The Creator's Journey tracks

Vanessa Fortier on Storytelling in Advertising

"Work hard. Be yourself. Don’t take yourself too seriously!" ~ Vanessa Fortier

Vanessa Fortier has been a Creative Director with The Martin Agency, based in Richmond, Virginia, for the past five years and has overseen award-winning advertising campaigns for Benjamin Moore Paints and Walmart. Before coming to The Martin Agency, Vanessa worked for ten years at Saatchi & Saatchi NY as Creative Director, primarily on global accounts for Olay, Iams, and Eukanuba.

Vanessa landed her first job out of school at Leo Burnett Chicago, where she cut her teeth on McDonald’s, Kellogg’s, P&G, and Hallmark. As a wife and a mother of two girls, Vanessa keeps a variety of balls in the air as she juggles the mix of home and office priorities that many leaders do.

Vanessa believes that advertising is really about storytelling, even with the advent of new technologies and channels of communication. Big data is at its best when it informs an awesome strategy, she says, while the ability to execute an idea is as important as coming up with the idea.

Marissa Boisvert On Cultivating Self Awareness

“When we produce authentic work, we reach our audience. In my own experience in working with people, I have found the more we cultivate presence -- the more we’re able to be in the moment -- the more we’re authentic, we’re confident, we’re focused, and we’re listening. And when we’re present, we learn how to manage extremely active imaginations, which most highly creative and artistic people for sure have. We don’t want to stifle the imagination. We want to redirect and focus it.” ~ Marissa Boisvert

Marissa Boisvert is a behavior change specialist and certified integrative health coach. Coming out of her training at Duke Integrative Medicine, as well as her experience as a professional dancer and yoga instructor, Marissa followed her curiosity to discover the link between mindful awareness and art. She found that in order to tap into your true creative potential, you must develop your self-awareness.

Through her company, WANA, an acronym for Where Awareness Nourishes Artistry, Marissa now helps creative leaders, artists, and visionary thinkers learn the practice of working and living in the moment.

In this episode, Marissa talks about the need to “meet the moment” if you want to reach your full creative potential. She cautions that we need to become aware of where resistance is holding us back, while at the same time allowing ourselves to enjoy the creative process.

Charlie Gilkey On Finding Your Yay-Sayers

“You don’t get to do everything. Limit your work to the essential best work projects and focus on getting those done. Pick three and go after them and finish them. When the year rolls over, pick three more and do it again. The more you can focus on a fewer amount of things that matter – that really, really matter to you – the better you’re going to be.” ~Charlie Gilkey

Charlie Gilkey is an energetic mix of Army officer, philosopher, and entrepreneur.

His website, ProductiveFlourishing.com, is one of the top websites on planning and productivity for professional creatives, entrepreneurs, and small business owners.

His strong suit is helping creative, small business owners deconstruct their businesses and rearrange the puzzle pieces so that their time is spent on the activities that matter most to both the business and the people running it. In short, he helps people take meaningful action on the stuff that matters.

Although I’ve read his blog and followed his work for several years, we met for the first time this summer at a three-day conference run by Stephanie and Jonathan Fields called Good Life Project Camp. Charlie led a workshop focusing on steps that leaders need to take to consistently finish and ship their best work. It’s a theme that I speak and write about and wanted to hear Charlie’s take on the topic. It was a talk that was instructive, encouraging, and validated my experiences.

Charlie encourages us to seek out the “yay-sayers” in our lives who support and believe in our work. He also reminds us that creativity thrives in structure. All of us have processes and routines in our lives. The key is finding the ones that best channel and harness our creativity.

Tania Dakka is a copywriter and owner of Badass’D Digital Ink. She’s known for her love of bourbon, bikes, and business, and is the copywriter business owners call on when they need the words that transform their talents into money.

Lou Jones on Remaining Relevant
“We have to constantly worry about remaining relevant in the way we’re communicating and in what we’re communicating. And the biggest hurdle is fear. We literally have to learn how to be less fearful and get out of our own way.” ~ Lou Jones

In this episode, Lou Jones, a Boston-based commercial photographer, talks about a career that has spanned several decades of disruptive change in business, technology and life. Of the creative leaders I’ve known over the years, I don’t know many who’ve been more thoughtful about assembling the right people and processes that provide the resources to allow multiple projects to overlap while consistently shipping impactful work from each endeavor.

He’s photographed assignments for numerous Fortune 500 corporations and major magazines from around the world. Lou has also published a number of books, and has photographs in the collections of several museums. He has been named a “Legend Behind The Lens” by Nikon, and has also served on the board of directors for a number of museums and trade organizations, including the American Society of Media Photographers, which is how we met 30 years ago.

Lou observes that talent is really only a small part of what leads to success. Whether a client hires you revolves just as much around relationship -- and whether you can problem-solve and get the project done regardless of obstacles. You have to speak the language of your client. He cautions us as creators to not let someone else’s opinion of our work define our perception of ourselves -- or our confidence in our own opinion of our work.

Tess Vigeland On Knowing When To Quit

“If I’ve learned nothing else, it’s this -- you know deep down inside yourself when something is wrong. Or when something is right. I think at first our instinct is to flee that, particularly if listening to it means there’s going to be real hard change. But there’s a reason it’s there. And if you do nothing else the rest of your life, listen to that. We listen to everybody else and what they think about us, what we think they’re saying about us. Listen to yourself!" ~Tess Vigeland

Tess Vigeland has worked in and around public radio for over 20 years, with 11 of those years as a host of NPR’s "Marketplace." In August 2012, she walked into her executive producer’s office and handed over a letter of resignation that started her on a new journey of discovery, one that led her from, “If I’m no longer the host of Marketplace ...,” to “Who am I now?”

In 2013, Tess took the stage at the World Domination Summit in Portland, OR, to regale an enthusiastic crowd of entrepreneurs and world changers on the topic of leaving a steady job and paycheck for the dark unknown of pursuing a path of discovery and change. An editor for Random House just happened to be in the audience that morning and out of her talk, Tess recently published her book Leap. Although Tess will tell you her book is not a “how to quit your job and start a new chapter in your life” book, it does recount her journey to date as well as vignettes from dozens of other people she interviewed about what they’ve experienced since making their own “leaps.”

Because The Creator’s Journey is focused on the processes that creative leaders use to ship their best work, I talk with Tess about one of the most difficult processes – the process of knowing when to quit something that may, by all appearances, appear to be going extremely well, but that’s causing your heart to stagnate and die.

Heath & Alyssa Padgett on Facing Down Big Challenges:

“Don’t be afraid of what other people say or what other people think. … Instead of trying to do what everybody else is doing, figure out what works best for you. You are unique and you do have something to offer to people and it doesn’t have to be what everybody else says it is.” ~ Alyssa & Heath Padgett

In May 2014, Alyssa and Heath Padgett were married. Four days later, they hit the road in their first home together, a 1994 Coachman Leprechaun motor home. Months earlier, they had both agreed that they wanted to quit their jobs and leave Texas, where they’d grown up. They wanted to be fulltime writers, and their initial jobs out of college weren’t moving them any closer to that dream. Their idea to travel morphed into a seven-month honeymoon road trip to all 48 states. But they realized they couldn’t travel aimlessly for that long. So Heath came up with the idea to work a different job in every state and film a documentary entitled “Hourly America” about their experiences. They were able to find a sponsor to help cover some of their costs. I met them in Portland, OR, while we were attending the World Domination Summit in the summer of 2014. We were working together on the film team covering various stories during the conference. My wife, Linda, and I were inspired by their vision and hutzpah, and have been following their exploits both on the road and off.

In this episode, Heath and Alyssa talk about tackling a creative project with hutzpah, dealing with conflict when you’re living in an RV, and pushing aside the excuses that keep you from pursuing your passion and taking that big risk. When something seems too big, and too crazy – it’s all about taking small steps every day, finding someone to encourage you, and putting some skin in the game to push you to commit on a bigger level.

David Baldwin on Leaning Into What's Scary
“I hope what I leave is relationships. That’s what I value in life. To this day, I have people I hired into this business, who are at the highest levels, that I’m still dear friends with and talk to all the time and value their input and opinions. That’s what I love. Advertising people are the funniest, smartest, most sarcastic people – they’re just such an amazing group of weirdos and misfits. I just feel so lucky to have been around them and to know them.” ~David Baldwin

David Baldwin, one of the most recognized copywriters and creative directors in the advertising business today, is the founder of Baldwin& in Raleigh, N.C. The agency was named Ad Age’s Small Agency of the Year after only three years in business, and was awarded the Four A’s O’Toole Award for best body of work from a small agency after only five years in business.

A former chairman of the One Club in New York City, David was also an executive producer for the Emmy-award winning film, Art & Copy. He’s also an associate producer for the Emmy and Peabody Award-winning film, The Loving Story.

David is also a guitarist/songwriter for the band Pants, whose CD “Twice The Snake You Need” can be found on iTunes and Amazon.com. His work and writings have been featured in numerous publications and college textbooks on advertising. To add to his accomplishments, David is also the co-founder of Ponysaurus Brewing Co., a nano-brewery in Durham, N.C.

In this episode, David talks about leaning into the scary things and compartmentalizing the terror to give yourself courage to explore what you don’t know about or understand. He shares the best advice he’s ever been given – and explains how his award-winning agency is more like a rock band than a family.

Dr. Caneel Joyce is the founder of Kickass Enterprises, a boutique consulting firm that helps startups and mission-driven innovators grow in smart, powerful, and sustainable ways.

“It’s a single player game. You need to solve a problem for one single person using your product alone. If you solve it for that person, other people will also have that value. And then you can start thinking about what will happen if everybody starts using that product together and how you’ll change the world. But if no one person wants to use it, you’ll never be able to do it.” ~ Caneel Joyce

Steve Sandstrom is the founder and executive creative director of Sandstrom Partners in Portland, Oregon – one of the leading branding and design firms in the United States. The firm’s clients have included Converse, Nike, Coca-Cola, Tazo Tea, Miller Brewing Company, Bacardi, ESPN, Levi Strauss, Nissan and Sony Pictures.

The firm has been featured in nearly every major publication covering branding and design, including Graphis, Communication Arts, Adweek, How, Creativity, One: A Magazine, and The New York Times Magazine. Steve currently serves on the board of directors for The One Club and has hauled in an endless stream of awards and recognition for his work over the past two decades. And to top it off, he’s a cool guy to chat with.

“Everybody’s worried about offending a creative person, like we have super thin skin. But I’ve never really known anyone who’s really good at advertising, or who’s really good at design, who doesn’t want to solve the problem -- the business problem. Who would put their own needs ahead of that? It doesn’t work that way. You won’t be in business very long if you are that way.” ~ Steve Sandstrom