guides artists, the creatively curious, and adults who have forgotten how to play to use art as a way to reignite their creative passionate selves so they can live a more expressed life.

She believes everyone is creative, and has the capacity to make powerful, meaningful art. YES, even YOU!

Here’s what we covered on the episode:

Mara’s Journey With Design

How Mara and I met about a year ago through a mutual copywriter friend
Mara shares that she’s been a designer since 1998, it was her first job in high school, then she studied it in college and became a designer, now she’s also working as a creative awakening coach
A creative awakening coach guides the creatively curious to step out of their comfort zone and find the courage to make imperfect art so that they can live the pure, juicy expression of their truest self
As a child, Mara loved being creative which is where her love of design stemmed, in high school she did year book, from there she worked for a graphic designer and shares she’s always loved putting together designs
In the last few years, Mara has worked solely with entrepreneurs, mostly females, coaches of all kinds, and a lot of people in the natural health and hormone balancing world
Mara does a lot of digital launches, individual and group programs, telesummits and campaigns where she does anything from design/development to strategy and editing copy for voice and direction
Through working with clients and teaching workshops for 7 years, Mara has been able to hone in on the stories that people tell themselves that are holding them back from being their most authentic self — she works with people on letting their expression out in their business

Creative Practices

Mara says the most important thing is committing to a creative practice because it’s a muscle that we have to flex and Mara says we have to be willing to flex it imperfectly as well and explains why
How it’s easy for people to follow what they’re good because there’s a lot of vulnerability in expressing yourself imperfectly, so what mara looks at when helping people maintain their creativity is their willingness to have imperfect expression
Creation should come from a place of intuition, not from being worried about creating the end result — this way we can learn to trust ourselves through the creative process to create our most authentic work
Mara shares that many clients don’t know what they want their website to look like, so she walks them through a special branding process and has a number of different ways for them to pull images and every time they go through the process the clients create their vision board themselves
Mara emphasizes that the best designs come when we have fun, play and when the clients have been playing in their original branding inquiry process — this creates the most aligned websites
If a client isn’t willing to play, tap into their creativity or are struggling to, Mara has found that they never get to something that they truly love until they work through that piece
Some of Mara’s creative practices are drawing, using watercolor, acrylic painting, going out into nature, hiking, communicating with trees and explains the deeper she can feel connected to nature, the deeper it connects her into her creative process
How Mara doesn’t plan anything out in advance when working on her creative practices because it’s exciting to let it naturally emerge and says she always feels inspired by what she creates in that space
Mara loves exploring different crafting projects and lists some she’s tried like, screen printing, taking ceramic classes, sewing, making paper flowers from scratch, etc
The goal for Mara is to keep coming back to her creative practice even if she goes through phases where she doesn’t do it consistently but says she tries to do it each day
When it comes to creative practice, Mara says accountability is important and working with a creativity coach or working in a program can be helpful
Allowing flexibility when it comes to your creative flow is important says Mara because there are going to be times when you aren’t feeling as creative
When Mara isn’t feeling as creative as normal, she’ll scroll through Pinterest, other websites, or go to an art museum for some inspiration
Last year, Mara experienced some burnout so she listened to her energy, gave herself time away from working, and eventually a clear path emerged but says if she wouldn’t have given herself that time, she doesn’t think she would have had that breakthrough
Mara shares that it took a lot of courage to step away from her design business and says she currently works with clients as a creative awakening coach and gives an example of how she puts creative practices to work in her coaching
Remember that everyone has creativity and the ability to be creative inside of them, so trust yourself and make space for your creativity to come out because that’s when the magic happens
Connect with Mara on Instagram, on her Facebook group or on her website