Luck and connection are key elements for business creative. Life brings us luck, but connection is usually forged. Often times, luck unexpectedly enhances creative efforts.
A photographer snaps a professional portrait, and most of the time it looks 100% better than any shot by an amateur. They know how to light, and if they’re good, the photographer notices symmetry elements others miss. To get good photos, it’s all about skill, talent, and luck. The last one, the luck factor, that’s about the subject’s eyes staying put, not blinking, the shutter depressing at precisely the right instant, the subject keeping their posture or position. Still, occasionally, you get lucky with a selfie.
It’s quite similar to working with a professional designer or advertising agency. Professionals will get you where you want to be faster and usually better because of their talents, skills, and experience. Your message will better connect, campaigns will have greater impact, reach, and longevity. On occasion, you might get lucky on your own.
The big difference is in risk factor, as in can you afford to have a less effective message? Can you afford to have limited scale reach? And can you wait for success to occur instead of knowing the effort will pay off after launch?
Every effort has to pay off in short order for small businesses, but larger entities have a tad more flexibility in time to success. This is important to learn, especially if you come from a big business background and have opened your own shop, and often comes as a swift kick kind of lesson.
Probably the biggest question, though, is can you afford to shift your focus away from your expertise to fumble around with an area served better by a professional?
If you take an objective look at the time and frame of mind shift you have to make in taking on peripheral roles, it often turns out to be a wash in terms of distraction, revenue, and even satisfaction. But you never know, you might get lucky.
You can increase your luck factor by limiting your own peripheral-focused efforts, those tasks that fall outside your expertise. The less time you spend on them, the more likely your efforts will succeed. The more time you spend on them, the more likely it is you’ve climbed into a rabbit hole.
The connection factor is two-fold. For one, the goal of all marketing is connection, and two, when you make the connections between smart efforts and those you should delegate, your increase your chances of luck and success.
Kelly Hobkirk - teaching marketers how to harness strategy, goals, reality, and purpose to connect and do better work.
Kelly Hobkirk has been helping companies succeed in creative ways for nearly 25 years. His work has been featured in Time Magazine, and books by Rockport and Rotovision. Get exclusive articles when you sign up for his monthly newsletter.