Hypercreative: Bridging the Gap between Creativity and Entrepreneurship with Amanda Sabreah — Gavin Guidry

Being a hypercreative provides many advantages. We create ideas not out of necessity, but as a by-product of living. Our creativity can be sparked by almost anything, and when it does, the ideas keep coming. But what about when these ideas lead us to a place where we need to monetize, develop products, or even a business? Suddenly, those things that make us special can provide hurdles for us executing. In The Hyper-Creative Personality, Blair Palmer writes, “Left to our own devices, we hypercreatives will get stuck at stage one (the ideas phase), perhaps dipping our toes into the waters of stage two (the development phase), only to discover that it’s a bit chilly for our tastes, then reverting to a nice warm spot in the sun where we can go back to thinking exciting new thoughts.”

So how do we break through and bring prospective clients and our hypercreative society the game-changing ideas, products, and businesses that only we can offer? Well, if there’s one creative I know that has mastered turning their creativity into real business solutions, it’s Amanda Sabreah. So I spoke with her to get the secrets behind her creative business endeavors.

"For me, I won't start a company if I don't feel the pain myself."

What are your slashes?

“Problem Solver/Analyst/Strategist/Vision Setter/Product Designer”

But what do you actually do for a living?

“I'm currently the CEO of two very different companies, which warrant some similar yet different responsibilities.

At Thought Factory, I'm the CEO and Head Strategist - I work with clients to understand their business growth goals then set an integrated plan across marketing, operations, etc to make it come to life. After that, I lead a team of five really talented people to help execute against it. Leading the team takes the most skill/effort.

At Staat, I'm the CEO/Vision Setter/Strategist/Head of Sales/Product Designer - it's a tech startup. At every startup, the founders are wearing multiple hats. I think what's interesting for me is that I'm wearing them across two companies. Out of necessity, not desire.

Right now my day within Staat is comprised of obsessing over the problem we're trying to solve, finding teams that want to use our product, and listening to their needs to make our product work better for them. After that, it's leading a team of two, soon to be four, others to execute on the overall vision. It's very challenging but very fun.”

Sounds like quite the challenge. And this is a big reason I wanted to talk to you. I was blown away when we met up (pre-quarantine, of course) and talked about these businesses you’re running. But when I first met you, you were running Sprite's P.O.U.R. platform. How did you go from creating content to creating companies?

“You know, my first slash is problem solver. And solving problems is consistent across both creating content and creating companies. My second slash is Analyst. Every day, I'm analyzing my workflow, what I'm seeing, and what others are experiencing to find problems to solve (or content to serve).

P.O.U.R. started with a problem presented by Sprite. The idea was how could you take a large iconic brand like Sprite and build community relevancy. How do you give Sprite an ownership stake into young culture now. I wanted to use Sprite's brand value in Hip-Hop to dive deeper into Hip-Hop culture outside of iconic rappers. While working on P.O.U.R. I kept running into the problem of finding and curating the creative team that had the level of talent I needed to both 1. bring the vision of P.O.U.R. to life and 2. stay within Sprite's budget – all normal problems when you're creating content. The issue, at the time, of not being able to really find these creatives across the country and building a solid relationship with them was really killing me/the team. It lead me into my first company Partnr, where I wanted to build technology that would give creatives a legitimate business platform to find people like me – champions inside of companies that wanted to create great work, and get them paid.

So problem solving was the lateral, and still is. Although I'm building companies now, I still strategize around content creation – and it all starts from a problem.”

So it seems like the companies you’ve started all aim to solve a problem that you've personally encountered in your career.

“There is no sustainability in the business if you are not solving a problem. The more painful the problem is for your customers, the more value your company is bringing to the table. BUT this does not mean that you have to solve world hunger. (And if you want to do that, that's amazing too). What I'm saying is, the problems can be small, as long as they're annoying as hell.

For me, I won't start a company if I don't feel the pain myself. If I don't have a unique take on what that pain is. This is because a large part of building a great product is having empathy for the pain your customer feels when they don't have your product. I shut down my first company because it started turning into an HR product (companies using it to better understand the talents of their internal employees). I have no experience in HR, and really have never had to feel the pain of understanding the talents of 100, 500, 10,000 people – therefore I couldn't build an exponentially valuable product.

The funny thing is, while building my first company, I felt an even larger pain of efficiently running an engineering team building complex software. So when I knew that I had to pivot the first company, I was already feeling a pain that was much larger than where I started. And Staat was born.”

Is being a creative and running a business the same part of your brain or did you have to retrain yourself?

“Oh, I definitely had to retrain a good bit. I had to let go of perfection, beauty, cohesiveness, fullness - and understand with a business that it's a progression over time vs. something that you start out with. As a creative - we're used to showing people our work when it has all of these factors polished without any blemishes. As a business owner, especially of a company that's building a product - you are constantly trying to figure out what's the best solution that solves your customers problem and aids their daily life. THAT can look VERY different from the idea you have in your head.

I had to retrain my brain to register:

- "In the hands of customers" is better than "perfect"

- Critique on the "art" (for us, product) is better than adoration in the early days of a company

- Being niche is better than being broad - even though it feels counterintuitive to your end vision

- Building the right team is better than creating the work”

Wow. Things like putting work out before it’s finished or welcoming critique over adoration are totally unnatural for us as creatives, but helpful points for those of us that feel compelled to get businesses/products off the ground – even creative ones. Your point about building the right team is an interesting one in that regard. Is it about painstakingly disciplining yourself until you can conquer those unnatural skills, or coalescing a team around you that can complement what you bring creatively?

“I think the best entrepreneurs learn just enough to be dangerous, then hire someone. But that's it. I think that entrepreneurs have to realize there's an art in building a functional team. If Steve Jobs would’ve spent all his time learning business instead of focusing on the product, we would not have the Apple we know today. Jobs understood what made people buy and that was it. Wozniack understood why design and product were so important, but left it up to Jobs to bring to life. This is so important. You can spend years spinning your wheels trying to learn a little bit of a lot, or years honing and perfecting one thing. I was told once "the riches are in the niches" - and that comes from personal skill sets as well. Focus in, get great at one thing, and build a team for the rest.”

So do you think more creatives should feel empowered to start companies?

“Yes they should. But they should be real with themselves around the question: Are you an artist or are you an entrepreneur? Very rarely are you both, and sometimes it takes time to figure that out. If you are the visionary (a Steve Jobs) go find a business partner (Steve Wozniak). And vice versa.

The quicker you figure that out, the faster your company will get off the ground.”

What are the advantages vs. disadvantages of being a creative business owner? For example, I would love to get my own agency off the ground one day, but I'm so particular about the kind of content we'll create, how we will attack content, etc. that I never get started.

“There are more advantages to disadvantages. The biggest disadvantage is exactly what you stated. As creatives, we like perfection, we like having the right answer. As a business owner, you have to love finding the right answer.

The advantages are that there's a certain level of empathy that a creative inherently has. I've never met a creative that wasn't sensitive on some level. That sensitivity is great for empathizing with your customer and their problems.

Building a business is all about solving a problem from a unique perspective. As creatives, we're born with perspective. The toughest part is letting the perspective bleed through to what your customers actually need. In certain businesses this is much easier like fashion. But even then, your perspective has to hit a niche of people that feel underserved (a problem).”

What advice do you have for creatives starting their own companies?

“- Build the right team with the right people - don't pick friends, or people who are just enthusiastic about what you're doing. Pick people that have the skills you don't.

- Solve a problem - every industry, every company is solving a problem.

- Just get started. Progress over perfection.

- Stay niche. Riches are in the niches.”

As hypercreatives, we offer something that the world needs. Just like Amanda, we don’t just see a problem, we see numerous ways to fix it – and we enjoy it. How much better would our industries be if they had the unique perspectives, empathetic natures, and innovative solutions that we can offer. How can we rob our world of that? Simple answer. We can’t. In our last profile, we talked about how passion can multiply our creativity to reign outside the walls of our day jobs. That passion might be driving you to create a new kind of business that pushes you outside of your comfortable ideation zone. But as we just learned, there are the added factors of honing your idea to solve a real problem, and then, once you’ve pushed your creativity to its limits, putting that team around you that can help bring things to life. In The Hyper-creative Personality, Palmer goes on to write, “In order to turn ideas into action, we need other people to complete the cycle. Even if you are sufficiently motivated to address your weaknesses and determined to follow through to completion… there will be times when your own sheer determination is not enough to overcome your natural preferences.” So what is that idea that you keep talking to your friends about, have written down in your phone, or pinging around in the back of your head - and what do you need to do to bridge the gap?