So you run a creative business. However you came to the decision, just hanging out your shingle is enough to show your willingness, your gumption to go your own way. The question then is how deep does your desire go? Mike Tyson is really well known for saying that everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth. What will happen/has happened when you get punched in the mouth?
Desire is not masochism. Desire is the willingness to endure, even enjoy the virtuous cycle – fail, adapt, learn, succeed, fail, adapt, learn. Success and failure are poor measures of performance, rather your ability to adapt and learn. Notice adapt and learn, not the other way around. You can only learn by doing in creative business. Change your model with the best of intellectual and professional experience, then let the world teach you. In the words of Seth Godin, you have to ship.
I am a nerd and I am a sponge. I want everyone and everything to teach me something new. Mostly I want the world to teach me their why. How come they chose to do things this way? Where are they going and how come they are adamant that they will get there. Read this New York Times article about the opportunity in front of Netflix and where Reed Hastings wants to take the company (i.e., be a media behemoth like Disney and Comcast). Who cares whether he is right, he believes he is and is building the business to get there. Oh, and do you really think he saw today’s reality when Netflix started sending you DVD’s in the mail in 1997? Adapt and learn, rinse and repeat.
One thing is certain: nobody knows the future. You can plan for it, think you can control it, right until it punches you in the mouth. Then you will be left with your depth of your desire. You cannot adapt and learn if you are not willing to see the world around you, to make yourself smart with the things you need to be smart about. If that is learning business fundamentals – accounting, finance, etc., go do that. If it is learning how to be better at presenting ideas, go take an improv classs or acting lessons. If it is about trying to become better at your craft, well, you know where to get that knowledge. Here’s the rub though: desire dictates that you have to make it your own. There are no shortcuts to your own truth and that of your art and your creative business. You are the only one with the answer.
As we are in the time of year for practical change, two suggestions: eliminate the idea of packages and stop with the platitudes.
The word package connotes sameness and is your shortcut to try to get clients to understand what you do by acting like a deli. Has never worked and will never work for this simple reason: you are not a deli, you are an artist. Your creative business is there to, ahem, create. Your size fits one, not one size fits all. Packages tell the complete opposite story and are, therefore, entirely destructive shortcuts. Take the time to explain what you do and, most important, why you do what you do. If you do not have the time, having handy dandy packages do not solve your time issue, they just get you more clients that really have no idea how to value (and properly pay you) for the time you do not have.
Platitudes – great customer service, attention to detail, lover of pretty things – mean nothing. Why? Because the opposite cannot be true. So so customer service? Love it when things fall through the cracks? Pretty sucks? If the opposite cannot be true, then everyone must do it and you doing it is expected and essential, not special. We only do modern interior design. The opposite can certainly be true and now you have actually told me, the client, something that will or will not resonate with me.
Then have at it: kill your packages, eliminate your platitudes. It is real and demanding work. Crutches are there for a reason. Except you do not need them and have never needed them. Desire to be better. Always.
