For centuries, historians believed the great Renaissance master was just another Starving Artist, struggling to make ends meet. Michelangelo himself embraced this image, living frugally and often complaining about money. He once wrote in a poem that his art had left him “poor, old and working as a servant of others.”
But it turns out he wasn’t telling the truth.
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Some fads have come and gone and come back again. And some have stayed gone. But do you know what has always remained? Email.
You need an email list. It’s just that simple. If you want to write a book that sells thousands of copies or more, you need people paying attention to your work. If you want your message to spread, you need people’s permission to communicate with them. And if you want your words to change something, then you need an audience.
Is it possible to live a life on your own terms? Can you do what you want even when it defies the expectations of others? Is the way you’re living right now a story that others would want to tell? And how do you do all this with bills to pay and responsibilities to manage?
One question I keep hearing is: What’s your favorite writing tool? It’s always good to ask what’s working for someone, but this question represents a popular misconception about creative work.
You didn’t fail. The goal was to learn something, so if you learned, you succeeded. It’s only when the unexpected happens and we don’t learn from it that we really fail. The reason why you may not have achieved what you set out to achieve was that you were measuring (and therefore expecting) the wrong thing.
Why does anyone buy anything? Because the cost of not having it is greater than the cost of acquiring it. This is true for almost everything but especially for sales and marketing. If you want to thrive as a creative professional, you need to understand what it takes for someone to buy from you. Otherwise, you just might starve.
When is it time to launch your latest product? The answer is before you think it’s ready. This is where you make your product public. Is it a book? A course? A new coaching program? Now is the time for you to let the world know.
Digital products have changed my life. Courses. Ebooks. Coaching programs. Masterminds. Membership sites. All of it.
Making things and sharing them on the Internet has revolutionized the way I live, learn, and earn a living. And if you aren’t taking advantage of this revolution right now, you are missing out on a lot.
How do you create something from nothing? You don’t. You always start with something. Creation comes from chaos. And so will your next book, course, or big project.
One of the challenges of being a creative professional is that you aren’t always sure what people will buy. It often feels like a game of Roulette, in which you have to create a lot of work, hoping someone will buy something. But what if it didn’t have to be that way? What if you could sell something before you ever created it?
Bestselling author and creativity expert Jeff Goins dismantles the myth that being creative is a hindrance to success by revealing how an artistic temperament is, in fact, a competitive advantage in the marketplace.
For centuries, the myth of the starving artist has dominated our culture, seeping into the minds of creative people and stifling their pursuits. But the truth is that the world’s most successful artists did not starve. In fact, they capitalized on the power of their creative strength. In Real Artists Don’t Starve, Jeff Goins debunks the myth of the starving artist by unveiling the ideas that created it and replacing them with fourteen rules for artists to thrive.
