STUDIO OWNER-X
HOW TO RUN A CREATIVE STUDIO WITHOUT LOSING YOURSELF
By Robb Wagner
For a creative studio, sourcing and managing talent is increasingly inefficient, costly and exhausting.
- Chasing freelancers
- Checking availabilities
- Negotiating rates
- Explaining the job
All before even starting to do the actual work.
Multiply that times all of your projects. You become a human resources machine, project manager and freelancer-whisperer. That was me in 2008.
I was the creative studio owner who missed my kids’ games, graduations, and family dinners.
My clients were Disney and Michael Jackson.
Above all, I needed a constant stream of talent with huge creative chops. But the time to source and manage them consumed my work and my life.
In the years that followed it got even worse, until finally, there was no time left to give.
Then in 2013, I created a system to automate outsourcing.
It let the world’s best designers and animators bid to do our work. In short, this changed my work and life forever.
My studio’s capabilities skyrocketed.
We moved into new markets creating cutting-edge immersive projects for some of the world’s most innovative brands. We still maintained an in-house team of designers and animators, but we outsourced all the work that was outside of their capabilities. Previously, we would waste time and money trying to bend our in-house artists into pretzels, which never worked anyway.
Over time, outsourcing increased while my in-house team size decreased. The result was a better product for our clients.
The more our work became automated, the more time I got back.
I wasn’t the only one who found this to be a better way.
Along the way, one of our best and highest-paid animators left our in-house team to join our global workforce. He made more money bidding and doing work remotely for us than he ever could have driving into work every day. And he got to pick and choose his jobs.
In the same vein, the more I increased outsourcing, the more my work and life improved.
Firstly, I found more time to be creative at work. Secondly, I found more time to spend with my family. Most importantly, I found the work/life balance.
To sum up, I run my entire studio from a laptop.
Our studio’s complex networks of creatives collaborate through my platform, Biddable. And I’m sharing it with creative agencies like yours because the future will involve more and more remote work.
Without a system to automate outsourcing, you could easily lose yourself.
Watch the one minute video.
For the next two weeks, I’m sharing all that I’ve learned with the industry that I love. Let’s compare notes and see how we can help each other.
-Robb Wagner
Robb Wagner is an experiential artist, whose creative breakthroughs have raised the bar on big and small screens. Robb’s aim is to create a bridge between imagination and reality and collaborate on partnerships where the ask is simple: How can we do something that’s never been done before?
