(#035) Entrepreneurs and creators

A few years back, I added a small atomic habit to my to-do dashboard: on the first of each month, I pick up a book from the library of those I’ve read and chosen to keep (roughly one in three makes the cut), and flip through all the pages I previously marked with one of my trusted Stalogy sticky flags.

I do this because a potent idea doesn’t guarantee it lodged itself in long-term memory—let alone that it gets refreshed daily.

There’s already a scarcity of high-quality content out there. When we find some, it’s worth revisiting—again and again—as long as it feels relevant and motivating.

Yesterday, August 1st, the book I picked was So Good They Can’t Ignore You, one of Cal Newport’s bestsellers. I first read it in November 2023. It left a mark.

As the author intended, debunking the catchy myth of “Do what you love” grabs your attention. Though, as I’ve since written in my piece on dynamic pursuits—balancing Fulfillment, Public Resonance, and Financial Independence—I’ve come to resize its impact.

Yesterday, however, something else caught my eye…

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The core of Newport’s thesis is that one’s career—and by extension, one’s fulfillment—is built on their stock of career capital: the depth of experience and expertise accumulated in a specific domain.

Abundant career capital makes you valuable to society, sought after for your contributions, able to generate value—and monetize it—with less effort and time.

An expert lawyer’s fees rise with experience, even as the time required to resolve a case often shrinks. A world-class marketing strategist doesn’t chase clients—he filters them. An experienced doctor selects more relevant tests, prescribes more effective treatments, and earns your trust—and your higher fee—without question.

The result? Freedom. Time freedom. Location freedom. Financial freedom.

It makes a lot of sense.

And yet, this time, something didn’t sit quite right.

Building an exceptional skill requires devoting serious time and deliberate practice to one subject—studying, refining, seeking mentorship.

That’s a clear fit if you’re a doctor, engineer, lawyer, professor, chef, carpenter, software developer, designer, architect… in other words, someone whose profession appears in a drop-down menu on most registration forms.

But what if you’re an entrepreneur?

Not a business owner. Not a consultant to startups. Not someone who founded one successful company twenty years ago and he is still running it today.

I mean an entrepreneur:

someone who finds their mojo in conceiving visions of alternative realities—and then sets out to convince others that this vision is not just viable, but better than current reality.

Be it a product, a service, a technology, a software as a service, an NGO, be it regional or global, big or small.

Then what’s your skill? What exactly do you practice, refine, repeat? What competence would society seek from you?

Some entrepreneurs have pivoted into consultants or startup gurus—trying to turn entrepreneurship into a “skill”—and while I encourage anyone to seek mentorship from other successful entrepreneurs, one needs to use a pinch of skepticism:

entrepreneurship isn't a codified discipline. It can't be perfectly taught. There’s no blueprint, no body of knowledge that guarantees the success of the next venture.

Luckily, I have a parallel lens to look through: the world of creatives and creators.

Creators may possess standout skills—photography, videography, color grading, music composition, instrument mastery, graphic design, screenwriting, dialogue writing, the list goes on. But mastery in any one of those doesn’t make them a creator. It sure helps. But it’s not the essence.

The creator’s value isn’t in their skill.
It’s in what they create.

Entrepreneurs are exactly the same. They may be great at marketing, finance, operations, tech—and yes, that helps. But it’s not what makes them entrepreneurs.

Just like creators, entrepreneurs thrive on cross-discipline exploration, variety, reinvention, questioning the status quo—sometimes even restlessness. They’re at their best when they travel across domains—and continents—cross-pollinate ideas, and bring unexpected combinations to life.

This is also why the story of most entrepreneurs doesn’t begin with a professional sharpening their sword for decades, becoming “so good they can’t be ignored,” and then launching a business.

Don’t get me wrong, that archetype exists, abundantly so, but look closer: they are typically self-employed professionals, not entrepreneurs.

They didn’t build a business; they just started working for themselves—maximizing the monetization of their skill. That’s valid. That’s smart. But it’s not entrepreneurship.

So if entrepreneurs can’t be defined by a single honed skill, what defines them?

Once again, the creative world offers insight.

To thrive as a creator, one good idea isn’t enough.

It might get you started. It might even take you far. But eventually, it wears thin. Both your internal spark and your audience’s attention drift away.

And this doesn’t just happen when the original idea was mediocre. It might happen even more if the idea was so strong, so resonant, that it made you feel safe. Comfortable. And increasingly afraid to leave that comfort behind.

To grow as a creator, you have to step out of that zone.

Take risks.

Accept that your next work may not be as successful as the last—in fact, the next ten might not match the first.

And here’s the thing: I don’t believe that the leap is driven by strength of will, grit, or some grand noble quality.

I think it’s driven by a deeper fear.

The fear of living an unoriginal life.

The fear of missing out on a slice of human experience in this minuscule blink of time we get on Earth.

The fear of pulling a slingshot maneuver with life—getting close to it, only to be flung away, never reaching its core.

Of course, the pursuit of wealth, of meaning beyond oneself, the flexing of one’s intelligence and imagination, and the savoring of that ethereal space—where you know you’ve created something, and yet it’s becoming greater than you, taking on a life of its own through its interaction with an audience (or market)—is all incredibly motivating, inebriating.

But it may still not be enough to reach escape velocity from the comfort zone.

It’s when the fear of leaving too much untapped outweighs the fear of the unknown that action follows.

Of course, not in everyone such fear is strong enough to push them beyond the inertia of getting started and confront the unfamiliar again.

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Skills are invaluable. They also generate tremendous confidence and a sense of self-worth.

But—perhaps—being “too good to be ignored” isn’t the only lens for everyone to view their career—and life—through.

L.F

P.S. I’d love to know: how much of your career—or life—has been shaped by the pursuit of excellence in a single field, and how much by the pursuit of expression—professional or otherwise? (There’s no right or wrong answer, of course.)

(Read this article on Medium.)