Today we’d like to introduce you to Lacey Robinson.
Lacey, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
I’m a Southern girl from a liberal city: Austin, Texas. After pursuing advertising, specifically art direction, at the University of Texas at Austin as a way to commercially apply an artistic passion, I got lucky and joined the ground floor of a two person cyber security tech start-up. Eventually, that tech start-up, Jumpshot, succeeded in a way that you hope all tech starts up do and we were bought out by the third largest antivirus company in the world, Avast! Meanwhile, as someone who has always been active, I searched for an outlet that fencing had previously fulfilled in college. I found it in stunts after watching a documentary Double Dare on Netflix, a 2004 documentary film about stuntwomen, specifically Jeannie Epper and Zoë Bell.
At Jumpshot, which became GrimeFighter and while dabbling in other roles at Avast, I wore many hats. I was an online community manager (social media, PR), content manager, graphic designer, UI designer, A/B tester, email campaign manager and bear suit wearer. It was an amazing experience, I got to travel (another passion of mine) to Prague were Avast is headquartered and meet many unique and amazing people. Eventually, however, with a building of film credits I found that the stunt profession began to monopolize my interest. I decided to leave Avast to pursue stunts full time while continuing my marketing career as a freelance graphic designer.
I moved to Atlanta, Sept 1st of 2015, cold turkey, with no connections and my only local friend the owner of the AirBnB house I stayed at when I visited Atlanta for the first time. Since then I’ve come to make Atlanta my home and continue to expand my horizons both in my career by branching out in the marketing community and by enjoying Atlanta for the wealth of cultural and social experiences it has to offer.
Has it been a smooth road?
Ha! Love the journey and not the destination, isn’t that what they say? I’ve had to embrace this mantra as I travel my “road”. That is to say, I’ve had a very blessed life and continue to have many opportunities that I am very grateful for, but anyone who chooses the creative paths I have rides something of a life rollercoaster. My struggles mostly have been and continue to be the persistence in knowing my value and learning to make rejection your best friend. I have never been the brightest mind in a room or the most impressive athlete in a competition, so putting out my best because of the love of what I’m doing and accepting the outcome, just as likely failure as success, honestly is a struggle that forces me to reassess and reassure myself on a consistent basis. Just a few tangible examples of this are not being hired by popular (or any) ad agencies upon graduation, being dropped by both established and new freelance clients, doubt by others after revealing my plans to be a stuntwoman and of course the very competitive nature of the entertainment business.
What’s your outlook for the industry over the next 5-10 years?
To be honest, I feel like in this particular moment in time nothing is really certain. I’m a little removed from more subtle industry trends as a freelancer, but I think a lot of things are still in flux. For example, we constantly have great and progressive technology opening up opportunities and in a lot of ways automating processes thus removing the human element. Who knows what will be invented in the next 5-10 years! That being said, I think our industry has learned the best quality product is the result of a mix of technology and creative minds, so there is the continued goal to find the right balance.
Also, I think social media has been a catalyst in forcing companies to diverge from being neutral third parties and vocalizing the values they represent in a highly opinionated society. Social media is so heavily relied upon for brand messaging and you can’t just flash your name on someone’s screen ten times to be noticed these days. Consumers are choosing how to spend their money based on their beliefs. In the near future, I think a trend we will see manifest is more and more companies directly and indirectly spending marketing money on representing their core audience’s values.
As far as stunts are concerned, hopefully, Marvel will continue to keep us busy with action movies.
What would you say has been the biggest challenge for you over the course of your career?
Well, I somewhat unintentionally answered this previously, but I can expand on the issue of knowing my value. Ironically I think one of the things I have the most trouble with is marketing myself. It goes a step further than individually understanding your own worth and capabilities to having to convince others of this with confidence and assurance. It’s that last part that sometimes gets me. Can I do almost everything asked of me? Absolutely. Do I exude that same certainty in the moment when it is asked of me… Hmmm, not always. I think what I’ve done to try to combat this challenge is surround myself with people who excel with this. There’s that saying that you are a representation of the three people you are closest to. Well, I do absolutely believe that if you surround yourself with people that are proficient in the characteristics you aspire to have, you learn by example.
Let’s change gears – is there any advice you’d like to give?
Be prepared. Have a portfolio, even if it’s just a quick DYI website with a couple pieces of your best work.
Don’t settle for the first offer. Shop around, in Atlanta, there is so much opportunity! You’d be surprised how much being responsive, punctual and reliable matters. This will set you apart from others, there is so much opportunity!
You’d be surprised how much being responsive, punctual and reliable matters. This will set you apart from others.
Learn how to make people feel comfortable around you. Smile, ask light, but personal questions (be observant, if you see a college sticker on a laptop that’s a conversation starter). Read body language. Know some good jokes. Making someone laugh is the best impression you can leave.
Learn video editing, lol. Kinda of kidding. That’s one of the marketing tasks I have no experience in (other than iMovie) and always get requests for.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://laceyrobinson.carbonmade.com/
- Instagram: @laceykayr
