We spend money on necessities, we invest in meaning. We expect necessities to function perfectly and breakdowns usually mean we will seek a substitute. Meaning, on the other hand, is fraught with uncertainty. We forgive those creating meaning provided they effectively get back up. It is never the falling down that breaks the relationship, it is the inability to use the misstep as an opportunity to build trust.
Oh how I wish the simplicity of the above were in the ethos of creative business. Sadly, it is not. Instead, creative business owners default to the known, to the “value” of what they are doing. Hey, we are spending x hours working for you, available to you 24/7; we will not charge you for y because it did not come out as expected. Epic fail.
The client is never right in creative business, they just have a point. If the client were always right, then you would not have a job. Any client that tells you otherwise is operating out of a place of weakness and fear of the unknown. And that is the thing about the unknown — it is unknown. As much as you know where you want to go and how it will likely turn out, there is no guarantee no matter how much you plan or how much you have done it before.
There is a direct inverse relationship between certainty and creativity. If you create for a living (and you do), the risk is that it might not work out. You will fall down along the way, in ways large and small. Which then defines how you are paid, why someone would choose to invest in you, your art and your creative business: your resilience. To come back to the relationship when there is a mishap requires humility, sure, but also requires a conviction to learn. Promising that you will not do it again is a fools errand. You may very well do it again, just not for the same reason. What you do promise is the intention to be better, more related, more diligent, more aware of what lies underneath.
So back to investment and the focus on meaning. Meaning is your world, compels you to have faith that your work matters beyond the thing you manifest, it is, quite frankly, the place that you cannot be touched or condemned so long as you operate with integrity and responsibility for every single step of the journey. However, when you move over to cost, talk about money as if it is real, then you are playing in someone else’s arena; a world that is not only not yours but one you are more than likely not to be nearly as versed in as your clients.
I have seen more creative business owners eaten alive when they try to discuss rational value with clients as clients are inevitably more capable than they are in this discussion and place the creative business owner permanently on the defensive. There is just no there there.
All of which brings me to the conversation of what you are actually selling. Of course, you have to offer a vision of what you do and what you will manifest. Might I suggest that that is what you cost and is not enough. To make you, your art and your creative business a worthwhile investment you have to convince your client that you will understand them better than anyone else. Understanding requires empathy, connection and the willingness to be truly present.
If you are too busy communicating the value of what you cost, you will miss the boat. We all want to be seen as the complex personalities we all embody. Your ability to navigate the very humanness of those in front of you will move you past the rational to the ephemeral. All of your success comes from your mutual connection to the ephemeral. Live there and when you think you have to come back from the irrational, double down. That is the essence of integrity and conviction and truly is what you are paid to do.
