Be Proactive

Running any business will expose every emotion you have, test everything you believe, and, if you let it, teach you all that you need to keep moving forward.  Yet, when we get overwhelmed by the issues we and our creative businesses face (you pick — money, employees, vendors, clients), too often our instinct is to “solve the problem” instead of looking for the underlying disease.  And in that reaction we create processes of the moment that actually only reinforce having to react in the future.  How many of you have had to talk to a client at 2:00 a.m., worry about whether you will be able to deliver on time, or, worse, have had to explain why your final art is not what your client asked for.  You say to yourself, “I do not ever want to be in this position again” only to find yourself there again (and again).

It is only natural that, if you are in danger of being burned, you will do all you can to stay away from the flame.  However, it is only when you give yourself permission to focus on the flame instead of avoiding getting burned that you will be able to effect real change.  Solving the issues confronting you and your creative business means you have to redefine the question.

Act, do not react.  Easy enough.  What is hard is that acting is uncomfortable, risky and, if done poorly, arrogant and alienating.  You cannot be proactive with your employees, vendors, or your clients if you are worried about what they think.  Everyone’s a critic and if you put out there what your world looks like you will be judged.  No matter how thick your skin, the sting of getting it dead wrong hurts.  You have to be deeply convicted to have the strength and courage to do it again (and again).  The fairy tale is that if you do “it” enough you will succeed in the end.  Maybe, but probably not in the way you envisioned, and certainly not if you stubbornly stick to your guns.  Zealous tunnel vision is as myopic as maintaining the status quo.  Both do not allow for the possibility that the world is not as you see it.  You have to live in the discomfort to discover whether it is the kernel of necessary change or your intuition telling you to go the other way.

At Engage! 10: Cayman Islands, Colin Cowie said that he calls all of his clients after their event to find out what he could have done better.  Exposing yes, but given who he is and the level of event he orchestrates, not all that risky (or proactive).  HOWEVER, Colin also calls those clients he did NOT get to find out why they chose not to work with him.  Colin probably hears a lot of “you were too expensive”, “we liked so and so better”, but in the mix are those clients who respect him enough to tell him the truth as they see it.  I can only imagine how that information has helped him evolve his business over the years.

Will some people think Colin is arrogant for making the call?  Sure.  Wasting his time?  Of course. But proactive?  Definitely.  And for his vulnerability Colin has honest, real time information about his business that those who would not dare ask the question will never have.