Then and now... Tony Hardy

In the latest instalment of Bdaily’s Then and now series, Tony Hardy, founder and director at Blyth-based Canny Creative, reflects on his career, from his first role to the present day, highlighting the lessons he has learned from his personal and professional evolution.

You’re the founder and director at Canny Creative. What does your role entail? 

At one time, a better question might have been, what doesn’t my job entail! 

I used to find myself doing everything, but now, ten years in and with a team in place, my role has scaled right back and I’m more focused on the bigger picture.

I do still like to get stuck into the creative side of things from time to time, though. 

Did you always want to work in the creative and marketing industry? Or did you have other ambitions when you were growing up? 

When I was young, I wanted to be a professional wrestler.

But given I’m only five foot nine, those dreams got dashed early! 

I would probably credit my love of wrestling with the origins of Canny. 

One of the things I love about wrestling is the characterisation and how each wrestler has their own personal brand. 

Looking back, I guess it inspired something in me. 

The digital world was really coming to the fore in the 1990s. I remember going online to search for wrestling content, which then progressed to me starting to build my own webpages about wrestling. 

It was a very natural progression, but I realised I really enjoyed doing it, which is what eventually led me to study graphic design. 

What was your first job – and did you enjoy it? 

My first job was working at Morrisons just before I went to university, and I definitely didn’t enjoy it. 

I recall one particular shift where I was asked to move a stack of toilet rolls around the shop four times for four different managers. It was such a waste of time. 

I think that experience contributed to the whole idea of working for myself one day, where I could hold myself accountable and do something worthwhile with my time that actually makes an impact. 

Were there any mentors or individuals that helped shape your career? And are you still applying lessons you learned then to your workforce of today? 

Growing up, my dad was always self-employed and my grandparents had their own businesses too. 

No one around me had a typical job; there were always entrepreneurial influences in my life, so I suppose it was inevitable I would end up down that road. 

From a creative perspective, there hasn’t been one specific influence, although starting out, I did look to the likes of Alex Hormozi and Gary Vaynerchuk for inspiration. 

The biggest lesson I took away from both of them, and I’ve definitely tried to instil this into the Canny team, is to just keep doing stuff.

Do it, and more stuff will happen. 

What attracted you to the creative sector? 

I fell into it. 

While my early ventures into making web content about wrestling definitely sparked an interest in the creative sector, I never set out with a career in the marketing industry as my end goal.

A lot of my early clients weren’t marketers, they were small business owners who happened to do a bit of marketing. 

It wasn’t until I landed my first corporate client, and I was working for a marketing team, that I was able to really see the correlation between what I was designing and the marketing output.

It was a game-changing experience. 

How do you feel you’ve changed as a person over the years? Have career roles brought new dimensions to your personality? 

I’ve definitely changed in the ten years I’ve been running Canny. 

When you’re first starting out in business, you don’t necessarily know how to behave and you find yourself kind of scared to bring your ‘whole self’ to the party. 

You might know that what someone is saying or doing is silly, but you go along with it anyway just to be agreeable. 

I’ve learned there’s definitely more value in being honest, and that to ask why is so much more productive than being passive.

You’ve seen many changes to the employment world across your career – how do you see the workplace evolving in years to come? 

The biggest change I’ve seen has been around the range of creative technologies available.

At one time, if you weren’t fluent in Photoshop, you couldn’t call yourself a designer.

But there are now so many tools on the market. 

The evolution of artificial intelligence has been particularly disruptive in recent years, but I genuinely think if we integrate it properly into our workflows, the potential is massive. 

People are always going to be needed for creativity and authenticity; we’re not all about to lose our jobs to robots. 

Not yet, anyway.

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