The Entrepreneurial Artist: Lessons from Highly Successful Creatives

In The Entrepreneurial Artist: Lessons from Highly Successful Creatives, Aaron Dworkin offers an engaging, practical guide to achieving artistic fulfillment, both personally and professionally. Based on the accomplishments of Shakespeare, Mozart, and several contemporary creatives, these lessons will help you realize your goals―no matter your medium. Among those Dworkin personally interviewed for this book are Emmy-winning actor Jeff Daniels, Tony-award winning choreographer Bill T. Jones, Grammy award-winning musician Wynton Marsalis, and Pulitzer Prize winner Lin-Manuel Miranda, among others. The stories of these twelve remarkable individuals come alive with lessons of love, loss, despair, sacrifice, perseverance, and triumph.

Some of the artist-entrepreneur takeaways explored in this book include:

Build partnerships―with peers, patrons, and sponsorsEmbrace diversity Expand your focusAllow your work to mature
Whether one is an aspiring student artist in search of practical tools to build a sustainable career, or a veteran seeking reinvention, The Entrepreneurial Artist offers insights―well-tested, unusual, or innovative―that are meaningful for every kind of creative.

Aaron P. Dworkin is an acclaimed multi-media performing artist, social entrepreneur, and educator. He is professor of arts leadership and entrepreneurship at University of Michigan’s School of Music, Theatre & Dance and Professor of Entrepreneurial Studies at UofM’s School of Business. Dworkin is the founder of ArtsShare.com―a global marketplace for the arts―as well as The Sphinx Organization, whose mission is to transform lives through the power of diversity in the arts.

A 2005 MacArthur Fellow and President Obama’s first appointment to the National Council on the Arts, Dworkin is also the recipient of the Royal Philharmonic Society Honorary Membership, Crain’s 40 Under 40 and Who’s Who Awards, and an AT&T Excellence in Education Award.

Dworkin lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan