Simon Sinek’s Why, Seth Godin’s Linchpin, Value, Storytelling, Mission Statement, Confidence, Margin, Blue Ocean Strategy. These are all amazing ideas and I literally just watched a webinar where a business consultant threw all of these concepts out there to say this is how you get the right price. She talked about not caring about the model if you can make it work. But you better know your numbers and have a target to breakeven. Figure out if your customer is a relationship, value or price customer. Term after term after term with nothing behind it. Nothing meaning no intention, no purpose, no foundation.
F—-ing infuriating.
We all need to slow down and do the deep work of acknowledging that creative business is different. Touching the surface of your why, blue ocean, and storytelling is not near good enough. Amen Bill Baker.
Creative business is itself a story, with an arc, dramatic tension and a series of resolutions that culminates in a profound crescendo. As with all stories, a plot element will either build trust or create uncertainty. We will come to know characters as the author, director or actor chooses to reveal that character to us. We are drawn in as we all vacillate between the unknown and our own connection to what is known. And the story grows from there.
The depth and commitment to this story IS your creative business. If you are able to define the container from which you will create with your creative business, then you are free within that container to engage as the maestro you are. Just do not get lost with the container being the story as so so many consultants, experts, pundits, industry leaders talk about today. The story is what your clients feel as they move through your journey with them. The mistake is thinking clients get to feel as they will about your work together. They do not. How they feel about your work is actually up to you and your unwillingness to own that responsibility is what will keep you stuck (or, worse, marginalized).
Dramatic tension (i.e., distrust) is as important as trust. We have to believe it might not work out for you and your creative business to step in to show us that the answer was never in doubt. If you cannot hold dramatic tension, you will give in to the client’s folly and you will be lost. You will be toast even though your intention was to be helpful, supportive and even respectful in your own mind. Except all you did was validate that you are not in control of your process. A quick example will land the plane.
Say you are an interior designer and, for any room, you start with floor coverings, then lighting, then wall treatment (paint and/or wallpaper), then window treatments, and finish with furnishings. If you are an event planner, it could be catering, decor, entertainment, photography, same concept — order of design matters. When a client asks to talk about wall treatments before you have finished with the floor (entertainment before decor), what do you say? Are you able to say not yet? Can you hold what might come back when the client does not get his way? Can you live to the truth of the container you established when you went through your two minutes, explained your contract, followed through on your calendar of communication? This is the essence of storytelling as a business.
You can have all the buzzwords you want at your fingertips — your why, your value statement, your understanding of the client and what they need — but if you do not know your story and how you and your team intend to tell it as a business, what do you really have? Cotton candy — sweet and light and gone in an instant with a bunch of sticky goo remaining.
So listen to all of the buzzwords and appreciate that at least they are making some kind of impact on our creative world. Then acknowledge that they are not near enough. For the next month do the following: for every single interaction with a client (potential or actual), ask whether that interaction added to trust or consciously burned it (i.e., created dramatic tension). If it was to build trust, when do you intend to burn it? If it was to burn it, when do you intend to resolve it? Write it down, schedule it with your client, make every interaction intentional to enable and divine the next. If you do this work, you will then prevent yourself from giving in to your client’s version of your creative business’ story. You will be left with your art and its power to transform through the power of your creative business’ story, not the other way around.
