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Synchronicity

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After spending time last week in Tampa presenting to the attendees of ABC’s Annual Conferenceand in New York City talking to interior designers for The Business of Home(both fantastic experiences), I was traveling back to Northern California on the early flight and thought I would get a few hours of sleep before getting home. In a huge nod to Cindy Novotny, you never know when life is going to smile on you on a plane.

Before closing my eyes, I see my awesome friend Michael Benevillewalking down the aisle. A few favors later and we are sitting next to each other. I figured we would catch up for an hour or so then both check out for a little bit. When the captain announced we were getting ready to land, I was like, “but we are just getting started”.  We had literally talked for five hours straight and it felt like five minutes.

Here is the deal: the best way to describe Michael is that he is a futurist. He imagines the world as it might be and shares that vision with his clients. He is the force behind IHeart Radio’s corporate offices in New York City, the Empire State Building’s new observatoryand the coming Area 15 in Las Vegas. Oh, and he does incredible personal bespoke projects for private clients that are mind-blowing in their combination of media and state-of-the-art technology —think juke-box as a 50th birthday present in a way you would not think possible — holograms, video mapping, etc.

Michael is very deep into the possibilities of virtual reality, blockchain (still trying to wrap my head around it) and bridging the gap between our world and the digisphere.  He is working with companies like High Fidelityto figure out how to create a real, real time experience for everyone globally and virtually. Crazy.

Here is an example. Take Jeff Antoniuk’s Jazzwireand its function to bring together a community of avid adult amateur and semi-pro jazz musicians to learn and get better together. Even though it is only two weeks old there are members from literally thirty countries —everywhere from the U.S. and Canada to Hong Kong and Singapore to Europe and Australia and New Zealand. All musicians evaluated by Jeff and placed into communities at their playing level. Imagine for a second if Jazzwire was a members only club in High Fidelity (to play, not listen — anyone could do that) where, if you wanted to grab a set, you just walked in, entered a room at your level and started playing with others who were there — all in real time, with no lag and with avatars that looked exactly as you did in reality.

You might think this is a distant fantasy but it is not.  More like next year than 2025.

So what does this mean for you, your art and your creative business? The size and scale of human interaction is going to shift immeasurably. The convergence of digital life and reality is only going become exponentially more integrated.  Pokemon Gotimes a thousand. Knowing your role as a creative in this space is singularly expansive and narrow.  You might be the proprietor of Jazzwire and also simultaneously host workshops, camps and meetups. Value in the digital world will transfer to the physical and vice-versa.

Think about what that might mean for deeply personal events like weddings and how that will play out. Will the wedding occur digitally and then be experienced physically a week later? How will we tell the difference?  Will we want to? This decision is something those in the event business ought to be thinking about today.

Given the state of our world, how important is it for temporary shelter to offer VR so that those families displaced can still eat dinner at their table in their home as they always have until their actual table can once again exist. If you are an interior designer, what is your role now?

Now you can see why five hours felt like five minutes with Michael. Hopefully, you can also see the work ahead for all of us as we seek to (re)shape what community means from a creative perspective. No doubt tomorrow will look nothing like today and it is high time that we kiss yesterday goodbye.  Truly, it is a brave new world.

The Distance Yet To Go

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We only have $25,000 for our project, will that work?  So sorry, no, to do what you are asking would be at least ten times that. Oh ok, let’s do it.  In the end, they spent $850,000.  High fives and smiles all around.

When anyone asks me what is wrong with creative business today, this is it. There is an unknowing, trusting client on one side and a hungry creative on the other.  Trust is manipulated, preyed upon so that the desire for the emotional return overwhelms the benchmarks set to get the process going. Here is the thing —a $250,000 project is NOT an $850,000 project and to convince anyone that they can get what THEY want for $250,000 when what they want is $850,000 is criminal.  Maybe not in the legal sense, but in the business sense. And no it is does not matter how awesome it all turned out.  The relationship was built on a lie and deception.

If only this isolated to one creative industry or a few bad apples in each industry, then we would be able to say so sorry for the bad actors.  Nope.  Literally, I see it celebrated just about everywhere I go.  The client did not really know what they wanted so I gave them what they wanted and they went for it. The reality though is that you promised them one thing but sold them another.

The counter is that the client does not know what they want and if you told them the real number they would go to someone else and you would never get to convince them of the value of you, your art and your creative business.  Better to get them in the door and then work on the budget.

So you lie because you know someone else will if you do not.  Oh how far we have to go.

Owning your own power, the integrity of what you do and what matters to you is priority number one. The manifestation is to know what you are selling and to stand firm in that light.  Anybody that will trust you with their profound hope for transformation, the deep desire to express themselves as the best they imagine themselves to be, deserves to know what that will cost — within a 10-15% range of the number you quote.

Here is where the rubber hits the road.  If you say $250,000, you cannot show anything that would make the total production cost more than $287,500.  If this underwhelms your client, then that is your own fault.  You get paid to know what your client does not and you do not get to be manipulative with that power imbalance.

We can, as creatives in our respective industries, demand better of ourselves.  We can shun those who would be unwilling to own their space and see the opportunity in candid conversations upfront with our clients. And when a creative business owner celebrates his bait and switch, we can call him on it instead of applauding it.

It is time to stop apologizing for who we are and what we do.  Pride of authorship is owning the cost of authorship.  The tools available to artists and clients alike warrant the conversation. Integrity will demand it.  The future awaits if only we shun those who refuse to move forward.  Hold trust as sacrosanct and the rest will take care of itself.

The Stories We Tell

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In many areas of our lives, we make decisions based on emotion, tribalism, community and intuition, anything other than logic. Often, we make illogical, irrational, counterintuitive decisions because we are, well, human.

63% of North Dakotans voted for Donald Trump. North Dakota is solidly Republican. Yet, because of his trade policy (war?) with China, North Dakota’s soybean farmers have been decimated (one of North Dakota’s principal sources of revenue). Some may lose their businesses because of the President’s decision. In the next presidential election, will these North Dakotans vote Republican? A pretty sure bet.

Is your iPhone the most advanced out there? Arguably not. Yet, you will buy it anyway because you believe in Apple.

Switch to creative business and somehow the emotion switch gets inverted. We talk about budgets, affording, costs with clients all the time, as if that is how decisions get made.  We talk about value in an absolute sense: “buy this because it is better. Here let me prove it to you.” Then we are shocked, shocked, when the client says, “how come we can’t have this one? It looks close enough and is half the price?” Then you proceed to try to defend it logically as if the client cares — you talk about quality of construction, service, etc. of the production partner.   What you do not do is simply say that this is the right one for the project, the one you care most about, the one that works.

In no way am I suggesting that you sell anything other than what you completely believe in.  The emperor’s new clothes belongs to snake-oil salesmen and the like. What I am suggesting is that relationship, trust and conviction matter as much, if not more than logic when it comes to the business of creativity.

So then how will you spend your time? Will you be working to create rational solutions to irrational problems or will you be focusing on reshaping how you define value? Will you appreciate that words matter, characterizations matter even more.

Stop and think about it. Every dollar your client spends on your projects is discretionary. Talking about what they can afford is an insult. They have the funds, it is just whether they choose to spend them on you, your art and your creative business or not. Same thing with budget and cost.  Simply because a return cannot be measured rationally does not mean it does not exist.  Emotional return is a real as financial. And yet no designer I know of works in that vernacular.

Other consultants loathe talking about investment and focus on price and cost as determinative of value. Stone age tools in a digital economy.  Good luck with that.

The buzzword of the day for all creative businesses is being properly paid for their work, to unlock and receive adequate, sustainable payment for the effort undertaken. Hmm, perhaps redefining how to calculate and discuss value would be the place to start. Instead, we see an effort to standardize, marginalize, normalize. This is the last bastion of an age gone by.  Zombies are zombies for a reason.

Instead, ask your clients to appreciate that true value is a feeling, a desire to be transformed a deep investment in the transformation. The goal is to make trust real, to embrace the future as illogical and manifestly hopeful, even spiritual.  The clarity of story is not its logic, its perfection, its defensibility, it is the ability to move the recipient, to compel investment in its power. Do you know how to sweep your clients up into the ephemeral, electric that is your journey? To demonstrably prove that emotional return is far greater than rational?  Or will you stand tall convinced that if you define why you do what do, facts will win out?

Today, faith and courage of conviction is the foundation for success. Start there.

Scope Creep

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When I was a teenager, I used to visit my grandparents in Florida for Spring Break. We would go out to dinner frequently and my grandmother would bring an extra large bag.  She would put rolls, crackers, breadsticks in the bag every time. Each restaurant would see it and then just refill the basket without a comment. Then one year, there were no more bread baskets. Too many grandmas with too many extra large bags.  You could have your bread, but you had to ask and then you only got one at a time.  My grandmother got the hint and still brought a bag, just not as big.

The idea of going the extra mile, overdelivering, the customer is always right, is deeply engrained in our culture. When the extra anything is as undefined as it often is in creative business, it inevitably leads to going further than is sustainable. So hate the game, do not hate the player.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with a client asking for more than they contracted for and even being persuasive about it.  In fact, that is their job — to get the most they can from you, your art and your creative business. What is wrong is a creative business owner’s willingness to either accede to the request and/or be resentful for doing it if it means going further than is sustainable.  As with all things, the line is for you to set, communicate clearly and often and then live to religiously. And if you find yourself going further than you are comfortable, stop.  Just because you went too far does not mean you have to live there.

To use a very graphic (and hopefully indelible) example, if your dog pees on your rug and you do not say anything, it does not mean you have to live with the dog continuously doing it. What it does mean is that you have to decide to say no and then do the work of correcting the behavior.  No, clients are not dogs, but they sure can act like them.

Absolutely nowhere is this more apparent than when it comes to payment.  If your creative business is due money and you either are late to bill it and/or slack to collect it, you must realize that you are destroying your credibility. Regardless of whether the payment is connected to delivery of true value or not (and it definitely should be), failure to collect payments when due is a reflection of immaturity and disrespect of your creative business.  Leave the money lending business to lenders, you are due what you are due when you are due it, end of story.  If not paid, stop working. Yes, stop working. Whether the wedding is in two weeks, install a week, or final delivery scheduled for tomorrow, not your problem. Make any excuse you want to argue with me and it will not play. Here is why: the air you breathe in your creative business is not free. If you perform for a client, they have to pay for the air. Nobody put a gun to their head to hire you and since it was their choice, it is also their choice to honor their obligations as much as you must perform for them. That is mutual respect.

I can hear the chorus of “that is so harsh”, “just not the way it works in the real world”, “what is the big deal?” See above – a client not paying is peeing on your rug and you are saying it is ok each and every day that goes by. Moreover, every day that goes by value and process get destroyed without payment. This means that every day that goes by without payment is a day that you give more and more of your power to your client, right up until the time when they force you to choose between your ego as an artist and your future as a business. Finish the work because you need to see it through or stop because you have not been paid to go on.  Me? I am on the beach without another thought.

It all comes back to the idea of integrity, communication and respect. Overdelivering still requires a boundary. Great service is giving what is nourishing for all involved — you and your creative business and your client.  That is creative business’ axiom — win-win is the only structure that matters. However, what winning looks like is entirely up to you. Do the work and be forthright in how far you are willing to go and why.

Who Would Buy Your Creative Business And Why?

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Most creative business owners do not ever consider who might buy their businesses. Most consider themselves and their artistry (or artistic vision) the very lifeblood of the business.  Without them, there would be nothing is how that thinking goes.

On the one hand, I very much understand the sentiment.  Your creative business is the very definition of your voice as an artist and without your voice there really is not a business. However, there is larger point at work here. If you cannot contemplate your creative business beyond yourself, are you effectively copping out of the work that lies underneath you art, beyond brand to cultural ethos that you wish to inhabit for yourself, your art and very much for your creative business. Do you want to mean something beyond your craft?

Not all creative businesses are self-limiting and many, many contemplate selling themselves all day long. Fashion designers are a prime example. They put their vision of the world out there and become available to other creative businesses that wish to acquire the vision as their own.

I will leave classic exit strategy valuation, wanting to cash out, and other considerations aside for now. This post is to focus on legacy and vision; the very idea that art transcends its medium.

Are you willing to really ask yourself why another business (or artist) would ever want to own yours? Can you see how your artistic vision would be accretive to another’s?  Here is a specific task for you to consider:

Make a list of what you believe your clients pay for. Make a list of what you hope they would pay for but either do not currently or not enough. Compare the lists.  For the hope list outliers, why are you not getting paid for the item and why does it matter that you do?

With the list of what matters, now who exactly does it matter to apart from your clients? What could you do to make what matters (and is currently undervalued) primary to your mission?

My guess is that when you do this exercise you will move past any one thing you currently do (i.e., we are great at logistics, project management, item selection, etc.) and into the realm of acquirable value (i.e., we speak to the client who understands color, values history, etc.).  Acquirable value because there is, almost without question, another business that needs the ethos you possess. Quite literally, they wish to be painted with your brush.

Of course, you will likely never sell your creative business and might say this exercise is pointless. To which, I would say fine, do what you do with intention and let the future unfold as it will. Then again, perspective and understanding that the world is always larger than you perceive is the very font of opportunity.  As you would never consider your current technique or process the end of discovery for your art, why would you foreclose the same when it comes to the ethos of your creative business.

Move beyond branding, beyond story, all to find meaning.  In meaning there is legacy, opportunity and flexibility to become what you have never imagined. Give yourself the permission to go there. Who would buy your creative business and why?

Metrics Of Success

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You order a pizza from the local place for dinner as you have many times before.  You have never talked about how long it should take but it usually takes 25 minutes. Today, the delivery takes 35 minutes.  You call to complain.  The restaurant says they try to make it within 30 minutes but are happy if it gets there +/- 5 minutes from there.

Who determines success in this situation? You, the customer, who values 25 minutes or the restaurant who targets no more than 35? Who is responsible for setting what makes success and what does not?

For businesses apart from creative businesses, usually the answer is a logical one based on industry standard. Perhaps it is industry standard for pizza to be delivered in 30 minutes based on prep time and delivery requirements.  Expectations can be defined because they make sense.

Creative businesses are different.  Metrics of success are iconic to the creative business (and the creative process of the business). Therefore, the determination of what those metrics are and the responsibility of communicating them to clients, employees, and colleagues alike rests solely with you, the creative business owner. The reason is simple — to do your best you have to do it your way and that only happens if you set what success looks like. There is nothing rational about it.

Easy enough. However, implementing these metrics is much harder than it looks.  We all want to be conciliatory and owning our peculiar preferences can appear overly self-indulgent. So we allow there to be wiggle room from clients, employees and colleagues alike in the name of being collaborative and/or supportive.  Nowhere do you feel like you are compromising what matters until it becomes plain that you have done just that.

The reason compromise is painful is that if you allow others to determine what success looks like, they, not you, are defining your business. How exactly can you build anything if you are not in charge of determining the value of not only what you built, but how you built it?

Remember, nobody needs what your creative business does. Nobody. You exist to create joy and that is far beyond pretty.  Beyond pretty because it requires you own that you see what others cannot despite their deep desire to possess the very thing you imagine for them.  So you must use trust to nurture faith in the unknown and the journey into the mystery, not from it.  Trust is only built when you resolve tension, solve a problem as you intend to solve it.  If you permit others to pose the problem to which you must then solve, you absolutely lose control of the narrative. A narrative lost is the essence of fear — distrust in your ability to actually do what you say.

Own the fear in you and around you. See you clients as terrified, because they are.  Stop telling them not to be scared and instead set about managing that fear with your metrics of success.  Assuaging fear is for amateurs, managing it to scale your creative is the work of professionals.  Do the same with your employees and colleagues alike.  You will come to appreciate that defining your best with metrics of success you alone have determined will be self-fulfilling, and, more importantly, self-sustaining.  From here you will sow the seeds of opportunity that will take you, your art and your creative business wherever you would like them to go.

How Do We Decide How To Shape Tomorrow?

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Polarized. Divided. Angry. Distrustful. Depressed. Motivated. Sad. Scared.

These are just a few words to describe how most of us in the United States feel these days.  And no matter which side you fall on, these words certainly apply.  In the mix is that somehow we have lost, or at least forsaken, our ability to see each other as worthy of seeing – to fully embrace how someone who does not look, act or talk like us is thinking.  Yes, the one skill that is not on display is real empathy and respect for other.

As with all things, empathy is a skill that can be developed and honed with education, experience and desire.  For the business of creativity, there is no more important skill to work on today.

As the noise of the world stage impacts us all, I submit to you that you have to decide whether to own your responsibility to empathize and respect with all of those you encounter or to continue to strike a note of being tone deaf at worst, condescending at best.  Will you perpetuate the entirely antiquated notion of a power struggle and value based on power or will you embrace the value inherent in your ability to empathize with your clients — to fill the emotional void that brought them to you and your creative business in the first place?

Since the end of season is in sight for many creative businesses, the question will always become what will you do in this slower season.  For some of you, right now, the idea is to go to sleep for a few days (weeks or months).  Rest and recovery. Important no doubt.

At a certain point though, you will have to contemplate how to shape the tomorrows of your creative business.  Then you will think about what you will do to improve your art and your creative business.  You can already see all of the experts getting ready for you with new courses, guides, conferences, seminars for you to jump on when your “tomorrow” window opens. Of course, you also have your new site, social media campaigns, etc. to get to.  Busy busy doing what is next to convince yourself that you are, in fact, improving yourself, your art and your creative business.

I will never be one to say that learning to be better is not a valuable investment.  However, given where we are today and who we want to be tomorrow, you might want to consider that, for this year in particular, nuts and bolts ought to take a back seat to your own humanity.

All creative businesses are in the relationship business and almost without exception the lives your clients lead are most certainly not your own.  How then do you really go about understanding them and they you?  How do you find your way to communicate in a more meaningful manner?  How do you discover the joint desire to be fulfilled with the creativity you and your creative business possess?

Will you find your way to an improv class to learn the rules of improvand tap into what a world will look like where you can only say “Yes, and…”?  An acting class to improve your ability to express yourself?

Will you do the art that maybe you have left behind because it is now your job?  Or will you invest again in the inner artist because of the joy it gives you?  Will you nourish that part of your soul?

If you are beating your head against the proverbial wall, when you stop you will feel better.  However, you are not really better until you figure out your way around the wall or, best, how to remove the wall.  Honing all of the techniques, theories and fundamentals you are working on in your creative business is important work but not today’s solution for tomorrow.  Only your decision about whether you will allow yourself to go deeper into the community you hold so dear will reveal a new path to you, your art and your creative business.

Time and money are precious, no doubt.  Never mistake a tool for talent, technique for soul, marketing for meaning.  The world has enough tools, techniques and marketing for the moment.  Artists giving us more talent, soul and meaning is what is on order.  We will all be better off if you do, your creative business most of all.

What Problem Are You Solving?

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You are not your job description.  Your creative business is not its industry category.  If the problem you solve is only being the source for the need, you are lost.  I need a florist for my wedding, a designer to help with my kitchen renovation, a graphic designer with my website.  A need is not a problem to be solved since anyone in the category fits the bill.  Nope, it is the sub, sub, sub-set of that need that begets the problem you create (or identify) for those that care.  For your throwback wedding, you need steampunk flowers, this is what we do.  Even deeper, industrialism of steampunk is your definition of avant garde.  It is ours too.

When you contemplate creating and/or identifying a problem for your clients, it forces you to really think about what they most care about.  Simply, the best problems are the ones only you, your art an your creative business can solve.  Yes, this is a riff on what Seth Godin talks aboutbut I am taking it deeper.  For creative businesses, the problem to be solved has to be emotional, wholly irrational and deeply vulnerable.

You MUST be able to say that if you can create this work with your client, they will feel this way.  The problem to be solved is that if they cannot feel this way after the work is done, they will feel incomplete or, worse, unsatisfied.  Your solution is to ensure they feel as you intend and they deeply desire.

If you go there, then you own that your solution must be indelible.  You and your creative business may produce thousands of creations but for each one the memory is transformative.

There is that word “transformation” again.  I use (overuse?) it because it connotes a sense of obligation and responsibility that “pretty”, “beautiful”, “lovely”, “wonderful” never can.  And, ultimately, “transformation” is the solution to every problem you and your creative business present to your clients, employees and colleagues alike.

If yours is visceral, profound, moving transformation, then you must then be soulful.  Soulful not in the woo-woo New Age way, but in the essence of humanity way.  We react because you and your creative business are proactive.

Then you can understand when I say that, for creative business, “What can we do for you?” is the ultimate cop out that will very very soon find its place on the trash heap of bad ideas, right alongside “package”, “collection”, and, my favorite, “the customer is always right”.  FYI, how can the customer always be right if the customer has no clue how to get what they do not know they most want?

Now, to the practical.  Authoritative conviction.  You do not need to be a snobbish jerk to be the expert but you need to honor the value of your expertise.  No one trusts an expert putting their expertise on display.  Start a sentence with “It is up to you, but I would suggest..” and you are lost.  How about “My choice for you is…”  I cannot tell you how many times I see a creative business owner selling their expertise to a client AFTER the client has hired the creative business.  Nothing undercuts credibility more.  If I were you does nothing for any client, ever.  Own the role you have auditioned for with authoritative conviction.  People pleaser, impostor syndrome, service oriented are back doors designed to sabotage integrity.  Please weld them shut and live with the idea that your vision matters most.  If your vision did not matter most, how exactly would you ever get to transformation?  Authoritative, purposeful conviction lets the world know what you truly care about as an artist and creative business owner.  From this place, all will know you see a world they do not and promises will be fulfilled, problems solved.

To me, anyway, everything else is just fluff that will blow away at the slightest breeze.  Have the courage of conviction in the face of challengers who have no idea the price they will pay without it.

Risk Revisited

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Every creative business is about communication and risk and most often about communicating risk to clients, employees and colleagues.

The difference between creative business and other businesses, however, is that, at its essence, risk is emotional, entirely personal and wholly irrational (and perhaps illogical).

If an interior designer needs to focus on the flow of a space and where she places the lighting defines that flow, then when the value of the placement is questioned it becomes a risk she cannot bear.  To another interior designer this is not a significant risk at all.  Because of this very personal and specific perception of risk, it is virtually impossible to generalize risk as it is other businesses.  Then the designer is caught between perception and her reality and all too often compromises.

In the compromise, we find ourselves in a culture of marginalization and commodification.  In the wedding space, have a look at the Wedding Wire and Knot merger.  The goal is not to highlight the power of the wedding professional but instead marginalize her.  The same is the strategy for many other digital enterprises.  No judgement there, this is a very smart and reasonable business practice and strategy.  We have seen it before with superstores (Target, Walmart, etc.), mass fashion (H&M, Gap/Banana Republic, etc.) and even bookstores (pre-Amazon — Barnes and Noble, Borders, etc. and then, of course, Amazon itself).  Eliminate the value of individual risk and force commoditized risk onto consumers and then you control the supply chain.

Make no mistake, if creative businesses do not own the risk that they themselves hold as unacceptable and support other creative businesses in the risk they hold as unacceptable (even if it is not theirs) we are all sunk except at the highest level.  It is the true death of luxury.  The demise of Henri Bendelis a multi-faceted story but it is rooted in the unwillingness of a culture to support the definition on an icon.  This at the same time Michael Kors purchases Versace.  No disrespect to Michael Kors but Versace it is not.

Perhaps this is the way of the world and what we can all expect our future to look like.  And for those who see the benefits of mass culture and a willingness to reap the rewards of commodification, it will be.  However, there will also be another set of drivers, which Seth Godin discussed in his recent post:  We are also about community and decisions about what is valuable to those communities to which we choose to belong.  This, I believe, will become the very definition of luxury and assessment of personal risk.

So if you are unwilling to define your risk as your own, how is it ever going to be possible to define your community?  You will not and you will be marginalized.  Period.  Instead, allow all those to know what you will and will not tolerate in service of your art and your creative business.  And reciprocate in that understanding.

For far too long we have defined risk as a power struggle.  Clients want you to compromise you, your art and your creative business beyond what you are willing to accept and, likewise, you want to push clients past where they are comfortable.  Those who take the power control the game.  Of course, there will always be an element of this struggle as in any situation where an expert is tasked with transformative work for those who do not have the expertise.  However, and it is a big however, there has to be a spirit of community — a desire to improve the lives of those in the community with the benefits each bring to the relationship.  Simply, we have to respect what matters intrinsically to members of the community to give them permission to do what they do as they most believe they need to be able to do it.

The rest of the discussion of risk matters too.  Systemic and project risk from poor client/vendor behavior still matters and needs attention.  Most creative businesses still suck and communicating this risk to clients, employees and colleagues alike.  It is a work in progress that must continue.  However, emotional risk — the unwillingness to compromise (or outsource) your core – must come to the fore in the face of those who seek to minimize, or worse, ignore its value as anything other than an idiosyncrasy.  If not, we erode the very power of art and its inherent ability to change the world.  A day I, for one, never wish to see come to pass.

Buzzwords Are Cotton Candy

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Simon Sinek’s Why, Seth Godin’s Linchpin, Value, Storytelling, Mission Statement, Confidence, Margin, Blue Ocean Strategy.  These are all amazing ideas and I literally just watched a webinar where a business consultant threw all of these concepts out there to say this is how you get the right price.  She talked about not caring about the model if you can make it work.  But you better know your numbers and have a target to breakeven. Figure out if your customer is a relationship, value or price customer.  Term after term after term with nothing behind it.  Nothing meaning no intention, no purpose, no foundation.

F—-ing infuriating.

We all need to slow down and do the deep work of acknowledging that creative business is different.  Touching the surface of your why, blue ocean, and storytelling is not near good enough.  Amen Bill Baker.

Creative business is itself a story, with an arc, dramatic tension and a series of resolutions that culminates in a profound crescendo.  As with all stories, a plot element will either build trust or create uncertainty.  We will come to know characters as the author, director or actor chooses to reveal that character to us.  We are drawn in as we all vacillate between the unknown and our own connection to what is known.  And the story grows from there.

The depth and commitment to this story IS your creative business.  If you are able to define the container from which you will create with your creative business, then you are free within that container to engage as the maestro you are.  Just do not get lost with the container being the story as so so many consultants, experts, pundits, industry leaders talk about today.  The story is what your clients feel as they move through your journey with them.  The mistake is thinking clients get to feel as they will about your work together.  They do not.  How they feel about your work is actually up to you and your unwillingness to own that responsibility is what will keep you stuck (or, worse, marginalized).

Dramatic tension (i.e., distrust) is as important as trust.  We have to believe it might not work out for you and your creative business to step in to show us that the answer was never in doubt.  If you cannot hold dramatic tension, you will give in to the client’s folly and you will be lost.  You will be toast even though your intention was to be helpful, supportive and even respectful in your own mind.  Except all you did was validate that you are not in control of your process.  A quick example will land the plane.

Say you are an interior designer and, for any room, you start with floor coverings, then lighting, then wall treatment (paint and/or wallpaper), then window treatments, and finish with furnishings. If you are an event planner, it could be catering, decor, entertainment, photography, same concept — order of design matters.  When a client asks to talk about wall treatments before you have finished with the floor (entertainment before decor), what do you say?  Are you able to say not yet?  Can you hold what might come back when the client does not get his way?  Can you live to the truth of the container you established when you went through your two minutes, explained your contract, followed through on your calendar of communication?  This is the essence of storytelling as a business.

You can have all the buzzwords you want at your fingertips — your why, your value statement, your understanding of the client and what they need — but if you do not know your story and how you and your team intend to tell it as a business, what do you really have? Cotton candy — sweet and light and gone in an instant with a bunch of sticky goo remaining.

So listen to all of the buzzwords and appreciate that at least they are making some kind of impact on our creative world.  Then acknowledge that they are not near enough. For the next month do the following: for every single interaction with a client (potential or actual), ask whether that interaction added to trust or consciously burned it (i.e., created dramatic tension). If it was to build trust, when do you intend to burn it?  If it was to burn it, when do you intend to resolve it?  Write it down, schedule it with your client, make every interaction intentional to enable and divine the next.  If you do this work, you will then prevent yourself from giving in to your client’s version of your creative business’ story.  You will be left with your art and its power to transform through the power of your creative business’ story, not the other way around.

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