If I had to start my career from scratch, here’s how I’d do it:
1. Study
You’ll find everything that is taught in ad schools in books or for free.
But, portfolio schools, courses, and universities give you four things that books don’t:
• Structure
• Mentors
• Community
• Internships
If you can’t afford education, that’s alright. You can still do it yourself.
Start with structure. Create a personal syllabus of everything you want to study, or use mine:
Click here to access my favorite books, articles, and posts.
2. Practice
Creative practice mainly comes down to:
• Imitation
Find work that you like and try to make something similar.
• Improvement
Find work that you don’t like and try to make something better.
• Invention
Come up with your own spec campaigns.
💡 Tip: Find a creative partner. For example, if your focus is writing, work with a designer.
It can be someone from your course or a community like r/advertising or Very Creative People.
3. Get feedback
Practice without feedback is useless.
Get social, peer, and mentor feedback on these platforms:
I explain how to find mentors here.
4. Build your brand
A creative’s personal brand consists of:
Learn how to build a creative portfolio here.
💡 Tip: If you want to share you journey online, these will help you:
5. Start working
Get your first client, land an internship, or start a business and promote it.
The more you invest in your personal brand, the easier it’ll be to land your first gig.
💡 Tip: If you do cold outreach, remember that 99% of creatives just send boring emails. So, show, don’t tell. Create a spec piece for the clients you’d like to work for. If they hire you, congrats. If they don’t, great, you have a new portfolio piece.
The process isn’t linear, though.
Usually, it’s more like everything, everywhere, all at once.
