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SMARTY.

The human side of business

Archives for September 2018

Small Business

Replication.

September 18, 2018 · By Amy Swift Crosby

There’s nothing quite like a winning streak to cast doubts on one’s ability to perform the same trick again and again.

Ironic as it may seem, especially from someone with such strong opinions about being thoughtful in messaging, it’s surprising to find myself in an almost constant dialogue about the detriment of too much communication.

But over-writing, as anyone who has written and re-written an important email or text can attest, can be a self-sabotaging sinkhole. I discovered this recently when tasked with replicating memorable work.

Maybe something similar has happened to you.

After a series of successful collaborations (Blue Chip, portfolio projects) with a relatively new agency partner, I found myself in cerebral overdrive when they asked me back for another high-profile campaign. The gig was to write multiple scripts for a prominent tech company in Silicon Valley. The stakes were high, but no higher than other similarly positioned products or brands – which is to say – it wasn’t new territory. But on this day, on this job, I found myself listening to an inner whisper: “those others were so good… but can I really do it again?”

This is a particularly universal theme that many performers, athletes and creative’s have encountered – either after solid gold hits, sell-out shows, wow-factor work product or best-selling anything.

I remember the writer Elizabeth Gilbert doing an entire TedTalk about the burden of expectation following her internationally beloved Eat, Pray, Love memoir. Sports fans refer to it as Steve Blass syndrome because of the infamous all-star pitcher who, one day, couldn’t do the one thing he was famous for doing; pitching. He never got it back, and it ended his field career. His case is living proof of the ultimate fear.

Success Replication Pressure (my term) is a thing, and it was happening to me. I started the project with low-grade anxiety but looking back was in complete denial, reassuring myself how not stressed about it I was. But the work couldn’t hide behind anything, and it presented in a painful first draft over-write.

While the ideas themselves were viable, the totality was closer to something I might have submitted in my 20’s. I over-explained, over-justified and over-defended the concepts to the point of incomprehension. Remember Jon Favreau leaving 18 voicemails for his love interest in Swingers?

I wish I could have told myself to JUST STOP. But of course, it’s nearly impossible to have that perspective when you’re deep in the weeds. The clock was ticking…people were waiting… expectations remained high. I was failing – and fast.

This story has an unexpectedly happy ending because a principal partner in the agency, whose confidence I’d won (thanks to our other successful jobs together) swooped in to save me…which is to say he did what few others would do, and said what few others would say.

“Come to New York. This work is a mess – but come to New York anyway. Let’s figure it out in person.”

He could see I was anxious, and because of this, had lost the plot. But I hadn’t lost his vote – which was the booster I needed to call in my copywriting superpowers and get the job done. Together, we slashed and burned until the voice and narrative found its way out of my mental maze.

And it taught me a valuable lesson.
It’s easy to feel like we’re falling into quicksand when we think our previous successes were flukes.

The biggest hurdle in the aforementioned disaster was my ego. I wanted to prove that I could keep “being great,” that they wouldn’t regret giving this sizable project to me, a girl from Eugene, Oregon who accidentally impressed a few people and somehow found her way into the big leagues of advertising. Everyone has his or her own dumb story, that’s just mine.

In the end, I had the answer, and so do you. The fans that loved it/you/your last great work… may think they want to see it again, but they don’t really know what they want. They just want you to be the one doing it.

Replication is a fool’s errand. What you did before is over. Whether you teach an epic class, post something funny/relevant/beautiful, deliver a mic-dropping pitch or hand in bulls-eye copy…experience sets the stage, but I think we each start over every time.

Big Life

September.

September 5, 2018 · By Amy Swift Crosby

Summer, for many of us, impacts productivity, disrupts established processes and changes the pace we strive to hit the rest of the months of the year. More than any of the other seasons, it forces us to make tradeoffs, to negotiate for the summer pleasures that can only be done during these magical months. For me, there’s always something that ‘has to give’ to make room for everything else I want to savor.

Hot days are the reason to power down early, to cancel meetings; days off are legitimate needs more than they are guilty pleasures. Deadlines are accommodated, whereas new initiatives – and the requisite heavy lifting – those, we wave off to fall.

In July and August, we forgive erratic, work-disrupting kids’ schedules and colleagues’ inconvenient vacation notices because, for this fleeting period, work can wait. There’s an unspoken, collective agreement that because summer is a rare window of time, all is forgiven. It provides the ultimate “hard out,” a season that demands we milk every minute, without judgment.

But the transitional days between the end of August and early September feel less clear. Cues that point to more prescribed rhythms compete with our lingering desires to be spontaneous and open-ended. These weeks have us in a collective no-man’s land of bumpy starts, even for those of us ready and wanting of more structure. It’s easy to feel (temporarily) unmoored as expectations shift.

This was especially true for me as I sat down to write one recent morning, the first uninterrupted personal work day in (many) weeks. In spite of the numerous messaging projects I’ve completed for others this summer (it’s not as though I didn’t work), I found myself undone. I’d even go as far as to say panicked – by a palpable sense of incongruence. Was it my unusually quiet house, with kids now back in school? Was it an over-stuffed in-box, full of unanswered emails? Maybe.

But if I’m honest, the unexpected strangeness hit me as I began this blog entry. Sentences that usually come so easily felt rusty and punishing. After a six-week hiatus from personal writing – a self-imposed pause intended to uncover new perspectives and be present to other areas of my life – the exercise of unearthing clear dialogue, in this format, was sharply awkward.

I can’t tell you that a flash of regret didn’t seize me, because it did.

Please tell me you’re having a similarly clumsy transition.

Should I have been here, at my keyboard, so as not to lose all the momentum that suddenly appears to have evaporated? 

Is the consequence of enjoying more summer –time, people, experiences – the loss of something else – art, progress, life’s work?

(This is long, but if this sensation is at all familiar, stay with me.)

As I thought back to why I chose to break the status quo, I was reminded of how fatigued I’d felt last spring, bored by the inescapable expressions of my own stirrings. Have you ever tired of your own output? I remember craving a new way to relate to the observations that have defined my work, a desire to evolve in some way. Maybe this acute, uninspired slump was the toll to be paid on the road to creative rehab. 

But that narrative feels too punitive. Why is the nature of internal dialogue so sacrificial? Why is enjoying our lives – themselves works of art – often characterized as hedonistic? Could the real price of mental rest – especially because what was gained was both novel and meaningful – be thought of as walking down a path without footprints? Could we gently remind ourselves that we have not undone hard fought achievements but are simply in the realm of the unfamiliar?

Transitions don’t always appear productive, on the outside.
Nor are they very comfortable, on the inside.
But they are, quite often, the precursor to the new story we’ve asked for.

I’m not sure any of us have any clue to what we’ve released or acquired until we get back into relationship with it. It’s in the doing that we see what percolated and grew while we stepped away from it, particularly for those of us who create something…from nothing.

Sometimes the world invites us to a conversation we can’t refuse, and the roar of a wonderful, important, or worthwhile force takes over. But it doesn’t mean whatever has gone quiet, set aside for rest or recalibration, isn’t making its own magic while you’re not watching.

I get the sense that a new path is waiting, once my feet hit the ground. It may be overgrown, thorny and even a little formidable, looking at it right now. But trusting that there’s a way through it, that the part of me that churns and moves isn’t so much dormant but unexplored, is one reassurance that helped me take this first step.

How are you, friend?

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About Me

photo of Amy Swift Crosby

Amy Swift Crosby is a brand strategist and copywriter who has positioned or voiced messaging across the commercial spectrum, from icons like Ford, BVLGARI, Pottery Barn, Pantene and Virgin, to boutique brands like The Wild Unknown, fitness franchise Barre3 and the rebrand of legendary metaphysical bookstore, Bodhi Tree. She has leveraged this expertise to help entrepreneurial women and small businesses owners hone their skills, mission and message, while uncovering their own “voice.” This blog explores “the human side of business,” and universal themes like uncertainty, anxiety, the tension between engagement and disconnection, personal value and most importantly, of finding - and hearing - our own voices in our everyday life.

Photo - Andrew Stiles

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About

SMARTY began as a thriving community in Los Angeles and Boston with weekly panel discussions and events designed to better understand the mindset and growth strategies behind successful entrepreneurs. Today, SMARTY is a weekly blog written by Amy Swift Crosby who chronicles her life as a creative, parent, entrepreneur and spiritual seeker. As an urban refugee living in a New England seaside village, she unpacks topics ranging from uncertainty and doubt to the built environment and advertising. More on Amy.

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