“When others ran away from the blank slate, I embraced it.” Today’s guest post from banker turned community manager Bryant Miller is a good reminder to embrace your creativity — even if your company and/or industry doesn’t:
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Post by: @iambmac
I was always the weird, creative child growing up. So everyone was caught off guard (myself included) when I went to business school and went on to work for one of the world’s largest financial institutions. Yep, you read that right: The kid who dreamt up stories for his My Little Pony and fought against evil with his sidekick She-Rah became a banker. For a decade.
Call it fear… call it trying to be practical… whatever the reason, I found myself in a brand new world filled with people who didn’t think like me and certainly didn’t “get” me. This was the business world.
The years I spent at the bank weren’t easy. I had to fight twice as hard as anybody else to share my ideas and have my voice heard – because, let’s face it, I was “the crazy one.” But do I regret the last 10 years of my life? Not at all. In fact, I managed to find my niche and somehow became the go-to person for all things creative. When others ran away from the blank slate, I embraced it.
I’m not the authority on the business world, but I did learn some wonderful lessons about being creative in a place that’s pretty void of my type of people. I’d love to share them with you:
- Know your business: You can’t be the crazy person who just runs around screaming “Listen to me! I have great ideas!” If people don’t trust that you fully understand the business, why would they listen to your thoughts or your solutions? So know your business – and know it better than anybody else.
- Do the grunt work: You’re not going to walk in the door and be shown to your throne as Chief Creative Officer. In order to truly know the business (back to Number 1), you need to start at the bottom. The jobs aren’t fun, and they certainly won’t tap into your creative side. But they will teach you lessons that are invaluable later on.
- Find your champion: It’s easy to find the few other creative folks and then sit around and talk about how nobody “gets” you. Don’t do it. Instead, get out there and find the person who is the opposite of you but truly values what you bring to the table. Your skills will be complementary to theirs, and these are the relationships where magic happens.
- Harness your creativity: Find a position or a mentor who can teach you discipline. Learning how to put structure around your creativity can be one of the best parts of your career. It’s not about limiting your ideas; it’s about packaging them the right way for others to understand and implement.
- Be your authentic self: Not to go all Oprah, but be genuine and be true to yourself – you’ve earned it. You’re smart; you know the business; and you understand how your different way of thinking can add value to any situation. If you try to be like everybody else or fake who you’re not, others will see right through you. So be bold, and let your light shine.
If you find yourself, like I did, as the weird, creative person in big business, don’t give up. Don’t lose your spirit. And don’t get crushed by the wheels of the machine. Being the one who can think differently is truly a gift.
So get out there and dream up your stories with your My Little Pony; fight against evil alongside She-Rah; and rock out with your creative self.
Bryant is the Columbus Community Manager for Yelp.com, a website and mobile app that connect people with great local businesses. When he’s not yelping his way through the city, he is the Communications Director for Columbus SOUP, a quarterly crowdfunding event that aims to make philanthropy accessible to anyone with a $7 donation. Connect with Bryant on LinkedIn and follow his (mis)adventures on Twitter and Instagram.