Ep 8: 'Be Relentless' with Nick Fordham

The Creative Coach with Dan Brophy

Nick Fordham is a name that is mostly known inside the Australian media industry.

He is a talent manager for a number of Australia’s best known media and sporting personalities. Possibly his most celebrated client in recent months has been Lisa Wilkinson, who Nick has worked with for over a decade.

Nick Fordham is an ideas man. He belongs to a category of creative thinker that I like to call 'the strategist'. His super power seems to be in zooming out to see the bigger picture, observing how systems work and finding a way to connect disparate elements - usually for the purpose of satisfying a gap in the market.

2017 has seen many of Nick’s other projects blossom to fruition: Outback Wrangler - a 'Steve Irwin meets Bear Grills show for Nat Geo' is in its third season screened in over 130 countries; Nick’s re-invigoration of the Club Rugby has taken it from a forgotten subsidiary of Union to quite literally putting it in a league of its own;

He is co-owner of health food brand The Man Shake which is one of the biggest in its category and he has co-created a TV series called ‘The Mentor’ in which Mark Bouris of The Apprentice acts as a coach to small business owners.

And to top it off, he has just landed The Ellen Show as a client.

All of these ideas originating from his observations of opportunities within the market - and doing the creative problem solving to fill in the gaps - usually with a solution that is innovative and enticing.

I haven’t always thought of business as being creative, but in getting to know Nick I can see how much his process is like so many other creative disciplines I have observed: there are a set problems that are presented for the purpose of achieving a synergetic resolve, a number of movable parts organised around fixed parameters, and a set of rules to each game - some of which are observed purely for the purpose of bending them.

This episode is especially inspirational for those who would like to be be more innovative in business - and in particular in the business of being a creative. As talking with Nick will show, the two are not mutually exclusive, rather they are a necessary part of each other - the yin to the other’s yang.

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