We were lucky to catch up with J.W. Affourtit recently and have shared our conversation below.
J.W., looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Let’s start with education – we’d love to hear your thoughts about how we can better prepare students for a more fulfilling life and career.
As a society, education is a slow evolution. Microchip technology is consistently getting better and smaller and faster and we still have kids who are living, and breathing a digital world, sitting in classrooms for 8 hours a day sitting forward and writing notes with pencils. I’d love to see an approach more based in reality and less pressure to be “perfect” no two students are the same. College is not for everyone and some people will excel with their hands or craft. Instead of saying this is what you must do to be successful, we should start evolving education to be about what’s possible.
J.W., love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
I’ve always been creative. How I used that creativity earlier in life was art, music. I loved to paint and draw. I never thought to pursue a career in any of those things, until a random summer party in 2011. There I was a college dropout, trying to figure out my place in the world and a friend of mine said “Hey man, you should do graphic design and go to the creative circus” At the time I laughed and thought the place sounded made up but 2 years later I applied just trying to do something, an attempt at anything. I loved it. It was the realization that I could do this every day for the rest of my life and never be sick of it. I had never opened a mac book, knew nothing of Adobe or even pixels. I failed a lot in the beginning but was tired of giving up.
If you ask my dad what I do now, he’ll tell you I make memes. Technically…he’s not wrong. What’s great about my job is its not the same two things everyday. One day I’m making commercials, the next I’m in NYC making mustard doughnuts for a client activation.
Any advice for managing a team?
Be humble. As a manager you don’t know everything. You have experience that can help you make decisions and give that perspective to others but you can learn just as much from your teams. You hire them to give a new twist on the work so let them. Creative work is subjective so as a leader, can you get out of your own way to let the best work come through?
Treat your team how you would want to be treated, that’s how you have high morale. If times are tough are you absent and having the team deal with it on their own or are you rolling up your sleeves and getting in there? Respect goes both ways and I think people forget that as they climb up the ladder.
Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?
Everyone has that acid in their gut that keeps them going. Mine is remembering what failure feels like. Remembering all the doubts people put on me. As creatives we’re never satisfied with what we’ve done. That’s why my motto is “Keep it Bitter” I never let myself forget where I came from and all the times people/places/projects made me feel like I wasn’t good enough.
Contact Info:
- Website: jwaffourtit.com
- Instagram: @jw_mthw
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/j-w-affourtit-b49a999a/