How to Build a Creative Career & Personal Brand (The Honest Version)
About this Squarespace video tutorial
We all want our careers to go up and up forever, but if you’re building a creative career or personal brand, that’s not the case. By looking at my career trajectory, I hope you can prepare for the ups and downs of this field and know that every step you take is building your creative career (even if it’s not how you expect).
Timestamps
0:00 - Introduction
1:05 - The Corporate Ladder
1:34 - My Career Path
11:31 - Reflections
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Being Honest About Building Your Creative Career And Brand
If you’re looking to build your creative career or personal brand (or if you’re one of my students), I’m so glad to have you here today. Today, we’ll be talking about reframing how you think about building a creative career or brand. When you see someone online or read their bio, it’s easy to pretend that their success followed a pretty linear path; obviously that’s not the case. Creative careers and personal brands almost never follow a straight line. I’m one of those examples. Today I want to go over how my journey of how this has happened for me, both to introduce myself and let you know how every part of your story can help the brand you yourself are building.
“The Corporate Ladder”
Here’s what a creative career doesn’t look like: a straight, ascending line to success. We want that to be read, and for a lot of us, especially when we’re starting out, we do think that’s what success is going to look like. I call this “The Corporate Ladder”. It’s an upward, predictable trajectory with jobs, then better jobs, then promotions, and so on and so forth. That’s not what my career has looked like at all and I’m pretty confident this isn’t what your career will look like either. It’s time to say goodbye to the idea of the corporate ladder.
My Career Path And Story
Let’s go over how I got here.
College - I went to college for music technology and piano performance. I knew I wanted music to be a part of my life but I didn’t know what that would actually look like. I got into recording and editing music, which led me to my major.
Graduation - I didn’t know anything about the music industry, truly, but I knew I wanted to be in Music City, so the day after college, I drove down to Nashville without a home, job, or even friends lines up. At this point, I didn’t have much going for me except for the dream. That was all I had.
Unpaid Internship - I started meeting with everybody who would meet me, and around 3 weeks in, I got the same email forwarded my way from 3 different people, that an artist management company was looking for an intern. I landed that internship…for $0, but that’s why I’m here. It became a part time paid internship and then from there…
Full Time Job at Bluegrass Association - I processed memberships, I did all the creative things I could, but this was my first real job.
Management Company - I went back there full-time after about a year, and the owner of this company is still my mentor to this very day. Somehow I landed in the right spot with the right people, and that is all owed to putting myself out there and putting myself in a position where I could do that unpaid internship. My mentor was at the end of her career, so I started looking for what to do after she retired.
Designing The Row - I actually turned down a job offer from a prominent music publication company in Nashville to start Designing The Row.
Music Biz Besties - I had a group of friends in the music industry, and we started a happy hour club together as a way to stay in touch. I started a Facebook group to build this sort of community in between those happy hour meetings. I invited them, and if they all invited a person, we’d have 10 people! By the end of the week there were 200-250 people to that Facebook group. I was looking for support and ended up becoming the leader. That group now has over 6500 people in it.
Period of Success - More clients came my way, MBB was mentioned in Forbes (no relation to me), I was asked to speak at a panel hosted by Yelp, and even more started to happen because of Music Biz Besties.
2020 - The less said, the better. Live events, meet-ups, and musicians touring all slowed down severely. The next year, I got pregnant, which is obviously great, but it made me slow down even more.
ETSU - Once I had my baby, ETSU reached out asking me to teach a digital marketing class online. I am now an adjunct professor there and teach two classes, a branding & identity class and a digital music marketing class.
Additional Hardships - In 2023, there was a very unfortunate childcare situation that forced me to put additional resourced into being a full-time mom, working during naptimes, midnights, all around the clock.
Website Designer Position - I got a job as a website designer through a connection, was running DTR in the background, but the job wasn’t the right fit for me.
Designing The Row Full Time - I was able to commit full time to DTR!
CE - I am now a TN real estate commission approved instructor from a condensed version of my college course.
And that’s how I got to this point. I’m doing these videos and blogs, I’m teaching college courses and realtors, I’m designing websites, I’m a Squarespace authorized trainer, and now I’m finally finding momentum in the career again. I’d love for this to keep going up, of course, but we truly don’t know what’s going to come next, and that’s okay!
What All Of This Means
In that 2020-2023 period, that was the hardest part of it all. In it, I felt like I was going backwards, like nothing was working, and it was all slipping away. But now, on the other side of the season, I can see that I needed it all to let go of what wasn’t aligned. It sucks to say, but I needed these dips.
Because during the dips, my values stayed the same. These values create the foundation of your personal brand and your career. See the full picture through my story as you grow and pivot and build a career that resonates with who you are and who you want to be. If you want more prompts, strategy, and branding clarity, be sure to download the 75-page personal branding workbook I’ve created, which you can find at designingtherow.com/workbook.
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