Carol Mackay helps Australian creatives manage their business better - more effectively, more efficiently and more sustainably - so they can spend more time creating. After 30+ years running a graphic design firm, Carol moved from client-focused projects to consult to the design industry. Now with the Design Business Council she uses her experience, and research, to help creatives build robust, sustainable businesses, and to help businesses integrate, and profit from, design.

What’s the difference between personal branding and onliness?

Personal branding is how you want to be perceived by others — or as Amazon’s Jeff Bezos would say, what others say about you when you are not in the room. I prefer to use the term ‘onliness’ – comes without the history and baggage of ‘branding’.

Was your own ‘onliness’ something you instinctively understood, or did it take a lot of trial, error and experience to work out?

I’m relatively new to the importance of thinking about my ‘onliness’ and that’s mainly because I’ve worked alongside my life partner for nearly 40 years. We first worked together for someone else, then in a design studio we co-founded and now at the Design Business Council. During the design studio tenure, we had distinctly separate roles that evolved over a long period of time. Greg had his clients and I had mine. He ran the external face of the studio and I ran the internal. Our roles evolved with the business.

This changed when I closed the studio after 34 years to re-join Greg in a side-hustle we’d co-founded five years earlier. We’d dipped our toes into a venture we thought might work, and then worked hard to get it to a stage it could fund us both.

While I kept the studio going to fund the venture, Greg had had five years to assess, define and refine his new role. And he is is really, really good at what he does. When I joined him, I had to work out how I could add value. Greg and I now have overlapping roles with far less clarity.

Anyone with a successful partner knows if you don’t have clarity around your own strengths and weaknesses, if you don’t have a strong sense of your value, you will continually be overshadowed. Especially if you are second to the table. I’d come from the comfort of a role I had for 34 years into a new challenge needing completely different use of my existing skills.

“I had to find my onliness, and I had to find it quickly. It wasn’t easy.”

Is onliness important when you’re first starting out?

Being aware of your onliness is absolutely of value to a graduate. It means you can stand above the cookie-cutter folio we all graduate with, and more easily sell your value into prospective employers, in writing, in visuals and in person.

What do you think the main obstacles designers come up against when running a small business?

Stamina and sustainability. That first flush of clients may last a year, may last five but we work in a rapidly changing industry that is constantly disrupted. Identifying, adapting and managing change is constant. It takes energy and it takes stamina.

Many small business are founded by people who love what they do, but don’t necessarily love the business of what they do. Sustainability comes from employing someone to work on the business so you can continue to do what you love. If you love what you do, stamina is less of an issue. Energy comes from enjoyment.

You’ve taking your wealth of design knowledge and client-focused experience and pivoted to consulting, are you enjoying the pivot?

I am now. But it took a couple of years to be comfortable in my new role.

Comfortable working as a partnership rather than with an in-house team and running a studio. Comfortable remembering I’m now a supplier to the design industry rather than a designer and comfortable referring projects from ex-clients to other designers.

What I am enjoying is having a forum to share my experience. I would have loved to have a ‘me’ to advise me through the tough spots – that’s what I’m trying to do with others. Running a creative business is hard. Your eye is continually on billings for the end of the week/month/quarter. Having time to future plan is really difficult.

Now I am relishing having time to research better ways of running a design business. I’m relishing having time to talk to others about what they do, why they do it and how they do it. And I’m relishing having a voice to share that knowledge.

Have you had to change your onliness at all?

I am naturally a chatty, enthusiastic introvert who is most comfortable chatting one-on-one. Five-on-one sometimes. Ten-on-one max. This is not a perfect attribute for my new role in the Design Business Council, and it could be said it limited my role.

It was the personal journey map activity (I’m going to share in the Masterclass) that helped me identify what I do well, and what I don’t – and that helped me change my thinking because I understood where I needed additional skills.

Tell me a little bit about the work you do with Womentor (on hiatus at the mo) and how important do you think mentors are to women in design? And women in general.

Mentors are important. Having the counsel of others can open opportunities and remove obstacles. I’ve not had a mentor (apart from Mary Tyler Moore and Murphy Brown :) but I am sure with one I would have worked more efficiently and more effectively.

On the other hand, I’ve mentored many, as does anyone that employs others, and especially graduate designers. I’ve mentored employees, designers within schemes like AGDA and Womentor, and as a paid gig as part of my role within DBC.

“Mentoring is sharing knowledge and that comes easily to me. I think we all have an obligation to give back to the industry. ”

Where can women find a mentor that’s right for them?

I think many women struggle to find a mentor because of their mindset. They seek someone who will give their time freely, who has the perfect balance of knowledge, character and in an aligned career. Can you see the problem?

Mentoring should be a two-way relationship. Good mentors are open to continually learning, and to new experiences yet many mentees are only interested in taking. I’ve had designers request to buy me a cup of tea only to sit opposite me with an open notebook and grill me with questions until my eyes water and my bladder almost bursts. And then they ask when we can meet again.

Knowing your onliness is about understanding how you can give back to your industry at every level. Perhaps it’s not about finding the right mentor, perhaps it’s about making connections with people with whom you have something or someone in common and with whom you think you could share something you know in return for some advice. Who would not love that?

What’s the one bit of advice you would give women in business?

Firstly, that it’s OK not to be in business. If the business is a weight around your neck, if it is not giving you joy, and you don’t like the majority of your day, then it’s absolutely OK to walk away and support the work of someone else. The world is obsessed with start-ups but having a business is hard on every level.

It’s hard making the tough financial decisions. It’s hard to continually disrupt yourself and your business in an attempt to stay relevant and it’s hard working solo, but then it’s really hard managing other creatives.

It is not for everyone and I don’t think enough people consider walking away. That said, the one bit of advice I would give is understand your onliness – what you do differently to others, what makes you distinct. Understanding your strengths and your weaknesses makes it easier to play to your strengths and buy skills that plug your weaknesses.

And that’s what makes it easy to portray a successful personal brand.

Join us for Carol’s Masterclass on Friday November 6th at 1pm. Subscribe to her weekly article that helps designers manage their business. You can view her current work at Design Business School and see an archive of her design work at mbdesign.com.au