A creative entrepreneur is a new-ish career that has sprung up in the past few years. Generally, when you think of the word “entrepreneur” you think of someone who owns a business, is a part of a business, or is trying to sell you something. Technically, you’d be right, but a creative entrepreneur is slightly different.
Creative entrepreneurs are people who use their creativity or intellectual knowledge and skills to help them make a living from freelance work or as a small business. So you might be wondering, why wouldn’t they just be an entrepreneur then?
What separates creative entrepreneurs from the traditional entrepreneurs is their approach to business and what they offer to clients. Entrepreneurs will typically offer a product or service that requires little creative input or knowledge to sell. A creative entrepreneur on the other hand, offers products or services unique to them, that can be tailored to each individual client or business, and that require some level of creativity, spark or “personal touch” in order to sell.
Typically, creative entrepreneurs consist of bloggers, coaches, graphic designers, social media managers and influencers and people that teach or offer online courses. These are just a few examples, however there are many, many more.
As you can see, each of these people will have some sort of creative input on their work or services. No two blogs, social media posts, designs, etc. are the same. They all require some level of creativity, uniqueness or intelligence. They require a mixture of marketing, business, communications and art– all in one. As a creative entrepreneur, you have to be able to draw in customers on the basis that you’re creative enough, you’re unique enough– that the client will have consistent, but unique content that’s geared for their business and will turn some sort of profit or gain for them.
The career of being a creative entrepreneur is growing increasingly popular, especially thanks to the rise of social media and the work from home (WFH) culture. This encourages people to engage on social media, across physical borders and communities, with people from all over the world. It also shines a light on the possibility of working from wherever and whenever you want. Being able to choose your own projects, your clients and what type of work you do is something that draws a lot of people with natural creative personalities in. It allows them a sense of freedom that working for a traditional business or company would not. No company is going to let their employees take three or more months off just to tour Asia. If you work for yourself, you create your schedule. You can also decide if you want to continue working (since you work from your laptop) while away from your office or if you want an authentic, work-free vacation.
Before the rise of this creative culture and the introduction of creative entrepreneurship, this business area was majorly under-represented. Most people would take on multiple roles to cover the missing pieces that most creative entrepreneurs provide. Someone with a degree in marketing might design ad campaigns, but they would also be in charge of public relations and the online blog for the company as well. In this day and age, there are three different people for those jobs specifically.
It’s a lesson for many companies and businesses to learn, as it’s more cost-effective to hire one person and have them wear many hats. However, thanks to the rise of social media awareness, people are learning to speak up more and talk about things like stress and anxiety. Much of this is due to work and being overwhelmed with workplace culture, workloads and people’s positions in a company. This has also spawned the rise of having multiple people for multiple jobs. It takes the stress off of just one person and allows for the accumulation of teamwork and co-working. It builds people’s confidence as they can focus on specializing in one specific area or field of work, whereas before, people were just mediocre at multiple things to get the job done. We are seeing a higher quality of work and people reaching heights that have yet to be explored. It’s an exciting and thrilling time for anyone in the business world as we have experienced the dawn of this new business avenue.
Schools also encourage creative entrepreneurs as they begin to offer programs targeted toward specific creative industries. Decades ago, it used to be that anyone interested in art, design, digital marketing, public relations, etc., just graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree. Now we have colleges and universities offering programs such as Bachelor of Communications, Interior and Graphic Design courses, Public Relations diplomas, and more.
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