We were lucky to catch up with Bianca Jenkins recently and have shared our conversation below.
Bianca, appreciate you joining us today. Are you able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen?
I’m blessed to say I am a full-time creative. This is something I truly never thought possible, and while I am still at the very beginning of my journey, I can honestly say the last 5 years have been life changing. There is no perfect way for someone to make their creative dreams come true, and it isn’t easy either. When you are on your creative journey you have to be prepared to take risks, put yourself out there, and know that you will have some high highs, as well as low lows. Despite it all, you have to keep going. Consistency is really the only way to see success in this field. You gotta trust the process. I can remember being 20-years-old, cold calling, emailing, and showing up to random events in New York City just trying to find that one creative connection to get the ball rolling. I was told no, ignored, and even called naive, after all I was a young midwest girl trying to make something happen in the most brutal city in the world. But I loved it, loved what I did, and felt called to the city, so I kept going. Now 24-years-old I am blessed to be able to live in Brooklyn, run a branch on a creative agency as well as pursuing my own creative endeavors full time. I am still so young and still at the beginning on my journey. But had I not kept going years ago, I wouldn’t have learned what it was like to struggle and how to handle it. It’s still not easy, but I have a better grip on how to handle the struggle, and I have faith that it will all work out better than I could have ever imagined. There is no way to ever speed up a process like this. Anything great takes time and patience. Get consistent, because motivation will come and go, and as long as you know what you need to do daily, and you keep going it’s all going to work out.
Bianca, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
I was born and raised in Grand Rapids, Michigan. As a kid I always loved doing creative things. I loved to act, play music, paint, draw, really anything I could get my hands on, I tried it. When I was in 8th grade I was given my first camera, and began to take photos of everything. From there my love for photography grew and I began to love capturing people. Then in college I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do. I knew I loved photography, but I thought of it as more of a hobby. After high school I ended up going to Central Michigan University, where I was honestly a terrible student. I began studying fashion merchandising because to me at the time that was the most creative thing I could find that would still give me a good job. The idea of creating content for a living truly seemed impossible. After two years of just barely getting by in college, I ended up landing an internship at a creative agency based in Grand Rapids, MI called Carbon Stories. It was this internship that truly changed my life. During my internship my eyes were opened to how much more was out there in the creative world, anything was possible, and I could create for a living. After my internship was done, I had absolutely no desire to go back to school, I wanted to work at Carbon so badly I needed to make it happen. So I spontaneously dropped all my classes, told my parents I wasn’t going back, and began to show up at Carbon everyday to provide as much value as I possibly could. Not long after, they hired me on and now it’s 5 years later, I have been able to travel all over the world creating with them, and currently live in NYC and get to help build their Brooklyn branch. It has been a true blessing to how far we have come as a company, and how far I have come as a creative.
Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?
I think the biggest thing that has helped build my reputation isn’t just my work, but the fact that I value building relationships first. Building that relationship, and showing your clients you care for them builds that trust factor. That trust factor is so important because it makes projects go smoother, and helps grow business. If one person trusts you and you have a solid relationship built with them, they will recommend you to the next person and you can keep building from there.
What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?
I would say the most rewarding aspect of what I do is the connection and relationship I get to build with certain clients, especially ones I have worked with for many years. I have been able to not only see them grow but capture their growth.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bianca_jenkins/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bianca-jenkins-60a911132/
Image Credits
D’Ana Smith Skylar Bumgardner Atlanta Grubbs Ursula Stephen Carbon Stories