Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Josh Rose. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Hi Josh, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to hear the backstory behind a risk you’ve taken – whether big or small, walk us through what it was like and how it ultimately turned out.

My career has been a one-step-in-front-of-another kind of thing. Sure, it has been in the topsy turvy world of the arts, so there are little risks all along the way, but it generally followed a cause-and-effect kind of trajectory: art major (sculpture and drawing), retoucher, art director, creative director, chief creative officer. However, in 2018, just two weeks before my 50th birthday, I was without a next step. I’d been at the same agency holding company for almost two decades when they served me my notice. I interviewed all over. I was once a hot commodity with nowhere to go but up. Now I was a cold commodity. I couldn’t find a place that wanted me. The next logical step? A step down.

In my entire life, I’d always worked for someone else. I literally would call myself, “a paycheck guy.” I had this narrative about myself that I needed the stability of a paycheck in order to be creative and, furthermore, I believed I was “bad at business..” By putting myself under other people’s direction, it seemed I could carve out a nice little hole for myself. But I decided I’d try not working for anyone else for a bit. Let go of the stability of a paycheck. It was the riskiest thing I’d ever felt myself do. My whole life I’d told myself and everyone else that I couldn’t do this.

Five years later – exactly when they tell you this will happen – I have a business that is running, with a good book of interesting and creative clients and projects. I incorporated this year, took on a partner, have bookkeeping, advisors and a brand. I feel free. More than free of the world of working for other people, free from the hole I’d carved out for myself, out of fear.

Josh, 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?

There’s this idea of a creative polymath – someone who does a lot of different creative things. And while I have done a number of different things, I’ve done them one at a time. So, I think of it more as a creative monogamist. While I’m in something, I’m all in. For two decades, that was advertising. I started in as an art director and by the end of my tour I was Chief Creative Officer at a worldwide firm within the Interpublic Group of Agencies. Then I went all-in on photography for five years; had a rep and toured around the world with my camera. And then I went all-in on filmmaking.

I need to be all-in because I long to do timeless work. Making things that are contemporary in feel can happen quicker because they ride current winds. Timeless creative endeavors take an incredible amount of concentration.

If I look back so far, these are a few of the things I’m proud to have taken part in as a creative:

1. I was one of the first art directors to work on front end design for the Internet. Meaning, I created many firsts in the digital realm: I worked on the first shows ever created specifically for the Internet (The Spot and Eon-4). I created the very first website in a new technology called FutureSplash (which then became Flash) and won a Webby for it the first year the Webby’s came out (The Experience Music Project Website). I created many first websites for many artists, including my favorite at the time: Alanis Morissette. And then I became among the very first fully-integrated (digital) creative directors at a major ad agency (Deutsch).

2. I pitched, won and was a creative director on Volkswagon, Playstation, Fisher-Price, the US ARMY and Dr Pepper, to name a few. I worked on the “Mini Darth” superbowl ad that, for many years, was ranked the best superbowl ad of all time and won top honors at the Cannes Lions. I was part of the creative team that did the “Trust me, I’m a Doctor” campaign for DP and the “It Only Does Everything” campaign for Playstation.

3. I pitched, won and creative directed the launch of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) across the United States, including the largest exchange: Covered California. I launched that with one of my favorite campaigns I ever did: “I’m In” (English)/”Tengo un Plan (Spanish). And came up with the launch slogan: “Welcome To A New State of Health.” Probably my favorite line I’ve ever written.

4. I have two ongoing art series’ called “The Standouts” and “Metamorphoses” that I’m especially proud of. It

5. I wrote and published a short sci-fi story called “Latch.”

6. I’ve done five major photo-documentary projects in as many years, all of which took me into uncharted territory for myself: “America at Work,” which documented the state of American blue collar jobs by traveling across the U.S.; “Inside Baseball,” where I spent a month with the Washington Nationals the year they won the World Series; “Death Wish,” where I traveled around the world with Japan’s greatest rockstar, Yoshiki; “In-Tents,” where I spent months documenting residents of Skid Row inside their homes; and then most recently I traveled to Qatar with the Los Angeles Dance Project during World Cup to capture a sequence of dances in and around Doha, designed to get the soccer fans to come out and experience the various areas of the country. This work has led to a nice, long relationship with Leica where I am an Akademie Instructor.

7. Then there’s the scores of short films and dance photographs I’ve done which, hopefully, haven’t just been lost in the waterfall of content online. A great many of them, in another time, I believe might have actually had an impact in some way. But regardless, it’s all part of a childhood proclivity to make things and be part of the community of storytellers.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

Social media is one of those things that is really just as important as you want to make it. My approach to it is like most things I do: it’s either all or nothing. If I couldn’t do something there that thrilled me, I wouldn’t even bother at all. I’ve tried a lot of different channels and the ones that have stuck for me are Medium.com and Instagram. I’ve grown Medium to 51k followers and Instagram to 39k.

In Instagram I grew quickly simply from posting a lot, posting good things, writing from the heart and partnering with brands. Then they changed the algorithm and we all know what it’s like now.

On Medium, I continue to grow every month at a steady rate. I write about 3 or 4 articles a month and am pretty consistent with it. I built myself up there by talking about a subject (photography) that almost always gets discussed in the exact same ways, and doing it differently.

People crave unique voices online. My big advice is not to follow anyone else’s journey. Not because of any moral issue, but because it’s just not sustainable as a long-term strategy. Find a subject and a voice that you really care about and then go figure out what isn’t being said about it. In advertising, we called this, “finding white space.”

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

One, you wake up excited. Working on creative things, especially when you’re part of a team, is exhilarating. You’re making things, experimenting, getting ideas, getting excited about those ideas, talking about and working on them. It has a vibration and a way to fill up your time with something that feels worthwhile. That’s essentially the juice of life. The flow, as they say. As an artist, you get to be in your flow an incredible amount of time.

And then, two, in the end you have a thing. A finished product. Something to share. These things mark your progress and become a kind of living proof outside yourself that you accomplished what you set out to do. Here’s my film. Here’s my photograph. Here’s my book. These things, really, are part of you. What other profession offers that?

Contact Info:

• Website: www.joshrose.art
• Instagram: instagram.com/joshsrose
• Other: medium.com/@joshrose