Jimmy Gilmore – Writer – Director

The early part of my career was easy. Seemed like things just got bet­ter every year. I had my pic­ture in CA Mag­a­zine within a few months of get­ting my first busi­ness cards printed. On my sec­ond job was as pri­mary writer on the Oak­ley sun­glasses busi­ness. My next job included a lot of TV shoots and some awards. Heck, I musta been great at what I was doing.

You see, snarky TV, radio, and print ads are a spe­cialty of mine. The kind that peo­ple want pulled off the air and will even talk about. I once wrote a bus board that ended up being fea­tured on the local tele­vi­sion news and received above the fold cov­er­age in the Ore­gon­ian.

Later came a mid-career that was a lot tougher fol­low­ing the tech crash and a move back to my home­town of Atlanta from the west coast. My flair for snark was a near use­less tal­ent in the con­ser­v­a­tive South dur­ing a reces­sion. Really, what mar­ket­ing exec wants to rock the boat when there’s a short­age of jobs? This, unfor­tu­nately, meant what I was work­ing on stopped being remark­able too. I even got laid off twice fol­low­ing account losses.

Why did things get harder? 

Well, I think it’s because peo­ple don’t want any­one to be what they think they’re great at. Busi­ness is not inter­ested in sup­port­ing anyone’s art. Deci­sion mak­ers just want what they think is needed and what their bosses want. I was just lucky that, before the tech crash, my tal­ent for writ­ing edgy ad copy was per­ceived as needed.

For­tu­nately, a boss rec­og­nized another gift I have. I am not only nat­u­rally snarky, I’m also really freak­ing curi­ous. This recog­ni­tion has led me in the direc­tion of social media.

But isn’t this sup­posed to be about you? Well, here’s what I think the take away is:

Don’t focus on just being good at something.

Try and under­stand why you’re valu­able to some­one else. Learn what they need from you and focus on their needs and not your ego.

Try and develop mul­ti­ple tal­ents so when one becomes less valu­able you’ll have some­thing else to offer.

Be curi­ous.

Be Socia­ble, Share!

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