Body of Work

by Pamela Slim

  What are the rules of the game?

  Which skills, ingredients, experience, certifications, or education are required to be successful in this work mode?

  How do people get hired? Is there a clear, objective hiring process, or do you have to have the right connections?

  Are there any deal killers, like age limits or physical restrictions? (No matter how much you want it, you may not be able to switch work modes from fifty-five-year-old computer programmer to NBA draftee. Then again, I would love to be proven wrong.)

  How do I need to tell my story to get hired?

  In a traditional job, you may need to have a strong résumé and cover letter, with a LinkedIn profile.

  In a freelance job, you may need to have a place to house your portfolio, as well as testimonials or ratings from satisfied past clients.

  What story will resonate most with the new market? (We’ll discuss this more in chapter 9.)

  Who can I talk to who has been successful in this work mode?

  The best way to learn the true ins and outs of a work mode is to talk to a handful of people who are currently doing it exceptionally well. It is very important to get up-to-date information, since someone’s experience as a freelancer, or Internet personality, or employee five years ago may be very different from the reality of today’s market.

  CHAPTER 5

  Create and Innovate

  But unless we are creators we are not fully alive.

  What do I mean by creators? Not only artists, whose acts of creation are the obvious ones of working with paint or clay or words. Creativity is a way of living life, no matter our vocation or how we earn our living.

  —Madeleine L’Engle, Walking on Water

  When Mike Carson was nine years old, he begged his parents to buy him a digital video camera that could add special effects like explosions and flying helicopters. He was obsessed with film and proudly produced his first video, starring his little brother, within a week of getting the camera.

  Through the rest of grammar school and junior high, Mike learned everything he could about filming, special effects, and editing by watching YouTube tutorials. He even found a way to use his video skills for most of his school projects. By his early teens, he was making videos for his dad’s nonprofit organization.

  In high school, he developed an affinity for music and loved discovering new artists. “I grew up listening to music in church and my parent’s music in the house. But it was fun to find my own taste.” He became a big Kanye West fan in 2004 after hearing his first album, The College Dropout. In 2008, when Mike was sixteen, he went to see Kanye live in concert and was blown away by his production and creativity.

  Turning to his friend at the concert, he said, “We have to work with this guy sometime!”

  Two years later, he was sitting in a studio in Australia, filming Kanye West and Jay Z during the making of their platinum album, Watch the Throne.

  “To this day, that is the craziest moment I have ever had in my life,” Mike said. “I’m eighteen years old, holding a camera, watching my favorite two artists in the world make an album in front of me.”

  How did he get there?

  After high school, Mike enrolled in Columbia College with a major in television editing. He assumed he would follow a traditional path and get his college degree before finding a job in television.

  During his freshman year he met Mike Bowen (Mike B.), a fellow Columbia College student who was working at RSVP Gallery, a local store in Chicago. The store’s owner was also Kanye West’s manager and creative director, and after learning about Mike C.’s video skills, he gave him some small creative projects to do for the store.

  The Mikes, as they came to be known, started to work on the side on freelance video projects for emerging artists. One such client was Big Sean, a relatively unknown rapper at the time, signed to Kanye West’s GOOD Music label. They made a music video for him and it caught the attention of Kanye’s team.

  “We were in the right place at the right time,” said Mike C.

  Since Mike C. was still in college, his parents, while excited for him, didn’t want him to make the decision to leave school without some serious thought. He finally decided that he could not pass up the opportunity, and quit school.

  Over the next two years, the Mikes would work on a variety of projects, including the Kanye and Jay Z collaboration in Australia.

  “We took it all in,” said Mike C. “We watched every aspect of how Kanye ran his business. I learned about music, editing, fashion, stage production, and promotion.”

  In addition to his other clients, Mike C. became the creative director for Big Sean. He handled tours, album packaging, and merchandising. He produced a show in Detroit in a stadium for thirteen thousand people. He handled every part of the production: set design, video, staging, and promotion. The show was a big success.

  Not yet twenty years old, the Mikes moved to Los Angeles and expanded their creative empire.

  Now their hip-hop blog, Illroots, gets more than a million hits a month. In their creative business, they work with advertisers and artists to create videos and produce live events.

  “I am so excited by the possibility of producing tours,” said Mike C. “I saw how Kanye treated his shows like Broadway productions. Right now, I wake up every day and learn something new. I read, watch videos, study people, experiment with different mediums, and try to be a better person every day. As much as you might think that the lifestyle of the people I have worked with is crazy, it is really not. They are focused on always growing, always moving, always pushing the edge. I want to be surrounded by people like that. I do eventually want to go back to school and complete my degree. But it won’t be in film or video, because I am learning all of that now. I want to keep living, keep creating, and keep progressing in my skills every day. Most importantly, I want to make my parents proud.”

  You may think that Mike’s story is about a one-in-a-million chance of getting a big break by being discovered by someone famous.

  It is not.

  Mike’s story is about an eighteen-year old kid who mastered the most important skill of his era: creating innovative work that opens the door to opportunity.

  The skill of creating

  In the new world of work, our ability to create a powerful body of work is what will determine our ongoing employability. In order to create, you have to quickly scope, design, and ship a series of creative projects that come in many forms.

  If you step into a new job, you have a short time to make a mark and prove to your employer that he or she made a great choice hiring you.

  If you start a business, you have a limited amount of time to get a product to market and attract your first customers.

  If you run a nonprofit, you need to organize a program or a project to serve your community and galvanize funding.

  If you merge two companies, you have to evaluate staffing, manage customers, work on branding, integrate the cultures, and create a unified business plan.

  Your creative work will tell your story. And in order to tell a story, you have to get it out of your head and into the world.

  As Scott Belsky, the author of Making Ideas Happen and founder of Behance and 99U, says about the future of work:

  “We will ultimately live in a perpetual data-driven talent edition. Everything you create will be measured and tracked by others through comments, shares, and likes. Your work will come up on the radar of potential employers and clients, and the data will tell them if you are worth talking to or hiring.”

  Every creative project must answer the following questions:

  What do you want to create?

  Name it. Describe it.

  (A book, a job, a video, an app)

  Who is it for?

  Describe your audience.

  (Include specific details about who yo
u are targeting.)

  Why does it need to be accomplished?

  Describe the roots of the project.

  (How does this fit into your body of work? Who will be affected by it? What positive outcomes will occur as the result of you completing it?)

  How are you going to structure the project?

  Define a model.

  (Who has done something similar in the past? How was it structured? How can you customize this model and make it your own?)

  When does it need to be finished?

  Make a timeline. Set a deadline.

  (Nothing happens without a deadline. Set a date and work backward.)

  Soon enough, asking these questions will become second nature. You will think about each one for each new piece of your body of work. Creating rapidly will quickly become an unconscious skill.

  Your creative process

  Everyone has an opinion about the best way to accomplish creative work.

  Some advocate a daily writing practice, starting first thing in the morning.

  Others think you should work from 9:00 P.M. to 2:00 A.M. on your creative projects if you really want to “crush it.”

  I can’t think without a clean desk.

  If you need to stuff your face with Nutella while you edit videos, or like to have paper stacked twenty inches high around your computer while you code, or want to mess around on Facebook while you write, go ahead and do it.

  Whatever you prefer, you must make sure your setting allows you to create consistently on a sustainable basis.

  Your creative process is your own, and no one is allowed to touch it, but make sure that you know yourself and how you can best fashion an environment that supports your work.

  Research the best methods and choose one that works for you. If you want to get work done, you must claim your creative process.

  Scott Belsky says that in all the years he has been writing and speaking about taking action and managing a creative business, the one piece of advice that helps the most people is to “tell people about what you are working on, especially when it feels immature or you worry about someone stealing it. You get priceless feedback. If it is a bad idea, you get an amount of accountability. Tell people, ‘Here is what I am working on. It is launching in three months.’ Then you will have to sweat it out to launch in three months.”

  There Are Four Parts to Your Creative Process

  Part one: Enjoy the adventure of your craft

  Part two: Develop a mastery mind-set

  Part three: Scope, test, scope, test

  Part four: Flex your creative muscles

  Let’s explore each one in some depth.

  Part one: Enjoy the adventure of your craft

  I was pretty fearless in my teens and twenties.

  I figured out how to get myself to Switzerland as an exchange student at sixteen, with little money and no contacts.

  I had many adventures in college in Mexico and Colombia, often traveling alone and having some dangerous experiences, like being held up at knife point and walking home alone after a late night of salsa dancing (sorry, Mom).

  I lived in Rio de Janeiro for six months by myself while I trained in the Afro-Brazilian martial art of capoeira.

  And much earlier in my life, as soon as I really got the hang of books, I loved to read stories of myths and adventures from all over the world.

  I think intense devotion to your craft is a commitment to going on a hair-raising adventure.

  Unfortunately, we often focus too much on the outcome of our creative projects instead of the fun, and often painful, process of bringing them to life.

  As a wide-eyed first-time author who was struggling to put pen to paper, I got some great advice from the publisher of my first book:

  “Write the damned book,” he said.

  And now having written the damned book (two, actually), I will tell you that it was an adventure to the grandest scale of my childhood dreams. I fought demons. I interviewed kings and queens. I scaled the highest mountains of impossibility, gave up, died, and somehow came back to life in time to finish the last chapter. All while changing tiny baby diapers, managing play dates, serving clients, and dealing with economic warfare all around me.

  I think craft has spirit.

  In individual sessions with clients, writing on my own, or in a large room teaching a group of people, there are moments of intense and utter grace.

  They come when you immerse yourself in your work and feel like you have to know how to do it better or else you will lose your quest and the king will behead you in the public square.

  They come when you feel ideas rising up in your chest and you know, for certain, that they are turning into something big and powerful, as if conjured by a magic spell.

  Craft is not a rote, calculated path. It is an explosive, messy, terrifying, and passionate adventure.

  How can your work take you on a journey?

  What dragons are to be slayed?

  What myths are to be broken?

  What music is meant to be danced to, until there is no separation between beat, body, and spirit?

  Which battles are to be fought?

  What deep, passionate love is to be made?

  What inner tiger is meant to be released from its chains?

  How would you feel differently about your craft if you viewed it as a noble adventure?

  One of the great burdens of creative people is wondering, after looking at what they have done: “Is this all just a bunch of meaningless drivel? Do I have any idea what I am doing?”

  It is also the great burden of experienced creatives.

  As a little girl, I sat in the darkroom with my dad as he showed me subtle manipulations to the printing of photographs that made a huge difference in the feeling and look of the picture. I watched him smile as he found the one shot in eighty that captured just the right collection of facial expressions in a group shot.

  To my dad, a craft is a noble undertaking. He takes his photography seriously. And his writing. And his work restoring the Port Costa School.

  Even in the last quarter of your life, you can never consider yourself a master at the end of the journey.

  Choose adventure.

  When you choose the adventure of your craft, you find unexpected, beautiful, and unlikely twists and turns that you never expected.

  Differentiation, as the marketing wonks like to say.

  Are you on an adventure?

  Who is the hero?

  Who are you trying to save?

  How would your work be different if you didn’t have to sound pithy or appear perfect?

  Part two: Develop a mastery mind-set

  Your body of work will broaden and deepen over time. Its value is determined by your commitment to continually improve your skills and deepen your ingredients.

  When you focus on mastering your chosen craft, many opportunities open up for you.

  In today’s world of hacks, shortcuts, and instant money-making blueprints, I think we have lost appreciation for slow-brewing mastery in our work.

  Through the years, I have worked with many martial artists, cultural leaders, and business mentors who have taught me that trying to finish first in a short race is not only stressful, it also works against developing deep expertise.

  Here are eleven ways to develop a mastery mind-set.

  1. Learn patience

  My mother-in-law has taught me that Diné people (Navajos) have ceremonies for every part of life. There are ceremonies at a baby’s first laugh, at puberty, and for the changing seasons. There are water ceremonies and lightning ceremonies and blessing ceremonies. In these sacred gatherings, conversation is slow and deliberate and unhurried. An elder can take an entire hour to share a teaching, or to bless a meal. I have watched elders see a young person s
quirm with impatience, then choose to talk slower and longer. They do this because they know that learning to settle down and develop patience is going to help the young develop thoughtfulness, depth, and wisdom.

  2. Practice the basics

  When we first learn a new skill, we dive into it with abandon, taking classes, learning from mentors, and practicing like crazy. When we reach a certain level of success, we often get lazy. True masters never stop practicing the basics. Martial artists do push-ups and sit-ups every day of their lives. Artists practice brush strokes. Writers write daily. Entrepreneurs create, market, and sell. When you don’t practice the basics, they go away.

  3. Appreciate the source of your materials

  In a film called Jiro Dreams of Sushi, Jiro’s son walks slowly around the fish market, looking for the perfect fish for the evening meals. He has relationships with fishermen who will not sell their product to anyone but him. Great work is built with great materials, by people and partners who care as much about what they do as you care about what you do. Avoid cheap, sloppy, and poorly constructed tools and materials.

  4. Deconstruct everything

  Often success is random. If you started a business in 1996 like I did, you might have thought you were naturally talented. The market was flourishing. Companies were throwing huge sums of money around for training, employee perks, and expensive toys. If you do well, take the time to figure out exactly which conditions led to your success. If you have a raging failure, figure out exactly which conditions, personal and environmental, led to your downfall.

  5. Set boundaries

  You cannot create great work if you are in a constant state of defense. You must protect your creative work time by blocking out your schedule, turning off your phone, and closing down your e-mail. You must protect your creative energy by avoiding “life-sucking squids,” as my friend Martha Beck calls people who care only about their own edification and not about your needs or soul.

  6. Make your space holy