News:
  • John Cullum: An Accidental Star
  • Blindness: The First Post-COVID Off-Broadway Show
  • Coming Back to "Live"
  • Voyeur: Street Theater in the Time of COVID
  • Poets on Craft: Laura Grace Weldon and Donna Hilbert
  • D2D: Train Train + Near Perfect Synchronization
  • Contact us
  • About
    • What is Cultural Weekly?
    • Advertise
    • Contributors
    • Masthead
    • Subscribe
    • Submissions: Write for us
    • Cultural Weekly Style & Formatting Guide
  • Contact us
  • About
    • What is Cultural Weekly?
    • Advertise
    • Contributors
    • Masthead
    • Subscribe
    • Submissions: Write for us
    • Cultural Weekly Style & Formatting Guide
Cultural Weekly logo
  • Film
  • TV + Web
  • Poetry
  • Art
  • Architecture
  • Literature
  • Theatre
  • Music
  • Dance
  • Tech
  • Lifestyle
  • Food
  • Film
  • TV + Web
  • Poetry
  • Art
  • Architecture
  • Literature
  • Theatre
  • Music
  • Dance
  • Tech
  • Lifestyle
  • Food
YouTube Chronicles

Your Life Purpose, One Million Strong

By Adam Leipzig on March 12, 2014 in Lifestyle, TV + Web

3

Click Here To View Comments

What is life purpose multiplied by YouTube?

When, a little over a year ago, the organizers of TEDx Malibu asked me to give a talk, I realized that many in the 200-seat auditorium would be creative entrepreneurs, so I tried to come up with a talk they would find useful.

Recently the video of my talk surpassed one million YouTube views. In the grand scheme of billions of streaming videos, a million views is probably insignificant, but still I am humbled by it and sense the power in over a million people thinking deeply about their life purpose.

Here’s one thing YouTube does right: It can bring a million people together around an idea.

As with the people in Malibu, the YouTube audience is full of creative entrepreneurs— a term that carries special meaning because it joins together two groups of people who are not generally placed in the same category: entrepreneurs and artists. Entrepreneurs are artists because they have the artistic ability to envision something that has never been done before; artists are entrepreneurs because, in addition to being creative, they must craft the business principles for their success.

Creative entrepreneurs have a deep creative drive; they are writers, designers, developers, architects, painters, filmmakers, musicians, poets, choreographers, composers and more. Because their expression forms the chosen environment in which we live, creative entrepreneurs are the foundation of our culture; their provocations make us feel joy and empathy and reflect profoundly on our lives.

Yet, they are often frustrated at the difficulties of their journey, and how hard it can be to forge a living from their art. They fear, at times, if they truly know their life purpose and wonder if they should abandon their work.

For my talk, I decided to adapt a series of questions I’d developed in my business consulting practice, when I work with companies finding their way and developing new products and services. For these companies, the challenge is to get out of their self-enclosed bubble and reach out to their market. Would the same approach work for creative entrepreneurs? Because artists need such congruence between their life purpose and their work, they can become too inward-facing, more focused on their own process than on their audience, and audience that hungers for brilliance, passion and the sublime.

In the talk, entitled How to Know Your Life Purpose in 5 Minutes, I asked everyone to answer five questions:

  • Who are you?
  • What do you do?
  • Who do you do it for?
  • What do they want or need?
  • How do they feel as a result?

Over the past year, I’ve received  emails from creative people all over the world who have watched the video. While some ask me their own questions, most share their answers, telling me what they do, who they do it for, and how their audience feels. Many viewers resonate with a story I tell, about my 25th college reunion, and the gulf between people who planned careers versus those of us who studied for the joy of learning and to pursue our passions.

To carry further the theme of the talk, what’s the next step for creative entrepreneurs? Once they have identified their audience, and know how the audience feels as a result (which gives you a way to talk to your audience), the next step is to build that audience bigger.

Today’s game-changing dynamic is that all creative entrepreneurs can increase their audience and be in direct communication with them. While this used to be the job of publishers, gallery owners, studios, record labels and marketing companies, and doing this job is certainly a lot of work, there is an immense benefit: Now creative entrepreneurs can “own” their audience themselves. This is, in fact, what makes them entrepreneurs.

The audience you carry with you brings value wherever you go… even if the studio puts your project in turnaround, the record label drops you, or if you get fired from your design job.

Having your audience wherever you go: That spells success.

Speaking of spelling, a number of viewers have pointed out that the video and YouTube don’t agree on the spelling of my name. As it turns out, YouTube is correct. That’s another thing they do right.

Spellcheck! YouTube has it right; it's Adam LEIPZIG

Spellcheck! YouTube has it right; it’s Adam LEIPZIG

Top image: Photography by Benjamin Edelstein © 2013, all rights reserved. Used with permission. Benjamin Edelstein is a renowned international award winning photographer. Born and raised in Miami, Florida, he is a self-taught photographer who specializes in both fine art and commercial photography.

Click Here To View Comments

TagsAdam Leipzigcreative entrepreneurslife purposeTEDxthe artist's lifeyoutube

Previous Story


Matt Kindt

Managing the Minds of Comic Book Fans

Next Story

AWP14 Recap: Part Two

About the author

Adam Leipzig

Facebook Twitter
Google+ Google+
Website

Adam Leipzig is the founder and CEO of MediaU, online career acceleration. MediaU opens the doors of access for content creation, filmmaking and television. Adam, Cultural Weekly’s founder and publisher, has worked with more than 10,000 creatives in film, theatre, television, music, dance, poetry, literature, performance, photography, and design. He has been a producer, distributor or supervising executive on more than 30 films that have disrupted expectations, including A Plastic Ocean, March of the Penguins, Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, Dead Poets Society, Titus and A Plastic Ocean. His movies have won or been nominated for 10 Academy Awards, 11 BAFTA Awards, 2 Golden Globes, 2 Emmys, 2 Directors Guild Awards, 4 Sundance Awards and 4 Independent Spirit Awards. Adam teaches at UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business. Adam began his career in theatre; he was the first professional dramaturg in the United States outside of New York City, and he was one of the founders of the Los Angeles Theatre Center, where he produced more than 300 plays, music, dance, and other events. Adam is CEO of Entertainment Media Partners, a company that navigates creative entrepreneurs through the Hollywood system and beyond, and a keynote speaker. Adam is the former president of National Geographic Films and senior Walt Disney Studios executive. He has also served in senior capacities at CreativeFuture, a non-profit organization that advocates for the creative community. Adam is is the author of ‘Inside Track for Independent Filmmakers ’ and co-author of the all-in-one resource for college students and emerging filmmakers 'Filmmaking in Action: Your Guide to the Skills and Craft' (Macmillan). (Photo by Jordan Ancel)

Related Posts

  • Vic’Adex: Two Poems

    By Vic'Adex
    Men Not...
  • 5 Essentials I Have Learned Publishing Cultural Weekly

    By Adam Leipzig
    When I started Cultural Weekly, I thought it...
  • How a popular children’s cartoon-show set in Siberia illustrates the diversity of perspective

    By Pitamber Kaushik
    The fifth-most watched YouTube video in the...
  • Deepfakes: How Are They Good, and How Are They Bad?

    By Jenna Tsui
    We know there's a lot of false information...

Support Our Friends

Follow Us

Join Our Mailing List

Latest Tweets

Tweets by @CulturalWeekly

Comments

  • Lisa Segal Lisa Segal
    Valentine’s Day Redux: a Second Chance at True Love
    Marvelous!!!!!!!
    2/14/2021
  • maurice amiel maurice amiel
    Shakespeare on Despots, Power, and Finally… Transition
    Timely and educational this post Your scholarship...
    1/31/2021
  • maurice amiel maurice amiel
    Abigail Wee: “Growing Home”
    A first place well deserved While the particular...
    1/24/2021

New

  • Europa League semi-final preview: Could there be an all-English final?
  • John Cullum: An Accidental Star
  • Bok Choy 101 Guide: From Cooking to Regrowing
  • 4 Ways you can make a profit with the Clubhouse app
  • Can the 2021 Eurovision winner reach the popularity of songs from years gone by?

Tags

art dance film Los Angeles music photography poem poems poetry tomorrow's voices today

Like us

Please Help

Donate

Who are we?

Cultural Weekly is a place to talk about our creative culture with passion, perspective and analysis – and more words than “thumbs up” or “thumbs down.” Our mission is to draw attention to our cultural environment, illuminate it, and make it ... read more

Site map

  • About
  • Advertise
  • Contact us
  • Contributors
  • Cultural Weekly Style & Formatting Guide
  • Food
  • Home
  • Masthead
  • Privacy Policy/Do Not Sell My Personal Information
  • Submission Form
  • Submissions: Write for us
  • Subscribe
  • Terms and Conditions
  • Thank You

Links

Adam Leipzig
Entertainment Media Partners
This Is Crowd
CreativeFuture
Plastic Oceans Foundation
Arts & Letters Daily
Alltop
Alexis Rhone Fancher
Jack Grapes
Ethan Bearman
Writ Large Press

Mailing List

* indicates required


  • Terms and Conditions
  • Privacy Policy/Do Not Sell My Personal Information
  • Contact us
Cultural Weekly is the digital magazine and public platform of Next Echo Foundation. DONATE HERE.
Copyright © 2010-2020 by Adam Leipzig. All Rights Reserved.