Category: The World of Worth

A Day in the Life of The Creative

Several years ago, I was fortunate enough to be offered the job of Development Manager for the Creative Quarter in Nottingham.  It was fortunate for several reasons.  It had the word ‘creative’ in the title; Nottingham was a place I had not ever really visited properly and lastly but not insignificantly leastly, I had a part to play in developing links with our local universities, with a view to offering graduate internment opportunities.

Over the summer of 2015 we were lucky enough to be graced with the presence of some five luminescent graduates who made life in the CQ shine and resonate with their young energy, ambition and clarity of desire.  They had clearly not experienced life in the ups and downs of the start-up venture and were all the cleaner and fresher for it. Costas, Rachael, Emma, Paige and Matt made that summer sing with possibility, endeavour and a productivity born of skill, talent but above all desire and the whole CQ crew – Kathy, Cathy, Raj, Claire, Jane, Rory and me – were enamoured with their energy and spirits. One of us, who shall remain nameless for the sake of decorum, openly wept when being presented with a proposal to produce a marketing booklet.   Such was the impact those young people had on us.

And the one impactful moment which stayed with me over that heady summer was when Matt, after a few beers, a pub crawl around Nottingham and endless deliberations about what it meant to be ‘creative’, asked me ‘Why don’t you write a blog called A Day in the Life of the Creative?’ That was all I needed.   Within weeks a blog was forming and then soon after a book – Mess Theory – was shaping up.

Mess Theory was inspired by my belief that creativity is dependent entirely on mess.  We need scrap, junk or any old rubbish to exert our creative muscles and this book is no exception.  It plays with the challenges of getting and securing gainful employment in the creative industries whilst providing an alternative insight into what that work can entail. ‘Creativity’ is one of those words which conjures up all kinds of shiny, warm and cosy feelings: but there is a darker side to that moon and Mess Theory pulls no punches in showing us what that is. It’s in two parts: “How Not to Get a Job” and “A Day in the Life of the Creative” the latter part of which is of course my response to Matts’ suggestion all those years previously.   Here’s a snatch from A Day in the Life of the Creative.

What’s in a name?

Well loves, it’s about time I set you straight about what the life of The Creative is all about. You might think it’s all about jetting around on roller skates, partaking in the odd skinny fat café olé and playing Pac Man until the early hours waiting for the muse to text you and tell you where she’s been the last two months. But no, the life of a creative these days – sigh – in times of flat pack austerity – sigh – is not the golden time beloved of many a script writer, radio jock or Daily Mail bombardier.

No, the life of a Creative is an altogether different proposition and it’s incumbent on me (known to many in this large multinational organisation whose staff canteen is the size of many large football pitches strung end to end) as the resident Creative, to set the record straight.

First things first. Those words: ‘The Creative’. The fact is love is that if I am The Creative at the office party that rules you out. There is only one thing you can be – the non-creative, the un-creative, the collateral damage – call it what you will. But we can’t all be The Creative one now can we? Otherwise that would mean that none of us were and that would rule me out of a job – or several small portfolio development opportunities – straight away.

So please: let’s be clear. To be ‘The Creative’ in the workplace (and this huge workplace in particular) is a mark of respect and you should use it whilst simultaneously doffing your metaphorical flat cap. You can do this in real space-time continuum, or you can do it virtually: the choice loves is yours.

Mess Theory

Mess Theory

Mess Theory has been inspired by my belief that creativity is dependent entirely on mess.  We need scrap, junk or any old rubbish to exert our creative muscles and this book is no exception.

Mess Theory plays with the challenges of getting and securing gainful employment in the creative industries whilst providing an alternative insight into what that work can entail. ‘Creativity’ is one of …

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Tips for Business Start Ups: Try not to reinvent the wheel.

Tina and Toni  came to see me today, bubbling over with effervescent excitement. They could hardly contain themselves with their business proposition which they assured me had been focused grouped, road tested, demolished, rethought, redesigned and reconstructed to death.

They tentatively placed a large black box on the table and swore me to secrecy. This idea – this product – this concept – was going to blow my mind, and along with everyone else who had benefitted from it, I would be converted instantly from curious sceptic to sun worshipping zealot, such was the paradigm destroying nature of what I was about to receive, once they had opened the box.

I held my breath as they gingerly levered open the lid and ceremoniously lifted up on high the contents of the matt black box.

“It’s a wheel.” I said.

“Isn’t it beautiful?” Whispered Toni.

“Have you ever seen anything like it?” Tina asked urgently.

“Yes. It’s a bicycle wheel. It goes around and around, around and around…” They interrupted me before I could get into full song.

“But don’t you see it’s potential?” Toni looked shocked. “You could put it on a large container and attach a couple of donkeys and before you know it you’re moving heavy loads unimaginable distances.”

“With a bit of effort, you could transport many people, many thousands of miles at all times of day.” Tina was incredulous that I wasn’t impressed.

“It’s a wheel. You’re trying to reinvent the wheel. It’s already been done – very successfully, over thousands of years.”

“But it’s not just a wheel!” They chimed in unison. “It’s a neo-wheel which goes forward…” And here was the killer line… “And backwards.”

“At the same time?” I asked. They looked at me with something resembling pity which soon turned to contempt.

“You don’t get it, do you?” Toni hissed.

“Call yourself an advisor?” sneered Tina. “You know the story about Decca and the Beatles don’t you?”

I hung my head in shame – this is every business advisor’s worse nightmare – taking the role of Decca and sending their prospective golden geese off to Parlaphone. 

I capitulated. “It’s a very interesting proposition” I said weakly. “I can see its potential, now you come to mention it. I guess it’s always difficult to see genius in the room when it looks like a bicycle wheel.” 

They warmed to me by now and smiled back. We were going to get on fine, them with their neo-wheel and me with my sense of professional foresightedness still intact. 

Watch this space – the invention of the last 3000 years will be in a street near you soon. And I was there to help make it happen.

The Business Allotment: Tips for Business Start Ups, Lessons for Life.

The Business Allotment: Tips for Business Start Ups, Lessons for Life.

Tips and Tricks for Business Start Ups in Eight Chapters:

  1. Business Start Ups and Life
  2. First, find your Space Centre
  3. If you wanna get ahead, get an algorithm
  4. Don’t flounder in the Founder Syndrome
  5. Find your Inner Mountaineer
  6. Life’s a pitch and then you die
  7. If in doubt say ‘Creative’
  8. How to love your Business Plan

Paperback, 87 pages with accompanying photos.

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A 5 Set Grand Slam or a Complete Bagel? Your chance to review The Courting Lives of an Ageing Tennis Player now!

“Tennis belongs to the individualistic past – a hero, or at most a pair of friends or lovers, against the world.” (Jacques Barzun)  

The Courting Lives of an Ageing Tennis Player is out on Monday 26 January 2025, following the final of the Australian Open Tennis Grand Slam. In this sequel to Confessions of An Ageing Tennis Player, Lord Andrew thinks he has won the vote for the club chairmanship and is to be lauded by all before him in the club.    His time has come, his victory is total. But not complete.

What’s the next challenge for the tennis player who’s just won Wimbledon?  It’s to win the next Grand Slam in Australia.  So, he goes back to his tennis roots, bades farewell to his club and sets off on his journey over the equator to Melbourne: followed in hot pursuit by the two loves of his life: world tennis champion ‘Serena Williams’ and world leading ornithologist,  ‘Phoebe Snetsinger”.   Who will find true love?  And at what cost?  The Courting Lives of an Ageing Tennis Player will reveal almost all…

If you’d like to review it, just leave us your contact details below and we’ll get a copy over to you as fast as we can!

(And please don’t worry if your review is damning with faint, major or non-existent praise! All feedback is helpful, really it is!)

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Tips for Business Start Ups, Lessons for Life: learn Mr Kelloggs lessons early on.

Rumour has it that President Trump has instructed Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg to end the war in Ukraine in 100 days. Whether he’s related to the iconic Mr John Harvey Kellogg who invented the cornflake is unclear, but rumour also has it that the old Mr Kellogg, after he invented his infamous Cornflakes, was so enamoured with his creation that he wanted to make sure that everybody who ate them did so knowing exactly how they should be eaten: the right shape of bowl, the right amount of sugar and the perfect temperature of milk. He wanted to ensure that everybody experienced the product perfectly. Trouble was, that as no-one had ever eaten a Cornflake before, there was a huge amount of distrust in the market about this new fangled food product.

This meant, he thought, that he had to personally visit every household who bought a packet of Cornflakes in order to engender trust between him and his customer. This worked for a couple of weeks but of course as word got around, and families tucked into one of the worlds most popular processed foods, the possibility of visiting hundreds of enthusiastic families before 8 in the morning became, of course, impossible. Mr Kellogg realised – with the help of his wife, so the rumour goes – that he needed something else which stood in his place and which instilled public trust and confidence in his product, but without him having to be there in person.

At first he printed up life-size cardboard cut outs with his image printed on them which he dispatched with crate loads of Cornflakes to towns in the Midwest. He insisted that each box of Cornflake product was accompanied by one of these life-size models, accompanied by a personalised speech bubble which he personally wrote. The best to you each morning was one of those speech bubbles in the early days. Mrs Kellogg was hugely influential in this aspect of the process, so we are told.

This primitive form of marketing worked too for some months, and involved the production of many thousands of Mr Kellogg Cardboard Cut outs distributed across the United States. However, it soon became clear that this form of marketing was also unsustainable: there were only so many hours in the day and Mr Kellogg needed to keep on reinventing breakfast product, not writing speech bubbles for cardboard cut outs.

So, the next innovation he made was to completely rethink his presence. He scaled down the cutout to the size of a postcard, turned it into flimsy paper and put pictures of the product on it along with a selection of the best speech bubbles. Thus was the first promotional leaflet born.

This is a valuable lesson for many business start-ups: if you cannot be present at every sale of your perfect product, you’ll need a surrogate ‘you’ which instills the same level of trust and confidence in that product, as if you were there in person. The promotional leaflet is the perfect solution. And as Mr Kellogg also found, they frequently taste better than the actual product they are meant to be promoting. Particularly with a spoonful of sugar, 35ml of milk at 4 degrees Centigrade and in a plain white teardrop shaped porcelain bowl.

Whether Lt. Gen. Kellogg has as much success as Mr. John Harvey Kellogg is unclear; but we’ll certainly know in 100 days time. What is certain, is that the Kellogg dynasty will have added to its vast Cornflake-driven $10.71 billion financial empire.

The Business Allotment: Tips for Business Start Ups, Lessons for Life.

The Business Allotment: Tips for Business Start Ups, Lessons for Life.

Tips and Tricks for Business Start Ups in Eight Chapters:

  1. Business Start Ups and Life
  2. First, find your Space Centre
  3. If you wanna get ahead, get an algorithm
  4. Don’t flounder in the Founder Syndrome
  5. Find your Inner Mountaineer
  6. Life’s a pitch and then you die
  7. If in doubt say ‘Creative’
  8. How to love your Business Plan

Paperback, 87 pages with accompanying photos.

£9.99
Shop now

Solid Sixes or Big Fat Zeroes? Your chance to review our Confessions of Ageing Sportspeople series now!

Hardly a day goes by without someone telling us off about our bodies: they’re too big, too small, in the wrong place at the wrong time, or they just don’t behave in the way we want them to.

How we interact with contemporary sport can be a productive way to explore our relationship with our bodies and how they respond to the demands we make of them. We follow performers and athletes, clubs and countries, the ups and downs of the elite; and we are encouraged – daily – to get off our sofas, to join in and be part of some team or another. We identify, and sometimes, over-identify with our sporting heroes. We become appalled at their behaviour when they fall from grace, but can’t help getting drawn into their stories, whatever age we are, and whatever age they are.

The Confessions series of books explores these matters in, hopefully, an entertaining and thought-provoking manner. Whilst a particular sport might be more prominent, the books themselves are not really about that sport at all. Tennis Player explored dreams and delusions; Footballer, loneliness; and Basketball Player was my take on the Covid-19 pandemic. Confessions of an Ageing Figure Skater follows this tradition by exploring the expectations of growing up and adulthood.  

If you’d like to review any of our Confessions… series, just leave us your contact details below and we’ll get a copy over to you as fast as we can!

(And please don’t worry if your review is damning with faint, major or non-existent praise! All feedback is helpful, really it is!)

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