Sunday Letters- Life of Clarity

June 8 Edition

Welcome to Sunday Letters, This edition is called Life of Clarity

Overview- We as a design studio have some momentum and the next focus is to build a team, network and leverage this traction.

Point 1 - I think it is important to make retainers work before making Youtube work. Because Youtube would require more effort and also a full time editor or person, If I want to also run a company alongside. For all of that to happen I need a consistent and more importantly predictable cashflow.

Point 2- I have realised that as things scale, I would be moved to doing everything but design. Which means sales, admin and other things. I would have to focus on everything else, which means I need people who are better designers than I am to work with me, The quality of work is everything.

I want to build the most highly talent dense creative company and the services that this company provides would be “whatever the fuck we find interesting to do” which is basically my philosophy of life and work. Money- sure. but more important is finding it fun and interesting. From Branding to websites to marketing campaigns and ad films to short stories and our own media channel, as I said basically whatever we find interesting.

I have a solid portfolio of work and some social media presence as well which means that I can show it to design and advertising agencies here in Canada and US via outreach. The retainers are the most important goal right now, because I don’t want to be haggling on 14 sales calls a day, I would much rather haggle with 3 valuable clients

There are 4 things that would be the focus of next quarter starting July

• Design Network- When the first video hit I had more enquiries than I could handle and I converted less than ideal but thats because I was bad at sales, this would not be the case anymore because I am working of learning sales which means that I would hopefully be able to close more work. I need people with me so that I can fulfil that work while keeping my content going.
  ACTIONABLE- Reach out to 5 great designers and try to make a private community of them on Slack or Whatsapp. For the community to be useful, try to have a rate card sheet template for everyone to fill so that I can use help and they can also help out each other. The bar would be kept really really high because the quality of work should not go down in any case. Ideally this would only have 10-15 people. The Community will be called the Creative Co

• There would be designers in the creative co but I need to train people to help me with content as well because I need AI visual designers. This is something for which I am willing to train new people. I have to figure out the logistics of this somehow. ( I am seeing things from my vantage point where I believe video form is going to be much much bigger and I will be betting huge on it. More on this later)

• Hiring- Something that I do not want to train someone completely is Outbound sales. This outbound person need to be great hire. They need to be able to take on a lot of responsibility and understand some aspect of the business in general. I would ideally be hiring an Intern with really high potential and then give them the task.
  ACTIONABLE- COPYRIGHTER/ SALES AND MARKETING HIRE. Dilemma is that I know what needs to be done step by step but for that to happen this person needs to be committed to the company almost as much as I am which is going to be very hard to find. The other side of the thought is that I hired editing help too soon in the beginning which was a waste because I hadn’t figured out the process and my voice and content in general. Now that I have each step figured out, I can easily train someone to do it or add a team member but I needed to figure it out myself first which might end up happening with outbound too. It would make more sense to not repeat the mistake and figure it out myself first and then add a team member and get them scale what works.

• Media Channel- I understand that content is possible and every company will need to be a media company in the future and I want to double down on it. Once I hit 25K on IG, I would start my Youtube journey as well. Starting with 2 videos a week. I need to plan how will I be able to do all of this, especially if I would be travelling too.

Last thought, my vision is very crystal clear on the creative company. The goal of the company would be to have the most creative people- writers, designers, motion artists, filmmakers, storytellers and to do what we find most interesting and fun. If you a creative of any kind reading this, you have it in you to work really really hard and if you have it in you to give a few years alongside me on building. I want you to take a bet on me. I will make it work. We will make it work. You will have to work a lot- don’t be mistaken, but you will have the time of your life, produce your greatest work and I will make sure you make a lot of money.

Get in touch.