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Messing With Success

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Business is good for creatives.  Clients are commissioning more and more work.  While nothing is certain in this world, things seem to be pretty stable, even growing.  Many of you are just enjoying the busyness.  And, fair enough, it has to feel pretty good to be busy.  So why mess with it?

The best time to do anything in business is when you do not have to.  Borrow money, trim staff, hone your message, your core values.  Fortune gives you the opportunity to question everything, not validation that you were right all along.  More important is the very idea that, for most creative businesses, projects take a substantial amount of time.  Decisions today will impact your business next year.  You are literally setting the stage for what 2015/16 is going to look like in the next several months if you have not done so already.  A better future, where your creative business is more resilient than it is today depends on your willingness to embrace change when it does not appear that you need to.

Let us take borrowing money as an example.  If your creative business is and has been solidly profitable for the last few years and looks good for 2014, why would you borrow money?  Certainly, it is never easy to get a lender to say yes even in the best of times.  But if I told you to buy property insurance to make sure you are protected if something were to happen to your office/shop, you would easily see the value.  No difference here.  Look at your Line of Credit/Loan as insurance against dips that might come along.  No one will want to give you money when you are in a dip, only when you are strong.  Since you are strong now, go get the money as I do hope you have humility to know you may not always be.

How about trimming/replacing staff?  Everything evolves and success tomorrow is predicated on those who most want to live there and not what yesterday afforded.  Being able to keep everyone busy is not the same thing as looking to improve your team.  A thriving business is a great time to attract those that want to take the success further.  Dead weight does not get reborn or ignored, it just gets tolerated.  You owe it to yourself, your art, and your clients to believe, fervently, in the upward spiral.  Nature abhors a vacuum and if you allow yourself to create the void by jettisoning dead weight, vitality will be its replacement.

Honing your message/your core values?  Who are you and what do you do? This is a never-ending question.  And it gets to Why.  Why you do what you do is everything.  The result of undertaking this work now is a deep presentation of value to you, your staff and clients alike.  You will know what your clients pay you (the most) for and you will be uncompromising in the effort.  With wind at your back, it is (or should be) easy to refuse business that will damage the boat.  Saying no not only to obvious misfits but also to the marginal yeses allows those who want to be all in with you, your art and your creative business, to, in fact, be all in.  Now is the time to eat only the best apples.  Letting go of a known thing is never easy, a bird in the hand for sure.  However, making room for only the best, purest distillation of you, your art and your creative business will be its own reward far beyond today.

To What End?

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Why are you in your creative business?  Usually the answer is something more than just making money.  For the vast majority, if it were about the money, you would be better served getting a job.  Regular paycheck, less stress, easier hours.  No, you are in your creative business for something other.  Could be to practice the art you love so much.  Could be the combination of the art you create and the clients you work with.  It could also be to build something from nothing, itself an incredible form of creativity apart from your art.

For many, your business is unsellable, unscalable.  The independent photographer that has no interest in having a staff can only produce as much as the photographer is willing to work.  Literally, there is nothing to sell apart from the photographer.  She stops, the business stops.  Let us call her and the like artisans.  Artisans practice their craft and are, of course, incredibly valuable to their clients and colleagues alike.

Other creative businesses are scalable and sellable.  Photographers that run big staffs with multiple streams of revenue – everything from education to products.  If the lead photographer stopped shooting, the business would carry on.  Let us call these creative businesses creative enterprises.  Creative enterprises are what is valuable to its clients, employees and colleagues alike.  The business beyond the artisan, even though the artisan is surely at the helm.

Whether an artisan or the creative enterprise, the one question that has to be constantly asked is: to what end?  For the artisan, it had better be what matters to the artist first, clients second.  Without the fervent belief that your art and your artistry will enrich all those touched by it, what is the point?  The world does not need another photographer mailing it in to pay the bills.  Once you answer the question, please let it drive your business model.  If it is about capturing the moment for the photographer, then what exactly does that mean and how are you going to go about setting the stage to do just that?  The difference between amateurs and professionals is not success.  A great image can come from anywhere.  No, the difference is in setting the foundation for success.  Professionals know the details, how to prepare, how to behave, how to guide and how to make success inevitable.  Grab a deposit, show up and shoot at your own risk.

For those considering a move from artisan to creative enterprise, why?  If it is about the money, do not.  It has to be about a sense of expansion, a desire to move beyond the limits of your own two hands.  There are huge headaches with managing people and watching your creative business move beyond your ability to comprehend its size and scale.  When you cannot keep it all straight in your head, you will be confronted with how far you are willing to let what you started move past you.  Much much easier said than done.

For creative enterprises, you have to always be asking yourself who would buy your business and why.  As much as the analogy is apt, it ultimately fails.  Your creative business is not your baby.  You may care for it, nurture it, but it is meant to sustain you, not the other way around.  And in the end you are meant to let it go.  The very rare entrepreneur is the one who can both start a business and scale it.  Two incredibly different skill sets.  So if you are not thinking about who might buy your creative enterprise and why, you are holding on to the idea that you are its only steward.  Whether you actually sell or not is an entirely different question.  The analysis, introspection and contemplation of what might come next is what is important.  Have a look at Whitney English’s recent post on why she has decided to sell her Day Designer business, a terrific example of what I am talking about.  Finding what matters always involves letting go, even if there are a million reasons not to.  Have “To What End?” be your guide and see where it takes you.

Every Last Dollar?

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Pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered.  I have talked about pricing many times – about getting paid what you need, understanding margin and risk and the difference between subjective and objective.  What I have not talked about is the amount of work associated with extracting the largest premium for your art as opposed to consciously leaving something on the table.

An example:  let’s say you are a designer and work on a percentage rather than a flat fee.  You know going in that there is an inherent conflict in what you say is needed versus what you need to get paid.  If you are an interior designer, you might think to yourself that the project in front of you will take brain power and resources of your creative business for the better part of a year and you need to get paid $100,000 to make it worthwhile.  If you work on a 30% fee on whatever is spent then you have to do everything in your power to get the client to spend $333,333 on the project.  Except your client has no idea about the $100,000 or that you need to be done in a year.  There is no problem if they want to spend $400,000, but if they want to spend $250,000?  You can see the tension inherent there.  And that is the every last dollar energy.  You believe you can get them from $250,000 to $333,333 and beyond so you take the job and try to “get” the client to spend more.  Up sell is what I hear so many creative business owners call it.  Crap is a better description.

If you look to get every last dollar, you simply cannot live in transparency.  If the client knew that $100,000 was the goal, they might agree to that fee but no more.  The less they know about what you need and what is important to you, the more you can take advantage of your expertise of what things actually cost (or do not).

I believe in value for value with complete transparency.  If the designer needs $100,000 then that is what needs to be said.  The number is also a moving target based on time and, collaterally, the willingness of the client to make decisions, as you and your creative business would have them.  You can and should trade money for the ability to complete the project as you wish.  For instance, the designer could still charge a percentage, get a minimum of $100,000 and cap it at say $125,000 provided the project is completed in twelve months, if it goes longer the fee is and additional $20,000 per month.

Sure, the above project might go to $666,666 and the designer’s creative business would have “missed out” on the opportunity to earn an additional $100,000.  Maybe you can absorb the tension of every last dollar.  Just do not tell me it comes free.  You have to work incredibly hard to maintain integrity between what your art demands and your wallet hopes for.

On the other hand, if you did cap your fee and were transparent, you also got paid.  Your creative business got the freedom to do great work on its terms and its terms alone.  There is no such thing as doing something for less, just doing something for different payment.  If you do it for less, you will get what you deserve.  Bargains belong at Wal-Mart not in creative businesses.  And remember, the designer wanted $100,000 in the first place.  If you get the money you want and have the freedom to do great work on your terms, what else do you need?  Pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered.

Your Legacy

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When you stay at a great hotel, what do you remember?  The décor?  The food? The service?  Since Valentine’s Day is coming, what do you think will be the highlight of your dinner out?  The food?  The lighting?  Conversation?  How about your trip to the dentist?

Think about the millions upon millions of dollars spent on infrastructure, image and all things polish.  In the end though, it is the smallest details of human encounter that define all of us.  A series of moments, rooted in process sure, but deeply improvised is what helps us to feel heard, seen, and, I daresay, loved.

Perhaps all the money you spend on a fancy office, website, PR, etc. is worth it.  For many creative businesses, image matters.  However, without the ability to relate, to find yourself in the underneath of a client’s dreams, it will all be an empty shell – a monument to your own ego.  You will live and die on your ability to pull it off in the end, to have your finished art shine against the competition.  Maybe you are just that good.  For the rest of us though, memories of the art will be driven by the experience of our humanity first, talent second.

So what would it mean to build your creative business around moments, details, human reaction and interaction?  It would have to start with the first contact.

No potential client is calling you to say hi.  You know why they are calling and so do they.  Then why would you start the conversation like they are ordering from a drive through?  The who, what, when, where of the project?  If your business is about legacy, moments, you know those questions will be answered in the course of the conversation.  How well can you listen, learn, embrace, engage the person in front of you?  Will their memory be a smile, knowing that they matter to you, your art and your creative business or the feeling that you are competent to do the work?  It can be both, just not at the same time.  Your legacy, your choice.

And what about when times get rough as they always do in creative projects?  Will you say the proverbial “suck-it-up”, roll over and play dead or choose humanity?  Humanity is to acknowledge the reality, embrace its truth, and offer guidance as the professional you are.  If your culture is perfection, mistakes will come with blame and blame will breed resentment.  There will be bullies and Teflon Don’s.  On the other hand, if your culture is about process and a steady, wise hand, then the journey will be the point and seeing through to the end will breed community.  More we have each other’s back than kumbaya.

Most important though is what clients, employees, and colleagues will say about you in the in-betweens.  What happens when the potential client signs?  What deliverables do they get BEFORE you deliver your final product?  Everyone should take a lesson from architects.  Think about the models, plans, renderings, etc. that they have to show just to get a client to agree to build.  What would your creative business look like if you did the same?  What would everyone say about you then? Do you care?  Value is in the unexpected, the gentle knowing hand.  What about after the project is done?  How do you say goodbye?

Clients have to talk about what lies underneath your art, how your creative business embodied their essence at every step.  All creative business is about connection and your ability to nurture the connection throughout your process.  Make meaning and let that be your legacy.  The art will take care of itself.

Success and Hard Work

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Happily, I am hearing that the outlook for creative businesses in 2014 is very good.  For some, too good, so much work that the creative business cannot handle it all.  Running parallel to the success is our culture’s validation of overwork.  We presume that the ultimate rewards go to those willing to work longer and harder than anyone else.  Call me what you will, but both notions – taking on all that comes your way and overworking are fools play.  Instead of being a measure of a success and the arbiter of a brighter future, they are, as Malcolm Gladwell put so well in his latest book, Underdogs, Misfits and The Art of Battling Giants, evidence that you are about to go over the crest of the inverted u-curve.  When you are at the crest of the u-curve as so many of you are getting to be, the value of no far outweighs the yes regardless how tantalizing the offer.

First, a thought about the difference between creative businesses and traditional businesses.  When a product driven business gets busy, it can scale.  Max out what a factory can produce and then build a new factory.  In today’s world, there are more ways than ever to smooth supply side problems.  Everything from full outsourcing to international temporary labor solutions and the like.  Creative businesses on the other hand, create for a living.  Scale happens slowly if at all and often leads to a crisis of the overall mission of the business.  Sure, you can produce 150 events a year but that is not the same business as one that does 50.  The reason is the intimacy of the work, the intensity of the process and the need to maintain subjective value.  Creativity matters first and most.  You just cannot throw bodies at the problem to solve it.  When a creative business reaches its max, the entire business suffers and ALL clients get less than the best.  Not the same as when a factory maxes out – for the most part, this just means there will be less of the product available.

If you have an understanding of what you, your art and creative business can handle, then let that be enough.  If ten projects is your number, then the price of doing eleven has to be enough to ensure that the ten that came before do not suffer at all.  At a certain point, though, there is no price that can be paid to make that a reality.  And, if you are there, ask yourself if you really want to throw those that honored you, your art and your creative business the most by coming in early, respecting how you do things, etc. under the proverbial bus.

Which leads me to the oxymoronic notion that overwork is to be rewarded.  When you suffer from that delusion, you might believe that there is no limit to what can be taken on and you go over the crest of the u-curve.  Ahem, sleep deprivation is a universal method of torture.  Prolonged sleep deprivation impairs judgment and motor skills.  Yes, there are times we all have to work hard to get the job done.  But we also require rest and downtime to recover.  If you are so busy that you are always stepping on the gas and demanding everyone around you do the same, you are going to lose.  Period.

Think about the why of your creative business.  You are paid to move people, to stir them with your art and all that is behind it.  If you and your staff are unable to be truly present, to value what is before them and the responsibility in their hands, your clients will find someone who will.  Win the battle, sink your ship.

You might wear the fact that you and your staff have been up for days on end as a badge of honor.  Unless you have been unbelievably well paid to do just that (i.e., incredibly tight time frame and pressure), it is more a message that you do not have your proverbial sh-t together than your ability to perform.  Who cares if you pull it off in the end?

Your clients pay for your best.  They deserve just that, nothing less.  For all creative businesses, there is a limit to how far you can go and still do your best.  Ignore those who tell you to just suck it up, work harder.  You will get more and better great work by doing great work, not by doing more work for the sake of the work.  Creativity begets creativity.  Let the rest go.

The Power Position

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Seth Godin’s blog post today, “…Different People Differently” got me thinking.  In the post, Seth argues that now we must talk to each person differently.  No more mass marketing or singular message.  Treat the chess champion differently than the star quarterback.  Know what makes someone tick and make that the conversation. “[The digital age] is a chance to differentiate at a human scale, to use behavior as the most important clue about what people want and more important, what they need.”

For creative businesses, it means talking only your language to your clients, letting only those who will choose to listen matter.  Be uncompromising in the work that you do.  What I think Seth is saying though is that this is not enough.

You are the smartest person in the room.  You know more about what you do than 99.9% of the clients that walk in your door.  Of course, this applies directly to your art and the work of your creative business.  Only you do what you do, how you do it.  More important, you are not talking to people capable of having a peer-to-peer conversation with you.  You are the one with all the power.  You are the expert, the artist.  So what do you do with that role?  How do you honor your position in the relationship? Are you The Autocrat, The Collaborator or The Maestro?

The Autocrat – Might be said prettier, but basically The Autocrat is the “I am awesome, you will get my awesomeness, trust me, give me money and get out of my way.”  The Autocrat speaks with condescension and demands that his client conform to what he expects so they too can be part of the flock.  I am not a fan of the Autocrat, but he does have a place.  There are those clients who want the status associated with The Autocrat and that status is often just as important as the final art.  In the freedom, the Autocrat and his creative business can do what they do.

The Collaborator – The Collaborator is a client’s best friend and he talks to them as if they are his peer and he theirs.  The opposite end of the spectrum from The Autocrat.  The Collaborator teaches by indulging every question, every whim with equal importance.  A client’s voice has the gravitas of his.  While The Autocrat may answer no questions, The Collaborator answers each question at a 101 level, often with another question.  “You do not like the couch?  Okay we will look at as many as it takes to get it right.”  Not “What don’t you like about the couch?”   I am not a fan of The Collaborator either, but, like The Autocrat, he too has a place.  Some clients need hand-holding and want to play artist even if they are not actually one.  So long as The Collaborator gets paid for the effort, who am I to judge?  Perhaps the result of the joint effort is terrific work.

The Maestro – The Maestro expects their clients to participate.  He will ask clients to be versed in the essence of his creative business while providing all necessary information for them to make a meaningful series of decisions.  The Maestro respects clients and their decisions and demands that they do the same.  He understands clients are not him and do not know what he does.  He neither beats a client over the head with his wisdom, talent and experience (the Autocrat) or hides from it (the Collaborator).  Quiet confidence to take clients from idea to execution his way is a Maestro’s hallmark.

Back to Seth’s post and a little revision in my thinking.  I used to think that being the Maestro was the only way to create great art and happy clients.  I was wrong.  I still believe it is the best way and that most clients would prefer to be treated as the Maestro would have them be treated.  However, I now realize some clients need The Autocrat or The Collaborator and working with The Maestro will be an epic fail.

The digital age has offered the opportunity to creative business owners to choose clients based not only on the what but also the how.  Pre-digital age, you could get away with not defining your relationship to power.  Not today.  To paraphrase Seth, it is no longer good enough for you, your art or your creative business to be what your clients want; you have to be what they need.

What Is It Worth?

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Put aside notions of what clients will and will not pay for.  It is an exercise in mental masturbation anyway.

Now ask yourself what YOU would pay for each part of your creative business.  Do it with percentages.  What is your reputation/experience worth?  Your ideas?  Your production?  The end product?  Once you have assigned percentages, then ask how your creative business is doing in getting paid specifically, first for the category and second at the percentage you assigned.  My guess is there is a Grand Canyon between your answers and how you actually get paid.

If you are not telling your clients what they are paying for, then they will be telling you.  When the two do not match (as they will not), your business will be to compromise to meet the desires of your clients.  Of course, this makes your creative business beholden to how your clients want their project completed, not how you want it done.  Good luck with that.

An example: a designer (you pick – fashion, event, graphic, interior) believes his reputation/experience is worth 15%, his ideas 40%, his ability to execute 25% and to deliver the final product 20%.  However, the price is a fee plus the cost of production due a third, a third and a third with cost of production due up front.  Oh, and there is a laundry list of items the designer will provide for the money.

Maybe pricing is industry standard or sounds ok.  His clients do not know that though.  They think it actually means something; that you have thought about it.  So lets look closer.  You are overpaid by more than double for your reputation/experience, underpaid by 7% for your ideas, overpaid by 8% for your production and not paid at all for your final installation/reveal.

What does it mean?  Without belaboring the point, you value your reveal/final product at 20% but get paid nothing.  You send the message to your clients, even your employees, vendors and colleagues alike that the end does not matter, when it really does.  Is it a wonder when problems arise with final delivery?  You can blame your clients, your employees, your dog, but you did it to yourself.  You overvalued your reputation and undervalued your final product.

Yes, you have to get paid what you are worth.  More important is getting paid when you are worth what you say you are.  Alignment of value is everything.  There can be no interpretation or acceptance of a client’s determination of value.  Is it hard?  Sure.  If someone wants to pay your price, what does it matter what they think they are paying for?  Except creative businesses get paid for the journey, not the destination. The destination is interesting, the journey iconic.

Undertaking the journey requires that your clients, employees and colleagues alike acknowledge that it is your and your creative business’ journey first and foremost.  To go along with you, value belongs only where you say it is.  And irony of ironies, the more narrowly you define your value, the more you create.

Why?

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I was recently introduced to the work of Simon Sinek and his ever-popular 2010 Ted talk: Start With Why (has over 14 million views).  Simon’s basic premise is that great leaders, great businesses start with why and work their way out to how and then to what.  Not the other way around.  Of course, I screamed “Yes” when I watched and it resonated with all that I am trying to help creative business owners achieve.  People buy the why and pay for the rest.  The what (i.e., the stuff) you create is a mere sub-set of the why.  Simon gives terrific examples of failures (TiVo) and successes (Apple) and I highly recommend you watch Simon’s talk and/or read his book.

Synchronicity is a wonderful thing.  At the same moment I was watching Simon, a Facebook thread was going on with wedding photographers and someone recommended my blog.  So kind.  The response back though was that I was just providing inspiration and my words were not germane to the discussion about how to make more money as a wedding photographer.

First, I was angry and felt slighted.  Hey, I am human.  I even went so far as to advise the person who recommended my blog that she point the thread to my articles on Design Aglow (which I am really proud of) and to my post, ironically enough, “The Why”.  That should show them.  Thank goodness she did not.

Then I stopped.  I realized that my words are out there for those to take any way they want.  My why is to inspire those who create art for a living to be the best version of themselves; to have the creative business behind the art be a direct reflection of the art it creates.  I wish for every creative business to see themselves as the iconoclasts they are.  And act like it.   Start with why.

To be clear though, I do have a very specific position that does run counter to most traditional business models.  Even if you start with the why, you will lose if your pricing is based on the tangible, the objective.  You might be able to extract a premium for your product but it will be capped by what the market might “allow”.  Apple would love to charge $10,000 for an IPhone, but no one would buy it.  Moreover, since the cost of the tangible is forever falling today, so too will be the absolute dollars you can make if all you do is a attach a premium to the tangible.  You have to get paid for the why – specifically.  The why is the subjective and is uncapped.  It is uncapped because, in the subjective, you are a market of one.  You have to get what you need in order to do what you do, no more, no less.  Your clients will pay you the cost of the subjective because they believe in what you and your creative business offer separate and apart from anyone else.  What is between your ears and what drives you is and will be far more important than anything you might do between your hands.

So to those who hear my message as be the best you can be, awesome.  It is just that you have not heard the hard part: being your best means that you are not able to compromise, shade the truth or accept those projects that make it impossible for you to deliver your best.  No short cuts, no trap doors, no traps.  You have to be outrageous with what you need and want.  However, you also have to be able to support your why with far more than, “because that is the way we do it…”  Or worse, because that is the way the industry works.  Every creative business that uses “packages” should take them out back and shoot them in the head.  Then shoot them again just to make sure they are dead.  You have to be able to prove, yes prove, that your way is the best way you know how to do your best today.

Starting with why is mandatory for creative business.  Living your why in every molecule and moment of your art and your creative business, this is the work.

Earning It All

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You deserve nothing, but you have earned it all.

Where do you go with the statement?  Feel like somehow your effort entitles you to rewards?  Do you get angry at the notion that you deserve nothing?

I love a new year because it is the beginning, a chance at redemption, a prayer that things will be better, even if things are pretty good already.  An annual do over.  No comment on the effectiveness of resolutions or how you hope 2014 will transform you.  Only an idea that what might come is a function of today, not yesterday or tomorrow.

Change is hard and it sucks no matter how good it is for us.  What feels like overnight never is and yet happens faster than we can ever believe.  So instead of looking back at what 2013 was or was not for you or thinking (hoping?) what you will make 2014, how about you do neither?  Take stock of where you are today.

Who do you believe yourself to be? Your creative business?  Your art?  Can you prove it?  My guess is that you cannot, or at least not all of it.  If you are a designer (graphic, interior, event, fashion, etc.), how can you take a fifty percent deposit without doing anything?  Indefensible in my book.  The word designer in your name presumes you actually design something that your client will like or not.  If they do, awesome, away you go with production.  But if they do not?  Are they really going to walk away from half of their money?  Explain it however you want but you trapped them when they said yes to working with you.  What would it mean if you took a twenty percent deposit and got paid the other thirty percent (or more) when they approved your design (i.e., gave them their voice back)?

Reputation earns you access, nothing more.  You do not deserve the benefit of the doubt simply because your client said yes to hiring you.  You earn the benefit of the doubt with your process, your integrity and your respect for your creative business, your art first, client second.  I do not agree that the client is always right.  It is your business.  That said, clients have to be able to make meaningful decisions based on the best information your creative business can provide.  And you have to live with those decisions.

Best information you can provide.  Hmmm.  That is A LOT of work.  Do you cheat?  How tempting is it to race ahead to get done?  To just say “trust me” and move on.  Or do you really work hard to educate your clients?  Then again you still take that fifty percent deposit.  You deserve nothing, but you earn it all.

Forgive yourself.  We are all human and we all want what we imagine is possible.  Except living the truth, your truth and that of your creative business is always a work in progress and asks that we own our humility.  Yes, the truth will set you free.  However, in freedom is uncertainty.  Nothing is more terrifying than swimming without knowing where land is or if it will ever appear.  Yet, swim you must.  Living in the uncertainty is where change happens.  From that place, what will come, will come.  After all, you will have earned it.

The Phoenix

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I am obsessed with the allegory of the phoenix for business, creative businesses in particular.  For those that do not know, the phoenix is a mythical bird born of its own ashes.  It lives then burns and is reborn again.  Many philosophers, mystics and theologians have weighed in, but my favorite is from Eliphas Levi …”it is because, as essential condition of existence, a void is necessary to every plenitude, space for every dimension, an affirmation for each negation: herein is the eternal realization of the phoenix allegory.”

When applied to creative business, the idea has two levels.  The first is rather straightforward: to rise again you have to reinvent yourself.  The second is much subtler and insidious: to rise again, the you you once were must be fully dead.  The phoenix rises again only after ALL of her feathers have burned.  From the ashes…

There are so many examples of the first level – what Steve Jobs did with Apple in 2005, Lou Gerstner with IBM in the 90s, and countless fashion designers throughout their careers.  The overarching sentiment on the first level is the road you are on is ended or ending (i.e., the phoenix is dying) and, if you want to keep going, you have to go another way.  Sure, betting the proverbial farm is always daunting but, with nothing to lose, not as scary as when there is life left.  Hey, the phoenix has burned or is burning.

More fascinating is when you have reinvented yourself and your creative business, supposedly owning the reinvention.  I hear it all the time – some permutation of “Life is great, but whenever things slow down for a little bit, I am worried about 2008/2009 happening all over again.”  Put it to the phoenix allegory – the current version of the phoenix is not burning, however you remember the feeling so you trap yourself in purgatory.  You worry about the past as if you live there today, thereby precluding the work on today’s process.  Fear of yesterday drives you away from what is necessary for today.

If you have changed your model to reflect what clients now want in the information age – getting paid for your ideas, your artistry as much as for your execution, then when things slow, your evolution must come from here, not where you were.  If you once did piece work (i.e., a graphic designer just doing a logo instead of a total brand strategy, an interior designer a single room instead of an entire space, etc.), going back in the name of protecting the business is foolsplay.  You can only be seen in the light you cast.  Instead, the questions should be, how can I improve my presentation?  My production process?  My reveal?  Which part of THIS business is meant to die?  Which part is to rise from THOSE ashes?

It is scary, I know, believing a shut door can never be opened again.  Then again, you shut it for a reason. With a little success and distance, you forget the pain of hiding that lies behind that door.  Evolution demands that you remember why the phoenix burned in the first place so you can live fully in the phoenix you are today.  Most profound though is knowing the phoenix will burn again as will your creative business (or a specific part of it) only to rise again if are willing to let it fully burn.  Be completely invested in what you look like today and you will be guaranteed that tomorrow will look completely different.  What a ride.

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