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The Cost Of Delays

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Why is it so important to get money for production in advance?  You avoid the cost of delays.

Pretty straightforward, except there are so few creative businesses that get paid well enough in advance to avoid the pain of delays.  I wish I could specifically state why this is, but I cannot.  What I can say though is that most creative business owners do not fully grasp the cost of the delay until it is too late.  Mostly, creative business owners undervalue both project risk and systemic risk when it comes to delays.

Say what?

Project risk is what you think it is.  When there are delays, your chances of failure for the project increase and you may not be able to do what you want to do for the price you originally quoted, if at all.

Systemic risk is more subtle.  When you have to have to work harder for a particular client (who caused the delay), that leaves less time for your other clients who have been good actors (and did not cause a delay).  Less time is less time and now your ability to perform for your “good” clients just took a hit.  Remember, unless you are paid for BOTH systemic and project risk when there is a delay, you do not have the money to pay for the added stress you have just placed on your creative business.

Of course, you are who you are and you will pull it all off in the end even if you do not get paid for the extra risk.  But there will be a price, a big one.  Every year, I see creative business owners at the end of their season walking around like the living dead, catatonic from the effort of completing their projects without being compensated for the cost of delays.

When I ask a creative business owner what happens when a client is late in paying, changes their mind about an important design element, or is slow to decide critical path issues, what the cost to the client is, inevitably I hear crickets, or worse, ten, twenty thirty percent of their fee as an additional expense.  No wonder there is no blood left.  The clients have sucked it all out.

How to contemplate the real cost of delays?  Ask yourself what the project would cost if the client came to you right after the delay and had to get done in the reduced time frame.  What would you charge, first to get the project itself done and then to make sure that none of your existing projects suffered?  Yes, two separate numbers.

When you do this work you will find very quickly that the number is an exponent of what you originally charged and you should not be afraid at all to charge this new number now since there is no difference between that situation and the one you currently face.

One more thing.  You do not want your clients to cause delays and want to actually punish them for doing so.  The numbers you calculated above are NOT punitive, they just keep you at the same risk profile as when you originally took the project.  They get you back to even.  You want to create a disincentive to act this way and need a punitive fee to do it.  I like fifty percent of the new fee added to your calculated number.  If you originally charged $100 to do the project but were delayed, the cost is now $200 plus a $100 penalty or $300 to finish the project.

The whole point is you do not want the delays in money flow and/or decision-making.  If clients can understand the pain they will cause AND the pain you will cause them, likely is that there will be respect on both sides.  Explained in this context at the outset, there will likely be mutual agreement and no thought by the client that they could ever be the bad actor you describe to them.

Of course, none of these triggers are likely in your contract and/or process now, even though they will be tomorrow (right?).  What to do then? 

Be willing to walk away if the pain is too much.  You bringing your creative business to the edge, literally, because of a client’s bad behavior is pointless.  Pointless, because you are hired to do great work, to inspire and transform.  If this becomes impossible, why would you finish other than ego?  You might say this would cost your reputation and provide sympathy for the client you left hanging.  On the other hand, you would have the wherewithal to live to fight another day and garner the reputation that you, your art and your creative business are worthy of respect.  The days of martyrdom are long gone, live to the truth of what makes you and your creative business the force that it is, if only to change the world, one client at a time.

Interior Designers: Introducing The VW COLLECTIVE

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As many of you know, last June I launched The BBC Collective for Event Professionals.  Together, I am so proud to say, we have made meaningful change in the industry and we are just getting started.  The change comes from a willingness to erase the proverbial box and question everything, together.  My mission is to help creative professionals come much much closer to their truth as businesses; to have the business itself be as creative as the art is produces.  And it is working.

When I think of doing a similar group for Interior Designers and after talking to many many designers, I realized what is also necessary is the voice of a master designer.  A designer who can bring his decades of experience in the industry to the discussion.  Someone who has seen and done it all — AD 100 forever, completed incredible residential and commercial projects around the globe, authored four books and counting, entered into more than a few success licensing deals, and a tremendous retailer to boot.  What would a weekly experience be like with both of us?  One where the same format as The BBC Collective would operate: written post with a recorded conference call to follow (all archived), private Facebook group for ongoing discussion, quarterly one-on-one check-ins.  If I were a designer who really wanted to up my game, to question all that I am doing, to challenge myself not just to change but to truly evolve, would this be for me?

So I asked my mentor Vicente Wolf if this is the kind of work that would excite him at this stage of his career.  Something he would really value and appreciate?  I shared my experiences with The BBC Collective with him and after about five minutes he was all in.  That was a month ago.  Today The VW COLLECTIVE is here.  We will start our conversations on July 10th.

A little history on Vicente and me.  I have known Vicente for over 14 years.  I worked with Vicente for almost five years on everything other than his core design business, making many many deals for commercial projects (hotels, condominiums, and country clubs), licenses and other endeavors.  During that time Vicente taught me all he could about the design business and I have used that foundation to grow my own philosophies about what makes a successful interior design business.  Nine years into my consulting career serving many of the industry’s elite has brought me amazing insights into this incredible business and I feel like we are just getting started.  I also feel like the interior design industry is at an inflection point.  The brave new digital world is affording opportunity like no other and, at the same time, exposing those who have not yet done the work of rethinking the way things are and ought to be.  Above all, this is the purpose of The VW COLLECTIVE — to move the industry forward.  The reason the group is limited to 60 designers is we want every designer to be able to have access while at the same time be strong enough in number to bring meaningful change to the industry as a whole.

All of the details of how The VW COLLECTIVE will operate, what it costs and how to join are are on the site.  Here are a few that are not there: if you join before July 2nd, we will have an hour long recorded call to discuss your business (scheduled at your convenience).  Vicente will also want to talk to you one-on-one about what you would like to get out The VW COLLECTIVE. 

One last thing.  Vicente and I know that there are many amazing professionals that have so much knowledge beyond what he or I could bring.  Media, marketing, licensing, publishing, even color experts who spend their lives immersed in making what they do impact the design world.  These experts will be part of The VW COLLECTIVE once or twice per month and will be paid to do what Vicente and I will do each week— write a post and have an intimate conversation with members that will be recorded.

If you are ready for The VW COLLECTIVE, we are ready for you.  It will be an amazing journey with will take. Together.    I, for one, cannot wait.

Center of Gravity

seanlow
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I was always good at school.  Some kids are great athletes, artists, musicians.  I was and am a great student.  Mind you, it does not mean that I was the smartest – far from it, only that I understood how to play the game of school really well.  And knowing how to play the game, coupled with my own drive served me well in the eyes of so many.  What it did not do though, was to put my feet on the ground and have a sense of perspective.  I knew all the rules and none of the nuance that we all need to navigate our way through the path we choose for ourselves.

I have been out of school for over 25 years and during that time I have learned more than I ever did while I was in.  What I learned was to have purpose, intention, and, on my best days, integrity as to who I most believe myself to be.  I have come to understand that many do not see the world as I do, and that is ok.  However, if we are to accomplish anything together we have to share a perspective, a vision, even if we may not manifest said vision the same way.

It might not be immediately apparent to you, but I also feel very similarly to many creative business owners and their path to what they consider success.  Perhaps you too were great at school, although I am fairly certain you were better at artistic endeavors.  No doubt, you gave yourself permission to be an artist so much so that you decided you could make a living at it.  The issue for you, like me, is that you arrived untethered. Even the very best of us needs to learn how to put our feet on the ground before we can move with intention to where we seek to go.  Having a purpose is not working with purpose, even perspective.  Having a purpose is faith that what you are doing matters.  Working with purpose is the fortitude you need to manifest your faith.

Just like me, your ability to be good at the game, your talent as an artist, can carry the day, serve you past innumerable obstacles than those who do not have it will succumb to.  There is a limit though, a place where nuance and wisdom and experience and integrity matter more than talent.  This is the place of true learning, where you have to say that we do it this way because and that way is entirely unshakeable.  And if you do not yet know the difference between unshakeable and inflexible, you have more work to do.

Unshakeable means a deep understanding of why you, your art and your creative business travel the path you do.  Every moment, every conversation, every text, email, call, is done with purpose because it is the very manifestation of the philosophy, the faith, you espouse.  Inflexible is like the parent who tells their children not to fight with each other or else they will get a spanking.  Inflexibility means for clients to follow your rules simply because you said so or, worse, because that is just the way it is done.  Good luck with that.

The issue is that inflexibility is the providence of those looking for the shortcut, to excuse the responsibility that your business needs to be as creative as your art.  The responsibility for creativity exists because both your art and your business tell your story.  One without the other implodes the rest. Conviction and faith go hand in hand with your need to be a profound storyteller to realize the success you seek.

To the practical, if you cannot share with me (or anyone for that matter) how your creative business works in less than two minutes, you are doing it wrong.  You should be able to state your role in the business, the stages the client will go through, when those stages will happen and who is responsible for those stages in a way any ten year old can understand.  I should know that you have a firm (meaning iron) grip on what it will take to do great work.  Whether the person on the other side has a monstrous bank account, huge acclaim or status is irrelevant, they have to believe in what you are going to do for them and how you will do it or they cannot be your client.  Period.  You cannot wish for your client to appreciate what you need, you have to tell them.  Two minutes.  Go.

What Happens When It Works?

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The secret formula.  The hidden process.  The new technique. Proprietary software.

When you strike on something that works for you, your art and your creative business, what do you do?  Do you keep it under wraps, available only to you?  Or do you share, trying to let everybody in on what you have discovered that actually resonates?

Truly, no judgement either way.  If you believe that your path to success is in full lock down mode, then that is fine.  We have codified the value of intellectual property and the rewards due to the creator.

On the other hand, there is the value of the network.  The idea that if you discover a better way, sharing it, teaching it, letting it see the sunlight of everyone’s eyes is how others learn to absorb what you know and as a group we become better together.  Open source coding, of course, is an amazing example of what I am talking about.

In the end, it is about the value of the tool versus the value of the use of the tool.  If your use of the tool you created provides success to you alone, then you will keep it proprietary.  If improving the tool makes YOUR life better, you will seek to share it.  The better the tool the better you will be able to use it.

All of that said, no one has THE answer since there never is one answer to a problem where human interaction is concerned.  So leave the sermonizing to someone else, instead offer what you believe so that those that can see their way to your way of thinking might be convinced to leap.  We are all looking for the third person in.

And the biggest effort is often a single step.  Way back when Prestonand I did not know what to call him to describe what he did, despite the fact that he had been doing it for over fifteen years at that point.  Sure, he started as a florist, but had, by the time I joined him in 2003, long since transcended just flowers.  He certainly was not a planner as all he did was decor and decor specialist sounded awful.  If those who focused on home decor were interior designers, why couldn’t Preston be called an event designer since he focused on event decor?

Preston’s willingness to call himself an event designer changed his conversation with clients.  Many many others have followed suit and fifteen years later the concept of event design lives vibrantly in the event industry and has spawned many practices and tools in support of event design alone.

To which I say, what is the one thing you are doing or have changed that will have ripples in the industry if you were to talk about how it works for you, your art and your creative business?  No line-item pricing?  Getting your production budget one hundred percent up front? Using 3D rendering/virtual reality in your presentations? Creating a YouTube series?

We have all had enough of systems and programs and methods based in a pedantic view of a placebo.  Yes, the system might work for you in the short run until you are forced to explain the foundation.  If you have no answer, you can either seek the foundation or find another system.  With a foundation, you can build your own path, stand in your own light.  Another system is an answer to a problem someone else has created and solved, derivative in the very worst sense.

I said this to my son today and it is as true for creative business as it is for all of us: self-acceptance is perpetually seeking the end to a never-ending story that only gets better the harder we look. If we have others generous enough to offer what they have discovered it will only make our story better, if not change it altogether.

So go find your third person and, if ever possible, be the third person in.

What Makes A Great Client?

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Great clients are made, not born.  This, to me anyway, is axiomatic.  You have to have a fantastic process that is intended to serve and enrapture those clients that care about you, your art and your creative business.  The more you guide your clients, embrace their fears and fulfill their visions, not just at the end of the project but every step of the way, the better the work will be.  To be specific, if you are practiced in the art of transferring power, willingly, from your client to you and your creative business you will have earned the trust to overcome requisite obstacles and earn the permission to do what you do.  Before a client signs with you, they have all of the power (and money).  You want their business and it is theirs to give.  As you move through though, clients will hopefully make narrower and narrower decisions (and payments) until they are left with an ultimate yes and a zero balance on your fees.

All of that said, great clients also have attributes that make them great presuming there is a fit in your process with who they are.  There are three primary attributes you should be able to assess: 1) Motion In Fear; 2) Resolute Decision Making; and 3) Patronage.

Motion In Fear

All clients of creative businesses are scared.  The result you offer is uncertain no matter how many times you have done it before.  Ahem, that is why it is called creative business.  Some clients want certainty where there is none and drive you and your team crazy when they cannot remove the fear of uncertainty.  Unless you have a business built to deal with these clients who want this kind of access (this would be the one place that hourly fees might work), you need to appreciate the difficulty this client represents and actively seek to avoid them altogether or place strict boundaries around your unwillingness to deal with their active and ongoing uncertainty.

On the other side of the coin are those clients who embrace their fear but look to you, your art and your creative business for solutions to their concern.  If you are powerful in your ability to communicate your ideas, these clients will find solace in your vision.  They will still have fear but can live with it as they have intention for how to resolve it.  These clients embrace where you are heading and can live with the uncertainty that you may not get there.  All of this said, if you are not a good presenter, these clients will run over you as they will likely try to take over design to allay their fear.  If yours is more of a collaborative process, these clients are not for you.

Regardless of how a client moves through their fear, the one thing you and your creative business cannot do is to tell the client to not be scared.  Yes, you are confident in your ability to design and execute and the client wants to believe in your ability, but fear is not rational and needs acknowledgement before it can be resolved.  Not, “don’t be scared” but rather, “I see your are nervous, here is what we are going to do.”

Resolute Decision Making

Resolute decision making is a natural offshoot of how a client moves through fear.  You might think the client that says, “I trust you, do what you want.” is the dream.  More like a nightmare since they trust you until they do not and then they never will again.  You and your creative business are not mind-readers and your path is always informed by those who you are meant to lead.  Instead, the dream client is the one that can make decisions as you would have them be made.

If you enjoy a ton of collaboration, these clients can work with you to build a decision on top of the last decision until design is completed.  However, if you think “too many cooks kills the broth”, the collaborative client is not for you.  Again, for those with deep and powerful presentation skills, having clients who are capable of making large, permanent decisions is the dream.  These clients see what you see, say yes and allow you to move on without ever looking back.  The clearer you are with all that you do (when, why and how), the better these clients will be.  Options for these clients is a non-starter — they want to be guided and if you refuse to guide their fear will explode and you will literally get nowhere until you finally choose.  Resolute decision makers demand confident exposition.

Patronage

Clients who want to own your work as their own are of value if, and only if, you can see your work as it is without need for acknowledgement.  Being truly comfortable behind the scenes is, of course, possible, but you have to appreciate the strength it takes to be there.  We all know those clients who refuse to call your work yours and instead seek to marginalize you at ever turn.  Ultimately though, we should all seek acknowledgment for the art we put into the world.  These are patrons who endow your creative business and do so in the effort to find the fantasy they seek.  When the fantasy manifests, they deeply acknowledge the craft, talent, experience and wisdom it took to make it happen.  Patrons come in all forms — they can be complete collaborators and demand an absurd amount of attention, but then turn around and celebrate your work to whoever will listen.  There is even a certain amount of redemption in PIA clients if they can see their way to patronage.  Not that it is ever an excuse to be awful, by the way, just that it can be a modicum of humanity.  In the end, great clients show respect, professionalism and integrity that is given to them by you, your art and your creative business.  Success is in the relationship and candor as to what it means to be an artist for someone who cares.

The entire point is is for you, the creative business owner, to figure out the characteristics of what makes an amazing client for your art and your business.  Then share it with the world so that the world knows who should show up.  Much better than just hoping and praying that Mr. or Mrs. Right will magically appear.

What Is Your Responsibility As An Artist?

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I have danced around this topic for a long time.  I am of the firm belief that art changes the world and creative business owners are the stewards of that change.  Whether someone’s home, a wedding, a visual design, fashion, food, the work of creative business owners is transformative and influences how we all think and act in the world.  As artists, your principal role is to create something that does not yet exist and, by extension, teach your client (the world?) to see with fresh eyes.

So then what is your responsibility as an artist?  Last week’s post was on diversity and talking only to the right client.  And, sure, that is part of the conversation.  However, this week I want to go further and say what is your responsibility to move into an ever purer version of your creativity?  To own the evolution and presence of your projects as equally temporal? In short, how do you get your clients to think while at the same time serve their fantasies for what the project will bring them?

I am perpetually fascinated by the mind of an artist and how they become compelled to create as they do.  I also enjoy those that envision their work as having a larger meaning in a micro context.  Check out David Chang’s Netflix Series, Ugly Delicious,as an example of what I am talking about.  Of course, there is a window into what drives David to invent the food he does and why, but equally important is the cultural underpinnings he is poking holes into.  In the Fried Rice episode, the discussion of Chinese food as dirty, unrefined and substandard relative to other ethnic cuisine is awesome.  Just the scene talking about MSG as the group eats chips and snack foods loaded with MSG is worth the time to watch.

Of course, David Chang is, well, David Chang.  He has earned permission to make cultural statements with his food after years of doing the unexpected starting with his very first Momofuku in 2004.  What about the local florist?  The newly minted interior designer out on her  own just last year? The lifelong design employee?  The old guard architect?  The very artists next door who know how we (whoever wemay be) live and, perhaps, ought to live. What about them?  And if you are this creative business, what about you?

I can be hyperbolic and say that if you are not willing to make a statement with your work, you will not be relevant for much longer.  I can also say that I believe this to be fully true.  It does not matter.  What matters is if you, the creative business owner, sees the value of being iconic, willing to act with purpose and intention without specific regard to consequence.  The essence of art is it might not work and also that you may not (probably will not) be able to figure out whether it will work or not BEFORE you create it.  Once you create it, we can all be confident in its manifestation; that is called being a professional.  However, the edge of creation is always fraught with risk and is what you truly get paid for.  This edge of uncertainty, the risk of failure, or, worse, sameness should be what drives you as an artist AND as a businessperson.

So my position is this: you as an artist and creative business professional are responsible for the moment, whatever that might be for you.  This moment lives in the context of your client’s desires, your vision of the world, your culture and the perspective you bring, and most of all, the transformative element.  Your responsibility is to make us think, to challenge notions of what is as ever being real beyond perception.  Your responsibility is also to do it every day with the singular purpose that your voice as an artist matters like ripples in a pond.  Some ripples are bigger than others and that is ok, collectively though they become the waves that shape us.

Doing great work is not enough then.  You must do great work with intention for those that care.  The intention is ephemeral and is also sacrosanct.  To find your intention, ask yourself, “To what end?  Why does your work matter to YOU?”  If you, your art and your creative business both embody and are responsible for your intention, the work will move us.  Where it will move us is uncertain and mostly irrelevant, simply moving is enough.  I remain hopeful that when we can dwell more in art’s uncertainty we will live more comfortably in a brighter possibility.  Let this be your responsibility and embrace just how much the effort is the reward.

The Power Of Inclusion And Saying No To The Wrong Client

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At first blush, you would not think that a discussion on how we can improve diversity in all kinds of creative business would be related to finding the right client for your particular creative business.  And yet nothing could be more profoundly linked.

The point of asking for all aspects of creative business to be more diverse is not actually to drive business one way or another.  For instance, featuring more African-American weddings on Style Me Pretty now that Abby and Tait have reacquired the business is not to highlight those creative businesses that are creating Style Me Pretty-type weddings for African-Americans. The reason is that turns the conversation into a transaction and that, in turn, limits the purpose of the forum.  Instead, Style Me Pretty should feature more diversity on its site — race, sexual orientation, religious preference, etc. — simply as a statement of the cultural significance of the art.

No one should be forced to produce art for those they do not believe in.  I am actually on the other side of the gay wedding cake Supreme Court case, Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, in that I believe the baker is an artist and has the right to share his art with who he pleases.  That said, I also believe deeply in the right of the gay couple to be able to marry. When we force Style Me Pretty to promote diversity under the guise of highlighting the artists that created the wedding, it loses the import that the right to have this wedding in the first place, equal to all other weddings, is what really matters.  Separate but equal is awful, separate but same is the place of cultural evolution, if not revolution.

We have to acknowledge that niche and the power of our digital world is to allow those who we will connect with deeply to find us and us them.  For purposes of commercialism, this is magical.  It allows for targeted media to be deeply relevant.  Amen to that.  However, let’s not confuse this with the burden of media to be inclusive as a definition of culture.

This is where it gets so hard.  Because where do you draw that line and where is your responsibility as an editor larger than that of a businessperson?  When you create content for a specific market, what is your responsibility to acknowledge the power and legitimacy of other markets?  I would suggest that it is risky to try to wear both hats at the same time.  If Abby decides (or is shown) that being more diverse is bad for business, how far does she have to go to be the standard bearer for the idea that weddings of all kinds are a reflection of tolerance and an evolution in our society?

I find it fascinating that the single most important cultural moment in weddings is about to happen on whenMeghan Markle (a divorced, bi-racial, American) marries Prince Harry. This was heresy in England and is now being fully embraced.  Or is it? I see tabloid coverage of the wedding in the United States thus far, but profound insight into the implications of the wedding globally, not so much.

The equality of diversity is the link between more inclusion and finding the right client.  We need to do better at not eliminating differences but celebrating difference as the same.  When we build the value of diversity as a touchstone, it allows artists to reach in and find their slice.  So, where I have to respect the baker in the Masterpiece case to create art for who he chooses, I despise the reason – that he does not want to recognize gay weddings as a fundamental right.  We all have to acknowledge that we have a long way to go on the diversity side, and on the client side it then has to be to create fundamental statements that belie the argument that “this” wedding should not be included in the conversation.  The two actually go hand in hand.

To the nitty gritty of finding the right client, when you say yes to the almost right or even the very wrong client, you value those who do not show up at zero.

The profound solution is to write a check every single time you accept a client who does not honor what you are all about.  Yes, write a check — make a donation, pay money into a “why did I do that” fund, I do not care, just make what you cannot see real.  The math: if your perfect client would pay you $10,000 and allow you to do your very best work, when you accept a non-ideal client, what is the chance the perfect client never contacts you?  Ten percent, twenty?  No way is it zero.  Probably more like thirty percent, but I will go with ten percent here.  The perfect client would say, “Oooh, I did not know she did designer-lite weddings, I want couture, let me keep looking.”  And let’s say when that perfect clients does call you have about an eighty percent chance of getting her to sign with you.  Then the math is easy.  Every. Single. Time. you take the wrong client you will write a check for $800.  Write enough of those checks and you will realize that taking business where you have NO chance to do great works costs you more than just not getting paid to the work you most want to do.

When you own the price of taking the wrong client, you will stop talking to them.  Instead you will fully embrace that you can ONLY talk to clients who care about what you most care about.  The rest will take care of itself.

Working with those who do not care leads to generic work, generic work to a sea of sameness regardless of who the client is, and back to the K Car generation we go.  We can do better, so much better.  If we let the world see the power of beauty – deep profoundly authentic beauty, different but same becomes ever more possible.  And, yes, I may be naive, overly optimistic or even delusional but a world where we all matter equally is the one I choose to aspire to.  Art and artists have always made that journey for us.  I want to say, “Keep going, you are just getting started. When you teach all of us to see another way, we wake up bit by bit by bit.”

All Creative Businesses Sell Luxury

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A BBC Collective member shared this article from Entrepreneur Magazine about selling luxury.  The article was written in September 2015 and is based on the author’s (Vincent Bastien) book, The Luxury Strategy.

Even though it is a few years old, Bastien’s premise that the strategy to sell true luxury is different from selling luxury as fashion and/or premium is an evergreen.

Luxury is different and, for creative business, knowing that the rules of selling luxury (Bastien calls them anti-laws and there are twenty four of them) is fundamentally different than any other strategy is vital for every single creative business owner.

For our purposes though, two topics stick out — do not compare yourself to anyone and target those who are not your buyers.  My interpretation of these two statements is a) be iconic, and b) quit trying to use all media to get clients and focus on conversation instead.

Being Iconic

This the linchpin for me.  If you are unwilling to stand for why you matter simply because you matter, you cannot be in luxury.  If you believe there is a substitute for what you do, you will act in comparison to that substitute and will be, therefore, limited by the comparison.  Think of that in terms of your business.  If the words “package” or “full-service” exist anywhere, you are not selling luxury, only premium relative to the rest.  Just not good enough anymore.  Luxury connotes uniqueness as much as it does price.  Being expensive is the easy way out and does nothing if you cannot communicate singular.  You do what you do because you are the only one in your world that does.  It boils down to knowing the difference between preference and substitutes.  Luxury is about preference.  Clients hire your creative business because they believe your art (and the process of creating it) speaks to them and all that they seek from your work.  They do not choose you because you are cheaper, nicer, smarter, hungrier than the next creative business.  They choose you because you matter to them.  If you cannot get to this place as a creative business owner, you might have to acknowledge that this world might not be for you. Here is why: we are coming to a time when those who refuse to be iconic and stay only as a matter of relative value to competition are going to be squeezed into oblivion.  If a client can know there is an alternative, they will push for more and more and more.  Add in all of the technological improvements and you have a recipe for only those at significant scale (who can make it with very thin margins) to have an opportunity to succeed.  The rest will have to live on crumbs, which is no life at all.  Step into the light or you will be shoved off the stage.

Iconic cannot just be about what comes out of your media mouth though.  It HAS to be about your business, which is where the whole walking the walk part comes in.  Without the willingness to make an outrageous promise as a business, you cannot be luxury and likely not a true creative business in the future.  Here’s the thing: when you make an outrageous promise and request, you likely get permission to make the next one.  An example, a floral designer no longer does line item pricing and has increased her design fee by fifty percent. Clients do not push back and have come to actually see the wisdom in both.  Now she is about to ask for ALL of her production money (including her fees) as soon as design is approved instead of half upon approval and half thirty days out. This applies to interior designers too who, instead of getting paid upon item approval, get all of their production money up front. Life changes dramatically for all creative businesses when all production money (including fees and a percentage for unknowns) is paid significantly in advance.  One outrageous promise to the next, this is how we all change the game.  Walk the walk so you can create a brand new, better path.

Create Conversations

Of course, brand awareness is critical to every creative business. However, if all is geared towards those who would be buyers, you miss the opportunity to create profound statements of those who would aspire to your art but cannot afford it.  You will always be too cheap for some, too expensive for others, that is not the point.  The point is to demonstrate how much you are who you say you are so that those who care enough will and those you cannot afford to but also care enough dream that they could.  Drip by drip by drip.  It goes back to being the expert I talked about last time and is validated by those that seek you out because of the effort.

All creative business is luxury because all creative business is a choice.  No one needs what you do, they want it because of what impact your work will have on their lives. Transformation. Joy. Enlightenment.  Own the responsibility and see where it takes you.  Thinking outside the box is an oxymoron since you will always be derivative to the box.  First, erase the box, then imagine the world, your world, as it ought to exist.  Then make it happen.  Or live in a world where you all is you do is make pretty happen like everyone else.  Your choice.

The 80/20 Issue and Being An Expert To Get To The Next Level

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The 80/20 Issue

The 80/20 issue is from Vilfredo Pareto and dates back to 1906.  He was writing about wealth and said that eighty percent of the wealth is held by twenty percent of the people.  FYI, in the U.S. today it is closer to ninety percent, but that is a topic for another day.

The Pareto rule has been applied everywhere and has deep applications for your creative business.  For those of you who have various levels of service and/or products, my guess is that you are living today with an 80/20 issue.  Yes, twenty percent of your clients generate eighty percent of your revenue (and probably profits).  If you jettisoned eighty percent of your clients you would only lose twenty percent of your business.  You would gain a TON in extra time for not much lost in revenue/profits.

The math is easy.  Break up your business into segments that matter to you.  Let us say project cost buckets.  Then list number of projects for the bucket and gross revenue for all projects in the bucket. If you can easily figure it out, list net revenue for each bucket.  You will likely see your 80/20 issue staring you in the face.

Now to work on the solution.  Of course, you want to minimize the bottom.  So set a floor for the bottom ten percent at a price or minimum ten percent higher than the bucket.  If the bottom ten percent of your creative business by number of clients generates five percent of your revenue then you would set the minimum project cost at ten percent higher than this bucket.  This is business you can absolutely afford to lose without blinking an eye.  And you should.

Moving up the ladder, if there is business that you need but do not necessarily find vital (i.e., just below your sweet spot), the goal has to be to narrow the range to drive this client into your sweet spot for this area of your business.  Ironically, this means capping options for this client.  Say you are a florist and your sweet spot starts at $7,000 for a project but you are consistently at $4,500 to $6,500, you would want to possibly raise your minimum here to $5,500 but offer nothing in excess of $8,000.  If they wanted to spend more than $8,000, they would have to jump to another category — say one that starts at $12,000.  This creates a no-fly zone where effectively you offer nothing between $8,000 and $12,000.

For the most part, my answer to any 80/20 issue is to create the “no-fly zone” where your creative business offers nothing in this area so that clients will remain where they find the most value and your creative business earns the most. When clients cannot tell which category they are in, the tend to go for the margin.  What this means is that all things will push to the bottom and create an 80/20 problem.  With distinct offerings created by a no-fly zone, value will separated accordingly.  Think of it this way, ready-to-wear versus couture.  Ready-to-wear depends on knowledge of existing inventory, couture on customization.  If prices and process are too close, the expectation will be for ready-to-wear to receive couture value while those willing to pay for couture will disappear, leaving couture to get cheaper and cheaper.  Hello 80/20.

 

Being An Expert To Get To The Next Level

If you know what you are deeply passionate about as an artist and creative business owner (and assuming you have talent), inevitably you will go deeper and farther than most in that one thing.  Not just the topic, but your area of the topic.  Not just floral design, but maybe neo classic floral design in Texas.  Of course, your interests may expand beyond the one thing, however the one thing will always be your core.  You must then own the space, put yourself out there as the expert you are and talk to those that care.

Of course, those that care will come in waves.  When gay marriage became the law of the land, interest in how to best design and produce gay weddings peaked.  Now that we are a few years in, the depth of caring has waned.  Does this mean you have to pivot to another topic to remain relevant?  I do not think so.  It just means you too have to evolve, to go deeper into what you love, resonate more intensely with those that still care.  The facts of what you know never matter as much as your willingness to ever deeper.

The caveat, of course, is if you became the expert because you saw opportunity more than you believed in the purpose of the topic.  Then, when the spotlight fades and others are moving on to the next “it” topic you will inevitably feel left behind.  If that is you, it is never too late to delve into the one thing you are truly passionate about.

The global answer though is, yes, you have to become an expert, the expert, in what you stand for.  You must become the teacher both to your industry and to your clients.  You do it because there will be trust, faith that you care enough to deliver on what matters most to those listening.  Do not do it for the money.  The money may come but it will only be as a result of authenticity not the other way around.

Here is the thing, if you are not willing to share what you know, what drives you, with your world, why should we trust you?  Your portfolio will only speak for itself if you give us context.  That means you have to step into yourself and own your world.  Give us something to believe in and we will.  Whether that is an audience of one or millions, it does not matter, doing the work day after day after day does.

Style Me Pretty Goes Dark

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Just when it seems are moving along to move along, the wedding industry gets huge news that  Style Me Pretty is going dark in a few weeks.  AOL (now OATH) has announced that they will not be archiving the site but will instead be shutting down.

Of course, there are marketing and SEO concerns from those creative businesses who have been featured and/or are part of SMP’s Little Black Book.  However, the real fallout is the feeling that the days of the blog, even social media in general, is dying as an effective marketing tool for wedding professionals.  This thought has ripples for all creative business industries and I am not one to say whether the idea that current marketing tools are becoming irrelevant or not.  I leave that to those who know better about these tools.

My focus is two-fold — the power of the validator and what authenticity really means.

SMP was built on Abby’s vision and Tait’s tech chops.  Abby had a point of view on what she thought was “pretty” and we could all see it from a mile away.  Tait was (and is) unbelievable at getting Abby’s vision out across the internet.  Like every great validator, if Abby loved your work, you, the creative business owner, reaped the rewards of the endorsement.  Fold in Little Black Book and you have a mechanism for great marketing potential.  Whether anyone cares to admit it or not, the value of SMP was derived from Abby saying you were great and brides believing her.  When Abby and Tait left last year, OATH did not work hard enough to capture the spirit of Abby’s voice or allow another voice to emerge.  The business turned into straight advertising play and faded as a result.  The question then is: Is the day of the validator, the power blogger, the print media tastemaker, gone?  Or is SMP’s closing just a statement that niche is not meant to scale?

And if any of it is true, then what is your responsibility as a creative business owner today?  Who will be our validators?  Will there be a validator?  If there is not, how will you be found?  Most important, when does using a validator become counter-productive?

Take only half a second to look at trend setters and the power of influencers on any particular industry (Goop?!?) and you will know that validators are not going anywhere.  What is going away is advertising aggregators based on general (or overly generic, broad, boring (?)) content.  Clients want to see themselves in the validator and they want to trust the motives of the validator.  Abby likes the work of particular vendor just because she does, not because (or not only because) they pay her money.  Dilute Abby’s point of view and the whole thing crumbles.

All of which brings me to empathy, taking from Seth Godin “people like us do things like this”.  SMP let you cheat.  They did the work of saying who you were to those who were looking for people like you.  That day is gone until the next Abby that comes along that is relevant, a day which may never come.  So, in the meantime, you have to do the work of authenticity, especially if you have earned the right to have your own voice.  You have to understand who you are talking to and, even more importantly, to who you are not.  You have to do the work of building community drip by drip by drip.  You have to show up with consistency and truth to the outrageous promises you are making and keeping. Every. Single. Day.

Yes, SMP is a wake up call to those who live to give over their power to the validator.  Validators matter less mostly because they stray away from what made them great validators in the first place.  If you think this is a statement about social media and advertising in general, you are all wet.  It goes back to Duncan Hines.  Do not blame the validator for dilution as that is their endgame, just as we are the products of Google and Facebook, not the customer.  We can and have to choose to do the work ourselves.

The answer will be in community — our willingness to say here is where my creative business resides — the place we belong and if you, the couple, want to be part of that place, come on in and, if not, go find the place you seek.

If it is about community, empathy, authenticity, then marketing dollars and the calculation of ROI has to shift.  It is incredibly myopic to value your investment based solely on the business that comes back to you in a particular season.  Instead, your investment should be based on the meaningful conversations you are able to have because of the investment.  If you are paying to be seen in an ocean of pretty you will be lost.  Instead, how can you connect with those that care in ways that matter to both you and your client?  Will you invest in being smarter about what you most care about? Or are you going to seek out the next validator so you do not have to do the work? 

I have heard that everyone who has already invested in SMP should take that money and spend it on marketing somewhere else.  Better to go to Vegas and bet on black.  The moon is beautiful but will always be a reflection of the sun. The lesson is to spend those dollars on yourself and the intention of your art and your creative business.  Build a community that matters, live in your own light.  Easier said than done, of course, but SMP’s demise tells us that, today, you really do not have a choice.

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