Are you at the best age of your life?
I say absolutely yes.
A recent Guardian article pinpointed the 35’s as the best age for personal and professional goals. If you’re still in the under 35 you’re still winning – with enthusiasm and energy – but great news, by 35, this enthusiasm has a proven track record of success.
Here are the 5 traits of under 35’s, as we see it especially for creative agencies:
1. Confidence
Reaching the 30’s brings along a bright number of personal successes: you know your friends, you can identify your strengths and weaknesses, and you have the energy to tackle both. You may have a home, and have great plans for fixing it just the way you like it. Your children (if you have them) are beginning their lives, and you want to capture each moment with them, and show them the values worth living for. You’ve identified your passion in life, and are on the road to making it a profitable or fulfilling one. Adventure beckons, and your confidence is high.
2. Creative Drive
Because of the support in your personal life, you’ve found the drive that fuels your small business, your creative endeavour, your need for world domination. You have the energy and enthusiasm that only youth brings, the drive to complete a goal, and you are pursuing it with all your might.
3. Hunger
This drive to pursue your goals has a struggle with it as well: to support the life you want, or the passion that drives you, are the financial obligations you must fulfill. This can make for a drive that is unparalleled. Your hunger helps you succeed, helps you strive with energy, helps you make a profitable success of your business.
However, a tiny word of warning: in my opinion (since I’m in the under-35’s category too), it can also make for business headaches if you simply charge ahead with that hunger and drive. I encourage you to channel that hunger in a way that is profitable for you (more on that later).
4. Willing to try anything
Your confidence and energy means you may find a new interest in photography, guitar playing, game design, painting, music, or brazenly putting pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) for that novel you always meant to write. You aren’t adverse to picking up a new language or skydiving, or taking a new route home every day. Your appetite for learning sets you apart, as you’re not intimidated by social media or creative solutions.
5. Collaboration over competition
Best of all, you know that your it’s not about competing as much as it is collaborating – especially in the creative sphere. You have discovered that your contemporaries are actually your best assets: they push you to succeed, but the best approach for both (or all) of you is working together. Every contact, personal or professional, no matter the age, can provide you with energy and assistance along the way. One of the outcroppings of this is the fact that there are workspaces popping up all over where small businesses and one man bands can get that collaborative energy in a place of great creativity.
So, what does all this mean for your own creative agency?
As you pursue [fill in the blank for what you create], all that great creativity and collaboration, hunger, and support, can bring challenges. You run out of time. You spend more time managing administrative elements of your business than you do creating.
Tracking expenses, documenting tax liabilities, keeping the proper documentation of the invoices and expenses can be overwhelming. A clear financial picture is essential for your success.
And yet, getting an accountant sounds boring. Tedious. You can’t think of someone who has the energy and enthusiasm you do – someone who’s going to sit with you and produce cool-looking reports and understand what API is and help you put all your accounts in the cloud and chat with you on Twitter.
Well, not to fear.
Because although your mental picture of an accountant may be a somewhat stodgy and dry individual with thick lenses and grim predictions of profit, a new trend in accountants is proving that wrong.
(Wild cheering resounds.)
Accountants can be young and creative too.
Recently, Accountancy Age, a news source for current accountants, featured an article about young rising stars of finance and accountants, the “35 Under 35” in which I was honored to be mentioned.
As I reflected on my contemporaries, and on you as creative, I appreciated that here was a list of people (amongst whom I was honoured to be named) that carry the same dreams and passions and hunger and characteristics that you’ve got. Which is all positive.
Let’s put those amazing 5 traits to good work. Good creative work, and good accounting work.
