How to build a creative studio inside your brand. Part 2 - Doing it right.

If you haven't already, for context, read part 1 about how not to do it.

As a business we have learned so much since v1 of our studio, we are now on to v4 and we learned the hard way, so you don't have the pain.

If you haven't checked out Zuper, do it now!

Here are the top tips to think about whether you are a startup, scaleup or established brand:

Vision and north star - We spent a long time thinking not having a plan was the problem. So we created a plan! Boom, nope. Every day the plan was rendered useless by something; the news, culture, bad ideas, good ideas, learning, data and so much more. So the plan didn't work and no-plan didn't work. The actual solution was in the middle, to have a clear vision and north star and work towards that, guard rails in place to keep everything on track and a very clear definition of what we, as a group wanted from our creative output.

Pirates - You can't build a creative studio from nothing without having a pirate mindset. I use pirates very specifically because pirates had a different perspective on hierarchy, worked in well aligned groups and not only rejected the norms, they reinvented them. All characteristics that need to be in the people you hire and trained into everyone within the business. If you don't have a group of pirates who will hustle in every way, failure will be your friend.

Empowerment - In Part 1, I talked about leadership, it's important for sure. What we learned though is that there is no secret sauce to leadership, every stake holders has to be able to provide leadership. What is more important is empowerment, endowment and the structure to allow a group of people to lead, follow and work together to drive forward. We have an open structure in our studio with one person who acts as a guide and everyone else is empowered to make the right choices within the guidelines.

Block the Jon - This is very specific to our business, but there is a Jon in every business. And yes, it does refer to me, but in this instance, I am going to use it as a metaphor. The Jon is the biases we all carry with us, whether you are really experienced or new to it all, we all come with biases about how things, could and should be done. These need to be dropped, these need to be acknowledged and broken down as a group. And yes, in this case, removing the Jon was actually a good idea!

Expectations - We all love to overestimate our abilities and underestimate how much time something takes. I am an expert at this! Moving things in-house makes people think two things; super fast and free, neither of these are true!! Setting expectations and having a culture of ability to push back is key, nothing in this world is free or happens at a speed that isn't possible. After a few cycles of output, you will get the rhythm right, but everybody who joins the team needs to know the rhythm.

Opinions are like a-holes - Don't really need to say this, but going to anyway. Every single person will have an opinion, none of them are right or wrong. You friends, family, customers, investors, random people on the street will have an opinion. We have to listen, but we don't have to; take offence, action everything (or anything), fight back, get down, get happy.. You get the idea.

Iteration is your friend - Humans are imperfect, creativity is imperfect, your brand is imperfect. The first thing you do will suck, the second thing you do will suck, actually, maybe a lot of what you will do will suck. That's ok, iteration is your friend and if you can ignore the opinions, you will get better and find the sweet spot. As Marc Randolph said last night about Netflix, they went from a test every 6 months, to monthly, to weekly, to daily, to 3 tests a day. What they found was that a good idea executed badly was still a good idea and bad ideas died quickly. Don't be afraid of ideas, good or bad.

So there we go; have kind of a plan, hire and train pirates, remove the Jon, set expectations, ignore opinions (mostly), have bad ideas and good ones.

Thoughts, opinions (ha), ideas, anything to add?

Next post will be about creating a brand in an ever changing world. Coming next week.

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