Blog

Building a thriving design studio is a far more creative venture than the work it produces. A creative business should not be in a cycle of getting work, delivering work, billing for it; rinse, and repeat. A creative business is a dynamic organism that requires an equal marriage between the commercial and the creative. Both are as important as the other.

In a creative business's early years, you don’t have the luxury of being choosy, but once you start to build that portfolio and build a name for your studio, the ability to choose becomes available, and here is where it often goes wrong for so many studios. This is the stick or twist moment. A choice must be made — plateau or grow.

We are not cogs in machines anymore. We are people who get paid to think and create. We must stop working within business model frameworks rooted in the past.

If you're everything to everyone, you're nothing to no one. Knowing your niche gives creative freedom and opportunity for better clients and better work.

Fear is our friend and not our foe. We must stop being afraid of feeling afraid. Invite Fear to a drink, ask it what it can tell us, and then tell it to sit quietly while we get on with the creative work that matters.