Andrew Huang on creativity vs. business:
A lot of what I talk about in this book is trying to encourage creative people to consider being open-minded about business, and organization, and self-promotion, and a lot of things that I think we often don’t feel like we gel with.
But I think you can engage with them, and I think you can even find ways to enjoy them, and that doesn’t make you any less of an artist.
And, I’m totally from that camp. I was so flighty and spontaneous with my creativity, and just did whatever I felt like at the time without thinking ahead too much.
I did so many things wrong and had to figure things out by trial and error, but I found that putting in just a bit of strategic work really allowed my creativity to flourish and helped a ton of my dreams come true.
If anything, figuring out these boring things with money and time management and all that, made me more of an artist because they gave me the resources and the free time to be able to create 100 times as much.
So that’s the first thing. I would love to help as many creators as possible build sustainable careers.
The second thing is that, as wonderful as it is to have millions of followers, it’s so much more important to be yourself and do what you love. And, as we’ll see, sometimes these things go together, and sometimes they don’t.
Later, @ min 11:18:
And it was what I wanted to do. I had so much fun making these videos. I loved making these videos — until I didn’t.
At a certain point, I’d done a bunch of these videos, and it just got boring to me. So, I stopped.
And, they still fit four of these circles but I realized that, if I wasn’t enjoying myself, what was the point?
I guess the views and money would’ve been the point. But, they weren’t pointy enough for me!
So, I stopped making that type of video, and around this time I also just made way fewer videos.
I was getting burnt out from doing YouTube seven days a week so that I could maintain this upload schedule that I had decided on for myself.
So, I stopped with the schedule, and sometimes I’d go for a really long time without posting anything. And, I just needed to recalibrate.
And, all my metrics took a nose dive. I used to get 5 million views a month, and then it dropped down to a few hundred thousand.
I used to grow by 50,000 subscribers a month, and that went down to, like, 2,000.
But, I saw that if I wanted to continue chasing that ridiculous, explosive growth I would just be completely unhappy.
And, you know, growing by 2000 followers a month, getting a few hundred thousand views a month is still a tremendous privilege.
I had to be grateful that I still had this audience that was interested in the new stuff that I was doing.
Many creators (if not most), struggle to think of themselves as business owners. They bristle at words like ‘sales,’ or ‘products,’ or ‘organization.’
We all just want to make cool stuff and have fun discovering who we are, and how the world will respond to what we have to offer.
And, for a time, that’s entirely as it should be.
But, if you’ve been among the more observant creators (like Andrew), you’ve discovered that fun and business need not be mutually exclusive.
You can have both.
Having a business platform of your own gives you two incredible superpowers:
- the power to switch creative interests anytime you want, and
- the power to walk away, completely
…all without algorithm/income fear.
— Tang
Andrew Huang’s owned platform is: AndrewHuang.com.
