What Working At Netflix Taught Andrew Balfour About Creativity
Andrew Balfour spent a decade touring in rock bands before stepping away from music for eight years and building a career in technology, advertising, and entertainment. He later spent 15 years working across Netflix, Yahoo, and BrightRoll, where he led creative and production teams inside large companies.
Balfour eventually returned to music as Black Sands, an independent project recognized by the Hollywood Independent Music Awards and the Unsigned Only Music Competition. That return helped form the seven creative rules examined in his first book, The Ten Minute Rule, which Black Sands Studios LLC will publish on October 6, 2026.
Ahead of WMC 2027, we spoke with Balfour about what touring and corporate work taught him, how to protect personal creativity when income depends on output, and why independent publishing gave him the control he had already come to appreciate in music.
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Interview With Andrew Balfour
You spent a decade touring before moving into companies including Netflix and Yahoo. How differently did those environments define productive creative work, and what did each one misunderstand?
Touring taught me to protect conviction. Corporate life taught me how to create the conditions where conviction can survive.
When I was younger and playing in bands, creativity felt intense and almost mystical. You had to be completely committed, and every riff could feel as though it were on trial in a room of five people. If an idea sounded commercial or recognizable, we could dismiss it before understanding what it might become. That environment taught me to defend the work, although we sometimes confused disagreement with seriousness and treated planning as a threat to the art.
I had also absorbed the belief that being uncompromising meant being stubborn and firmly rooted in your own point of view. My corporate career challenged that. At Netflix, I saw talented people working toward the same goal, sharing imperfect first ideas, and allowing someone else to improve them. Collaboration and audience awareness helped the work reach people without removing its original conviction.
Large, successful companies can make the opposite mistake. As there is more to protect, the appetite for risk can shrink, and the qualities that initially attracted people to the work can gradually disappear. Staying creatively honest means retaining the curiosity and willingness to take chances that produced the initial success.
Did your corporate career improve the way you make decisions as Black Sands, or did some of those habits become obstacles once you returned to music?
My corporate career had a positive effect on Black Sands. It taught me that being organized, prepared, and thoughtful about working with people accounts for much of the job. Clear agreements, properly managed splits, fair compensation, and a considered release plan create trust and leave everyone with greater energy for the music.
The habit I have had to monitor is introducing the commercial idea too early in the creative process. During the early days of Black Sands, I was living in Amsterdam and working at Netflix. I was surrounded by stories from Germany, Korea, Spain, and Brazil, alongside colleagues from many countries, and I wanted the music to carry that international perspective.
On early songs, I would imagine how interesting it might be to hear someone speaking Spanish, Portuguese, or Italian. I even made several songs entirely in Spanish, which is a language I do not speak. Some experiments worked well, while others felt as though I were imposing an international concept upon a song that had never called for it. I was considering how a language choice might help us develop an audience in another country before listening closely enough to the song.
The business idea may have looked reasonable on paper, although the creative result was usually better when I allowed the song to establish its own direction. I still enjoy working internationally and incorporating different languages and perspectives into the music. I have learned to listen first, then apply the planning needed to help the finished song reach people.
From a distance, The Ten Minute Rule can look like a productivity book, yet its main argument concerns identity. Why is that distinction important for professional creatives whose income depends on output?
The book began with a direct question. Friends would ask how I balanced a demanding professional career while continuing to find time for music. I thought I was writing a book about beginning, although I eventually realized that time was only the surface of the problem.
I had to be candid about why returning to music mattered and how it connected me with who I had been, who I was, and who I wanted to become. That question can be especially important for professional creatives. You can spend an entire day producing creative work and still feel disconnected from your own creativity.
You can write for clients, build campaigns, produce content, or help other artists bring their work to an audience while the part of your practice driven by curiosity and personal meaning gradually receives less attention.
When your income depends on output, every idea can begin carrying a deadline, an audience, or a commercial expectation. The Ten Minute Rule protects a small period in which the work can exist before it has to earn anything. You can play, write, experiment, or follow a feeling without knowing where it will lead.
That time helped me rebuild my relationship with music after losing it. Increased output followed, although the greater change was recognizing myself as a musician again.
The industry already tells artists to work harder and post more often. How is your book meant to resist that message?
The industry often combines creating, releasing, and posting into one continuous demand, although they are separate types of work. Making a song asks something different from finishing a record, and each activity differs from feeding a social platform.
I have always told my teams that quality and volume are not equal. Regular effort is important, as is making enough attempts to develop your abilities. Every attempt does not need to become public material.
Some ideas need privacy, while others need time to remain unfinished. Some periods of work serve primarily to maintain your connection with the practice, even when nothing from that day is released.
The Ten Minute Rule creates a protected window. You do not owe the algorithm a finished song when it ends, nor do you need a post, a monetizable asset, or proof that you were productive. Some days, those ten minutes will lead to work you share. On others, they may simply remind you why you wanted to make music.
Artists already face considerable pressure to remain visible. I wanted to offer a method that protects the curiosity, enjoyment, and personal connection that allow public work to continue.
You are publishing the book via Black Sands Studios LLC. What did releasing independent music teach you about bringing a book to market on your own terms?
Music taught me to understand the complete process from creation and distribution to everything that follows a release. Access to music distribution is relatively open now, although persuading people to listen remains difficult. Over time, ownership and speed became areas in which I felt confident.
I entered publishing without the same depth of experience. Several friends asked whether I would seek a traditional publisher, although I kept returning to how important it had been in music to understand the process myself. I wanted to learn how the book was edited, designed, manufactured, distributed, and promoted, even if that meant moving slowly or making mistakes.
Independent publishing never meant completing every task alone. Augusto Paiva created the visual language and helped develop the book as a physical object, while David Baum’s photography added a human element. Matt Demazza improved the writing, and my wife Ling and a group of trusted early readers helped me understand which ideas connected and where I needed further explanation. I retained control of the concept, and their contributions improved the book.
The physical edition was important to me. The ideas were designed to be absorbed quickly, although I wanted readers to keep the book on a desk or coffee table, revisit it, and recommend it to a friend. That led us to pay close attention to the paper, photography, typography, foil, and smaller production details.
I care a great deal about the outcome, and I have also stopped treating the process as something I need to tolerate before seeing the result. I appreciated making the book, including the difficult portions, and I want to do it again.
What do you want someone working in music to change the morning after finishing The Ten Minute Rule?
I would ask them to define why music matters to them beneath the deadlines, release plans, audience metrics, and daily industry demands. People working in music may already spend each day creating, producing, promoting, or helping other people reach an audience. That does not mean the part of the practice belonging to them receives enough attention.
I lost contact with mine and had to find my way back. Returning meant challenging my belief that planning would make the work less creative and that every idea had to prove itself immediately.
“River Soul” is one example from the book. The song failed my initial assessment, and I played it for people I suspected would reject it. They did. I could have treated those reactions as proof that the idea had nowhere to go, although I continued working on it, released it, and watched it connect with listeners.
The lesson was never that every unfinished idea deserves release. I learned how little we can know about an idea before giving it time to develop. My collaborators still surprise me with the demos they respond to, since something that sounds incomplete to me can give them space for a lyric, melody, or feeling I would not have found alone.
The morning after finishing the book, find the part of music that still feels personal and give it attention. Reopen an unfinished demo, play without recording, or write something without a release plan. Protect the reason you came to music before professional demands replace it.
