Robert A. M. Stern has been the launching pad for some of the world’s best architects. As with many (creative) professionals, having worked at prestigious firms is often the best validator for what will come when you decide to hang out your own shingle. You will also have the benefit of others who have done the same thing. And yet.
Just like a degree from a fancy school does not necessarily mean you are any good at what you do, so too having worked at a prestigious firm. As any creative business owner will tell you, running a creative business is a far far cry from working for one. You might pick up a few things watching someone else drive, think about what you would do if ever you were driving, but until you are actually driving alone, you will never really know.
Does it really have to be that way? Must we reinvent the wheel every time a creative entrepreneur strikes out on her own? Even more, what would it be like if there were self-contained incubation services that allowed creative entrepreneurs access to tools and support they would not otherwise have access to?
No, I am not talking about incubation businesses like We Work and the like. What I am talking about more like what happens at so many hedge funds today. If a trader builds a track record for herself (a fund within a fund if you will), then the hedge fund itself might be a principal investor in the trader’s new fund. Watch almost any episode of Billions and you will get the drift.
The idea would be to invest in the success of the future by providing those who seek the future a path without nearly as many pitfalls. Call them consortiums, design groups, whatever you like. I am saying that there would be a group of businesses invested in the success of the other. Senior businesses would provide necessary resources and guidance and they would get fees and ownership. New business owners would receive a leg up in doing ever better business. As the services would no longer be needed, the equity would remain.
Why has this not worked before for just about any creative industry? Easy — abundant versus limited mindset. If you believe there are only so many buyers and that you might “lose” a client to competition you will likely focus on how to “win” the sale and not work diligently to build a variety of meaningful choice — artistic style, budget and, most important, artistry. Instead, you will compete on price, work hard to say that you do that too and not allow yourself to truly focus on what you absolutely stand for. Of course, you would not invest in building another who you would consider direct competition because their success would be your risk of failure.
Abundance, ironically, means that you understand no one needs what you do and, therefore, that your art and your creative business exist solely for the purpose of transformation, fulfillment of a client’s desire to be other. Most businesses exist because they point to a need we did not know we needed before the business created the need. Example: smartphones. The world was just fine with cell phones with modest text/email capabilities. Just ask Blackberry. Not true for creative businesses. Nobody is ready to upend the world because you hung flowers from the ceiling. In that way, creative businesses change the world one moment at a time. In the single moment there lives abundance. The human desire to connect, express and find relationship to the world unknown to them is eternal. Post-COVID, it rages.
So why not come from the place of abundance, seek to define choice by alignment and the desire to connect client and artist with those whose relationship will lift both to unforeseen opportunity. On the ground, it means nurturing those who choose to start with what it takes for them to truly grow into what they stand for and to provide those services as a small group that makes the consortium so compelling for those its seeks to serve. Small groups of businesses that come together to say to clients let us help you choose which one of us will serve you best. Within those groups there are equity opportunities, customization and growth that simply cannot exist as an untethered group of stand alone businesses. Abundance.
The world is as you choose to see it and, to paraphrase Adam Grant, if you rethink the power of the collective and decision-making, perhaps the unpaved road will be the widest yet.
