Two Books, More Ways to Explore Your Creative Potential

Every creative person has heard some version of it. "That's a nice hobby, but what's your real plan?" Diane Strand heard it too. Then she spent more than three decades proving that the stage, the camera, and the editing bay can teach you just about everything you need to build a business. Now she has poured that journey into two books, and each one opens a different door to your own creative potential.

Let's start with CreativePreneur: Use the Tools of the Arts to Grow Your Business. Part memoir and part business playbook, it follows Diane from Hollywood soundstages to founding JDS Video & Media Productions and the nonprofit JDS Creative Academy. Along the way, she shares how the tools she picked up in theater and television helped her build companies, survive a recession and a pandemic, and turn creativity into a career, a calling, and a legacy. Readers clearly connected with it, because the book climbed to #1 on Amazon in the Starting a Business category.

Image: CreativePreneur front and back cover

So what will you actually walk away with? Practical ideas you can put to work the same week you read them. The D.R.E.A.M. framework walks you step by step from a creative idea to a real, sustainable business. Diane's "Tools of the Arts" show how the skills performers practice every day become powerful business and leadership skills, whether or not you have ever set foot on a stage. She also explains why visibility, not talent alone, is what creates opportunity, what it really means to "pack your own parachute" before you leap, and how to lead with H.O.P.E., Helping One Person Everyday.

Image: CreativePreneur at #1 in Amazon Best Sellers, Starting a Business

At the heart of it all is a philosophy Diane lives by: businesses need more creativity, and creatives need more business structure. Being a CreativePreneur isn't about being an artist. It's about being willing to use the tools of the arts to create the life, business, and impact you envision.

Then there's the companion book, The CreativePreneur Anthology: Twenty-Four Stories of Passion, Purpose, and Possibility. If CreativePreneur is the playbook, the anthology is the proof. Diane brings together twenty-four entrepreneurs, performers, coaches, and changemakers who each share how creativity shaped their path. Their stories show what becomes possible when people embrace their creative side and build something meaningful with it. One lesson runs through every chapter: creativity isn't just a form of expression. It is a problem-solving tool, and the skills developed in the arts carry straight into business and leadership.

Image: The CreativePreneur Anthology front and back cover

Which one should you read first? If you want a roadmap, start with CreativePreneur. If you need a spark of inspiration and want to see these ideas come alive in many different lives, open the anthology. Better yet, read them side by side. One hands you the tools, and the other shows you two dozen ways people have used them.

Image: Pull quote from Craig Bruce

Both books grow from the same belief that drives everything we do at JDS Creative Academy. Through inclusive arts education, digital media training, and workforce development through the arts here in Temecula and across Riverside County, we see every single day how creativity builds confidence, real skills, and creative careers for people of all abilities. When you learn to use your creativity on purpose, the obstacles in front of you start to look a lot more like opportunities.

Your creative side is calling. It's time to answer. Grab your copy of CreativePreneur in hardback, paperback, or Kindle, and pick up The CreativePreneur Anthology in hardcover: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HMHNFQ3P. You can learn more at creativepreneurbook.com. Then come tell us which story or tool inspired you most.