📝 The Struggle and Value of Doing Concept Work.

Dear reader,

It’s a waste of time.

I should be doing things that get me paid.

I can’t afford to do this.

These are all statements I made to myself when thinking about concept and practice work. And quite frankly, still plague my mind when practicing.

Now I love the work that I do, but when it comes to concept work, I’ve had a bit of a struggle to get the personal projects done since I was told I could get paid for my skills.

There’s a chicken and the egg situation here.

You need more work and to practice to build a portfolio of amazing work people want to hire you for, but you also run into a problem where you need work to pay the bills.

If you’ve ever been in a similar position, here’s what I’m doing to help combat this feeling and do more concept work.

There was a mentor of mine who told me to view concept work or work you do for free as a marketing expense.

You need to get your name out there. If nobody knows who you are or you don’t have the work to show your competence, how is anybody going to hire you for your work?

This is the largest mindset shift I’m going through right now. As weird or stupid as it may sound, it’s actually helping return me to a state where I can do the concept projects.

However, there’s another reason to do these projects. Practice.

By using them for practice, you’re able to continue building on your skill set which is the longest term investment into your work.

As creatives it can be a hard balance to strike between getting paid for work and just doing work for free. And I’m not suggesting you do work for free for a long period of time. Use it as a way to help yourself get discovered by those who you’d like to work with.

Here’s how I’m going about creating concept work right now.

I’m looking at YouTube videos and stock footage and trying to complete an edit within in an hour or two a day. This edit doesn’t have to be perfect, but it has to be something I’m somewhat proud of.

Then I post it on YouTube and/or TikTok. This is my form of accountability and feedback. Allowing me to see how “good” the edit is. ** I don’t judge myself for it underperforming though. I’m not going for massive views. My barometer for “good” means it’s getting some views. I don’t want to set unrealistic expectations since my goal is to practice not to become famous.

Ultimately, I wanted to write this memo as a note to all of us who want to work on concept projects, but feel like it can be a waste of time.

If you don’t have work right now, give yourself permission to work on personal projects to help get yourself seen.

Until next time,

Andrew