Switch and pivot
A new era for DSCS — and the why behind it.
I’ve been on a classic Daniel travel bender, stitching several moments into a two-week trip across the Midwest, South, and West. After a visit to Chicago to see a few friends’ shows and new homes, I attended the opening of Detroit’s Month of Design at Newlab. I then went down to Jackson, Mississippi for my Change Collective Fellowship capstone trip. I met the mayors of Memphis and Jackson; discussed the work I’ve been scaling at the fellowship with PCAC to bring Detroit microgrants back into the hands of young cultural workers; and even DJ’d an afterparty at the historic Hal & Mals. Around 20 of us from Detroit met alongside the cohorts from Chicago, Jackson, San Antonio, and Memphis; it was a dream come true. Thanks to Dexter, Chanel, Christina, and everyone at CC and across every cohort for the time, attention, strength, and support.
I then flew to San Francisco for a wedding, a live radio show on SutroFM where I played all new music of mine (I hear it will be uploaded to Soundcloud soon), and time with my family before I started my new full-time position in the automotive industry. Yes! That’s right! Vroom Vroom! I’m now a Program Manager at the part startup, part company LeadVenture, which builds better data, web, SaaS, and leadgen at generationally-owned dealerships across the US. (An interesting environmental angle is to, quite simply, build better systems for people selling used cars in order for us to stop buying new cars).
This shift means pausing DSCS for the time being, and—when it makes sense—right-sizing it to work with one Design Operations or Art client at a time.
How we got here
Design Operations, Artists, Startups, Ad Agencies, Nonprofits—they’ve been the core of my clients over the past four years. I’ve worked with 47 of them in North America and Europe—scaling their funding ($5.5M+), their teams, their programs, and their operations.
This year, as prospective clients pulled contracts and work slowed (call it election, call it white collar recession), I saw two paths:
Double down on my consultancy, hiring a team and transitioning my work to 90% chief-of-getting-clients, 10% leadership.
Go back to a startup environment, pausing DSCS to build a whole new set of skills with a whole new team (and, quite possibly, in a whole new industry).
While I entertained both options over the year, it became clear that option two was the right way for now. I feel set and accomplished with what I’ve built at DSCS. I’ve worked with some of the greatest minds on projects that have been published and broadcasted around the word. I built my own brand, website, archive, and newsletter with hundreds of subscribers. Doubling down just to become a super duper Client Sales Person Extraordinaire (e.g. more of the same, just …. more aggressive) isn’t a skillset I want to invest in right now.
I want something else—something that can give me new skills and real financial stability. (Client W-9s in the cultural industry won’t give me (us) that.) And while the going is slow across DesignOps and Community Strategy, I might as well learn something new and exciting.
I applied to 189 jobs. 95 I never heard back from (around 50%). 76 outright rejected me (40%), and 18 led to at least one interview round (just under 10%).
Of those 18 jobs I interviewed for, 7 ghosted me after at least 1 interview, which included a Director-level role in the arts. I received formal rejections from 5 of them after a round or two of interviews—which included every DesignOps or Design Program Manager job I interviewed for. The remaining 5 included 3 fellowships/mentorships (Bocoup, NEW INC, and a yet-to-be-announced third), 2 contracts (shoutout Karin Soukup (h/t Anjelica Triola) and Creative Capital (h/t Sheetal Prajapati)), and 1 full time (LeadVenture).
Where we’ll go
At LeadVenture, I’m going to learn all about M&As and complex partnerships across dealerships. As I think about this shift to automotive, I think about the legacy—the hard and the soft, the good and the bad—of cars in Detroit. Can I approach this work post-Fordist? Can I use this opportunity to imagine the future of mobility? Dare I get a membership at Newlab? These questions energize me. And where there’s energy, there’s movement and opportunity. It’s where I need to go right now.
This will also be an exercise in church-and-state-ing my life. My 7+ year career has been almost exclusively in the art and design industry. It informed my own practice as an artist, but it muddied the waters over time. Am I Daniel the artist? Daniel the fundraiser? Daniel the consultant? Daniel the event producer? If everything is art and design, is anything art and design?
Working at LeadVenture will allow me to see what it’s like to work in a new industry—and give breathing room to my creative practice across art, sculptures, films, and networks like PCAC, Imbolc, and Moods. I can 9-5 one thing (Daniel the day job), 5-9 the other (Daniel the artist). It might just fit right into my upcoming releases, my first institutional show closing soon, and Imbolc already planning for 2025. And who knows; the work I’ll do at LeadVenture is certainly adaptable to contexts across art, design, and startups should I return.
This Substack may lay fallow. It might become even more regular! The unknown is exciting. Maybe this becomes a diary—a Didion derivative that talks about my exes. Maybe it becomes a self-help Stack. Maybe I vanish. We’ll see.
Thank you to all 47 clients I’ve had the past four years. What a whirlwind. That includes, from earliest onward: UC Berkeley, Laundromat Project, People for the American Way, Rooftop Films, Sm;)e (DB Burkeman), Wide Awakes / For Freedoms, Euneika Roggers-Sipp, Chitra Ganesh, NewsMatch / INN, Art World Conference, Hank Willis Thomas, Kickstarter, Four Day Work Week, Mama Xanadu, Testudo, LANDBACK.Art, Tony Patrick, Amplifier, The Creative Independent, Public Parking, Collecteurs, Primary, Chautauqua Visual Arts, BAVC, Cinelogue, Kat Mustatea, Connor Sen Warnick, Common Field, Digital Counsel, School of Lived Experience, Adam A Schomer, Corine Vermeulen, 92NY, Brown University, Nancy Kim, NEW INC, America's Next Great Author, Anticapitalism 4 Artists, 3pts, CreativeStudy, Project for Empty Space, Sotheby's Institute-New York, CalArts, Nancy Nowacek / Just Crushing, Reform (Karin Soukup), Olu & Co, and KODA.
And thank you to everyone who has been cheering me along as I swim these waters. To those who have housed me, introduced me, supported me, bought work from me: I have real tears from your gratitude. Community is bedrock.
