I am grateful for the coronavirus pandemic. Of course, it is cataclysmically awful in just about every way imaginable. However, I have fallen ever more deeply in love with my wife as I marvel at her remarkable humanity. My children love us and each other and together they are finding joy in that love. Yes, there is unbelievable stress and anxiety. We all wish we could be out in the world and having the ability to physically connect being taken from us, we suffer. Still, though, there is love, kindness and light. And that is everything.
For creative business, diamonds are made under intense pressure and heat. Quite literally, imperfections are burned away in this time. As someone remarked on Instagram, it took her 14 years to get what I have been throwing down, but now she gets it. I am grateful.
What am I talking about? Value delivery, alignment, process, scarcity, honoring the irrational, intention and conviction. Go back and read my blog over the years and you will see these themes over and over (and over) again. If you have chosen to go the other way of package, focused on price and the thing, with randomness associated with value (i.e., 50% down, 50% prior to delivery), being just-this-much-better than your competition, the coronavirus is exposing you with exquisite pain. Yes, I have empathy and sympathy for your creative business. Then again your straw house is getting blown over by the strongest wind. While the coronavirus wind may ultimately take all houses, I am absolutely confident that those artists who have worked diligently on why they matter will be the very last to go.
It is very important to understand that there are two things happening to the global economy. Paul Krugman lays it out very well in this column. First, we are in a medically induced coma in order for us to save ourselves from ever more horrible consequences. Next, we will be in a stagnant economy for which demand will shrivel and the pain of de-leveraging all things will cause a horrible recession. Whether or not governments can try to solve both remains and all of us pray they do. No matter though, you and your creative business have been given an unwelcome window for which can, in fact, choose your course.
You might blame the world and all things around you (fair enough) for what is happening to your creative business and you might dig in to what you have already built. OR. You might take the time to reconsider the very foundation you have built to date. Does it really, truly serve you in your effort to create joy? And, reminder, create joy is a technical term to me. Create — make what has never existed before. Joy — the essence of what we all seek to feel alive. Together — the permission to be transformative in your work so that those who enjoy it are forever changed by the effort. If it does not, then might I suggest that now is the time to erase the box, rip it up and start over brick by brick by brick.
I cannot think of another time before or in the future where we have ALL been given permission to start over, to dare what we never could have without the coronavirus pandemic. Perhaps you believe you do not have to, and that is awesome, grounded intention and conviction are there for a reason. BUT, if it is only because you refuse to be open to humility that there might be a better way for you, hubris is a bitch.
Change sucks. Like it or not, we are all now forced to change and contemplate the new constraint that the coronavirus has imposed on us all. The Phoenix is burning and it is death. There will be rebirth. So what. Between now and then we need to contemplate how we intend to live (i.e., not just exist) in a new world order. Be prepared to defend the story of your creative business and how it is going to deliver the outrageous promise you will most certainly need to make to your clients (old and new).
A few other thoughts. For some of you, now is the time to make hay. Wayfair has exploded as has Zoom. There are those of you out there for whom the world is now a very very bright place in a sea of darkness. Naturally, your good fortune might make you feel guilty relative to your peers. While it is most certainly false guilt, you cannot just push it away. Give it its due and then live on the stage you, your art and creative business were born to play on. The world needs your full throated voice now more than ever.
Last, perfect is the enemy of done. No one knows what tomorrow will look like. We are all contemplating what will be necessary and making it up as we go. We will all be wrong until we are not. You were delusional enough to start in the first place and you must be delusional enough to start again. No one has the answer, yet you must still listen. Whether you choose to hear is the very choice you must honor now more than any other. In the midst of it all you can be grateful to epic awfulness in front of us all as are compelled to confront yourself and question everything. You do you because you must.
