I'm opening five mentoring places. Here's why.
There's a question I get asked a lot: can I pick your brain about something? It pops up in LinkedIn messages, at the end of events, or in cold emails from people who need some guidance. It even once happened in the queue for the loos at a design festival.
The truth is, I just never have enough time. Sure, I'll offer some quick advice. Perhaps a ten-minute Zoom if my week is unusually quiet. But as a founder, editor, vlogger and podcast host, I just can't give people the support they deserve.
So I'm finally doing something about it. From today, I'm mentoring a small number of creative founders and freelancers, five at a time, one-to-one. All the unglamorous stuff, like how to grow a creative business, how to price your work and offer value, and how to stay visible as the entire industry shifts beneath our feet.
Why now?
Because I've realised I've got a whole load of experience. I've been a broadcast journalist, a PR account manager, a freelancer providing PR services, and the co-founder of a marketing communications agency in Manchester. And I've had my fair share of side projects and ventures, including Creative Boom – one of the world's leading media platforms for the creative industries. That's my main focus now, but everything I've done since graduation in 2000 has led me to this.
Besides all of the above, I've read something north of 40,000 pitches (a number I worked out recently and then had to sit down), interviewed hundreds of creatives, and watched a whole generation of studios launch, grow, wobble, pivot and (mostly) survive. The businesses that thrived got a handful of things roughly right. The ones that struggled got at least one badly wrong. After 25 years, the patterns are impossible to unsee, and it felt like the right time to share what I've learned.
There's a timing thing too. Search is turning into AI, which rewards whoever is genuinely credible rather than whoever shouts loudest. Being trusted, cited and actually known is becoming the whole game, and building that is a craft of its own. As it happens, it's the same craft I've spent my entire career on the receiving end of.
Who it's for (and who it isn't)
This works best if you're a few years in. A studio founder, say, or an established freelancer, or a creative lead wondering about going it alone. You have clients and revenue, and you've hit a ceiling you can't quite name.
If you're just starting out, I'd honestly rather you didn't pay me. Save your money. Everything I'd tell you in year one is already free in the magazine, the podcast and our community, and I'd feel awful charging you for it. Come find me in a few years. I'll still be here.
How it all works
There are two ways in. If there's one specific thing keeping you up – a pricing decision, a should-I-hire, a rebrand wobble – book a Strategy Session: ninety minutes, and you leave with an actual written plan rather than a warm feeling.
If it's bigger than any one question, The Quarter is three months of me properly alongside you, a session a month with written check-ins in between. And if you book the three months when one session would've sorted it, I'll tell you. I'd rather be useful than paid twice.
And here's the other clincher: I'm only offering five places at any given time. That's because I still run a magazine read by over half a million people a month, and I'd rather mentor five people brilliantly than fifteen adequately.
One bit of small print I need to establish: while you're a paying mentee, you won't be featured in Creative Boom. There'll be no articles or podcast. And certainly no highlight features. Nobody will ever be able to say you bought coverage, and nobody will ever be able to say I sold it. That firewall protects everyone, yourself included.
The bit I keep coming back to
Seventeen years ago I started building the support I wished this industry had. It began as a humble blog, and somewhere along the way it became a magazine, a podcast and a community of thousands, all resting on the same stubborn belief: creative people deserve better backing than they actually get.
Mentoring is just the newest bit of that. The version where the support isn't broadcast to a million people. It's built around exactly one. If that person might be you, the application takes a few questions, and I read every single one myself. Apply today.
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