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
The Beyond Employee
Based on my understanding of career happiness (I’ll leave others to define success) there are some obvious things to get on top of, noteworthy:
Keep learning, (Tech’ yes, but soft skills are more critical than ever, none more so than empathetic ability) learn to be adaptable, focus on relationships, but also key, find time to get perspective, both to understand trends but also to keep in a good mental space!
One other factor to focus on here, personal agency. This is you needing to strategise for you! What are your goals? If you know the answer, you’ll know what your dream working scenario is. Know this and then you’ll know what experience, expertise and connections deficits you have and what you need to work on. Why is this important?
The reality in 2025, we’re all one relationship away from a good or bad year. From making money or not. From working for someone else or not.
If you are currently an employee, what I want to communicate, you should start thinking of youself right now, as self employed. Yes deliver as employee, but also make your employer, ‘work for you.’ Consciously make connections and get experience with a mind to working for yourself. This way, it will be a softer landing when change comes for you.
Agency consolidation is not a new thing neither is job insecuity, but as one accelerates, so does the other. Start to adjust your mindset to it and in so doing you’ll be better prepared to build as a ‘beyond employee.’
All happiness,
Live to Work? Work to Live? (an ode to ‘time well spent.’)
(three minute read)
It’s a choice, many are not prepared to make
Didn’t know they could
Some don’t have a choice of labor
Some like their work, all the time!
Out of work – Feeling daunted feeling scared
In work – Exhilarated but for others, trapped.
The route to sanity, happiness even
The clarity of purpose
Of attainable dreams at and away from work
Yes, knowing what you want
Understand your values, your strengths, your goals
You tell your story better
You live your time with vigor
Thanksgiving provides respite
Temporarily, we are kinder, more prepared to give
and to forgive
Give yourself a gift of reflection and perspective
Think about things..Get in to it
Are you blindly on a hamster wheel to nowhere
It’s time to be the sentient being you were made to be
It’s time to think about what matters
Time to think, what gives and where you don’t
Time to recognise time is precious
There are things you need to do.
Job Searching Woes – Who is technology working for?
(five minute read)
Technology is amazing and can enable but used primarily for the purposes of efficiency/short-term profit with disregard for human impact, it will have the opposite effect – It will disenable and in so doing, lose the benefits automation bring whilst creating many frustrated people.
Your experience when looking for either freelance or full-time work has to be better than it is.
We have to move away from the feeling that the odds are stacked against us. Whether it’s the algorithms that exclude or tied agents who will only recommend one company/agency, the one they work for.
The application of technology in advertising and marketing today makes having someone on your side in the job search, more important than ever.
And the whole process of getting work needs to be less transactional.
The experience of getting a job/work, should not feel like a job!
There is a way forward. A number of you I have already discussed it with.
For those frustrated with the way things are currently ‘working’ when looking for work either as a freelancer or full-time job seeker, let’s talk.
Stuart
Short Termism and Job Security – What You Should Do
(five minute read)
Short termism. What are we talking about? A focus on short term results and driving that, short term thinking, systems, practices, environments, all focused on the end of year bonus. What does this mean for you?
Transactional Relationships – All of you that have consulted for any time understand a more transactional approach to making money. Anyone that knows anyone understands that the agency world on the whole, regards all employees as expendable very often even when they have performed, short terms results are preeminent.
What should you do in the midst of short termism?
1. Mindset change – If you haven’t already done it, don’t assume constancy, security (however professionally effective you are or your connections might be). Seriously!
2. Have options – Always keep your options lined up, as chances are, you will need them and if not, you’re prepared.
3. Niche – Yes, be a generalist, but devlelop a niche, core expertise that limits your competition and ability to be replaced by it.
4. Relationships = Internal ones are important but being the client’s ‘go to person’ is crucial, if you want to be the ‘last person standing.’
5. Money deliverer – Everything is very short term, so if you’re more a big picture thinker, you have to translate that/communicate it’s pathway in to short terms results (as well as longer term payback).
Finally, you need someone that’s independent that’s on your side, in and out of full-time work. I have a new ‘agent’ led approach, which you might want to hear about.
My best,
Stuart
Freelance Help – June 2024
There are many conversations I have with candidates that have chosen to freelance perhaps as a temporary step, perhaps interim and for some, they are done with working full time for others.
In all these scenarios, however you postion yourself, you are now ‘in business’ and in this marketplace in particular, you will have your fair share of ‘getting business’ (versus fulfilling it) unless you’re smart, able and lucky, to be able to line up the client work before you leave full time employment.
Based on 24 years working for myself, as a freelance/consultant/business owner, some key realities/thoughts:
The work you get – Despite marketing yourself, the work you do will always act as the best calling card.
Reputation is key – Being kind with all you engage with is part of the key to building the reputation, which gets you referrals.
Core Referral Group – Despite all the thousands of emails, texts you send and calls you make, you will see that it’s a core group of individuals and those allied to them that provide the bulk of your work opportunities.
Fishing Location – Most of your competition and for a time you, will continue to seek opportunities where others seek work. Unless you have stand out content, find less crowded channels or expect low response rates. For instance, who these days sends anything in the post. Try it, most use social media!
Fishing Timing – The best time to have a conversation is ‘not’ when work is advertised. Decide who you wish to work with and engage them now!
Your Most Effective Channel – Working for yourself requires a range of opportunities and this requires raising your profile. Some newtwork well, some present well while others debate well and others prefer to write. Whatever you do you will do alot of it so, chose a path or combination of mediums which play to your strengths.
The Power of in person – Digital media is amazing but what’s more amazing, the connection you make with a person when you make the effort to travel to see them and the energy that’s exchanged from an in-person meeting versus a phone or video connection. I swear by this simple but overlooked reality.
Targeting – Topline, if you want to identify the lowest barrier to resistance to you getting work, follow the money. For instance, if an agency is pitching business even and particularly in cash strapped times, that is where money will be directed and potential great thinking welcomed and, one of ‘your’ best paths to working. I’ll have a seminar soon to really expand on optimal targeting of freelance/new business opportunities, how to identify them and effectively engage them. Please email me if you are interested to take part at: stuart@sparkinsearch.com.
Mindset – Final thing for now, when you aren’t getting work the last thing you want to do is smile as the pressure mounts. That said, smile, it’ll make you feel better and those you interact with are more likely to respond positively.
Strategy Jobs Market Update – May 2024
Fulltime Roles – In the last several weeks there has been a mild uptick in hiring of creative and brand planners/strategists, but this has to be seen in context. This market is still very tight. I’m talking with a number of you still being given news that your job has been cut.
Freelance Roles – For many of the freelancers/consultants, 2022/2023 were good years but 2024 is a different story. This year many of you have experienced a clear reduction in opportunities. This is a factor of less work generally, of brands and through them agencies, reluctant to spend on freelance, which is more expensive than hiring someone full-time.
Across Markets – In the last three months, I’ve met with
strategists in a number of markets including Sao Paolo, Amsterdam, Los Angeles, Miami, New York and London. The picture I am seeing is consistent across markets. There are always nuances that effect each market differently but one that is a key driver (as well as AI) is the cost of money.
Where is the strategy jobs market heading?
There’s plenty in the way of holding company ‘recalibration’ which will drive
uncertainty for some time yet that said the simplistic, optimists’ view…
The reason this jobs market feels ‘incremental/replacement/defensive’
versus one of ‘investment’ hiring is because of a CFO fear that until
central banks communicate a confidence that interest rates are on a downward trajectory, they might actually go up! Yes, once we see a reduction in interest rates it’s my belief that CFO’s will then have the confidence to allow greater investment in jobs. We’re getting closer to this point. Stay positive.
Roll on interest rate cuts which if nothing else will cut brands and agencies some slack.
Onwards,