Creator's Block

With IMPACT growing and changing so quickly comes many new roles and opportunities for advancements, changes, and promotions.

Which of course makes many of us here wonder are we ready for a new role? Is this the career path I want? If I don't put myself up for consideration will it reflect poorly on me?

I have personally struggled with this as a designer. I know that moving up in the ranks as a designer means you may not be as hands on as you would like. You may be spending less time physically designing and more time taking care of the administrative side. Is the trade-off worth it? Will this fulfill my creative passions? And the most important question... will I still be HAPPY in my job?

When you're up for consideration it can stir up a lot of feelings and internal monologues that you may not necessarily have the answers to. Join us this week, as Justine and I try to tackle that inner monologue and discuss how to make the best decision for a career move.

I'm sure we've all been there before -- you presented an amazing idea to your client, agreed on next steps and then while in the midst of the project, get news that something needs to change or an item wasn't approved by the right person, sending your project into a tailspin.

How do you communicate they don't have the budget to redo the work? Will the account be at risk if the client doesn't take the news well?

Tough conversations like these can be the most stressful part your job. After 8 years managing projects and working for various agencies, I can confidently say following this five-step process will guarantee effective communication to help get you through these harder conversations.

Listen in and Marcella and I discuss how to have tough but effective conversations with clients and clearly outline our five-step process to follow during your call.

The designers have been having lots of brainstorm meetings lately where we basically all hop on a call and look at a ton of different websites. The purpose of this being to find things we like or think are cool and new to incorporate into our own designs.

I know what you're thinking, "You just STEAL from other website designs?!".

Not quite, we take these things and try to improve them in some way.

This is a common practice among designers and creatives alike.

We're always on the hunt for inspiration for an original idea.

A simple search for the term "originality" on medium shows that about half the articles seem to be focused on the death of of originality or how it no longer truly exists.

Michael Riley writes -

"The way you become original is through imitation to some degree. When starting out as a creator, your work is likely going to largely reflect the ideas of your influences. That's how you find your voice. The more you make things, the more your voice will become a collection of those influences and start to feel unique. … When that happens, you'll rely less on the inputs you're getting from your influences and more on your own original thoughts."

Going through art school I became acutely aware of this idea. In almost every class I took we were learning through copying someone else's work. We copied masters, we copied amateurs, we copied random google image searches. This was how we learned.

With each copy I did a slowly started to see my own hand shine through. It was no longer just a copy, but a great idea that I started to shape into my own great idea.

This week Justine and I discuss the paradox of originality. Does originality truly exist or are we all just really good copycats?

I recently took Friday off for a personal mental health day to reset and recharge. The past few months have been some of the most rewarding and challenging I've experienced in my career so far as I adjusted to my new role as Account Supervisor.

I entered a new world of management that I wasn't previously familiar with. Though I've accomplished a lot over these months, it certainly hasn't been easy and over the past few weeks I started to feel like I wasn't doing my job well enough.

Self-doubt is something I've struggled with over the years so I knew when Marcella recommended me to read You Are a Badass: How to Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living an Awesome Life, it was exactly what I needed.

Author Jen Sincero provides a witty approach to learning how to love yourself and attracting the people and energy you need in life in order to embrace your inner badass.

The book starts off with some high-level, feel-good advice but eventually taps into actionable takeaways you can incorporate into your every day. A few of my favorite messages and exercises include:

• Make enjoying your life a priority
• Ditch the self-deprecating humor
• Forgive yourself
• Take advantage of opportunities when they present themselves
• Find a cause you care about and give to it every month (however you can, whether by money or time!)
• Compliment your peers and others

Though these may seem obvious to you, I promise that the sentiments go much deeper. Listen to Marcella and I discuss these topics and more in this week's episode of Creator's Block!

As many of you may know, Marcella and I love to talk about our varying yet similar personalities -- how can we both be Aries and yet so different?! -- so it should come as no surprise that I wanted to dive in deeper with her to see where she felt she fell on the personality spectrum.

Were we introverts, extroverts or ambiverts? What do the personality types even mean? And how do they relate to our work productivity?

After doing research and taking way too many online personality tests, we both confirmed that we were indeed ambiverts -- along with 68% of the population.

The more I researched, the more fascinated I became with how our personality types influence our work.

For example:

• Ambiverts make really great sales people because of their ability to adapt and relate to both the boisterous extroverts and thoughtful introverts.
• Open office floor plans can be a detriment for introverts but perfect for extroverts.
• Extroverts excel in being able to jump back and forth between different meetings or tasks but can fail to set boundaries and avoid burnout

Psychologist Adam Grant said "To work well with other people, you need to understand their personalities and they need to understand yours."

This is so true whether you're trying to work with your colleagues or your clients.

Join Marcella and I as we discuss how the three different personality types can be more productive by leaning into their strengths and overcoming their weaknesses.

So we've talked about how to balance your personal life and your professional life and make them work like yin and yang, but it wasn't until earlier this week that I really started to think about one of the most important parts of making that work… my work family.

Not to get into great detail here, but I have been feeling not quite right lately. I've been having trouble focusing and getting my head right, beyond the usual 3pm blues. From the get go I immediately went to a couple of my closest coworkers for support.

These people not only helped me logistically but rearranging my schedule and work, but also emotionally. Just like family would.

This really got me thinking about how lucky I am to have coworkers and managers that I trust enough to share these parts of my life. Lucky not only that they are understanding as my team, but that they genuinely care about me as a person.

...and I'm not alone! 83% of U.S. employees say their work family makes them feel happier and a survey  of 1,000 full time workers ages 18-65 found that having a familial relationship with coworkers boosts productivity and feelings of well-being in the workplace.

So this week, Justine and I are talking about something I think is not being discussed nearly enough, "The Work Family".

We discussed some of our favorite (and not so favorite) productivity hacks in a previous episode, but one thing we didn't expound on is why being productive and time management is so important.

Of course the obvious answer is to be able to accomplish your week's tasks, but it can actually run much deeper and effects more than just yourself.

Are you managing your time effectively enough for your team's and client's success? What happens if your management falls short?

To help us dive into the topic, we asked Karisa Egan -- an Account Executive with crazy good time management skills -- to join us this week.

Here are her initial thoughts on the topic in her own words: 

"Organization is a skill set that can really be a struggle for some people, for me it comes naturally, which can be a good thing, but also results in some obsessive tendencies.

One way I've made this work for the job I do every day is make sure I organize my time efficiently and effectively. I use a variety of tactics to make sure I'm not letting myself or my team down and on the weeks that my organization falls are my most stressful weeks.

Time management is a topic that's unique to everyone and there are a million tips and tricks that we could share, some have even already been shared in this podcast,  to make sure you're using your time effectively, but what we wanted to focus on today is how to make sure you're holding yourself accountable when it comes to your time management."

Join Marcella, Karisa and I discuss the importance of time management and holding yourself accountable in this week's episode!

Recently, I've been dealing with some personal matters that have taken up more time in my professional life.

It's weeks like these that make me appreciative of the fact that I work remote.

Knowing I can flex my work schedule -- to a certain degree -- in order to best fit what's happening in my life is something I don't take for granted. 

I'll be honest though, I was hesitant and nervous when IMPACT first approached me about working remotely full time. I loved working in an office, brainstorming with colleagues and having friends to grab lunch or happy hour with.

What would it be like to be alone, in my home, every day? Could I be productive? Would I be lonely? Would I get bored or lose my creativity?

A recent study shows there's been a 115% increase in people telecommuting in the US over the last 10 years.

Was I ready to become part of that statistic? 

In time, I weighed my odds and decided to take the risk and see if remote work was a fit for me -- And boy, am I glad I did.

Overall, I love working remotely, and the flexibility and freedom of my schedule is just one reason why. However, there are plenty of days where I just don't feel "on." 

With no one around me to hold me accountable in doing my job, I realize now it is more important than ever to find ways to reignite my creative spark and ensure I'm able to deliver quality work.

Join Marcella and I as we discuss how we combat the remote working blues to keep that creative spark alive in this week's episode. 

As some of you may already know, I'm a struggling perfectionist when it comes to work.

I always want to do tasks perfectly, the first time, every time -- but, as we all know, that's not realistic.

Failing, whether at work or in my personal life, used to be something that crippled me. 

Over time, though, I learned to appreciate my failures -- every single one of them.

Whether I messed up with a small task or failed on a larger scale, I gained more insight and direction from those mistakes than I ever will reading a book or attending a webinar.

So, why are we so afraid to admit our failures?

There was a recent post in IMPACT Elite where a member detailed a mistake she made at work and felt she let her team down because of it.

She asked other members for "some encouragement and a quick pat on the back saying, 'its ok, it happens, it's not the end of the world, everything is ok.'"

I was actually humbled by the number of responses people shared, explaining how we are all in the same boat. It was encouraging to hear other people's experiences.

Those simple reminders that you're not alone, others have gone through similar instances.

Though it's at first scary, owning and sharing your failures actually ends up building a stronger culture and relationship.

How so?

Listen to this week's episode as special guest -- and Creator's Block founder -- Liz Murphy and I discuss some of our biggest failures and how to change the negative experience into a success story.

I've actually been struggling through this week after getting back from vacation. I returned with a glowing tan and equally glowing optimism, but I quickly found myself in a productivity slump.

I was easily distracted and it seemed like every day I had more and more external forces pulling me away from the work that I really, really needed to get done.

Feeling fully over-extended and realizing I couldn't keep going at the rate that I was going, I turned to the internet to fill me with it's endless wisdom. As always I was not disappointed by the results.

Now, it's been a while since we've found a really juicy list to tear to shreds (and I know this is really the only reason you guys keep listening to us). So this week I've found a couple articles about the highly sought after "Productivity Hacks", but here's a plot twist… I don't actually hate all of them.

Join me and Justine, as we break down some of the best and worst productivity hacks the internet has to offer.