by seanlow on July 27, 2010
Running any business will expose every emotion you have, test everything you believe, and, if you let it, teach you all that you need to keep moving forward. Yet, when we get overwhelmed by the issues we and our creative businesses face (you pick — money, employees, vendors, clients), too often our instinct is to “solve the problem” instead of looking for the underlying disease. And in that reaction we create processes of the moment that actually only reinforce having to react in the future. How many of you have had to talk to a client at 2:00 a.m., worry about whether you will be able to deliver on time, or, worse, have had to explain why your final art is not what your client asked for. You say to yourself, “I do not ever want to be in this position again” only to find yourself there again (and again).
It is only natural that, if you are in danger of being burned, you will do all you can to stay away from the flame. However, it is only when you give yourself permission to focus on the flame instead of avoiding getting burned that you will be able to effect real change. Solving the issues confronting you and your creative business means you have to redefine the question.
Act, do not react. Easy enough. What is hard is that acting is uncomfortable, risky and, if done poorly, arrogant and alienating. You cannot be proactive with your employees, vendors, or your clients if you are worried about what they think. Everyone’s a critic and if you put out there what your world looks like you will be judged. No matter how thick your skin, the sting of getting it dead wrong hurts. You have to be deeply convicted to have the strength and courage to do it again (and again). The fairy tale is that if you do “it” enough you will succeed in the end. Maybe, but probably not in the way you envisioned, and certainly not if you stubbornly stick to your guns. Zealous tunnel vision is as myopic as maintaining the status quo. Both do not allow for the possibility that the world is not as you see it. You have to live in the discomfort to discover whether it is the kernel of necessary change or your intuition telling you to go the other way.
At Engage! 10: Cayman Islands, Colin Cowie said that he calls all of his clients after their event to find out what he could have done better. Exposing yes, but given who he is and the level of event he orchestrates, not all that risky (or proactive). HOWEVER, Colin also calls those clients he did NOT get to find out why they chose not to work with him. Colin probably hears a lot of “you were too expensive”, “we liked so and so better”, but in the mix are those clients who respect him enough to tell him the truth as they see it. I can only imagine how that information has helped him evolve his business over the years.
Will some people think Colin is arrogant for making the call? Sure. Wasting his time? Of course. But proactive? Definitely. And for his vulnerability Colin has honest, real time information about his business that those who would not dare ask the question will never have.
by seanlow on July 21, 2010
There is a wonderful new e-magazine out called Fear.less. Started by Clay Hebert and Ishita Gupta (both really incredible in their own right), it explores, through a series of interviews (it is how I found uber-awesome Danielle Laporte), how we are to identify, confront and ultimately overcome that which we are most afraid of. It is amazing stuff and the blog, written by Matt Atkinson, is also very well done.
I cannot do justice to the insights Fear.less provides and leave it to you to discover them for yourself. However, my biggest take away, at least for creative businesses, is that fear drives conformity. You become desperate to find the box you can put yourself in so that you can be easily understood (designer, planner, photographer, stationer, florist, etc.). You use buzzwords that really mean nothing: “quality customer service”, “attention to detail”, “creative”. You offer the same “packages” as everyone else and your contracts make Ulysses look like People Magazine. It is all fear of having your creative business be iconic, to stand for something, to stand apart not just for the sake of being different, but because it is different. The irony is never lost on me that you get paid to create for a living. You do not make widgets. I am sure you would all shudder if someone told you that your art is such a good knock-off of so and so (read: copy, not reminiscent of). Yet, so many times I see that that is exactly what you are doing with your creative businesses and are not horrified at the thought that you are.
It reminds me of a time during my days as a lawyer (yes, back in the stone ages) when some overworked associate put “all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” (G rated version) into the boilerplate of some dense agreement. This was when word processing was just getting started and all documents worked from a previously created one. The line found its way into multiple places in 235 documents at 5 different firms before it was discovered. No one read the boilerplate, but it was there in every document because it had to be. Really? Or was it easier to just cut and paste? There is safety in the idea that there is A way it has to be done. Except it is not safe at all. Imagine the senior lawyer that had to explain why it was there to her client — a client who was paying hundreds of dollars an hour for the very same lawyer to actually read the documents she was going to sign.
If your art demands that you talk to your clients (as opposed to their planner, manager, agent, lawyer, etc.), then not making that a prerequisite regardless of who you might offend (clients included) is a sure way to jeapordize your art. If you present only one opinion while your competition shows many possibilities, what will it do to you to conform? We all have to make compromises, but never at the price of integrity.
What fear of authenticity does most of all though, is stop your evolution. What might have worked when you got started may not now. Your contracts, process, pricing structure, even the name of your business need to be relevant to who you are today and where you are headed. A clever name works for a start-up, almost never for an established creative business. If you fear the ramifications of having your creative business be truly authentic, all that should be open to question will not be. Conformity (even to a version of your former self) will make you stuck. And broke.
