Conversations with the people in my head: Is there life after advertising?

So many advertising creatives fear what lies beyond the agency gig. They think the work they do doesn’t teach anything useful for the “real world.”

BS.

It teaches you how to be a business partner. You work with an Art Director or Copywriter day in and day out, solving big client problems. You get good at it. People pay your agency large sums of money as a result.

You learn to create a rhythm with other people, a give and take, sometimes battling, sometimes f-yeahing and a whole bunch of time thinking “how the heck did we figure that out?:

You learn how to think critically and creatively. Perhaps the most important skills you can bring to any job.

You learn humility. After about the ten thousandth rejected idea, you start to realize you may not be perfect.

You learn persistence. Somehow, after all that rejection, you come up with idea number 10,001 and 10,002 and, well, you get it.

You learn how to cut through the BS and get to what really matters. Because that’s the job. Every day. Swimming through a sea of noise to find the one nugget that might stop people for a second to consider your client’s brand.

You learn empathy. You spend hours putting yourself inside the heads, hearts and souls of other humans. You can’t help but feel a connection.

You learn gut trustability. So much learning happens below the surface, through experience. Dealing with challenging clients, co-workers and the not-so-kind voices in your head. Some call that wisdom, others like to use goofy made-up words like “gut trustability to describe it instead.

You learn perspective. You put out enough fires, you start to realize which ones have the power to do real damage and which ones are just a distraction (hint: most are just distractions).

So, if you’re wondering if there’s life after advertising, there is. And you’re well suited for it.

And if you’re a business owner, solopreneur or lonely leader in search of a creative, humble, persistent, BS-busting, empathetic, gut trusting business partner with 25+ years of perspective, call me. That just so happens to be one of my new coaching offerings—fractional business partner.

Free Discovery Session: https://calendly.com/teejaybee/free-30-minute-discovery-session

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