If you’re a creative, chances are you’ve felt impostor syndrome. Chances are you feel it more than you don’t, and chances are it’s fuelled by looking at how well everyone else is doing. Existing in a competitive landscape can be draining - and 15 years into running doodledo, our MD James knows it all too well. So, what’s the secret? We sit down to talk about turning challenge into celebration, and feeling at home as an agency.

And as a bonus - some of our best work has been made in collaboration, so we've shared some of it as you go. ‍

Maintaining a strong relationship between team doodledo and the wider creative community in Manchester is pretty close to your heart - why do you think it’s so important? 

The starting point for me was fear - I’m not good enough, the whole comparison thing, wondering who we are, what’s our USP, what’s our niche? It was causing me anxiety, not being secure in who we were, looking across at who others were, worrying what our USPs were. But shifting the narrative from competition towards, not collaboration at first but just conversation, being able to open up to another agency and say hey, I love what you’re doing and really admire your agency. That was what helped me to realise - I don’t need to be the only person who’s good at video and animation, it’s ok for there to be dozens of us. We don’t even need to be that different, our USPs are our people. It gave me permission to get on with what we wanted to do, without needing to copy other people. 

Do you think that reframing how you think about competition led to better work? 

Well, if you feel like you need to be like everyone else, there’s no room for collaboration. You’re already trying to take their bit of the pie too - but waking up to who you are and what you love and what you’re good at, and focusing on those things, leaves people room to get on with what they love and what they’re good at. That’s what lets you get the best out of what you are, and the best out of what your collaborators are. 

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Feeling so comfortable amongst your ‘competition’ can be a pretty challenging point to reach - how did you manage to get there? 

There’s a conversation I started with myself three years ago, when our business turned ten years old… I started to think, what are we here for? Are we making a difference, are we achieving anything? All of those questions and doubts and things like that. There seem to be more video and animation companies than ever, a million people doing what we do, and if I’m honest, every time a showreel went up, I felt threatened. I was worrying, why aren’t we doing something like that, every time there was a good idea put out there. An agency could be putting on an event and I’d think ah we should have put that event on. You’d be in pitches, and you’d hear who else was on the pitch list, and just get that real sense of being worried about the competition. 

So it was causing some anxiety, and I know people have all sorts of different ways with dealing with that, and for me and my belief system, one of those ways is prayer. I had a moment where I was just praying about this stuff and a thought popped into my head and the finger pointed, this is your issue. You’re treating everyone like competition and that’s causing you anxiety. 

That’s a powerful revelation to have - how did you turn it into something actionable, something positive to develop your way of thinking? 

It began a process of thinking: what if we’re all doing what we’re born to do? And if you can believe that, that there’s something you’re born for and you’re meant to go after that, to do that thing that you come alive for and that you’re good at and all those things, and if we’re all doing that, then there must be enough room for us all to flourish. There must be enough room for us all to succeed, for us all to be ok, and there must be enough work. So I started going after that, and it allowed me to celebrate people instead of viewing them as competition. I got rid of the word competition. I told our team that as far as other agencies go, we’re not gonna view them as competition any more. If you see a showreel we like, we’re just gonna celebrate it. And be genuine about it.

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What followed that then? Where did your thinking go from there? 

I still needed to shift myself in a real sense, like a physical change, so I kind of made a competition with myself that as soon as a showreel went up, I’d try and be the first to celebrate it or comment on it or whatever else. It totally shifted my mindset from competition to conversation. Eventually, a few years on, I feel like we’ve had some of the deepest conversations - quite vulnerable conversations - with other people totally in my sector, totally on my patch if you want to be territorial, where we’ve been able to help each other, open up to each other, and in some ways and some instances, collaborate. 

How does that manifest itself when it comes to work? 

We send work to each other! There are times when we’ve spotted opportunities that are maybe not 100% fit for us, but normally we would have gone after it. But now, we’d think actually, they’re a better fit, and send it over. And it’s been reciprocated! And I’ve noticed that, on my own journey from competition to conversation to collaboration, it just feels like  a nicer place to live.

If you want to see some more of our work, check it out here.

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