Do you want to show up more creatively for your clients and your colleagues, your family, and your friends?
Do you want to default to thinking about opportunity versus focusing just on problems?
Discovering Hope is full of proactive steps you can take right now, to achieve a more positive mindset or to help maintain the positivity you already have
Getting Positive reveals that more optimism is close at hand
Building Bridges – Proactivity the Safest Way to Build and Protect Business
Many of you that I’m speaking with whether freelancing or working full-time, are talking to me about current client uncertainties caused in large part by U.S. led tariffs.
Until anyone knows the impact of these tariffs, whether you import parts or export finished products, it’s hard to invest in anything with confidence, least of all people!
The result is inconsistency of work or budgets being delayed or reduced; This means it’s not the best of jobs markets or times of job security.
If you’re in full-time work, what can you do, (particularly if you have a great relationship with your clients) is support them in their scenario planning. Help them if you can, find ways to protect revenue/and or enhance it! OK, not rocket science advice, but really important to be proactive, particularly when the pressure is on.
Is this a time of economic crisis? No, but it is most certainly (as witnessed by the financial markets) an uncertain moment. True to the dual Mandarin meaning of the word ‘crisis.’ It’s a time both of threat and an opportunity.
Threats often act as a catalyst forcing us to contemplate new approaches.
What might you be able to identify for your clients? A short-term win or bigger potential strategic pivot?
If your freelancing short or long term, think along the same lines. Don’t wait to be asked to help, look at those businesses most exposed and anticipate what a smart next step might nbe.
Now is a golden time to build bridges.
Why Strategists Have More to Gain Than To Fear From Generative ‘AI’
To be clear, I am no ‘Large Language Model’ ( ‘AI’) specialist, although I do intend to pursue a course to correct this fact! I have been talking with a number of you, who ‘are’ ‘AI experts, embedded as part of planning groups with the remit to:
“Operationalise the use, understanding and application of ‘AI’ to enhance more rapid pathways to strategic clarity and through it customer impact.”
My topline understanding, if you have several years of strategy experience under your belt, you’ve nothing ‘currently’ to fear from ‘AI.’ It is your questioning, your interpretation, your editorial oversight, your client reassurance, that is still needed. And what ‘AI’ can provide, can enhance your work. And, even if you are a junior strategist, you will position yourself as best you can if you ensure you learn from and how to optimise ‘AI,’ as shrinking strategy teams will continue to re-tool.
How ‘AI’ Might Help You
When teams are shrinking it is a valuable analyst and thinking partner – see Ethan Mollick’s two latest Substack posts about the impressive capabilities of the latest models and how that goes beyond the simple “AI assistant” idea. It can help you consider more options with a greater degree of realism – If synthesis of data can be speeded up, there is greater opportunity to focus on the soft skills/the nuances of customer interaction. ‘AI’ could for instance mirror your biases, used in a focused way, it could prevent reinforcement of those biases.
Is ‘AI’ a Career Threat? It’s evolving all the time, but at-the-moment, it’s a rapidly evolving aggregating machine, that thrives on using data and logic. Efficiency is not strategy. Any work area that requires more emotionally nuanced interaction will be work that continues to be human-focused.
Which jobs will be the first to go with ‘AI’…. Given ‘AI’ can trawl data from the whole web and synthesise it at hyper speed, any jobs that require aggregation and synthesis of information become vulnerable. Data gathering and analysis make basic research and media buying vulnerable.
Which Jobs Are ‘Relatively’ Safe Editorial oversight requires understanding of humans: Strategists providing empathy and judgement and creative directors.’ narratives that resonate with humans. While research can be automated, will it reveal outliers in understanding? The quality of up-to-date ‘in-person’ research will continue to have a role; Experiential Strategists bring together many parts of understanding human engagement and interaction, they will become even more important; Work seeking to persuade individuals or groups where logic alone isn’t enough/EQ needed; PR Specialists providing counsel directed specifically to influence human opinion.
Which Jobs Will We Humans ‘Want’ Human Interaction? (even if supported by ‘AI’) Even if ‘AI’ could do it well, there are areas of our lives we simply demand ‘direct human direction.’ Think human reassurance and interaction (versus diagnostics) ‘is a key part’ of wellness treatment; High Value purchases or high stakes such as crisis management will still require a level of human understanding of human reactions/require reassurance.
HOW MIGHT YOU ACT IN RELATION TO ‘AI?’
‘AI’ – Understand it/Invest in it – I f your employer hasn’t already provided training, do it yourself or request your employer invest in you completing a prompting course – Learning about LLM’s (large language models) and how to get the best out of them. Any great ‘qual’ researcher will probably be a natural, but one can always learn more.
Human Strength to ‘AI’ Weakness – Bolster your human skills: Emotional understanding/empathy, Relationship building skills/trust, Caring/Nurturing skills, Creative appreciation skills, Leadership/motivational skills. Also make yourself aware of evolving AI tools developed to analyze EQ. Consider reviewing https://www.receptiviti.com/
Adaptability Skills/AQ – This is just the beginning of ‘AI’ – If it freaks you out then perhaps what you fear is not ‘AI’ but uncertainty. The greatest bulwark against change, is your ability to adapt. Learn what it takes to become adaptable. Article attached. https://bit.ly/3DjAyCb
Big picture – ‘AI’ has and will transform lives for good and bad! From a business perspective, without being an expert, invest in understanding how ‘AI’ might help your work. Key, enhance your job security by understanding the chokepoints for creating or sustaining revenue and ‘AI’s impact there! For instance, maintaining ‘trust’ in client relationships is key to holding on to revenue and very much a human delivered capability, albeit back up by data/great performance, enhanced by ‘AI.’
What’s Happening With Freelance
As the business environment and the agency world in particular, seeks greater flexibility (for lots of reasons) in hiring, a record number of you are now freelancing/consulting.
Boon times for freelance were during the pandemic years where amid huge uncertainty, greatest flexibility was needed both by employers and employees alike.
These times – More time of uncertainty, but corporate focus while still seeking flexibility, cost control has greater importance, meaning?
Freelance opportunities have in the last year been fewer, shorter in duration and harder to land. Why?
Agencies and companies have been trying to save money. They have done this by seeking to reduce freelance as a proportion of payroll as although it provides flexibility, arguably it’s expensive (when used extensively) relative to full-time hiring.
Future trajectory – Freelance in time will regain greater momentum particularly against a backdrop of greater uncertainty in the business environment. That said, there are and will be even more of you seeking (for different reasons) to freelance, placing downward pressure on freelance rates.
Happy to talk with any of you about the market, where greater opportunity may be, where to target, how you might position yourself etcetera.
Happy hunting,
All happiness,
Stuart
The Beyond Employee
Based on my understanding of career happiness (I’ll leave others to define success) there are some obvious things to get on top of, noteworthy:
Keep learning, (Tech’ yes, but soft skills are more critical than ever, none more so than empathetic ability) learn to be adaptable, focus on relationships, but also key, find time to get perspective, both to understand trends but also to keep in a good mental space!
One other factor to focus on here, personal agency. This is you needing to strategise for you! What are your goals? If you know the answer, you’ll know what your dream working scenario is. Know this and then you’ll know what experience, expertise and connections deficits you have and what you need to work on. Why is this important?
The reality in 2025, we’re all one relationship away from a good or bad year. From making money or not. From working for someone else or not.
If you are currently an employee, what I want to communicate, you should start thinking of youself right now, as self employed. Yes deliver as employee, but also make your employer, ‘work for you.’ Consciously make connections and get experience with a mind to working for yourself. This way, it will be a softer landing when change comes for you.
Agency consolidation is not a new thing neither is job insecuity, but as one accelerates, so does the other. Start to adjust your mindset to it and in so doing you’ll be better prepared to build as a ‘beyond employee.’
All happiness,
Live to Work? Work to Live? (an ode to ‘time well spent.’)
(three minute read)
It’s a choice, many are not prepared to make
Didn’t know they could
Some don’t have a choice of labor
Some like their work, all the time!
Out of work – Feeling daunted feeling scared
In work – Exhilarated but for others, trapped.
The route to sanity, happiness even
The clarity of purpose
Of attainable dreams at and away from work
Yes, knowing what you want
Understand your values, your strengths, your goals
You tell your story better
You live your time with vigor
Thanksgiving provides respite
Temporarily, we are kinder, more prepared to give
and to forgive
Give yourself a gift of reflection and perspective
Think about things..Get in to it
Are you blindly on a hamster wheel to nowhere
It’s time to be the sentient being you were made to be
It’s time to think about what matters
Time to think, what gives and where you don’t
Time to recognise time is precious
There are things you need to do.
Freelance Help – June 2024
There are many conversations I have with candidates that have chosen to freelance perhaps as a temporary step, perhaps interim and for some, they are done with working full time for others.
In all these scenarios, however you postion yourself, you are now ‘in business’ and in this marketplace in particular, you will have your fair share of ‘getting business’ (versus fulfilling it) unless you’re smart, able and lucky, to be able to line up the client work before you leave full time employment.
Based on 24 years working for myself, as a freelance/consultant/business owner, some key realities/thoughts:
The work you get – Despite marketing yourself, the work you do will always act as the best calling card.
Reputation is key – Being kind with all you engage with is part of the key to building the reputation, which gets you referrals.
Core Referral Group – Despite all the thousands of emails, texts you send and calls you make, you will see that it’s a core group of individuals and those allied to them that provide the bulk of your work opportunities.
Fishing Location – Most of your competition and for a time you, will continue to seek opportunities where others seek work. Unless you have stand out content, find less crowded channels or expect low response rates. For instance, who these days sends anything in the post. Try it, most use social media!
Fishing Timing – The best time to have a conversation is ‘not’ when work is advertised. Decide who you wish to work with and engage them now!
Your Most Effective Channel – Working for yourself requires a range of opportunities and this requires raising your profile. Some newtwork well, some present well while others debate well and others prefer to write. Whatever you do you will do alot of it so, chose a path or combination of mediums which play to your strengths.
The Power of in person – Digital media is amazing but what’s more amazing, the connection you make with a person when you make the effort to travel to see them and the energy that’s exchanged from an in-person meeting versus a phone or video connection. I swear by this simple but overlooked reality.
Targeting – Topline, if you want to identify the lowest barrier to resistance to you getting work, follow the money. For instance, if an agency is pitching business even and particularly in cash strapped times, that is where money will be directed and potential great thinking welcomed and, one of ‘your’ best paths to working. I’ll have a seminar soon to really expand on optimal targeting of freelance/new business opportunities, how to identify them and effectively engage them. Please email me if you are interested to take part at: stuart@sparkinsearch.com.
Mindset – Final thing for now, when you aren’t getting work the last thing you want to do is smile as the pressure mounts. That said, smile, it’ll make you feel better and those you interact with are more likely to respond positively.