The Three Stages of Building a Creative Foundation

creatorpreneur

Table of contents

Hey 🙌

Welcome to the first issue of the Creatorpreneur newsletter!

Coming Up...

In the next five minutes, we’re going to cover:

  1. What ‘thinking like a Creatorpreneur’ means.
  2. How to establish a solid creative foundation, before trying to scale it up into a business.

💬 Let’s get into it

So when it comes to thinking about the creative projects that we want to run long-term, a couple of questions are probably going to come up.

Is this project sustainable? And do I ever want to turn it into a business?

Maybe the only question you’re concerned with is the first, and that’s great. It’s super beneficial to have a creative side-project that we only ever want to treat as a hobby.

Without the pressure of making money from it, we can just enjoy the creative outlet and an escape from the hustle of the day to day.

Creation for the sake of creation đŸ’Ș

đŸ€·â€â™€ïž Are You A Creatorpreneur?

But for Creatorpreneurs, it can be hard not to notice the revenue-driving potential of some of our ideas.

You might be running a YouTube channel or podcast which is beginning to see some growth. Or perhaps you’re a music producer with a desire to start marketing your skills to others in the industry. Or maybe you’ve gotten really into gardening during lockdown and people want to know more about your aesthetic garden layout ideas - it could be anything.

If you’re starting to notice that your creativity could (with the right guidance) have the potential to drive revenue, then you’re starting to think like a Creatorpreneur.

🛠 The Three Stages of Building a Creative Foundation

A Creatorpreneur is, first and foremost, a Creator. So we need to have the foundations of that creativity nailed down before we think about turning it into a business. Otherwise the business could easily run out of steam a year down the line.

There are three stages to ensuring you have a sturdy creative foundation, and it’s important to think about where you’re currently at.

đŸš¶1 - Get Going

As Shakespeare (more or less) said, ‘the course of true creativity never did run smooth’.

Whether you’re a writer, podcaster, YouTuber, or streamer, you’re probably going to suck at first. But that’s ok. You just need to get going.

Choose a time period, let’s say a year. Yep, a year. That might seem daunting, but you need to give enough time for your efforts to compound. Decide that you will write something every week; you will release a video every Thursday; you will tweet every day about inspiring gardening tips and tricks.

If you’re scared about what people will think, write that first article assuming you won’t publish it. This really takes the pressure off, and stops you feeling like it has to be perfect.

Then, after all the work has gone in, you’ll be surprised how easy it feels to take the last step and click ‘publish’ 👀

👌 2 - Get Good

Once the consistency is nailed down, you’ll naturally start improving - as long as you’re paying attention.

If you’re getting into YouTube, those first 10-15 videos will teach you a hell of a lot. You’ll learn what to do during filming to make your life easier at the edit. You’ll start to realise which titles draw people in. You’ll discover what kind of videos you enjoy making the most.

It’s ok not to have a plan when you’re getting started, but to get good, you need to look at the data. Notice what your audience is responding to, and see where it crosses over with the stuff you find the most enjoyable. That’s your sweet spot. Double down on that.

It will also become pretty clear whether this is something that you can (or want to) scale up. Have you started to systemise your production? Are you able to get ahead of schedule by batch-creating content? Are you enjoying this enough to want to keep doing it for several years?

If you come to the conclusion that this is a hobby, then there’s no harm done. But, if there’s an audience for what you do (and you’re starting to do it well) then it might be time to...

🧠 3 - Get Smart

This is where you start to leverage the principles of entrepreneurship.

How could your creative side hustle be monetised in the next year? Get a sponsor for your newsletter? Sell a small online course about the principles of maintaining beautiful gardens? Start promoting products and services you use through affiliate links?

You need to think more long term about your content as well. Is there a particular niche within which you could become one of the leading voices? Do you have a system for generating infinite content ideas?

Getting smart also means not necessarily having to work harder. Ask yourself if you could scale up your production speed if you outsourced parts of the process, like video editing, or social media repurposing.

If you start asking yourself these questions, and adjust your plans accordingly, you’re becoming a Creatorpreneur đŸ’Ș

đŸ€” What’s next?

So if you’ve decided this creative hobby is something to pursue more seriously, ask yourself - what stage am I at?

If you’ve realised you do want to ‘Get Smart’, then you’re in the right place. We’ve got loads more to share over the coming months, so feel free to sign up to the mailing list if you want to stay up to date 🙌

Thanks a lot for reading the first edition of the Creatorpreneur Newsletter! Check out the info below for the other cool stuff that’s going on.

Have a great rest of your week,

George
Man at Typewriter @ Creatorpreneur


🚀 Part-Time Creatorpreneur

Our new course, ‘Part-Time Creatorpreneur’ is available now!

This self-paced course, presented by Ali, distils all the lessons learned in his journey from casual YouTuber to ‘professional’ Creatorpreneur.  After three years, dozens of business books, and tens of thousands spent on business coaches, Ali turned his creative hobby into a business which turned over nearly $5 million last year.

‘Part-Time Creatorpreneur’ gives you the principles, tools and resources to scale up your creative side hustle in the same way.

We’ll always offer tonnes of free content here, but for anyone who’s serious about taking their creativity to the next level, scaling up efficiently without burning out, and driving revenue, this course will be super valuable.

🐩 Creatorpreneur Twitter

We turn all our newsletters into tweet threads, so if you found this useful it’d be fab if you could show the thread some love ❀ It really helps us reach new people :)

We tweet every day about Creatorpreneurs and the creator economy, and we’d love to keep the conversation going over there with fine folks such as yourself đŸ€

🎙 Creatorpreneur Podcast

[Work in Progress 👀]

Recently, Angus (Ali’s Director of Operations) and I have been sitting down with some inspirational Creatorpreneurs from around the world, and getting their perspectives on how they were able to turn their passion projects into full-time ‘jobs’.

This podcast will be starting in the coming weeks, so keep an eye out!


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