"Congratulations, you've chosen homelessness as a career..."

I was recently invited to join a group of senior creative types to do a weekly discussion of life as a senior creative type.

The group is pretty interesting. Everyone is smart and funny and jaded as hell and sardonic. Years ago, we'd all taken the leap away from common sense to pay for our lives and raise our families by making stuff up and hoping to get paid for it.

One thing we've all come to realize is that choosing to make your living in the creative business is a little nuts. But really, if you're seriously considering it, you don't have a choice. You could give it a good shot, maybe be terrible, and end up doing something else, but if you've got the stomach for it and some ability, you might get lucky and love it your whole life.

Our discussions last an hour via video conference. We crack a lot of jokes and laugh a lot and then turn to big life questions—the kinds of questions folks who are fund managers or plumbers or doctors never have to answer. Creative Types have to start every day with a blank canvas and fill it with something brilliant, convince someone with money that it's brilliant, and then get the bastard to pay for it.

Every day.

Till you die.

And add to that, you're running an agency or you're freelancing or you're selling a book or creating film or music. Then you're a coyote, having to go out and hunt down a buyer, create something brilliant, and HOPE the bastard will pay for it.

The Direct Response part of my brain tells me to use bullet points to talk about our findings so far:

• If you're seeking a life in the creative biz, realize you'll have to reinvent yourself over and over again.
• You'll age out at a certain point and be utterly unemployable.
• You'll be unemployable because you're jaded by a life in the creative biz and your well-honed sense of detecting bullshit will keep you from embracing corporate baloney. A great example. I went in for an interview with an Austin agency to fill their Chief Creative Officer role. I did some research on the agency, and they had a terrible rap around town for doing lousy creative work and not delivering. I ended up being interviewed by two kids around half my age and told them they had a terrible reputation and that I could fix it and turn the agency around (which was a factual truth). They looked astonished that I'd say something like that (channel your Inner Jaded Ad Guy), and I couldn't help but tell the joke. "An old guy is being interviewed by a much younger guy. The young guy asks about his biggest weakness... The old guy says 'I'm too honest'. The young guy says 'honesty isn't a weak..." And the old guy cuts him off and says 'I don't care what you think." Not sure why they didn't hire me.
• You'll love what you do. It's kind of like being a drug addict. You know it's bad for you, but when you get a good dose, it's so damned nice.
• Anyone can learn some skills, but not anyone can make stuff up for a living. You either have it or you don't.
• You'll never retire with a pension, so you'll never stop working.
• You'll either be a great salesperson, or you'll starve. You're selling ideas that can vanish into thin air if they're not sold. Third place is you're fired.
• If you can't take a life of constant risk and stress, you can't survive in this biz.
• It's a shit-ton of fun.

We're not sure where this thing will go. We've all come to realize that it's great to talk with other jaded creative types to realize we've all faced the same barriers in life. I think our weekly talks would be a fine podcast of some sort. I could see bringing in guest senior creative types from film, music, art, advertising, etc., to talk about how they survived the business and what's next. If I were just starting out in my creative "career," I'd find it useful to see an honest long view of this business. So stay tuned. We'll see where this goes.

And the headline... "Congratulations, you've chosen homelessness as a career." That came from one of this gang of jaded creative types. He was talking with a friend about his decision to publish a book and that was the response.

It's a little like the classic, "Besides that, Mrs. Lincoln, how'd you like the play..."

#creative #creativebiz #advertising #getarealjobinstead