A recap of episode 77 of the Cracking Creativity podcast. If you liked it, check out the full episode with David Smooke where he talks about taking small incremental steps, the importance of community, and why you shouldn’t hold yourself back.
David Smooke studied economics and creative writing in university because he liked to write and felt economics had real world applications. He believed these two areas of study would be practical skills to have for his career.
After graduating, David got a job as a journalist, but felt his creativity was being stifled. He was given assignments, and was given very little leeway in how he could apply his creativity.
So he saved up a few months rent and moved to San Francisco. This turned out to be the pivotal moment in David's career. It was here that he got his first taste of marketing while working for a startup.
At the startup David honed his marketing and community building skills. The lessons he learned here allowed him to start his own marketing firm called Art Map Inc.
In this episode, David talks about taking small incremental steps, the importance of community, and why you shouldn't hold yourself back.
Here are three things you can learn from David:
Many artists want to run before they even learn to crawl. They want to be a well-known, successful, artist, without figuring out what steps will help them get there.
If you've had trouble reaching your goals, that's a sign you might need to slow down. Instead of trying to tackle your tasks full speed, you need to break your goal down into smaller, more manageable, parts.
David believes everyone should work at their own speed. "Everyone moves at their own pace and whatever their age is irrelevant."
He believes we need to position ourselves to make giant leaps by taking incremental steps. "You have to do a million of these incremental steps to even be in a position to make the leap, whatever the leap is."
So, no matter what stage in life you're in, you can make strides towards your goal. You just need to be patient and practical about it.
One of the most important and overlooked aspects of a successful creative career is finding your tribe or community. As artists, many of us would prefer to work alone or in isolation, but we can't do everything ourselves. The most successful artists have a community they can count on in their moments of need.
David believes community engagement is much more important than vanity metrics like likes. An small active community around your work can make the world of a difference.
"One hundred likes aren't worth as much as one comment. Someone else actually contributing and being a part of it is always been more meaningful to me."
David owes the growth of his agency and publications to the community he's built around them.
"Really a lot of the initial growth, from the beginning, I owe to the community."
It has allowed him to grow his following from zero to tens of thousands of subscribers. It is how he built his business.
One thing that holds artists back from growing their audience is holding work to themselves. If you have a tendency to hold yourself back when sharing your art, you are doing your fans a disservice.
"If you're a good artist, you're probably doing a lot more than you're putting online, and you're probably more interesting to look at your actual work and talk to you then it is to browse and search for you on the internet. So closing that identity gap is a lot of where I would start with."
David also believes you should share your work before it's even finished. It allows people to see your process while you're in the act of creation.
"I would also say that a major barrier that I see is that people being scared to put things out there before they're what they would call finished. You know, it's very acceptable and good marketing to put out there the process that you're doing, while you're doing it."
Don't wait for your work to end up in a gallery, or in the hands of your customer, to share it. Be proactive with sharing your art.
"You shouldn't wait to finish a painting, get it in a gallery, get it sold, and wait for that customer to put the painting online. You don't have to do that to market your art."
What many artists fail to realize is that your work is interesting to other people. People are interested in your process and how you create. Share that with them and you will start to build a community around your work.
"There are so many things around what you're doing that's interesting content to other people, that will create your audience and community."
Dorie Clark is a marketing strategy consultant, speaker and contributor to the Harvard Business Review, Time, and Entrepreneur. She authored the books Reinventing You and Stand Out, and is also an adjunct professor of business at Duke’s Fuqua School of Business. In this episode, Dorie talks about how she went from working on Howard Dean’s political campaign to being a business consultant, how you can reinvent yourself, and what you can do to stand out.
Here are three important lessons you can learn from Dorie:
Dorie did not start her career as a marketing strategist. She worked her way there. Before she ever started advising businesses and teaching business courses at Duke, she was a journalist, political campaign strategist, documentary film maker, and head of a non-profit.
It was only after going through this journey that she found her calling. Instead of accepting the fact that you can’t change your status in life, figure out how you can change it instead.
The way to do this is through experimentation. While making the documentary, Dorie discovered she was much more comfortable with words than she was making videos. The only way she could have discovered this was by trying it first.
By experimenting, you can discover what resonates with you. Try things until you find the thing that lights you up inside.
Through her journey, Dorie was able to reinvent herself multiple times until she found what she wanted to do. If you want to make a career change or you want to change how people perceive you, you must first discover your brand.
The problem is, it is hard for most people to know what their brand is. We know far too much about ourselves to know what our brand is. Dorie advocates asking half a dozen people close to you “If you only had three words to describe me, what would they be?”
This will give you a good idea of how others perceive you. If they chose words you don’t want to describe you, you must determine how to close the gap between those words and the words you do want to describe you.
In this noisy and competitive world, the only way to become successful is to stand out. Dorie wanted to systematize a process for talented people to be recognized and heard.
For Stand Out, she spoke to thought leaders such as Seth Godin, David Allen, Robert Cialdini, Daniel Pink, and Tom Peters. She also spoke to regular professionals in a variety of fields. Through this process she discovered the three things people can do to stand out.
This starts with building one one one connections with trusted people. This allows you to gain feedback from people you respect.
Once you have a network of trusted people, you can build an audience. You can only get so far communicating one on one, so you must communicate your ideas publicly.
If you have ideas that people resonate with, you can leverage it through a community. Ambassadors of your idea are the most powerful asset you can have in order to stand out. When your ideas are bigger than yourself, you will stand out.