Jamie Oliver's words on creativity and careers from Spark for the Fire.
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Jamie Oliver's words on creativity and careers from Spark for the Fire.
Extract from Spark for the Fire: How Youthful Thinking Unlocks Creativity.
Reading time: 6 minutes
Ten years ago, Spark for the Fire: How Youthful Thinking Unlocks Creativity was published. To celebrate this milestone, this is an extract from the book’s afterword written by chef and campaigner Jamie Oliver.
Afterword, by Jamie Oliver
“As I write this at 36, it feels like only a moment ago that I was young and hungry. Even though a lot has changed since then, I still feel that the core of what I do – how I feel about it and what excites me – is the same as it was when I started out. Ten or 20 years from now, I hope you feel the same way about your career.
Sadly there’s no one path to success, but I’ll try to share a few of the things I’ve learned over the years with you. I hope some of these things will stay with you and prove useful or encouraging down the road.
The first and best bit of advice I can give you is to do what you love. Start by getting yourself into an area of the industry you feel passionate about, and if you aren’t able to do what you love during work hours, do it in your free time until the right job comes along. Before my career took off, I spent about 15% of my time working for free so I could improve my skills. I absolutely believe the right experiences and opportunities will find you if you do what you love.
Once you’re doing what you love, there’s a fine balance between being single-minded in your approach and listening to the people close to you. Success, for me anyway, has always been about falling in love with great ideas and turning them into reality. There will always be people telling you your ideas won’t work or that you’re going to ruin yourself financially (like my dad said when I set up Fifteen), but ultimately the ages of 18 to 30 are the best years for taking risks because you’ve got less to lose. Things might not work out, but even that’s OK because failures shape you, so you do better next time.
After years of working hard to prove myself, I hit 30 and finally felt like people trusted my judgement, which was wonderful for about six hours until I realised that some people would run with my ideas even if they were rubbish. I guess what I’m trying to say is that the route to good ideas has something to do with staying true to your instincts and also with having a great team of people to interrogate you and challenge and support your ideas. Be open to getting a bit of grief from them because their questions will force you to defend yourself and think things through until you either spot weaknesses or polish those little seeds into things that really can work. If that team of people around you puts in as much hard work and passion as you, you’ll always take those ideas far beyond your expectations. Some things are just meant to be. It’s so important to make creative, rather than commercial, decisions.
Your choices should never, ever, just be about the money. If they are, things are bound to end in tears. Believe me, I know. When you follow your gut and make good creative decisions, the rest of the details tend to fall into place.
This next one is really important. Regardless of whether you’re a one-man band or a big business, the rules are pretty simple: screw people over, and they’ll never forget it. Be consistently good in your work and consistently good to people, and they’ll remember. Don’t wait to be asked to do something, do more than expected and fix problems as soon as they occur. Behave this way right from the first day of your career, and people will want to work with you.
A few years ago, I used to meet the fashion designer Paul Smith for breakfast every six months. I really admired the way he ran his company and treated his staff, and I wanted to learn from him. For any of you who don’t know, Paul is a wonderful designer who runs one of the most profitable fashion houses in Europe. He’s also famed for being a nice guy and an absolute gentleman. His ability to spot talent and stick with things is second to none. At one of our meetings, he gave me a piece of advice that totally screwed with my head. He told me: never to try to be the best. Instead, try to be the second best. Imagine hearing that at 26, when all you want to do is be the best! I didn’t fully get it then, but I do now, and it’s been one of the most profound pieces of advice I’ve ever been given.
In the fashion world, being ‘the best’ might mean making suits out of gold that cost $60,000. Yes, those suits might be incredible, but how many people will actually be able to buy and wear them? Compare that with seeing the joy and pride on some dude’s face when he puts on his first beautifully cut ‘off-the-peg’ Paul Smith suit that looks and feels the business and costs a fraction of the gold suit.
Being creative isn’t necessarily about being the cleverest, the fastest, or the best. It certainly can be, but it can also be about surprising the general public with affordable luxury. The biggest rewards, personally and for your business, come when you can find ways of democratising that luxury experience or creative idea for the general public. Whether that’s in the way you design a building, a laptop, a suit, or a meal, keep what you do real and street-level and work hard at getting to know the public because, whatever you do, they will always be your audience and will look after you as you grow.
I’ve learnt so much from people like Paul and the brilliant chefs I trained under. And as you go on your journey, doing whatever incredible things you’re going to do, I hope you’ll also have some empathy and respect for the young ‘you’s’ out there.
Devote a little chunk of your time to nurturing young talent coming up in whatever way you can.
Don’t fall into that playground culture of bad-mouthing people who happen to be doing something a bit cooler or cleverer than you are at that moment. That back-stabby culture is horrible and unhealthy, and, to be honest, if you’re a bitter, horrible person, I don’t care how good your product is – I won’t want to buy it or work with you.
So love what you do, take your work seriously, be true to your word, and be generous to everyone you meet. No matter what you do, it’s all about people and inspiring them to believe in what you’re doing. Do this, and hopefully, you’ll find yourself with the career you’re dreaming of. If you’re lucky, that career will also pay you well. But most importantly, it should allow you to enjoy what you do every day of your life. And surely that’s the biggest reward of all?
Good luck on your journey.”
Jamie Oliver
Buy Spark for the Fire on Amazon