Build a Business
Around Your ART

When we met up with Paul Carrick Brunson in his stylish flat in London, he embodied the poster boy for success: handsome millionaire with a gorgeous wife and two adorable sons, friend of Oprah with multiple profitable businesses and projects in the works.

While he may look perfect enough to be annoying, the truth is Paul has earned every bit of his success—and it hasn't always been easy. Growing up with a proud immigrant mother from Jamaica, Paul almost flunked out of high school. With the support of his parents, he turned his life around and graduated college starting his career as a lowly non-paid intern in investment banking, fetching coffees and running errands. But he worked his way up the industry and was soon making bank, with a Rolex and BMW to boot.Even with these external signals of success, Paul still had a stomachache every Sunday night as he dreaded another grueling work week in this cutthroat industry. Trusting his gut, he quit his coveted gig and over the next...

DOUBT is a natural feature of the human mind, coded into our psyche since the dawn of time to help us survive as a species. But it’s also the #1 stumbling block for an entrepreneur and/or artist who wants to build a business and career around their art.

That urge to double, triple, and quadruple check our safety in any given moment was INVALUABLE back in the paleolithic period - so we could avoid stepping on a venomous snake that looked like a root, or poisoning ourselves by eating the wrong kind of berry... 

...but that instinct hasn’t evolved to match our current conditions, and the types of stressors we deal with in the modern world. 

Playing the "mental game" as a creative entrepreneur

As creative entrepreneurs, when left to our own devices, we can become our own worst enemy when it comes to making smart business decisions… and sticking to those decisions.

See, it’s not hard to come up with a business plan on your own.

With the...

As an artist, making the work is the part that comes naturally, whether that’s illustration, design, music, art, film, performance, writing, photography, or crafts. It’s the part that comes after — the budgeting, strategy, marketing, legal hurdles, and production — that can create roadblocks. 

Today, The New School is thrilled to announce the launch of the Parsons Entrepreneur Academy, a digital platform created to empower creatives to build businesses around their art. Through community networking, masterclasses, and self-guided courses, this program will help you develop the skills you need to turn your creative passion into a successful, sustainable business.

The program emerged from a growing need in the creative industries: access to basic, real-world training that makers and artists can apply to scaling their ideas. The Parsons Entrepreneur Academy’s business resources are made for creatives by other creatives, and speak to the...