What does it mean to be the best in the world at what you do? How do you get better? Are you really willing to do the work? The hard work it will take to challenge yourself at the edges? Or are you looking for the silver bullet? For someone to give you THE answer that will propel you forward to the place you believe you are meant to be both as an artist and a business?
As we come closer and closer to a sharing economy, where virtual and analog converge, the idea of incremental change becomes ever more the oxymoron it has always been. Radical change and radical authenticity is upon us as creative business owners. Community is demanded and you are going to have to listen with different ears.
For most of you, you aim to make the sale and then to maximize the sale. The ethos is to see it all in the short term as the client is likely to never repeat. So you do what you can to get the “yes” and then go from there. You might even study all that you can about generational trends to understand what people today are doing in an effort to be a chameleon.
Where am I going with all of this? Tis the season to take stock of where you are and endeavor the future. If you are listening to the pundits, you want to book more business, raise your prices, tweak what you are doing. And like answering all of your email, you will feel like you have accomplished something if you heed the advice, right up until you are marginalized out of existence. Yes, we are here.
For those of you who think 2020 is going to be like 2008, you might be right, just not in the way you think. 2008 was the beginning of the mobile age and all that the IPhone and its offshoots gave us. It ushered in a historic four year boom for ultra luxury goods that businesses like LVMH (who, by the way, just bought Tiffany’s for $16.2 billion) and Bentley provided. While the recession was deep and hard for many, for those that matter (i.e., the vast majority of your clients), it was the exact opposite. So if you think 2020 and all that is happening in our political and economic landscape are the harbingers of doom, you are not paying attention to what the pervasiveness of streaming, 5G, AI, and the cataclysmic shift to a sharing economy are going to do for all creative businesses.
If this does not implore you to erase the proverbial box, I do not know what will.
To the practical, surround yourself with those who are wildly radical and imminently practical. People who will say “what if we did it this way…” and those will respond with “I can build that…” People who will expect you to fall on your head and then demand that you get back up. None of us are very good at defining our own boundaries. Sure, you might make more money and that is great. Just do not do it for that reason. Do it because you need to make a difference in the lives of those you seek to serve.
Mostly, it means we need to hear your voice, the depth of what drives you as an artist and creative business. You need to know who you want to serve, why you will make a difference and then own the responsibility for the community you will have to create to make it all happen. One person at a time. Drip by Drip as Seth Godin would say.
Today, the definition of professional is not stoicism, it is conviction. Are you willing to appreciate the difference? The default is that all we have is to do the same as everyone else, just a little harder. Perseverance will win the day. And you will have that message reinforced to you every day by those that believe in the indelibleness of the straight and narrow.
What they will NOT do is take the time to have a look at your creative businesses and point out the disconnects. They will tell you to flood the balloon with gas to make it rise higher without ever being aware that at the same time you are filling the balloon with air, you are filling the ballast with sand. You might briefly rise, but you are simultaneously defining your own demise.
Here is my advice: do not do that. Instead, make sure that what you do as an artist IS what do as a business. Most likely, it means jettisoning practices that might even be serving you today. Radical change is not for the faint of heart. However, the future awaits and the depth of your soul as an artist hangs in the balance. If you own the urgency of the moment, know it might not work out, but you will never ever regret having leapt.
