Take a Business Class if You Are a Creative Person
By Emma Woodhead
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Being creative is hard.
And I don’t mean to sound uptight and pretentious, but it is. Creating something is only a millionth of the task. Bringing attention to it with a loyal and sustaining audience and monetizing it are all of your problems and the root of every issue an artist will have during their careers if they choose to make the creative life their income.
Being creative is not linear, and we can not control what we have. It is not organized, and I know I have struggled with it. In business, we know exactly what will happen unless the unthinkable happens. In the creative field, that happens every day. The simplest of things could throw us off in the creative field. If you wake up and you have writer’s block, you aren’t going to make money, and your boss is not going to be happy. And that is why I think all creative people should take a business class, and there are two reasons why.
The first reason is that a business class will bring structure into your life. Business is a rigid and structured field. There is minimal leeway for you to work. Accounting, finance, economics, management can only be done in so many ways. Don’t take marketing because marketing can be just as creative as art classes. Take a structured business class. You need a balance in your life. You can be wild and erratic, but you also need structure and order. A class can create this balance for creative people in college. It is hard to explain but trust me, it will, and the reserve goes for business students or students in very structured programs, take a creative class that allows you to work out of the organized schooling you usually are in.
The second reason is that you are going to want to be your own boss one day, and to be your boss, you need the foundation to learn how. When being your boss, you need to learn how to budget, read contracts, accounting, and so many other factors- taking an introductory business class will teach you how to do this. Marketing is the more accessible part of it. You know your audience, and there are millions of ways to reach them. However, dealing with money and contracts can be scary and overwhelming, and when you are starting out, you can’t always afford to pay for the staff to help you. You are going to have to do it yourself.
Life and your career will always be better when you are your boss, especially when you are a creative person. It is extremely hard to make money in a creative field, and it is even harder to make money when you constantly have to go through others to earn an income. For example, if you are trying to publish a book and you have a publisher, an editor, a marketer, a printer, and all the other people who would be a part of the process, all of those people need to get paid, and you will get paid last. However, if you are your own editor, marketer, treasurer, and self-publish, the money goes directly to you with only having to pay the print house for help.
When you are your own boss, you get to handle your money, your time, and the copyright of your work. It will be a lot of work, and it will push you out of your comfort zone, but as creative people, we are supposed to break out of our comfort zones. Take the class. It will cause you to view your work differently, and it will frustrate you, but when the time comes that you want to monetize your work and make a brand for yourself, you will be thankful you took those foundational classes.
My advice to you is to always take the business class and to pay attention to that class more than any other class you take.