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It’s Not About You. Or Is It?

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As he is wont to do, Seth Godin wrote a great post a few days ago about what triggers trust. I love the two issues he sees:

  1. The trustworthy person or organization that fails to understand or take action on the symbols and mysteries that actually lead to trust, and as a result, fails to make the impact they are capable of.
  2. The immoral person or organization who realizes that it’s possible to be trusted without actually doing the hard work of being trustworthy.

Apply these issues to creative businesses and you have me spinning from the moment I read Seth’s post over the weekend.

Simply, whoever you need to trust you, your art and your creative business has to be able to see themselves in your vision. It does mean they have to want to be like you or even like you for that matter (although it helps), it just means they have to see you as a catalyst for their dreams. Dreams as in what clients hope you will create for them beyond the physical – how you will bring their best selves to life.

You have to know what the triggers are to instill confidence and trust that you appreciate, embrace and can fully articulate their vision in your art. Your portfolio will NEVER, EVER be able to do this work for you. Of course, it is a great start, but only a start.

I am not going to focus on Seth’s second concern – where you can talk the talk but not walk the walk because I am of the (naïve?) opinion that, when it comes to creative business, bad work is ultimately unsustainable. If you bait and switch, are unresponsive, take all of your money up front, you are just begging to get your ass kicked by a creative business that does not. You are just not that good. Nobody is.

Instead, my eye is on those who are unwilling to let clients, employees, colleagues alike find themselves in your answers, your vision, your value. These people I will call the humble egotists. Why? Because they most often talk about what it takes to hire them. Even if the client asks how much do you charge, starting there is the surest way to communicate that only your story matters. If you listen and then talk about why you create the art that you do, what you would hope to create for them, you, of course, are talking about yourself, your art and your creative business, just in a way that allows a client to tell themselves their story in your answers. Subtle it may be, but massive nonetheless. The first kills trust dead, the latter cements the foundation.

No one said running a creative business was easy. It is not hard for the obvious reasons (hours, energy, labor, etc.). Every business has this in common. No, creative business is hard because it demands that you reveal yourself. The work you do might cost a lot of money, but it is not expensive to the right client. If you cannot understand the difference, you have not yet allowed yourself to be exposed – truly judged as to the essence of what you are tasked to create beyond the thing.

The story beyond the image is all that matters. Trust lives there. So must you and your creative business.

The Power of Story

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Bill Baker defines storytelling as “an exchange of meaning shared from one person to another for a purpose.”

“For Sale: Baby Shoes, Never Worn.” Hemingway’s (supposedly) shortest story.

It means something to you because of your life experience and what you imagine it to be. For most, it speaks of tragedy. Some, however, may just think the baby never needed them.

Your creative business exists to create meaning, to be the story. What that story is, how you want to tell it and who you want to tell it to are your decisions. This is what Bill does and if you are able to be in Toronto on April 14, 2016, you should come to The Business of Weddings whether you are in the wedding business or not. You will learn something that will help you improve how you tell the story of your creative business. No doubt.

Me – I am all about the underneath of the story; how your business acts as the foundation to the story it is wrapped in. To paraphrase Seth Godin, no creative business is built for everyone. It is built for a “you”. The you who will resonate loudest with your creative business’ mission, its purpose, its why. The story of the creative business with the foundation set amplifies the story as a speaker would standing above the crowd. It is how I see the interplay between what Bill and I do and what I will talk about at The Business of Weddings.

The point of your creative business is to sell unused baby shoes to those who most want to see the light in the purchase, not the dark. Meaning shared for a purpose – Joy. Joy is what you get paid to create, to use to transform, to inspire.

Joy only comes to those who want and are able to receive it from you, your art and your creative business. The rest will look for the dark (can I get it for less, it isn’t brain surgery).

Ignore them. Your story is not for them. As with all things, storytelling is a skill. You can learn to be more effective at it. You need to acquire the tools available, but then you need to use them in a way that is radically yours.

In the spirit of Hemingway: if you create the same way for a $5,000 project as you do a $50,000 one (i.e., process, contract, etc.), you need a better story.

From Fertilizer Comes Flowers

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Overcoming adversity is the testament every successful person on the planet shares. Until you get knocked down, you have no idea what it is to get back up. Such is the beauty of life. However, that is not my focus today. Instead, I am writing about when the new version of you, your art and your creative business gets shredded.

As you evolve, learn your story, stand in your own light, you will come to have the intellectual understanding of how it all works. It will all make sense. You might even be able to sell it to potential clients, employees and colleagues. They were the ones ready to say yes in the first place. Then there will come along that client, employee or colleague who will find the weak spot – the place where intellect fails and conviction has to take over. And they will tear you down. Nothing worse.

Haters are going to hate, but shredders never look the part. Shredders want to believe in you but can smell uncertainty a mile away. Uncertainty breeds distrust and distrust is cancer. Distrust grows until your process is undone by your own lack of conviction.

It would be lovely if you could avoid the shredder but you cannot. They are a right of passage we all must endure to get to our bellies. They are there to show you the way to yourself, your art and the essence of your creative business’ value. You should thank them after you move past the deep desire to beat them with a stick.

You should thank them because they are making you defend the indefensible – you do it this way because it is YOUR way, intellectual or not. So long as you are not in the “Trust Me” business, but rather the “I Will Earn Your Trust” business, you will own your value after going through a few shredders. You might have to step up your game when it comes to proving and earning the value you demand, but that can only be a good thing.

Here is an example: if you are an interior designer who thinks themselves a presenter, have shifted to understanding the power of your ideas and the need to be paid for them, but not improved your presentation skills, you might underwhelm the shredder. Worse, you might invite the shredder to be a collaborator (“Can I see a few more options?” “What if we did the room in blue, not green the way you want to?”). All of a sudden, the idea that your client can only say yes or no and/or pay you money has disappeared along with your process. Shredders are the worst back street drivers there are, so if you let them in your car you better know how to drive.

The beauty of shifting to your own intrinsic process is that it is a statement on what you believe to be most valuable. The shadow of the shift is that you are probably not ready to prove it when you first do it. Shredders are awesome at exposing your own naïveté and demand that you recognize that the spotlight has no room for uncertainty. Never blame the shredder though. Sure, they might be crazy, but you have yet to move into your belly. If you get paid for presentation as a designer, you better make it worthy of the price. This is the lesson – fertilizer only makes flowers if you are willing to recognize the necessity of putting it in the ground in the first place.

Commissions

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I spoke this morning on Periscope about commissions in creative business; specifically non-transparent commissions. The topic is such a hot button, I thought I would also write about it again here.

I have long been out there saying how much I am against commissions where the client is unaware of the practice and has to pay the price by getting less for their money than they otherwise would without the commission. That much has not changed in the perfect world.

What has changed is my acceptance that we do not and cannot live in a perfect world. The practice of non-transparent commissions is pervasive. In the event world, it is almost impossible to find a name player who does not engage in the practice. In the interior design world, “trade discounts” are the worst kept secrets at any vendor of hard goods. And on and on for other industries.

Here is the thing: until we create a better mousetrap, the practice will live on. Rather than vilify those that engage in the practice, I am going to choose to take another approach. Yes, there are those who are enormously greedy and do not care who suffers so long as they get theirs. There is no point in talking about reforming these folks. Instead, I am going to presume the vast majority of creative businesses in the practice of taking and receiving commissions, transparent or not, are attempting to make what they need to make to support their businesses.

If you need, in general, 20% on your projects but believe the market will only support charging your client 10% and receiving the rest in commissions, so be it. The point is that we as creative professionals have not been collectively engaged in education and transformation, both to the client and within our industries. You can say that it is because we are invested in the way things are, that it is easy or maybe a bit of both. It makes no difference, the urgency to change just is not there. Yet.

Until clients understand what is necessary for a creative business to create its art and appreciate the value provided, the commission practice will continue. If you want for the practice to change, you have to offer a compelling alternative.

In the event world, I very much applaud what folks like Marcy Blum and Valerie Gernhauser are doing. Marcy with her EPIC Collaborative Course to show the power and value of what an ultra sophisticated planner can and should do in the ultra-luxe market. Valerie with her Sapphire Sessions – trying to teach wedding planners across the country how to charge their true value.

Valerie owes a debt of gratitude to Tara Guerard who has long been transparent about her business practices and has set the mark for what wedding planners ought to be charging (i.e, between 20% and 30% of a budget). You need only look at the vitality of the Charleston market and the strength of the players there to understand my point. Tara had a huge hand in establishing the value provided by wedding professionals and the market benefitted. Great work paid as great work begets great work by many great artists. Social media amplifies that statement exponentially.

If creative businesses can get paid what they need, the power of commissions diminishes. The power will disappear when the information economy becomes the ultimate gatekeeper.

We can rail all we want at the practice of non-transparent commissions. However, when it looks as if a client is paying substantially less to a commissioned player, it is almost impossible to compete if those in the game refuse to acknowledge its existence.

The way out is not shame. The way out is a better educated client on value and process. Even more, the way out is a better mousetrap. Those with the power to garner commissions have to be able to see opportunities to use that power to generate more than they can with commissions. We all have to be invested in figuring out what that is and showing the way there.

The beauty of the world we live in today is that great work is its own reward as bad work is its own demise. If you suck, paying a commission is not going to help you. Such is the power of our information age. And that is what has changed in the six and a half years since I wrote my first post on commissions. You might have to pay a commission to get in the door, but you have to stand on your own two feet to stay there.

That changes the game. For everybody. The question is, what are we all going to do about it? Not as a question of good/bad, but as a way to become ultimately self-sustaining beyond anything the commission structure presently offers. Translation: time has come to create a better way and we all need to get to work.

What Are You Worried About?

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Here comes that time of year again. 2016 looks good but the proverbial phone is not ringing enough. Money is running low –   holiday hangover, taxes coming due, deposits spent. Water is rising and you worry you are going to drown. After all, that prime date, time for the plum project, pending business deal are all still open. Hey you cannot eat potential anything. And you are getting hungry.

Clients, specifically awful, soul-sucking clients, smell panic and worry better than sharks smell blood. Their money looks greener than anyone else’s because you can see it, taste it, even touch it. Bird in the hand right? Hearing a yes and watching your bank account rise is there to ease your worry. Every year you tell yourself you will not go down this road, but oh the temptation, the “need” to take care of things. This time will be different. Without the worry, you can work on getting the “right” clients and they will magically appear. Just like the confidence fairy.  Ouch.

The best part of all creative businesses is that they are entirely based on the irrational. I cannot say it enough. No one needs what you do. No one. And yet, if done well, a client’s want feels like a need – to both of you. The point is to honor the irrationality of creation and stay there. When you go down the rabbit hole of worry, you look for the way out and rationality, delusional as it might be, looks like the way. So you take business that does not fit simply because it takes irrational worry away. Circular logic to be sure. You need money, so you compromise your integrity to get it, convincing yourself that, when you have the money (which is not real by the way), you will have your integrity back. Yeah, not so much.

Of course, if you are starting out, you do what you have to to make your way. Practice, desire to find recognition, sheer hunger, lets you do things seasoned pros might not touch. We all walk through fire if we want it badly enough. This post is not for you. We will call you three years and younger creative businesses.  Keep doing what you are doing so that you can stand up and be counted much sooner than later.

If your creative business is older than three years, a) congratulations you have made it longer than most start-up businesses, and b) time to put on the big boy/girl pants. You can stand in your own light or you cannot. You have to be able to be paid for the art you create in a manner that is self-sustaining or you need to go away.  Sorry not sorry for being so blunt.

The concept of a starving artist has no place in creative business. The key to great work is great work. Great work requires that you serve your own muse first and foremost. The intrinsic why of your art and your creative business. You get paid for the why and your process is built around it.  Integrity has no trap doors, no rationalizations for the irrational, just faith that great work borne of a process iconic to you and you alone will be its own reward. Only talk to the clients that matter. It does not mean do not talk to everyone, just sing the same song regardless of who is in front of you. The clients who care are those that will sustain your art and your creative business. They are also a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Worry is contagious. We all catch it and it sucks. We know it is fruitless and yet we all persist. I am not here to tell you to stop. I can worry with the best of them.  Let all those much wiser than me guide you there.

Just worry about something else, something that will make a difference to your creative business: whether or not you are being true to yourself, your art and your creative business. Worry that you are not being irrational enough. Do you know matters most to your clients?  How far are you going to communicate your value? Is that how you are paid? Is it truly what you need?  Can you sing your song ever purer and more confidently?

Tomorrow can never take care of itself if you are busy selling it out for today’s worries.

What Happens When Your Clients Are Morons?

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Here is the thing.  For the most part, clients of creative businesses are smart.  Really really smart.  They have made their way enough in the world to be able to afford the services of a creative business.  Yes, there are varying degrees, but the ability to hire a creative business is evidence of success – financial and otherwise.

For some clients, the ability to invest in a creative business and to allow the art and the artist’s process to thrive is in full view.  These clients know that they are hiring the creative business for its gifts.  They know what they do not and cannot know.  We love these clients and respect them for their knowledge of their own ignorance.  Their ignorance is the desire to trust in a creative business’ ability to teach and to execute.  Simply, you get to do what you do, how you want to do it.  This is the recipe for success on every level.  We will call them smart clients.

Too often though, clients believe themselves to be collaborators; peers to the art and the creative business behind them.  Technology has only fueled the monster.  In the hands of these clients, Pinterest, Instagram, YouTube, etc. is, or should be, the bane of every creative business’ existence.  These clients are morons, not because they are in any way unintelligent, but rather because they refuse to accept that they do not know what they do not know.  These clients seek to marginalize a creative business at every turn.  They will question your process, your fee, even your design choices.  Most often, they will refuse to accept the axiom that needs to be true of every client of a creative business: once engaged, the only thing a client should be able to do is to say yes or no and/or pay you money.  That is it.  So when you get things like, “Can you just tell me what you think about XYZ” before you had a chance to present a complete design, please do one of two things: say no, it will wait until my presentation, or, if you have not been hired yet, run.

The one thing you can never do if you are confronted with clients who reveal themselves to be morons is to try to turn them into smart clients.  Will never happen and will only lead you into a power struggle from which you cannot survive.  What you have to do though is respect the art that your moron client seeks.  You might not think cocktail napkins are important for the after-party, but if the client does because they saw the cutest picture on Instagram, you have to also.  You just do not have to think about it when they tell you to.

Fundamentals and foundation are there for a reason.  You have to be able to go back to them in any situation.  Be grateful for moron clients.  They force you to stay true to your process no matter what.  You will present cocktail napkin ideas for the after-party at your presentation, to be viewed in context of the entire design, when you want to show the element. Not a second before or after.  Your process is yours alone.  Your way is the one that you know will bring you to your best work.  At the end of the day, this is what you are paid to do for smart and moron clients alike.  Moron clients are made not born.  They take you out of yourself because you let them.

It is not good customer service to indulge the notions of a moron.  Their success is not yours, just the mechanism that allows you the opportunity to provide yours.  If they could do what you do, they would.  Yes or no, pay or do not pay.  That is front and center in your work.  Smart or moron, you must be tireless in your efforts to make these decisions as powerful as they can be for both your art and your creative business.

I know moron is pejorative, hard to hear and to listen to over and over in this post.  Then again, being wholly disrespected for months on end is reason enough to acknowledge the depth of the word and how hard you must on your foundation and fundamentals.  That, of course, is the essence of your art and your creative business.  Moron clients only exist if you let them.  Please do not.

Desire

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So you run a creative business.  However you came to the decision, just hanging out your shingle is enough to show your willingness, your gumption to go your own way.  The question then is how deep does your desire go?  Mike Tyson is really well known for saying that everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.  What will happen/has happened when you get punched in the mouth?

Desire is not masochism.  Desire is the willingness to endure, even enjoy the virtuous cycle – fail, adapt, learn, succeed, fail, adapt, learn.  Success and failure are poor measures of performance, rather your ability to adapt and learn.  Notice adapt and learn, not the other way around.  You can only learn by doing in creative business.  Change your model with the best of intellectual and professional experience, then let the world teach you.  In the words of Seth Godin, you have to ship.

I am a nerd and I am a sponge.  I want everyone and everything to teach me something new.  Mostly I want the world to teach me their why.  How come they chose to do things this way?  Where are they going and how come they are adamant that they will get there.  Read this New York Times article about the opportunity in front of Netflix and where Reed Hastings wants to take the company (i.e., be a media behemoth like Disney and Comcast).  Who cares whether he is right, he believes he is and is building the business to get there.  Oh, and do you really think he saw today’s reality when Netflix started sending you DVD’s in the mail in 1997?  Adapt and learn, rinse and repeat.

One thing is certain: nobody knows the future.  You can plan for it, think you can control it, right until it punches you in the mouth.  Then you will be left with your depth of your desire.  You cannot adapt and learn if you are not willing to see the world around you, to make yourself smart with the things you need to be smart about.  If that is learning business fundamentals – accounting, finance, etc., go do that.  If it is learning how to be better at presenting ideas, go take an improv classs or acting lessons.  If it is about trying to become better at your craft, well, you know where to get that knowledge.  Here’s the rub though: desire dictates that you have to make it your own.  There are no shortcuts to your own truth and that of your art and your creative business.  You are the only one with the answer.

As we are in the time of year for practical change, two suggestions: eliminate the idea of packages and stop with the platitudes.

The word package connotes sameness and is your shortcut to try to get clients to understand what you do by acting like a deli.  Has never worked and will never work for this simple reason: you are not a deli, you are an artist.  Your creative business is there to, ahem, create.  Your size fits one, not one size fits all.  Packages tell the complete opposite story and are, therefore, entirely destructive shortcuts.  Take the time to explain what you do and, most important, why you do what you do.  If you do not have the time, having handy dandy packages do not solve your time issue, they just get you more clients that really have no idea how to value (and properly pay you) for the time you do not have.

Platitudes – great customer service, attention to detail, lover of pretty things – mean nothing.  Why? Because the opposite cannot be true.  So so customer service? Love it when things fall through the cracks? Pretty sucks? If the opposite cannot be true, then everyone must do it and you doing it is expected and essential, not special.  We only do modern interior design.  The opposite can certainly be true and now you have actually told me, the client, something that will or will not resonate with me.

Then have at it: kill your packages, eliminate your platitudes. It is real and demanding work. Crutches are there for a reason.  Except you do not need them and have never needed them.  Desire to be better.  Always.

What Matters?

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A New Year.  Transition into hope.  The prayer to leave behind what is broken, nourish what breathes life.  Answers to both are there if only we choose to look.  The beauty always comes in the unexpected, the unknowable, unforeseen moments that define us.  Gratefulness is the ability to relish the moments without distinction or judgment.  Integrity is the willingness to admit our humanity and forgive our ungratefulness.  Opportunity abounds for those of us humble enough to accept the effort to live with integrity as a perpetual work in progress.  For me, some days are better than others.

This blog is about creative business and how the artists who own them and/or run them can come closer to themselves – as a business.  Now is when I am asked, what can I do to get better, go to the next level, discover a new possibility.  My answer: only do the things that matter.  Matter to you as an artist, your clients who crave the underneath of your art, to those surrounding your business (employees, colleagues, vendors).  Ignore the rest.  If you embrace the notion that your creative business has a purpose beyond money, what is it and can you live it?  Are you willing to not only acknowledge the purpose, but be unyielding in its defense?  What do you have to do to make that defense possible?

Nobody can see what you see.  If they could, they would not need you, your art or your creative business. How far are you willing to go to show, teach, guide those who desire to see what you see?  “Trust me” is always a short cut to yes and the cancer to those who seek to become other.  Do the work because you can, not because it validates anything about you, your art or your creative business.  Own the responsibility to have others see the world through your eyes, even it is with their lens in mind.

Read everything. Study all that inhabits your world and the world next to it.  Then let it go.  At a certain point, where your feet are on the ground is all that matters and all that can matter.  By definition, everybody is an amalgamation of what has come before.  If you choose to live in a reflection of those who have the answer, however, you miss the beauty of what is yours and yours alone.  In the end, the path has to be only for you, your art and your creative business.

For those that want specific advice for improving their creative businesses in 2016: write down the five things you did extraordinarily well in 2015.  Ask yourself why you are so proud of each effort.  It has to be more than you made the most money on a particular project or that you pulled it off.  No, it has to be what you did that makes you stop and say:  that was good, really really good.  Even if 2015 was brutal, there are always five moments.  Of course, if 2015 was ridiculously awesome, it might be hard to limit to five.  Either way, five.  Then ask yourself what you can do with your art and your creative business to do those five things better.  Specifically, what can you do IRRATIONALLY to make those five things better.  Irrationally, in that it will not make any sense to the outside world why you would ever do such a thing.  Then go do it anyway.  Nothing else matters.

When we stumble in 2016, as you and I both will, my prayer is that we are able to find our humility, integrity and gratefulness despite the all powerful temptation not to.  The work is its own reward and moving closer to its purpose worthy of our unwavering effort and desire.

Foundations

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I have a daughter in fifth grade and a son in third.  They do much of their work on IPads now.  If they have to go old school and use actual pencil and paper, often times they just take a picture of their work and turn it in digitally.  And yet they still have to figure out how to do their spelling and math at the fundamental level, even though the machines pretty much will do it automatically.  I, for one, am thankful that our educational system has not gone so far as to forsake fundamentals in the hopes of pushing students farther faster.

I hear all the time from creative professionals that they need not bother learning the foundation when the machines will do it for them.  Whether it is with respect to your art or your business, your goal has to be to break the rules, or at least bend them to your will.  However, you cannot break the rules until you know the rules and why they were created in the first place.

As much as we would all like to believe there is a silver bullet, a panacea for what troubles we might be facing – terrible client, too few clients, bad employees, low bank account, etc. – there is not. NOONE has the answer except you.  However, that answer has to come from education — a willingness to grasp fundamentals to the best of your ability even if it is not your game.  Hey, I cannot sing a note but I work with many musicians on their businesses.  I have to be able to appreciate what goes into the work they do even if I will never be able to read music.  Same with your business.  You do not have to be an accountant but you have to be able to know your numbers and what they mean.  Concepts like seasonality, margin, profit and loss cannot be Greek to you.

Think of it this way:  you ask your clients to relate to your world so you can do what you do.  You are in the role of educator and teach your clients what their vision actually can be.  You expect your clients to be able to make good decisions and you have to own the role of providing the information necessary for those decision to happen.  When the shoe is on the other foot, own the expectations others have of you so you too can make good decisions.  Or you can blindly trust those who say they have the answer.  Good luck with that.

Nuance is everything.  Subtle cues you, your art and your creative business share with the world to say, “This is who we are and why we stand alone” is the distinctive element to your success.  When I ask you why you price the way you do, can you defend it in terms of value delivery?  When I ask you why I cannot change my mind once the design is set, can you tell me why? How well do you embody your four transitions?  Your four P’s?

When issues arise, do you try to address the symptom or the disease?  Is the client, employee or colleague really a jerk or did you help make them that way?  How can you tell the difference?  Are you willing to look at your process to find out?

We should be learning all the time.  Foundations do shift and we have to adjust along the way.  The world is, in fact, round and older than five thousand years.  We have to be willing to live where we are though to the best of our ability.  That means do the work to understand where you are and where you need to go.  Listen to learn, not to be saved.  Evolve as you learn with the hope of moving closer to who you, your art and creative business actually are, not to what the world asks you to be.  The whole point is to move from an ever stronger foundation based on experience, knowledge, and integrity.  Or you can let the machines do it for you.  Your choice.

What Do You Give And Why?

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There is no such thing as balance in creative business.  Balance is equilibrium, one point on the continuum where opposing forces are offset equally.  In a world of fluidity, balance is an illusion.  Literally, you would have to be recalibrating your art, your process, your life daily, hourly to maintain it and to what end?  There are moments that demand sacrifice (talk to any interior or event designer during final install) and moments that ask for contemplation (i.e., when a photographer thinks about the essence of what she wants to capture that day).  Balance does not exist in either case.

Instead, why not ask what you have to give and, more importantly, why you want to give it.  The reasons of why can be myriad – money, ego, artistic integrity, business necessity, honor.  What is almost always borne out of necessity of why.  We are compelled to create and devote incredible energy to the effort.  The real question then is whether the why is self-sustaining, a platform for growth, or, ironically, your own personal governor – the very limitation of your and your creative business’ potential.

When no one needs what you do, the reason you do it has to be because you believe your work matters.  Your work matters to your clients because they are transformed; to your employees so they can be fully invested in your vision; your peers so they can see the future of their art, their craft in your creative business’ eyes; and to anyone else who wants to pay attention how you, your art and your creative business live in integrity.

Yes, you need to make money and receive acknowledgement for your work.  In our world, that is how you get more.  However, these are the by-products of integrity, not its reflection.  Without fundamental responsibility for what you have chosen, the process you live to, the vision you manifest for yourself, your business and your clients, you will be lost in the external.  Success will only be when you are busy, not in how you moved someone.  So you will chase the dragon and the business will grow on the illusion that “busy” is the most important metric.  Regardless of how much you chase, you will eventually be challenged with the choice – busy or value?

Value is what lies underneath, the responsibility, the challenge to transform, the willingness to bet it all on the ability to create art that stirs both those who commission it and those that are simply able to enjoy it.

If you were unable to generate value for yourself, your creative business or your clients, why would you choose to give the energy even if there is the illusion of balance?  The project might pay a lot of money and allow you to be home with family but the client treats you with no respect at all.  Each day a frustration.  We have all been there.  The question I always ask myself when I find myself here is why and then realize I have been asking the wrong question.  It is never about balance, it is about joy and the hunger to create joy for those that can receive it.  Doing work that matters for those that care.

Sometimes you simply do not have it to give.  No time, no energy (physical, spiritual, financial) and maybe even no desire.  Honoring your own limitations is our most important exercise in humanity.  If, however, those limitations are caused by your own refusal to ask why you give first, then you have a ton of work to do.  The external will never fill you – money and/or fame are, and will always be, reflections.

Creative business requires faith in all that has been given, so much of which is beyond your comprehension.  You cannot point to the source of your talent any more than you can point to why someone else does not have it.  You cannot bottle what you have and can manifest; you just have to own it as bigger than you.  The work is its own reward, the ultimate reason why you give all that you do.  From there, you, your art and your creative business will go wherever you are meant to.  Why not let being the best in the world be a call to introspection and integrity rather than a measure of you against your competition?  Let what and why you give drive everything.  See where it takes you, even if there is never any balance.

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