The Five Most Effective Ways I’ve Learned to Get Creative Work I Love
Martin Gomez
Creative Director, Founder
Working Creative
INTRODUCTION
The big idea behind Working Creative is that by creating a practice out of what you love doing and then hiring yourself, you’ll never be out of work again.
I know that sounds like “If you find yourself drowning, build a boat, stupid.”
But it’s more like, “Become un-drownable”.
I’ve always felt like I had a truly charmed career. My friends would call it outright luck. “Gomez falls backwards into opportunities” is a good one and “Gomez gets fired into promotions” is unfortunately another one I get more than I’d like.
But they’re true.
Straight out of college I lucked into a job I would hold for ten years as web designer in the music industry (an absolute dream for a lifelong music nerd).
After that, I had the opportunity to build my own agency, staff it with people I loved and when it came time, sell the whole thing to someone else.
I’ve worked incredible dream gigs - to this day I still can’t believe I was hired to rebrand an NHL hockey team (of which I’m a super-fan).
However, just as quickly as opportunities would blow into my life, the winds would change.
The economy would shift and downsize the company, the great visionary that hired me would resign and the org’s focus would veer away from their creative vision, or the hockey team rebrand dream gig would suffer the unfortunate timing of starting 14 months before a global pandemic.
But whenever I was between longer commitment gigs (jobs) I always had work of some kind or another.
Since my days of designing ugly business cards as a student, I always had a safety net of freelance work. And reflecting on it now, the most creative work, the most exciting brands, and the clients that I was most excited for were always those freelance gigs.
To be clear, I’m not about to sell you a transcendental lifestyle of yogi minimalism that’s supported by one project a year. I live the kind of privileged life of home renovations, family trips and trendy meals tailor-made for Instagram Stories. And here’s the thing: I’ve found myself laid off, sort of fired, legit fired and many times wondering how I was going to pay for my trendy meals. But I always made it happen.
How have I been so lucky?
I decided to look back on the things I got right. (They’re nestled there amongst the vast backdrop of things I got wrong.) Specifically, what are the real gems that made a huge impact on my career/life?
Working Creative is the project born from that question.
I’ve come up with the following:
Understanding (and riding) sales cycles
Creating genuine connections
Making every interaction a preview
Over-communicating the process
Show-and-telling everyone
Effective Thing #1
EFFECTIVE THING #1
Understanding (and Riding) Sales Cycles
I remember sitting down for a beer with a client after launching a large website my agency had designed for him. I had a singular goal of getting more work out of him and I think he could sense it.
Unfortunately, he kicked off the first round by making it clear he had no budget for anything else but that he had enjoyed working with me and I was first on his list for anything new.
This beer had come at the end of a long few days of cold-calling studios for freelance work and I was drained. I dropped the ruse and blurted “How do I get more work when no one has any to give?”
He asked me if I knew what a sales cycle was.
“Yes,” I lied.
Detecting the lie, he explained it this way.
“Imagine all the people in the world. Now out of all those people, imagine just the people that need new websites” he said with his hands out like he was measuring a fish.
“Ok, so out of those people, the amount of people that are actually aware of it… is this many” (Very small fish.)
Bringing his hands closer, “Of those people, these people are ready to move on it.”
I could see where this was going and wanted another beer.
His hands practically touching now, he said “And this is how many people are ready and actively looking for a solution”
We sat there, me frowning, him looking like he was going to dive into a small pool, and I let out, “So how do I target those people?” gesturing at the sliver of daylight between his palms.
He dropped his hands, polished off his beer and said “You can’t. You gotta market to everyone.”
I didn’t know it at the time but this afternoon of unsuccessfully plying a client with beers would come back to me at least once a week for the rest of my career.
The science is this, you can’t know when someone will need to hire you.* You need to make sure that the “whole fish” is always aware that you are a top tier creative ready for work and enthusiastic to talk about it.
*Sure there’s RFPs and job boards etc.. but that’s when everyone knows someone needs to hire.
100 People
The Horrible Math
Here’s the rough, completely baseless, numbers version of the fish:
You gotta pitch 100 people to get 10 replies (sad but true and it gets worse)
5 aren’t ready to move but really like you**
3 will take a meeting with you but the project won’t happen
1 will randomly ghost
And 1 out of a 100 becomes a rewarding, profitable, relationship (possibly for life)
Math will help you deduce that pitching a thousand people will get you 10 clients and you’re set, right?
Right. But it’s also not as depressing as it sounds.
Strategies for pitching and cold-calling are more nuanced than I’ll lay out here but for now, let’s look at one simple way to broadly tend to the whole group.
** These folks randomly reappear and often are the best clients
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Be A Presence
With the variety of social networks available now it’s never been easier to constantly keep people aware that you exist. The operative word in that sentence being “constantly”. You’d be surprised how someone can say “Gee, I can’t wait to someday work with this creative” and completely forget about you by the time that day comes.
Being a ghost on platforms like Linkedin and Instagram is leaving money on the table.
But since we’re all not content factories - and the whole reason we’re here is that we don’t have a lot of work to share - you’re going to have to get creative with how you stay a presence.
[Hard swallow] Let’s talk about Linkedin.
I’ve had so much success with Linkedin but even I can’t browse it for more than 10 minutes without feeling nauseous from second-hand embarrassment. I know that’s awful to say but it’s because everyone is trying to be a presence without much to share.
Try this instead:
If you don’t have new work to share, share older work that you deeply care about. Share what you learned working on it. People love this, and all work is new to someone. Just don’t keep dusting off the same trophy every month.
Share someone else’s work. Pump someone else’s tires and be clear about what you love about it. Maybe even try to sound like you know what you’re talking about. This energy is infectious (Spoiler: More on this later)
Like, comment and support the people that are doing great work and inspire you. Most important people in your life don’t realize how much they mean to you. Give them the juice on socials and their post will get more traction and as a bonus, your juicy comment goes along for the ride. Call your mother while you’re at it.
Your goal shouldn’t be to have one legendary viral post or to say something so clever people drop everything and contact you directly. Think of how you feel when you browse Linkedin - everyone feels like that.
Your goal should be to subconsciously build up positive sentiment with your name. So that when you reach out to someone, or a contact recommends you, your name is already familiar. When you’re one of a thousand creatives after one opportunity, “vaguely familiar” is a massive edge.
The Takeaway
You have to blip on peoples’ radars often without being annoying. When the time comes for finding that perfect creative, if you’ve blipped just right, they’ll think “I know exactly who to call for this”.
Don’t be discouraged by how long this takes. Don’t take the ghosting personally. Keep your chin up. Don’t be gross on Linkedin. Let’s get this bread, player.
Ok - But How Do I Get Work I Love?
When I was young and tireless, I would cold-call everyone on Linkedin and never hear back from anyone. I never truly understood why that was happening until I got a job where I received daily cold-calls and I didn’t reply to any of them.
When I was creative director at the Ottawa Senators, the pitches were constant. I started to grade them on how lazy and un-personal they were. (If you ever come across a template for optimized cold-call messages, stay away.)
Now I shouldn’t say I didn’t reply to anyone. Out of 100, I’d say I replied to a couple where I sensed this was a real person, or someone I might know, that deserved the basic decency of a reply.
By the way, it’s not that I was a snob, it’s just we weren’t even close to hiring (remember the fish).
So how can you be one of the few without knowing someone? You’re going to have to be a bit of a detective but it’s possible.
If you want to work with a specific company, target your actions to a few people related to the work you do.
Try connecting with the heads of creative depts and a few lower down the chain. The lower they are, the more likely they will respond to you.
When you do connect, keep it brief but clear what you’re looking for, and understand that potentially they get twenty of these unsolicited connections a week.
For this reason, any name you can drop is useful. A sneaky step is to first reach out to people asking who is the best person to contact. Once someone tells you who, you can contact the person they recommended with an opener saying “John Smith suggested you were the person to contact”
As long as you’re honest and don’t try to pass yourself off as John’s childhood friend, it can be an effective way to at least momentarily stall someone from auto-deleting your message.
Keep it cool. Don’t be desperate. Think about it - you don’t want to be hired by companies that hire strangers. So your goal should be to grow your list of contacts and then be a presence among them. It’ll happen.
KEEP READING
KEEP READING
Now that you’re everything, everywhere, all at once, you’ll need to learn how not to be a slimy, sales-monster with:
EFFECTIVE THING #2
Creating Genuine Connections