Welcome to the fourth and final part of our Head Heart Hustle series. Over the last few weeks, we’ve talked about how your brains, your passion, and your drive to do awesome stuff are what make you amazing at what you do.
This week, we’re putting all of that together – and we’re unveiling a VERY special new initiative that we’re quite excited about.
The Knowledge Economy has changed everything.
One’s value in the economy is no longer tied to our time or our productivity.
As knowledge economy workers, our value is tied to our expertise.
Our skills, our creativity, our pool of knowledge, our drive to keep learning more – that’s what makes coLab’s members so darn valuable. Because they are subject matter experts of the highest order.
Collectively, coLab’s members have completed thousands of projects for hundreds of companies, with spectacular results.
Here are just a few of our members’ biggest victories:
Okanagan coLab cofounder and UX consultant Shane Austin (ShaneAustin.com) rescued a large-scale government project from Development Hell after a personal crisis gave him new user insights into the design. After a public outreach project for the Government of Alberta grew beyond its original scope, Shane reoriented the design process to better meet user needs.
Copywriter Mike Straus (BrandGesture.ca) has spent the last 6 years building campaigns and writing high-converting copy & compelling content for marketing agencies, tech startups, and membership-driven organizations. A brand psychology expert cited by Smashing Magazine, Web Designer Depot, and Sparkflow, he’s helped startups to 2X their sales within 2 weeks and get accepted into the COLLISION Pitch Competition, which accepts a meagre 15% of the applications it receives.
Photographer Daniel Jones (TheDanielJones.com) is 3 years into a commercial photography business where he merges the creative power of photography with marketing tactics he has carried over from his advertising background to tell unique, inspiring stories and create engaging campaigns. Before that, he served a key role on a team at Disney Online Studios, where he helped to deploy a campaign that generated 2 million daily unique web views.
The coLab is home to a great many talented independent professionals. And now, we’re creating an innovative new way to encourage collaboration, shine a light on our community of awesome people, and impact the world around us.
It’s called Junction Creative.
Junction: A New Kind of Creative Agency
Junction Creative is a new extension of the Okanagan coLab – a “satellite brand” of sorts.
Simply put, Junction is a B2B distributed agency that connects large organizations with highly-skilled freelancers in order to solve problems & do awesome work.
Over the years, we at coLab have noticed a gap in the creative services market. The large businesses that are most in need of expert knowledge workers tend to gravitate toward creative agencies – but the subject matter experts who have the Head, the Heart, and the Hustle needed to do a spectacular job? They aren’t at the agencies.
They’re doing their own thing. They’re freelancers.
Junction Creative will bridge the gap between freelancers and large organizations by bringing together a network of talented independent contractors who want to tackle big, ambitious projects.
For freelancers and independent professionals, this means:
- Less marketing work to find clients! We bring in the projects for you, so you can focus on your craft.
- No project management, customer service, or accounting to worry about! Instead of worrying about all the “business” tasks necessary in a freelance business, you’re free to come up with creative solutions with that big, beautiful brain of yours.
- New opportunities to collaborate with other awesome professionals! No more asking your cat what she thinks of your logo design. You get the camaraderie and creative stimulation of working as part of a team, while still having the independence of a freelancer.
- Lower overheads than a traditional agency! Thanks to less managerial bloat, we can hand a bigger piece of the pie back to our independent service providers.
For clients, this means:
- Access to a deeper talent base! Junction Creative will draw from the Okanagan coLab’s well-established network of freelancers and independent professionals to source the best and brightest knowledge industry professionals around. Because the truly talented creative workers? Aren’t found in traditional agencies.
- Better solutions delivered faster! Junction Creative’s lean structure means we can run through the creative process faster than a traditional agency, so you can unleash a brilliant campaign and start generating sales while your competitors’ agencies are stuck in endless rounds of revision.
- A more enjoyable client experience! A project isn’t just a project. It’s an experience. Nobody is forcing us to start Junction Creative, but since we are embarking on this journey, we’re going to do it our way. We’re only going to take on projects we care about. That means you can expect a great final product and a fun time.
It’s time for a new kind of creative work.
Are you a freelancer, independent contractor, or solopreneur? Or maybe you have a full-time gig, but you desperately wish your side hustle would take off so you could escape the rat race?
We want you.
Junction is about collaboration, not competition. Participation, not observation. Doing, not saying. “We”, not “me”.
If you’re looking for an opportunity to work on big projects that matter, and to collaborate with your peers, then you’ll love Junction.
Contact Shane Austin or Mike Straus to learn more about how YOU can do rad work that stimulates your brain, lights you up inside, and makes work feel like play – work that unites your Head, your Heart, and your Hustle.
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