Excuses: Creative Agencies Are Out of Excuses & Need to Stay Creative with Sean Womack | Ep #209

The creative landscape is changing. Is your agency keeping up? Are your creative people struggling to stay fresh? It's easy to become overwhelmed with change and uncertainty. Learning new trends and technologies can be challenging. However, there are massive opportunities available in our day and age. It's good to be a creative right now, and there's no excuse not to create! In this episode, we'll cover: Why it's never been a better time to be a creative. Why you're out of excuses not to create. Today I chatted with Sean Womack, founder, and CEO of Smack, a media agency, and author of the novel, The Six Sides of the Black Box. That's right, Sean wrote a fiction novel (not a business book!) which provides a glimpse into agency life and illustrates 6 lessons learned. Sean's interesting and extensive background a creative in the agency space speaks for itself. On today's show, Sean shares his interesting backstory and the excitement of being an agency creative in today's landscape. He also touches on the evolution of being a post-40-year-old creative person as well as give us some fresh insight on being creative in our crowded agency world. With the ever-changing technology and fast-paced nature of our industry, it's refreshing to hear from someone who has navigated successfully and reminds us why it's an exciting time, no matter your age. It's Never Been a Better Time to Be A Creative Are you a Gen-X-er? If so, then you remember the "Don Draper way" of pitching creative ideas to the client. As a Creative Director, you show up to a meeting and tell a compelling story to get a client to buy the idea. Not so much anymore... Today's philosophy is to create as many ideas as possible. Then those ideas go into a system to be analyzed and tested in the marketplace and see which one(s) will fly. That change has been radical and it's impacted the entire industry. Change can be difficult and scary but we have to remember all the positives that today's technology brings. If you are (or if your agency has) an awesome creative who love creating stuff but feel guilty about not really knowing which idea will work...then this is the best time ever to be a creative! Not only do we get to generate as many ideas as possible, but we also get to put them into a system to be tested. That system is able to tell us which idea worked and with whom. It's pretty ideal - the system always needs new creation in order to test and improve. So keep creating! Why You're Out of Excuses Not to Create 1. There's plenty of material. Today, creatives get to work directly with a ton of different people, from engineers and business people to artists and storytellers. Everyone comes together and mixes it all up to create an interesting and rich creative environment. 2. There's plenty of resources. Let's not forget all the different mediums and platforms right at our fingertips. In recent times, a creative's job has expanded. You might be thinking of writing a book and you know that actually writing the book is just step #1 of like 20. But the amount of tools at our fingertips makes our expanding jobs easier... that's to technology and social media we can reach the masses at lightning speed. No excuses... Now is an exciting time to be a creative! Looking for a Payroll and HR Solution for your Agency? Payroll and benefits are hard. Especially when you’re a small business. Gusto is making payroll, benefits, and HR easy for small businesses. You no longer have to be a big company to get great technology, great benefits, and great service to take care of your team. For a limited time, Gusto is offering a deal to Smart Agency Master Class listeners. Check out Gusto.com/agency for 3-months FREE once you run your first payroll with them.