Book excerpt: Rooted in the author's experience as an entrepreneur and creative professional, Thrive! The Creative's Guidebook to Professional Tenacity helps those in creative fields acquire the skills and tools needed to successfully market their talents and manage their careers. Speaking directly to how creatives think about and conduct business, the text is filled with engaging and accessible exercises, strategies, and tips. The six units cover branding, searching for clients, asserting the value of creative work, pitching your talents, leveraging social and other media, managing finances and taxes, and more. Each chapter includes business terms creatives need to know, action tasks to prepare for the professional work ahead, and specific guidance about how the content can be applied in the real world. Fresh and innovative, Thrive! The Creative's Guidebook to Professional Tenacity understands the importance of speaking to creative professionals in their own language, and showing them how to leverage their outside-the-box skills to achieve professional and financial success. The book is ideal for anyone studying or working in the fields of art and design, or any creative endeavor. The founder and chief executive officer of Laboratory5 Inc., a creative production company, Cyndi Coon has twenty years of experience working as an artist, educator, speaker, and writer, and has taught professional practices at Arizona State University. In addition to her work with the university, she regularly conducts workshops and professional training on aspects of creativity and the creative fields. Her education includes studies at Kendall College of Art and Design, the New School for Social Research in New York, and the Accademia Di Bella Arti in Perugia, Italy. She is the author of Art that Pops and Guerrilla Success.