Tips for building a successful creative career
1. Ensure that there is a market for your talent or vocation
After many years working in the industry, I decided to set up a creative agency that would bring together the three areas of communication I had experience in: advertising, internal communications, and corporate communications. The idea was to align all of a company’s communication activities under a single strategy, rather than leaving them in their traditional silos.
Several CEOs understood the concept and hired us. Whenever the boss was present, all the departments behaved as if they were lifelong best friends. But the moment they looked out of the window, they slipped straight back into their old ways: sealed off from one another, uncoordinated and pulling in different directions. It took a great deal of frustration and a fair few stalled projects before I finally admitted defeat.
On paper, combining my different skills made perfect sense. In practice, however, there simply wasn’t a real market for that particular fusion.
2. Deciding on your first clients —or employers— is crucial
On another occasion, I managed to persuade a multinational agency to send me to the United States. I accepted the first office they offered me in Chicago. Later, when I tried to move to a more cutting-edge office, all my potential employers were put off.
I discovered that having worked in the pleasant, well-mannered Midwest was not the best calling card in the US market if you wanted to be associated with edgy work. They expected to see New York, Los Angeles or Miami on my CV. Ultimately, I took a pay cut and a step-down in seniority just to be able to work on the kind of campaigns I had always dreamed of.
The same thing happens with your first clients. Good clients allow you to produce good work, and that work attracts more good clients who value and pay properly for quality.
The reverse is also true. Mediocre work tends to attract more mediocre clients.
Those early decisions –your first roles and accounts– are crucial in any creative career or business.
3. You can’t be a good creative professional without self‑knowledge
Full of enthusiasm, I said yes again. This time to taking responsibility for a team of creatives within a communications group.
On my first day, however, I was handed a list of redundancies to manage. I spent the first week knee-deep in financial dilemmas and client complaints. By the end of the first month, I was hovering around the creative department, offering unsolicited opinions on strategies, visuals, and headlines. After a year, I was practically begging to be allowed into meetings, just to feel close to the ideas again.
I don’t think I was a great leader for that company. Since then, I have refused management roles that would completely remove me from the world of ideas.
I’ve learnt that I’m more of an idea hunter-gatherer than a farmer. I’m happier roaming around, sniffing out concepts, than ploughing the same field over and over again.
4. Just because you work for yourself doesn't mean you have more freedom
“I’ll be my own boss. I’ll decide when to take holidays. I’ll protect my weekends. I’ll turn down bad clients”. I have made all of these promises to myself at various points in my career as an independent freelancer.
But the reality is that when you run your own studio, you’re like a dancing bear, a gypsy playing the flute, and a clown passing round the hat all at once. Being self-employed doesn’t necessarily make you freer than being an employee. You’ve simply chosen a different set of obligations.
5. Never put off building your own brand as a creative professional
My passion for client work has ofter taken precedence over my own personal branding and self-promotion. Yes, I’ve written books, given talks, appeared in the press and on radio and television, and developed online courses. However, these have always been secondary activities, not my main focus. There has been no particular planning or strategy involved. I have simply done these things in my spare time, during quiet periods, or because I didn’t know how to say no.
Without fail, every promotional effort has brought me new clients, original projects, or fascinating collaborators. Each one has helped me to understand myself better, learn new skills, and explore different professional disciplines.
However, the downside of not having a deliberate, consistent promotional strategy is that my personal brand has ended up rather scattered. Many clients and collaborators are surprised to learn that I have worked on political campaigns, have experience in front of and behind the camera, and feel entirely at ease on stage. Because they didn’t know about these aspects of my work, they never considered me for creative projects that would have made me very happy.
Your first client should always be yourself.
