The Business of Being Creative

A new selling/busy season will be upon most creative businesses sooner than we think.  So a few thoughts about how you might approach things when these clients hit your door.

Why does it matter where someone heard about you, your art or your creative business?  How will that shape a conversation?  Who do you perceive your potential clients to be when they show up at your door?  Of course, you have to really listen and be present to your clients, potential and actual, but with what ears?  The one that will be a chameleon ready to adapt to whoever is in front of you, regardless of the fit or the one with a story ready to share.  The one that says I see you through my eyes and we share a vision.

Bill Baker is a fantastic teacher of strategic storytelling; using the power of story to empathize, sympathize, listen.  His latest post talks about having a story at the ready for when the situation comes where you can use the story to relate in a deeper, more personal, ahem, human way than any typical dialogue of question and answer ever could.  Do you have your story ready?  Why would we care?

For creative business, can you tell the story about why you are obsessed with what you do.  Today’s world, for good or bad (though I believe for mostly good) is driven by obsessed people obsessing over other artist’s obsessions.  Being passionate is nice but irrelevant to the mission.  You are paid to stare into the proverbial creative abyss for a living and that means you have to be obsessed with the endeavor.  There are a ton of amazing sushi chefs but only one Jiro (still alive and cooking at 93 btw).

I am, of course, not saying that you need to be Jiro to be successful, what I am saying is that telling a client that you love what you do is not a story that matters.  The story is the moment that gives us all goosebumps, when we know you get lost in the effort.

I have heard chefs talk about butchering a pig with such enthusiasm that you would have thought they were talking about almost anything else.  Designers of any sort in it with the thrill of their creation.

With your story at the ready, are you willing to go first?  Are you willing to truly say to a client that you are not the regular kind [HT to Seth Godin]?  My exercise for you is, for the next 21 days, ignore who you think is in front of you and instead start with two ideas.  The first is that you are the smartest person in the room and the second is that your story is the only one that matters.

I can hear all of the harpies now.  The client comes first, you are there to serve them.  Lose the ego, you are there to make the sale after all.   You first is not how sales work, let alone business.  

To which I say, you see a world your clients cannot see and you have to own that for yourself, your art and your creative business if you are to go anywhere.  If clients could see what you see they would not need you or your creative business.  That makes you the smartest person in the room when it comes to why everyone is there.  However, being the smartest person in the room also means that it is YOUR job to communicate how things are going to go in a way that will serve everyone best.  And you better make it thrilling if anyone is going to sign on.

This is where your story comes in.  Your story has to be thrilling and to be thrilling/compelling/infectious, you have to be vulnerable, willing to reveal the compulsion you have to create as you do.  Your story needs to tell me how your art, your creative business brings you joy — the kind of deep fulfillment we all seek from our lives.  Of course, you may not get there (or even stay there very long if you do), but it is the proverbial brass ring you are ever reaching for.  I do not know of a visual designer (interior, event, graphic) that does not love the look on a client’s face when they see the work as intended for the very first time.  It never gets old to them no matter how long they have been practicing.  It begins with being vulnerable, going first, sharing why you care so deeply about your art and your creative business.

After all, if you are not obsessed, cannot express why and what you care so intensely about, why should anyone else?  And if you do choose to be vulnerable, to truly own your story and you get a “meh”, why exactly would you want this client?  Great work comes from caring as only you can.  Go first.

Most of you are heading into a slower time for the next six weeks or so.  I do hope many of you get the chance to rest and refresh.  I see taking the time to invest in yourself — whether a vacation, educational endeavor (conference, class, travel, etc.) or just time away — as incredibly meaningful.  The reason is not woo woo.  It is because the single biggest asset in your creative business is between your ears.  If you are not nourishing that asset, it is the same to me as leaving your laptop (or whatever device you work on) near an open window in a rainstorm.  It might keep working, but not for long.  Inspiration comes in the quiet moments when you allow the noise of the everyday to be still to the beauty around you that you simply do not notice in the noise.

When you do return to hard thinking about your creative business, my prayer is that you come not only with an open mind, but beginner’s mind.  Truly, to contemplate what your world might look like if you rewrote your script with fresh eyes.  To help you down the path, I thought it might be useful to have some comparisons you might not have contemplated and ask the question about why things are the way they are.  Perhaps you might choose to ignore the accepted way/standard/market and define a better version for yourself.

First, hourly rates.  Regardless of whether charging by the hour is a good practice or not for your creative business, charging an appropriate rate does define the story of you, your art and your creative business.  In ten years of doing the work I do, I have never seen an hourly rate exceed $300 but once.  Most are in the $200-250/hr. range.  Hmmmm.

If you can see the work you and your creative business does in the moment it does it as important as other significant moments in someone’s or some business’ life, then why the disparate rates?  An interior designer redoing a client’s home literally shapes the way that client will live their lives every single day.  A creative business focused on weddings is involved in one of the most important days in that client’s life.  A photographer tells the story we will all use to remember the moment.  A graphic designer can shape us with her work so that we perceive her client’s world as she most wants us to.  Certainly, the work is as important as a lawyer writing a contract, an accountant doing taxes, even a therapist, um, therapizing.  And yet the hourly rates are not even close.  If a senior partner at many law firm can charge more than a $1,000/hr., why not you?  Value is how YOU define it.  Saying that it is just not the market presumes a defined market when there is none.  What you are saying is that convention and perception are up to someone else so you can only get what you get.  That only has to be true if you let it be true.  So do not.

Percentages are made up numbers.  Interior designers often get 30-50% of a production budget to produce their designs, event planners and designers 10-20%, architect’s 10-18% the cost of construction, agents and managers 10-20%, real estate brokers 2-7%.  Why?  Mostly because some business owner did some quick calculations and figured out that the percentage range was what they needed to make a decent profit and made it a short hand for clients to easily understand.  And then the shorthand spread regardless of whether or not it was the right number for your creative business and so you stuck with it.  If your creative business happened to look like the business where relative percentages can work, you are good.  But what if you are an outlier?  What if you are an interior designer who loves working on intimate spaces and you are a minimalist?  If a space is 1,500sf, how exactly are you going to spend enough on production to generate a production percentage that will justify your time?  Your fees could easily be as much as the cost of your design.  Same is true, ironically, of a huge project.  Most often these huge projects take an enormous amount of time (years) and a gargantuan amount of work.  While the percentage looks great, what happens if the number is too low given the time involved?  Again, live in convention and you will fall to convention unless you are in fact conventional.

A final thought.  If you and your creative business are literally paid to imagine a world that does not yet exist, why wouldn’t your business get to live there too?  Yes, it is incredibly scary and vulnerable to say to anyone what you truly value and what you need to be paid for that value when you create it.  Then again, if you will not say it and live by it, why should anyone else?

There are only two ways to grow a business: get more clients and/or grow the ones you have. Starting an offshoot is not growing THE business, it is starting another one.  And the same rules of growth will apply to that one too.

Instead of talking about sales as if it is one size fits all, break it down according to your creative business’ needs: hunters acquire new clients, gatherers nurture them to earn their trust so that you can maximize their value to your creative business.  Two skill sets, both sales, and both incredibly valuable to your business.  And yet I see it over and over – sales is sales with very little in the way of integration, let alone separation of the two skill sets.  The result is a miss mosh of advice and structure so that acquisition salespeople (hunters) find themselves in the role of operational sales and vice-versa.  No wonder the client gets confused and things break down into a deep misunderstanding of not only the process but how the process is to go.

First, hunters.  These are the people who love working with someone to get them to a yes. They are awesome storytellers and get you excited about the possibility of what is to come.  Sometimes they are the owners of the creative business, but not always. The value of hunters is to source opportunity, structure it and put things in motion.  The best hunters have a deep appreciation and deep respect for what gatherers will do but are not limited by what has come before if there is an opportunity to move things forward within the confines of the core and overall mission of the creative business (always honoring the one thing that matters).

Gatherers (operational sales, liaisons, client managers, etc.) are the proverbial grease to the wheel.  The best gatherers understand that they earn trust every moment of every day by making promises on behalf of the creative business and keeping them.  Whether that means delivering a proposal by a certain date, providing an update on production or even just returning a call/email/text as promised, the value is the same — consistency as a communicator and guide.  Where were you, where are you and where are you going.  Always.  Again, sometimes this is the owner of the creative business, sometimes not.

We all have to agree that those who like to close deals are rarely those who enjoy the beauty of daily maintenance.  That is why they are hunters.  Likewise, those who see the glory of a flowing project rarely are overjoyed by simply getting a yes.

The biggest issue is that hunters are seen as profit centers while gatherers are a necessary investment your creative business has to make.  It just does not have to be that way and need not be that way today. Communication tools are ubiquitous and becoming more powerful every day. Slack is worth $20 Billion for a reason.  

Every. Single. Person in a creative business is responsible for profit. Profit might mean dollars, it might also mean a better decision.  It might mean both.  What it needs to be is structural.  As a hunter most likely earns more the more she brings in, so too the gatherer when she improves the experience (and reaps the rewards) from a known baseline.  Do the work of setting the metrics of success as equally valuable so that each will be rewarded for bringing your creative business to another level. Just because it is harder to measure the value of what an awesome gatherer brings to your creative business relative to an awesome hunter does not mean that you should not figure it out.

There is a big reason to solve the value discrepancy if you have one — transition.  The entire game for any creative business is won or lost in the transition from hunter to gatherer. All clients are worried they just fell down the rabbit hole when they leap with your art and your creative business. The panic that they will not receive the journey they most desire is ever present. If you can make the transition to those that will guide the journey as smooth as possible, with a sense of equality and trust, you will have earned the right to begin well.  Fiefdoms and misperceptions of value on both sides have a way of undermining that transition and introducing the poison that makes the work oh so much harder and ultimately self-limiting.

The difference between creative business and other businesses is that what you do does not exist before you do it not matter how many times you might have done something similar before. If you were selling a known product (even one wrapped in service — a hotel room, restaurant reservation), hunters likely do matter more in that they can convince the client to choose that business’ product over those of other similar businesses. Creative businesses, on the other hand, ask the hunter to convince clients to leap into the abyss with the idea that the gatherer will be there every moment of the journey to the light.

So have a look around and ask who is a hunter and who is a gatherer even it means looking in the mirror. Do they belong there? If not, fix it.  If they do, then get to work on the concentric circle that exists between them and appreciate the necessity and value of each.  I am confident your world will turn upside down (in the best way) once you do.

It is my money and you will do what I say.  Don’t you know who I am? You should be grateful to be working with me (client and artist). Thanks for sharing, I will do what I want anyway.  Trust me.

Add to the viciousness of ego the idea that change sucks and you have the recipe for a major train wreck if frank conversations are not had.  As always, the very definition is that is has not been done before for this client, even if you have done something similar for hundreds of clients before.  This is different from other businesses, luxury very much included.  While you can customize a lot of things, at the end of the day, luxury items are not themselves creative because they already exist.  If someone says to you, “I’ll take that one.”, you might be an awesome business but you are not a creative business. Creative business means it does not exist before I create it for you.

The process of creation is where ego needs to be in check for the simple reason there is a power imbalance.  You have the tools to transform your clients’ lives with your art, they have the power to let you do it (or not).  So if we all do not play nice in the sandbox, ego will take over and the delicate dance will careen to the painful, “I just want this to be over” zone.

To which I always hear, that is what my contract is for, or I just do not have those clients or we do what we have to do.  Yuck, yuck and more yuck.  No we have to have the frank conversation before you start, then while you are going and finally when you are about to be finished.  The frank conversation comes from you with an acknowledgement of everyone’s ego — you are the artist, they are the patron – and these are the guardrails.  Boil it down to five things that always have to be present for the project to go well.

Here is an example:

1. Mutual respect goes a long way — decisions will be timely (i.e., not longer than 48 hours) and in writing.
2. Money will flow as outlined (and requested by artist) and if it does not, full stop.
3. Doing things on your own (client or artist) where any sane person would know that not receiving input is wildly inappropriate is the recipe for disaster.
4. Do not assume — every eight year old knows the adage.
5. Promise to do the next thing right.

Notice what is not here are the details of the process that will unfold for the project to be successful — how you will move through the 8 stages of any creative endeavor; that is something else — the road map.  What I am talking about here is how we are all going to behave in the car/plane/train/covered wagon to make the trip worthwhile.  Checking everyone’s ego at the door never means only one side, it means everyone understanding that snapping trust is a nanosecond if it becomes my value is more than yours. Ego.

In today’s everything faster, cheaper, more efficient world, the value of laying out what decorum feels like gets lost.  And because it is all about getting done, diminishing the creative in creative business, we lose the humanity in the endeavor.  Humanity is lifting each other up so that each can discover the joy they cannot yet see.  Spend the time talking about your expectations of how you and your team will be treated and how you will treat your client and those in their orbit and you will see quickly that you will both get what you need.

Yes, the exercise will feel clunky and unnecessary.  Then again, when you complain how you are doing so much for you client and they just do not get it, remember this post.  It feels clunky and unnecessary because change sucks.  Learning new rhythms means having beginner’s mind and refusing to skip the step of moving past what you, your art and creative business need as people first, artists second, producers third.  All the mission statements, Why’s,processes, business and/or strategic plans mean nothing with out ethos, culture and what vulnerability you provide and demand. The idea of “this is who we are” is your responsibility.  Start there and make it as real as the device you are reading this on.  It will take ego out of the equation as best as possible. From there, great work will be inevitable.

One of my most favorite images to discuss is this one:

It shows the power, responsibility and earned trust to permit a client to simply put their head down and follow the leader. The implications of the profound journey, the work to make sure client and artist are joined in effort with the clear understanding of who is the guide and who the guided.

So when news came out this week about the overcrowding at the Mt. Everest summit, with the resulting deaths of at least 11 climbers, most of whom should never have been there in the first place, it sent me down another path — when your business model forces you to compromise, people are going to die.  in the case of mountain climbing, literally die, and in the context of your creative business figuratively, though losing your business and/or failing a project can certainly feel like a death.

The New York Times articlelays it out best, “Fly-by-night adventure companies are taking up untrained climbers who pose a risk to everyone on the mountain. And the Nepalese government, hungry for every climbing dollar it can get, has issued more permits than Everest can safely handle, some experienced mountaineers say.” People are dying largely on the Nepali side.

Clearly, the government of Nepal, climbing companies, Nepali sherpas and thrill seeking but woefully unprepared climbers are all driving the push to compromise the trust necessary to climb the highest mountain in the world.  With a very narrow window to summit and pressure to generate as much revenue as possible, standards fall to the dollar.  And people die.  It is the ultimate breach of trust.  Even the best sherpa in the world cannot save you if you are stuck in line to the top and run out of oxygen, sherpas who, by the way, have no ability to judge whether you are capable of behaving as you should at 29,000 feet up. In Tibet, however, permits are strictly regulated, prices far higher and standards absolutely enforced.  The result, many fewer climbers attempting to summit, from Tibet, but those that do are with proper credentials and understanding of the risks involved.  Shocker, but there are about 3 times less climbers from Tibet than Nepal and far fewer casualties.

Now, creative business.  If your model is to be a broker or capital asset business (i.e., a traditional hotel) but you would like to invest in the client and their growth (i.e., purposely leave the room empty), you simply cannot.  A business built to thrive on volume cannot sell scarcity.  Oh, and the trend is your friend (or arch enemy).  In the short run, you might get away with the dichotomy and get the premium scarcity would bring.  It will not last though as your creative business simply will not let it.  A fish has to swim regardless of how much it wants a sun tan.  Volume is a cruel mistress and will force you to compromise until peril arrives at your doorstep.  I have seen it hundreds of times, the proverbial wrong client is justified and the relationship sours and sours.  The price jeopardizes not only the wrong client’s project but also that of the right client.  Then it all breaks.

Life is a choice.  Clients can choose to ignore the risks of the volume player in front of them and consider all players the same (they are not).  Creative business owners can convince themselves that it will all work out even though they are built on baiting and switching in a time of perfect information.  The internet and all things digital has driven the idea that anyone can walk the path and minimized the diligence it takes to walk it with integrity.  Add to that bad business models and you have the recipe for the perfect storm.

It takes courage to leave the brass ring for those foolish enough to risk their lives unnecessarily.  Playing Russian Roulette is not a strategy even if you win. The point is to build the foundation that fulfills your outrageous promise with your outrageous demand.  The two have to go together.  Always.  And the only way they go together is if trust is sacrosanct, supported and the essence of the process you build as an artist and creative business owner to do to work you do to transform your clients world.

I have talked recently about the importance of debriefing, both internally and with your production partners in the aim of getting better.  However, what happens when things go FUBAR.  For some creative business owners, you can fix the issue — interior designers can replace the couch, graphic designers can update the site, reprint the invitation, etc. — others cannot — event professionals, caterers, performers.  Regardless of fixability, the issue remains:  there is a mess and it has to be cleaned up.  The question is how and by who.

My first thought is a statement: throwing money at the problem solves nothing.  Giving a client their money back is just a way of patting them on the head and telling them to go away.  A refund does nothing to repair the pain you have caused by breaching their trust.  Now, if the client has been a class A you-know-what AND the project bombed, a refund is adding lighter fluid to a bonfire.  Most often, refunding money is only the first step and often the placebo you, the creative business owner, convince yourself will make the problem go away.  I will not, there has to be more.

The more is empathy, sympathy and resolve to create another memory that will never replace the sour taste but, instead, will create its own sweetness.  First, empathy.  Start with the vulnerability that the client was looking for your art to transform them, to fill an emotional void.  Whatever the cause, your work did not accomplish its mission.  That is a reason for sadness and a moment for you to stop and say, “Wow, that sucks.”  There will be time enough for the blame game, however in the first moment of empathy and sympathy you can convey your deep desire as an artist to make things as right as they can be.  You can then express your commitment to their memory, a desire to make things as they ought to be with the specific knowledge that nothing will remove the memory of what went wrong.

Which then brings me to investment.  I hear all the time about sales and marketing and I talk about the value of process and the meaning of journey endlessly. However, what about investing in your humanity and that of your art and your creative business.  I teach my kids (and myself) as much as I can that it is not the falling down or getting mad, it is the coming back that matters.  Integrity is standing tall when it is hard, acknowledging that you did not do what you promised and working to make it right. Of course, some will just want you to go away and that is their right.  What is not their right is to say the value of what you did is zero because you hurt me.  Uh uh.  If you did your work with intention, purpose and in good faith, you and your creative business deserve to be paid.  All bets are off if you tried to rip someone off and got caught.  However 99.9% of creative business owners I know are honest, hard working people trying to bring joy to their world with the art of their creative business.  And for those creative businesses that would seek to blame another for the failings of a project without any responsibility of their own role in the shortcoming, you deserve the lonely world you will undoubtedly find yourself in. This post is for those who know we rise and fall together. Always.

There is no guarantee that things will work as intended.  We have taken so much slack out of our systems that we expect perfection.  The stability of our computers, cars and infrastructure has brought all of us to a state of deep disappointment when things do not work.  I was on a flight recently where WiFi was down (but the in-seat system was working) and people were asking for their money back or some other source of recompense.  I admit I was frustrated too but had to stop and think about the absurdity of it all.  Now, when we are talking about art, the manifestation of the unknown and that does not work out alongside the expectation of perfection, you have a powder keg waiting to happen if you persist in the notion of perfection.  Please go the other way.  Value truly is in the journey and if you have worked as you should then diminishing that value by offering only money back is not only soul-crushing, it is also sending completely the wrong message. Instead, invest in another memory.

For instance, if you are a caterer and one of your events did not come off as planned, might you consider an intimate series of dinners?  If you are DJ and the gig was a bomb, will you offer to have an at-home/at-office dance party?  Photographers with an unhappy client can always promise to recreate a series of intimate moments.  The list goes on and on.  You might be thinking why offer anything when you have failed?  Again, empathy, sympathy and a desire to create a memory both you and your client can savor.  It feels strange because we have all been taught to run and hide when it comes to mistakes.  Some clients might never get past their rage.  So be it.  Do not build your business to protect yourself from these people — the ones who will never be satisfied until you suffer pain greater than what you may (or may not) have caused.  Instead, find those who can see your vulnerability and while they may never fully forgive your breach of trust, will be able to move past it to give another chance to do work you can both be proud of.  Invest in that effort — time, dollars and energy.  It is uncomfortable and awkward because it is supposed to be.  It is also the way forward, today more than ever.

For so many creative businesses, particularly those with significant seasonality, there is an effort to get to the next and the next without really stopping to debrief, discuss and regroup.  To be analogous to athletics, to study the film and learn from what just happened.

Check out this video from The Blue Angels.  Yes, it is dated, but look at what they do.  Grateful to be here.  Grateful to be alive.  Grateful to be part of the team.  Grateful to have the freedom to speak my mind without repercussion.  Then, with all military formality they rip each other (and themselves) to shreds.  Hey, if you are flying at 500 mph 36 inches (18 inches today) apart, you better make sure you are all on the same page.

So what are you doing to have a look at what you were able to accomplish with your latest project. With a nod to David Stark, and what he spoke of on his Wedding Biz Podcast, looking at the project just to see what could be done better is not nearly enough.  No, the work is to discuss what was accomplished (or not) within the context of your values as a creative business sure, but artist first and foremost. What is it that you stand for and how did you carry out the integrity of your vision.

There are three layers of debrief to contemplate: internal, partners and client.

Internal — that is The Blue Angels — how did your team do?  Were you true to your process?  Did everybody appreciate the value of each step and feel confident that the journey was yours to contemplate and execute?  If there was a breakdown, how did you get back on track?  What could you do to better convey what is most important to your creative business in an unexpected and supportive way?  Yes, find your way to being better starting with the idea that you are already the best in the world.

Partners — It takes a village to complete a creative endeavor.  You are going to have to rely on others to find success.  The question is how are you going to approach those you serve or are served by as to how you will each be better?  My suggestion: switch roles.  There is no point in telling a partner how to do their job better as that is like a Blue Angels pilot telling another pilot how to fly the plane.  Unnecessary.  Instead, what would it be like if you were the upholsterer and they the designer? You the florist, they the planner?  What would you have done differently given the experience you both just went through. If there are multiple players (as I am sure there are), sit around a table and randomly switch roles.  The point is that you can learn so much if you are in another’s shoes and trying to solve their problems from the inside versus from the peanut gallery.  Yes, partners want to keep relationships and most will go a long long way to maintain the relationship.  True growth, however, comes from challenging each other to solve different problems. Your partners are your fresh eyes.  Go there after every project and you will learn to see your world differently.

Clients — This is a tricky one.  Asking clients what they think about their experience with you is a snake pit.  The ones who were not thrilled will vent and the ones who are will serve platitudes.  Neither will get you anywhere.  Instead, interview those who have enjoyed your work with a client.  Guests at a wedding, those who have seen your vision who are not your client.  Of course, you run the risk that these people are not, in fact, your client and do not value what is most important to you as an artist and creative business owner.  Most often though, these people can grasp why it is that you were hired by their friends/family member.  From a place of appreciation about why you were hired, they can talk about what you did to fulfill your promise.  How were THEY touched by what you did (or did not do)?  What do they understand about what matters to you and why you are able to serve their friend/family member?  What was missing?  Take them to dinner, buy them coffee, be engaged with them in a casual way to receive their honest feedback.  From here you can learn what is the message you are really sending about your art and how to communicate your message that much better.

Take the time to consider what matters after EVERY project.  Your promise always is to be better tomorrow than you are today and to do just that you cannot ignore what yesterday has to teach you.

We all have those moments.  Whether it is a personal interaction, or you watch, read or see something.  The thing just stops you and makes you have a look at yourself and ask what it is that you can do to be better.  Maybe it means you need to stop being a jerk, but mostly it means that you become instantly aware of what has been lying underneath all along.  Of course, there are many moments like this (and I have been warming up with my fair share of Brene Brown), but in THIS moment I come to where I actually am today and know powerfully where I might go.

That moment for me was from a Facebook post that Alok Appadurai wrote yesterday.  My wife, Cate, sent it to me because she knew I needed to see it (yes, she is way ahead of me, miles in fact – no shock there).  I will repost it below because summarizing it will not do it justice.  However, I did want to point out a few things in the context of my work and that of creative business in general before you scroll down.

The first point is that fear does not only mean there is a gun pointed at your head or some similar threat.  In fact, physical threats are not the deepest fear we all face for the simple reason it will be over one way or another.  No, the deepest fear is being seen, or worse, ignored for the essence of who we are even if the very reason the relationship exists is BECAUSE of this essence.  This fear is pervasive and all too often neverending. I would never ever take this out of the context of gender given where we are today.  Men appreciating what it takes for a woman to show up today and listen to her fully is the challenge of our times.  All men can do better no matter who we are.

The reason Alok’s post first hit me is because I, as a man with many women clients, have to appreciate who is in front of me no matter her external success.  Intimidation and bias is baked in and I have to be sensitive to where it is in me and her.  Yet, I also need to work through it with her so that I can be effective in helping her make change.  After all, this is the reason we are together — to develop a stronger foundation for her art and her creative business.  To make a better foundation, we have to challenge what exists, sometimes (ok, often) break it down before we can rebuild it more strongly in her image.  We have to move through “I am doing it wrong” to the place where she can definitively say her voice is stronger, her vision palpable and uncompromising.

However, Alok’s post struck me further and much more to my core as to why I do what I do. In the context of creative business there is an overlay of the power of the feminine as we might all contemplate in a spiritual/metaphysical context.  Choose how you might come to it, but the power of the feminine is in the universal sense of creation and wisdom to know what is without logic.  

While this masculine/feminine can exist between men and women it is far beyond gender and ultimately is about the wisdom of universal creation — faith that your ability to transcend the knowable with your art. The fight today is to compel the intrinsic value that lies within universal creation so that it might become manifest.  Today though, more than ever, we swim in the sea of creation with those who do not appreciate either the depth of the water or its ability to transcend.  These are intimidating people and is a powerful basis for fear and a reason to hide in the “easy to understand”. 

Perhaps it is too difficult and too vulnerable for any of us to live in the sea today, yet we all must try to have the courage to acknowledge our fear in the face of the masculine who would seek to define the undefinable. Again, not gender specific.  We must come to honor the feminine that lives in all artists, work diligently to disrespect those who seek to marginalize the feminine out of their own fear or even rage at what is not theirs to understand, artists very much included. 

How we go about this, ironically, is to honor the humanity in the relationship — the power within each of us to touch another with our gifts.  To transcend the known. No doubt, some may not get there and that will just have to be.  For the rest of us, be present to the relationship in front of you, frailty and strength all at once and hold the center for where it might bring us all.  Hopefully, to a new awareness of what makes us proud to be in our skin, no matter the skin.

Thank you so very much for your words Alok Appadurai and without further adieu, here they are:

Have you ever taken something for granted that took someone else a ton of courage to do?

Yesterday, that was me and I want to share the incredible healing it led to.

As you know, I have been interviewing parent entrepreneurs about their challenges getting 5-figure clients. Well, during one of them with a mother of 3 yesterday, something amazing happened.

At the beginning of the call, I noticed that she was quite strong in her positions but as the call went on she softened.

She began to share that fear was actually the root of what was holding her back in her business.

What she revealed though is that being vulnerable in front of a man she didn’t even know was incredibly hard for her. That even getting on the call which she volunteered for was challenging because of past pain.

I was stopped in my tracks.

I do so many of these interviews and my lens is on “parent entrepreneur” not “man or woman” that I had lost sight of how courageous it may be to talk with me about what she hasn’t done well in her business because I am a man.

It may risk being “mansplained…”

It may risk being judged by a man.

Our entire call shifted to an a touching exploration of life beyond gender divisions, how I hired a woman coach myself who only works with women, my mother’s legacy, and how much I respected her ability to break through her own hesitations in order to create a new way forward where men and women can share ideas and uplift each other.

I haven’t stopped thinking about that interview.

Yes I got many valuable insights that can help me shape my group program to help parents like her get 5-figure clients. But the real learning went soul deep.

Some may call it naive but I see a world beyond gender where I hope to be viewed as human first. I try and see what unites us more than what separates us.

This isn’t intended to silence or question the realities and hardships that so many face because of gender.

It is simply my desire to not see “man entrepreneur” or “woman entrepreneur”

Just “entrepreneur working hard to provide for their loved ones.”

This mother and I moved mountains I felt on that call.

These are the subtle behind-the-scenes healing moments that bring humanity closer together.

We laughed, we darn near cried, we explored her next steps to touch more lives in her business and allow herself to be seen.

We shared our own challenges and successes.

And at least for me, we experienced connection that can create hope for a better future for all.

It takes tremendous courage to break through stories that have no shortage of evidence in order to allow a new story to be written.

After the call, I closed my notebook and just took in the courageous act I had just witnessed.

#grateful#blessed