The Key to Creative Success
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It’s a truism that success takes a long time. But I can also remember the day my fortunes changed — right down to the very moment. I was at home in my flat, having just put the phone down. I’d been cold-calling for months, working my way through a list of strangers’ phone numbers, trying to reach decision-makers. I’d had plenty of meetings, but no new business to show for it. But the call I’d just finished wasn’t a cold call. The previous month, I’d travelled half the length of England, for a meeting with the HR Director of a large company. She requested a proposal for a pilot seminar, with the aim of rolling out an extensive programme. I’d spent several days writing the proposal. But when I rang to discuss it she was unavailable. I rang several more times. Finally the phone was picked up by a PA who reluctantly put me through to one of the director’s colleagues. She seemed outraged that I expected a response. “We’ll be in touch if we need anything else from you,” she snapped, and hung up. I felt humiliated. At that moment, I realised I could have any excuse I wanted for giving up.
No one would blame me. My business partners knew how tough it was. Ditto my family and friends. I was pretty well guaranteed sympathy if I admitted failure. But I didn’t want excuses, sympathy, or failure. I wanted success. So I promised myself I would do whatever it took to make this business work. I stopped asking myself whether I was wasting my time, and whether it was possible. Instead, I started asking myself how I could make it happen. I read everything I could about the corporate sales process. I developed a thicker skin for rejection. And one day, I walked out of a meeting into the sunshine and rang my business partners — to tell them I had closed a deal. In this case, the pilot actually happened. And it actually led to an extended programme that brought in more money than all my previous clients put together. A few months into the programme, I asked my client what had made him choose us. “Well, it took several months for us to decide,” he said, “and you were the only guy who kept calling me all the way through. So it seemed only fair to give you a chance.” In other words, what had separated me from the competition was persistence. I may have been better than my competitors, but he had no way of knowing that for sure. And as we’ve seen, I was clueless about marketing so I was following the surgerywithout-an-anaesthetic approach — cold calling. And as I later discovered, the consulting business model would prove to be unsustainable for me.
So in spite of having no marketing strategy, no sales experience and the wrong business model, I succeeded — through sheer persistence and a willingness to learn along the way. And that persistence came from the decision I made at my lowest ebb, when instead of giving up, I chose to commit. At that moment, I tipped the scales in my favour. You’ve probably realised by now that there’s no magic bullet, no magic formula, no foolproof system that leads to success. And no infallible guru to tell you what to do. The real magic happens inside, in your mind and heart. Only you can commit to making your dream happen, whatever obstacles stand in your way. Only you can turn that key. There’s also more to success than commitment. The creative part of ‘creative success’ is about learning from your mistakes, finding new options and trying them out in practice. Varying your approach until you get the results you want. If you want to know more about that kind of creativity, follow me through the lookingglass.
Through the Looking Glass
It won’t surprise you to learn I was a dreamer as a child. I read endless books of fantastic adventures set in strange lands. I dreamed of going through the looking-glass. I never thought it would happen for real. Especially not when I had finally grown-up, committed to joining the real world and set my mind to running a business. But an odd thing happened when I published my first blog post. I crossed the threshold into a new world, through the looking-glass of my laptop screen. A world where, a few moments after hitting the ‘publish’ button, I could see readers reading my words, and discussing them. A world where I found a global audience for my writing. And it wasn’t just online. I started going to coffee mornings and social media meetups, to meet complete strangers and people I’d already ‘met’ online. Each time I went to one of these events, it felt like we’d beamed down from the Starship Enterprise. At a time when most of my friends were moving out of London, settling down and having kids, my social network was exploding. It was hard to explain my new world to my old friends. They told me it was ‘antisocial’ to spend all that time on the internet.
As I acclimatised to this strange new world, I realised there were people earning a very good living in the looking-glass world. Some were like me, generating leads for their offline business. They went online to find clients, then delivered products or services in ‘real life’. Others ran purely digital businesses, sitting at home with their laptops, selling software, ebooks, training courses and consultations via Skype. And then there were the artists, creating work in their studio (or studio flat) and selling it across the globe. As the New York Times put it, ‘Suddenly, the world is their market.’ Like John T. Unger . John uses industrial welding equipment to create ornamental fire bowls and sculptures out of recycled propane tanks, and a laptop to find customers. Or painter and illustrator Natasha Wescoat , who markets her artwork online, not only to sell directly, but also for mainstream media exposure and agency connections. Or artist and author Hugh MacLeod . When Hugh worked in Manhattan as a copywriter he got into the habit of doodling on the back of business cards while sitting at the bar. The format stuck, and became the basis of his blog Gaping Void way back in 2001. Hugh gives his cartoons away, on his blog and in his daily cartoon newsletter — and sells limited-edition prints to his fans. He’s also used his blog to become the best-selling author of Ignore Everybody and 39 Other Keys to Creativity . Whatever the business, artists and creatives have an edge in the looking-glass world.
Like me, a lot of people had evidently cottoned on to the fact that advertising wasn’t the best way to find customers online. Instead, they were attracting attention using free blog articles, ebooks, podcasts, images, cool designs and nifty little software applications. This is known as content marketing. In a nutshell, it means creating and giving away original media content that doesn’t look like advertising — but functions like advertising. For example, Matthew Inman creates hysterically funny cartoons and gives them away for free on his website The Oatmeal . And because they are so cool and funny, lots of people show them to their friends, via Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites. When you visit his site, he offers to send you more cartoons for free. What’s not to like? As a result, Matthew builds a big mailing list. He also has a shop on his website, selling posters and mugs of his cartoons. And he has a book out soon. Not every visitor or subscriber will become a customer — but enough do to create a nice income stream. So Matthew gets to be a professional cartoonist, his website visitors get a good laugh for free, and his loyal customers are even more thrilled with their purchases. Win-win-win. Not only that, but people like me, with audiences of our own, start doing his marketing for him, by linking to his website and recommending his stuff. Is Matthew highly creative? Yes. Is he generous? Yes. Does he have a smart business strategy? You bet. Even when Matthew gives away his cartoons for free, he’s not really giving them away for free. They bring visitors to his website and subscribers to his mailing lists. In a nutshell, he’s giving his work away in return for attention. Now that he has an audience, he’s in a strong position to sell products, services or whatever else he wants. Matthew’s success illustrates one of the central paradoxes of internet marketing: the less your media content looks like advertising, the more effective it will be as advertising. If he had started a website that was nothing more than an advert for his books and posters, how much traffic do you think he would get? Not much. But because he is (a) giving away something genuinely valuable and (b) making it easy for others to copy and share it, he’s created a business that virtually markets itself. Welcome to the future. And it doesn’t just apply to artwork. Whatever the business you’re in, content marketing can give you an edge. My own coaching business is just one example. Remember Hugh MacLeod? Before he started selling prints of his cartoons, he made a nice living using content marketing to sell Savile Row suits , South African Wine , a Scottish feature film and enterprise software . So content marketing is one of the biggest trends in internet marketing. And the experts at creating original media content are the artists and creatives. Which means artists and creatives have an unfair advantage at internet marketing. But there’s more to it than uploading some pictures to a blog and hanging out on Twitter. Content marketing involves strategy as well as creativity. And the more I looked into content marketing, the more attention I paid to the work of Brian Clark.
An Improbable Partnership
Brian Clark is a writer and entrepreneur based in Texas. Tony Clark (no relation) is an illustrator, animator and programmer in North Carolina. I’ve never met either of them in person, but we were business partners for over two years. Here’s how it happened. Brian started a blog called Copyblogger in early 2006, almost exactly the same time as I started my Wishful Thinking blog. He got my attention (and subscription) the moment I saw the original tagline for Copyblogger: How to sell with blogs and RSS. At that time, the idea of using blogs to sell things was heresy in the touchy-feely culture of the blogosphere. But for someone like me, looking to build a business, Brian’s advice on copywriting and content marketing was pure gold. And I wasn’t the only one. I was pleased with my audience of a couple of thousand blog subscribers and the business it brought me, but that was nothing to the success of Copyblogger. Within a year, Brian had over 10,000 subscribers, and by the time we started working together, it had climbed to 50,000. (Today, Copyblogger’s subscriber count is 140,000.)
Then one Sunday morning I looked myself in the mirror and thought, “Well, they aren’t mind readers. If you want to work with them, you’ll need to ask them.” So I wrote them an email outlining my vision of an online course for creative people, and asking whether they’d be interested in collaborating. I thought I’d have to wait several days for a reply, but later that Sunday afternoon I saw an email from Brian, beginning: “In a word, absolutely.” Next day we were talking on Skype, and within a week it was a done deal. Lateral Action was born. We launched the site as a blog, using a series of animated videos scripted by Brian and brought to life by Tony. I got to be the voice of Jack, the young creative hero. It felt like I was working for Pixar — except this was my own company. I had to pinch myself. My job was to be the ‘front man’, writing the blog to build our audience. As I blogged in consultation with Brian, I learned how content marketing really works, and to replicate the success of my ebook on a more consistent basis. It had taken two years to reach 2,000 subscribers at Wishful Thinking. Lateral Action passed that total within days. And it finally got me off the treadmill of charging for my time. Because we were selling e-learning courses, the only limit on our income was the number of units we could sell. It felt strange but exciting to create something once, then earn more by selling multiple copies. As if I had been released from gravity.
Why Become a Creative Entrepreneur?
What triggered my ‘release from gravity’ was shifting from a freelancer, working for hire on client projects, to a creative entrepreneur, developing my own products and selling them via my own media platform (the blog). This table shows how freedom, money and time play out for employees, freelancers and creative entrepreneurs.
Now it won’t have escaped your notice that although it looks more fun (and profitable) to be a creative entrepreneur instead of an employee, entrepreneurship is traditionally seen as a riskier option. There’s no ceiling on your income — but there’s no floor either! So if you’re an employee, I’m not advocating a blind leap of faith, ditching your job to ‘go it alone’ as an entrepreneur. Many creative entrepreneurs start building their empire in their spare time , only quitting their jobs once the business is earning good money. If you’re a freelancer or consultant I’d invite you to take a good look at the right-hand column. Because — unless you’re an exceptional freelancer who attracts so many clients you can cherry-pick the best ones — the middle column can be the worst of both worlds: •Many freelancers say leaving their job and taking on clients felt like exchanging one boss for several bosses. •Like the employee, there’s a ceiling on your income. Like the entrepreneur, there’s no floor. •Unlike the employee, you don’t get paid holidays. Unlike the entrepreneur, when you stop working, you stop earning. You don’t need to abandon your clients or your day job to get started as an entrepreneur. I love working with clients — but I’m also building a business where they aren’t my only source of income. It’s not a black-and-white choice. And don’t get hung up on the word ‘entrepreneur’. I know it sounds flashy and corporate, but in the original French it just means ‘someone who undertakes something’. Someone who makes things happen. Someone who commits.
Read also
The Key to Creative Success Part1
The Key to Creative Success Part 2
The Key to Creative Success Part 3
Footnotes:
1. The cover image is copyright Joan Vincent Cantó and
licensed from istockphoto.com
2. Full licensing terms: http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/uk/
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