Be a Creatorpreneur: Stop Letting Your Artist Side Handle The Business Side
Memory Lane
March 2024
I’m at a writers conference hosted by the Chicago Writers Association. It’s the last day and I’ve learned so much from these panels and discussions, but also from many writers I’ve bonded with.
I'm also so proud of myself because I'm getting out there as a creativity coach. I'm exercising my introverted side—I never thought I could do that. It's almost like a different side of myself.
It's been a superb three days. And here it is, the last speech of the convention. The mid-afternoon sunlight ignites the room with a warm, comforting energy, bonding every soul here.
I look around me and smile at the hundreds of writers, from 21 to 93, who all share an expression of excited nervousness as we’re about to go out into the world with our art.
The speaker ascends the stage and a large white screen shows the title of the presentation: The Changing Face of Publishing: What All Authors Need to Know.
What a perfect way to end this weekend.
But as she talks, my smile begins to fade and my face wrinkles in concern.
Oh no.
I've been to enough of these conventions to know that every single one of them has at least one speaker who talks about what every author needs to know—the facts.
Not again. Why do they have to rain on our parade?
I have nothing against her, really. She seems like a nice enough woman. But every time she smiles, she says something like: “I know this is a lot to take in but these are the facts.”
I literally gulp, like cartoons do when they’re afraid.
I feel sick. Where’s the bathroom?
“The facts.” The phrase resonates in my mind.
I’ve heard that before. At another convention. Long ago…
“The facts…”
“The facts…”
“The facts…”
September 2012
It's the first day of a two-day writers convention and I’m at a panel called “Giving You Just The Facts: An Agent’s Guide To Making It In The Publishing World.”
I am hopeful. I am intrigued. And I am ready for whatever she tells me.
(10 minutes later)
Nausea. Anxiety fluttering in my chest. Dry mouth. Vertigo? Where can I puke?
I’m trying to keep myself together but I can’t. I write things down but only in snippets, unable to get my thoughts straight.
Soon, it is all over and I’ve missed most of it. What I do end up writing is five short sentences that sum everything up:
This is going to be a lot of hard work
The chances of me publishing are small
The chances of me making any money are smaller
Writers MUST market themselves
I can do this
But that last phrase is a lie and I know it.
What the hell do I know about business anyway? Don't I have enough to do working a full-time job AND trying to write?”
I become incensed.
As I’m walking home that day, I make a pact.
I don’t need to market. I’ll write until they find ME!
I return on the last day of that convention and for the next twelve years of writing with a vengeful kind of motivation to show the world but particularly these haters with their “facts” that I can publish without marketing at all.
What the hell do I know about business anyway?
March 2024
As I sit in that audience listening to the facts of the publishing industry, I recall my failed first novel and my forgotten second one, the sixteen months I’d quit from burnout.
But you’re a published writer, Dave. Don’t forget your essay.
But it’s no use. The negative voice checkmates me.
Unable to feel the guilt of all those years writing angry and the shame of not being able to do anything about it now, I once again feel the only thing that can help me—anger.
The woman talking is another harmful agent. I can’t stand her. It’s not fair but I don’t feel like being fair; I’m hurt. And all these people are being lulled into things that they can’t possibly know. We should be listening to a speech about the wonders of writing, not the business end of it! We can’t do this!
I can’t do this!
I’m about to walk out to find a bathroom to scream in when I spot a man a few rows up busily taking notes. He’s about fifty, wearing clear, plastic-frame glasses, a faded tan suit jacket, and brand-new jeans. His concentrated expression lays me back down into my seat for a moment of amusement.
Oh I gotta see this. What is going through his head? What is his deal?
His student-like attention makes me smile in pity.
What a complete newbie. I thought I was bad, but this guy has absolutely no clue what is going on. Poor idiot. Don’t you know these people, these agents, want you to do something you can’t? You know we can’t do this, right?
He reminds me of a…
And that’s when it hits me.
And everything—everything—changes after this.
Knowing that our artist self isn’t equipped to handle the biz is the first step.
ALL of us
There’s a reason why we as artists hate these facts, the business side of things like marketing and profit—
They hurt.
But dig a little deeper and you’ll find a more legitimate reason why we hate them—because our artist can’t handle them.
This is the first step to success in handling the business side of things—self-awareness (something crucial to your overall success, as I wrote in this post).
Knowing that our artist self isn’t equipped to handle the biz is the first step. It's not an artist’s job to market, it's a marketer’s job.
The second step is finding a part of ourselves that is equipped.
And that's where you come in.
No, not you, the artist.
You, the Creatorpreneur.
“If we think of ourselves as a corporation, it gives us a healthy distance on ourselves. We’re less subjective. We don’t take blows as personally...
Sometimes, as Joe Blow himself, I’m too mild-mannered to go out and sell. But as Joe Blow Inc, I can pimp the hell out of myself. I’m Me Inc.”
We are all different kinds of men rolled into one body.
We are sons, we are fathers and uncles, we are brothers, we are husbands and boyfriends.
We are warriors, we are civilians. We do battle with the muse and we also buy groceries.
We are bartenders, Uber drivers, corporate types, and every other type of blue-collar worker.
We are painters, sculptors, musicians, designers, writers, and actors.
We are kids and we are adults.
We are fools and we are kings.
Every part of ourselves has a place in this world. We certainly wouldn't show our artistic selves to our customers at the barber shop or share our music to our clients if we work for a corporation. Nor would they want to hear anything about our personal life.
There are many definitions of what a creatorpreneur is. Here’s my definition:
Creatorpreneur: an avatar used as a mediator between your artist self and the business world.
If you haven't already, get your free guide to charging your depleted creative battery.
Click on the pic.
At the convention earlier this year, as I was watching this 50-ish man scribble things down in a notebook with a look of cool confidence, I realized he looked like a fellow coach I knew.
And that’s when I was suddenly snapped back into reality—I’m a creativity coach as well as a writer.
Being around all those writers had me forget that I’d trained at Coach Training Alliance and that I’d hired a business coach to help me build up my own business practice.
In fact, one of the main reasons why I went to that convention in the first place was to market myself! But as soon as I heard about the business side of things, my artist self took over with all of its fearful emotions.
That makes sense from the artist’s perspective. Our artist self is emotional, imaginative, inventive, creative. When it’s employed to create meaningful art, it is a genius; but let to employ our everyday lives, it can become a problem.
And so, for the rest of that presentation, I stayed and listened to everything the speaker said about the business. Every now and then I grew worried, as all talks of publishing your work in the world tend to make you feel.
But overall, I understood and agreed to what was going on. I was my creatorpreneur self. I could handle it.
Understand this: your artist should not be dealing with all the business stuff. It's far too emotional and too imaginative. You wouldn't let a little five-year-old kid try to run your business. Even if it was told what to do, at the first sign of difficulty, he would fall to the floor and cry.
Don’t be so hard on yourself. Your artist self doesn’t need to be shamed for something it wasn’t equipped to do.
If you get anything out of this blog post, it's that you should keep your artist separated from the outside world with all of its problems and concerns, especially business.
Let your artist self make art. And create for it environments for it to make that art and flourish. Just keep it away from the grind of the business world.
But don’t ignore the business stuff. The business stuff means marketing, it means money stories, it means that big, weird, and sometimes dangerous world. You need to work on a business self to handle all that stuff.
Marketing means getting your art connected to your audience in all the creative ways you can—that’s it!
It’s just business
Here are the elements of owning your own business that I’ve learned—your service/product, your tribe, your content, and your marketing.
If you are a creative, it would look something like this:
Your service/product—the process of selling your art and/or the service of creating art for others
Your tribe—the specific people you create for
Your content—the art you make which connects with your tribe
Your marketing—making connections and building relationships
Let's look at an example from the band The National (a personal favorite of mine).
Their service is playing music and their products are all the ways that service is captured, through EPs, albums, live shows, as well as all of the peripheral things, like merchandise.
Their tribe are the fans that consume their music, their videos, and go to their concerts. People like me. The National doesn't appeal to everybody (and I know this so well because I’ve been trying to get my friends into them for years). It’s niche.
These are the people that are just like you, who are weird and different and odd like you, who are imaginative and curious like you. They have the same likes and predilections. What excites you? It'll excite them too. I love The National because I can see me writing music like that. I’ve created to their music. I’m inspired by their music.
Their content is the specific music itself. What chords and notes go where, how they can change the tone and character of their songs from track to track or album to album. This is what any artist should be spending the most time on. THIS is what makes them the band they are.
It's existential, it's moody, it’s gorgeous and complex. There's longing, regret, love, whimsy. Here’s one of my favorites.
Working on your content means working on what you love and what excites you so that you can connect it with your tribe. It’s synergistic—the fans love it, the artist makes it.
The way that The National markets is through SoundCloud, Spotify, Apple music, and other music platforms, as well as on YouTube showcasing them playing live shows and studio concerts. They go on tour. They sell merch and connect with fans at shows. They use social media. They work with other artists, like Taylor Swift and Sufjan Stevens.
Marketing is all about making connections, and that’s what they’re doing.
Also, marketing means getting your art connected to your audience in all the creative ways you can—that’s it! Right now your tribe has no idea who you are, but I’m betting they’d be so psyched to know about you and your art if it resonates with them.
Now, a band that big has a whole marketing department and has ways of connecting with people that they don't do themselves. They can’t.
But—like every single other artist that's ever made art in human history—even The National once started out not having anything but their own dream and their own passion to make their art.
It's become a right of passage for a band to play in a garage and to make copies of their albums to hand out at shows. It's the way we grind it out.
you lose so many chances of putting yourself out there as an artist when you don't have that buffer between the business world and your artist.
Your Creatorpreneur can do that.
The Creatorpreneur
Dorothea Brand wrote in her book Becoming a Writer about the two sides of a writer—the child and the adult—and how we must work to ensure that they work together.
Spoiler: No agent or editor wants to hear about your dreams and goals and what you read and what inspired you. It’s not because they’re mean, but because they want to hear how your art can benefit them first, the agent, the company.
Believe, there are plenty of business people out there that love art, but business comes first.
You need to build an avatar with the set of boundaries and expectations that are reflected in the business world.
We work with boundaries and expectations all the time.
When we start a workout program, we don't eat pizza while we're working out or wear jeans to the gym.
We go into another part of ourselves, a competitive part, a warrior part.
You lose so much perspective when you take things personal in life. That’s because a part of ourselves is taking over and stepping on the boundaries of another.
Most importantly you lose so many chances of putting yourself out there as an artist when you don't have that buffer between the business world and your artist.
Your Creatorpreneur can do that.
He can look at the business side of things and talk to people to represent yourself, just as an agent would.
He can hear the facts.
He can hear the ideas of budgets and money and the business and all the other stuff that goes with it.
Here’s a fact I’ll give you: This is the way of the world.
This is the work that separates the people that make art but don’t bother with the business side (like I did for lo those many years) and the ones that actually are creating work and putting it out there and getting themselves out there.
Please understand that creating authentic and inspiring art is your number one goal. Don't ever flag away from that. If you start to lose yourself in the business side of things, go back to that artist self.
Don't ever let anyone—including myself—say that this is not about art saving the world and inspiring a generation. It is.
Your Creatorpreneur is about budgeting your expectations, hearing the truth, kicking ass, taking names, and getting you paid. Yes. Because businesses make money.
Like it or not, you must learn to have at least a good grasp of how to market yourself.
I did this at the convention earlier this year. I exercised my extrovert. I never in my wildest dreams imagined that I could talk to so many people. It was electrifying and is still a highlight of my life.
In the next blog post, I'll show you the ways of creating your Creatorpreneur avatar.
Please leave a comment below on what you think of the business side of the art world!
