Steven Pressfield's Blog, page 2

What Is an Entrepreneur?

My online dictionary says the word comes from the French, entreprende, “to undertake.” It’s related to “enterprise.”

A person who sets up a business or businesses, taking on financial risks in the hope of profit.

Dan Sullivan, the biz guru, defines an entrepreneur as

Someone who has an exceptionally intimate relationship with the 15th of the month.

In other words, payday.

Payday where nobody is going to pay you except yourself.

Payday when YOU are the only one generating income.

We said in last week’s post that if you are an artist, you are an entrepreneur, whether you like it or not. And we all—you and I—need to start thinking like one.

[More to come on this subject in the next weeks!]

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Artist = Entrepreneur #2

Are you a writer? A filmmaker? A dancer?

Then you’re an entrepreneur.

You have more in common with the young Steve Jobs and the early Bill Gates than you do with your dad who worked all his life for AT&T or your aunt who’s five months away from collecting her pension from the Post Office.

Steve Jobs. This is you and me, whether we realize it or not.

Are you a returning vet?
A recent or soon-to-be retiree?
Did your company just lay you off?

You’re an entrepreneur too. And you’d better start making the Jedi mind-shift from Working for Somebody Else to Working for Yourself.

These are two completely different ways of looking at the world and of thinking about yourself.

One way looks to others for daily structure, for validation, for monetary support. The other way looks for these primarily from herself.

This is a HUGE difference, an earth-shaking, life-changing, monumental watershed of the mind and the heart.

[This post is the second in a series I’m going to call TK THS JOB N SHOVE IT. We’ll be doing a lot more in the coming weeks … and also a video series on Instagram.

[Stay tuned!]

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Artist = Entrepreneur

Are you familiar with the work of Ryan Holiday or Jack Carr?

These gentlemen are what I mean when I say “artist = entrepreneur.”

Both are excellent in their specific creative spheres. Both can handle their emotions despite any external adversity or their own internal Resistance. (I.e., the first “two brains” I cited in last week’s post.)

But where Ryan and Jack truly separate themselves from the competition is with the third brain—the mindset of the entrepreneur.

Ryan Holiday’s “Painted Porch” bookstore in Bastrop, Texas

Ryan and Jack are not just writers, they are industries. In movie terms, they are studios. Both have podcasts, both have extensive speaking careers, both have massive online presences. Both tour. Both have teams to support them. Both have online stores with as much merchandise, it seems, as an old-time Sears Roebuck catalog. Ryan has an actual physical bookstore in Bastrop, Texas (outside Austin) that doubles as his office and podcast studio.

You may say (and I might myself), “Hey, I don’t wanna do that. I’m a writer. I don’t have the time to build an empire and I wouldn’t want to if I could!”

Consider this, however. The year is 2025. The world has changed. You and I can’t hope for a review of our newest novel in the New York Times. The apparatus of awareness generation that once supported writers and artists no longer exists (or at least has changed form dramatically.)

When a Big Five publisher evaluates our work and ponders bringing it out in print, its editors and sales team and marketing people ask, “What else, beyond her talent, does this writer bring to the party? Does she have an online presence? Does she speak at events? Does she do personal appearances? How will she come across on podcasts or radio or TV? Does she have a podcast herself?”

I’m not trying to discourage us, I swear. I’m only trying to point to the hardball reality of the 2025 creative world.

Each of us must be the face of our brand. We must have a brand, even if it’s the idea of NOT having a brand.

Nothing is more dispiriting than to launch a work of our best and truest art into the world and have it vanish without a trace.

We are of necessity entrepreneurs, you and I, and we have to learn, one way or another, how to represent ourselves and our work as such.

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LAST CHANCE: The doors are closing. Resistance isn’t.

We’re in the final hours of enrollment for my new course, Overcoming Resistance: From Start to Finish. If you loved The War of Art, think of this course as a live, immersive companion.

The doors close and your opportunity to meet with me one-on-one ends on June 5th at 6pm EST.

Recording the video course, September 2024

There are just a few VIP spots left which include a one-on-one Zoom call with me, and every student who signs up by Thursday gets access to a FREE bonus live group coaching session this Saturday, June 7th.

I’ll be there to help you kick off the course, tackle Resistance head-on, and get the momentum rolling.

JOIN US HERE

This whole thing started with a conversation.

Roda Ahmed @RodaWorld (some of you know her from the Silent Writing Retreat) said something simple but surprising:

“You’ve written so much about Resistance, but have you ever thought about teaching about it in person? I think people would love it if you did.”

I hadn’t and I decided to trust her and try it. 

So we teamed up.

Roda helped me think about how to reach people in a new way. How to get out of my comfort zone. She was actually one of the first ones to show me that people were sharing my work on this thing called Instagram.

This has been a humbling and deeply meaningful experience. After years of writing about the creative fight, it feels good to offer a roadmap that walks with you through it.

To those of you who’ve already joined, thank you. To those who’ve come to the Instagram Lives, entered the giveaway, shared your Resistance stories, thank you.

And to those still standing on the edge of the pool wondering if now’s the right time to jump:

I hope you’ll leap.

Resistance isn’t going anywhere. But neither is your power to beat it.

JOIN US HERE

See you Saturday,
Steve

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3 Brains, Part Two

A couple of weeks ago, we did a post entitled “The 3 Brains of an Artist.” Here’s how we described Brain #2:

The second brain is our anti-Resistance brain. That’s the part of our psyche that has learned how to handle our emotions while we’re using the first brain, i.e. the pure artistic brain.

The anti-Resistance brain fights off distraction, overcomes procrastination, continues to work despite self-doubt, fear, laziness, superficiality. It’s our Pro vs Amateur brain. It keeps us moving forward against all odds and adversity.

The War of Art was written for Brain #2. That’s its target. That’s its subject.

The September ’24 Silent Writing Retreat

The Writing Retreat video course I’ve been talking about here and on Instagram is also aimed at Brain #2. It’s not a “writing course” in the sense of addressing theme and structure, plot and characterization.

It’s entirely about the mindset that lets us sit alone in a room with our demons for a year or two years (or as long as it takes to write a novel, a screenplay, a memoir, whatever) … and keep on working at a high level, despite all those crazy voices in our heads.

That’s why The War of Art resonated so powerfully with so many people—because it was about that no-nonsense, non-glam mindset—and why this new video course does the same. The difference is the course is me onstage in-person (or as close to in-person as video can get), rather than words on a page or a voice on audio.

If that’s the way you learn (it’s certainly the way I do), please consider taking a click at www.stevenpressfield.com for more information.

P.S. This Friday, June 30, at 5:00PM Pacific, we’re doing a “Happy Hour” Instagram Live where we give away four scholarships to the Video Course. I’ll keep us updated this week on IG as to how to get your name in!

P.P.S. One of those scholarships will be for a one-on-one half-hour coaching call with me personally.

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A Creative Retreat With Steve

I was fifty-two years old when my first book was published. That’s after thirty years of trying, when I supported myself driving taxis and tractor-trailers, working in the oilfields and as a migrant laborer. I get asked now all the time, “How did you keep going all those years? Why didn’t you quit?”

The answer is in a new three-hour video course called the Silent Writing Retreat. The course went on sale this Wednesday, May 28, and will be available till Thursday, June 5 at 6:00 PM EST.

Here’s the link to learn more and to sign up:

https://silentwritingretreat.com/steven-pressfield/

The actual event took place in Malibu, California on September 7, 2024. It lasted all day with breaks for writing in silence. Every second was recorded on video. It was a day like no other. Everyone had to check their phones at the door, nobody could talk except me. It was all business. No chit-chat.

The substance of the event was simply me alone onstage all day, delivering a distillation of my thirty-year battle with my own Resistance—my compulsion to self-sabotage, my susceptibility to procrastination, perfectionism, self-doubt, fear, etc.

I talk about my mentors—my boss Hugh Reaves at the trucking company in North Carolina, my writer friend Paul Rink in California, and a migrant-fruit picker/former-Marine named John whose last name I never knew—who taught me the lessons you only learn in the University of Hard Knocks. I talk about my C-level career in Hollywood, with its many humiliations but also its manifold lessons in storytelling. And I talk about the lone female who has guided me and stood by me through everything. I’m talking about the goddess, the Muse, who may not be flesh and blood but who is realer than real and without whom none of us could get a single decent word down on paper.

I’ve never done an event like this before, and I’ll probably never do it again. I hope you’ll jump on this opportunity to see and hear me share my fifty years in the trenches, in the hope that it will encourage and inspire all of us to DO OUR WORK and become the person and the artist we were born to be.

[P.S. A VIP feature of this course is the option to book a half-hour one-on-one ZOOM coaching with me. Click this link for more details.]

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My First (And Only) Writing Course

I want to alert you guys to the first and only Writing Course I’ve ever taught. You may remember me talking about this last year. (We held the actual live event in September in Malibu, California.)

Dozens of friends wrote in at the time. “Oh, I wish I could go! I live too far away!” “I’m so sorry to miss it!”

Well, you can go now.

We videoed the full day’s event as it happened. I and my partners Roda and Kriss have been working on this package ever since.

The video version of the “Silent Writing Retreat” is available now. Today.

Here’s the link for full information and to sign up:

https://silentwritingretreat.com/steven-pressfield/

I’ll be writing more about this in the coming days (for starters I’m doing an Instagram Live TODAY at 1:00 PM Pacific) but here’s the short version of what the course is about.

Oh, I almost forgot …

A special VIP feature is the opportunity to book a half-hour, one-on-one ZOOM coaching call with me. (More on that later as well.)

The essence of the September event was summed up in its subtitle: OVERCOMING RESISTANCE. The medium was me onstage for the whole day, with breaks for everyone in attendance—about sixty people—to do their own writing in silence. Everyone checked their phones at the door. There was no talking, except by me. No socializing. No chit-chat.

I spoke pretty much non-stop, delivering a distillation of everything I’ve written in The War of Art, Turning Pro and other books … as well as telling in excruciating detail the story of my own journey as a writer—from driving a taxi in New York City and tractor-trailers up and down the East Coast to ten years as a C-level Hollywood screenwriter to thirty years and twenty-something books as a writer of fiction and nonfiction.

Steve with Roda Ahmed, who produced the Writing Course event and video

If you missed the live event, this is your chance to see and hear it all—in a form you can replay and return to as many times as you wish.

Here again is the link for full details and to sign up:

https://silentwritingretreat.com/steven-pressfield/

For more, join me today at 1:00 PM Pacific for an Instagram Live.

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Scraped!

The first major item in our rebuild process has been completed—Debris Removal.

What this means is the Army Corps of Engineers (or a private removal company if you have insurance) comes to the site of your house with a 30-ton excavator and a crew of half a dozen and basically scrapes the site clean, loads the debris onto trucks, and hauls it away.

Scraped clean

We dug a little through the remains and came up with some pots and a colander … and the blasted remains of my old manual typewriter. These will become mementos for the future.

The emotion? We were with the Army Corps crew for three days. The guys are technically not in the army; they are independent contractors hired for the current catastrophe. We had been warned that they would come in and bulldoze everything, willy-nilly. But they turned out to be great guys. We made friends. We hung around. The crews are working, we learned, 12 hours a day, seven days a week … and there’s work work work still waiting to be done. It’s a bonanza for them.

The first day’s emotion was mainly amazement at how good these dudes were at their job. Just to get the HUGE equipment up our narrow road was incredible. The “chimney topple” was the big moment after that. Then the excavator’s huge steel jaws grabbed the ruins of my 2016 Kia Soul EV, lifted it, shook it like a doll to make all the crap fall out, then set it down gently to be hauled away to the dump.

The next day was when the emotion hit. It’s weird to see the place where you lived for thirty-one years scraped clean down to raw dirt. You did feel, I must say, the sense of a new beginning. We hope the hurdles to come won’t be too high.

I must take my hat off to our guys on site—RTS out of Bakersfield, Tetratech, ECC and the Army Corps. The scale of the fire calamity in L.A. is massive, yet these gentlemen and their cohorts from around the country have made a huge dent in clearing the ruins in just four months. The task is a long way from done, and another long, long way from being restored. But Step One is finally rolling.

The skyline of every street and driveway is silhouetted with the booms and scoops of John Deere, Volvo, Hitachi, Caterpillar, and Komatsu excavators. The shoulders of the highways are lined with haul trucks—independent operators—waiting to be called forward to get their loads. Pacific Coast Highway and Sunset Boulevard (I’m sure it’s the same across town in Altadena, our sister wreckage site) are still one-lane, passes required, with checkpoints manned by the Highway Patrol and the National Guard (almost as many women as men), in camo, with M-4 carbines on slings across their chests.

More to come as the next steps unfold. Thank you, everyone who has pitched in to help keep us afloat. We will never forget it!

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The 3 Brains of an Artist

You and I as artists and writers have to have three brains.

The first is our artist’s brain. That’s the part that writes or sings or dances. The part that invokes the Muse. It’s our “instrument.” It composes the music, bangs out the comedy routines, comes up with the idea for the iPhone or the self-driving taxicab.

The second brain is our anti-Resistance brain. That’s the part of our psyche that has learned how to handle our emotions while we’re using the first brain (above.)

The anti-Resistance brain fights off distraction, overcomes procrastination, continues to work despite self-doubt, fear, laziness, superficiality. It’s our Pro vs Amateur brain. It keeps us moving forward against all odds and adversity.

Then there’s our entrepreneurial brain. I’ve put this third behind the other two but in many ways it’s at least as important.

If we are writers, actors, photographers, filmmakers, we are entrepreneurs. We are in business, and we have to think like businesspeople.

We have to know how to make a deadline, how to conduct ourselves in a meeting with financial people. We have to have a sense of the marketplace. We have to teach ourselves self-sufficiency. We have to be comfortable without an external structure. We have to learn how to trust our instincts when others doubt us or seek to undermine us (or flat-out ignore us.)

We are not hobbyists.

We are not artistes starving in a garret.

We are the Steve Jobs of our own creative enterprise. We have to be our own champion and our own best friend.

Artist = entrepreneur.

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Resistance Recruits Allies

This is the title of a chapter in The War of Art. But let me expand on it here, from recent experience …

Resistance, remember, is that negative, sneaky, brutal, merciless force that you and I wake up with every morning. Its aim is to stop us from doing our work, from becoming the realized individual and artist we were born to be.

All by itself, Resistance is a massive challenge. But Resistance is so diabolical that it can search through our circumstances like some evil form of AI … and add a dimension to its perniciousness.

Resistance recruits allies.

If we are facing any kind of adversity in our lives—a child struggling at school, a health issue in the family, a lost job, a divorce—Resistance will piggyback onto this and use it against us. It will tell us—the voice in our heads—that this exterior headwind is so urgent, so time-consuming, so critical that either we must devote all our time to dealing with it (and thus not do our work), or we must become so demoralized and depressed that we can’t deal with anything at all.

This phenomenon is front-burner stuff for me right now, dealing with the (very real) rebuilding process after losing our home in the California wildfires.

What’s the proper response? First (I’m coming to this realization myself even as we speak), we have to recognize the component of adversity that is Resistance. It’s there. It’s hiding. But it’s real. Fifty percent, maybe more of the intensity of adversity that we feel is almost certainly Resistance.

We have to dismiss it. We have to tell ourselves, “This is bullshit. This is our own self-sabotage. Gear up and fight it.”

At the same time, we have to cut ourselves some slack. If our emotions are on overload over the very real problems we’re facing, we have to take a deep breath and sit ourselves down for a little talk. “Yeah, this feels like hell … but remember, fifty percent of this intensity is just our own Resistance. We can get around this. We can overcome it.”

Again, we must dismiss the element of our issues that are Resistance only. They’re not real. They’re the bully that vanishes as soon as we stand up to it, as soon as we ramp up our commitment to ourselves—no matter how much we don’t want to—and sit down and do our work.

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