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Most creative professionals aren鈥檛 ready for the business challenges of the gig economy, but Ilise Benun believes that everybody can learn

In 1988, Ilise Benun was fired from her job as the operations director for a travel agency. It was her second job out of college. She was furious. 鈥淚 never wanted to work for anyone again,鈥� she says. 鈥淚 realized since then that I鈥檓, in fact, unemployable.鈥� With more free time on her hands, Benun visited with her creative friends. She noticed stacks of paper strewn about their desks. Each pile was bursting with opportunity for more business, better marketing and self-promotion. Benun used her newly found free time to help her friends with marketing and bookkeeping, finding enough opportunity under the piles of paper to start her own company. Soon, her client list grew and her status as 鈥渦nemployable鈥濃�攁t least by anyone else鈥攂ecame a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Benun is author of and founder of , a company that helps creative professionals find 鈥渂etter clients with bigger budgets.鈥� She has kept her business growing by responding to the needs of the market. Very soon, those needs will largely reside in the gig economy.

Currently, , according to Intuit, a number predicted to grow to 43% by 2020. However, most creative professionals鈥攅ven creative marketers鈥攍ikely aren鈥檛 ready to manage their own business. That鈥檚 where Benun comes in. 

Marketing News spoke with Benun about the entrepreneur mindset, how creatives can market their business and how they can prepare for the gig economy.

Q: What鈥檚 the most difficult part of getting into the business mindset for creatives?

A: Getting outside of themselves and seeing that what they want isn鈥檛 the focus of marketing their services; it鈥檚 all about the client. Self-promotion is not about you. It鈥檚 a paradox, but the idea is that even the way you answer the question 鈥淲hat do you do?鈥� is not about you. What I like to say to that, for example, is, 鈥淚 help clients get better clients with bigger budgets.鈥� That tells you nothing about what I do or how I do it, but I鈥檓 speaking to a certain type of creative professional who is at a certain place in their process鈥攖hey want to take [their business] to the next level. 

Q: Are most people ready to run their own business? Should people in full-time jobs start preparing to be self-employed? 

A: I don鈥檛 think people are ready. Employed people think they have job security, but I don鈥檛 think there is such a thing as job security anymore. Even if you have a full-time job, you could lose it at any moment鈥�. You have to be constantly cultivating your network and building your relationships so that, as things evolve, you know who to call, where to go and how to position yourself for whatever the next thing is鈥攚hether it鈥檚 a full-time job or a gig. I make a distinction between an employee mindset, where you鈥檙e an order-taker, versus a business-owner mindset, where you take responsibility for going after the work you want, as opposed to taking whatever comes along. 

Q: What鈥檚 the most important tenet of entrepreneurial thinking for creatives?

A: It鈥檚 being ambitious enough to pursue what we want. That means you have to decide what you want, find the people and companies and approach them. You have to not care about rejection because the reality is that most of them won鈥檛 want what you have to offer. You鈥檙e looking for something better than whoever happens to find you. That is the biggest challenge for people, even people who are successfully self-employed. A lot of people are spoiled by word-of-mouth and see it as a blessing, but when it stops, it is no longer a blessing, and you have no foundation. That鈥檚 why taking responsibility for the direction of your business and pursuing the types of projects and clients that you want puts you in a much stronger position. You鈥檙e not dependent on something outside of you. 

Q: So it鈥檚 marketing. It鈥檚 doing the job you already do, but doing it for yourself. That has to be a hard concept for some to grasp. 

A: It is, because you鈥檙e too close to it. And that鈥檚 why my business exists, because I鈥檓 not close to it. I can see who might benefit from your services. I can see what your strengths and weaknesses are, what needs to be shored up, what language might make sense based on who you are and what you want to pursue. 

Q: What is the first step people can take toward this way of thinking? 

A: Go to networking events in research mode. A lot of people hate networking because they imagine that it鈥檚 a situation where people are just foisting their business cards on other people, but it鈥檚 not. It鈥檚 developing relationships and learning about what the world needs. If you go to a networking event in research mode, you see that this person needs this, and this other person needs that. Then you can be responsive to the needs of the market.