Understanding Risk

March 27, 2013

For creative business, risk abounds and, to the extent you are asked to absorb it, you need to get paid appropriately.  What is risk?  Not odds of success (like rolling the dice in Las Vegas), neither a safe or chancy bet.  Rather, risk is the acknowledgement and categorization of factors outside of your control that […]

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Redefining Success

March 19, 2013

Businesses evolve.  Clients change.  Strategies shift.  What was yesterday is gone, today is a new day and tomorrow is unknowable.  It is the nature of things.  In a perfect world, we would all let go of the past instantly, embrace today’s reality fully and allow the future to unfold in its own accord.  The multi-billion […]

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Rising Tide Carries All Ships

March 15, 2013

On Monday, I presented a talk on The Perfect Egg at Event Solutions Idea Factory 2013 in Las Vegas.  The conference is terrific and offers a wonderful cross section of all that is going on in the event industry.  This year there was a general feeling of “whew, the worst is behind us, business is […]

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Value vs. Price

March 4, 2013

Categorically, the single biggest mistake any creative business makes is to lead with price, or, better said, to make it all about stuff and not artistry.  I see it everywhere:  photographers talking about creating packages, some going so far as to offer a “create-your-own” radio button menu on their websites; graphic designers having a cutesy […]

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Money Is Not Real

February 25, 2013

Money is a social construct we all buy into (pun intended).  We agree that the paper and metal has value and we can get stuff for that value.  Rather than having to trade shoes for fruit, we just each trade dollars for fruit and shoes.  Works for everyone.  Except dollars are not shoes or fruit, […]

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An Apple Tree

February 11, 2013

Due respect to Isaac Newton, a very apt analogy came to me last week – your creative business is like an apple tree. In the beginning, you plant the seed and then work tirelessly on the (blind) hope that the seed will grow.  When the sapling breaks the ground, when you land your first client, […]

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Ego

February 5, 2013

No art without ego.  The desire to express oneself, to be seen and heard, is intensely personal.  We have to believe in what we are meant to do to even attempt doing it.  Ego says that it could be me, why not me, okay, me.  Inner faith, longing almost, drives us forward, inspires us to […]

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Boundaries II

January 29, 2013

Danielle LaPorte wrote a great post yesterday about how excessive boundaries can create resentment.  How too much of where you will and will not go too soon is a major turn off. Like Danielle, I am all for healthy boundaries and their absolute necessity in creative business.  This much I talked about in my first […]

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Fresh Eyes, The Perfect Egg and Engage!

January 22, 2013

I have been dying with anticipation, waiting for Rebecca Grinnals and Kathryn Arce to announce what their plans are for the Engage! conferences this year. The announcement came today – the first will be at the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, North Carolina in June and the second will be at the Montelucia Resort in Scottsdale, […]

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Fear and Panic

January 16, 2013

For most creative businesses, this is the slow season. Actual business is slow as is those who will come in and book new business in 2013 and beyond. Now, some who have been in business for a while will have more or less than previous years. Even for those with more, maybe there are open […]

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