‘Thoughts Become Things’: What I learned from my first 12 months as a creative small business owner.
I stand before you now, a thirty-something suburban professional.?
I am functional. I run errands. I declare several dependents on my taxes and despite the occasional frivolity, I display various external signs of maturity… especially when said dependents are watching.
I’ll admit. During my first 12 months of creative small business ownership at Happy Medium Studio, the question ‘so what have you learned?’ pops into my head, let’s say, bi-monthly. Roughly the 15th and 30th of each month.
But I can never quite put my finger on it. Call it an occupational hazard — or just being busy.
Have you ever heard of ‘gravity’s rainbow’??
Have you ever had something happen to you, but it doesn’t hit you straight away. It will be at 4pm on some idle Tuesday, you’ll just sit up in your chair and click your fingers at the TV like that Leonardo DiCaprio meme. All of a sudden an intuition springs forth, like a direct deposit of the soul.
One of those ideas came to me like this. I compare running a creative business with those cute videos where a grizzly bear befriends a sausage dog or something: just the most unlikely best friends. But weirdly, mutually beneficial to one another.
I’ll nail the business/creative dynamic one of these days, but until then I’ve attempted to unpack — from the deepest recesses of my recent memory — 5 things I learned from my first 12 months as a small business owner and freelance Creative Director.
1.‘Kill the little bitch inside’
Are you ready for this one? Honestly, I wasn’t.?
I’ll give you an example. I used to hate phone calls, part of me still does. I just can’t seem to think on my feet — I feel like my thoughts materialise too slowly and my words lag. I’m much better with the written word.
This is not an endorsement, but one takeaway from Sabri Suby’s book ‘Sell Like Crazy’ was what he called the ‘little bitch inside’.?
‘Kill it’. He said.
I’m not even exaggerating, I had to literally change outfits to make my earliest phone calls. Nice shirts… in brand colours. Just to get in the mindset to get on the phone and call clients and prospects alike.?
Now, look at your phone. Now look at me.?
Nope, I don’t suddenly have magical phone banter. But! I’ve become much more confident to pick up the phone and do business.?
Do the difficult thing, until bravery becomes your normal.
2. Generalist vs. Expert Practitioner
Don’t believe everything you see on Instagram. The same people peddling their so-called expertise and HVCO’s are buying it from someone else or worse, using A.I. In a world full of undifferentiated, middle-of-the-road design agencies, the hardest, but most necessary business decision to make is deciding who you will not serve.?
In the traditional client/agency relationship, the power usually rests with the client — they see all the alternatives to hiring you (such as other generalist freelancers and design agencies) and without a meaningful point of difference, base their decisions on price.
I must have read ‘The Win Without Pitching Manifesto’ about 4.5 times last year. In chapter one, Blair Enns describes positioning as an exercise in relativity. When you position yourself as someone that specialises in a particular area of knowledge or creativity, you drastically reduce any competition to hiring you.
How do you do that?
Choose a focus.
Make a claim of expertise based on that focus.
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Build the skills to deliver that expertise.
Deciding not to decide is a cop-out. When Clients begin to un-see the many generic alternatives to the expert level of craft, knowledge and olympic-level weird ideas you have, the power rests with you.
3. ‘Slow is smooth and smooth is fast’
Everything is collage and everything is a template.?
You’re using your weirdly glib language again Kieran. Could you be more specific??
There’s no such thing as a creative business starter kit, so you piece together what you need bit by bit. But slowly and with purpose.
No-one knows this at the time but chances are, when you’re starting out, you’re eventually going to need service guides, invoice and quote templates, marketing reports, brand guidelines, proposals and on the list goes. Translate and evolve your copywriting from one document to the next, and for god’s sake, use a sensible procedure to name your files and folders!
Setting up studio processes wasn’t just about the customer journey, either. That’s only one side of the coin. I had to ask myself: ‘am I even aware of my own creative process?’. How could I guarantee clients that I could solve their creative problems, each and every time?
The starting point was to unlearn almost everything from my previous roles. All the bad habits.
I decided early on what the low hanging fruit would be. I decided no more rushed campaigns, and no more panicked churn of resized artwork. From now on, I take on a ‘measure twice, cut once’ attitude and adopt longer project timelines to facilitate this. Either that, or I decide to charge more.
4. Know your numbers but trust the pros
Holy crap. Xero. Where do I begin.?
I gave the accounting firm I started with fair warning: you are dealing with someone that is essentially financially iliterate. Any kind of financial forecasting for me was like trying to picture a one-ended stick in my mind. Call it a failure of imagination… one of my myriad failures, but I was hopeless.
Hear me now, believe me later, find someone who can put the microscope on your business finances, so you can focus on your craft. Frequency of measurement is key, check in every quarter and if you can, do your own reconciliation.
Slowly, but surely, I learnt my way around accounting terms like ‘Net Profit Margin’ and things like Single Touch Payroll and Superannuation Clearing House. I actually enjoy it now. Wait, I lied. I just like seeing the little green words ‘PAID’.
5. Everyday wins
Mixing business, creative thinking and present fatherhood can make for, shall we say, a long-ass day. There’s a lot to be done, and some of the time work is only completed in-between wrestling the two-year-old, cradling the little one to sleep or vacuuming the house for the 14th time.
Moving the large rocks is a good metaphor for life in general — but most of the time in your day to day, you just need a few wins to get going. Start with what you can, not just what is urgent.
After all, you are the boss! No-one will do it for you.
Anything to add? Leave a comment below.