5 Steps to Build your Creatorpreneur Avatar
In my previous blog, I wrote how a Creatorpreneur helps us deal with the business side of things to let our artistic side flourish.
Most artists have Creatorpreneurs—they’re called agents. Their specific purpose is for the artist to do their jobs so that they can do theirs by handling all of your marketing and publicity affairs.
But in the time before you can hire an agent to look after your business affairs, you are the one who will be the agent—or a version of yourself. Your avatar.
What is an avatar?
An avatar is a digital persona or representation of ourselves online. It can be close to reality or it can be more fantastic. Typically, it’s an idealized version of ourselves.
But even before the internet, we as humans engaged in avatars all the time. When we are at work, we engage in a worker avatar, like bartender, supervisor, and others. When we are with our kids, we are the dad. When we are with our parents, we are the son.
Avatars can be called many things—parts, roles, sides.
The word’s original meaning comes from the Sanskrit word "avatāra," which means "descent”. In Hinduism, it refers to the descent of a deity to Earth in a physical form, often to restore cosmic order but can also mean an incarnate divine teacher.
I like this because it adds a bit of spiritual wisdom to this post. We are invoking the Creatorpreneur avatar in ourselves to help us.
Now let’s get to the nitty gritty.
1. Know Your Field
The first step to building your Creatorpreneur avatar is by knowing your field. This may be the easiest step because if you’ve done any kind of art making, you know who you are interacting with, what art is there, and who your tribe is.
But even if you’ve spent a long time in your field, it’s important to look at it through a business lens.
As a writer of fiction for twenty years, I knew of literary journals, my tribe, and even trends but it was only after I began working on my own coaching business did I look at the writing world from a businessman’s POV.
I narrowed down my tribe, worked on getting myself and my art out there, worked on my money stories, and built relationships through networking.
Namely, being more of a Creatorpreneur instead of a writer just hoping to get published.
Prompt: Spend 10 minutes taking stock of your field—your fellow creators, the people you are creating art for (your tribe), and the business people in it.
2. Know Your Biz
The second step to building your Creatorpreneur is that you need to know what business you have to learn and strengthen.
One of the hurdles that keeps artists from being able to negotiate themselves in the art world effectively is that we never saw ourselves as business people, so that when we get to it, we are stumped. Rightfully so.
If we were into business, we would’ve gotten our MBAs. But even Shakespeare and Dostoevsky networked.
As I’ve said before, you might already being doing this. As a writer, I did research on what literary reviews and magazines to submit my short stories and poems to and also my sample chapters to agents and small press publishing houses.
I joined writing critique groups (which also doubled as a great social group to talk shop). I went to writers conventions and conferences. I took a networking class for writers. I passed out business cards.
This is networking and marketing. Looking back on it I realized that I was doing some of the business side of things for my art, but I never considered myself doing business. I just called it doing my best.
You will also want to learn some Business 101, whether it’s starting your own business entity like an LLC, hiring a marketing or business coach to help you with the operations of a business, an accountant to work on your budget, or some other way to put you in more control of your business.
Because like or not, if you are trying to sell your art, you’re a businessman!
The point is, there are things you must learn and there are people out there who can help you.
Getting your work out there is what you want, it’s what your future fans want, and it’s what the world needs. YOUR art, YOUR voice, YOUR self.
It’s scary, I know, but remember, your art heroes who influenced you in the first place, THEY took a chance. So should you.
Prompt: Set a timer for 10 minutes and write down all the things that you don’t know about business, the things that scare or frustrate you. Get it down so you can work on them.
“Making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art.”
3. Know Your Role Models
Speaking of heroes, that brings us to the third step in building an avatar—finding your role models. For most of us, even practicing a little bit of business stuff here and there is not being a Creatorpreneur, and that’s scary to most of us.
We don’t know anything about business, we tell ourselves, except to make art and procrastinate.
When we’re newbies, we are students; and as students, we need role models to help us, whether it’s a teacher or a guide. We need a role model.
It’s much easier to see it than try and imagine it, so looking for a someone that we admire that is also doing the work we are doing is essential to help us gain confidence and momentum in building our own Creatorpreneur avatar.
Ask yourself these two questions to help find your role models:
Who do you admire as a person?
Who could stand up for you, fictional or real? Is it a hero from a story, a personality from a film, a guru on social media? Is it someone you know, like a relative or a friend?
One of my role models for this is the strongly self-sufficient Henry Rollins. Not only did he sing in Black Flag but he also started his own publishing company to publish his own work.
In an interview, he said this came natural to him because punk rock in the 80s was very much DIY—if you wanted something done, you had to do it yourself.
I think this is a great mantra to help us in this day and age—the DIY mantra. Keep that in mind as you work on your avatar.
What specific qualities do they have?
If I tapped into my Henry Rollins for my Creatorpreneur side, I know I’d be passionate, knowledgable about my art and the business, unrelenting, professional, and to fight to the death for my well-being. THAT’S a Creatorpreneur.
Prompt: Set a timer for 10 minutes and make a list of three people that you would want as an agent for your art.
4. Know Your Stats
So you got your field down, the business within it, and the role models you look up to for support and confidence. The fourth step to building a Creatorpreneur avatar is by beginning building him.
Oftentimes, the idea of a side of ourselves is too ephemeral and abstract, which causes us to like the idea but not inhabit the avatar totally. To get it more concrete, make a profile of your Creatorpreneur.
When you begin to write down the specifics of this avatar, you can become these things. Or in other words, allow this side of yourself to bloom and grow. It’s already inside of you, after all.
Here’s a little glimpse of my Creatorpreneur, John:
He’s 6ft. He dresses in business casual, with sometimes wears a nice pair of jeans with a dress coat. He’s immensely savvy about the business of writing and music. He loves listening to heavy metal (his favorite band right now is Falling In Reverse).
He’s gregarious and fun but can also fight for me like a warrior.
When you work on building and becoming the Creatorpreneur, you’re taking more control of your business without the creative expectations coming from your artist side.
The last thing you want to do when you go out into the world to promote your art is to be nervous and anxious about whether they will like or accept your stuff.
It’s something I’ve fallen prey to time and again—thinking that the people that are working the business side of things are as in love with art as I am.
They may love art, but they are also dealing with the 1s and 0s of business—profit and loss.
Your Creatorpreneur will give you the separation you need between the expectations and the goals of the artist and that of the businessman and the business world.
Prompt: Set a 10 minute timer and create your avatar profile. Name, height, weight, all that.
Side Note:
Just the other day I was working on some business things (as my Creatorpreneur) when a revelation came to me:
What if I made my coaching a work of art to create a service where coaching is a collaborative creative process, where the best art that my clients can make is their own life in order for them to make great art?
If you need help creating a consistent art practice or are just looking for a guide to help you get through your mental blocks as a creative midlife man, pick up my free guide by clicking the pic or the link!
Or better yet, click here for a free discovery session!
Help me to make your second half of life a work of art!
5. Know Your Fight
The last thing you need to build your Creatorpreneur avatar is begin building your avatar’s value system—what is he fighting for? This goes the next level higher than just music tastes and names. This involves three things—principles, expectations, and goals.
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These are your own values you believe in. One of my principles of being a human being is always trying my best, no matter how hard it may be.
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As humans, we need expectations in order to interact with each other.
The next time you’re on an elevator, turn around to face the people and you’ll understand how you’re breaking the implicit expectations of elevator etiquette.
Every interaction has an explicit and implicit set of expectations. -
Goals are what we work toward. When I make a song in GarageBand, one of my goals is to make a song I would love to hear on my own playlist. They can be big or small, noble or playful.
To do business with others, you have to understand where they’re coming from (expectations), what they value (principles), and what they want to achieve (goals).
Here’s a quick list of my own Creatorpreneur’s expectations, principles, and goals:
Principles
Take nothing personal. Business is business.
Rejection is just a specific opinion from a specific person at a specific time for a specific piece of art.
Businesses need time and patience and care to grow. Nothing happens overnight.
Expectations
Negotiates on my behalf.
He does the business side; I do the art side.
Go for win-win scenarios—how can they help me and how can I help them?
Goals
To make money
To connect with the artist tribe
To make connections and build relationships with other artist, business people, and others in the field as well.
Just from this small sample you can see already the benefits of having a Creatorpreneur.
For example, the first goal for the Creatorpreneur is to make money. That sounds hollow and shallow and wrong…to an artist.
But if money isn’t the first thing that the business is trying to do, then it’s not a very good business agent.
Rejection is another example. To my artist side, rejection sends me directly to my comfort zone of binge watching MST3K and eating Taco Bell.
But when I’m using my Creatorpreneur avatar, rejection from his POV is a logical, rational thing—it IS just a specific opinion from a specific person at a specific time.
So you can see how the Creatorpreneur avatar gives us space, rationale, and distance to help us flourish.
And what else does this do? It makes us feel more confident, more relaxed, and more in control of what we really want to work on—our art.
Prompt: Set a timer for 10 minutes and write down your Creatorpreneur’s expectations, principles, and goals.
There you have it!
Know your field
Know your biz
Know your role models
Know your stats
Know your fight
You can do this because you already have been!
When you were nine, you negotiated basketball card trades with your friends. When you were in college, you offered to pay the tab at the next bar. Relationships of all kinds are, at their core, doing business with another, whether it’s professional, personal, or romantic.
Begin looking at business through the lens of making relationships and as marketing and networking as building relationships.
You already have a strong foundation of business. Now you must build on it.
Hello out there!
Please leave a comment on what resonated with you!
