If you’d like to have a calmer, more sustainable creative practice you’re in the right place
About the Studio
The Studio is for people who make creative things for a living, but feel like the infrastructure around it is quietly falling apart.
It’s like looking at a rickety old rollercoaster and wondering if it’s really such a good idea to get on.
Or maybe it’s more like the show The Bear and you’ve got Michelin star food on an elegant table, but open the kitchen doors and it’s a screaming mess inside.
Maybe you’re growing faster than your systems can handle.
Maybe you’re creating, but constantly on the brink of burning out because you’re holding it all together with duct tape and someone else’s content calendar.
Whatever stage you’re at, the work here is the same: build the structure that lets you keep going.
You don’t have to be a born organiser to get it together
I have started three novels. I finished none of them. That's not because I don't enjoy writing (I do!), it's because I eventually worked out that the novel was not the right fit for me at that moment in time. Short film scripts, it turns out, were what I needed.
Contained. Smaller steps. Completable. Ah-ha, lightbulb moment, I just needed a different format to get things done.
I was converted to tidiness from once having a floordrobe many moons ago. I used to prioritise spending my time travelling over having a neat apartment, I went out instead of doing the pile of dishes.
I quietly assumed that some people were just born with the neat-and-tidy gene and that I was not one of them.
Then I encountered Marie Kondo's method (remember when we all sparked joy & flung out our old rags?).
Finally, I realised that order doesn't need to be a set of harsh rules, it was a way of thinking about what belongs in your life and how to access things easily.
Marie, you organisational queen, that certainly was some life-changing stuff.
Both of those things taught me the same thing: the problem is rarely the person. It is almost always that we haven't found a better way of operating or the right person to help us find it.
Hi, I’m Gill
Before founding the Studio I spent years developing operations at Google. In a nutshell, that was simply about:
building a way of working that helped busy people keep doing their jobs, under pressure and even when the amount of work grew rapidly.
I now bring that same kind of thinking to creative practices. Specifically to people who are producing content, building an audience, and running what is (whether they call it that or not) a business.
I work with people who are very good at the creative part and are being slowed down by everything around it.
I call what we build together a "Creative OS" (your operating system for your creative business). But, I’m not coding anything (for now), and it isn't based on a template. It's a way for you organise and move from idea to finished. It’s built around how you specifically work, not the way you think you "should" work, but the way you actually work.
Nobody thinks exactly like you do, so why would you try to fit their model?
I work with a small number of clients at a time. I look at how you specifically work.
I pay attention to where you lose time, where things stall, where energy is lost in second-guessing and where there’s a missed opportunity to repeat the steps that work well.
Believe me that you don’t need to worried about this looking neat and tidy (remember the floordrobe? I get it. Truly). Then we build a Creative OS around that.
I am not a coach and I also do not ask you how things make you feel (well, we look at what frustrates you about your day-to-day work, but we’re not exploring our childhoods here).
I am an operations consultant who works with creative people. I will tell you directly what I see and what I think you should do about it.
Clarity and an action plan so that you can manage.
Not sure yet?