BOBC Podcast Transcription #137: You Go First
INTRODUCTION:
The key to sustained value, important clients and great work? Proaction. If you do not go first, there will be no story, no spark only reflection. Fluency not brilliance. If it really matters to you and your creative business, you have to go first.
BODY:
So the key to sustained value to important clients and great work. It’s proaction. If you don’t go first, there’s not going to be any story. There’s not going to be any spark. There’s only going to be reflection. Fluency, that’s not brilliance. If it really matters to you and your creative business, you have to go first.
So if you really start to think about things and start to think about what makes you tick as a creative business owner and doing the work that you do, um, no matter what it is, ask yourself, ask yourself, what is it that you find your purpose in doing what it is that you’re doing?
Maybe it’s to make money. Okay, great. Maybe it’s just have the freedom to express yourself the way you want to. And maybe it’s just the idea to have freedom altogether to chart your own schedule. But I want to tell you, I think it’s something more than that. I think it’s about doing the thing that we all seek to do in our world is, which is to change somebody else’s life, right?
To be important, to matter, to have your business be a reflection of what could be for anybody. Whether that’s for the globe and as, as the world knows, we all know it. That’s pretty grandiose. And maybe that is, um, but maybe it’s just for the world of the people in front of you, no matter who you are, no matter what it is that you seek to do and how you seek to do it.
So then the real question is, how do you do that as a business? How do you do that? when we’re surrounded by, the energy of being reflective of the client is always right. You have to listen to what the client wants. You have to adapt to the client. You have to be a chameleon. You have to try to figure things out in a way that is purposeful for you as a derivative of those that you seek to serve.
And I just really don’t agree. I don’t agree. I’m not there. I am really of the mind that if you truly want to be brilliant, if you truly want to be the person that’s going to make the most difference, no matter what it is that you do, you have to go first.
You have to go first because you’re the leader. You’re the one who’s defining whatever it is. And when I say you, of course, it’s your business. And it’s the process of what it is that you’re asking of somebody so that you can say, Hey, I’m leading the way I’m willing to take a risk. I’m willing to be, you know, vulnerable to what it is that I am and what I need so that I can create for you something that will make something different.
And that means that I’m not going to ask of you anything that I would not be willing to do myself first. And so that means I’m going to share with you the things that are important to me with the risk that you might laugh at me. You might laugh at, Hey, I need to go out to dinner with you before I can figure out what it is that we’re going to do for your wedding or for your home or for, for the, for whatever it is that I might be doing for you as a creative. So you might say, Hey, that’s, that’s the person that would say that back to you is like, well, maybe they’re not for you. So I am very much. The person who is a gracious knows is wonderful because it isn’t for them. And so the only way that someone can figure out that it’s not for them is if you tell them what it is for you and why it matters to you so much and that how it inspires you to get you to the place that you need to go as a creative and as a business, um, and that, that you’re willing to risk what it is that you’re going to do in the process of that, in the process of saying, Hey, I care about shoes and the shoes are what inspires me. So tell me what kind of shoes you like, right? It is all of that energy of saying, I am the person that matters, in this situation. And as the person that matters in the situation, it is my responsibility to take over the energy of what it means to be proactive of what it means to define the Path that we’re going to go on by saying, I will start the process by sharing with you the risks that I’m willing to take the things that matter to me, why I do things the way I do them and to embrace the idea that it will not be for everybody and embrace that the energy is always to be what it is that I’m going to define what it’s going to be.
And so I’ve said it so many, so many times in my career and said it on this podcast too, is that yes, on your terms is for me, the definition of expansiveness. Yes, and your term says I can help you. I can always help you.
You had the courage enough to reach out to me However, it is that you did I will have the responsibility and respect back to you to say this is what’s necessary This is what I need in order for you to appreciate who and what I am and how it is that I’m going to do what I’m gonna do for you and so It may not be right for you.
So you may only want me to do well, this little one thing, but I would say, Hey, I can’t just do this little one thing. I can do this other thing too. And in that way they can decide maybe that’s for them and maybe it isn’t. And in doing so you can live with whatever the answer might be, because yes, in your terms has been defined for you, both as an artist and as a business, and it is always for you to fulfill the two promises that are so very, very important to me, which are do only your best work, not the best work you can do on the circumstances and stake your reputation on every single thing that you do. Then you can sleep at night. Then you can sleep at night, knowing that if you got the opportunity to do what it is that you’re going to do, here’s how it has to be.
Now, let’s take a big left turn. It doesn’t mean you can only have one way of doing things. In fact, it means incredibly the opposite. It’s about the slinky, which I’ve talked about many times before. It’s about defining what those ribs are for you. And what those ribs mean. And within those ribs, you can… Be flexible and twist and turn and go whichever way you want, because we all know that a slinky stretched out down the stairs is not the same thing as what it is on the shelf. And yet it’s the same toy unless you bend or break a rib. So the work that I’m talking about is to find the ribs, share it with people. Go first in the vulnerability about why those ribs matter so much, and then be flexible as to what they want, right? Hey, maybe somebody doesn’t want you to do the whole kit and caboodle of whatever it is, you might be doing, they just want to slice off the top and get your ideas, right?
A la the expert. Tell me what you think. Tell me how that’s going to be wonderful. You just go through, instead of going through the 10 ribs that you have, you go for the first three, right? What you try not to do is go do the things that don’t matter that much, right? The things that you’re only fluent at.
Meaning that you might be a brilliant designer and presenter and creator, but you’re just an okay producer, right? Or you produce what you do really, really well, but it’s certainly not your superpower, right? So your superpower is coming up with it in the first place. So why would you build a business on the thing that you’re fluent at?
Because here’s the thing, right? Anything that you are just merely fluent at Somebody is brilliant at, and they deserve that work much more than you do. And if you’re going to try to compete because that’s the way you need to make money or whatever it is, that’s a very narrow, constrictive vision of the world.
And I just don’t choose to live there. I choose to live in expansiveness and the expensiveness of brilliance is where you can explore whatever might be for you and whatever it could be for you. And it means you go first. It means you go first with being vulnerable. And there’s no such thing as being so absurd as to alienate everybody.
That just isn’t true, right? Because that 99. 99 percent of you out there are limited in what it is you’re going to take on. You have no desire to serve a million people. In fact, you would be hard pressed to ever think about how you ever could. Right? So what you seek to serve is. 10, 20, 30, maybe even a hundred people, but that is a microscopic spec of a market that you are after, and it is not about the greater whole, it’s about serving the people in front of you.
And then by doing that, you’re able to be actually iconic to them. And they’re seeking for you to be brilliant for them. Does that mean you can run other businesses? Of course you can run other businesses, right? But the one that you run the most is always, always the thing that you care the most about. It is your core. It is what matters. And it is the essence of who you are. And it requires a level of vulnerability that I dare say, most of you run away from, you just are looking for the silver bullet, the person who might have a formula for you or, or something that a tactic for you that you can employ.
But the depth of strategy, well, that’s for you, that’s for you to decide. And it’s for you to put out and it’s for you to consequent and really live with what might not be because somebody chooses to not understand what it is on the other side. There’s just only so long as you are very clear about what it’s about, that’s a choice on their part.
And you have to be willing to let that go because in the definition, you know, what I want to say to you, what is your real aim for success? What are you really after? I hope that what you can see is that you’re after creating joy, you’re after creating joy for your clients, not in the rom com joy, but in that ephemeral deep in your belly, I have changed your life joy, and you are better off for whatever it is that I might have provided to you.
And in that way you can seek to create it for them, you can live it for yourself, and you can inspire it all the way around you. And that is what the purpose and power of art is. And the purpose and power of your businesses is to create joy because joy is the ultimate self sustaining enterprise, right?
No matter what it is you might do to practice joy, the joy that you create, the joy that you inspire and the joy that you live in yourself. Well, that is what happens. And the only way that that happens is if you go first, you got to first find what that’s going to look like and how it might come to be.
So, that’s my riff for today, thank you so very much for listening.
