MOCA Roundtable
Practicing Creativity in Business with Mike Brennan
MOCA Roundtables are shared resources that represent the collective wisdom of our community and invite you to explore real, experience-based insights from business owners who have been there.
This Roundtable discussion is about how creativity shows up behind the scenes in a business. Jess sits down with Mike Brennan, a visual artist and community builder, to talk about what it really means to build a creative practice that supports your life and your work.
The Conversation
This Roundtable began with a conversation between Jess Hershey and Mike Brennan about entrepreneurship as a creative process. They talk about how creativity isn’t only for artists but for anyone trying to solve problems, stay connected to their purpose, and build something sustainable.
Here are a few highlights from their conversation:
11:14 – Start Small and Just Begin
Mike shares how the Daily Creative Habit grew out of his own process of starting small, staying curious, and making time to ask what creativity means to you right now. Making space for creativity might mean returning to a childhood hobby or simply carving out ten minutes a day to explore something new. We always want to do everything in a big way, and that usually short-circuits us from actually starting in the beginning. So think small and just start.
20:14 – Rediscovering the Joy of Play
Make time to play. Have fun, doodle, do something silly that doesn’t matter. When we stop pushing and start playing, ideas come. We create room to experiment and learn things that we wouldn’t have found otherwise–maybe a bridge to something new. Play allows us to show up even when we don’t feel inspired. Let your brain breathe a little and make room for discovery.
30:10 – Tracking Your Creative Growth
If we’re going to build a creative process, it’s important to have people and practices in place to help us. Jess and Mike talk about the importance of community and having others around who can share encouragement and feedback. Mike introduces his Daily Creative Habit Guided Journal as a 90-day practice to set intention, take action, and reflect.
46:44 – Building an Aligned Business
Making space for creativity gives entrepreneurs a way to build a more aligned business. Not just a path to get there, but a way to stay there. Things are always changing. You, your audience, and the world. So it’s important to have consistency, time to play and explore, and to reflect back on what you’re accomplishing and how it’s working. When your business feels aligned, it feels better for you and for the people you’re trying to serve. It’s where we need to be if we want a business that truly feels like a success.
Featured Experts
Learn more about the community members that participated in this Roundtable:
Mike Brennan
Member Profile
Jess Hershey
Member Profile
Community Insights
Members of our community joined the conversation, sharing their own experiences and advice for approaching creativity in business with more intention and flexibility. These insights represent the ways structure and exploration can support creative growth over time.
Mike Brennan
Everyone is creative. Creativity doesn’t have to mean painting or playing music. It can be the way you solve problems or how you organize your day. It’s the way you see the world and what you do as a result of that.
The key to creating space for creativity is to start small. I always say, through action comes clarity. Most people flirt with their creativity. If it’s important, we make time for it. We protect it. Put it on your calendar. Don’t forget to play. Play is where we experiment and ask, ‘What if? What could be?’ And then look at what you’ve created. Celebrate your wins. That can start to give you some momentum.
Jess Hershey
It’s easy to get lost in the day-to-day of running a business and forget that it’s actually something that we’re creating. We had a vision, and we built it. How crazy is that?
Each day we’re making decisions about our business. How we grow, where we go next, which ideas to chase. This is a creative practice whether we acknowledge it or not. And shifting your mindset to think of it as creativity will make it infinitely more enjoyable.
You get to create your world. So what do you want to build?
Thinking of this as a creative endeavor is step 1. Then put practices and people in place to support you in holding that perspective. More creativity = more joy.
Resources
We asked our community to share their favorite resources related to connecting with creativity in entrepreneurship. We hope you find them helpful!
Related Offerings
Make Fun a Habit
Mike Brennan’s book invites you to rediscover the joy of play. Through personal stories, prompts, and simple exercises, he offers a gentle push to reconnect with what lights you up. If you’ve been missing fun in your daily life, this is a place to begin.
The Daily Creative Habit Journal
This 90-day guided journal helps you build a consistent creative practice by starting small. With space to set intentions in the morning and reflect in the evening, it gives you a simple structure to show up for your creativity each day. Created by Mike Brennan, this tool is grounded in his own daily creative comeback and designed to support yours.