Working with creative people requires an entirely different approach. It's about taste, vision, and communication through visuals.

Over the past year and a half, I've made major improvements in hiring. I became really educated on how to hire people and increase the success rate of them becoming good employees in my business. This was a skill I struggled with for a long, long time.

It took me many years of failing to hire people and make them work properly. I thought my common sense was everybody else's common sense. But apparently only I have the brain of me, and all other people have the brain of them. I got really frustrated when people didn't do what I thought was obviously what they were supposed to do. But for me it was obvious. For them, they didn't know, or they were afraid, or whatever.

It's not that they didn't care—of course they all wanted me to be satisfied with them because they wanted to continue working for me. They cared about me and my satisfaction level, but they didn't care about the job as much as I cared about the job. Or they didn't care about the output as much as I cared for the output. Or maybe they cared, but differently. They cared about different aspects of the output and forgot very important aspects for me—aspects they couldn't know because I never told them.

Anyway, I got really better. Really, really better.

The Challenge of Creative Hiring

But the subject of today is not how to hire people. The subject is more interesting, I think: how to hire and work with creative people. I already figured out how to work with a typical employee, but now the question is how to work with a creative person—someone doing graphic design, video editing, website design, or whatever.

Let me give you an example of why it's so challenging and difficult.

Imagine you're going to have someone help you edit and post your Instagram posts. Your Instagram is already there—they can see how you like stuff to be made. But once they're going to post, you're not going to like what they post.

So how do you work with a creative person? It's completely different than working with someone who just needs to click buttons in a software program. It's more challenging to explain what to do because it's about taste. And taste is not something you can explain with words.

These people are working on creative stuff. It's not about "put here 20, put here 40, press submit, review with a supervisor before you press submit." No. It's about the feeling, the vibe, the energy of something. How can you explain the feeling, the vibe, the energy of something? How do you do that? It's crazy.

The Power of Visual Communication

My first realization is this: you do that with visuals.

Have you ever worked with an AI image generator and tried to explain how to make an image that you have vividly in your brain? You can see the image, but how do you translate it to someone else—AI or a person—to do the design the way you have it in your brain? Impossible by words. It's impossible by words.

That's why they say one picture is worth a thousand words.

Instead, how do you do it properly? You go to a website like Pinterest and create a mood board. You put all the mood and the vibe and the design language in a mood board and share it with them—even if it's an AI. Then your results will be much closer to what you want.

So that's the first step: a mood board. Or I should say, visuals are very, very important when you're working with a creative person.

You can create a whole lecture with images: "This image is great. This is exactly the tone. This is exactly the temperature. This is exactly the intensity, the saturation, the hue that we're looking for."

"But this image, while it almost seems identical, is not the tone, not the way, not the brand. Why? Because it's colder. Because it's too dark. Because it's not positive. Because whatever."

Maybe it looks the same to you, but it's not the same. This is not the brand. This is how you create this kind of stuff. You add pictures, videos, snapshots of real stuff. And that's how you explain it.

If you're sitting with that person next to you—and most of the time it's remote jobs, right?—but if you're sitting next to them, you do this with them by drawing and painting and showing them on paper, positioning it here and here. You use your fingers more than you use your mouth. Because they need to see. They do it creatively. They need to see. They have to see. They don't need to read. They don't need to listen. They need to see.

That's my first realization.

The Three Roles: Director, Producer, Actor

But there are still plenty more to go. Because if you think about creative work, there are many aspects of it.

There is the vision of the work.
There is the producing of the work.
And there is the making of the work.

Think about a movie. You have the director—he's the visionary. He knows how things need to look or feel or taste. You have the producer—he's the one taking care of all the logistics, the deadlines, the scenes, the locations, all the clothes being exactly where they need to be. A crazy amount of logistics, coordination, and money. And you have the actor who is playing the character. The actor needs to have peace of mind in order to really get into the character, remember his words, and do his job.

So I think instead of thinking, "Well, I need a graphic designer," I should think more like, "Okay, I need a team here."

I need someone to be in charge of the graphic designer to make sure the graphic designer has peace of mind and is taking care of all the back and forth and stuff like that. That someone needs to know my brand very, very well. Therefore, we can change the actors—the designers—all the time, but that person? I need a producer. And I will probably be the director.

This is what I think now. It might change because it's the first time for me to think about it, but this is something I'm working on right now.

I hope my thoughts helped you some way along your way. Good luck.