Intense, but fun.

In September, I joined an international group of fourteen creatives, entrepreneurs, and business owners at the Royal College of Art in London for a three-day short course called Building a Globally Successful Creative Business. There were just two of us from the U.S., while others came from Hong Kong, Taiwan, Germany, India, France, Greece, Mexico, and England (by way of Switzerland). Each of us arrived hoping to uncover that elusive something that might propel our business or idea forward.

My expectations going in were fairly simple — there’s only so much one can absorb in three days, and on top of the compressed schedule, I was fighting a cold I’d picked up on our trip across the pond. I was, admittedly, most looking forward to being back in London — museum hopping before the course began and visiting as many of my favorite pubs as I could in just a week. Beyond that, I had three intentions: to connect with like-minded creatives from around the world, to experience the RCA up close, and to gather insights into how one might expand a creative business abroad.

The course itself, co-hosted by the RCA and Made in China UK, was indeed intense — beginning with talks on design leadership and global growth from figures such as Jim Heverin of Zaha Hadid Architects, followed by visits to AWAL and Jack Godfrey Wood at Heirloom in East London. Day two shifted focus to team culture and brand evolution. We visited the Tate Modern (my second visit that week) and met with Hamish Anderson of Tate Enterprises before crossing town for a private conversation with designer Mika Kanayama at the Garden Cinema.

On day three, we toured Bompas & Parr’s studio, where Sam Bompas unexpectedly rekindled my love for design and self-initiated projects. I'm completely serious when I say, I do hope he publishes the definitive guide to smoke machines. I would buy that — absolutely. Then it was back into black cabs to cross the Thames and conclude the day — and the course — by dissecting our own businesses and discussing how each of us might evolve our creative practice globally.

At Made, where I’m currently a Creative Director, we have a saying: “Intense, but fun.” It’s a euphemism for the chaos we tend to find ourselves in. But this three-day course actually was intense and fun! More than discovering a single secret formula, it confirmed what experience had already taught me: there isn’t any magic to starting a business. Most of the speakers admitted they began with a good dose of naïveté and simply kept going. So, in the end, perhaps my key takeaway from those three days is this: much of starting a business is simply about getting started — then persevering, keeping at it, and, of course, a bit of luck never hurts. Finally, as Anthony Burrill so perfectly put it, to “Work Hard & Be Nice to People.”

It was then on to the Netherlands — feeling inspired, less sniffly, and carrying a notebook full of ideas — which, for a three-day course, felt like a rather successful outcome.