Every business owner is being tested these days, especially creative businesses. Simply, the ground underneath your feet is perpetually uncertain. The pandemic, politics in the United States, economic turmoil, technological leaps. You name it and the winds of change (and chaos) blow ever harder. Yet, on the other side is opportunity to shift, to redefine your role and responsibility in your clients lives, our lives. The question then is whether or not you will embrace the opportunity or shrink back to the known, comfortable in, well, comfort.
Make no mistake, you are in the business of creating joy, not rom-com smiles, rather deep, unabided joy for those that embrace your world. Art drives your business, not the other way around. Art changes the world and you are the person, the business to make that happen. We live in a time where other is hated for being other. Tribalism in an echo chamber where there is no community.
If you choose, your art can reveal hate’s ugliness and ultimate self-limitation. Art matters only if your respect its gravitas. You might have fun creating joy but there is nothing “fun” about it. Conviction.
You cannot see through to the other side. Nobody can. The only thing that you can do is to walk the path you choose with intention and integrity. Confidence comes in actually walking the path, not knowing where it will take you. Such is the nature of conviction. You have to leap. You have to crash. You have to get back up. You have to stand in your own shadow. You have to leap again. And again. And again.
If failure terrifies you, I understand, then go practice your craft working for someone with whom it does not. Fearlessness is not on order, conviction in the face of failure is. Lead because you must, not because you can.
As the emotion of the day crescendoes given all that surrounds us, please know you, your art and your creative business will be exposed. Daily. You will be bullied, humiliated, debased, misunderstood, ignored and vilified. It will be up to you to remind everyone — employees, clients, colleagues, even family that creating joy is purposeful, intentional and fraught. As such, it requires idiosyncrasy as to what will make your best work possible, and that idiosyncrasy must be respected above all else. Are you crazy? Yes, next question.
Other endeavors can be buttoned up, protected, contracted for. Creative business demands that you be vulnerable. You are tasked with, ahem, creating what heretofore has never existed. To create, you have to invest in the relationship. It is personal. Inherent in the relationship is the idea that you see what others around you cannot. You must be the guide and walk with a firm hand regardless of circumstance. Conviction.
Conviction has to be hard. You have to be challenged. If you, your art and your creative business were not, you would never discover the courage you never knew you had. Courage is the knowledge that you actually know better and the willingness to act in that knowledge. What this means today is to never look back and ever say the words “It’s just…” ever again. If you cannot believe in the power of design, of art, why should the rest of us?
So please do not wing it. Especially today. The path, your path for your art and your creative business, is only there if you define it with resolve, not just because that is the way it is. Work tirelessly to understand the purpose of each step of your creative business, resolute in the step’s necessity and place. Everything must exist for a reason. To those who wish to shake you from your center, you have to be able to appreciate the value of your own faith in the path you have created and your unending desire to walk it. Gravitas, conviction and faith all require hard, painful, testing choices. We are here now. Success is the willingness to walk towards these choices and not run away. The solution is not to run with the wind as much as it is to plant your feet and lean in.
