From Creatively Serving Others to Owning Your Vision
Running a creative business should be about the freedom to decide your next steps
Six years into Adam Studios, and we're still terrible at celebrating milestones. We're always chasing the next project, the next challenge, all in pursuit of battling our #1 enemy (and it’s not always creative fulfillment)… but cashflow.
But here's a quick PSA: take time to celebrate your wins. Share your work. Give people a reason to care about what you do. (Consider this post my belated attempt at both.)
One of the most alluring parts of agency work is the excitement that comes with working with different people on different creative challenges. I love seeing different businesses up close and understanding where and how they convergent or divergent across industries.
But while you help other people with their business goals, you're often left without any equity of your own. Only certain opportunities will afford you the upside, and they don't happen often. Even then, equity requires a series of positive events to translate into anything worthwhile.
About a year ago, we started to make a conscious effort to identify the things we enjoyed doing and do them with more frequency. For us, building businesses and having the opportunity to define their direction and story are things we care about. When my partner Alex and I left our day jobs, it felt like risky endeavor but also the right one. Looking back, it's never not exciting to identify gaps and opportunities, to create something of value that can make a difference.
One thing we've actively tried to do is build things from the ground up alongside other passionate founders and operators. We know what we're not good at, and we know what we excel at. Experience has taught us to create situations where our attention is focused on things where we have the most expertise .
One of my favorite projects was the creation of acoa (a change of air), a hospitality company focused on helping experiences for those visiting new places, starting with Nijo (Kyoto) and Takashima (Lake Biwa). From the start, we knew what experience was lacking: the ability to instantly integrate as a local when stepping into a new place. Alongside our friend Takuma, we built a brand that represents the beginnings of a different approach towards hospitality.
We're providing our point of view in a way that can bring a degree of responsible tourism and enable people to experience culture and exchange in a different way. While equity isn't just about financial outcomes, it creates a integral relationship where the collective efforts of all parties are recognized not for their transactional nature but for the cooperative belief that you're driving toward the best possible long-term outcome.
Having equity in something you've conceptualized and launched is nice. But the real reward for us will always be what drove us to step out in the first place: the freedom to bring our vision to life.