Make your own luck
Luck to me is preparation and opportunity. Earlier this week, I had the opportunity to meet a lifelong idol of mine, Casey Neistat. We visited his wife’s pop up store for her jewelry company, and ended up helping her decorate her car and attending the after party. At the after party, I connected with a guy from Texas with a mineral water company. We are discussing on how I can help expand his business to Portland. On Sunday after the week of touring agencies ended, I found myself talking to two advertising people in central park. The first is a producer for still production at BBDO and the second is a strategist at twitter. Both of these interactions were serendipitous, and for that reason felt more genuine than any other connection made this week. NYC is full of opportunity and plenty of time to prepare as long as you don’t sleep in.
-Justin Hartney
Turtles in Central Park. Who would’ve thought that was a thing.
I like this.
Facebook was full of quick and dirty takeaways. Here are my favorites: Meet people, reunite with teachers, win and learn, don’t be comfortable, keep hobbies, reflect on learning, do what you can’t, content is communication, chase bigger dreams. Facebook takes the cake for the lesson that will influence me the most: “Don’t give up on what you want to do until you actually do it.” To me this means that I won’t give up on being a freelance photographer, until I am a successful freelancer. I may want to give up because I haven’t met my goal and it seems impossible, but until I reach my goal I have no idea what life may be like. No more quitting halfway.
-Justin Hartney
360i: The Five Defining Strategic Principles
Chelsea Coleman, Strategist and former duck, dished us some wisdom of 360i’s strategic process.
1.) Research-> “Always the first step,” 360i Suggests doing the 4 C’s research exercise.
A: Culture B: Category (research about the competitor/industry trends etc.) C: Consumer D. Company
2.) Storytelling-> “We have to be able to define and frame problems and solutions to the audience in ways that are interesting and inspire new ideas”-
3.) Connecting the dots->”We have to have a larger vision for clients that goes beyond just traditional campaigns and thinks long term.”
4.) Making-> “Our job is to push strategies & creative executions to go one step further”
5. Counsel-> Building trust with the team is vital. We must understand everyone on the team’s motivations. Sometimes the strategist needs to be the adult in the room and be blunt with teammates when needed.
-Noah Wilskey
“We are experts at things we’ve never done before.”
Code and Theory is a one of a kind agency. Their intelligence blew me away. My biggest takeaway is to focus on the atomic particles of a story. This doesn’t mean the specifics of the story, but rather the parts that make the story a story. The parts that are present throughout the whole story. To think on such a minuscule and broad level simultaneously is a perspective I will work to have one day. Another takeaway is to be visibly motivated. This will lead others to help you, and will help you identify people you want to help. With this, people can leverage each other’s skills, creating a sum greater than the parts.
-Justin Hartney
This place is really huge and small.
I had the fortunate opportunity to meet up with my friend from high school on Tuesday evening. We picked up right where we left and an epic night was ahead of us. We removed ourselves from Manhattan only to shoot photos of it from Brooklyn. All of us enjoyed talking camera tech and helped each other get the shots we wanted. The night was still young after my high school friend went home to pack for her flight. We shot underneath the Brooklyn Bridge until every composition was captured. On the walk back to the subway, I noticed a one in a million composition. Excitement took over me, and I ran up the road to get the perfect vantage point. By now, my two other friends couldn’t see me and assumed I was lost in the streets. After spending 20 minutes shooting the scene, I searched for my friends. A dead phone was no help, but I knew where the subway station was. To my surprise, my friends were waiting for me outside. They are still my friends to this day.
-Justin Hartney
The Empire State Building aligns within the Manhattan Bridge.
The Unreasonable Man
For a while, prior to the trip, I was stressing out about the typical “I’m about to graduate college” thoughts: “Will I find an internship/job?”, “Will I wake up being happy with the work I’m doing?,” “where will i be living?”-you can fill in the blanks with more. This stress was causing me to overthink in certain situations, like applying and interviewing for a job, and really forget the things that make me happy and make me, me.
But that all changed midweek, after a chat over a beer with a friend and good mentor, Jazo Moises. Jazo reminded me that if i’m applying to something and have the opportunity to be interviewed, the place obviously knows I am a qualified candidate and they just want to talk and get to know the REAL me, to see if i’m a fit for the vision of their culture. Hearing this brought a huge weight off of my shoulders. For a while, I honestly felt like because of this stress I was putting on myself, I was changing who I was and what I want to do, to adapt and fit the mold of a place I was inquiring about.
This epiphany moment came sort of full circle to me at the end of the week, while I was waiting to speak with a friend at Anomaly. There, In the waiting room, I saw a quote by George Bernard Shaw (pictured below). This quote spoke to me on so many levels and once again reminded me the importance of always being me and doing me, or else what I really want to do in my life may never be accomplished.
-Noah Wilskey
This place is huge.
Make something you love. Make something together. Understand why you like or dislike things. Never do the same thing twice. Fail gracefully. Ask why. Ask why again. Be not feel. Make general observations about everything all the time. These were some huge takeaways from Huge.
-Justin Hartney
Don’t let a good idea die.
I saw that note in my friends notebook and thought it was a good idea to write it down. An idea I had later in the day for the Wieden challenge was to ask kids what they thought of NYC. Our team doubted that we could find kids willing to talk to us and pose for a picture, so we gave ourselves a short time frame to accomplish this task. My teammate and I talked to four different kids and their parents only to hear “No.” from all of them. Before we gave up, my teammate went up to one more mother with two kids. Not only was she excited to help us, her kids were eager to talk with us. Patrick’s favorite part of the city was the water. There is always something to appreciate in NYC.
-Justin Hartney
Fake it until you make it.
Day 1 ended with a visit to a production house two thirds the size of our hotel rooms. The size of an office does not limit the potential of good work that can be produced. The team of five that made up Starr Media works with companies like Adidas, Nike, and Tommy Hilfiger. Finally that cliché “Fake it until you make it” made sense to me. No way these guys held client meetings in their tiny office. Who the hell would want to hire a group of guys in an office overflowing with pelican cases. The brain power is what matters here, and these guys had plenty of it. My biggest takeaway from this visit it that specializing in a specific craft and being decent at everything else will keep you employed.
-Justin Hartney
Cite Your Sources
This past week exposed me to enough wisdom to last several lifetimes. Now begins the process of curating and storing these gems of inspiration so I can pull them back out when I need them.
I recently used a piece of advice an alumn gave me about a year ago, so I decided to reach back out and give credit where credit was due. I wasn’t trying to ask for a portfolio review or a favor; I just wanted him to know how much his ideas had helped me. When I saw how stoked he was to witness the results of his guidance, I realized how important it is to cite your sources. When I inevitably use the wisdom from this trip, I’ll be sure to let people know how their words have inspired action.
Hannah Lewman 05.15.17