Meet the Collective: Writing, coaching and penguins with Nina Lenton

Nina Lenton is a business coach and mentor with a rich background in marketing and project management, who in this episode shares her insights into the world of creativity and the importance of nurturing it in both personal and professional realms. 
Nina discusses her passion for helping business owners rediscover their creative spark, especially when the daily grind threatens to overshadow their artistic pursuits. Nina's approach combines coaching with practical planning, allowing clients to not only express their creativity but also align it with their business goals. 
The conversation flows into Nina's own journey back to creativity through her writing, and how, through the writing sessions she now runs, she engages with others in an informal setting designed to foster creativity. The sessions incorporate warm-up exercises and writing prompts, where participants can share their work or simply enjoy the process of writing without pressure.
As a Creativity Found Collective member Nina values the inspiration that comes from connecting with others who share a passion for creativity.
But what about the penguins? Listen to the end to find out how they fit in!

Nina Lenton at creativityfound.co.uk

Join the Creativity Found Collective at creativityfound.co.uk/joinus

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Researched, edited and produced by Claire Waite Brown
Music: Day Trips by Ketsa Undercover / Ketsa Creative Commons License Free Music Archive - Ketsa - Day Trips
Artworks: Emily Portnoi emilyportnoi.co.uk
Photo: Ella Pallet

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Click here to book a 1-to-1 online chat with me to understand more about the Creativity Found Collective, the promotional and networking membership for creative small businesses.

Chapters

• 4:49 Exploring Creativity in Business
• 6:46 Rediscovering Creativity through Writing
• 11:24 The Importance of Community for Indie Business Owners
• 13:04 Creative Expression and Creative Thinking
• 16:01 The Penguins!

Transcript

1:41

Coaching, as in listening. Helping business owners to figure out where things maybe aren't feeling creative and where they want to put more creativity back into what they're doing. That's why I decided to join Creativity Found, because it's about creativity and actually just enjoying being around people who understand what it's like to want to do creative things. I mean, obviously you're trying to make money, but that you're also prioritising the things you love doing so that they don't get pushed down the list. So that's my writing sessions. Yes. I do a couple of warm up exercises and then I have some other prompts. We spend five minutes writing, come back together, have a bit of chat. How did we find it? Sometimes people read things out, sometimes they don't. You know, nobody has to read anything out if they don't want to or even say anything if they don't want to. They can just turn up and write. Hi, Claire here. Creating this show inspired me to take the Creativity Found mission further. As well as sharing inspirational stories of people who have embraced their creativity in adulthood, I wanted to actually help people do this for themselves and to support artists and crafters who share their creative knowledge with adults through their classes, kits and supplies. Creativityfound.co.uk and the creativity Found Collective were born. You can visit creativityfound.co.uk to find ways to learn printmaking, try embroidery, get touchy feely with clay, make your own kilt, start weaving, learn to paint, and so much more. And the wonderful teachers and makers featured on the website are members of the Creativity Found Collective. We also have business support enterprises as members who help others grow their businesses. In this episode of the Creativity Found podcast, adapted from a live video posted on the Creativity Found YouTube channel and in the Creativity Found Facebook group, I chat with one of our members about what they do and how they can help you. And if you would like to join our merry band, simply visit creativityfound.co.uk join us and I'll see you soon. Over to you, Nina. Let's start with how you help other business owners to thrive or grow or do whatever they need. Tell us about that bit of it first. Okay, so I'm a coach and I've got sort of got two bits of that. So there's, there's coaching as in listening, helping business owners to figure out where things maybe aren't feeling creative and where they want to put more creativity back into what they're doing, maybe make more time for that creativity. If they haven't been prioritizing it and have got bogged down in other things. And then there's also. Because my background's marketing and project management, depending on the person I'm working with, sometimes I can then help with project planning or marketing planning. You know, it might be that somebody starts off having the coaching and then moves on to the planning side of it, or they might come for one or the other. So why might someone come to you? What kind of difficulties might they be experiencing that you can help with? For example, I've been working with an artist who does other things as well because she hasn't established her art completely. So she does freelance work as well. But what she was finding was that she wasn't actually finding time to do her art, and that's the thing she really loves doing. So we were able to just identify. Well, I mean, firstly confirmed that that was something she really wanted to do because she was worried that she might not be able to, you know, she might not be able to support herself if all she ever did with her art. So we were just talking about ways that she could make sure she kept her business running and did things in that, but also then taking advantage of some of the opportunities she was getting in her art and exploring new paths and new ideas and. And things like that. Oh, brilliant. That's absolutely perfect. I mean, that's exactly the kind of thing I hear from guests on the podcast who have wanted to make that transition whereby they can make their art their job or make their art make them money and challenges that. That brings up. Now, you yourself found, I think you found a bit more of a path back to your creativity with writing, is that right? Yes. So it started off. So, I mean, this is going back quite a lot of years, actually, when I was doing contracting and. And I think they'd always been, you know, I'd always written things My GCSE English teacher told me off for going off to do science A levels. She said I should be doing creative because I was writing some lovely creative things and she thought I should be doing. Um. And so that, you know, I went off, did a science degree, then did marketing, and so actually just sort of lost all of that, really, because it just was just too busy. And then it was a thing called the 30 day challenge that got me back into it, where actually what I was doing was picked a creative project and then you did a little bit of work on it every day for 30 days with the aim of having something to show for it at the end. And I decided I was going to write a blog and that my blog was going to be. I was just basically going to write a post every day. And I think I, I think when I started doing it I thought I was, I'm not sure what I thought I was going to write, but it ended up actually being these little creative, what I call creative snippets. You know, I would sit down, put a timer on for 20 minutes, just sort of being completely true to the 20 minutes a day thing. And I'd sit there and type and see what happened. And after a while of doing it, I actually really got into writing these little creative pieces. So I would, you know, I might look out the window and see a. See a tree. And I'd get inspired by that and tell a story about a man sitting underneath a tree. So it was partly descriptive and it was partly the things that were maybe the things the man sitting under the tree was thinking or what was going on. And I carried on doing quite a bit of, kind of going down the creative writing route for a little while. You know, I had the odd poem published and put them into competitions and I've self published a few, a few ebooks for example. But I think I sort of realised in the end it was something I was doing for me rather than that I necessarily wanted to be, wanted to be doing a lot of it. But really that's the thing that's kind of led to one of the, one of the things I have is my mix of things I do now and. Is that your writing sessions? So that's my writing sessions, yes. Tell me about those. But it's an informal sort of session. So basically I love them because I actually get to write as well. It means that I know that I'm going to do some writing if I run one. So I've just set it up so that I do a couple of warm up exercises and then I have some other prompts. We spend five minutes writing, it's online, come back together, have a bit of chat. How did we find it? Sometimes people read things out, sometimes they don't. You know, nobody has to read anything out if they don't want to or even say anything if they don't want to. They can just turn up and write. And then maybe later on I might give people a choice as well, depending on, depending on how people are finding them. Because I know that, you know, I quite like writing about nature and you know, in those sorts of situations and describing them. But actually some people would much rather be doing dialogue. That would be like a Birthday party or something where there's. You don't have to insert the people because they're kind of implied in the prompt. Yeah. And it's that dedicated time as well. Like you said, you have that dedicated time and other people need that as well. It's very difficult to say, I'm going to do this. From your coaching, mentoring, and even the writing sessions. From that viewpoint, why do you think that is an important offering? Why do you think that is useful for people who are working on their business to come to. You work with somebody else. The two things are slightly different, I think, for the. For the coaching and the. The planning side of it. I think actually if somebody's doing a business where they love what they're doing, there are inevitably going to be things that they don't want to do. And actually by working with someone else, you know, sometimes it's something they can outsource. Occasionally I do bits of writing for clients, for example, bits of social media or something. I've got a couple of clients I do that for. So sometimes it can be specifically outsourcing stuff. Sometimes it can be about rearranging your time to make sure that actually you're prioritizing the. I mean, obviously you're trying to make money, but that you're also prioritising the things you love doing so that they don't get pushed down the list. You know, I was talking to a client the other day who, Who's a writer, freelance writer. So she writes factual stuff, but actually she wanted to do a lot more creative writing. And in talking about it, we realized that the ideal time for her to do that was first thing in the morning, rather than saying, oh, I'm going to do a bit of creative writing at lunchtime. Actually, her saying, I'm going to spend 15 minutes at the start of every day just writing a little bit of something creative before I get on with my other work. So then she felt nourished because she'd done that kind of thing. And then actually it probably made her more efficient in doing that other work, you know, and then maybe she even was going to get back to it later. Yeah. And then for the creative writing, I think actually it has that benefit of just inspiring other creativity and just being something. Something that's for you in whatever form you want it to be. Yeah, perfect. You've recently joined the collective. Why do you think it's important for indie business owners to. To be a member of a community, whether it's Creativity Found or other ones that. That we go to I mean, there's so many different reasons for it, aren't there? I mean, I think any kind of community, it's about having the support of others, knowing that you're not, you're not out there working by yourself. And I think a community that gives you a monthly online meetup is great because then you can turn up from your own house, switch on the computer and have a chat with some people. Then you've got somewhere that you can go to ask questions, get support for different things. And if it's in the case of, you know, a creative community, it can inspire your own creativity as well. Because you get ideas from those people. Yeah, absolutely. There's just a little bit of specificity within that and I think that can be a good introduction for somebody to join a group to know that there is that specificity of something that you believe in, which of course is creativity. Sometimes you can go to in real life networking events and be completely with the wrong kinds of people. Yeah, I mean, I know that I've certainly experimented with them on and off. Well, I mean, it's probably been 10 years since I first started doing networking and yeah, I've experimented with all sorts of different ones. That's why I decided to join Creativity Found, because it's about creativity and actually, you know, just enjoying being around people who understand what it's like to want to do creative things. Lovely, thank you. That's exactly what I want to hear and why we do it. What about the future? Have you got any thoughts on what's coming up or anything you want to do going forward? The other thing that I have recently done is a certification in something called Creative id, which is a psychometric tool that looks at creative thinking. Because when, when I talk about creativity, I describe it as having two bits. So I say that you've got creative expression, which is all of the writing, the art and anything like craft, anything that's making something, including things like cooking, gardening, those sorts of things, that's all creative expression. And then there's the other side, which is creative thinking. And actually everybody has a style of creative thinking, even if they don't think they're creative people having lots of ideas, people developing those ideas and how that works along the way. Yes, you have the creative people with a lot of ideas, but you also have the people that support them in doing that. And so that's what the creative thinking and the creative styles is about. So I'm looking at doing a. Probably going to do a workshop for freelancers about that. And I'M certainly going to try and work with some of the other consultants who also use that tool and hopefully maybe do some work with some teams to look at a different aspect of creativity. So that's a, that's quite a big focus for me next year as well. Brilliant. That is so interesting. What started the penguins? Actually, it was, it was when I was working in an agency, it was over 10 years ago now, and they had an art competition. It wasn't meant to be like, you know, it wasn't obviously a serious art competition. It was a kind of, you know, bring some creativity to it. And I drew what I called March of the Penguins and I just did this, a four sheet with a whole load of these weird little penguins on it. And then I forgot about them for a while until one day I was coming back from London and I was. I'd had a couple of glasses of wine and I was on the train, got my notebook out and I drew, I drew a tower of penguins. I don't know why. And then ever since then I sort of, you know, every now and then I've gone through little phases of bringing these penguins into things. It really kind of escalated a bit last year when I told members of a freelance community that I'm in, but when I procrastinate, I draw penguins. And, and, yeah, and they didn't think I was weird and they, they sort of went, oh, great, show us some. And I ended up setting up an Instagram account for my penguins. And then one of the networking events that I know we both, we both go to online, I actually started writing notes in the form of penguins. So whatever topic we were talking about, I would do a penguin related. Do you know, so by the end of an hour's session, I might have five or six or even more sometimes silly cartoons with this penguin doing all sorts of weird things. So, yeah, so I mean, that's my penguins. It's a form of sketchnoting, isn't it? I've got an episode with a lady in America who does that. But that's what you're doing as well, isn't it? Yes, just very specific sketch noting because it has to involve a penguin. So that's absolutely fine. So where can people find you on Instagram as your penguin account and your. And as your you account? I am Nina Lenton business. My penguins are weird penguin doodles. And they're lovely. They bring so much joy and happiness and these little thoughts. It's lovely. You can find out everything about Nina on her page at the Creativity found website. It's creativityfound.co.uk Nina Lenton. You can find her social links there as well, links back to Nina's site and descriptions of everything that she does. I'm just going to mention that we have live streamed this using Riverside, which is the platform I use to record all of my podcast episodes as well. And you can find links to Riverside and Buzzsprout, which are the people who host my podcast in the description and have to let you know that if you do use either of those links and you pay some money, a little bit comes back to Creativity found the podcast which is lovely. Thank you so much Nina. Thank you very much. Claire. Thanks so much for listening to Creativity Found. I hope you enjoyed this episode and gained some value from it. If you did, perhaps you'd like to contribute a small monetary sign of appreciation either by becoming a regular supporter from as little as $3 per month using the link in the show notes or if you are listening on a value for value enabled app such as Fountain, Truefans or Podverse. Feel free to send a few sats my way. I also occasionally promote products that I personally use, so please use the affiliate link where relevant if you are buying from those fine companies. Thanks so much. I really appreciate it.