- Jay Maharjan

This is a follow-up piece on what I was writing on creative entrepreneurship. I was encouraged to explore further on the topic of creative entrepreneurship after receiving several responses, emails. I also had a great radio call on the same topic this week hosted by Creative Convergence.

As I wrote earlier in one of my posts, Picasso once said – Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up -.. Creativity, entrepreneurial, innovative drive dies when we grow older. The reason the drive dies is because Life happens and priorities shift. But for the select group of passionate creative entrepreneurs, the passion lives on and they make sure that they turn their craft into meaningful, fulfilling career.

Over the last ten years, I have been extremely fortunate to work with and consult some of the leading minds in the entertainment industry. More I get to interact with entertainers from all ages and demographics, I tend to find that one common sentiment, concern over and over again – i.e. on how to sustain career in this highly competitive arena. I remember my first meeting with the legendary 80 year old Academy award winning director Arthur Hiller at his Beverly Hills office back in 2001 when he shared his secret behind longevity of his career. Hiller was different in his peer group, he had a Masters degree in Psychology and always stayed grounded, truly followed his passion and focused on film-making. He successfully went on to direct 33 major studio releases, including several classics. Besides Hiller, I have worked with many notable professional athletes and entertainers and I can firmly say that the sentiment among all has been the same – that it is extremely important to treat your craft as a sustainable creative entrepreneurial venture.

I have found the analogy between sustaining business competitiveness and a creative career more similar than I had previously thought.

The age old mantra to succeed in business has been to be able to maintain competitive advantage. I see day in and day out how smart people with the highest level of intellects crashing and burning in spite of great ideas and multi-million dollar initial funding. This happens in every scale – from a mom and pop store around the corner to a major Fortune 500 companies – if you fail to know your customers, adapt quickly, sustain your competitiveness, you will crash. The key is to be able to understand your customers early on and do everything that your resources allow to master your craft to add value.

The analogy for the entertainment industry is the same that you have to understand your customer, in this case it could be your fans if you are a studio, could be the studios you are a screenwriter, the record industry if you are a musician and so on and so forth. Will write more on this topic tomorrow. Please feel free to comment, post your questions.

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