Do you want to show up more creatively for your clients and your colleagues, your family, and your friends?
Do you want to default to thinking about opportunity versus focusing just on problems?
Discovering Hope is full of proactive steps you can take right now, to achieve a more positive mindset or to help maintain the positivity you already have
Getting Positive reveals that more optimism is close at hand
Stuart Parkin
Getting Consistent Freelance Work
I asked strategists:
‘What actions will optimize chances of consistent freelance work?’
Given that the number of strategists freelancing is significantly up in 2025, knowing the answer to this is more important than ever.
Invest in your network before you need it : The most sustainable freelance careers are built on relationships – keeping in touch with peers, former colleagues, and clients.
Differentiate/Be clear about your value : In a crowded market, it is critical for freelancers to define what they uniquely bring – Own a specialty: Create an interesting POV about a strategy-related topic. Create your own set of ‘thinking tools’. Clarity builds confidence, both for the freelancer and for those considering them.
Be Creative – Inquire whether a posted job can be turned into a permalancer role; Lay the groundwork for the next project with your client before you finish the current one.
Targeting – Consider an opportunity hypothesis for a category/industry, then look for relatively weak brands who may be open to learning/developing your work.
– Lay the groundwork for the next project with your client before you finish the current one.
Line up your ducks – Be ready to provide supporting information: Having a solid line up of references/cases. I’ve always collected them wherever I’ve been
Communicate availability: If people don’t hear from you they will hear from others and if they know you/rate you, they may just assume you’re busy.
The power of on-going contact – Maintain saliency by gently contacting your connections every 6 months. Key here is how often you connect (don’t overdo it) and the tone with which you communicate.
Make outreach worth ‘their’ time – Provide material or ideas that help the person (in some way) that you’re communicating with.
Actively market/’tell your story’ both one-to-one and through social media.
Ensure you build your personal brand and get recognition for the freelance work you do, don’t let it be invisible work you do in secret for a brand/agency/client.
Reputation – Ultimately, your reputation sells. Do amazing work/Be easy to work with.
Adapt/Re-tool – DO NOT REST ON LAURELS. While you will always need to prove that you moved the needle for others, in order to get something new, doing the same old thing without demonstrating you can integrate new things (in today’s case, things like ML and AI), nobody is going to care.
Reality check – Many of the above might seem fairly obvious but for some reason, habit, fear, sloth, being too busy, being too afraid to back ourselves, many of the above actions aren’t consistently taken. So perhaps in order to get consistent work, ensure you’re properly motivated (perhaps because of the work you’re targeting) and if you are, you will more consistently take the steps to get the work.
All success,
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Strategic Planning – Keeping Your Job (8/25) (5 min’ read)
After several months of net job losses last month we were back to net hiring of agency personnel. (AdAge). Finally!
Though from a strategic planning perspective, as many of you will corroborate, the jobs outlook remains very uncertain. This uncertainty stems as much from industry consolidation as it does from incorporation of new technologies notably AI, while the biggest drain on confidence relates to client uncertainty borne by uncertain macroeconomic factors.
Given the context of continued uncertainty, I asked strategists what they believed is critical to keeping their jobs. A big ‘thank you’ to all of you for generously finding the time to provide your perspective.
Ensure you are reading the room – Many strategists get fired because they fail to ‘read the room’/understand what the client ‘actually’ wants – Meaning, stress-testing your thinking before it hits the boardroom.
When to theorize and when to build – The strategists who survive – Aren’t necessarily the smartest ones in the room. They’re the ones who know when to sharpen their pencils and when to put them down and start building.
Be useful – Our job isn’t to be right. It’s to be useful. Recognize which situation you’re in. Is this a moment for strategic brilliance or strategic service?
Business objective focus – Double down on being the translator between business objectives and the potential of right brain creativity to achieve them.
Directly connect with the consumer – AI is great but simply sitting behind your laptop theorizing won’t cut it. Get out there. Talk to actual customers
Understanding your value (to the client particularly) and how you deliver it. There’s not enough honest assessment or understanding of what that value really is.
The goal is to create a robust strategy (not a perfect one) that can survive contact with reality.
Create space with clients for things to emerge that nobody is thinking about. That needs time and connection. Challenging but if done, makes the difference.
Be proactive! Get out of a transactional mindset. Too many strategists wait to be given a task, and then go back with an output
Stay curious and have a strong POV – Curiosity drives learning and allows for you to provide clarity and a direction.
Stay close to revenue – Insightful thinking should be enough, but thinking needs to be tied to revenue generation.
Be easy to work with – Heroes are great, but advertising and marketing requires a team effort. Ensure people genuinely enjoy working with you.
Be a more empathetic person/leader/client supporter. Too many people think they’re empathetic. Few really are.
Network internally – The quality of your work should shine through but don’t rely on it.
Get on the AI bandwagon – Or perhaps better put, get ahead of the bandwagon – Incorporate AI’s ability to speed up and optimize your ability to help creatives and clients.
Freelancers – Where to Find Work Full-timers – Indications of Job Security
Around 39% of CMOs reported that they are looking to reduce spending on labor this year, mostly by simplifying overlapping roles and reducing total headcount. (AdAge, 5/25)
Let’s call this what it is, one of the most uncertain times for finding and keeping work. But as they say, this is the time when great thinking cuts through, great thinking by you for clients and their business and for you, in terms of how you manage your own career.
If you’re freelancing, where is business likley to come from?
If you’re full-time, how can you understand your relative degree of job security and act accordingly.
Below is a list with some key areas to think about/get answers to, to clarify whether there’s work available and or/likely to remain so.
Are you in an organisation that invests in and sells what you do? Strategic Planning!
What are examples of strategy’s perceived value? Clients/Senior Management/ Creatives?
Is there a strategist represented in the CSuite?
Is the strategy lead known to value team/people/like mentoring? Is strategy lead someone that picks up a pen and creates work vs commenting on others work? Hands on working CSO or hands off CSO as reviewer?
People longevity – What’s the turnover of staff?
People longevity – How does the company handle mistakes and failure?
People longevity – Does the company value and reward doing what’s right for colleagues and clients or what’s easiest and politically popular?
Strategy Turnover – What’s the turnover of strategists?
Strategy Group – Size compared to agency personnel? 1/10 ratio is good
Strategy Team build or reduction – How fast is the team size changing?
Culture – Does the organization value fast reaction over strategic intent & purposeful action?
Culture – Is strategic planning client facing and leading or focused on making others look smart in the organization?
Culture – are you expected to present your own thinking or give that to others to present on your behalf?
Client Longevity – What is the longevity of clients
Client Longevity – Can you prove your value to clients in tangible commercial terms?
Client Longevity – Are you gaining more or less of the client’s business from competitive agencies?
Client Mix – What is the agency reliance. One big client or a mix?
Clients and Strategy – Are agency clients known to value strategy?
Client Type – Do clients rely on imports or exports in full or in part?
Client Business – Is the client’s business based in everyday consumables? Or business in growth areas? Or one that’s dominating its space or a ‘rising star?’
Building Bridges – Proactivity the Safest Way to Build and Protect Business
Many of you that I’m speaking with whether freelancing or working full-time, are talking to me about current client uncertainties caused in large part by U.S. led tariffs.
Until anyone knows the impact of these tariffs, whether you import parts or export finished products, it’s hard to invest in anything with confidence, least of all people!
The result is inconsistency of work or budgets being delayed or reduced; This means it’s not the best of jobs markets or times of job security.
If you’re in full-time work, what can you do, (particularly if you have a great relationship with your clients) is support them in their scenario planning. Help them if you can, find ways to protect revenue/and or enhance it! OK, not rocket science advice, but really important to be proactive, particularly when the pressure is on.
Is this a time of economic crisis? No, but it is most certainly (as witnessed by the financial markets) an uncertain moment. True to the dual Mandarin meaning of the word ‘crisis.’ It’s a time both of threat and an opportunity.
Threats often act as a catalyst forcing us to contemplate new approaches.
What might you be able to identify for your clients? A short-term win or bigger potential strategic pivot?
If your freelancing short or long term, think along the same lines. Don’t wait to be asked to help, look at those businesses most exposed and anticipate what a smart next step might nbe.
Now is a golden time to build bridges.
Why Strategists Have More to Gain Than To Fear From Generative ‘AI’
To be clear, I am no ‘Large Language Model’ ( ‘AI’) specialist, although I do intend to pursue a course to correct this fact! I have been talking with a number of you, who ‘are’ ‘AI experts, embedded as part of planning groups with the remit to:
“Operationalise the use, understanding and application of ‘AI’ to enhance more rapid pathways to strategic clarity and through it customer impact.”
My topline understanding, if you have several years of strategy experience under your belt, you’ve nothing ‘currently’ to fear from ‘AI.’ It is your questioning, your interpretation, your editorial oversight, your client reassurance, that is still needed. And what ‘AI’ can provide, can enhance your work. And, even if you are a junior strategist, you will position yourself as best you can if you ensure you learn from and how to optimise ‘AI,’ as shrinking strategy teams will continue to re-tool.
How ‘AI’ Might Help You
When teams are shrinking it is a valuable analyst and thinking partner – see Ethan Mollick’s two latest Substack posts about the impressive capabilities of the latest models and how that goes beyond the simple “AI assistant” idea. It can help you consider more options with a greater degree of realism – If synthesis of data can be speeded up, there is greater opportunity to focus on the soft skills/the nuances of customer interaction. ‘AI’ could for instance mirror your biases, used in a focused way, it could prevent reinforcement of those biases.
Is ‘AI’ a Career Threat? It’s evolving all the time, but at-the-moment, it’s a rapidly evolving aggregating machine, that thrives on using data and logic. Efficiency is not strategy. Any work area that requires more emotionally nuanced interaction will be work that continues to be human-focused.
Which jobs will be the first to go with ‘AI’…. Given ‘AI’ can trawl data from the whole web and synthesise it at hyper speed, any jobs that require aggregation and synthesis of information become vulnerable. Data gathering and analysis make basic research and media buying vulnerable.
Which Jobs Are ‘Relatively’ Safe Editorial oversight requires understanding of humans: Strategists providing empathy and judgement and creative directors.’ narratives that resonate with humans. While research can be automated, will it reveal outliers in understanding? The quality of up-to-date ‘in-person’ research will continue to have a role; Experiential Strategists bring together many parts of understanding human engagement and interaction, they will become even more important; Work seeking to persuade individuals or groups where logic alone isn’t enough/EQ needed; PR Specialists providing counsel directed specifically to influence human opinion.
Which Jobs Will We Humans ‘Want’ Human Interaction? (even if supported by ‘AI’) Even if ‘AI’ could do it well, there are areas of our lives we simply demand ‘direct human direction.’ Think human reassurance and interaction (versus diagnostics) ‘is a key part’ of wellness treatment; High Value purchases or high stakes such as crisis management will still require a level of human understanding of human reactions/require reassurance.
HOW MIGHT YOU ACT IN RELATION TO ‘AI?’
‘AI’ – Understand it/Invest in it – I f your employer hasn’t already provided training, do it yourself or request your employer invest in you completing a prompting course – Learning about LLM’s (large language models) and how to get the best out of them. Any great ‘qual’ researcher will probably be a natural, but one can always learn more.
Human Strength to ‘AI’ Weakness – Bolster your human skills: Emotional understanding/empathy, Relationship building skills/trust, Caring/Nurturing skills, Creative appreciation skills, Leadership/motivational skills. Also make yourself aware of evolving AI tools developed to analyze EQ. Consider reviewing https://www.receptiviti.com/
Adaptability Skills/AQ – This is just the beginning of ‘AI’ – If it freaks you out then perhaps what you fear is not ‘AI’ but uncertainty. The greatest bulwark against change, is your ability to adapt. Learn what it takes to become adaptable. Article attached. https://bit.ly/3DjAyCb
Big picture – ‘AI’ has and will transform lives for good and bad! From a business perspective, without being an expert, invest in understanding how ‘AI’ might help your work. Key, enhance your job security by understanding the chokepoints for creating or sustaining revenue and ‘AI’s impact there! For instance, maintaining ‘trust’ in client relationships is key to holding on to revenue and very much a human delivered capability, albeit back up by data/great performance, enhanced by ‘AI.’
What’s Happening With Freelance
As the business environment and the agency world in particular, seeks greater flexibility (for lots of reasons) in hiring, a record number of you are now freelancing/consulting.
Boon times for freelance were during the pandemic years where amid huge uncertainty, greatest flexibility was needed both by employers and employees alike.
These times – More time of uncertainty, but corporate focus while still seeking flexibility, cost control has greater importance, meaning?
Freelance opportunities have in the last year been fewer, shorter in duration and harder to land. Why?
Agencies and companies have been trying to save money. They have done this by seeking to reduce freelance as a proportion of payroll as although it provides flexibility, arguably it’s expensive (when used extensively) relative to full-time hiring.
Future trajectory – Freelance in time will regain greater momentum particularly against a backdrop of greater uncertainty in the business environment. That said, there are and will be even more of you seeking (for different reasons) to freelance, placing downward pressure on freelance rates.
Happy to talk with any of you about the market, where greater opportunity may be, where to target, how you might position yourself etcetera.
Happy hunting,
All happiness,
Stuart