Dear Jane,
You’re about to land your first job in advertising and begin a 20-year rollercoaster ride. After a few false starts, you’ve finally landed a role at M&C Saatchi. Your first account will be a baptism of fire and you’re totally unprepared. It’ll be the hardest job you ever do, but the only way from here is up.
Prepare yourself for a challenging journey. You’ll be knocked down more times than is healthy and doubt yourself; you’ll run away for chunks of time, and look to find something less challenging and stressful. But you’re a creative junkie and eventually you’ll come back for more.
You’ll progress through the ranks, although you’ll burn yourself out and make some calamitous mistakes along the way. You’ll talk a lot with your friends and female colleagues about the curse of imposter syndrome, which leaves you constantly doubting your abilities. You are a people pleaser, but I wish you would learn to just please yourself. When you do, you are liberated. You’ll be astounded at what you can achieve.
You love working in the advertising industry but it bothers you that it can be so resistant to change. You’ll see big agencies, with huge overheads, struggling to feed the beast, losing their creativity along the way. You’ll see the best agencies in Scotland grow weighty at the top with fewer opportunities for young talent to move about to earn their chance to shine.
Fast forward 15 years and you’ll walk away from the security and salary of a great position at the Scottish government to set up your own marketing consultancy. It’s an odd choice in terms of timing – your daughter is only 18 months old and your partner is setting up his own tech startup. Although you will have no money and lots of sleepless nights, it will be the best thing you ever did.
You’ll first launch what amounts to a lifestyle business, that allows you to work on your own terms with social enterprises and charitable organisations. But a short phone call with an ex-colleague makes you realise that you have ambitions to start your own creative agency. You’ll call it PUNK and throw the rule book out of the window. Comfort zones are for wimps, you decide.
Finally, this is your opportunity to flex your creative muscle and do something about those old-fashioned structures that have bothered you so much for 20 years. Flexible working? Tick. Paternalistic agency structures? Who needs them?
You’ll be surprised by the enthusiastic support you receive from your peers who tell you: “It’s just what we need”. You’ll be amazed by how many like-minded, talented people are keen to work with you, clients and colleagues alike. The business is propelled further than you’d ever imagined in this first year. You’ll feel incredibly fortunate to be starting up in Scotland, at a time when entrepreneurialism and start-up energy are in real abundance.
You’ll be challenged by how to manage growth, while sticking to your beliefs and delivering on big promises. At times you’ll feel under immense pressure, but remind yourself: this is what it feels like to put yourself out there. This is the time to commit to yourself and your ambitions, and disregard what other people think. To stop feeling guilty about spending enough time at home, or at work. You should know that one day the things that make you most proud; your family, your work and your friends, don’t all have to be mutually exclusive. They are all an extension of you.
This is your opportunity to aim high and to show that things can be done differently. To lead the charge and champion Scotland as a crucible of creativity. To follow your dreams, commit to your intentions and only be around those who inspire you. To continue to work every day in a job that doesn’t feel like work.
So try to enjoy and celebrate your achievements, as they happen. Time is indeed fleeting.
Jane
Jane Strachan is the co-founder of PUNK Creative.
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