The doorbell rings and you rush downstairs, leaping over the dog and crashing through the hallway. You fumble with the lock but manage to get the door open in time. He’s walking away, you yell after him, “Jeff, how’s it going?” “Good Steve, nice out today,” Jeff the FedEx guy replies. “So, uh, did you see the game last night?” you reply. “Yep, we’re looking good. I think this is our year!” Jeff says. “Gotta run buddy, full truck today,” Jeff shouts as he jumps back into his truck. You wave sadly, forgetting the cookies you’d baked for him as you slowly close the door.
Sound familiar? Yeah, you may need to put on pants and get outside.
Here’s what we’ll cover:
- • Building relationships by getting out there and networking
- • Building an audience by sharing your story
- • Building bridges by connecting with other creatives and mentors
- • Building collaborations by working with vendors, partners, and collaborators
Avoid Isolation
The creative life can get lonely. Even if you don’t work from home, we tend to be hunched over a laptop or sketchpad most of our day. You can start to feel like a hermit. Even if you work in a busy office or have a vibrant social life, you can still feel isolated if you’re not around others who have similar jobs. We need to vent and commiserate over industry jargon and client horror stories. Branching out to connect with others can go a long way in bolstering your love of your work.
Lisa Kanarek has a wonderful blog called workingnaked.net which captures the highs and lows of working solo. For many people, the appeal of working in pajamas is a perk of the job; as is avoiding unnecessary commutes and office politics. The downside is that you’re on your own, a lot, and unless you’re friends with other people who have done or are doing the same thing, you are going to feel isolated.
Preparing yourself for the solo mindset is one of the hardest parts of the job. There is no way to practice for it and after a few weeks or months, it hits you that it’s not quite the land of complete, pants-free freedom you’d envisioned. Working alone means you can do whatever you want, whenever you want. That’s the appeal for many of us. But it also means you can do whatever you want, whenever you want; no one is going to tell you when to stop or when to start. One of the biggest mistakes made when people start out is a lack of boundaries. You squeeze in a couple of extra hours here and there. You skip the gym to make that deadline since you’re not getting out of the house that day. Before you know it, you’ve gained twenty pounds, and you only own t-shirts and sandals. Independence is awesome, there is no doubt about it. But you have to understand that it’s easy to forget you’re running a business when no one is watching.
You’ll probably find your greatest sense of community with others who do exactly what you do. Often, they are your competitors. Our industry was built on sharing and collaboration, and you can be a part of continuing that tradition. So don’t be afraid to take a shower, put on pants, and get out there with the other creatives!
Build Relationships
Find Your Tribe
Networking will help you build your tribe. Going to conferences, meet-ups, being active on Twitter, and just staying connected will help you find the people that you will carry along throughout your career. Think of collaborations in the film industry: Martin Scorcese and Leonardo DiCaprio, Tim Burton and Johnny Depp, Christopher Guest and his gang dating back to Spinal Tap. It’s just as common in music, theater, art, and so on. Once you find people that you trust and enjoy working with, you will carry them with you no matter where you go.
I found my first tribe in 2008 at the first Creative Freelancer Conference, which is now a part of HOW Design Live. There I met eight other young designers, at varying stages in their careers but all still sorting out what the hell to do, and we immediately bonded over breakfast. As we spent the next several days together eating, drinking, and sharing ideas, we found common bonds that carried far beyond Chicago. Relationships formed that transcended geography and industry to create lasting bonds that still hold up today. When a referral, recommendation, or congratulations are needed—we’re still there for each other.
“Find a group of people who challenge and inspire you … Spend a lot of time with them, and it will change your life … Listen, say yes, live in the moment, make sure you play with people who have your back, make big choices early and often. You never know what is around the corner unless you peek. Hold someone’s hand while you do it. You will feel less scared. You can’t do this alone. Besides, it is much more fun to succeed and fail with other people. You can blame them when things go wrong.”
Amy Poehler, Harvard Class Day Address, 20111
That tribe morphed into another in my hometown of Atlanta. I attended a few events with our local Atlanta Web Design Group meet-up and got to know a few people who just happened to sit next to me or be next in line at the bar. Over time, the bonds formed with about a dozen core colleagues that I still carry today. One of them is my current business partner and one of my closest friends. My staff, my vendors, my clients, and my office location were all driven by the bonds formed with my tribe. When business has been down, I’ve turned to my tribe first for referrals and freelance work. When business has been too much to handle, I’ve turned first to my tribe to find vendors and freelance help.
Your connections make you necessary. When people are excited about your work and what you’re doing, regardless of what it may be, it’s because they’re excited about your involvement—they’re excited about you. After you, your network is the most valuable asset of your business.
“Go find your team and get to work.”
Leslie Knope2
How to Meet People and Ask Them for Things
Connecting with a complete stranger—whether it’s a prospect, industry pro you admire, respected local professional, or your personal hero—is terrifying. What will they say? Will they publish my letter online and write a scathing “how dare he!” takedown of my naive request? Or if you were to call them, would they scream at you and hang up the phone, proclaiming that you’ll never work in this town again! Admit it, I’m not being hyperbolic, this has gone through your head. The truth is you’ll either be ignored, acknowledged, accepted, or embraced. Any of the four can happen, and the outcome is out of your control. Some people are welcoming and generous, some are busy yet understanding, some are simply too busy to be bothered, and some are a bit full of themselves.
What you can control, however, is how you talk to them and ask them for things.
Be brief
You don’t have to dance around or give every reason and justification. The most important thing is to make sure you’re asking the right person. Find out if they can make the decision to help you and that they’ll be able to help. If it’s an email or social media connection invite, keep it short. It’s an unsolicited message from a stranger, so they’re not going to read the whole thing.
Be specific
Be very up front on what you’re asking for, e.g. “I want to work with you” or “I’d like to ask for your help with X” or “I truly admire your work and I’d like some mentorship.” The vague request to “pick their brain” or “get to know them” is going to either be ignored or met with an “I’m too busy” response. If possible, ask for something to which they can respond with a simple “yes” or “no.” Ask to meet for coffee for thirty minutes on X date at Y time, ask for a fifteen-minute phone call on X date at Y time, or ask to meet them before or after an event you are both attending. Don’t be vague and say words like “sometime”, “whenever,” or “if it fits your schedule.” Don’t be afraid to tell them point-blank how they can help you.
Use your elevator pitch
You need to state who you are and what you do; they may look you up later, but it needs to be in the conversation or message. Keep it to two sentences and try to denote any connections you have such as shared acquaintances, brands you’ve both worked with, proximity, or same school attended.
Be positive
Be the kind of person with whom others want to talk. You should commiserate with other creatives over horrible client stories, but make it fun. Don’t be a downer, be the magnet. People should be in a better mood after talking to you than they were before.
Turn awkward into awesome
Since you’re a creative, you’re probably a little quirky. You aren’t the type to fall into line and do what everyone else is doing. Embrace your awkward quirkiness and use it to your advantage. When you meet people, don’t feel like you have to talk about the weather or economy. You can start the conversation with quirky statements like “do you think the bar in this place has good whiskey? Because I need whiskey to get through what’s left of today.” Feel free to use that one, it’s my go-to.
Do your research and connect beforehand
If the event you’re going to has a list of attendees, “stalk” a few before you go. Just use your pre-research/stalking for good. When you meet someone or email them, quickly state that you admired a recent blog post, that you saw them speak at an event, or that you enjoyed a particular aspect of a recent design project. If you know a bit about a person, it’s easier to make a connection. Follow them on Twitter or send them a LinkedIn request before the event and mention that you’ll both be there and you’d like to connect. Taking the initiative to set up a conversation can help you skip the small talk and get straight to talking shop.
Embrace serendipitous encounters
You never know who you’re sitting next to at the bar. Striking up a conversation and sharing what you do could result in your next great adventure. I just met a young woman who was stocking towels at a resort. She would have casual conversations with guests about what they do and how their day was going. A particular guest noticed how hard she worked and how pleasant she was. After finding out about her creative background, he offered her a job on the spot. She could continue working from home and at the resort while building a creative career. If she hadn’t been prepared to talk about her pursuits, that job never would have happened.
The Art of Coffee Meetings
The ultimate networking wet fish handshake is “let’s grab coffee sometime.” The coffee meeting is often the most unproductive meeting in the world, doing nothing for anyone involved other than the $2 tip the barista got from each of you. However, it’s unbelievably powerful if you put your back into it and use them for good. Likewise, if you’ve reached out to that complete stranger and gotten them to commit to coffee, you can make it worth their time.
“The coffee meeting is the Swiss Army knife of networking. It’s a low-risk way to meet new people, swap advice, and lay the foundation for a more substantial relationship.”
Sean Blanda3
The coffee meeting is the most common way to form relationships with referral partners, potential clients, and colleagues. Here’s a few tips on getting the most out of them.
Do your homework. Only meet with people you’ve researched. If you’ve scheduled a meeting, spending forty-five minutes learning everything about each other means you have to have at least a second meeting to get anywhere. Do your research on their background and current endeavors and start the conversation by asking “tell me more about what you do” instead of “tell me about what you do.” That way you can spend your time together on specific actions and asks.
Pay. If you made the invite then you should offer to pay. You’re not putting the person in debt to you, it’s just common courtesy.
Be early. Starting the meeting in a rush is never a good idea. You’re going to a coffee shop, which is a place where some creatives spend their entire work day. Getting there early and getting some work done isn’t a stretch.
End on time. If the conversation is going great, stop five minutes before the agreed upon time (typically thirty minutes or an hour) and ask your guest if they need to wrap up since the scheduled time is coming to an end. I set a vibrate alarm on my phone to go off five minutes before; you don’t want to be looking at your watch while the other person is talking. If they decide to continue, and you can do so as well with your schedule, then it’s okay.
Mentorship
Mentorship, the concept of having a wise old soul show you the ropes and take you through a montage, is dead. Likewise, the idea of being the next executive in waiting or replacing your boss after she retires is dead. It used to be normal for people to work at one company for their entire career or at least for decades. Now, it’s expected that people will stick with a particular job for no more than two or three years. In fact, people under thirty-five who are in the same job for ten years are now considered abnormal. The idea of being mentored by someone a generation older than you isn’t even possible for most creatives since only a handful of people were in creative business a generation ago. Mentorship now falls to people who are further along than you, but they may be younger and less experienced in life as a whole. It’s likely you look up to, and would love to learn from, someone who is in reality your peer. Getting them to guide you is typically something they welcome, as long as you ask the right way.
They may not accept your invite or may never respond at all. They may reply that they’ll be glad to connect online and stay in touch. They may agree to a brief call for a few minutes. Make the most of what they give you by being sincere with your ask. If they do accept the meeting, they have already agreed to provide assistance and give you a part of their day, so make it as easy for them by making it the best meeting possible.
Finding the right mentor
- • Speakers. If someone is taking the time to share their knowledge with strangers, they’re more likely to share it with friends. If you can build a relationship with conference speakers you enjoy, they could be an excellent resource for mentorship.
- • Community leaders. Your mentor doesn’t have to be a creative, but they should be in a leadership role. It doesn’t mean they head up a company of thousands, just that they’ve taken the initiative to engage with the community.
- • Educators. If they can teach a classroom, they can teach you as well.
- • They’re successful. I would rather have advice from someone who’s doing well than someone who is failing.
- • They have a clear interest in you. Sometimes a relationship becomes a mentor-ship without intention. If someone who is further along in their career takes the time to answer your questions and chat with you regularly, you may be forming a mentorship organically. You should ask to make it formal and let them know you intend to learn from them.
Build an Audience
Building a website and printing business cards isn’t enough; you have to connect with other creatives and engage. If you build it, they won’t necessarily come. Even if your website and portfolio are amazing, you have to share them with industry publications or on social media for people to hear about them. No one goes to Google and types in “awesome graphic designer” and has your hidden website pop up. I’ve met many talented creatives over the years of whom no one has ever heard. I’ve also met some pretty average creatives that were very famous. The difference between the two is exposure. The more people know about you, the more people will see your work. The quality of the work isn’t always as important as the personality of the individual. It sounds simple, but so many creatives neglect to sell themselves.
I believe one of the biggest reasons people aren’t promoting themselves is that they feel it’s “pushy.” They don’t want to seem like attention addicts. That feeling doesn’t go away. If you don’t have some reservations about self-promotion, you’re probably narcissistic. But you can overcome your fear of self-promotion and build a valuable audience.
Gain Exposure
When you’re selling good creative work and have a solid process worth sharing, you’re not taking advantage of people; you’re making their lives better. You’re helping your clients stay in business so that they can provide for their families. You’re making things easier or more enjoyable to use. You are making the world a better place, even if you’re designing direct mail pieces for used car lots. By bringing a professional attitude to creative work, you’re making it more valuable. If you have something to add to the conversation, then you’re doing the creative community a disservice by keeping your mouth shut. You are helping people by giving them your knowledge and perspective. You have something unique to say, and others would like to hear it.
Getting to a place where self-promotion feels right can be done with a simple change in mindset. Don’t look at it as promotion. Look at it as evidence of your value. To put it another way, it’s not about fame, it’s about traction. Traction means that you have clearly identifiable momentum and progress. You’re going places. When people see that you’re headed in the right direction, they’re more likely to work with you. No one wants to climb aboard a sinking ship. Those who have an audience and recognition are perceived as being in demand. Thus, the more traction you have, the more likely you’ll find clients and get to keep working.
Get Social
The lowest-cost and lowest-friction way to build an audience is through online networking and social media. Leverage the tools on the web to connect with people across the world who share your interests. It’s not about posting every waking moment of your life or twenty selfies a day. It’s about showing who you are and what you do.
You don’t have to have a separate presence for your “personal” network and your “professional” network. You can create an online persona if you like or keep certain networks to only friends.
- • Facebook and Twitter are best suited for two-way conversations. You connect with your audience on a more personal level and share thoughts and images throughout the day. You may share what you’re working on or what you find interesting.
- • LinkedIn is better suited for one-way conversations where you share content periodically and engage in limited bursts within groups.
- • Pinterest and Instagram are visually oriented, so they’re more about showing off your work and your process. You can engage with your audience through comments, contests, and giveaways.
- • Chat apps and real-time connection tools such as Snapchat, Periscope, and whatever else is hot right now allow you to open up your life to your audience. You can talk to them in real time and allow them to see who you are and how you work.
Tips on better use of social media with your audience
- • Quality over quantity. Focus on building the right audience for your goals. If you’re an illustrator who would like to work with more magazines, then you should target your social efforts in the magazine publishing industry. Follow editors, art directors, and other illustrators.
- • Don’t try to be everywhere. Pick the platforms that are right for you and focus your energy there. You can have a presence across all major networks, but find the one that makes sense for your clientele and do it with excellence. If you’re a highly visual creative, look at Instagram as your place to work. I’ve noticed hand lettering and illustration are huge on Instagram and certain creatives have hundreds of thousands of followers. Needless to say, if they’re selling their work or speaking at events, they’ve got quite the reach.
- • Engage your audience. Don’t just post out things for people to consume, actually interact with your audience. Create members-only groups or private email lists. Hold Q&A sessions or meet up with people in chat channels. Let your audience know when you’ll be at an event and plan real-life meet and greet time.
- • Go with your audience’s pace. Don’t post everything, but don’t let yourself be forgotten. If you’re process-oriented, then show your works in progress. If your work is more suited to showing off your finished product, then build a posting schedule that makes sense for when your audience is online. You’ll have to track your performance to see when people engage. Tools like Buffer and HootSuite can give you powerful data on when social posts are successful.
Share Your Process
Keeping your ideas to yourself means you’re robbing the world of your contributions. You never know if what you’re doing is exactly what someone else has been trying to do for years. By writing a tutorial or simply posting a video of you working through your creative process, you may be educating the next great creative.
You don’t have to create forty-hour tutorial programs or a video blog. But you can take snapshots of work in progress, add your thinking to your case studies, and share the challenges you face as you work through projects. For digital creatives, Dribbble and Behance have become great places to show your work as it progresses and get feedback along the way.
Those who teach often have the largest audiences. Chris Spooner and Chris Coyier, no relation, have built massive audiences through teaching. They both do great work, but they aren’t standing out because of their finished products. They stand out because they constantly teach. They open up their processes to those on the web and engage with their audiences regularly.
Tell Your Stories
People love to hear your story and find common ground. If you’re a single mom photographer, you’ll be amazed when you find other single mom photographers who want to connect with you and talk shop. The stories behind the work are often more fascinating than the finished product. It’s why art museums are far more enjoyable than simply looking at the work in a book. When you hear from someone who knows the struggle behind the work, or even the artist herself, you have a newfound appreciation of the art.
It’s up to you to join your creative community. We’re lucky to live in the time of Twitter. You can connect with your heroes and icons throughout the world and, if funds allow, go to conferences and meet them. Even if you live in a remote town with no other creatives nearby, you can build thriving relationships with others who share your struggles and victories.
Build Bridges
Professional Associations
There’s no VA or Masonic Temple for creatives, but there are still a lot of ways to join the club in person and online. Groups like the AIGA, Graphic Artists Guild, ASJA, CHI, and others are actual clubs for people with particular job skills. From holding regular meetings and lectures from industry professionals to hosting portfolio shows and workshops, they can provide multiple outings in a given month to get you in conversation with your colleagues. These associations are also your advocates with government and industry officials when it comes to your rights and needs. They’re perfect for mentoring, finding interns or employees, fostering partnerships, and sharing war stories.
Community Organizations
Local Chambers of Commerce are where small business owners connect. Here you will find prospective clients, competition, partners, and drinking buddies. Some people may end up holding more than one of those titles. The best way to get a return on a Chamber membership is to attend networking events regularly and become known. Don’t be afraid to connect with people regardless of their profession, you never know to whom they may be able to refer you.
Invest your time and money wisely
Professional associations cost money, typically an annual fee of a few hundred dollars plus per-event costs, so you have to choose carefully. They also take up time. You can’t get heavily involved in more than three organizations, and two is probably the realistic limit. Ideally you should choose one professional guild or association for your craft and one for business development such as a Chamber or open networking group.
Organizational leadership
Volunteering for board positions and event committees can pay off. Get plugged into the organization and look for ways to help. Joining and then showing up to random events to stand in the corner is a waste of your time and money. When you’re visible as a leader in your community, it immediately increases your perceived thought leadership among your peers. I’m an owner of the Atlanta Web Design Group where we have thousands of members and our own event space. The visibility and credibility that come from my involvement with speakers and community leaders have done wonders for my business.
Conferences
Attending conferences is one of the best parts of being a creative. I’ve had years of experience working with trade shows and professional conferences for non-creative industries and I can tell you that creatives are unparalleled in putting on praise-worthy events. While the typical insurance or sales conference in Vegas can certainly end in life-altering debauchery (and tattoos), creative conferences are the right kind of fun. Sure, a lot of us are huge nerds and weren’t exactly kicking off the fast dance at prom, but getting together over drinks and talking about design theory or the latest Medium post can be surprisingly cool.
Some of my dearest friends are conference pals. There are people who live in my own city whom I’d never met until we both attended a conference on the other side of the country. Seeing your colleagues and competitors outside of the office can change your perception of them drastically. The camaraderie that comes from breaking bread together away from the office is special. Most conferences you’ll attend will be for your skill, such as a design conference or a photography workshop, so you’re naturally going to be around your competition. Making friends with them is one of the best things you can do for your career: more on that in a bit.
Getting the most out of conferences
Getting the most out of a conference goes far beyond attending the talks and workshops. While you’re there to learn, the real connections happen at after parties, around the lunch tables, and going out to dinner with your new-found friends. Seeing a new city with new people is a sure-fire way to get out of your routine and find a new sense of adventure. You don’t have to go wild or do anything uncomfortable, it may just be going to a nearby restaurant to take over a corner and chat late into the night. You’ll hate yourself for a few minutes when you have to get up for the next day’s sessions, but you’ll be glad for the connections made.
Conferences are a great way to find mentors as well. Standing around after they’ve given a lecture in your hometown to briefly speak with them is great, but they’re there for one purpose: to give their talk. You’re between them and their hotel room where they can call their family, grab a drink, and catch up on emails. Meeting someone you admire at a conference means meeting them out of their element. They have to eat, drink, and decompress. If you’re able to join them for that downtime, you’re no longer an admiring person looking up to them, you’re a peer joining them for a bite.
Choosing wisely
Conferences can be expensive, so it’s important to choose wisely and ask others about conferences that they’ve enjoyed in the past. You don’t have to attend the big ones that everyone goes to. In fact, I tend to enjoy the events with fewer than 500 attendees. Try to target new prospects in cities where your conference will be held, or meet with your existing clients already there, and schedule meetings or lunch with them. There will be times when you really can’t afford to go to a conference, but you know you need it. It’s a business expense and it’s part of your growth; it’s worth foregoing a purchase or taking on a little extra work to make a good conference experience happen. I’ve never regretted making that call. We actually budget for conferences in our shop rate calculation.
Non-creative conferences
Attending conferences for your vertical market, such as a healthcare or construction conference, is a great way to network with prospects. You can go so far as to buy a space and set up a booth. There’s value if you have a product or service that you can quickly discuss with people on the conference floor, but the expense may be better utilized in buying a few key prospects dinner or drinks over the course of the conference. This requires pre-research and contacting the prospect to find out if you can connect, but if you’re there at their industry conference to learn, it certainly says a great deal to your prospect about your commitment to their industry. It’s worth a shot.
Public Speaking
If you’re an introvert but you want to attend events, a solution is arranging to be the speaker. There’s a difference between introversion and shyness. You may be more comfortable on a stage rather than having small talk with a few people you’ve just met. When you’re the speaker, people approach you, and there’s a ready-made topic of conversation. Presenting your ideas to a small group of peers in your office is an excellent way to develop your skills and form relationships.
Thought Leadership
Speaking at conferences will move you closer to thought leadership. When you’ve been selected by organizers to share your idea, you’ve been given a vote of confidence by your peers. Other creatives want to learn from those willing to share their ideas, process, and lessons learned. You don’t have to come up with your own original idea or some earth-shattering process. And you most certainly don’t have to have clients of a certain size or be in charge of a big company. Some of the best talks I’ve ever heard have been from young, solo creatives without a single client I’ve ever heard of. The key is being open and willing to share, preparing as best as you can, and making yourself available after your talk to connect with anyone interested.
The best speakers are those who are truly there to share something. Putting the time and effort in to get a talk right can equal a full two weeks of client work. You will sacrifice free time and income to prepare. Speaking isn’t easy, but it’s well worth the effort. Check out recommended resources on developing your speaking practice on the book website.
Build Collaborations
At times, you will have to work with creatives who diminish the quality of your work, drive you insane, or ruin the entire project. Instead of being forced to work with others who aren’t at your level, you can build your own network of collaborators that you bring to all of your projects.
It makes you better
Psychologist Kevin Dunbar studied the workings of four prominent microbiology laboratories for insights into how new theories are developed. What he found was that the majority of creative insights and great discoveries actually occurred during regularly scheduled lab meetings, where individual researchers revealed their latest findings and shared their most difficult setbacks.4
Sometimes simply talking about your work with others will help you find new solutions and ideas. By breaking the cycle of isolation and deep thinking, you can spark creativity. Where these conversations happen is up to you. a you’re solo, you have to seek out events and group settings. If you’re part of a team, you have to foster a culture of collaboration by sharing your work in progress. If you’re the leader, then you should open your books and show your work in progress as well.
Making Friends With Your Competition
There’s more than enough work to go around. Even if you’re in a small market with only a few businesses, you aren’t limited to your potential client pool. If you’re good at what you do, and you provide value to your clients, you will find work as long as you market effectively. It doesn’t matter if there are twenty others going up against you for every job or just two, you will get work. Living in fear of competition and holding your ideas close to the vest isn’t going to help; in fact, it hurts.
Some of the best friendships you’ll develop over your creative career will be with your direct competition—people with your same skills, vying for the same clients. We are in a unique industry, one where people freely give away their ideas, processes, and tools to people who can use them to make money. Most of us, myself included, wouldn’t have this job if it weren’t for the work of others. From online tutorials to friends handing me clients they didn’t have room for, working with the competition has made a creative career possible.
Viewing your competitors, local or remote, as a threat will only make you paranoid. There are jerks out there, sure, and someone may try to tarnish your reputation to get their next client. That’s on them; life happens. You can choose not to be the problem and always take the high road. You’ll never regret being the bigger person. Be larger than a single client or individual employee when developing relationships with your competition.
It’s likely you won’t be doing the same thing for years and years; you will change your craft. As you do, your competitor may go in a different direction or close up shop altogether. They may need a home for their clients or a place to work. The more allies you have, the more likely you’ll be to get the next generation of talent and the clients you need.
Having repeat partners for complementary skills can do wonders for your business:
- • Partners get different referrals and leads. If you commonly need one another, you essentially have two teams doing full-time business development for your next client.
- • Partners can be marked up in cost, so if you choose to be the face of the entire project to your client, you can add a cost on top of your partner’s fees and make a profit for simply managing the work.
- • Partners make it easy to establish routine practices for project management, file sharing, and communication. If you’re working with the same people over and over again, you won’t have to re-learn or reestablish these systems each time.
- • Partners can make your business look bigger to your clients. If you’re offering more than your own services to your clients, your business appears bigger to them, and they could consider you capable of even greater responsibility.
- • Partners can become great friends and colleagues. Your partner may grow much faster than you, but if you’ve established trust, they can grow your business for you by getting you on board with bigger clients who have bigger budgets.
- • Partners give you the confidence to go after more work. If you know someone has your back for bigger tasks or skills you don’t have, you’re more apt to go after an RFP or reply to a prospect.
How to Find Partners and Collaborators
Partner with people who share your skills
It may be that one of you does a particular aspect of the job better than the other or that you simply like working together. Regardless, partnering to the power of two can make the job more fun. Often it’s because a particular project is too much for you to handle on your own, but you want to do the work. Partnering with a like-minded creative or agency to get the work done as a team is better than not getting the work at all.
Partner with people who complement your skills
Unless you have a very particular skill that clients can use in a vacuum, you’ll have to partner with others who have complementary skills. It may be a web designer and developer, writer and marketer, or photographer and advertising designer. Some sell easier than others or have a larger client base. By attaching yourself to people who have a service that has a shorter sales cycle or higher volume, you can get more business.
Partner with people who share your interests
The market or client you wish to work with may be out of reach for you, at least when on your own. You may be able to break through with individual prospects when you partner with someone else. It could be combining more than one agency into a single proposed services package for a large client. You’re building a relay team to tackle something that larger groups may be able to handle with individual in-house departments. This approach can also help you develop long-term collaborations for complementary skills.
We’re All in This Together
A 1920 study showed that a group of people working on individual tasks but at the same table performed better. They weren’t collaborating or competing; they were simply working near one another. It’s why we enjoy working at coffee shops or co-working spaces. It’s one of the reasons we find ourselves stopping in the middle of important work to check social media. The energy of other people can act as a substitute for a creative team even if we’re working solo.5
There’s no reason to hold your ideas or process so close. Remember that ideas are worthless and execution is everything. We’re better together, even when we’re competing for the same clients. The cream rises to the top, and your colleagues and teammates can help carry you with them as they rise. As each of you improves, and shares, you’ll be far better off than working in a vacuum.
Notes
1. http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2011/06/2011-harvard-university-class-day-speech-by-amy-poehler/.
2. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3748226/?ref_=ttep_ep13.
3. http://99u.com/articles/19678/10-steps-for-an-awesome-coffee-meeting.
4. http://99u.com/articles/7187/why-sharing-your-work-setbacks-struggles-breaks-creative-blocks.
5. http://99u.com/articles/16850/everything-youve-ever-wanted-to-know-about-teams.