BOBC Podcast Transcription #127: When You Assume…

If you start a lot of reasoning with a presumption, you can only go one way. And for most creative businesses, the presumption makes no sense. You can only go the wrong way. The old saying is true, when you assume you make an, well, you know the rest.

Body:

So, well, I’ll try to be as calm as I possibly can. I have a very big bone to pick with those out there that use macro trends to define micro movements. Meaning the weather is choppy out there. So therefore my massive yacht or my world cruiser is going to be affected by the one foot chop, right?

So that’s in the opposite way of talking about something or, you know, Hey, I live in this little, little tiny Hamlet, but you know, the weather across the world is going to affect me. Maybe, right, maybe it will, maybe it will come home to roost, but for the most part, when you take these macro statements and you apply them to your business, it just gives you an excuse to operate in a way that isn’t actually accurate.

And let me just ground that very, very quickly. The vast majority of people listening to this are in creative businesses that if you got 100 clients, it would be insane. Most of you are dealing in the five to 15 clients. And those of you that do a bigger volume, we’re still talking hundreds, not thousands.

So this very idea that we’re talking about millions and, and, you know, global trends or national trends is kind of silly, right? So the economy is falling off. So therefore the. Five people that I want are no longer available to me. Now, here’s a great statement for me. You’re in the wedding business, you do luxury, whatever it is that you do.

Yes. The pandemic has slowed engagements. People are slow to engage and slow to marry. So let’s just say, you know, if you’re a mass jeweler looking to sell millions of rings a year, yeah, that’s a problem for you, right? But if you’re a planner looking to do 10 weddings, not really a problem for you.

People are still getting married and people are still going to want what you do. And those are 10 people. So if you’re going to pay attention to, Oh my God, the business is slowing because people aren’t getting engaged because of the pandemic, that’s insane. That is an insane way of looking at it is just distraction for the fact that maybe, maybe, maybe to use a very technical term, you run your business like shit.

Maybe, maybe, maybe you didn’t bother to pay attention to the shift in culture. Now, the shift in culture, that’s a whole other thing. That’s not a global statement. That’s a shift in culture, the way people consume things, right? So if you’re not paying attention to the shift in culture, you won’t pay attention, for instance, to the way that we consume media today.

You won’t pay attention to the way that you are able to, basically watch anything you want to watch whenever you want to watch it, binge it or not. And you can consume media at your own pace. When 20 years ago, 30 years ago, you couldn’t do that, right? You couldn’t, you would, if you missed the show, you missed the show.

I’ve said it a thousand times and people have given the example a thousand times. Mash. The final episode of Mash was watched by, 30 million people, the average number of people that watched it every week when it was on 15 million. Today, if you have a show that has 2 million viewers on it, it’s a home run.

And the reason is, is because we don’t need to watch it when it runs. That’s why the super bowl is what it is. And it’s the only, in the United States anyway, and I’m sure there’s like many things around the globe. When you have global events watched by things around the world. That’s the only time you get that mass audience, because if you don’t watch it, you’ll miss it, right?

So, okay, that’s a shift in culture and shift in culture is a fundamentally different thing than paying attention to these, these data points that have nothing to do with you and excuse the idea of the following. When you start with the premise, that you’re affected by the globe that your business is going to rise and fall by demand, by global demand for your service when you are in the most micro business of micro businesses, you then give into the notion and you start your presumption with an element of seasonality, right?

And therefore, you’re going to act as if you run a seasonal business. Now, I have no doubt that you might go be busier at different times of the year than not. . But , you don’t run seasonal businesses. And the reason you don’t run seasonal business is because you don’t run a volume business. You are not a use it or lose it business.

You’re not a factory. If you don’t run the factory, you don’t maximize the asset. A hotel room is definitely a marginal volume business. You need a head and a bed. And so if you’re talking about hotels, you’re talking about businesses that

rely on volume. Sure, you’re gonna be affected by all those trends, but you don’t run that business.

And so therefore seasonality and the idea that you’re busy or not busy is really your own trope. And when you live in that trope of, oh, I’m seasonal, I’m super busy and therefore I don’t have to worry about things and things will always be busy and then things slow down. And the reason they slow down is because of the globe. You are not doing the work.

Let me ground that for you. What that means is that you’re not doing the work of how do I get related to serve those people that value what I do? No more, no less. How do I say I have, if you start with the idea, I have five slots, I have 10 slots. What does that look like? How do I maximize those 10 slots?

How do I provide the most to those people who want those 10 slots? How do I make sure that the people that might want those 10 slots really know it? Really are about it. And how do I make sure that the business that I’m in is defined for myself. I can’t tell you how many people say that they’re in the luxury, whatever creative business.

I’m a luxury designer. I’m a luxury architect. I’m a luxury event planner, but they don’t do the business of saying, wait a second. All luxury planners are not in the same business. Nobody would presume. That, Hey, Lexus and Bentley are in the same business. They’re not. If you like your cars, no one would presume that whatever, um, century 21, when it was, it’s gone now, but any other like department store would be compared to the highest end atelier that you can imagine in your area, right?

They’re not the same businesses, even though they sell the same thing, you know, that they sell clothes, they sell cars, you sell weddings, you sell design. It is not. The same thing, right? And you not doing the work during the pandemic, not doing the work of saying, Hey, what it’s going to be. And yes, were you flooded?

Was everything really, really hot in… we all know that when, when the world came back online, of course it was, but had you done the work, you would not be drowning in what the work was. You would not be feeling like, Hey, I have to make up the past in order to get to the future. And then now the future is inundated and now I’m just inundated with business, so therefore I can’t get the next business that is presumed to be seasonal.

Had you said, I am still going to operate in a very methodical, specific manner as to serve those people that want what I want, then yes, you would have just been doing great work and you would have been busy and more people would have wanted you than you could possibly serve.

And you would have said. No, you wouldn’t have tried to figure out. Well, how do I do that? Or I’ll just raise my price to raise my price. No, what I said back then. And I say today is you have to dig a deeper hole. You have to go further and further and further in regardless of what it’s going to be. And you have to absolutely ignore those fleeting trends that are very real, right? But are not shifting culture, meaning that you can’t ignore shifts in culture, the way that people are, the way that people behave, you know, a couple of things that are actually accurate, right? The way that people consume video today is different than what it was pre pandemic.

The way people communicate is different, right? That part I do really understand, right? But what I don’t understand and will never understand is the idea that that, lending to a seasonal business means that you have to react in a seasonal business, and therefore you’re going to basically try to, you know, shake your neon signs louder now that the business is slow, because you know that things are seasonal and you have to then say, my business is going to go up and down with the tides.

That’s entirely wrong. It’s entirely the wrong way to think about something instead of saying they have to figure out much more about my client whom I most want to serve to find alignment as to what I do and why I do it and keep on ripping away whatever ever little threads are out there so that you can keep getting pure and pure and pure as to what you do because the world is coming for you.

If what you’re trying to do is act seasonally and try to manage that flow of seasonality, which is what volume businesses do, which is what hotels do. Which is what anybody who has a volume play that might have an element of seasonality of trend of being responsive to whatever’s happening in the economy.

Yeah. That’s that world. It is not your world. You’re meant to serve people at the micro level, which means the depth of your emotional intelligence, the depth of your ability to share this is the business that you actually run and this is what you’re about, is the work right?

And so when you get lost and I see these newsletters and I see everyone talking about that and it is just absolute noise to me. It is absolutely someone who is very, very good by the way about teaching a fish how to swim faster. They are very, very good at teaching a fish how to swim faster. But you know what they’re not good at? Teaching you how to run a 50 yard dash, right? Cause you don’t swim. That’s how that goes. So quit listening and start listening to yourself.

Start listening to yourself as to how do you get to be more intimate? And maybe if you are exhausted, maybe if you feel like you’re suffering, maybe you’ve been listening to the wrong thing and you haven’t challenged the presumption that. Maybe you’re not in the business, they’re telling you you’re in.

Maybe you are not actually a fish, right? And so if you’re gonna be willing to do that, perhaps, then you’ll understand the beauty of art. The beauty of art is transformation. The beauty of art is transformational change. Nobody needs what you do.

So if you’re going to change somebody, who are you gonna change? And why are you gonna change them? And what is the point of going down the road to give them that? Element of change. It could only be for one reason to help them live a better life, no matter what that is. And that, that desire, that deep bone in desire to help them see a new world and live a better life has to be what drives you.

Not, oh my God, the economy is slowing down. So therefore I have to do this, that and the other thing. We have to change my website or blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. No, you have to dig deeper within yourself and that will be your evergreen and that will be your north star because in fact you sprint. You don’t swim.

That’s my riff for, today. thank you so very much for listening.