In Real Artists Don’t Starve, Jeff Goins tells the story of a young Michelangelo’s conversation with a stranger that would change the trajectory of his life forever.

One day, while sculpting the face of a fawn out of a chunk of marble, a teenage Michelangelo was interrupted by a smartly-dressed gentleman curious of his creation.

Michelangelo made mention the sculpture was to be an elderly fawn, to which the stranger suggested that he should be missing a few teeth.

When the stranger returned the very next day, he saw that Michelangelo had taken his advice and chiseled away a few of the fawn’s pearly whites.

As fate would have hit, the stranger was none other than Lorenzo de Medici, the richest man in all of Florence and arguably the most notable living art patron of the era, financing the works of artists the likes of Leonardo da Vinci.

Medici was so impressed with this brief interaction with Michelangelo, that he hired him to do a series of commissions in the Medici Palace, which functioned as springboard for the burgeoning artists career.

Creatives need patrons. Without them, they can’t survive.

Van Gogh’s patron was his little brother, Theo, who not only encouraged him to become a painter but financed much of his work.

Albrecht Dürer’s patron was the Holy Roman emperor Maximilian I, who commissioned such vast sums of art that he had to purchase a separate residence just to house his ever-growing collection.

Charles Bukowski’s patron was John Martin, who believed in the problematic writer’s talent and potential to such a degree, that he built an entire publishing house around him and paid him a salary to quit his job at the post office and focus his attention on writing full-time.

Unfortunately, today’s creatives have been conditioned to believe their vocations are financed not through patrons but followers.

Because of this, they spend their lives focusing on growing a following of thousands of people (and bots disguised as people) rather than earning the love, respect and appreciation of a handful of highly-impactful patrons.

The reason Michelangelo became Michelangelo, wasn’t because he sought out to impress all of Florence. The reason Michelangelo became Michelangelo, was because he managed to impress just one person, the right person, Lorenzo de Medici.

By Cole Schafer.

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