The Business of Being Creative

Talent only exists to allow you to see and/or do what others naturally cannot as easily as you can. Unnurtured talent is an oxymoron.  Talent only exists as a platform to find wisdom that will, in turn, encourage the limits of talent to expand.  Experience is never just the passage of time, it is the recognition of the stage you belong.  Talent, wisdom and experience are interwoven inextricably only through humility and uncertainty of possibility.  There is simply no there there only the promise that you will be better today than you were yesterday.  Better is not measurable it is an endeavor, the willingness to go further, to live in what will be uncertain with the notion that the discovery will benefit everyone. And that benefit is hope and hopefulness all at once.

The reality is that so many creative business owners use talent, wisdom and experience to sell certainty.  “Trust me, I know what I am doing and it will be awesome.” Maybe.  The irony though is that the promise is uncertainty. “With confidence we will get to ten, but you have paid me for eleven.  Life is lived between ten and eleven and that is where will go.”  Think about that when you are in your next sales pitch.  Are you getting to yes or are you getting to lets go?  Yes is fabulous for toothpaste, soul sucking for those who seek to create art.

No doubt, you gave yourself permission to be an artist so much so that you decided you could make a living at it.  The issue is that you arrived untethered. Even the very best of us needs to learn how to put our feet on the ground before we can move with intention to where we seek to go.  Having a purpose is not working with purpose, even perspective.  Having a purpose is faith that what you are doing matters.  Working with purpose is the fortitude you need to manifest your faith.

Your ability to be good at the game, your talent as an artist, can carry the day, serve you past innumerable obstacles than those who do not have your talent will succumb to.  There is a limit though, a place where nuance and wisdom and experience and integrity matter more than talent.  This is the place of true learning, where you have to say that we do it this way because and that way is entirely unshakeable.  And if you do not yet know the difference between unshakeable and inflexible, you have more work to do.

Unshakeable means a deep understanding of why you, your art and your creative business travel the path you do.  Every moment, every conversation, every text, email, call, is done with purpose because it is the very manifestation of the philosophy, the faith, you espouse.  Inflexible is like the parent who tells their children not to fight with each other or else they will get a spanking.  Inflexibility means for clients to follow your rules simply because you said so or, worse, because that is just the way it is done.  Good luck with that.

The issue is that inflexibility is the providence of those looking for the shortcut, to excuse the responsibility that your business needs to be as creative as your art.  The responsibility for creativity exists because both your art and your business tell your story.  One without the other implodes the rest. Conviction and faith go hand in hand with your need to be a profound storyteller to realize the success you seek.

Own the power of your talent, wisdom and experience with resilience and intention and always faith.  The purpose is to be a beacon of hope in the pursuit of joy.  It is and will always be your calling.  Live there.

How many of you record your calls with clients?  Why not?

You can say it feels awkward, invasive, unethical.  Yadda, yadda, yadda.  Yes, using the recording as a weapon is problematic, then again if so many of us did not hit record these days, change would not nearly be as afoot as it is.  We are recorded every day in some form so why not make it so for your creative business?

I record all of my work with my clients and listen back regularly to what we spoke about.  I want to make sure that I was clear in the conversation, listened well all in an effort to learn how I can be better in achieving the work we have set out to do together.  I record all of The BBC Collective calls for members to go back to whenever they like.  Most do.  Oh and I record a podcast every week as do so many of you. Again, why are you not recording your client calls?

There is not an athletic coach on the planet that does not watch “game tape” to learn how to be better for their team.  Since you are the “coach” of your creative business, do you really not need to see how you and your team are performing in real time?  Instead of rehashing the story from your memory (which is always colored by your version), how about seeing the reality as it is?

If you do choose to hit record, what will you look for?

Nuance and effective communication. Authentic building of trust and resonance with what is actually being received as opposed to what you think is being received.

You are not having a conversation when you talk to clients.  Conversation requires active listening and speaking with an open mind as to what is being discussed. There is a power equivalence.  Not so much with your creative business — you are the professional in the room and every interaction is meant to build your power by the willing dispossession of it by your client.  You seek to have your client trade power for trust with the promise of what can be.  “If I say yes to your idea, give you money to manifest that idea, and then get out of your way, my expectation is that you will transform me in the way I seek.” A willing transfer of power.

When you listen to the recording of your conversations, you will discover whether this transfer is based on an illusion (“just trust me”), force (“we have to do it this way because”), or, hopefully, faith (“you get what I imagine and now I will make it happen for you”). If you see illusion and/or force, you will know you have work to do.  It will mean that the power of your art is overwhelming everything and your business is only along for the ride.  The path then will be that the ballast in the balloon will only grow until the balloon cannot fly no matter the hot air.  Double down on faith and lose the illusion and force.

Next is clarity of the three W’s.  Can everyone involved in the conversation see where we were, where we are and where we are going on this journey?  How will was that discussion received?  How can you improve on that clarity.  See above — if you rely on illusion and force you will believe the three W’s are unnecessary.  Good luck with that. You can do better and you know it.  Now you will see and hear exactly what needs to change.

Here is what you are not looking for with recordings:  No gotchas.  No catching an employee misspeaking or a client being a bully.  Who cares.  The whole point of listening is to ensure that you are communicating the underneath.  Earning permission every day to do better work than you did yesterday.  You do not do that by punishing your dog for eating your shoe yesterday.  She has no clue what you are talking about.  It is about establishing behaviors to make sure that the choice to chew the shoe is not one she will make when offered the opportunity tomorrow.

Your creative business is about effective communication.  Effective communication in the requires nuance and idiosyncrasy, context and contextualization, hope, humility and grounded confidence.  Now that you can easily study your ability to continually reach for this level, make the time.  Performance matters in the genesis of intimacy.  Live there.

So this will be my last post for the year.  I will be back the week of January 4th.

Every year I read through all of my posts to see what the journey has been and where we might go.  Despite the pervasiveness of COVID, social unrest, a new administration and all things leading up to the election and the craziness afterwards, I am struck by the opportunity that lies underneath.

Fundamentally, we will get through the pandemic and I agree with Paul Krugman that the rebound will be robust and profound.  Yes, there is horrific pain now and so many are suffering.  If the government does its job and provides relief (and I so hope it does), when the artificial barriers to the economy are removed, demand will be there. This is not 2008 as much as it is 1981 (when the Fed lowered interest rates).  As will all things though, the future is unwritten.  Ask anyone in November of 2019 and they would have told you just how awesome they thought 2020 was going to be.  

So my advice for 2021: race to the top.  While many many people have suffered in 2020, your clients have not.  They kept their jobs, their portfolios soared and they could not spend their money on so many things — vacations, dining, entertainment, etc.  Couple that with the desire to express themselves through your art and your creative business and you have a recipe for quite a boom once the vaccine and the psychological effects of its protection take hold (yes, it will be safe to hug a stranger again).

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

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

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

If you earn your value, get paid for it when you have earned it.  The idea of getting paid a few weeks before completion is based on a convention that holds no water anymore.  Yes, you must retain your cost of production plus a buffer to avoid robbing from Peter to pay Paul, but that is but a fraction of value earned.  Creative businesses as a whole have backloaded their cash flow to ensure delivery.  You are all better than that and you are either responsible or you are not.  Let me land this plane.  If you a project coming on in April 2022, you will likely finish designing it in November of 2021 and probably start producing it in in December.  For me, this means you will have all of the money associated with this project in 2021.  All of it.  You will reserve what it will take to produce it plus a buffer, but the rest is yours to do as you see fit.  So while others will be starving in January, February and March, you will be investing in those aspects of your creative business that yield the most value.  Seasonality can be removed from all creative businesses if you choose to make it so. This is your chance and you will likely not get another one for a very long time.  Or you can chase the money.

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

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

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

See you all in January.

This is the time of year when most creative businesses slow down and start to think about what is to come in 2021.  Like everything else, COVID has upended everything.  Now, most are trying to contemplate how to make to the other side and what their world will look like when they get there.  Enter change; the desire, necessity, even compulsion to become something other.

I have written many times about change (just search the word on my blog) and will not rehash my thoughts here.  No, this post will be about the foundation for change.  Your willingness to appreciate the no-(wo)man’s land we all find ourselves in.  The world we inhabit will compel the future but the future will be unlike today in almost every respect.  Simply said, what will it feel like to hug a stranger post-COVID, let alone your grandmother?

To live in this dichotomy, you must accept the status quo today and acknowledge it will not be so tomorrow.  Which begs the question who do you want to be tomorrow?

And a moment about you.  In the context of your creative business, you are simply the persona that is on order as is your client.  I hear all the time that it is important to have a “real” relationship with everyone — clients, employees, colleagues, etc.  Such BS.  Real relationships require deep, honest communication so that you feel seen and heard as you are in the moment.  If you are feeling down or upset, those engaged in real relationship will want to hold that with you, even if they themselves are not there.  So not true for your creative business.

Your client could care less if you are upset that your cat died if you are expected to present an idea or complete an installation of your work.  Perhaps they might have a moment of empathy, but lose their expectations of your professionalism (i.e., why you are there)? Yeah no.  So let us dispense with the notion that you need real connection with your clients to do great work.  You just do not.  What you need is deep respect for the journey at hand which is but one slice of you and them.  The deep connection is alignment with your purposeful intention to do great work on their behalf.  You are all characters in a marvelous, fantastic, transformative story of your making for all involved. Stay there.

Given that place – the version of you, your art and your creative business that you wish to share – what will that version look like post-pandemic?  Better said, what aspects of your foundation will be highlighted and why?

The challenge of change is that we are desperate to maintain continuity.  In some cases, it requires buy-in and that slows radical shifts.  Ok, fine.  However, if it belies a mis-understanding of what is on order (even if it is working), then it becomes a crutch to what can be.

I will share my experience with on-line learning as a parent of a child in high school, middle and elementary school.  First, teachers are all doing what they can to move their students forward.  Insane work for an insane time.

For so many teachers, the joy of engaging young minds in real time and in real life is everything.  Trying to translate that feeling into digital directly is an epic fail.  What is compelling in-person becomes rote, even condescending on-line. Those who have found the most success have used all that the internet offers to go deeper and more fluidly than “here is what you need to know for the test”.  The opportunity to challenge independent thought, diligent research and principled discussion has been fully embraced by only a select few.  Our world, and all that it has offered this year is a prime fodder for discussion at all levels. And yet, for the most part, it has been a lost moment.

One reason for the failure is that the metric of success that so much of the U.S. education system has been built on is attendance.  Truancy is still a crime in most states for parents to not have their kids in school.  Yes, a crime.  And most schools consider a child absent if they are more than thirty minutes late.  How exactly does that work with distance learning?  Old metrics of success — attendance, graduation rates, percentage of kids who go on to higher education are off when it comes to distance learning.  And testing — regurgitation of information under time pressure also sucks as a measure of effective teaching.  Why not an interview? A real conversation? A written dialogue?  Does not exactly fit into the test rubric and allows for the teachers subjectivity as to who has done great work and who has not.  That is different from the real world how? The ability to deliver and follow through on interesting solutions to new problems is the currency of the future.  It is what will make anyone a linchpin (HT to Seth Godin)

This experience with education that so many of us have had as parents, even students, should shape your thoughts on your creative business. 

Start with upending your foundation.

If you think you are in the value-engineering business, grandma just got a whole lot better at shopping on-line.  If you think you deserve to be paid for your organizational skills, figuring out how not to kill the person you visit has been something all of us have had to contemplate.  And connecting digitally, grandma has gotten a whole lot better at that too.

So if you live and breathe on your ability to shop for the budget, get it done on time and have a trust me business that has no commitment to real management of the journey (i.e., responsibility for the 3Ws), good luck.  The lesson distance learning has to teach all of us is that different is different and different is here to stay.

Have a look at what Warner Brothers is doing with their new releases of movies for 2021.  In theaters and on HBO Max the same day.  No more delay to give a chance for theaters to make their money first as has been the status quo ever since the days of VHS in the 1970s.  What impact do you think it will have on movie theaters and how they have to make the desire to sit in a dark room with a few hundred strangers far more compelling that what is on the screen?  You can bemoan the fate of movie theaters or see the opportunity in front of those who wish to make the experience remarkable. I choose the latter.

Change the question and you will get a different answer.  It boils down to this for your creative business moving forward — ask better questions far before you seek better answers to the same question.

Here we are facing the darkest of winters in the United States.  Ho ho ho, more than 3,500 people in the U.S. will likely die from COVID on Christmas Eve.  Millions upon millions more will contract the disease between now and then.  And yet there is hope that Spring will bring a rebirth like no other if we can put this horrible disease under wraps with a vaccine.  Talk about doing what it takes to get to the other side.  Darkest of dark before lightest of light.

So here is how the thinking goes.  Make sure you price your work when the tide rolls back in to make up for all that was lost in the CF of 2020.  Perhaps you have to honor delayed business but the new has to make up for all that was lost.  Sounds logical right?  If only you were selling toothpaste.

What if we fully grasped that the essence of our psyches has fundamentally shifted, that getting back what was lost is a fools errand since it is, in fact, lost.  While you are busy looking in the rear view mirror to justify what tomorrow looks like, the Mack truck coming at you is just going to run you over. 

Let’s do some simple math.  If you lost two in 2020, you will need to charge four in 2021 and maybe 2022 to get back to where you were.  Then what are you going to do, go back to two?  Stay at four and ride the “getting back to square” train as long as you can?  Or actually justify your value?

Oh and who said the end of a calendar year is a time to recalibrate pricing?  Do you think that magically the world will change course on January 1, 2021? Just silly.  If you want to adjust your prices for inflation every year, you go.  That would be 1.4% as of this month in the United States.  Anything more than that requires an explanation as to why exactly you and your creative business are worth more.  Passage of time other than adjusting for inflation just says nothing.

If you were your client, why exactly would that make you feel good and valuable if you are going to go with the “making up for lost business” as a justification for four?  If anything, you are rusty, as are your production partners and the risk of performance is higher than it was when you were running as a well-oiled machine. That is the thing about the fly wheels of creative business, getting started again is not so easy as flipping a switch.  Let me get it straight then, you want your clients to pay more money for a rusty and/or likely overworked you?  Good luck with that.

Instead, how about we erase the box?  Erase the box means quit being derivative to what has come before as it has very little value with regard to what is to come.  Yes, you will be doing events, performing, cooking, printing, etc. just as you did before. Except the world has fundamentally shifted.  Think you will ever be able to ignore digital again?  Engagement on a whole other level with opportunities abounding within that engagement.  If you see value at say ten, then being limited to four just to get even prevents you from investing and shifting to manifest that value.  Not investing has huge implications as it will lock you in to your old (dead) model.

So let’s get down to brass tacks.  What part of your creative business do you love the most?  What part do you know your clients love the most?  How much do you charge for that love?  What if you charged five times for that love (and if you do not charge for that love right now, what if you charged sizably for it)?  What would you invest in to make that love stronger, richer, deeper for you, your client, your employees?  What if you decided that the level of quality, talent and commitment you provide would be what your clients had to pay for?

I give this example a thousand times to Sunday.  If you have a hundred dollars for labor and you have a choice to hire ten average workers at ten dollars or two rock stars at fifty dollars, almost every creative business owner I know would choose the rock stars.  And yet the illusion of more is better persists (not true of design and not true of production) so clients might think the exact opposite.  What if you could educate and justify the necessity of the rock star?  Then you would have the rock star on your team.  Erase the box because it provides the platform for value today and tomorrow regardless of what happened yesterday.

Last, let’s talk about value.  Nobody buys anything because they expect less in return. You buy toothpaste for two dollars because you believe it will help you keep your teeth clean for the time you think it does.  Awesome if it does even more because you will then go back and buy it again.  If not, you will move on until you find a toothpaste that does. 

For creative business the value is not in usage or financial return, it is in emotional satisfaction.  Joy. Transformation.  For your client, you must be cheap for the price because their joy has to outweigh what they paid your creative business to create and manifest for them.  Otherwise, you have failed. 

The relationship of price to joy is ephemeral at best, which makes it all about investment in ourselves.  Your clients invest in you and your creative business to bring them to another place.  They are simply asking what is it going to take to make that happen.  Your responsibility is to look only forward and answer accordingly.  Erase the box.

In your best place, you know there is more than enough for everyone; the more you give the more will be given.  Creativity is its own success no matter the result.  If only you were always in your best place.

Today, it feels impossible to believe in abundance.  The whole point of Thanksgiving is to find our way to abundance, connection and family (yes, I understand the dark underbelly but choose to stay here for the moment).  A place to be grateful.  I have enjoyed Seth Godin’s Thanksgiving Reader since it came out in 2015 and perhaps it can carry us back to gratefulness and a feeling of harvest despite the isolation and the knowledge that so many of us are hungry in all ways — physically, spiritually, emotionally.

Yes, there is hope. There might be a vaccine, a new administration in the United States, magnificent technological advances.  This winter is and will be cold and brutal indeed and these are the thoughts of Spring. No way through but through.

In so many ways, the pandemic and all things 2020 has made it easier to give up and to think that you will not be able to make or do what you need to do to support yourself, your family and your creative business.  Hey, COVID.  You can drive yourself so crazy as to make the fear overwhelming and interminable, trying as hard as you can to kill your creative spirit.

The reason I go here is because when we fail (as we all do more than we succeed), you can say to yourself, “I told you so, it was a dumb idea anyway and stupid to even try.”  Whether that is to “pivot”, to hibernate, even to give up, in this place we ignore the harm we cause to ourselves and to those around us. The test of resilience is not endurance, it is desire, grit and faith in the singular effort of motion.  Professionals show up every day, test themselves every day no matter how they feel, challenge themselves to keep going even if it means to stop until the path reveals itself.

You can only come back to yourself when you remember just how much love there is — your love of creation, of family, of community, of tomorrow. Mourn the death of what was even as it is dying, allow the five stages to wash over you.  Do not deny the process of suffering as healing is never resolute only the willingness to move forward, to evolve.

There will always be naysayers and haters.  People who stay stuck to the fear of what the future might bring instead of its infinite possibility.  In these, the darkest of times, the light is a wisp and the dark is there wherever you turn.  If you listen, you will probably hear YOUR fear masked as their judgment of what you are trying to do.  If you can have empathy for them and yourself, maybe you can get past their voice and let your own authentic expression of your art carry the day.  Abundance does abound only if we choose to believe it does and requires the faith imagine a future not yet lived.

And that is the thing about emotionality — depravation savors abundance and is muted by expectation.  Do not let that happen to you art or your creative business.  While you might find yourself denied access today to create as you desire, you have the opportunity, a singular opportunity, to redefine all that will be when the door reopens as it most certainly will.  The butterfly remembers what is was to be a caterpillar even as it is unbound from the ground.

I am absolutely not saying that if you ignore the doubting voices and judgments (internal and external) you will be successful.  Whether the time is right for your new idea/strategy or whether its execution effective, is largely a matter of fate.  What I am saying is shipping is its own reward.  It IS incredibly scary to put yourself out there in a wholly new light.  So actually doing it is remarkable in itself.  Scarier still is the idea of staying true to your initiative and giving it the best chance to thrive when the inevitable roadblocks come your way.

Just because the world wants and needs what you have to give does not mean it is going to make it easy for you to do it.  The fight to get paid for the beauty that rests between your ears will be fraught by those who are unaware of its depth.  Keep going.

Every business owner is being tested these days, especially creative businesses.  Simply, the ground underneath your feet is perpetually uncertain.  The pandemic, politics in the United States, economic turmoil, technological leaps.  You name it and the winds of change (and chaos) blow ever harder.  Yet, on the other side is opportunity to shift, to redefine your role and responsibility in your clients lives, our lives.  The question then is whether or not you will embrace the opportunity or shrink back to the known, comfortable in, well, comfort.

Make no mistake, you are in the business of creating joy, not rom-com smiles, rather deep, unabided joy for those that embrace your world. Art drives your business, not the other way around. Art changes the world and you are the person, the business to make that happen. We live in a time where other is hated for being other.  Tribalism in an echo chamber where there is no community. 

If you choose, your art can reveal hate’s ugliness and ultimate self-limitation. Art matters only if your respect its gravitas. You might have fun creating joy but there is nothing “fun” about it.  Conviction.

You cannot see through to the other side. Nobody can. The only thing that you can do is to walk the path you choose with intention and integrity. Confidence comes in actually walking the path, not knowing where it will take you.  Such is the nature of conviction. You have to leap. You have to crash. You have to get back up. You have to stand in your own shadow. You have to leap again. And again. And again.

If failure terrifies you, I understand, then go practice your craft working for someone with whom it does not.  Fearlessness is not on order, conviction in the face of failure is.  Lead because you must, not because you can. 

As the emotion of the day crescendoes given all that surrounds us, please know you, your art and your creative business will be exposed. Daily. You will be bullied, humiliated, debased, misunderstood, ignored and vilified. It will be up to you to remind everyone — employees, clients, colleagues, even family that creating joy is purposeful, intentional and fraught. As such, it requires idiosyncrasy as to what will make your best work possible, and that  idiosyncrasy must be respected above all else.  Are you crazy? Yes, next question.

Other endeavors can be buttoned up, protected, contracted for. Creative business demands that you be vulnerable. You are tasked with, ahem, creating what heretofore has never existed. To create, you have to invest in the relationship. It is personal. Inherent in the relationship is the idea that you see what others around you cannot. You must be the guide and walk with a firm hand regardless of circumstance. Conviction.

Conviction has to be hard. You have to be challenged. If you, your art and your creative business were not, you would never discover the courage you never knew you had. Courage is the knowledge that you actually know better and the willingness to act in that knowledge.  What this means today is to never look back and ever say the words “It’s just…” ever again.  If you cannot believe in the power of design, of art, why should the rest of us?

So please do not wing it. Especially today.  The path, your path for your art and your creative business, is only there if you define it with resolve, not just because that is the way it is. Work tirelessly to understand the purpose of each step of your creative business, resolute in the step’s necessity and place. Everything must exist for a reason. To those who wish to shake you from your center, you have to be able to appreciate the value of your own faith in the path you have created and your unending desire to walk it. Gravitas, conviction and faith all require hard, painful, testing choices. We are here now.  Success is the willingness to walk towards these choices and not run away. The solution is not to run with the wind as much as it is to plant your feet and lean in.

I write this on November 4th, with the outcome of the U.S. presidential election and that of the control of the senate still uncertain.  No matter the result though, the effect is the same.  We in the U.S. are a deeply divided people with many millions diametrically opposed to many other millions.  If there ever was a place of hopelessness, that would be it.  Forget about civil discourse or an ability to understand someone else’s circumstance. 

I literally saw a post today about how people should race to Disney World because the minimum wage is going up to $15/hr and the park will become ever more expensive (no idea if this is, in fact, true). Not a second thought from this person as to the impact that raise will have on those that work at the park and what it might do for their families.  And on and on it will go.  We in the U.S. have decided to not see each other and find safety in tribalism no matter the price.  This in a time of abject horror for what the effects of our pandemic have done (and will do) to the global society. When I see semi refrigerated trailers in the back of hospitals acting as temporary morgues to handle the overflow of dead bodies, I imagine the people inside gone and what that means for all of us.

We are left hopeful that there is a possibility of something other, hopeless in the divide among all of us.  Perspective though is necessary.  The world has seen much darker times, the United States very much included.  There will always be a shift and the future will arrive as it does.  Our ability to shape it will only be in our own desire to live with intention.

I wrote in 2016, after that election, that the obligation of creative business owners is to create, to be intentional in the effort.  My feelings are very much the same today.  The necessity of our future rests in those artists who choose to matter, to find the joy in transformation.  While you may not convince anyone on the other side of the fallacy of their viewpoint, you might at least introduce a sense of collective humanity that is gone when tribalism rules the day.

To do this work though, we are going to have to appreciate that change oozes then explodes then implodes and finally comes to its own sustenance. We are also going to have to take stock of what the purpose of art, your work, is to all that surrounds you.  It simply cannot be a means to an end and demands conviction both as an artist and especially as a business.

I read this the other day and it made me so sad (it was written this week), “We’re here to serve our clients’ needs. They want photos of their wedding – without looking awkward. They want their event to go smoothly – with peace of mind on the Big Day and all those leading up to it. They want guests to attend the event – and begin with an experience when they get their invitation in the mail. They want to look beautiful – and feel that way when they look back on the images years later.”

If all artists exist to fill a need, to bring the expected to life, we are lost.  It has to be about so much more.  It has to be about the gift of the possible, the beauty of a well told story and the grace of relationship to ourselves and our aspirations beyond desire. Emotional gravitas has to be the lifeblood of all creative business owners, to all artists.  You have to care beyond just doing a good job. First, the machine will ultimately do a better job than you ever could and second pride is in the effort of expression.  If given the opportunity, please know that want becomes a need when desire is met with enthusiasm and the willingness to move with intention and connection, hope and identity.  You need a chair to sit in, how you feel about the chair and yourself in the chair when you sit in it is the work of designers.  For the sake of all of us, please stop confusing the two.

The lesson that the CF that is 2020 has reminded us is that change is demanded.  The desire to stay stuck, to find identity as the landscape shifts, well that can bring out all things — the best and the worst in all of us.  Perspective owns the ephemeral.  

The responsibility of creatives, artists, creative business owners is to know that an uncertain universe is what brings opportunity, the chance to find other, the redefine the edge and let the beauty of creation ring through as a function of human spirit not ego.  Live in the idea that chaos must ultimately find order only to be undone again. 

When Seth Godin talks about creating a ruckus, this is what he is talking about — the obligation to offer a shift, to find a path not towards accolades or financial reward (though those might come) as the destination, but rather connection, community and a search for other.  My view is the same as it has been since I started in creative business in 2003: art changes the world because it gives us a glimpse of the impossible and a desire to be better tomorrow than today.  Hope lives there.

Change is really, really hard.  It is even harder if it is forced on you as 2020 has done to all of us.  Nobody wants to be wrong or to realize that good enough just is not.  So we invest in staying stuck, impose artificial limitations on ourselves that, ironically, keep us safe.  Instead of evolving to meet the moment we choose to hibernate.  Sometimes all you can do is hibernate.  Ok.  But you absolutely risk the notion that the world may not be as you understood it before you hibernated.  I love thinking about what the last one hundred years has given the world, the last twenty.  

When confronted with real change, fear kicks in, fight or flight or in many cases stubborn resistance to anything other.  Even if you move your art and your creative business towards the change you seek, the shadow anchor is always there, ready to pull you back whenever there is a shred of evidence of “this will not work”.  Throw in a pandemic, world upheaval and true chaos and even thinking about finding solid ground is a herculean effort.

It is far too easy to say you have to persist, fight through your fear, believe in the change you seek.  Like telling any addict that you have to have willpower and faith to beat the addiction.  No, you need humility and you need support from those who have been where you are and/or are willing to walk the path with you.  Even if no one has ever been through what we are all going through does not mean there is not wisdom to be gained by those who have experienced upheaval in some other form.

Again, though, too easy to give yourself over to a group or a teacher or a guide to have yourself and your creative business saved.  Nobody has the answer except for you.  Support only matters if you are ready to actually walk the path to another place.

Let’s then get real about fear.  Fear is not about losing business (you never had it in the first place), nor is it about having your creative business fold, nor about not making enough money.  No, fear is about rejection, having someone else see you and your art and say “no thanks”.  Most of us will do just about anything to avoid the raw and absolute “no thanks”.  Our response to the (potential) rejection is to hide.

Here is what hiding looks like: creating art that you are not proud of, for a price that does not work, for a client that does not really care about what you, your art and your creative business offers.  There may be sprinkles of yes in your world (with clients that truly value you and your art), but they are dwarfed by the volume (maybe number, but definitely noise) of those that do not.  Neurosis is acting out behavior you know to be destructive and irrational over and over again.  The momentary high is dwarfed by the reality and scope of the decision.  Feeling the “Yes” from any client overwhelms the notion that you NEVER want a “yes” from the wrong client.  Throw in the emotionality and uncertainty of today and you get excuse after excuse to live in the fear we all have.

Before you think me condescending, let me say we are ALL scared and fear bites us all at some point.  I have chased more than my fair share of nightmares, all along deluding myself that it would work out if and only.  It never did and it never does.  The wrong client is wrong for the simple reason that they just do not care about what you and your creative business care most about.

We hear all the time about letting go, focusing on your strength, having confidence, faith in yourself and your creative business.  Even today.  Lovely thoughts that you cannot buy a cup of coffee with.  You need to be rooted in a foundation of why.  Why you are an artist, why your art matters, why you are worthy of the responsibility to create your art for your clients, and why tomorrow’s version of your art and your creative business will always be better than today.  All of these whys are real, tangible concepts you need to live by and forever work on.  You cannot face the fear of rejection without them.  And even with your whys, you may still be bitten by the fear of rejection, it is that strong.

Change happens drip by drip, detail by detail, moment by moment.  This means when you actually need to be rejected by someone you care about and who cares about you, your art and your creative business.  You have to ask yourself in this moment if you are hiding in some way.  Then you have to become more raw, not less.  More resolute in your mission not fuzzier. You will be afraid, you will panic, you will think your world might end.  It will not, certainly not the world you truly wish to inhabit at least.

And that is the crucible for today.  To find yourself grateful for those that choose other.  As you work your way through to deep appreciation for the light in which you choose to stand, you can appreciate those who do not wish to engage with you.  You can truly say thank you for telling me that my art is not for you.  We are all worthy and there is an audience for us all.  You art will find its audience if your creative business never apologizes for it.

The indelible part of humanity is humility.  Humility is our acceptance of imperfection and uncertainty and the willingness to act in spite of this reality.  The power of fear, ironically, is take us away from our humility and only towards the illusion of hubris.  If you permit yourself the moment to know that your art, your creative business matters even in the smallest context, then you permit it to fill the room it will ultimately find itself in.  Simply do the work with integrity and purpose for those that see themselves in you.  It is, and will always be, more than enough.