About

About Lisa Sonora Beam

Author of The Creative Entrepreneur, an award-winning book about creativity and business that is based upon my process of teaching through visual journaling.

Creative director to coaches, artists and business owners who want to make a living doing what they love, while also making a difference.

Writer and visual artist: I put these two together because I have always done both together. Eventually I learned how to write and do visual art separately, but they tend to mash up a lot. Especially when I am inventing things.

Founder of Digital Hive: EcoLogical Design, an Internet design and marketing firm born in San Francisco in 2003 that supports green and social enterprise.

Digital nomad. Meaning that I live and work wherever I happen to be. 
Inspired by wanderlust and passion to live life as a daring adventure. 
Solution: portable work that feels like play.

Treehugger.

Geek.

What you’ll find on this site:

Inspiration and practical ideas for making a living doing what you love, while also making a difference. I’ve been calling it the Gorgeous Genius project.

I believe that each of of us had been gifted with a particular, gorgeous genius within. With the appropriate tools, nurturing and practice, we can bring this gift into bloom, so that it may benefit not only ourselves, but others.

When we neglect our gorgeous genius, we are not very happy campers, and may even suffer quite deeply.

Our innermost dreams and aspirations are not random. They are specific to us. They are clues to our gorgeous genius, and worth every effort to pursue.

Consider: “It costs nothing to dream, and everything not to.”

My mission in life has revolved around codifying ways of getting from where we are to where we want to be. Just like a creative director takes an idea for something: a movie, ad campaign, website, clothing line, or company - and knows how to bring it to life. After working as a creative director for a long time, I realized that this is what I’ve always done in my work facilitating the creative process.

It is a kind of cartography of higher purpose. I share some tools and ideas, and you create your own map and plan that makes sense to you and works for you. The tools are meant to become part of your own gorgeous genius toolkit that you can use to navigate any issue, or explore any opportunity.

 Sometimes people ask where my work comes from.

Throughout my life, there have been a few consistent threads that I have pursued passionately. In no particular order they are:

art
writing
nature
social justice
healing
spirituality
travel
living simply

That’s pretty much what I’ll be writing about here.

Pursuing these threads has been my inner imperative, motivated by wanting to:

heal myself from crap that happened in formative years
be an artist and a writer, but not a crazy, disfunctional one (see item 1)
have a happy adulthood
figure out how to make a living as an artist and a writer
make a difference for the things I care about: social justice, ecology, art, healing
explore this wonderful world and meet kindred spirits.

 I’ve learned a lot in my explorations and experiments over the years, and still remain completely curious about - and fascinated by - the journey we humans are on to become who we are meant to be, as kindly and as compassionately as we can. I’m still learning and always will be.

If any of this sounds interesting to you, I invite you to participate in this discussion. Introduce yourself to me via email, sign up to receive my once or twice monthly e-newsletter, subscribe to the blog feed by RSS or email.

This is a Gorgeous Genius project in formation, and I’d love for you to be a part of it.