Creatives Make the Best Entrepreneurs

Why your creative instincts are a secret advantage most entrepreneurs wish they had

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I hear this all the time from creatives just starting out:

“I want to do this full time but I’m not built to run a business. I just want to make art. How do I make this work?”

You are wired for entrepreneurship. You just don’t know how yet.

My Experience with Entrepreneurs

As an art school entrepreneurship professor, a business founder, a corporate veteran, and a dad to two adult creatives, I’m passionate about this one. Enough to write five essays unpacking all the ways you're wired for this. But let’s be honest. Even my kids wouldn’t read that.

So here’s the bottom line:

When I coach business leaders and founders who aren’t creatives–artists, designers, animators, musicians, producers, actors, writers, etc…

I have to coach them to be more like you.

Here’s what you do naturally that the most successful entrepreneurs also do.

Humanity

You already serve humanity with your work. You reflect humanity, uplift it, challenge it in ways that ultimately improve the human condition. Even if you don’t think about it consciously, that thread runs through every creative field.

Business also exists to serve humanity, but most business leaders forget it. Trade allowed humans to specialize labor, become more efficient, and free up time to start creating art in the first place. Most business leaders have forgotten that purpose and act like people exist to serve their business instead. (Side note: I refuse to work with those kinds of leaders and you should too.)

Emotion

You already connect emotionally with people. As much as we want to believe buying products and services is rational, it’s actually deeply emotional. The most successful businesses tap into emotional needs and build a relationship with their customers to fulfill them. That relationship is the foundation of brand loyalty.

Having worked in the toilet paper business, I can tell you, you’ve got a massive edge here. Unlike toilet paper, automobiles, anti itch cream, your work is, by definition, emotional. You put emotion into its creation, that emotion is evident in your work, and it evokes an emotional response from those who experience it. Toilet paper manufacturers spend billions of dollars a year to fake what you do every day.

Experimentation

You already experiment. This might be the most important skill for entrepreneurs to have. It’s also one of the most difficult to teach for anyone who doesn’t have your experimental mindset.

Starting a successful business isn’t an event like a launch or a grand opening. It’s an evolution that starts with experimenting at the edges of what’s possible and evolving into a successful business as you learn what works. Exactly like the process of learning and applying your creative skill.

I could go on. I’ve seen creatives thrive in entrepreneurial and corporate leadership positions throughout my career. And my time teaching creatives in the classroom has solidified my belief that you’re uniquely suited for this, even if you or the rest of the world don’t see it yet.

When I teach entrepreneurship in the classroom, my job as an educator is pretty easy. Yes I teach business concepts and frameworks to help creatives start and run a business. But most of my time is spent helping them uncover the strengths they already have, then connect them to successful entrepreneurship. That’s what I do here too.

This Week

So this week, reflect on your own strengths. I’ve given you three starters that most creatives already have. What strengths do you uniquely bring that might fit with your entrepreneurial future? They might be variations on my three themes or something else entirely.

Write them down. Keep them visible. They’re the foundation for everything you’ll build from here.

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