What Does It Really Take? Part II
This week we explore another three traits important to develop before starting your own creative studio.
The goal of stepping out on your own and working purely for yourself is one of those golden chalice accomplishments that most creative professionals strive for at some point in their careers. Taking that step requires the development of certain traits, skills, and a mental attitude that is poised for success.
In part 1 of this article, I went over several traits that I’ve found important in the 13 years I’ve been working for myself. In this article, we cover a few more.
One caveat, the experience of going freelance or starting a studio is different for each person, and as such, my view of what’s important is based on my experiences and could be very different than someone else’s. Yet, perspective is a bit like beauty — it’s often in the eye of the beholder. It’s always good to widen out and get the clearest picture of a given situation before making a decision of this magnitude. So, read about other people’s journeys. There are a lot out there. Yes, read wide and read well. Starting your studio is a life-changing decision.
As always, I’ll be as candid as possible. I have little to no shame when it comes to sharing the good and the bad.
Networking
I had to start with this one. In part 1 I mentioned that starting our studio, Shop, was my third attempt at getting a studio off the ground. The first two attempts were abysmal failures, and in hindsight, much of that came from me not having worked on a network of any type. Not having a network is one of the things that I was doing absolutely wrong. And I paid for it with having to have to start over...twice.
You need a network.
I’m not beating around the bush on that one. It’s plain and simple. If you want to start a business, you need clients. They absolutely will not just show up, and even if you do manage to bring a few clients with you, they will eventually leave and you’ll need to know where else to start sourcing work from. Your network can, literally, make or break your company, and it will if you don’t develop a resource that provides a solid source of leads.
I throw out a questionable statistic to my college students in which I claim that probably 80% of the work they will receive throughout their career will come through people they know (i.e. their network). While no study has been conducted to substantiate that number, I do know from my own experience and the experiences of other freelancers and studio owners I’ve talked to that most of the work we are approached about during our careers will come either directly from our network connections or someone related to our network. Cash can’t be king if there are no customers to give you the cash. Focus on building a network. But how do we do it?
I do know that…most of the work we are approached on during our careers will come either directly from our network connections or someone related to our network.
I have an upcoming article that goes into depth about building a network, but the quick of it is to get out there and meet people. Go to networking and industry events. Talk to people as you meet them in your daily life. Do whatever you need to do, but make connections.
One of the biggest mistakes new creative professionals make is to assume that their networking efforts should be focused primarily on other creative professionals. While these connections are good for helping answer questions that are industry-related, most of the time other creatives simply don’t need your services. They’re creative professionals.
The people you need in your network exist in other professions. The lawyers, the cement companies, the coffee bistros, the hummus makers, and the poncho companies. These are the folks who can’t do the creative work themselves, so they need someone (read, you) to do it for them. Stack your deck deep with these kinds of connections and you will start to get work. You will also have learned from my mistakes.
Selling
This skill, along with networking are, in my mind, the two most important determinants of success and longevity in business. This was also something I did not understand in my first two studio-building attempts — another huge mistake. My lack of focus on selling does make a bit of sense, though, too.
If you’re like me and come from a corporate or studio environment, then selling your work is going to be a strange concept. Until now, you’ve most likely had all your work handed to you. There’s nothing wrong with that, but that work you’ve traditionally been given was the result of some type of sales cycle or process. Someone, other than you, handled that process. They developed the client, sold them services, and closed the deal. Then, that work entered the pipeline and eventually made its way to you. You won’t have that available to you when you start your studio. So, you need to learn how to sell.
You’ll find that being the top dog of your own little creative Mecca means that sales are solely your responsibility. To land work for you (and eventually others), you need to do it…
If you hate the idea of selling, then the rest of this section is going to leave a very sour feeling in your stomach. The simple fact is that all projects are landed because of a sales process. It might not start as a formal process, maybe just a couple of conversations to land a job, but that’s a sales process nonetheless.
You’ll find that being the top dog of your own little creative Mecca means that sales are solely your responsibility. To land work for you (and eventually others), you need to do it, you need to do it well, and you need to do it daily. So, make peace with the sales process, learn about it, embrace it, and make it work for you. How?
The first hurdle to understanding how to sell your work is knowing what it is you do. Two crucial aspects to figuring this out are:
1. Being clear on what services or products you offer.
It makes no sense to even start talking to people about purchasing your work if you are unsure of what it is you want to provide. Are you a videographer, a graphic designer, a digital marketer? And once you have that sorted, what services will you offer under that role? If you are a designer will you offer UI design and user experience services? What about print design? What about logos? What about web or app development? Clearly outline your offerings so you know what you need to talk about.
2. Being able to talk about what you offer and why it is beneficial to others.
It’s essential to learn to talk about your services convincingly. Your goal is to engender trust in other people so they will want to work with you. Building trust with clients takes time. But trust is what you must have to sway people to your side. Knowing what you are selling and being able to talk about those services convincingly are key first steps to building trust and winning clients.
Remember, clients are putting hundreds and most likely thousands of dollars into your hands. It’s not a gift. It means that they trust that you will do the work they need to be done, at the agreed-upon price, and within the agreed-upon timeframe.
As creative professionals, we are in the service industry, which leads us to our third, and final, point for this newsletter.
A Service Mindset
If you’ve worked in the creative professions at all you know that we’re an odd bunch. Quality and professionalism run the gamut from amazing to exceptionally poor. I talk to clients all the time who are rightfully mad at the designer or agency they were working with because they paid them money and got, in their mind little to nothing in return. The phone calls and emails were scarce, the agency employees were rude, and the results from their work were less than hoped for. Keeping quality and professionalism at high levels requires adherence to standards and that requires a certain mindset that many agencies just don’t have.
I strongly urge you to develop a service mindset. It’s a frame of mind that recognizes that what we do is to help people. We assist them to create something they can’t create on their own. They have a problem, most often related to communicating to potential or existing clients, but don’t have the breadth of communication skills (visual and otherwise) to execute their messaging. They need real help.
Developing a service mindset isn’t easy. It requires lowliness of mind — a quality of putting others before ourselves. Let’s face it, humility is not a standard we encounter many times from the people we encounter daily, let alone from many of our contemporaries.
We work in an industry of self-appointed rock stars. Too many times, creative professionals get caught up in their egos, awards, and press. This profession has many of the trappings of other high-profile careers, like the movie or music industry. The fact that we are mixing art and commerce to visually communicate ideas is something unique, and of value. This work can result in visual communication that changes the state of things — something to be celebrated.
Developing a service mindset isn’t easy. It requires lowliness of mind — a quality of putting others before ourselves.
There is potential genius hiding in the details of every creative brief we work on, and we’ve been given the ability to see it and extricate it — bringing it to the surface for everyone to enjoy. Because of this, some of us are celebrated for our vision and the things we create. This can be a problem if we start to believe the hype and lose sight of what our purpose is.
Having a service mindset is simply about helping others to do something they cannot do without our assistance. Yet, we must remain humble enough to realize that without the client there wouldn’t be a problem to solve. We work for them.
The fact that I have a profitable studio to work at every day is not because I’m a rockstar. I’m absolutely not that. It’s because our clients know we are there to get things done. To support them. To move the needle. We are role players in support of others. The moment you start to think that your clients are the lucky ones to be working with you, you’ve lost the battle.
So, there you go. Three more mindsets it’s important to develop as you head off on your own and create magic. The two lists presented in parts 1 and 2 are by no means complete, but they are culled from a much longer list that I hope will one day be a part of a nice little book of my experiences. We’ll see how that goes.
Until next week...