What a moment we are living in as people, artists and creative business owners. I, for one, am amazed at what is happening in the United States, and not in a good way. I was a senior in high school in 1984 and did a term paper on the value of airbags and the new mandatory seatbelt law in New York. What I learned then was that, even though most people knew that wearing a seatbelt dramatically improved automobile safety, only fifteen percent of Americans wore them. And the reason car companies were endorsing seatbelt laws was because they did not want to have to install airbags (if two thirds of states had seatbelt laws by 1989, they would not have to). No matter that the value of saving lives dwarfed the financial cost (and inconvenience/discomfort) of seatbelts and airbags, it took almost a decade for most Americans to accept wearing a seatbelt as part of their culture. Many of of those protesting the limitations on freedom from wearing a mask happily get in their cars and put on a seatbelt. Just saying. Here is a recent article discussing the seatbelt journey in the United States.
Two points: none of what is happening now in the United States needs to be happening, but it is no surprise at all that it is. What it means is that the impetus to change is driven ever deeper for just about every creative business I can think of. Whether you are busy or in a self-induced coma, you are confronted with a stark reality that the other side is ever further away and what it looks like is fundamentally, permanently different than what once was. So you are forced to change ever more profoundly and a renewed discussion about change is more than on order.
Painless change is an oxymoron. All change, particularly in business, is painful. You are giving up the known for the unknown. We must acknowledge that moving to another reality is always fraught with uncertainty, yet must happen. For creative business, the uncertainty is a double force for inertia.
Why? Because no one needs your creative business. Every creative business is a want. I want fabulous flowers for my wedding. I want my new house to be ridiculously modern. I want my new website to be amazing. Hopefully, pre-pandemic and world upheaval you had figured out how to have clients get what they want from you, your art and your creative business. Now, the want is still there, it is just amplified by a hundred. The intensity of denial has placed profound pressure on you and your creative business to resolve it with ever deeper meaning. Compare this with businesses that sell a product, a thing. You either sell enough of those things or you do not.
Take toilet paper. Yes, we could live without it, but let’s go with it as a necessity relative to flowers for your wedding. Perhaps there will be another run on it to let us know how important it is to our lives (and toilet paper manufacturers certainly would not mind it if there were). The goal of those in the business of selling toilet paper is to sell more toilet paper. So if you are not selling enough toilet paper, you change to see if you can sell enough. All the unemotional business metrics apply.
Here is the radical statement for creative business – if your only reason to change is to make more money (or given our current situation, any money), you will fail. Unemotional switches in strategy (marketing, financial, structural, etc.) are irrelevant. The paradox of creative business is that real change, especially today, is not about telling a better story, it is about telling a deeper story. Less shining the apple and more peeling the onion. In peeling the onion, there will necessarily be those who do not fit — employees, clients, colleagues, even friends. Letting go of the fiction that they do fit always sucks, especially when you are not sure those who you are reaching for are the ones who actually matter. We call it faith – in yourself, the breadth of your art and the stage your creative business belongs on.
Of course, everyone likes a winner. If your strategy to sell more toilet paper works, you make more money. And maybe that is enough. For artists though, who cares? It is still toilet paper.
The satisfaction for all of us will come from creating; doing the work you are meant to share with us all. Being in full bloom. Yours is to move us, to make us feel, to inspire us. You create joy and your creation is joy. You might have once thought (and maybe even still think) the concept of working towards joy too woo-woo, but ask yourself what your clients will really pay for on the other side. I can get the thing you create cheaper. Period. What I cannot get for any price other than the one you are willing to accept is your desire to create for me. That is your foundation and you need to remove anything, and I do mean anything, that does not celebrate this foundation.
Enter trust. The reason people did not wear seatbelts or put on a mask is not because they did not know the facts, they did and they do; it is because they did not trust in the community of it all. Well, no one is going to trust you if you are selling the shiny penny when they want something so much deeper and profound. No one really cares about selling toilet paper other than to see if they can. So not true for art. If you cannot show in every demonstrable way that you care more about creating your art for your clients on your terms that will be transformative, you are sunk. No, you will not necessarily go out of business but you will be ever marginalized like a pencil being ground to its nub. Deeper stories, not better ones.
Yes, change is painful. However, it is a move towards joy. Not a smiling nod, a giggle at a romantic comedy kind of thing. Instead, a deep belly feeling that you are giving meaning to those who most want it from you. Live happy, even in these our darkest of days of recent memory. The money will follow your willingness to move further into your truth and that of your art and creative business. If you knew the fulfillment would be there, enduring the pain of transition would be a breeze. Such is not anyone’s reality today. Then again, leaping towards yourself, having your creative business jump with you is, and will always be, its own reward. You might just find that making awesome toilet paper covers is a whole lot better than pretending you make toilet paper.
