2025 Top 5 Predictions for Multi-Hyphenates and Creative Professionals
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Top 5 Predictions for Career Success for Multi-Hyphenate Professionals in 2025
There has been a big shift in the way creative professionals advance their careers and/or businesses in the past 18 months. With the commodity of AI taking over all things digital and the diversification (see: being diluted) on social media apps, the noise has never been louder. And, the trust has never been lower in what people are seeing.
In my almost 20 years as a creative professional and business owner, I have seen the waves of trends come and go, and this is my prediction for how the wave is moving this year.
Here are my top 5 predictions for self-employed creatives and business owners moving forward if they truly want sustainable success in their non-linear career paths:
1- Having a strong and unique brand that people truly resonate with on a personal level will not only be important but will be necessary for success.
Small businesses will need to almost feel like a personal brand and creative artist freelancers will need a strong personal brand.
2- Your relationships, proximity, and connections will matter infinitely more than anything else. With AI being commonplace now, there is so much content and noise and distrust in content. Plus, most popular social apps are losing trust and users (and useful algorithms).
Who you know, how you build relationships with them, and how you add value to them will be the most important marketing you can do.
3- If you want to break through the noise and stand out as a no-brainer option for bookings, you have to offer something they can't get anywhere else.
You have to offer something that is valuable, clear, and desirable. Anything else will fall into the pile of sameness. The brain does not remember ‘the same’, it remembers what is different.
4- Allowing yourself to break out of industry boxes and single income streams is the way in the future. Being able to create a non-linear, hyphenated career path is what will allow you the flexibility to succeed in the long term.
Leaning into your MANY talents and skills as separate income streams as a hyphenated brand instead of a single service provider will bake in the flexibility for the market shifts.
5- Understanding that pushing for the sake of pushing might be pushing you in the wrong direction.
Those who take the time to step out of their routines, reset, and own being a visionary leader of their own path instead of going full steam ahead on what they think they "should" do will break away into their own lane quickest.
xoxo Steph
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