Creative people; the people who sit down to create something, either a blog post, a game, a graphical illustration or whatever have to maintain a balance between creating stuff and other aspects of business. Especially marketing.
You have to learn how to switch off every form of distraction and focus on the task at hand: creating cool stuff.
Yet, you cannot focus exclusively on creating (especially if you are a one man band). You need to spend some time marketing your products. Sometimes, I wish I could just stay in my creative zone and keep working, but sooner or later, hunger will come calling… Then you realise that beyond creating things, you also need to create a revenue generating plan or structure. That is what will keep you freed up to continue creating things.
Business partnership and division of labour seems the smart route, the only challenge is just that business partnerships does not always work out. Sometimes, your staff and partners are not just as fired up as you are, they may slack or decide to rip you off and business still fails.
I completely subscribe to the school of thought that encourages business owners to also involve themselves in every aspect of the business even areas that seem outside their core competencies, this helps you get a wholesome view of the business and as such, you will be able to offer more practical suggestions to the business team.
The creative mind has to focus and create things, then you have to switch into marketing mode and go out there to tell people about yourself and what you can do.
The time to start marketing yourself and looking for your next contract is not after you have completed a project. It has to be a continuous process just as you create things everyday also.
