We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Tara Carsner. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Tara below.

Tara, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What was the most important lesson/experience you had in a job that has helped you in your creative career?

Previous projects have taught me the importance of accountability. No matter what, there’s always something you yourself could have done better to avoid any errors or mishaps that happen on a project. Did you get content back from a creative that missed the mark? Tighten up your brief. Allow for more edits in a work-back calendar. Did your staff show up late? Schedule call times earlier so it physically cannot happen. Staff better support–be more thorough in your hiring. Did plan B not work out? Maybe I should always think through a plan c or have a clear enough mind to be able to think on my feet and execute a plan c. Once I learned to stop pointing fingers at others and saying things were other peoples fault, my projects were more successful and oddly enough my mental state was more stable despite the added pressure and responsibilities.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I’m a multi-hyphenate Creative Strategist, Partnerships Architect + Talent manager.

I got my corporate start as a marketing specialist at Jordan Brand ultimately working on the North America Brand team out of Beaverton. After Jordan I started my own boutique creative agency, Hometeam, to further explore my true passion of being a dot connector and desire to empower the creative community–the right way. I saw agencies severely underpaying creatives, specifically in the freelance design space, as well as the nepotism in hiring the same creatives and even internally only hiring friends and family to work on their internal teams. I set out to be a creator-first agency; not hiring a large team but rather giving out freelance opportunities on every project for ever task needed – design, project management, staffing, talent, etc. Always keeping the goal to give as many people as I could the opportunity to build their resumes working with major brands in hopes that these opportunities could help grow their individual careers. And additionally, be the agency that put community first over being money hungry and wasteful with corporate dollars–I would always try to find a way to allocate funds back into non-profits and community organizations over taking a client to a steak dinner or ordering the extra expensive layout just because the budget was there.

I started out first as an experiential agency, working on Adidas grassroots basketball, and being the official agency of record for Champs Sports, Eastbay and also Chicago Public Schools High School basketball. I also produced events for brands like Complex, Puma and even Kanye West’s Life of Pablo Pop-Ups. The mindset of being creator first led me to working as the brand partnerships director for Lyrical Lemonade where I drove some brand defining deals with Jordan Brand, Pop-Tarts, NFL, Chicago Bears, Nike + more.

Going through the pandemic when events were slow, I decided to take the leap and double down on servicing the creative community first, and parted ways with event production for major brands and built up a rather large roster of talent driving their partnerships and some of them their full management of their creative business. My roster consists of content creators, visual artists such as KODONE, music artists such as Ice Spice + Sexyy Red, to designers like Kristopher Kites, and to athletes like Jerami Grant.

I like to say, and feel like my clients would agree, I have a really unique and impactful way of going about partnerships. I don’t wan’t to create what’s expected and I don’t wait for brands to hit my clients inbox. With the mindset of creator first, I think it’s important to build your strategy and find the brands that can align with that strategy and go after them. That approach weeds out doing deals that don’t make sense just for a check and really help propel my clients’ careers forward.

I’ve taken a few corporate jobs along the way battling through the economic hardships of the pandemic, working as VP of influence at Weber Shandwick working on major brands like Pop-Tarts, Twix, Pringles, Perrier, and even launching Cheez-It’s TikTok. But betting on myself has always brought me the most success and fulfillment.

Recently in addition to managing talent + driving brand partnerships for individual creatives, I’ve dove back into servicing major brands. I just completed the entire go to market strategy for Crocs and Foot Locker for their new Demon Slayer collaboration. I wrote the strategy and creative vision + back to the roots of Hometeam, I was able to bring on some of my favorite creatives to help execute the creative digital assets, influencer amplifications, and the culminating experiential activation at New York Comic Con.

In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?

Share work of others. Put people on to other creatives. Speak positively about other creatives in rooms they aren’t in. Pay the people on your mood boards to do the work.

What is meant for you, is already written for you. Giving others opportunities will only bring more opportunities your way. I really believe the universe works in that unique way. And I’m not talking about you give an opportunity to one person then that one person should give you an opportunity back. No. The universe rewards positive energy. It’ll come back from somewhere you didn’t even expect it. And in that same sense, don’t dare try to block some one. That energy will come back to haunt you even harder.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

The ability to inspire the next person that you really can make a career out of your creative passion. I once looked at “dot connectors” and discredited them like how do you make money? But if I can figure it out, any one can. I’ve seen a visual artist go from 0 dollars to 6 figures in 2 years. It’s all possible if you put in the work and build your own individual brand identity.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.hometeamtalent.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/copemnrockem/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/taracarsner/
• Other: www.instagram.com/hometeam.talent