A Blog

Competitive Advantage: Artists

June 25, 2010

Read a pretty great post over by Chris Ashworth, “My Competitive Advantage: I Hire Artists”

The gist is that an "artist" as he describes it, is the kind of person who is truly passionate about something. The example provided is that the artist in question turned down a significantly higher salary at a stable job in order to work for the author. Choice quotes:

”[He] is the kind of guy that uses QLab like a musical instrument. I couldn’t keep up with him if I tried. He makes things in QLab I didn’t even know were possible. AND I WROTE IT.”

“But for many (all?) of the best people in the world, money stops mattering once you have enough to not worry about it.”

At least for me, the word “artist” has conotated someone who was tempermental, lazy, and pretentious. And I think that for a large number of so-called “artists” this is true. But I think the true ones are as Chris describes:

“Artists, as a species, are amazing people… Show me a good artist and I will show you a highly educated, highly creative, highly passionate, highly driven human being.”

Written by Scott Williams who lives and works in sunny Phoenix, AZ. Twitter is also a place.