Why I Call Myself a Creator

Lately I’ve been wondering if the term “entrepreneurship” properly describes this journey I’m on.

I spent many years working in the trenches building companies, advising founders, and helping CEOs think through growth and fundraising. When I started Creators Creed, I assumed I could translate that experience directly into creative communities. I had the education, the frameworks, and the track record. The path looked very clear.

Over time, I realized I was holding onto a very specific definition of entrepreneurship, one that shaped how I thought about success and legitimacy. In business school, I was taught that the path forward was to come up with a big idea, build a prototype, create a pitch deck, and raise money to bring it to life. This model presents entrepreneurship as a high-stakes leap, where commitment is measured by how much risk you’re willing to absorb and how much you’re willing to sacrifice to prove you believe in the vision.

Culturally, we’ve reinforced this story by celebrating the small number of people who successfully raise capital while ignoring how inaccessible that path is for most. Raising money depends heavily on access to wealth, networks, and safety nets, yet we continue to frame it as the default way to build a business. We glorify founders who go into debt or “go all in” as if financial risk is proof of seriousness, even though this narrative creates a false hierarchy of legitimacy and leaves many capable people feeling excluded.

“If you don’t like the definition of something, change it.” I’ve carried these words with me for many years, shared by a former professor and mentor. As I move between the creative and business worlds, I’ve learned that definitions shape behavior. They influence what we pursue and how we measure progress. I initially tried to apply the entrepreneurial model to our creative community, but over time it became clear that it was too constraining. That realization pushed me to take ownership of an entirely different term.

Creator better reflects how I actually work and how I see others in my community. I’m not trying to settle every use of the word or replace how others identify. I’m using Creator to describe a particular path, one where creative work and business ownership develop together over time.

Creators are imaginative, ambitious, and driven by the act of doing the work. We want to build something that reflects our point of view while staying grounded in the needs of others. Some of us earn a living through the art we create and share publicly. Others offer services, design experiences, or build communities that improve people’s lives. What connects us is a commitment to making work with intention, paying attention to how it lands, and returning to the work over time as both the creator and the context evolve.

When I left the world of full-time employment, I started my journey without a clear destination. It began as a mindset rather than a plan, understanding the skills I could offer and finding the opportunities where people needed help. Over time, that approach led me to create art experiences for major music festivals. Alongside that work, I continually advised business owners to help them grow their companies.

As my art practice grew, I tried to force my creative output into familiar business frameworks. I constantly explored ways to productize or monetize the art I was creating. I felt pressure to identify a business model or find the next big thing in experiences to shape it into something scalable. These efforts ran alongside each other in tension as I tried to fit creative work into a structure that wasn’t designed for how it was unfolding.

Eventually, I made a decision to let both worlds develop in parallel. I committed fully to my work as an artist while continuing to build my advisory practice to sustain myself financially. As I did, each path began to strengthen the other. The creative work sharpened how I think about experience, audience, and trust. The advisory work grounded me in structure, discipline, and responsibility. Moving between these modes allowed the work to accumulate into something larger and more sustainable than any single plan.

Creatorship and entrepreneurship overlap in many ways, but the line between art and business has never reflected how I actually work. Through Creators Creed, I want to make space for others navigating a similar path, people building livelihoods through creative work without forcing themselves into inherited models. We don’t need a single title to validate what we’re building. We need language that reflects how the work actually unfolds over time. This is what I mean when I call myself a Creator.