Fractions

Creative direction. Client strategy. Sales calls. Internal reviews. Operations. Finance, all that stacked on top of a few different ventures.

For me, running Forge Studio means shifting gears constantly. No clean transitions. Just full speed.

And the truth is business and creativity don’t play nicely.

One requires emotional intelligence, taste, instinct. The other demands structure, precision, rhythm. Moving between the two, especially across multiple projects, clients, and ventures is a lot to handle.

So I built systems. Not to look more 'professional' or tick a box. But to protect my team’s headspace, and mine:
CRMs.
Onboarding flows.
Automated invoicing.
Detailed case studies.
Internal processes.
Each one a small act of self-preservation.

And what happened next surprised me.
More space.
More clarity.
More creativity.
I could lead again. Think again. Design and enjoy it again.

But with the noise turned down inside the business, I started noticing the noise outside it. So many business owners came to us believing marketing was the missing piece.

But what was really holding them back?
No ops. No sales infrastructure. No systems - and sometimes, not even a ICP.

They didn’t need better ads. They needed to rebuild the business.

I saw this first-hand with my first solo venture propGen.

We were generating leads for real estate developers. Ads to landing pages. Leads were generating, but calls weren’t being made.

I was told 'the leads are shit.'

So I called them. Booked 4 appointments. 1 became a sale a week later. The agent made about $22,000 in commission. A reminder that execution is often the place where good strategies go to die.

The leads weren’t the problem. The system was.

And it shifted something in me:

Great creative work is worthless if the client can’t act on it. You can’t just build campaigns. You need to build infrastructure.

What I learnt:
- The pursuit of growth is about more than revenue.
- Building real value takes systems and discipline.
- Building sustainably takes alignment, shared vision, mutual buy-in, and long-term thinking.

In a creative business, it’s not enough to be good at the work. You have to protect the people doing it. You have to reduce the chaos.

You have to treat operations as sacred because structure is what gives creativity room to breathe.

I stopped saying yes to noise. I started building with people who were building something real...

...and inevitability the rising tide lifted all boats.