- Hey everybody, this is Roberto Blake at robertoblake.com,
helping you create something awesome today.
So today's video is slightly different,
you'll notice a little bit of a different camera set up
and some things going on.
One, I'm still testing the Sony RX100 Mark V
as a new camera and it's pretty sweet.
The other thing is, this is one of those rare videos
that I'm shooting in realtime for you guys
instead of prerecording it weeks in advance
and part of that is, I actually don't have a lot of
backfill left because I've actually been traveling a lot,
I'm actually still getting a little bit over a cold,
and I really just wanted to make this video
while I had some things on my mind.
So let's talk about creative careers.
In general, we're talking about things like
graphic design, we're talking about photography,
we're talking about being a writer,
we're talking about anything you wanna do
as a creative person, this could include
being a musician or a performing artist
and what the truth of a career outlook looks like for you,
because I know there are a lot of people
and a lot of these people, they're not coming
from the industry, so, they're telling you things,
they're telling you there's no money in it,
they're telling you there's no future in it,
and that you need something more practical
instead of aligning you with somebody
who's been successful at what you've done,
because there may be, what they wanna say are exceptions
or anomaly or it's so rare to be successful at that thing,
but the reality is that they're saying that
on some level, they don't believe that you could do it
instead of putting you in a position to win.
And just keep in mind, this is not me bagging
on your parents, your aunts, your uncles, your teacher,
or whoever is giving you this advice,
I'm just saying, that you have to really question
the source here.
If you wanted to learn
how to drive a car,
are you gonna listen to somebody who's like,
oh no, I never drive, I have too much anxiety around it,
you see nothing but people getting into car accidents
all the time, is that somebody that you're going to take
as the source on something or someone who is a great driver
with a fantastic driving record, hasn't had an accident,
I mean, just think about that
from a practical point of view.
So part of my advice and my spiel to you is that
if you wanna be successful at something,
talk to someone who's actually been successful at it,
talk to someone who has actually made money at it,
and they can tell you what the reality is
and what it looks like and I'm one of those people
in this particular instance, but you need to find those
people that are accessible to you in your every day life
or on social media or in your community
and find the people who have actually done it
because those people can put you on a path
and give you the advice and tell you what it looks like
and how serious it is, what's changed and what's not,
and for some people that answer is college.
Now you guys know that I've been skeptical
about certain things with college
and I want to college and my experience was great
for the most part, but I also talk to college students
every single day, I talk to graduates every single day,
I also talked to the people who actually hire for a living
every single day, my friends, my contemporaries,
my colleagues, even my competitors,
and I know what the anxiety is even as someone myself
who has to write checks to freelancers,
I know what the anxiety is around hiring anybody
and I know what the reality and the outlook is for students
in a way that they may not appreciate,
professors may not appreciate,
your parents may not appreciate,
because you have to think, these are people
who don't write checks to creative people for a living.
So if your job and your business relies on writing checks
to creative people to do your design work,
writing checks to people to do video editing,
writing checks to people to do some
of your social media management,
if you're in that position, or you've been on that position,
and you've hired for that position,
or you've worked for that position before,
you are a credible source of information for somebody
who looks to do that, someone who has not done that,
someone who doesn't do that, someone who doesn't hire,
has not hired, or has not worked in the industry
in years and years and years, is probably not a credible
source of information, no matter how intelligent
they are, no matter how well intentioned they are.
That'd be like taking stock advice from somebody
who's never invested in their life, that would be taking
driving lessons from somebody who's never driven
a car before or hasn't done it in a very, very long time.
It's not the greatest idea in the world
and, again, I don't mean that to be dismissive
or offensive toward anyone in your life,
I'm saying that, if you want to be successful
at a particular thing, someone with the experience,
and not just prior experience, but active experience
that's a practitioner in the industry,
is your best source of information.
So you need to be cultivating those relationships,
you need to be marketing and networking with those people
because they can tell you what works and what doesn't
in a very realistic and practical way
because they're making real money at it
or they're doing it day in and day out.
Now you're probably saying, okay, that's great, Roberto,
but how do I make a living at a creative career?
One of the things you have to understand is
you have to make a distinction between
whether you're going to work for an employer
or whether you're going to be a contractor of some time
and also, what is practical for the state
of the market place and the industry?
'Cause I'll tell you right now that in-house
creative positions are drying up,
there are people losing those positions now,
and it's going much more toward a freelance market
and a freelance economy.
I actually did an article for HOW Design
about the gig economy and how that affects creatives,
especially designers, and where things are going with that
and it's very real that those freelance jobs are growing
and in-house positions are shrinking,
you can still get an in-house position,
you can still work for an agency,
I'm just saying that the competition is increasing,
the demand is shrinking with regard to the hiring aspect
of that for full-time work, but for individual one-off
projects, the market's never been better,
so you have to think about your positioning
and think about what you really want.
Now what many people will argue for is there's more
stability in a nine to five job and I can tell you that
that mentality is a little outdated
and here's the reality of that,
if you work in a nine to five position
and I did this in corporate America multiple times
for a long time, the reality is that
it's not really job security because it only takes
one person in a position of authority not liking you
for you to not have a way to make an income
because not only can they fire you,
but they could impact your overall career and reputation
especially if you are a younger person and you don't
have a ton of experience, or if you're an older person
and you've worked at that company for the majority
of your adult life and for whatever reason they decide to
to do that to you and it could be nothing to do with
your quality of work, it might not be that you deserve it,
it could be the internal politics of the company,
it could be that they felt slighted in any kind of way,
there's any number of things where that can go wrong
that's not your fault and we all know this
because we all know vindictive, petty people,
and sometimes those people are in a position of authority
over you and you have very little control over whether
that's your situation or not.
What you have control over is what you do on your off hours
which is why I tell people that doing your own personal
projects that you have ownership over, developing your own
personal brand, and doing non-compete side work
in something relevant, then those things matter
because you have a reputation and you have a body of work
to leverage independent of a singular employer
because, here, let's do another scenario,
what if you end up having to leave or what have you
or your department gets downsized, it's not even
that you're being fired for any negative reason
or anybody's out to get you, but there's something
in your contract where all the work you did
as work-for-hire, you can't use it
in your portfolio going forward.
That's a real thing and that does happen to a lot of people.
I had a friend who worked in the military
and her MOS had to do with video editing and marketing
and production and so on, and when she left,
she wasn't able to use any of her work
from that particular job, from her job within the military,
she wasn't able to use it in her portfolio
and it's a good thing that she had done some side projects
and that we had worked together and that I was a reference
for her and she had other clients that were a reference
for her because without having that body of work,
that job she had been doing for all those years,
that body of work that she thought she was going to use
in addition to her experience while she served her country
all went out the window and she would've had to start
from zero and that would've been very hard
and very discouraging, but she didn't have to start
from zero in terms of references, she didn't have
to start from zero in terms of relationships,
and she didn't have to start from zero with a body of work
because she was doing things in her off hours
so that she could have control of her brand and her career
and her resume and her reputation.
So, if you are somebody and you're pursuing
a creative career and you get a nine to five job,
don't think that when you clock out at six PM,
which is when you'll really clock out,
I know it says nine to five, you'll be clocking out
at six or 6:30, that's the real world,
don't think that it ends there.
You still have to at some point go home and hustle
for yourself for an hour at least if you really wanna be
successful and have a future because once you make someone
else the end all and the be all and the deciding factor
in your paycheck and in your career and in your credentials,
you're in a very vulnerable place if you're not building up
your personal brand, your portfolio, and your projects
and staying sharp and staying on top of the industry.
And so, I would encourage you to not slack off
and get comfortable and think that there's such a thing
as job security because there just isn't.
Job security's a myth.
You are only as valuable, or rather,
let me put it like this,
you are paid in proportion to the perceived value
of the problem that you solve and if you are no longer
indispensable in solving that problem, you are eliminated.
That's very true, go find me a switchboard operator
that's still working today.
That's very true.
I would say that one of the things that you have to
really look at is that instead of worrying about
jobs stability, you should look at the roadmap
of your overall career.
You should look at the roadmap of your overall career
and if this job goes away, what if your department
isn't downsized, what if the company goes under?
What if you have a CEO that's dipping their hand
in the cookie jar, what if your CEO gets a scandal,
you don't wanna be associated with a brand that has
a scandal and working for them because even if it
wasn't your fault, the reputation could bleed over.
So, you have to have independent control of your career
on some level even if what you want is a 401(k)
and job stability, you have to think about,
well how do I get the next job after this?
Or if there's an artificial ceiling in place
where there's not a ladder for you to move up,
how do you jump over to a new company and go up that ladder?
You have to put yourself in a position to do that,
so in addition to all that work, you also need
to be doing networking, you need to actually
be building up your contacts, you need to be going
to industry events, you need to be talking to people,
you need be going to conferences, you need to
deal with other local small business owners
and have a good relationship so that when you need
an opportunity, when you need a new job,
when you need an introduction,
then that's there for you and you're not starting from zero
and you're not panicked, that you already have people
that you can call in favors with, you already have people
who will vouch for you, who will fight for you,
and who will look out for you.
You gotta think about who's gonna have your back.
In fact, there's a book on my shelf by Keith Ferrazzi
Who's Got Your Back, Never Eat Alone,
I'll link up some books in the description
that you guys should check out and some other resources
but these are things that I wish had been told to me
when I got started in my career.
When I got started in my career, even in college,
one of the things they didn't teach us enough about,
which I really wish they would focus on,
is the importance of networking.
They really didn't stress that enough.
They also didn't stress enough how much we should be
setting aside and that we should be setting aside
that, in case our job is eliminated or anything,
that we have something to live off of
and that we need to be thinking about that
and in negotiating our salary, we need to think about
not just the bills that we're paying,
we need to think about going beyond that
in how we accumulate savings so that if this job
doesn't last then we have something to tide us over
until we can get a new position.
They weren't teaching us that.
They weren't teaching us how to build our own
creative business so that one day, if we wanna go
our own way, we could do that.
And yet again, I wanna stress I'm not knocking college,
I'm not knocking your professors,
I'm just saying that these things aren't and weren't
in place and I think that they were very practical
and I think they're very important
and I think they're things that we need to be able to
talk about and that's why I talk about them here
on the channel so that you have an alternative source
of information from someone living in the real world
that's been the employee, been the freelance contractor
, worked at an agency, worked in-house,
worked for themselves, owns and runs a business,
hires other people to do stuff at this point,
still does stuff with clients and manages clients of my own,
so that's a very real thing.
I've moved more to the marketing and consulting
and content and media production side of what I do with
Create Awesome Media instead of being
a full-time freelance designer.
I've made that practical decision because I saw where,
for me, I had to do the 80/20 rule, I had to see,
wow, the majority of my profits are coming from this thing
instead of that thing and that I had to make a very smart
pivot for me because I had to leave ego off of the table.
I had to make a very, very practical purpose-driven decision
to do much less with visual branding and design
and to only do that in the context if I thought that I was
the best person to do it on a campaign within the context
of a small portion of a larger thing that a client would
want from a content development standpoint meaning this,
that if I think that I'm going to do the best job on the
YouTube thumbnails for a video marketing
and brand development package that we're doing for a client
where we're handling some of the editing,
they're handing us the materials that they produced,
they're handing us the photography, and I think that,
gee, out of everybody, I could probably make the best
thumbnail out of this, then I would take part of that on,
but if I didn't think that I could do that,
I would hand that off to somebody else.
That's part of a necessary thing that you have to
come to a conclusion on of where you're going to take
ego out of the equation and where's it okay to let go of
as a little bit of a sense of ownership over something
to deliver on the best project possible.
I'm more interested in delivering
on the best project possible for my client
than what I could take credit for.
I don't need to take credit, I'm gonna cash the check.
So I don't need to take credit, when I can just
cash the check, right?
So that's something that, it was not the easiest thing
to do, do not mistake why I say this, because it wasn't
the easiest thing to do because every creative person
has just a little bit of vanity, but the more you can
let go of that vanity, you'll realize that vanity
is a very expensive thing to hold onto
and you'll learn to let go of it.
So, as an artist, I will tell you that
the day that you learn to abandon all vanity,
is the day you'll stop being a starving artist.
It's why I sarcastically refer to as grow up and sell out,
but it's not really selling out, it's about,
you sold out, meaning that you're in demand
and when you have some things that's in demand,
it's easier than you would possibly imagine
to not have an ego about things when you are selling them.
When you are selling a service or a product,
you let go of a lot of the romanticism because you're
really adamant about making sure you have the best thing
that you possibly can on the shelf
and that you're delivering for other people
because in the process of wanting to deliver
for other people, your hangups and your vanity
and your romanticism about the creative will take a backseat
to the deliverable and to making sure that the other person
is satisfied with what they've got.
In my mind that might be one of the best ways you can
interpret that form follows function,
that the form, the creative, the aesthetic,
all of those things that we like to romanticize
as artists, will take a backseat to whether it accomplished
what was needed by the client, by the consumer,
by the customer, and when you really empathetically
are being of service, that's when you'll do your
best work because you will be taken out of the equation.
Yes, putting yourself into your work does produce
great work, specially as an artist,
but it'll become, as if you're a creative
that's trying to do something in the business world.
You'll find that yes, when you are passionate
and you really care about this, you'll do your best work.
When you're passionate and you really care about
other people, you will do the greatest work
that you have done.
You may not be doing your best personally satisfying work,
but your greatest work will be the work that's done
in the service of other people.
You'll find that that's absolutely true,
at least, again, that's been my experience,
maybe you'll have a different experience.
I'm not gonna sit there and say that you'll find
that that's true because that sounds a little insincere
because everyone has an individual experience,
but I genuinely believe that you'll find that to be true.
I genuinely believe that if you start to think about
how what you do facilitates and serves others
that it will produce some of your greatest work of all time.
Anyway guys, that's what I've got for you today,
I just wanted to have a creative conversation,
I wanted to have some creative thoughts with you guys.
We'll be back very soon to your regularly scheduled format
where I'm giving you design tips and career advice
in a eight to 10 or 12 minute kind of video
where everything's on a tripod.
I am going to be doing a little bit more with rollovers
and lower thirds and slide decks and some other things
but I really just wanted to have this conversational video
with you guys and it was a lot easier to just do it
with the vlogging camera and in vlogging form
here in front of the bookshelf than anything else
and maybe I'll do more videos like this in the future
if you guys actually are kind of into it.
Anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed this video.
If you have questions about your creative career,
whether you're a designer, whether you're an artist,
whether you're a writer, a photographer, a filmmaker,
let me know in the comment section,
I definitely wanna hear from you guys.
Also, I'm planning a show around creatives,
think of it almost like a Ask Gary Vee style type show
but for the creative world and so I'm gonna be doing
a lot of Q&A, I'm gonna be highlighting and showing off
peoples creative projects, I'm gonna do kind of like
a challenge of the day kind of thing creatively.
Anyway, I'd love to get some ideas and feedback
from you guys on what you'd like to see in that show.
That show probably will be coming sometime
in late spring of 2017.
Like this video if you like it, don't forget to Subscribe.
Check out the other awesome content on the channel.
As always you guys, thanks so very much for watching
and don't forget, create something awesome today.
Take care.