From herding cats to an amazingly successful artist
Hear the recipe for a beautiful pivot, click on the picture to see the video
👍 Karen’s boss at McCann, Alex Young, once told me “This is an ungrateful job. When we’re doing our job well nothing happens.”
Karen, who worked at McCann-Erickson Mexico in account management, puts it more succinctly, “It’s like herding cats”.
So, for this episode we are going to break our usual format and talk to Karen about one of the most amazing, inspirational pivots ever: from the highly business-oriented ad agency that is McCann to a very successful gallery owner and painter in San Miguel Allende, Mexico.
👉 First the context: Karen went from doing free-lance illustrations to working at McCann-Erickson. Her high performance got her into the top tiers of the agency and she travelled all over the world.
👉 The shift:
👉 First, she “fell out of love” with the industry. Her moment came during a meeting when all of a sudden, she realized she’d rather be somewhere else.
👉 Second, the realization that there had always been the dream of becoming an artist. But Karen had never gone to art school.
👉 Third, get yourself in position to take advantage of the dream. Moved to San Miguel Allende, walked around and looked at all the art. She feel in love with an artist who painted San Miguel street scenes. And I thought, that's what I want to do.”
👉 Fourth, the hard work. She went to Bellas Artes (Fine Arts) in San Miguel and started taking art classes.
👉 Fifth, take risks. At one point, during one of her classes, the teacher mentioned she was moving away from San Miguel and asked Karen and another woman whether they would like to take over her gallery. They did.
👉 Sixth, work hard. Karen paints every day. She goes out all the time, takes pictures of San Miguel and then paints the street scenes that people pay hundreds for. She helps Susan run the gallery… it’s work.
👉 To sum it up in Karen’s own words “I discovered my passion. I discovered that I could actually do something that I had dreamt about for years and years. I'm an artist who really is a happy one. Have the desire, put in the work.
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