The Business of Being Creative

We all rely on our intuition to drive us forward.  Intuition is a function of experience, natural gifts, education and maybe even just age.  We use intuition to form opinions on just about everything — from who we choose to be with as a life partner to which toothpaste we will use.

Marketing, of course, helps shape our intuition.  The Aristocrat is not your favorite hamburger but maybe the Big Mac is.  Oh, and if the thought of going to McDonald’s today offends your sensibility as someone who cares about the planet.  Yeah, marketing.  Marketing shapes culture, culture shapes marketing and together we weave our own narrative about our own identity.

The issue is though when your intuition, your narrative, is just wrong.  I am not talking in the esoteric sense of opinion, I am talking about factually wrong.  The earth is round. Vaccines work. Climate change exists. The best of us immediately stop and rethink our position if shown our error.  The worst of us double down.  Most of us are somewhere in between.  Your creative business is no different. Except today there is no longer any slack in the system.

What it means is that you are going to have to be willing to question to fundamental tenets you have drawn on to create your intuition, your narrative.  The customer is always right? Not if the customer has no basis for intelligent discussion other than a big bank account.  Who is going to really do the work to check our prices? Literally, everyone.

You cannot have it both ways — to expect your client to be able to make a great decision while at the same time relying on their ignorance when making that decision.  Intuition gone kablooey.

How do you check yourself?  Listen to people outside of your bubble.  Find someone who knows and cares about your business but is not in it.  Tell them about what you do and what you are hoping to achieve with your clients. In the description though you are not allowed to use the words “happy”, “satisfied” or even “love”. What you must do is to describe what you intend when you do what you do.  You have to discuss what happens when you fall down (as we all do).  Then you have to listen to reactions.  If the person you are sharing with does not understand the concept, then it is on you to figure out how to communicate the concept better.  Appreciate that communicating the concept comes before nuance.  Those that care (your clients) will seek nuance.  However, anyone should be able to understand and appreciate the concept you seek to base your process on.  They might not agree or espouse your viewpoint and that is more than fine but understand and appreciate it, definitely.  Someone might find paying for hand-stitched everything in a car’s interior with the finest leather an incredible waste of time and money but still understand the quality and craftsmanship necessary to do it.

Your intuition will tell you that it is not worth your time to set the foundation well before digging in to nuance.  Maybe but that is a lot to ask today when so many are seeking to live in nuance.  Your gift to be shared only matters if those who receive it can embrace the depth of its value.  That value starts with bedrock not sand.

Edwin Land, the scientist and founder of Polaroid was quoted as saying that the camera should “go beyond amusement and record-making to become a continuous partner of most human beings… a new eye, and a second memory.”  He saw the possibility of digital photography, got some of the early patents in the 1960’s and Polaroid even started making digital cameras in the early 1990’s.  However, they could not let go of the idea that people did not need to hold the physical image in their hands.  Polaroid filed for bankruptcy in October 2001.  Do not be Polaroid.

If you have been at this long enough (i.e., pre COVID for a few years), you know how fast the world can change and what was once valuable is no longer.  Relying on that value — ask any photographer who prices based on time — is a fools errand.  So when you base your intuition on a world that no longer is, you need to retrain yourself to appreciate the best way to communicate so that it is resonant and deeply personal to the art and business you wish to create.  Doing anything less will marginalize you faster than you can possibly believe, intuition notwithstanding.

There will never be another Martha Stewart.  First, Martha is Martha.  However, she is not a unicorn, just a function of her time.  Her trajectory from caterer to author to licensee extraordinaire to media mogul was all based on limited distribution and information flow available when she started.  Simply, everything she did was amplified so much more than it would be today.  Choice and information has exploded so that trusting the quality of a Martha towel at Kmart is not nearly as valuable when your phone can give you all that you need for a quality comparison.

So who will be the next Martha?  Yes, designers of any kind (food, fashion, event, interior) will always seek to leverage their name through a combination of influence and license, but I am not sure that will be the path to being a mega brand.

Truly, I think it will be about who can build the most loyal community based on shared values and connection.  For instance, look at Shop My Porch, built and owned by my great and truly brilliant friend, Phyllis Cheung.  The concept is straightforward — think Etsy at the neighborhood level.  Makers create for their community and literally people shop their neighbor’s porches.  Yes, it was born out of COVID and the desire to connect with each other.  I am an advisor to SMP and am thrilled to know what is coming.  My hope is that it will be the medium for those who seek community to find it and build a following that will find its own life.

The real question is whether a single creative will ever seek to build the depth of relationship brick by brick, neighborhood by neighborhood until there is regional (or digital) density.  The allure of mega still lives though I think it is beyond elusive.  The average podcast has less than a hundred listeners, ealbum less than one hundred downloads on Spotify.

We are seeing the leverage in NFT’s and artists wanting to serve a following in new and powerful ways.  I am not yet a fan of NFT’s for a whole host of reasons, environmental and artificial scarcity that reminds me so very much of Collateralized Debt Obligations that blew up the financial world in 2008.  When you cannot explain something to a fifth grader, you know you are in an economic mental minefield that always has a huge trap door. 

If the only thing that makes something unique is that I say it is unique and can prove it, then I can always make a second version of it, call it unique and on and on.  It is like those photo games at the end of People magazine where it says spot the difference between the two photos.  Now imagine each was “unique” and had its own NFT.  How exactly does that create value?  I know, I know, I just do not get it and I am missing the underlying opportunity NFTs represent to artists.

Maybe.

What I am definitely not missing is that the function of community and connection is pervasive today and we will all seek to leverage it as much as we can.  I am simply hoping that, rather than seeking to peddle influence and product, the next mega brand focuses on community and connection. 

Rather than speaking from on high as all mega brands do, it would be about fostering interweaving knowledge, anticipating micro desires and discovering how to nurture relationships at the most human and intimate level.  Simply, how can my work make your life better and how can we find a network together that will, collectively, improve members lives?

No doubt, we will always seek validators, influencers and celebrity.  We all understand and desire status.  It is just that we can do it from a place of inclusion and opt in, rather than exclusion and cancellation. 

How about this?  What if designers who live and breathe on social media decided to make all of their accounts private? To require that those who are accepted participate in making the work better?  Not just likes and platitudes, but real suggestions that would lead to different opportunities.  Instead of, “love the flowers”, more like “how did your choose the mix, the design, what look and feeling were you going for?”.  Then again, if you are thrilled with your 200,000 followers, you are probably not interested in the voices of the hundred people that matter.

If COVID has taught us anything, it is the power of exponential growth.  Yes, a penny that doubles every day for a month (30 days) is $5.37million.  Yes, the next mega brand might be the designer next door if only she embraces the power of being your neighbor.  Go Phyllis.

It always feels good when you come up with a creative solution to a pressing issue.  MacGyver is a TV show about finding thinking alternatively about solving problems.  Awesome.

Today, there are real issues that require MacGyvering.  Restaurants and hotels are having trouble finding staff, supplies are constricted for just about any creative business.  Finding viable workarounds has become a full time job for so many.

I have absolutely no issue with ingenuity at all.  What I have a huge issue with is thinking this ingenuity is what connotes long-term value to any creative business.  It does not.  Why? The problem is going to resolve itself on its own.  The beauty of capitalism is that it is really good at exploiting opportunity.  Water flows to the path of least resistance.  While flowers may be in short supply now, if prices rise as a result (and they have), more will enter the market and supply will be restored.  Maybe not tomorrow but definitely before next season.

So by all means, enjoy the fruits of being a creative problem solver.  Clients and colleagues will appreciate it for sure.  Just keep doing the work of what really matters — defining value and digging deeper holes.  Now that you might be able to present your ideas in person again, how will that experience be different from what you did pre-pandemic?  If you are elevating your storytelling as both an artist and a business, what can we count on?  Why?

Martyrs are martyrs because they are dead.  Do not forget that lesson.  As you are busy MacGyvering, others are busy seeing opportunity and resetting their foundation to enjoy a fundamental shift.  Yes, harvest fruit as the season ripens, but plant better seeds.

The chaos of the moment will make you forget about the pain of yesterday.  This is a truth I have had to learn the hard way.

When I had may dinner delivery business, we were devastated (really destroyed) by 9/11.  We limped along as zombies.  Then we took part in the first Tribeca Film Festival and sold Lobster Rolls to patrons of the festival.  We made $7,500 in one day.  We thought all was right in the world and we would do well as we shifted to catering and getting people to buy our food at night.  MacGyver, MacGyver, MacGyver without recognizing that there was no there there.  We were out of business seven months later.

You are here now.  Production challenges abound no matter your creative business.  They will get louder before they settle.  You will want to get swept up.  Please do not.  Instead, do what you have to but equally focus on trust and value and hope.  Hope of what the future might be like as you seek to define it for your art and your business.

It makes me think of the new all electric Ford F 150.  The President drove a prototype yesterday and it is just going to be better.  Not better because it is electric and good for the environment, better because it is better.  It will be able to do things no other truck can do — like power your house (or campsite) — tow more and carry more.  Whether you believe in the moral imperative of climate change or not is irrelevant. Better will drive the market and Ford will have a whole lot more than $42 Billion a year to contribute to own.  Tesla, of course, will have something to say about it as will many other car manufacturers.

Better is better and MacGyver will always be just a TV character.

We are all faced with a new world order.  Post-Pandemic.  What does that exactly mean?  Whatever it might mean for you as a person and your realm of reality is profound in its own right.  Your creative business though?  You are confronted with so much.  For some, it is boundless opportunity.  For others, it is figuring out how to start again.  For all, it is about what to do to set your business and art on the desired path.  The answer could be do nothing, stay true to who you are and what you do and just dig deeper roots.  Craigslist.

Doing nothing does not mean you are staying stuck, it just means that you are staying still.  You are figuring out what will move your clients ever further into your purpose and mission for them.  However, you are not setting the stage for evolution as much as you are living within yourself, your art and your creative business.  Own it, be proud of it and ignore those who would shame you for doing anything other.  If you are nurtured by your creative business in every way — financially, physically, even spiritually — let it be enough. Because it is.

For the rest, those who wish to move towards opportunity, change awaits.  It is going to suck.  I love all things Seth Godin, but none more than The Dip.  Fourteen years old and never been more relevant.  The hard work of change is to consciously reset the foundation to dramatically expand the value of your culture.

Five words.  What are they and how can you live them?  How can everyone around you live them, do everything in their power to bring meaning to the work in the image of these five words?

The reason change is hard is because the foundation is the effort not the ultimate result.  Whether your business grows revenue or finds new areas is useless if it comes at the expense of culture.  I cannot tell you how many clients find themselves with double, triple even ten times the revenue they have ever had only to discover a misery they never knew possible.  Culture.

Dive in knowing the abyss awaits. Who knows what the future will bring once a new foundation is set.  The entire point is that no one does and yet you persist.  The only thing you can control is to endure the pain of change.  And do not call me Debbie Downer.  Change is brutal.  Always.  It is just that the benefit of the change or, more precisely, the hope of the benefit is why you leap in the first place.

Two caveats beyond The Dip.  The first is that if you leap, you will have to swim, no turning back. Commit to seeing yourself, your art and your creative business through the change else the pain of turning back will make leaping look like a pin prick.  Once you are on the other side, you can always choose to swim back.  Ahem, that would be another leap. Do not kid yourself.

Last, and most important, if you intentionally embrace the change — seek to redefine and expand your culture around your five words — then there has to be an end. The end is the time when you say, “here, I am done, your turn now”.  Whether that turn is for your employees, colleagues or production partners, it makes no difference.  You are done and have to let it go. Prometheus you are not. Intention and purpose are the point of the change and you are to resonate in the freedom and opportunity of redefined culture.

We are here now.  Never convince yourself that change is your burden.  It is and will always be your choice.  Choose wisely.  Integrity may follow conviction, but without purpose it will likely just be folly and even delusion.  With purpose and awareness, however, you will find hope.  Live there.

The United States’ Treasury Secretary, Janet Yellen (beyond brilliant), earlier this weeks said that she might see the need for interest rates to rise (which only the Federal Reserve can do) to keep the economy from overheating.  Our economy is indeed surging back now that it looks like we might, might be nearing the end of the COVID pandemic.  Oh and the value of design has never been higher.    Just have a look at theexpert.com.  Up to $2,500 for an hour of Zoom time with an interior designer.  A waiting list of over 600 designers and an investment of three million from a group that includes Gwyneth Paltrow.  This for a business that literally has no barrier to entry.  The scheduling and paywall functionality is something a site like Calendly can do instantly for any designer who wants to set it up.  The salad days are here.  All I can say is to take a breath and do better work for clients that care the most.

A revisit of my last post of 2020 is in order. My advice remains: Chase revenue at your own peril.  Pyrite will always be fools gold.  Best is a verb not a noun. Now is the time to upend everything and to not just enjoy the rising tide.  I, of course, am thrilled to see so many so busy but am utterly dismayed at seeing the profound resistance to evolution and the desire to step forward as other.  Better is a choice we all need to make.  So here goes a look back at my post from December 16, 2020:

Fundamentally, we will get through the pandemic and I agree with Paul Krugman that the rebound will be robust and profound (clearly, he was and is right).  If the government does its job and provides relief (and I so hope it does and it did), when the artificial barriers to the economy are removed, demand will be there (yes indeed). This is not 2008 as much as it is 1981 (when the Fed lowered interest rates).  As will all things though, the future is unwritten.

Race to the top.  While many many people have suffered in 2020, your clients have not (definitely did not).  They kept their jobs, their portfolios soared and they could not spend their money on so many things — vacations, dining, entertainment, etc.  Couple that with the desire to express themselves through your art and your creative business and you have a recipe for quite a boom once the vaccine and the psychological effects of its protection take hold (yes, it will be safe to hug a stranger again)(got this one right).

The instinct will be to gulp water now that if flows again; to put your feet close to the roaring fire to warm your frostbite.  Doing these things actually makes the problem worse.  Same is true for your creative business.  Chase the money and you will drown in a sea of yesterday.  Instead, do three things.  First, assess what it is you actually need.  What does life look like when you are able to live as you choose?  Forget about expenses, what do you need once life returns to your creative business?  Next, how much do you want to work?  Making up for 2020 beyond what is already the rescheduled books is a fools errand.  Start over.  I have seen more and more creative business owners simply ignore this advice in May 2021.  And so I worry deeply about the pain and exhaustion coming.

If you had to move all of your work to 2021 and that results in a full calendar then taking on more is an exponentially diminishing return.  Simple, if you have 2,000 hours to give and you do ten events at 200 hours each, you are good.  If you play the “I have to make up for 2020 game”, and say take on four more events, now you only have 143 hours to give to every event.  How exactly will you keep your promise to those who paid for 200 hours of your attention?  You lose every which way.  Work more than 2,000 hours.  Now you are exhausted and ask any young doctor how they feel at the beginning of a 36 hour shift and how they feel at the end and you will know why there are laws prohibiting such work.  Hire more staff?  With what money?  And even if you can hire new staff (thank you PPP), will they be able to meet your standards your clients expect or will you have to micro-manage until you are confident in their ability to serve your clients?  See point above about over-work.

Race to the top. Do the work that matters for those that care the most.  Redefine value to highlight (ahem) the most valuable piece of what it is you do. Get paid for it as you have never have before.  Learn the lesson of theexpert.com and know that design matters.  A LOT. Be fearless and intrepid because that is what your art demands, your creative business and most of all your clients.  Which brings me to the third point, change your cash flow.

If you earn your value, get paid for it when you have earned it.  The idea of getting paid a few weeks before completion is based on a convention that holds no water anymore.  Yes, you must retain your cost of production plus a buffer to avoid robbing from Peter to pay Paul, but that is but a fraction of value earned.  Creative businesses as a whole have backloaded their cash flow to ensure delivery.  You are all better than that and you are either responsible or you are not.

Let me land this plane.  If you a project coming on in April 2022, you will likely finish designing it in November of 2021 and probably start producing it in in December.  For me, this means you will have all of the money associated with this project in 2021.  All of it.  You will reserve what it will take to produce it plus a buffer, but the rest is yours to do as you see fit.  So while others will be starving in January, February and March, you will be investing in those aspects of your creative business that yield the most value.  Seasonality can be removed from all creative businesses if you choose to make it so. This is your chance and you will likely not get another one for a very long time.  Or you can chase the money.  And, no, I am not seeing this happening much, if at all here in May 2021.  WHY?

To be clear, you cannot change your cash flow unless you change the value you earn when you earn it.  And to change that value you have to invest in that value so that it grows.  If that value is design, what will you do to be better at providing your ideas to clients?  If it is the process of production, how will you demonstrate how your are getting better there?  Racing to the top means you start with your single greatest strength and go all in to be ever stronger there.  Shoring a weakness is important but you will never be paid the big bucks to be better than average.  Big bucks are there for those at the edge, who own the edge and demand value.

Greed has no place in creative business.  However, idiosyncratic desire is not greed, it is self-respect for the gift given to you.  Getting paid what you need to create is a self-fulfilling prophecy to do it again and again and again.

To wit, my ultimate advice for 2021: radical, unapologetic, idiosyncrasy is the key to a profound journey into a future of boundless opportunity.  Promise yourself that you will be radically better tomorrow.  A prettier caterpillar is useless.  The world needs butterflies.  As with all things, the choice to be the best version of your art and your creative business is yours.  The courage comes in convincing yourself that best is a verb, not a noun.

A wonderful conversation has been started discussing perfectionism, quality and profitability.  The catalyst is the story of Picasso destroying self-portraits months in the making that the gallery owner who was to buy them loved.  A florist remaking centerpieces because she was not happy with the result (again, client loved them).  Interior designer giving a client a credit because there were too many typos in a document she sent over (there were three).  Photographers destroying files because the images needed to never be seen.

Yes, I have seen and heard many many of these stories of perfectionism.  I have also seen many actors fall down when they forget a line, musicians crumble when the note goes off or the lyric is dropped.

If you were to ask the public what they wanted, we would all have faster horses.  So said Henry Ford as he was modernizing automobile production.  The tension between personal integrity and vision and client expectation is age old.

Quite literally, your clients cannot see what you see and are also predisposed to love your work. How many couples do you know really want to say their photographer sucked?  By definition then, you are able to produce art that will meet your client’s standards but not your own every day all day. Fact. What then trust?  Your promise is your best work.  And if you do not believe that to be so, you have forsaken trust.  Leave that there for a second.

Enter perfectionism.  Your work can always be better.  There is no such thing as perfect.  We call that hindsight.  It is also where all of your excuses live.  Your best work means best today as it is.  If you look in the moment and find it lacking, then, by all means do what you can to do your best work.  However, if you are able to recognize you own humanity and realize that the exercise is transformation then you can find grace there.  The whole point is depth of feeling not just ephemera.  Where you can get lost is in the idea that technical flaws undergird that resolution.  The search for perfection does come at the price of creation and there are no guarantees only intention and conviction.

The entire conversation reminds me of a post I wrote in 2012 about Jiro Dreams Of Sushi (who still runs his restaurant at 95 years old). I have copied it below.  My thought remains the same though: Perfection does not scale, creation does. You can find your glory, your love, your satisfaction in either place, but never both.

Integrity demands that you live to your best work that today affords. You promise to be better tomorrow.  Let that be enough.

I watched Jiro Dreams of Sushi this weekend.  Fascinating and should be mandatory viewing for creative business owners and their employees.  For those that do not know about David Gelb’s documentary, it is the story of Jiro Ono who owns the only 3 star Michelin rated sushi restaurant in the world.  The restaurant itself is ten seats and is in a subway station in Tokyo.  The meal costs an average of 30,000 yen (@$380) per person and consists of about 22 pieces of sushi depending on what is at the market that day (no, you do not get to choose).  It takes a month to get a reservation.  Jiro is in his mid eighties now and his eldest son is his heir apparent.  Yoshikazu has worked with his father for over thirty years and it was he, not Jiro, who prepared all of the sushi for the Michelin critics.  Jiro’s youngest son runs his own sushi restaurant.  Jiro himself still works 70-80 hours per week.

The lessons from Jiro are legion and I leave it to you to discover your own, but I take away three principal ones: 1) Know who you are.  2) The work is what matters.  3) The pursuit of perfection bears a heavy price.

Know Who You Are Jiro came from a broken home and was basically on his own from a young age.  As he described himself, he was a bully, a bad kid.  Making sushi saved his life.  The work provided discipline, focus and a relentless pursuit of the perfect technique.  Along the way, he broke the rules, created technique and honed a purity and consistency that will define him as likely the greatest sushi master ever.  As much as Jiro has honed the preparation of his sushi, the most interesting part of the documentary was the last bit – watching him serve customers, how he watches them and perfects his delivery (serving left handed people on the left, making sushi smaller for women so that they will be able to eat their meal at the same pace as the men).  The title of the documentary comes from Jiro himself – he dreams of sushi — how to make it, serve it and do it even better the next day.  His life and love are sushi.  It is all that he is, without apology.  Who are you in your creative business?

The Work Is What Matters There is a scene where the senior apprentice describes making egg sushi.  He made it every day for six months (about 200 times) before Yoshikazu deemed it acceptable.  The apprentice cried.  Jiro does not work for money or fame.  His sons will always be in his shadow.  Yet they all are in pursuit of perfecting their craft, giving honor to being a shokunin (artisan).  The work is its own pursuit and its own reward.  Monastic maybe (ok, definitely), but exemplary in the art of the possible based on untold hours of practice ala Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers.

The Heavy Price of Perfection At a certain point you have to choose between being the creator or the craftsman.  Jiro started as a craftsman with the eye to being a creator but has long since returned to being the craftsman (albeit of his own techniques).  His sons will never move into their own light no matter their talent.  Yoshikazu was the chef for the Michelin critics after all.  Yet, by culture, commitment or a little of both, Yoshikazu is content to maintain the tradition of his father.  Would you be?  What price are you willing to pay for the pursuit of perfection?  If your essence is creation, to scale your art to a wide audience, to perpetually break the rules, then constantly seeing how well you can follow them is soul sucking.  Some of the apprentices at Jiro’s do not last a morning.  Nobody would consider Nobu Matsuhisa a slouch in the sushi department, but one look at his empire and you know that he and Jiro could not co-exist under one roof for day.  How you choose to share your gift is your choice.

However, choosing perfection is its own isolation.  There is a huge price to ignore all things beyond the craft, to conciously look away from the opportunity that might await when amazing (not perfect) is good enough. 

Perfection does not scale, creation does. You can find your glory, your love, your satisfaction in either place, but never both.

Following on from last week’s conversation begging you to not be a chameleon is a challenge to practice being proactive. If you appreciate your obligation to be the guide, to stand in your own light, to honor the challenge of transformative joy ahead, then you own your obligation to be proactive.  Proactive in the sense that it is up to you to share what you, your art and creative business are all about so that potential clients can uniquely choose to align with you and your artistry.

Except we almost never practice proaction, only to be better at reaction.  Read the opportunity, the person in front of you so that you can react in a way that elicits the response you seek (whether getting hired or other road to yes).  What you almost never do is to be plain in the idea of what you are all about so that those who care the most know they are home.

Here is an exercise that I know most will find extraordinarily challenging simply because it is not a muscle you often use. Do it anyway.

Make three two minute videos, one every other day.  The first video is you discussing what your art and your creative business stand for. Not longer than two minutes and do not watch it back.  Skip a day. Then for the second video, why the work matters.  Skip a day.  The last video is what makes for an effective decision. Again, no video longer than two minutes.  On day seven watch them all back for the first time.  Now make another video not longer than five minutes answering all three questions. Skip a day.  Make another not longer than four minutes. Next day make the last video, not longer than three minutes answering all three questions.

You will be left with a distilled version of the only three things that should matter to clients.  EVER.  The video will be the proactive foundation you can always find your way back to.

To remind you, change sucks.  The inertia to change is overwhelming and if you are going to honor your creative business you have to embody the power of incremental moments toward larger change.  This requires proaction — knowledge of purpose, intention and direction — and the willingness to own the responsibility for all three at all times.  Yes, to simultaneously see the forest and the trees and the path forward.

When you are confronted with the desire to be reactive, no matter the reason, watch your video.  It is your truth and if you trust it, your superpower.  The world is filled with enough Diana Prince’s and Clark Kent’s, and is waiting for you to show up as Wonder Woman and Super Man.  Your world might only be a client at a time, just let that be more than enough.

Embrace the challenge, share with those who are able to push you to go even further.  This is no place to dull the edge.  But please do not share the work with your clients as it is what needs to come from you directly.  Your willingness to show up as you are is intoxicating and where faith, hope and trust will live.  Do the work and then own it as singularly yours.

For those of you who think this might be hokey, overly simplistic or self-indulgent, you are wrong on all counts.  We live in a visual world and practicing your ability to communicate and lead is its own reward.  Choose yourself.

Good luck.

Bernie Madoff died in prison yesterday.  Lest you forget, Bernie Madoff orchestrated probably the single biggest and longest running Ponzi scheme in history.  His fund bilked investors (most of whom were crazy sophisticated and extraordinarily wealthy) at the end of the day out of between seventeen and twenty four billion dollars over decades.  Despite at least four credible warnings of the fraud, state, federal and local authorities did nothing.  It was only the crash of 2008, where redemptions far outstripped available funds that the fraud was revealed.  Before that time, Madoff promised consistent conservative returns (relatively) that allowed him to fund the scheme with a consistent inflow of new investment.

Why does Bernie Madoff matter to creative business today? Because trust is about semiotics and choice to be purposeful, intentional and honest about the higher purpose of the work.  Bernie Madoff achieved what he did because he ticked all of the boxes — acted like a serious professional (ala Paul Ryan), said all of the right things to the right people who chose to believe in the promise he was selling.  Right up until it all crashed and burned.

I firmly believe we are at a Madoff moment for so many creative businesses.  The absolute desire to transform, to find joy, to literally live again is here.  Within the fierce desire to live are those responsible for creating and shepherding the transformation.  The question is how you, the artist, will handle the responsibility.  Will you look to tick all of the boxes, to be the chameleon that will allow those across from you to interpret your work in a way that makes them believe the art and your artistry are as they would see it?  Will you allow yourself to be a chameleon? I so hope not.

Integrity is about purpose when the allure to other is ever more delicious.  I actually loathe the idea that there is a “fit” or not.  Why? Because it allows you, the artist, the freedom to construct a process with ego and not vision.  Ego is what you think it is.  Aren’t I fabulous when I do x, y or z?  Vision is about effective decision making and what you very much believe provides what is necessary to move forward, regardless of whether it makes your client believe you to be fabulous or not.  Fit is not your choice, it is your clients.  Your obligation is integrity.

Oh the slippery slope though.  I have heard the noise of personal decision making and honoring the person across the table as to how they need to make decisions.  If someone needs fifteen choices and another just one, then you should be flexible enough to meet clients where they are.  Yeah, no.  I am not from the everyone deserves a trophy generation.  I am deeply committed to the power of idiosyncrasy and maturity.  Adults in the room say not everyone is for everyone and, when it comes to decision-making, the professional in the room drives the bus.

This is not to say that there is not a place for behavioral economics and psychology with regard to sales.  There is.  Just not in creative business.  If I want you to buy my toothpaste or my finished sculpture, then learning the best way to get to a yes, no matter the situation, is important and more necessary than ever.  However, if your business is a journey through the unknown to the known — ahem, creation — it has to be about what that journey looks like FOR YOU.  Your client can choose to take the journey with you or not.  And the harder you work at the beauty and power of that journey for you, your art and your creative business, the more alluring it will be to those that want to sign on.

The issue with Madoff is that trust is fluid and alluring to those even with the best of intentions.  Except that, when it is corrupted, the carnage runs oh so deep.  In no way am I saying that there is only one way to get to the destination.  The paths are indeed infinite.  It is just that YOUR path is singular and neither better or worse than any other.

To answer the question, can you be a chameleon today?  No doubt.  The price is your integrity though.  Maybe not today, but definitely tomorrow.  There might be no consequences for you, your art or your creative business.  There might not be another 2008 or a global pandemic.  Until there is.  Nobody said integrity and purpose was easy.  I for one would rather the brick house though when the wolf blows. 

Do the work. Stand up for your art, but more, your artistry more every single day.  I have no idea where that conviction will take you but I definitely want to be along for the ride.

Robert A. M. Stern has been the launching pad for some of the world’s best architects. As with many (creative) professionals, having worked at prestigious firms is often the best validator for what will come when you decide to hang out your own shingle.  You will also have the benefit of others who have done the same thing. And yet.

Just like a degree from a fancy school does not necessarily mean you are any good at what you do, so too having worked at a prestigious firm.  As any creative business owner will tell you, running a creative business is a far far cry from working for one.  You might pick up a few things watching someone else drive, think about what you would do if ever you were driving, but until you are actually driving alone, you will never really know.

Does it really have to be that way?  Must we reinvent the wheel every time a creative entrepreneur strikes out on her own?  Even more, what would it be like if there were self-contained incubation services that allowed creative entrepreneurs access to tools and support they would not otherwise have access to?

No, I am not talking about incubation businesses like We Work and the like.  What I am talking about more like what happens at so many hedge funds today.  If a trader builds a track record for herself (a fund within a fund if you will), then the hedge fund itself might be a principal investor in the trader’s new fund.  Watch almost any episode of Billions and you will get the drift.

The idea would be to invest in the success of the future by providing those who seek the future a path without nearly as many pitfalls.  Call them consortiums, design groups, whatever you like.  I am saying that there would be a group of businesses invested in the success of the other.  Senior businesses would provide necessary resources and guidance and they would get fees and ownership.  New business owners would receive a leg up in doing ever better business.  As the services would no longer be needed, the equity would remain.

Why has this not worked before for just about any creative industry?  Easy — abundant versus limited mindset.  If you believe there are only so many buyers and that you might “lose” a client to competition you will likely focus on how to “win” the sale and not work diligently to build a variety of meaningful choice — artistic style, budget and, most important, artistry.  Instead, you will compete on price, work hard to say that you do that too and not allow yourself to truly focus on what you absolutely stand for.  Of course, you would not invest in building another who you would consider direct competition because their success would be your risk of failure.

Abundance, ironically, means that you understand no one needs what you do and, therefore, that your art and your creative business exist solely for the purpose of transformation, fulfillment of a client’s desire to be other.  Most businesses exist because they point to a need we did not know we needed before the business created the need.  Example: smartphones.  The world was just fine with cell phones with modest text/email capabilities.  Just ask Blackberry.  Not true for creative businesses.  Nobody is ready to upend the world because you hung flowers from the ceiling.  In that way, creative businesses change the world one moment at a time.  In the single moment there lives abundance.  The human desire to connect, express and find relationship to the world unknown to them is eternal.  Post-COVID, it rages.

So why not come from the place of abundance, seek to define choice by alignment and the desire to connect client and artist with those whose relationship will lift both to unforeseen opportunity.  On the ground, it means nurturing those who choose to start with what it takes for them to truly grow into what they stand for and to provide those services as a small group that makes the consortium so compelling for those its seeks to serve.  Small groups of businesses that come together to say to clients let us help you choose which one of us will serve you best.  Within those groups there are equity opportunities, customization and growth that simply cannot exist as an untethered group of stand alone businesses.  Abundance.

The world is as you choose to see it and, to paraphrase Adam Grant, if you rethink the power of the collective and decision-making, perhaps the unpaved road will be the widest yet.