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TIME
As I boarded the empty tube carriage, the salmon-pink pages of the Financial Times caught my eye. Not my usual reading matter. But I did a double-take when I saw the header: Creative Business. Turning the pages, I found articles about advertising, computer games, intellectual property, digital media. And creativity. It was a new weekly supplement, devoted entirely to the creative industries. I was engrossed. And as I read, an exciting thought was forming at the back of my mind: If the Financial Times is devoting space to creativity, there must be money in it. And there is. A few years ago, a Work Foundation Report valued the “global market value of industries that rely heavily on creative and cultural inputs” at $1.3 trillion. I decided to go for it and focus 100% percent on servicing creative industries businesses — advertising, television, computer games, design, film, music and so on. It felt like the perfect way to marry my business interests and my work with artists and creatives. But I realised I would need more than coaching skills and enthusiasm. I was going to have to bite the bullet and learn about business. I was fed up feeling like a country bumpkin bamboozled by the big city slickers. Surely it wasn’t rocket science?
I went to the University of Warwick and studied for the MA in Creative and Media Enterprises. This was a different kind of business course — as well as traditional subjects such as strategy, organisation theory, marketing and entrepreneurship, we covered theories of creativity, intellectual property law and the creative economy. While researching a marketing essay, I came across an ebook by Seth Godin, explaining how to build an audience and grow a business by publishing a blog on the internet. As soon as I read it, I knew I had to do this. Instead of interrupting people with cold calls, I could attract them by writing articles. Just like I did in the magazines — except this time, it would be my magazine. On Valentine’s Day 2006 I published my first blog post on my website www.wishfulthinking.co.uk . I’d had the site for two or three years, having written the sales copy myself and paid a designer to make it look professional. But it had generated hardly any visitors and zero clients. The best way to explain what happened next is to show you a chart (from Statcounter ) of my website visitors during 2006.
Now, I’m no statistician, but even I can see the trend here. From practically nothing, my web visitors grew slowly but steadily for several months. Towards the end of the year, things really took off and I was attracting 6,000 visitors a month. And the part of the site that was working the hardest was the part I built myself, using free WordPress software. I experimented with Google Adwords, but stopped when I realised I no longer needed to advertise — because my blog meant I was already on the front page of Google for my chosen keywords. And the clients started to roll in. To begin with, it was private individuals looking for coaching, but towards the end of the year I started getting regular enquiries from creative agencies and studios. The kind of companies I couldn’t get to take my calls a few months ago were now ringing me. The emails started like this: “I’ve been reading your blog for a few months now, and it’s become part of my professional development. So when we needed some training, you were the f irst person I thought of ...” Instead of having to hustle for a meeting, they invited me in. And in the meetings, I didn’t really have to sell. Prospects treated me like a published author. They asked what I would advise. One day I realised my website had become my main source of new business. I found myself in airports, boardrooms, inner sanctums. On international conference calls. Talking to publishersabout book deals. My second taste of success.
But there was a problem with success: there was only one of me. I had to be on stage, in front of clients, in front of audiences, delivering a top performance, every time. I also had to be backstage, dealing with the equipment, the travel, the invoicing, the admin. Fixing the printer, making the coffee, chasing clients for documents, for payments. Meanwhile the e-mail was piling up. The day rate was great — but it wasn’t the real day rate. Things always took longer than I budgeted for — even when I budgeted for things taking longer than I budgeted for. Taking time off felt like throwing money away. I wrote my blog, it brought me work. Great. Then I got busy with clients, and neglected the blog. New business enquiries went quiet. Not so great. I needed a break, but I needed to keep writing the blog to bring in clients. Not to mention dealing with the printer, the e-mail, the invoicing, the travel arrangements... It started to feel like a treadmill. On the one hand, I had everything I’d always wanted — I was getting paid to do what I loved, for clients who loved the work. I was also writing for an enthusiastic audience and seeing my influence grow. On the other hand, I was shattered. I had the money and a kind of freedom, but no time to enjoy it. If I wasn’t careful, my business was going to eat me alive. I had to find a new way of doing things.
Learn from My Mistakes (Part 3)
Success is harder than it looks I’m not talking about achieving success, difficult as that is. I’m talking about dealing with it when it arrives. If you only have a few clients to service, it might not matter that there’s only one of you, and your setup isn’t all that efficient. But when things get busy, the hidden flaws in your system turn into glaring inefficiencies, and you can find yourself running faster and faster, but falling behind. At that point, you need to be prepared to reinvent the whole thing from the bottom up. The wrong business model can crush you A lot of my problems sprang from my business model. But since I didn’t even know what a business model was, I didn’t know how to fix it. In case you’re wondering, a business model is a system for creating value and delivering it to customers. For example, Tower Records and Apple were/are both in the consumer music business, but with very different business models. Tower’s model was built around physical stores selling CDs and vinyl. Apple’s model is built around a seamless system comprising a music player (iPod), software (iTunes) and a virtual online store. The difference between these models is a key reason why iTunes is booming while Tower Records folded. In other words, Apple’s creativity isn’t confined to designing beautiful products — it’s about reinventing the rules of the game.
In my case, I had gone from a private coaching model (selling my time by the hour) to a corporate consulting model (selling my time by the day). But I hit a ceiling due to the fact that there was only one of me and only so many days in the week. So if you’re working too hard for too little reward, it could be time to re-examine your business model. A new model could bring you more money, with less time and effort. And a business that looks less like Tower Records and more like iTunes. Build your own media platform My blog worked on the same principle as my magazine articles — marketing myself by publishing practical advice. Once people had benefited from my advice, they saw the value I offered — and those who wanted to take things further picked up the phone. In one sense, blogging wasn’t as prestigious as appearing in Creative Review or a national newspaper. But blogging had several key advantages over print journals: •Control — As it was my show, I could publish as many articles as I wanted. •Subscription — I offered my readers a free subscription via email or RSS. Within two years, I had 2,000 subscribers — enough to keep me in business. •Search traffic — Blogs attract links from other sites, which to Google is a sign of authority. The more I blogged, the higher up the search rankings I climbed. •Momentum — Links, traffic and subscribers accumulate. When I started, I reached a handful of readers. Now, I reach tens of thousands every month. Not only that, it gave me the satisfaction of knowing that, finally, I was a professional writer. Without a proper job.
Watch out for the final part...
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