In any business, your reputation and the impression that you make plays a major part in the success of your career. Being well-respected and taken seriously as a creative will, in time, open doors and lead to work that will get your ideas and creations (whatever they may be) to a wider audience and generate income as well. However building your reputation takes time and conscious effort. Below are a few things you can do to begin building your all-important reputation as a creative.
1. Develop quality material
It should go without saying – but I’m saying it anyway – that you should be actively working on your creative craft. Coming up with consistently good ideas and results of any kind takes lots of practice. Don’t let the myth that “all you need is one good idea” distract you from working on improving your work every day. I’m of the belief that creativity is a muscle requires constant exercise in order to stay strong.
2. Present your ideas professionally
Whether it’s is fair or not, you’ve only got one chance to make a first impression with your work. Even though, strictly speaking, a good idea is a good idea, the way you present that idea counts. Creative industry professionals are exposed to a lot of ideas every day. Don’t give them a reason to discount yours by pitching a poorly prepared concept. Remember, you’re running a business and you need to make sure your product (in this case, your creativity) is polished and marks you as a pro.
3. Develop your people skills
I think it’s important to remember that your ideas don’t exist in a vacuum. Your best bet for finding a receptive industry audience for your work is to remember that interpersonal skills count. Being friendly and taking an active interest in the people you’re meeting makes a big difference. For example, if you’ve got a meeting with someone in the creative industry, do a little homework and find out about the person and their company. Take the time to get to know someone before you begin asking them to do something for you. This can also be as simple as asking the person you’re meeting with what they’ve been working on instead of immediately telling them about you and your projects. And, although I’m not your mom (I don’t think…), I’m going to remind you say “thank you” when someone has taken the time to meet with you and/or answer your questions.
4. Take criticism well
Creativity is subjective. Everyone has their own sense of what they like and what they’re looking for. If you’re hoping to get one of your ideas or projects accepted, then listening to the comments of an industry decision maker about your work can give you real insight into what they’re looking for. Responding defensively to these comments won’t get you anywhere. You certainly don’t have to agree with every comment or critique but it’s in your best interest to give them real thought and consider the source. Remember, these are the people who make the decisions about whether your creations will be put in the position to succeed. Pay attention and see if there’s a way to give them what they’re looking for without feeling like you’re compromising your creative approach. I believe it’s possible to do both.
5. When pitching your work, remember that “less is more” on every level
I understand how passionate creatives are about their projects. It’s incredibly tempting to want to show any interested person A LOT of your material. Don’t. Only present the idea or project that is most appropriate for the pitch. There’s no good reason to add a “bonus idea.” Believe me when I tell you that if an industry exec wants to know more about your work, they’ll ask. Here’s an example, if at the end of their work day, an industry decision maker sees two portfolios, and one has one concept/project in it and the other has nineteen concepts/projects in it, which portfolio do you think they’re going to review? Also, once you’ve submitted your idea, be prepared to follow up. Again, less is more. A very brief email or voicemail about two weeks after your submission is just about right. You might need to do this a couple of times (with at least a two week space between each successive contact) before you get a response. However, if you’re polite and to the point, you’ll almost always get a reply eventually.
6. Be dependable
It’s essential for people in the industry to know that they can count on you to do what you say you’re going to do. By showing up to meetings on time, following up on things you’ve discussed and generally being reliable, you can go a long way towards developing a bond of trust. When people on the creative industry side feel they can trust you, it’s amazing how many opportunities present themselves. It sounds simple but by consistently delivering on what you promise, you’ll stand out from the crowd.
Conclusion
There’s really no way around it. Building a solid reputation as a creative takes time and effort. That being said, a healthy dose of patience and humility will ease your path. The good news is that once you’ve established yourself in the eyes of the creative world as a solid, reliable professional, the benefits far outweigh all of the work it takes to get there.
Find out more about my creativity & innovation workshops for business teams.
I’d like to begin by saying that I’m not a cynic. On the contrary, I’m a big believer that if your dream is to have success with your creative endeavors, then, in time, you will find that success. However, I am also a realist. There are rarely shortcuts in our line of work and being a gifted creatively, in my experience, simply isn’t enough to guarantee your success. It takes a combination of factors including patience, perseverance and, most importantly, an undeniable work ethic to rise above the masses of talented creatives all hoping to get their ideas out into the world.
If I’ve learned anything after living in Nashville and New York City over the past almost twenty years, it’s that at a certain point, creative talent is the least common denominator. In fact, the pool of gifted creatives is deeper and wider than we can possibly imagine. This is a good thing. It gives us ample opportunities to learn from each other and improve but the flip side is that talent is only a starting point. It’s all of the other things you do that will eventually separate you from the pack.
There’s a reason talent is also referred to as a “gift.” The spark that makes us creative and intuitively wired is something that we don’t choose, we just have it. But just because you’ve got a gift doesn’t mean that you don’t need to develop it or spend time understanding it. That’s the actual work. Then, what happens when you do this work is that you will develop the ability to turn something that was previously mysterious and unpredictable into something you can do consistently in order to make your living.
Being a talented creative without taking the time to understand the business world is the equivalent of a company that makes a great product that no one will ever hear about because they have no marketing department. In other words, your creative output is just the tip of the iceberg. You need to remember that like any business, you’ve got to know the landscape, who the major players are and set specific goals along the way in order to get to the next level. I’m not saying this is easy but I am saying it’s essential.
The dangerous myth about the creative world is that it’s an exciting, inspiring place where people have brilliant ideas, create beautiful things, go to parties, and then one day they wake up and they’re well known. The gritty, unglamorous truth is that just like any business, there are mundane, yet necessary, things you have to do day in and day out in order to get your creative projects out into the world. Having a solid work ethic and a willingness to get up every day and work toward your creative goals will eventually get you there. It’s not always clear along the way how these little things help but believe me when I tell you that they absolutely do and, in the end, make all the difference. There is, of course, glamor and excitement in the creative world but there’s a lot of good, old-fashioned work for you to do as well.
Conclusion
Creative talent is a wonderful thing and should never be taken for granted. I’m here to remind you to enjoy your gift for the amazing thing that it is. However, I’m also suggesting that talent is only one part of a bigger set of conditions that need to be met in order for you to successfully get your ideas and creative projects out into the world and to make a living doing it.
Find out more about my creativity & innovation workshops for business teams.
Learning to write songs as a way of exploring and solving problems has the additional – and powerful – benefit of providing you with a set of critical skills for facing problems you haven’t yet anticipated. In essence, the more we open ourselves up to the creativity that songwriting introduces into in our lives and work, the more we’ll be future-proofing our problem-solving approach. Below are four ways that learning to write songs will help us with any and all issues that can – and undoubtedly will – arise in the future.
The ability to think laterally
Problem-solving approaches are infinite but it’s also human nature to rely on one particular approach which has served us well in the past. The problem is that as brokerage houses are fond of saying, “past results are no guarantee of future success.” Using songwriting to explore different ways of looking at the same problem can open up a variety of solutions that a prior “go to” approach might not reveal. Instead of thinking in our accustomed linear way, learning to write songs encourages lateral thinking which will allow us consider alternate approaches and paradigms in service of a novel solution to a novel problem.
Enhanced communication skills
Songwriting is one of the oldest and most effective forms of communication that humanity has. There’s a good reason that songs have lasted this long. They are a miraculously compact and meaningful way to communicate an idea. When it comes to solving problems, communication is a key factor in how a problem is not only described but also in how possible answers to your questions are presented. The better our ability to communicate, the greater the likelihood of convincing others to join us in our search for a solution.
Better collaboration
The use of co-writing to create a song better than any one of the individual writers could have written on their own is a direct mirror of how effective collaboration works in a business context. Bringing in diverse experiences and points of view and allowing each participant to contribute their particular set of strengths to the effort increases by an order of magnitude the likelihood of a solving a future problem that lacks the precedent of an easy or familiar solution.
A willingness to take risks
When a business team steps out of their comfort zone to learn a new skill like writing a song, they are clearly taking a risk. This risk takes the form of vulnerability, the loss of control and the introduction of a certain amount of chaos into a well-ordered and productive routine. However, when my business teams complete their songwriting assignments and end up with a finished song just an hour or so after they’ve begun, it serves as a reminder that the reward on the other side of risk can be exhilarating. Signing on to solve an unknown problem can feel equally risky but the positive experience that a successful songwriting session brings provides an increased willingness to face the challenge – and risk – of solving a new problem.
Conclusion
The creativity, empathy, improved communication and collaborative skills that learning to write songs brings are a set of versatile and powerful tools. These tools work both for solving current “known” problems and, more importantly, they will work for future “unknown” problems where past solutions no longer apply.
-Cliff
Find out more about my creativity & innovation workshops for business teams.