A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of talking to many wedding professionals in Los Angeles as part of Honeybook’s Hive Educational Series. Really a wonderful event and an awesome experience.
Originally, the talk was supposed to be about how to get your groove back for your creative (and, in this case, wedding) business. However, by happenstance it was September 23rd, Yom Kippur, Judaism’s Day of Atonement, and also Greater Eid for Muslims, celebrating Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son to Allah and the end of the Hajj. The two events almost never coincide, making it extra powerful for me. So I decided to focus not on reinvigoration but instead on atonement for past sins and intention to start anew. I offer five thoughts on the subject:
1. Honor Your Creativity – You get paid for what is between your ears. You earn a living with what is between your hands. If you do not have a business that honors this axiom, you will suffer. Why? Because you are telling your clients to believe in the opposite of what you do — creativity trumps craft every time. I will forever be a broken record when I say that process is everything, the end inevitable, and, therefore, irrelevant. You will all come through in the end AND your clients are predisposed to want you to succeed. Failing a client takes a lot of work, much more than amazing them. What if your mission was simply to listen, relate and elevate? And what if that is ALL you got paid for? Would you still be arguing about why the couch is $20,000? Or would you be able to explain how it fits as part of design and overall budget? If you honor your creativity – what it means to listen, relate and elevate, surely you would.
2. Be The Sherpa You Are – All creative business is a process. Your client comes to you with a need for creation and your work is to manifest the need far beyond the imagination of your client. In every instance, your work is to guide your clients up the mountain as only you can. You know the way, the best way for them and, as much as they might be brilliant at what they do, climbing Mt. Everest is not their daily existence. It is yours though. Respect your experience, your expertise and your knowledge of what both you and your client know and do not know. Translation: your client does not get to decide how your business and/or their project runs. Only you do. Whether you guide people with a gentle nudge or a strong grip is completely up to you, so long as you are forever the guide. Truly, nothing else matters.
3. Stop Getting Paid What You Can And Get What You Need – If you fully grasp the depth of number one and two above, you understand creative businesses have no competition. Only you take your clients on your journey. There might be other ways to get to the same place, but none as satisfying to your clients as the way you do it. If you are getting paid relative to what others are getting paid, you exist in reflection. Maybe it will be enough, maybe not. The only way to stand in the Sun is to honor what you need to create what you do, how many times you want to create it each year. Any other method of value is a pointless exercise in mental masturbation. Your value is what you say it is. Full stop.
4. Own Your Niche – One Size Does Not Fit All – Only those who care about why you do what you do and how you will do it for them matter. If you believe in the first three thoughts, you know that finding those who drink your Kool-Aid is key to your ability to create your very best work. Here is a shocker: having the opportunity to create your very best work on your terms is the very thing that will get you MORE opportunities to do the same. You are not a deli or a diner. Speak to those who matter in a language that they and they alone will understand. Ignore the rest.
5. Get Real With Yourself – Do What It Takes Or Move On — This is the hardest truth of all. If you are unable or unwilling to go through the excruciating work that one through four above demand of you, your art and your creative business, you need to gracefully exit the stage. I am of the belief that the power of art, of creative business, is to transform. Whether that is through an amazing event, interior design, photograph; for a minute or eons, makes no difference. The point of it all is to inspire, exalt and, yes, elevate. The responsibility is yours to own. Your conviction in your talent is not enough. You must also be convicted in the way your creative business expresses that talent. Neither will enduringly exist without the other. There is no shame in admitting that you simply cannot rise to the responsibility, only your refusal to see it as yours.
