Are You Willing To Be Left Behind?

Ten years ago, the IPhone (and all of the smartphone technology behind it) did not exist (at least not on a consumer level); Facebook was two (in 2005, News Corp. bought MySpace for $580million – it was supposed to be Facebook – not so much, today it ranks 1945 for web traffic); Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram, Pinterest all did not exist yet.

These are the tools most creative businesses depend on every day today to market themselves. Let’s not even talk about the back end, Basecamp, AutoCad, and the various business management software programs that came along after 2006. Suffice it to say, how we all do business today looks nothing like what it did ten years ago.

So how come your business looks the same? I am not talking about your deliverables – sure you still produce flowers, images, food, interiors, structures, etc. – but the WAY you produce them has more than evolved in ten years. And yet you still have the same payment schedule, the same contract, the same process. Why? Because it isn’t broken? Nobody complains? Ok, fine. But while you are busy accepting good enough, someone else is out there changing the game because they are changing the conversation.

And here is what the conversation is changing to: not what can I do for you, but how well do you know me and how can I be sure along the way. Trust points, activations, systemic approvals are all as or more valuable than the end product. Clients appear to want more control, but what they really want is more validation that you understand what they seek.

Here is a very simple test – if you cannot tell me why you are doing what you are doing right now for your clients, what every word of your website, contract, collateral, etc. means in the context of how you and your creative business create only your best work, you need to change. Today.

Beautiful work is a prerequisite to the conversation and is, therefore, more and more irrelevant. Beautiful work intrinsic to the essence of a client validated along the way is what matters. Can you live in that journey?

Think about what the world could look like ten years from now. Connectivity, virtual reality, experiential, immersive design, all here now, will only grow. Will the expectation be that you will create in VR what will come to exist in “reality” after that? Will you be ready to make that shift? How do you intend to get paid for the experience you will provide above and beyond the thing?

Will you, your art and your creative business own the responsibility of teaching people to see? See in ways they may not yet appreciate or, most certainly, understand. Or will you stick with the tried and true ways you have always done things? It may not be broke (or so you say), but you had better think about fixing it. A call to action if there ever was one.