Rick Rubin’s bestselling 2023 book, The Creative Act: A Way of Being, comprises 78 meditations on how creatives can simply be—through attention, identity and receptivity. But the nine-time Grammy-winning producer takes a more abstract approach to the grinding practical question that haunts every working creative: Now what?

Adam Leipzig noticed that same gap across books written for creatives.

Leipzig is not a theorist, but rather a film producer, former senior executive at Walt Disney Studios and former president of National Geographic Films. His production, distributor and supervising executive credits include Dead Poets Society, March of the Penguins and Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. In his role mentoring creatives as an instructor at the UC Berkeley Haas School of Business, he’s watched the stellar work of talented artists vanish—primarily, he said, because they didn’t learn to read the systems that would enable their art to thrive.

The Systems Creatives Can’t See Are The Systems That Run Them

Leipzig’s new book, Fearless Persistence, published in April by Culturenomics Media, doesn’t quite reject Rubin’s philosophy, but it’s a necessary complement for those who want a real chance at thriving as a creative.

“We largely live in a creative universe that does not have a map,” said Leipzig in an interview. “And we need a map. There aren't a lot of models for what we do. Many creatives don’t post their maps; they don’t make them very public. That’s the service that this book is trying to accomplish.”

The central argument of Fearless Persistence is straightforward: effort and skill are not limiting factors for most creative people. What stops work from moving through the world and indeed, changing it, is failure to understand the systems that govern how work is seen, valued and sustained.

“We don't understand the system that we're in, and we don't understand the way the system is reading our messages,” Leipzig said. “When we get clarity on that, our work can move forward, and we're able to move forward.”

The author gives two examples: an actor he counseled who couldn’t get cast, and a filmmaker seeking capital. The actor said she felt directors were determining her suitability by reviewing her quality of work and resume. In reality, “the signal they’re looking for is, what’s the unique essence you bring to the table that nobody else can as a performer?” Leipzig said. “That makes you the undeniable choice to be cast in a certain role.”

As for the filmmaker, Leipzig noted that filmmakers often talk about vision and craft, but they don’t often speak the language of financiers. Investors want to know if the vision and craft can deliver profits.

“What does Netflix really care about?” Leipzig asked. “They care about subscriber retention and subscriber growth. So you have to be able to share what you're doing in a way that makes it really clear how it furthers what they need.”

Leipzig’s core argument is that most creatives spend years getting better at their craft while never asking the sharper questions of how to communicate what they create, and to whom, and in what language?

Fearless Persistence is structured in three parts; the first addresses emotional and philosophical terrain—basically, how to exist as a creative without being destroyed by it. Chapters include “How to Talk about Your Life and Work” and “Jealousy from Peers and Friends.”

The second, highly practical section covers collaboration agreements, taxes, budgets, how to scale up work, day jobs, how to test a project’s commercial viability, when to work for free and crowdfunding, among other topics.

The ‘Ten Laws Of Culturenomics’

Leipzig details his “Ten Laws of Culturenomics” in the book’s third section. The laws detail how ideas gain traction and spread through the world. Perhaps the most precarious trek on a creative journey is what Leipzig likens to a bridge—crossing from the act of creation into the vertiginous world of audience, market and commerce.

“The hardest thing for creative people to do is to cross that bridge,” he said. “When we're making our work, we've got to be in our embryonic creative space, whether it's by ourselves or with collaborators. But then you have to open that door, and the cold air rushes in, and you have to walk across the bridge and offer this beautiful piece of your heart into the world.”

Why Promotion Needs Evangelists

Among Leipzig’s Ten Laws of Culturenomics, the fifth law may be the most actionable: “To incite evangelists, there must be a gospel.” The people who spread news and excitement about creative work don’t appear by accident. They, too, need a map—in the form of shareable language that is “memorable and repeatable,” one they can deliver with authentic conviction, Leipzig said. “That becomes our responsibility. And when we do that and do it effectively, we actually create evangelists, and then the work spreads.”

Perhaps the most deceptively simple of the ten laws is number four: “Culture is not given, it is discovered.”

"Culture thrives when it feels personal, like an intimate secret waiting to be shared,” Leipzig writes in his book. “When audiences feel they have found something on their own terms, it ceases to be merely consumed; it is owned, integrated and treasured. This bottom-up dynamic is what gives culture its enduring power.”

He cites the example of jazz in the 1920s: “a product of the people, a symbol of rebellion, freedom, and emotional release.”

What does it take to embody this law? “Humility and a shift in perspective,” Leipzig writes. That translates to creating from “a place of honesty,” and “identifying and expressing one’s true voice, rather than chasing fleeting trends or external expectations.”

Cultivating and furthering such expressions is a matter of what he terms “seeding.” To spark interest in their work, authors might use social media to serialize their stories, or musicians might upload their tracks to smaller platforms.