It’s Gotta Rip

In school I wasn’t good at math. I would stare at a problem, re-reading the formula again and again. Then I would get it wrong. It never clicked for me. Science was the same way. I came up with phonetically clever ways to memorize the names of elements and organisms. The next day, I forgot them. 

But I was good at writing and public speaking. I could glean one insight from a book I didn’t read and write an A-level in-class essay about it. I could stand in front of my classmates with no preparation and deliver a solid presentation with no nerves. 

And this got me in a lot of trouble. 

I took these skills into my freelance career and leaned on them. I knew I could deliver a solid pitch or whip up a decent creative concept in no time at all, with little preparation. So I took on more clients than I should have. When one client dropped me for lack of attention, I networked my way to two new ones. 

And it wasn’t until a few years in to this turn and burn and churn that I realized this wasn’t a recipe for success.

Something I’ve been telling myself these days is this: 

It’s gotta rip.

We all have skills we can fall back on. And we worked hard to earn these skills. If you’re an illustrator, you know you could whip up something smart in a pinch. If you’re a video editor, you know you can cut something with energy the night before. But this isn’t enough. And it isn’t a sustainable recipe for success. 

In the social media era, people have millions of options. We have mere seconds to capture someone’s attention, and convince them to invest more time on our work. It’s not enough to lean on our natural abilities. It has to be good. It has to be firing on all cylinders from the first moment. 

It’s gotta rip.