In recent years, there has been a drastic rise in the popularity of what I call the “Solo Creator.” This is largely due to “influence-preneurs” (influencer-entrepreneurs) urging online followers to consider the Solo Creator (my words, not theirs) as a viable career path for professionals of all ages and levels of experience. The “Solo Creator” is a relatively new species in the online wilderness. You know the type: the man or woman who writes, records, produces, and edits all of his or her own content, which is pumped directly to an ever-growing online audience of subscribers and aspiring solopreneurs. The term “solopreneur” has risen in popularity, mirroring the ascent of the one-man creator. The influence spills over far beyond the sphere of “creators” and has taken hold of salesmen, managers, teachers, you name it. I refer to these creators as a new species with zero negative connotations. So, please don’t misunderstand me; I think the rise of the Solo Creator is amazing for the workforce, professionals of all ages, and society at large. Many individuals have been, and continue to be, inspired to venture out on their own and create an army of one(s). However, it’s most often the case that a major rise in popularity for one thing usually comes with the decline of another. Generally, we perceive these ascents and descents in popularity as inevitability, as societal scales balancing themselves accordingly. But at what cost? What will fall away to make room for the Solo Creator? In this particular case, it happens to be the decline of another type of creator, the Collaborator Creator.
We are guilty of drastically shifting our attention, beliefs, and affections from one thing to the other, throwing the baby out with the bathwater. We do this at every level of our society, from presidential candidates to corporate management/leadership strategies, to grade school pedagogy, and so on. For the sake of time (and risk of boring you), I won’t elaborate on that last point. I mention it only to illustrate a point made famous by Thomas Sowell: there are no solutions, only trade-offs. The embrace of some new “thing” comes with a cost, the loss of whatever other “thing” was released... unless we are conscious of our attitude towards this new embrace. In the case of the rising Solo Creator that so many are embracing, it is important to learn the subtle skills of the Collaborator Creator that, I fear, may soon become a lost art. In the coming months, we will take a deep dive into the skills of the Collaborator Creator. In order to learn these skills, we must first understand the philosophical foundation the Collaborator Creator’s skills are built upon: Ego Death.
To provide a pros and cons checklist comparing and contrasting the Solo Creator and the Collaborator Creator is a bit antithetical for the purposes of this discussion. At a glance, all the chips seem to stack up in favor of the Solo Creator, and for obvious reasons. For most, the Solo Creator way seems most fitting for the world as it is today. But things change. Always. My concern is the wisdom that will be lost with fewer Collaborator Creators out there. I think the greatest lesson we can learn from Collaborator Creators is voluntarily walking the long, grinding path towards ego death. There is a phrase in the literary world that has spread and penetrated all spheres of art and creators, instructing artists and creators to “kill your darlings.” Ernest Hemingway put his own very Hemingway-esque turn on the phrase, saying good, effective editing is like “killing your babies.” While (as a father) I find the phrase horrifying, it is unequivocally true. What’s more, there are not nearly enough “darlings” being killed when their creators would be all the better for doing so. Let me explain.
Dorothy Parker once said, “I hate writing, but I love having written.” Well, I’ll see that and raise my next paycheck because I don’t like doing most things that require me to create anything, but I love having done them all. It doesn’t matter if it’s a blog post, a new set of cabinets for the house, a new training course, or a drip campaign. That's because the creation of anything is difficult and painful. Plato had much to say about his unique understanding of creation as learned from Socrates. He said the souls of men and women can become “pregnant” and produce “offspring,” which could be enjoyed by others. This “offspring” could be art, stories, poetry, virtue, wisdom, comedy, etc. It is up to the individual to “give birth” to whatever is inside his or her soul. Herein lies the problem. Giving birth is both difficult and painful. Now, I only have second-hand knowledge of this as a father of two, but I was with my wife every second of both deliveries, and there was nothing about that experience that seemed anything less than “super not fun” for her. Except for every single moment after the delivery. The pure bliss of gazing upon your newborn child is an experience that is second to none. For my wife, that experience was exponentially deeper and more blissful than mine because she carried them inside her body, she nourished them with her body, grew them, and brought them into the world at the pain and detriment of her own body. They are a part of her, physically, in a way that I, nor any man, will ever fully understand.
Now, let me ask you something. If either one of my children happened to be truly, objectively ugly, do you think my wife would have cared, or even noticed, as she held them as newborns? I’m not talking deformed, like a nose in the middle of a forehead, but just a regular, good ol’ ugly baby. Do you think she’d notice? No. Highly unlikely. Even if she did notice, it’d be a passing thought quickly swept aside. But what do you think would have happened if a nurse or visitor said she just gave birth to an ugly baby? Since you probably don’t know my wife, let me tell you… chaos. It would have been an unholy union of violence and chaos. But why? Even if they were obviously ugly babies in the eyes of every single person in the world, in her eyes, they were perfect and beautiful because she made them. In that moment, they were her creation, far more so than mine. Just for the record, before moving on, my children are beautiful.
If there is something in your head, your heart, or your soul that does not exist out in the real world, the process of taking that “thing” inside you and bringing it into the world, making it real, is what Plato described as “birthing” your creation. While childbirth is not voluntary in the sense that when a mother’s water breaks she can’t just say, “No, I have things to do. I’m not having this baby until next month,” creative birth is voluntary. Because of this, far too few people attempt to create anything at all. But for those who still create, specifically the Solo Creators, we can learn how to kill our darlings and master the long-suffering art of ego death from the Collaborator Creators.
Let’s say you were assigned a project at work and you bounce that “thing” over and over in your head for days at a time before committing your “rough” ideas to a blank document, spreadsheet, or notebook. Then you put together some kind of working model or system of your “thing,” if not a final version. You have worked on this thing primarily on your own. Up to this point, I’m assuming nearly all of you have been here a time or two before.
This is your baby, and you don’t know if it’s an ugly one or not. You may not think it’s perfect and beautiful, but it’s still your baby. In my experience, it has become exceedingly rare that a creator will seek out a third party to tear that baby apart. But that’s exactly what should happen.
This is where, and why, the Collaborator Creator seeks ego death. You see, more often than not, whatever is making our “thing” ineffective isn’t really that special or precious to us. It’s because, while creating, our ego tells us that every choice is the right choice. Left unchecked, our ego will convince us that every color, every word, every formula, or line of code is exactly as it should be because, well, we thought of it, we did it, and we made something! Receiving feedback that our choices could be improved upon and (even worse) that some choices were downright poor can be too much for a creator whose ego has gone unchecked, overfed, and is not actively seeking ego death. Whenever we receive feedback that our “thing” is anything less than perfect and beautiful, that is not what the ego hears. The ego hears something more like, “You are stupid… and you are ugly.”
This is why the skill and the art of the Collaborator Creator matters. The Collaborator Creator understands that his job is that of a craftsman, not a self-reflective artist. Artists, in the purest sense, make art for themselves, because they must (as Plato discussed) and then share their art with the world. Some desperately wishing the world embraced their work, others caring only that the work is completed. The Collaborator Creator does not create with himself or herself in mind, but with the client and/or customer in mind. The work must be consistently effective and pleasing to the consumer and employer. The Collaborator Creator’s satisfaction in the work is directly tied to its impact and effectiveness as requested by the employer and delivered to the target audience. “Does this thing work?” That is what drives the Collaborator Creator. Of course, these new “Solo Creator” types are driven by the same bottom line metric. That’s all that should really matter for any creative professional, and I believe the Collaborator Creator’s embrace of ego death is paramount for producing the best work.
In order to create “things” that must please others first and foremost, a Collaborator Creator will surrender his creation to peers, co-workers, and even strangers to tear apart, dissect, and examine. This is all done as an act of service to the work itself, depriving the ego of that which would fuel it and feed it into a self-sabotaging monster. The Collaborator Creator knows the more you serve the work, the more you starve the ego. But the ego is a tricky thing. It never dies. Never. It only becomes manageable and should be fed rarely by others and never by the owner. The act of creation will always be an artistic endeavor. It is inevitable that, at the very least, pieces of the creator will find their way into the work. If left unchecked, the ego will assure the creator that even the tiniest pieces are the best, most essential pieces completing the “work.” Now, there’s nothing wrong with pieces of the creator finding their way into their work as long as they are equally weighed against the scale of, “Does this thing work?” Far too often have I seen peers across half a dozen industries avoid subjecting their work, and themselves, to constructive criticism from peers to only release ineffective content and products into the world and fail. Their reaction? Blame sales. Blame the messaging. Blame marketing guidelines. This is what gives me pause about the recent surge of Solo Creators. We are creatures of comfort. If we can find a way to avoid pain, we will do it. And that’s not always a good thing. It is only through discomfort that we experience growth and it seems that, for all of the advantages that come with being a Solo Creator, the “work” is primed to suffer and, as a result, the Solo Creator fails. I am not making a blanket prediction of failure for Solo Creators, nor denigrating the quality of work being created. I wholeheartedly believe the rise of the Solo Creator, the One Man/Woman Creation Army, is a very good thing that will open countless doors to professional, financial, and personal freedom. I also believe that anyone considering walking the Solo Creator path should pursue the philosophy of the Collaborator Creator and seek ego death at every opportunity for the sake of the work and themselves.
