Interview with Tony Luna
On Re-Inventing Your Career

Tony Luna is a Creative Consultant, co-partner of New Media Marketplace and Artist Representative for Wolfe And Company Films. Tony developed this program knowing the creative person craves, even requires change. Tony’s first tip is learning how to "bridge" one area of your career to the next. Creative passion for a particular thing you like has a "shelf life" and your challenge is to anticipate its expiration date! Tony says,

"As creative people, we do things we love that clients come to expect and appreciate yet as time moves on, they continue to ask for the same kind of thing. After awhile, we want to change how we express our passion but we feel locked in and committed. Maybe this is the underlying paradigm. We get into things because we love it and then we see there is money to be made, then the money causes us to make commitments. Once passion becomes occupation, we lose the passion. Then, because we don’t deal with this situation directly, change then comes as a reaction. So I wanted to find ways to act rather than react. How do we invest time and energy at the height of one career to springboard to the next phase without the traditional lull or low time?"

The problem with this change is typical to all creatives. You are busy with work (or busy being depressed because you are not working as much as you were) and have no energy to find a new passion. Tony offers two tips.

• One, be alert for that feeling at the end of every project that you could have done the work differently or better. Hold on to that feeling, explore it, it could be the first step on the bridge to your next career. Tony says,

  "It doesn’t matter how different. It could be a technique, a technology, a different point of view. It is your internal alarm, a call to action. We know we have to re-invent ourselves to re-vitalize ourselves and our business."

• Two, go back to your roots. Why did you go into the creative world in the first place? What got you started?

"When we become encumbered by our commitments (paying bills, etc.) it slows down the creative process and we start second-guessing and limiting ourselves. So the real challenge if we are going to grow into the next phase of our creative self is to go back to our basic creative self and see where we really want to go."

The next challenge is to determine who are the clients for your new passion. Traditionally, creative professionals looked at what clients wanted and how to make their talent fit, the "shotgun" approach. Now, to get a competitive edge, first find your passion, then find the smallest and most targeted group of clients you can identify for this work. The question Tony wants you to ask yourself is, "Now, how can I grow my business?"

In his own work as an art/photo rep, it turned out to be an area of new technology, satisfying increased new media needs for clients. His latest venture, New Media Marketplace, is the result. This company is a digital production service providing ad agencies and design firms with new media artists and programmers for CD ROM’s, interactive kiosks, motion graphics, Quick Time VR and film special effects. "The paradigm I am proposing is to get back to what’s important to you, find those clients and then saturate them with the knowledge of what you are doing," Tony says. Of course, when your re-direction is something you don’t have to show, you have to create portfolios and promos. You have to make the time, not wait for the time, it will never simply arrive at your doorstep. Tony feels, "Passion plus process equals an ever-changing goal and a goal is a dream with a deadline." We need to set these deadlines for ourselves, treating our need for re-inventing our career direction as a priority, not something to do when there IS nothing else to do.

To contact Tony Luna regarding his work with U.P./Los Angeles or for information on New Media Marketplace, e-mail tonyluna@aol.com.