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The Power of Story And Client Management

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I have touted Bill Baker here for years. All the links to my five previous posts about what Bill is all about and my thoughts on why he is just so so important to creative business are here, here, here, here and here. I just re-read all of them and each are still completely relevant to how I think about story in creative business today.  For those who have not listened to Bill’s podcast with Studio Sherpas, you should.

And just when I thought the power of story could not be any more prevalent, along comes this article in the New York Times about how General Mills and its Yoplait division are trying to get their groove back with Oui. How are they doing it? With, ahem, the power of story. The big takeaway (shocker) is that story drives data, not the other way around. If you are truly invested in what propels creation, you live there and then the creation becomes accepted and adored. Story is more important than the product. It does not mean the product can be inferior, it is just that product cannot be exceptional without a story. General Mills watched Yoplait disappear to the story of Greek yogurt, even though Yoplait tasted better. Product matters; story matters more. Nowhere, and I mean nowhere, is this more true than for creative business.

If the New York Times article is not hitting the story mindset you need to have for your creative business smack in the head, I do not know what will. Please note, story is not about marketing, branding, advertising and eye-ball muscle. General Mills had all that in spades. They got their ass kicked because the story of the business, of the history of the product, its legacy as told by its employees to anyone who would listen drove everything for Greek yogurt, Chobani in particular. This is not to say that the external branding effort is not critical, it is, it is just that it is not enough. The story, to be authentic, has to run deeper, it has to be woven into the fabric, the DNA of the business, creative business most of all. This is what Bill Baker is the master of and why every creative business owner needs to beat a path to his door. Once you understand what it takes to create the depth of story, generate true authenticity, you can then enter my world of client management.

Client management, as we discussed last week in The BBC Collective, is about knowing what is valuable and getting paid for it. Getting paid is not just money, it is having your client do whatever is necessary to move your process forward.  With the framework of story in place you can undertake the effort to develop the value points that need to exist during the arc of your creative business’ story. The exercise, then, becomes what is valuable about what you do, how valuable it is in relation to the rest of what you do and when you need to deliver the value (i.e., its place on the arc). This is how I and the members of The BBC Collective discussed Mindy Weiss’ lawsuit against one of her clients, and, in this context, the insights were profound.

Here is what happens if you do not fully appreciate the exercise – you, your art and your creative business tell an inauthentic story. Why? Your creative business will be saying something opposite to what is coming out of your and your employees mouths.

The most common example: design. Say you need your clients to finish design with you in a month but they paid a thirty percent deposit and the balance of payment(s) is/are not due for months. This is your creative business saying design does not matter and there is no value in finishing design in a month. You and your employees could be talking until you are blue in the face about how important it is that you get design done in a month, but you charged exactly zero for it. The story of your art and its creation is undercut by your business process and will become more (not less) inauthentic the more you tell it. Oh, and trying to fix it after the fact only makes the trust and believability of the story that much worse. Whether you like it or not, your creative business has its own voice and your clients very much speak the language. Clients value what you tell them to value when you tell them to value it, and, if you do not do this work, they will choose on their own. And, when clients are in the position to determine value, you literally just gave away your voice. Nothing good ever happens or can happen if your client is driving your creative business’ process. Your voice and that of your creative business has to be the only ones that matter. Period.

The essence of client management is timely value delivery. The power of value delivery is through resonant story. It is a three-legged stool. Lose a leg and you will fall down. Please do not, not because you now know better, but mostly because of the awesome opportunity that exists when you acknowledge how far you can go when the three legs are firmly in place. Enjoy your Chobani.

What Is Luxury?

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I have recently returned from Engage! 17: Grand Cayman, THE conference for luxury wedding professionals. At this point, if you consider yourself in the luxury wedding business and have not attended an Engage!, you are doing yourself, your art and your wedding business an incredible disservice.  I have also just completed my second post for The BBC Collective on Client Management where we are going to tackle the Mindy Weiss lawsuit on our conference call this week (see you there?). Then I read this morning an op-ed in the New York Times speculating about why Amazon might be buying Whole Foods while every other brick-and-mortar luxury retailer is in a death spiral.

The common theme: luxury is ill-defined and currently identifies a spectrum that makes niche unintelligible. Translation: we treat all luxury the same at our own peril. For interior designers, a $1 million project is not a $250,000 project. Same thing for weddings and fashion and all other creative endeavors. Yet, for the most part, the underlying business model for each is EXACTLY the same. Tweaks on a model (i.e., higher or lower percentage, higher or lower deposit, etc.) are not different models, just permutations on the same value proposition.  Yes, this sucks and is not nearly good enough.

As the NY Times op-ed surmises, Amazon might be buying Apple so that it can segment its client base to treat affluent clients differently. Create the Apple store experiences that Amazon simply cannot do online where anyone can access their site.

The luxury experience is always a big theme at Engage!. How brides and grooms are treated, their guests and what it takes to improve on the luxury wedding experience. Clearly and obviously, creating better experiences for those involved in a wedding, interior design project, video project is critical. Just as critical though, but receiving far less scrutiny and hard-thinking, is what the underlying business propositions and models are that serve each segment of the luxury market. An incredibly powerful example of what I am talking about is this awesome article in Racked.com about weddings for the 0.01 percent featuring Marcy Blum, Sarah Haywood, and Preston Bailey among others. When you read it (if you have not already), notice the various business models employed – flat fee, percentage, combinations of both and the variations in what an ultra-luxury wedding is – Marcy says $1,500/pp and up, Preston $5,000/pp and up. The debate is not who is right, it is an understanding of who we are talking about and more important what that luxury client typically seeks (i.e., what is valuable to them).

Nobody buys from Apple because they are a value play in terms of price. You can always get a technically superior product from someone else for less. Apple does not care about processor speed nearly as much as it cares about customer delight (yes, it might be waning but they are light years ahead of everyone else).

We are past the point of recognizing the influence of The Long Tail. We need to power creative business to appreciate segmented value propositions for each level of luxury and build business models accordingly. If the top 0.01 percent care about originality and creativity above all else, quit making your business about what each part of IT costs before you create what IT is. To make it real, if you are an interior designer working at the $135/psf level and above (i.e., @$400,000 for a 3,000sf house) you are forbidden from providing line item costs until you are done designing, Same for wedding planners/designers working with budgets of $2,500/pp and above (sorry Marcy, $1,500/pp is not in this category). And please oh please, if you are getting paid for your creativity, get paid for it and it alone. At this level, the “get out of bed fee” has to be $100,000 and up, JUST TO CREATE, not produce.  Here’s why?  If your creativity is not worth at least that much, how will those coming below your level ever justify the value of theirs?

Here is the issue, if creative businesses do not do a better job of segmenting what luxury market they are actually in, they cannot create business models that best serve THAT market. Each creative business then has an obligation to say – YOU are my client whoever that may be. From there, everything about your creative business – your price, how many projects you take, how you go about creating your art, how you finish – has to be about THAT client. Will clients that do not fit THE model come along? Sure. Who cares. These clients are going to have to accept the model as for who it was intended, not the other way around.  Abandoning niche for the outlier is a fools errand if there ever was one.

My opinion is this – all creative business is luxury. Luxury is something no one needs but wants. That is creative business to a tee. So do not shirk your responsibility here if you are at a lower level on the luxury scale. Value is value. Ultra luxury might do 5 projects a year, your creative business might do 50. What makes you and most importantly your creative business’ process compelling there beyond anyone else?

The time has long come for creative business to accept the gradations of luxury and meet the challenges that niche demands. Accept that you can only surprise and delight those you and your art most care about. Go all in there with how your creative business runs. This means that you MUST get paid for what you care about most. Not just because you can, but because you have to. Let us not go the way of traditional brick-and-mortar retail (i.e., dying a slow, excruciatingly painful death). Instead, let us all evolve because it is better for all of us if we do. Niche demands specific value delivery and payment for that value. Niche is only going to grow. Let us all agree that a one-size-fits-all business model across the entire luxury creative business spectrum is a zombie about to become a vampire and choose to go another way.  Into the light.

Introducing The BBC Collective

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The Highlights

I get asked often – what comes next for you, Sean? A book? A video series? Something where creative business professionals can get a more pointed experience from you without having to go all the way to working one-on-one with you. No matter how hard I tried though, I could not get excited about any of it.

After a ton of searching as to why, I finally figured out that I need to be interacting with creative business owners in some way.  I am a teacher and perpetual student at heart. I have to engage in challenging creative business professionals to be better and to be challenged by them for me to feel engaged.

Then the idea of community started to ring in my ears. What does it mean to be part of a community? What can the community do to change the landscape that a single business cannot? The answer, as I now fully understand, is a whole lot. Committed communities create movements and movements change the world.  Give me a limited, diverse group of rabblerousers and we can start the proverbial snowball down the hill.

This is how I came upon the idea of The BBC Collective. Pair my fierce desire to teach, be taught and to create a ruckus for creative businesses with a group of creative business professionals who want to come together to do the same. Add in other smart rabblerousers in to share their expertise once or twice a month and now we have quite a concert.

So here is the soup: a weekly experience where we talk about a specific topic that I will have written about beforehand, which post will include a case study of how a member(s) are experiencing the issue. Two hour long conversations later and you will have a weekly deliverable of an in-depth “brief” with two one-hour (ish) power group podcasts on the subject. $250/month with each commitment being four months (no month to month ever – the collective invests in you, you invest in the collective).

A much more detailed description of The BBC Collective follows, but the above are the highlights.

I am hoping to kick-off The BBC Collective’s weekly discussions the week of June 12th with the first topic going out the week of June 5th. I am ready and I am leaping as Seth Godin would say. For those ready to leap with me now, I am offering a ½ hour one-on-one session with me if you sign up before June 5th. Here is a link to where you can sign-up. Many many thanks in advance. It is going to be a fantastically awesome ride and I just cannot wait.

 

The Longer Version

I have been incredibly fortunate to have worked with a wide swath of all creative business on a one-on-one basis – all kinds of designers – interior, event, graphic, fashion; photographers, architects, even shoe makers. Some of the businesses are household names, others just starting to make a name for themselves and everything in between.

My mission is to have the business of a creative business tell a compelling, iconic story. For that story to be as compelling and iconic as the art the creative business produces.

The work is intended to be transformative and that is what I am about. Sure, there are techniques and concepts to learn, but the aim is to transform a creative business, to literally have the creative business (through its owner and employees) speak a different language. I seek for creative businesses to be confident in every aspect of their creative business’ process – from the moment the phone rings until the project is finished.

Success for me is when a creative business owner and/or their employees find their voice as a business. They become the guides that they are to make great art for their clients on their terms.   Of course, making more money matters and most of my clients usually do, but being in control of their story and their process is the foundation to that material success.

Why Group Work Now ?

I will always work with creative businesses directly. Being witness and guide to transformation is my drug of choice. However, the power of the collective to make profound change, to lead others into another way of understanding how their business might work, has never been greater. Together, voices of those committed to seeing if there is another way, those seeking to be perpetually curious is how the world changes and creative businesses are transformed.

Technology has afforded us the ability to connect as never before in human history. I want to use this power to raise those who are willing to stand up and do the work. Creative business needs to be propelled forward, to develop new and different techniques to surprise and delight its clients. This takes work and commitment to whatever knowledge I and my guest lecturers might impart. It also takes community to learn together and, more important, stand together to go another way. A way that is a truer, deeper and more powerful reflection of the business behind the art. Most important, it takes consistency, showing up every week to challenge ourselves and make each other better.

What Does The BBC Collective Include – Highlights:

  • A collective of creative businesses limited to 125 members
  • Weekly in-depth written brief with follow-up exercises (where appropriate)
  • Two Teleconferences (30 participant limit for each) per week on topic
  • 25% discount on any one-on-one work with Sean during your subscription
  • Private Facebook Group

Who is it for?

Anyone in creative business (owner or employee) who is looking to elevate their business through a process of weekly exploration. I expect members of the collective to want to work hard on challenging themselves about why they do what they do with the goal of transformative change. Being perpetually curious, willing to listen to different viewpoints and be part of the conversation are prerequisites. I am really hoping for a broad cross-section of creative businesses so that we can really be cross discipline and learn from each other in a real-time, practical, on-going way.

How Does It Work?

I have a very specific vision for the collective. I am a lawyer by training and have also worked with many MBA’s in my career. I would like to combine the best of both worlds in The BBC Collective – real time case studies from business school with Socratic discussion found in law school.

Each week, on Wednesday, I will send members a topic survey with five or so choices (i.e., pricing, client management, contracts, sales, finance, strategy, structure) with the aim of finding the topic hottest on everyone’s mind. Thursday, I will announce the following weeks topic and solicit requests for real time examples related to the issue. For example, if the topic is pricing, a member can send in how they are currently pricing, what is happening and what is a hoped for resolution.

I will review the case studies and will choose the one I think fits the best with the weeks conversation. The following Tuesday I will release my brief on the subject. With permission, the business owner will be revealed with the aim of finding support not only from me but the collective as a whole.   The brief will have four, possibly five parts: 1) a general discussion pertaining to the topic – more targeted than my blog posts but still general enough to apply to all members; 2) a specific introduction, review and analysis of the case study; 3) an industry specific recommendation based on the case study; 4) wider implications of the case study; and 5) follow on exercises/materials (if appropriate) that might be helpful for members as they seek to attack the issue in their own creative business.

On Wednesday and Thursday following the release of the weekly brief, I will host 45-60 minute recorded teleconferences limited to 30 members each. The teleconference will start with a brief introduction of the topic but will be largely a Socratic discussion on that week’s topic with members adding their opinions and analysis to the forum. Prior questions and thoughts can be emailed to me in advance, but definitely not a prerequisite. The teleconferences will be limited so I would ask that we all be good citizens and only attend one per week. My expectation is that life and business will likely mean only half of you can attend a conference in any week. The conferences will be recorded and you can look at them as awesome podcasts that you can review at your leisure if you are unable to dial in. If I am wrong about the desire to attend the teleconference live (i.e., demand is higher than availability, I would be willing to consider adding one more conference per week).

All briefs and teleconferences will be archived and accessible to members so long as they are members. I will likely keep a four month rolling archive so that materials will come off after being on for four (4) months. Of course, the archive will be searchable and organized by relevant topic.

Guest Lecturers

Once or twice per month (depending on availability), a guest lecturer will take over the collective for the week. You will have a few weeks advance notice of who the guest lecturer is going to be for a particular week. Members will know the topic the guest lecturer will cover the previous week and the same case study process will occur. The goal is to make sure that there will be a very rich experience with the guest lecturer vs. a simple guest post or passive presentation. Even though I think guest lecturers will truly enjoy the experience, I will absolutely be paying the lecturer for their time and expertise. My desire is to have each guest lecturer fully engaged in providing an in-depth and remarkable experience for members.

Facebook Group

The collective will have its own private Facebook Group where members can communicate and share ideas with each other both in general and specific to the relevant week’s topic. My goal with the group is for it to be dynamic and engaging as a workgroup. I will monitor and add to the conversation a few times daily.

Cost

Two hundred and fifty dollars per month on a rolling four month subscription basis (i.e., you sign up for four months at a time). If I have to develop a wait-list, you will have to provide 15 days notice if you are going to end your subscription. Only fair to those waiting.

What Makes You Remarkable?

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What makes you remarkable? So personal. Like asking, who are you really? Why do you matter? Why should I care? Do I believe you? Do you believe you?

We all spend our time pondering these questions. At least we should.  We are meant to live remarkable lives. To live with purpose and drive; to bring ourselves to the party. It makes no difference what “it” is so long as it is ours.  Everybody’s quest is for our own meaning.

Now move to your art and your creative business. Why are your answers any less meaningful, any less profound, any less introspective? What makes your art remarkable? Your creative business? Are you remarkable because you care? Because you provide great customer service? THAT is what makes you remarkable? Are you sure because I am not.  You have to be able to say that you are the best in the world (your world) at what you do.  If not, why not? Just because others practice your art does not make them remarkable or not relative to you.  Remarkable is not a relative question. Remarkable is a fingerprint – it belongs to your art and your creative business alone.  Of course, this means you and only you can answer the question as to what makes your art and your creative business remarkable.

Many of you read the above and think I am pushing platitudes and idealisms. After all, no creative business is truly remarkable in its own right. Too many competitors and choice for any one business to be remarkable. Remarkable as not being relative is an illusion.  And so it goes to say that you are only part of a category. Maybe the category is remarkable but your art and creative business are remarkable mostly for being in the category, not the other way around. To which I say, work harder, dig deeper, find the essence of what you believe your art and your creative business to be.

Arrogance is refusing to accept the grace of humility and to live only in expectation and entitlement. Do not be arrogant, but do not mistake arrogance for conviction. Your art and your creative business exist to be remarkable. Think for a second what it would mean to live in that skin. It would mean no apology for what you know to be true, the wisdom of your gifts and the power of your vision. Your clients can only appreciate the wisdom and vision, embrace their power and accept them. Your clients cannot, however, fully understand your wisdom or the depth of your vision, so do not expect them to. No fish will ever treasure the fresh air. Instead, be remarkable as your clients have every right to expect you, your art and your creative business to be.

These days are the beginnings (or the middle) of the busy moments for your creative business. Spring has sprung. As life blooms again, so does the desire to find joy. Make no mistake that is why your creative business exists – to help your clients find joy. And to help clients find the joy they seek from your art and your creative business, your art and your creative business have to be remarkable. More to the point, you have to KNOW why your art is remarkable so that knowledge can find its way into every moment your creative business spends with your clients.

Every day is an opportunity to learn, an opportunity to see cause and effect. When you bring all that makes your art and your creative business remarkable to the surface, see where that takes your relationship. My guess – it will make you resilient, determined and confident in your and your creative business’ ability to deliver joy. So go ahead, ask the question out loud: what makes your art and your creative business remarkable? Now live there and nowhere else.

Breaking The Model Vs. Redecorating

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New website, new prices, new contract. Some creative business owners believe that when they embark on these missions, they are breaking the model, not just redecorating. They are wrong.

The IPhone really is not all that different from cell phones that came before. Cooler and more functional sure, but not that different. Add in apps though and now we are in another realm. Exponential third party functionality growing exponentially every day. The premise that a phone itself could be both a product and an annuity generated by third party participation was and is groundbreaking for any piece of technology.

If your creative business is premised on what others are not, maybe you are breaking the model. However, if you are just redefining what you (and everybody else) already does with fancy words, you are not breaking anything but rather putting a shiny coat of paint on the same house.

A note: both are really important efforts. For instance, if you change the way you price to get yourself the money you need to do the best art you can create, awesome. Maybe that is going to hourly from flat fee or percentage from flat fee. Works for me if it works for you. However, if you do the same thing you have always done, the same way you have always done it, just with a different price (even if calculated differently) you have not broken anything, just dressed up better.

Breaking the model means redefining your risk so that the change is a reflection of the redefinition, not vice-versa. Translation: get paid for what you are all about. If you are all about design, get paid for design. All about production, get paid for production. So if you are all about design but do not charge a design fee, charging a fee actually makes sense and is, ironically, a better reflection of your current model than the way you might be doing things if you do not charge for design. Changing your price to be a reflection of an underlying shift in your creative business, that is breaking the model.

Breaking the model can and should be even more fundamental though. It should mean changing the ENTIRE value proposition you offer so that you approach your creative business in a radically new way. Literally, see the world from a different perspective and build your creative business accordingly. Up will be down and down up, but it will all make sense given a fresh perspective.

Let’s look at what my client Jeff Antoniuk has done in his approach to teaching music to adult jazz amateurs.

The basic approach to teaching music is just like any other form of education. There is a goal, an endpoint, an achievable metric. There is a done. Take a class, private lesson or other form of education and there will be an end. And for so many musicians, this works well. However, for the narrow band of fanatics, it does not.

At a certain point, for the fanatical adult amateur jazz musician, incremental change is what is hoped for.  Like the scratch golfer that obsessively takes lessons hoping to shave a stroke or two off his/her score. For these fanatics, done sucks. So along comes Jeff to ask what does the world look like for these adult amateur jazz fanatics if he erases done?

Well, everything. Instead of focusing on done, Jeff has to focus on perpetual engagement, community and passion for the music. For his business, it means consciously NOT squeezing the most out of a student but rather engaging in a significant ongoing investment. The promise is to engage for years, not months, and seek a commensurate investment. Jeff’s students are worth between seven to ten thousand dollars EACH to him over four to six years versus those that same students that might be worth maybe a thousand or so over six months. Oh, and fanatics need community, so students learn in groups. Each group has four or five students. And the more groups, the better the community. Why not ten to fifteen groups? If you see the world from the eyes of the fanatic amateur jazz musician, bingo. Not so much if you are determined to live the status quo, since you do not fundamentally believe in continuous anything.

Here is how that plays out. Jeff gives away technical training to students since his mission is perpetual engagement. Fellow music teachers cannot understand why he would ever do that. Hopefully, Jeff, through his teacher training, can teach some teachers to see the world as he does and spread his idea to better serve adult amateur jazz fanatics in communities around the globe. To do that though, these teachers have to see the world through an entirely different lens. Easier said than done since they have been indoctrinated to do the exact opposite — they learned by getting done because that is all there was before Jeff.  Is it worth the effort?  Of course, creating, serving and spreading a creative community always is.

I am certainly not asking all creative businesses to break their model. I am only asking that you consider what the world, your world, would look like if you did. Maybe you will not like what you see and then please redecorate always. But if you can see the possibility that might exist if you lived in a different lens, leap. After all, it is why you decided to make a living as an artist in the first place isn’t it?  We all need fresh eyes for our creative businesses, now more than ever.

P.S. I did an interview with Molly Klein for Benetrends Financial and I am really proud of my answers. Here is the link to the interview.

The History Of Whys

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I had the very good fortune to spend some time talking with Vicente Wolf this morning. He was gracious enough to let me and a friend pick his brain about his thoughts on the current state of the interior design industry.  For those of you who do not know who Vicente is, he is a remarkable interior designer with a storied career that spans over four decades and counting. Vicente is on every “best of” list you can think of for his ongoing contributions to interior design both here in the U.S. and around the world.

We spoke of many things, but the one that sticks out is this thought from Vicente: “Great design requires a history of whys.” As in, it is not enough to think the couch is beautiful, but rather why it is beautiful, why it matters of its own right and in relation to the rest of the space. And on and on to the depth where there is only light. His lament, one that I wholeheartedly share, is the effort to diminish, even dismiss the history of whys. There is comfort (which should make every artist uniquely uncomfortable) in conflating furniture in a room, flowers in a vase, or pretty letters on a page with design. Design can be pretty, however, pretty is never, by itself, design. Design requires talent, intent, vision, structure, experience, faith and, most of all, conviction that the world you see as an artist is the right one for your client.

So what causes the demise of the history of whys? Fear.

On the client side, there is information paralysis. Not only is choice ubiquitous but also juxtaposition belied by choice. If there is an alternative to the couch that is cheaper or presumably closer to what the client hopes the couch to be, why not choose that one? Or the one next to it? Or the one next to that one? All of these choices living in the palm of your hand on your phone.  And more to the point, if the couch is muted for a reason, how to argue when the client seeks to un-mute it? Designers choose for reasons far beyond price or function, they choose for experience, feeling, tapestry. Clients faced with a sea of viable choice are overwhelmed with fear that something other is afoot with the designer.  Something beyond the history of whys.

The fear of alienation is the designer’s plague in today’s world. No designer wants to say definitively, “this is the one” when there are legions of “almost the one” or “could be the one” living just behind the one. So they hide the history of whys so as not to offend.

When it was difficult to access the legion of the possible, it was easier to say with conviction that this is the one. Ironically, ubiquitous choice exposes those who have not done their work to be a voice for the history of whys, just not for the reason you might think. It is not because designers are less savvy or knowledgeable than their clients on a particular item. The designer might very well be not as up to date on a particular couch as the client who spent the last several days on the Internet researching the couch. Nope, it is because the designer cannot explain the role of the couch in the designer’s vision. Left only with pretty, they lose unless they can confuse pretty with design. So the spiral begins until those who live on the history of whys have to succumb to justifying pretty and answer the question about whether another couch could work with the design.  Power yuck.

Is choice going to become any less ubiquitous? Of course not. Will those, like Vicente, who have always made the choice that matters to them and their vision have to learn to adjust to those determined to see only pretty? Also, of course.

BUT BUT BUT, the future cannot exist for creative business without the history of whys. When stuff takes over, the breath of artistry is extinguished.

There is hope though.  Beyond the fear is opportunity. If design were about the ingredients, everyone would be a great chef. The best ingredients matter.  Art matters more. Every designer will have to own the history of their own whys to succeed.  It will be why you are paid. It will also put the focus squarely back on the creative in creative business, where it has always belonged.

Yes, it is scary to live in the history of whys when pretty is around the corner. Who cares? Do it anyway. You would not be here in the first place if the chaos of the unknown did not beckon you home.  Better to be there than to drown in a sea of pretty.  Many thanks Vicente.

Ask The Right Questions

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This is not school. The unasked question is not the only bad question. Worse, far worse, for creative businesses is asking the question that is designed to categorize a client rather than reveal more about what you and your creative business truly care about. Literally, your question shoots you, your art and your creative business in the head before the answer is ever given.

Need an example? A potential design client just bought a 5,000 s.f. vacation house on the beach for 5 million dollars (you looked it up on Zillow.com). Your first question is “What are you looking to spend on décor?” Not, “What Drew You To The House?” or even “What Drew You To My Work”. Now, for some clients, budget goes first, but for others, budget is relative. For those where budget is relative to the art you are providing, talking about budget first is alienating to say the least. Of course, budget matters, just not first, at least not for this client. By asking about budget first, you demonstrated a disconnect – you do not care about what the potential client does. Maybe you can overcome the disconnect, but I would bet heavily against it.

Some of you (okay, all of you) should have an eyebrow raised. Hidden in my example is the assumption that budget is a selector. If the potential client has a 1 million dollar budget, you will treat them differently than if they have, say, a $200,000 one. The budget question is designed to categorize the client, not be a reflection of the business you are actually running. Unless your mantra is bang for the buck, more for less, the question sucks. Here’s why.

Clients have to care about what you care about. They have to see value where you do, else you will never ever find success. The problem with asking sorting questions is that, by definition, it conveys that there is more than one category. Except for you, your art and this aspect of your creative business, for this client, there is only one category. Note I am not saying your creative business cannot have more than one area of business (i.e., high end and low end). What I am saying is that you cannot ask your client which language they would like to speak. Your language, how you will best communicate, is up to you, not them.

To be specific, if you are asking questions that exist to sort a client, stop. Instead, ask questions that affirm the values you know will drive the process that will, in turn, produce great art.  Please, please, please only speak the language that matters most to you, your art and your creative business.

You can tell me all day long that clients do not know what they want and so you have to try to “figure them out.” To which I have to say, build your business on the continued ignorance of your clientele at your own risk. Your clients may not be able to do what you do, but that does not make them stupid. They know the transformation they seek and it is up to you to confirm the transformation you provide, not redefine their sought-after transformation. Amplify is not redefinition by the way. The ideas is to ask questions that convey connection, to set expectation of what is to come, to allow creativity, your creativity, to flourish.

Here is another way to think about it. No conversation with a true artist starts as a mystery. However a client found their way to you and your creative business, they are drawn to you. Sometimes, they are drawn for the wrong reason (a topic for countless blog posts), but most often they are where they need to be. The goal of the questions you ask then has to be to tell them they have no other place to go. Or you can continue to try to put your clients in a box with your questions. Good luck with that.

Getting The Exact Wrong Reaction

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Most creative business owners are people pleasers. After all, 99.9% of creative businesses are in the happy business. You, your art and your creative business exist solely to bring joy to your clients. Even on the commercial side, the aim is to help a business client achieve what they seek through your work, not destroy it.

In the name of go along, get along, sometimes (well, too many times), you agree to what is exactly opposite to your and your creative business’ self interest. Delay three months without changing anything? Sure. Show another design for no additional cost? Whatever the client needs to feel comfortable. Let a vendor you do not know or trust work alongside you? What could go wrong with Aunt Jane next to you?

Even worse are those artists who refuse to be the leader for fear of being perceived as a dictator. I mean if you want to talk about the couch before we have established paint color, I suppose that would be fine. Whatever you need.

We have all been there. You feel like you are doing right by your client (and maybe even employees, vendors and colleagues) by keeping your opinions on mute. Accommodation, we all think, is the grease to the wheel, makes the process that much easier and endears everyone to us. Except it does the exact opposite. Every time.

The reason is simple. You are the artist and the expert. Your credibility is directly correlated to your willingness to stand for what you believe, educate everyone on the impact of your accommodation and resolute as to its cost. Oh, and not because it is in your contract, but because it is in your contract for a reason.  You have to give teeth to the reason, not words on a page.

Aunt Jane might be amazing but you do not know her and cannot trust her until you know she can deliver what you need her to do at the level your client demand of your creative business. If your client would like for your creative business to use Aunt Jane, it will be $10,000 for you to analyze her business. By the way, $10,000 is not made up and would be the LEAST amount of money I would charge a client to evaluate a vendor I do not know to use on one of my projects if I were in your shoes. For those that think this is nuts, value the impact of Aunt Jane’s failure on your creative business both for the particular client and beyond to your reputation, the alienation of Aunt Jane’s competitor you are not using, and the scathing review of everyone other than your client viewing Aunt Jane’s failure (i.e., potential clients, employees and colleagues). That is not even counting the amount of work you would need to do to actually vet Aunt Jane’s business.

It is not about being perceived as good or bad, accommodating or difficult, it is about being confident in your own ability to produce great art on your terms. So instead of quieting that pit in your stomach when someone throws the inevitable curveball, realize that the pit is a sign that you need to seize opportunity. The opportunity to demonstrate your expertise, share your opinion as to why it needs to go this way, AND the cost of not going this way. Because if you miss the opportunity, it is not just gone, it is its own pain. Every moment you do not act the expert is a moment that validates the idea that you are just a member of the audience, not the star (or co-star) of the show. The proverbial loose thread if there ever was one. There is no saving it for later (when it really matters?). Each time you remain silent in the name of being a team player makes it that much harder to ever assert yourself, you artist’s vision, your true expertise. Never ending pain that only ends when the project does and sometimes not even then.

Your art and your creative business exist because of your talent, your vision, your expertise, your voice. This is what your clients actually pay for, not to be their friend or to give them the power to make decisions they are not educated enough to make. So go make great art, your way with your voice heard as loudly as your expertise runs deep.  Amateurs need not apply when you are expected to be the professional in the room.

Free Is Free

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So let’s lay out an all too common scenario. Your favorite project length for your creative business is four months. You happen to be slow at the moment and for the next month but busy down the road, four months from now. The same client comes to you and says they have identical projects, one for a month from now, one for four months from now. However, the budget for the one coming up is $5 and the one four months from now is $10. All extraneous factors aside – repeat client, possible marketing potential, etc. – what do you do?

99% of you would say, “Hey, were not busy now so why not take the $5 project, it is $5 we would not have had. And the $10 project is a good one for the right money.”

For those of you who recognize this as being completely backwards and radioactive to your creative business, you can stop reading now. However, for those of you who think I am out of my mind, take a breath and read on.

The power of creativity is what you, the artist, the creative business owner says it is. If you are willing to define creativity based on relative demand for your art, you are literally turning over the decision of what you are worth to someone else.   Why oh why would you ever do that if you did not have to?

Even more, what it takes to do your best is absolutely a function of time. The more time you have to design, prepare and then ultimately produce a project, the better. Sure, some of you are great crammers, but cramming does not a business foundation make; only definable, reliable process does that. If it usually takes you four months to complete a project well, shortening the time has to be more expensive, not less. Your business process is an accordion. An accordion stretched looks nothing like an accordion compacted, except it is one instrument. You can stretch or compact your process but the steps NEVER change. Your creative business does what it does best, how you and your staff choose to do it to create and produce your best art. End of story.

Creative business is not a manufacturing business so do not treat it like one. You do not own a factory that needs to be put to use to generate value, meaning the more you use it, the better. Yes, some of you have staff, even assets that need to be used. Okay, but giving away the most valuable part of any creative business, ahem, the creativity, in the name of using the asset is fools play. The plane is not going to fly anyway, the hotel room will not exist regardless of anyone occupying the beds, the machine will not run even if there is nothing for it to do. Not for your creative business anyway. Leave the use it or lose mentality to those capital asset businesses that require the model to sustain them.

Instead, focus on value and what you, your art and your creative business need to do the work the best way you know how. This has nothing, I mean nothing, to do with how busy you are or are not at the moment.

Oh how impractical Sean you might say. Am I really going to turn this work away when I am literally doing nothing? Maybe not, but at least acknowledge that you will then no longer have control of your value and own the price you will have to pay for that. Given the scenario I set out above, please acknowledge that the real price for the first project is $40. You need four times the resources to do a job in one month as to do one in four. Arguing others might not be busy either (and therefore cheaper) only compounds the issue and does not solve it. All creative business has intrinsic value or it does not. Your goal is to collectively defend that value, not look for ways to help your client destroy it.

And for those of you who want to say I just do not understand seasonality, fine. However, what if instead of saying yes in January to a February project you said yes in August instead? Those clients willing to honor and respect all that you and your creative business do to create and produce your art deserve to be rewarded, not the other way around.

There Are No Guarantees

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We live in a world where there are no guarantees. No promise that if you work hard, be a person, a business, of character, integrity and purpose you will win the day, the client, the game. I suppose we never did live in this world, however, we (okay I) could always cling to the illusion given examples we could see of this vision of success.

The idea that someone, some business, could lie, cheat, undercut, oversell to “win” seemed to be, at best, a temporary and, ultimately, self-defeating strategy at best. The race to the bottom is always filled with those willing to go lower. Not so much anymore.

When people, businesses, are willing to do the very thing they cannot, we all lose. When no one or, better, no group stands up to say this way sucks, we give in to the notion that what is is all there is. Instead of spending our time seeking a new path forward, we lionize false prophets.   We cheer those who say the tried and true is a permanent truth. We dismiss the rabble rousers as lost in their naïveté. We leave the true disruptions to others.

I suppose this is the track Seth Godin has been on forever. His message was never lost on me, but the depth of his call to action, the intractability of the known was a scintilla of what I have come to see today.

We cannot begin to be better until we admit our own humanity. We are all wrong at some point. We all have something to learn and being smarter than the next person is not a race to win, but an opportunity to raise that person up. The sum of human intelligence rests in each of our cell phones. There is no point in saying you know better when the other person can just look it up.

Instead, find your mission. Look outside of your own prism to say what has to be a bigger purpose than just surviving. And make no mistake, landing that big project, the “golden” opportunity at the expense of your integrity, your character, your purpose is surviving no matter how bright the light. You are derivative and you are kidding yourself if you think that derivation will not bite you stronger every day.

I feel like I am watching creative businesses in so many categories slip into the paradigm of yesteryear.  Business owners fighting over projects that make no sense. Using antiquated processes all in the name of inertia (i.e., this is how we have always done it). Just because it does not feel broken does not mean it is not. Too many are propping up the illusion of success in the face of immense trouble in paradise. Rather than look inward, blame the client, the other guy.  Worst of all is the deep investment of the “old guard” (which include far too many acolytes that belong in the “new guard”) to dismiss those who seek to change, to evolve as quaint in the way of the world.

Truth may not win out. Character, integrity, vision may be, for the foreseeable future, lost to those who “win” no matter the price. Despite being the most connected as humankind has ever been, we have never been lonelier. Isolating bubbledom has an ever stronger allure. Or.

We can own the responsibility given to creative business. Own the idea that what you create is valuable because you say it is. That nobody needs what you do does in no way diminish its importance. Only you can do that by being willing to be derivative, by worshipping false prophets, by acting directly against your self interest. There is a better way only if you choose to acknowledge your own humanity and your own grace. Find those that wish to lift you up and be lifted in the process. The community does exist but it must start with the power of your own voice.

My prayer is not for those with character, integrity and conviction to defeat those who are willing to be derivative. That is false hope. No, my prayer is the collective voice of art, those who can create a world none of us have yet seen, find community and the power in the community to develop beyond the limitations now imposed on them. Better said, for new voices to sing with old acknowledging we are always a work in progress, never always right or wrong. Erase everything. Acknowledge that the only truth for creative business is the vast power of creativity and, from there, start again.

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