Who is on Your Support Team?

by Corey May, CEO The Communnications Journal

Being a media professional is like any other profession when it comes to excelling and moving forward.  No one gets to the top alone!  As a matter of fact most people progress forward only through failure.  Many artists progress forward after rejection.

Rejection or failure in the eyes of some is an opportunity to advance.  If failure or rejection are learning experiences a person can grow in a positive direction.  An important lesson is that you do not have to wait to fail to ask for help.  However, there is a very important lesson for asking for help!  YOu have to ask the right person.  Every artist needs to have the right support and help team.  What should your help team be like?  And who should they be?

About Your Help Team

  1. Your help team should be people who are at least as knowledgable as you in the area that you are asking for support.
  2. Free advic is just that, free.  Paid advice is just that, paid.  So what is good advice?  Good advice comes when a knowledgable personhas your best interest in mind.  Any one with contrary interesst is not considered to be a good advisor.
  3. Your help team has to be comprised of honest people with the intent of supporting you.
  4. You help team should be comprised heavily of people who are experts in your weaknesses.  These people may or maynot have expertise in your field.
  5. You need to choose a support team who has the time to support you.  Having an attorney that you cannot pay and therefore has no time for you is ineffective.
  6. You should have peers on your support team.  This group of peerscan be your critics, or atleast honest advisors, but you have to keep that advice in perspective.

Many people want to know, do family members make good support team members?

The andwer to that is if you follow the above rules family members can be helpful.  If family memvers attempt to control creative and design artists without pure support, it usually turns out a disaster.

When the rejections are dragging on, and the family memvers are burned out, how do you handle that?

  1. You can get a thick hyde like a rhinosorous and ignore it.
  2. You can quit.
  3. You can seek third-party help and advice to keep things in perspective.

This is why we advocate that all artists have a “help network.”  If you need a help network or a coach, contact us!