I am reading Adam Grant’s new book, Think Again. It is all about challenging ourselves to act more like scientists and actively question our beliefs as much as possible. I love it and am loving the book. Huge fan of Adam Grant and his way of re-thinking organizational psychology.
I find the paradox of creative business profound in the context of Think Again. Literally, the bedrock of creativity, of creative business, is that what “it” is did not exist before you, the artist, thought of it. While there might be close proximities from previous work, the entire idea is that what is done is done for the moment at hand. In its purest form, creative business is a perpetual exercise in re-thinking. How can we do it better today for what we are seeking to create? And yet.
The beautiful grace of humility, the desire to search, to be still, to contemplate and to come from a place of wonder is what makes great artists great. Their businesses, on the other hand, are in a race to the pre-digested and the test is more about tools than structure. Any tool will work if gerry rigged enough. Percentage pricing? Most creative business owners go there because they want to communicate a sense of value delivered relative to spend. And for a moment, that works. “I get that you are worth x% of what I spend.” But then the tool becomes the crutch and the logic breaks. What if I spend less? What if I do some of the work myself? You respond with, well there is a minimum. On and on it goes.
Ultimately, the battle to commodification of your business versus the desire to create better art tilts towards commodification. It is just easier to use the tool that gets you close enough. Hourly fees, percentage pricing, keystone mark-up. I would never say that using these tools is not appropriate, what I am saying is whether or not there might be better tools available today. Just as you would not hand draw everything today, so too challenging whether the tools you use to tell your business story really do the work you need of them.
Ask yourself then, what is really your DNA? In the end, it is how much do you want to work and how much do you want to make? Once you know, you know and you can set about using tools and methods that extract, define and legitimize the value you seek. Perhaps percentage is the only way for you to get there, though I really, really do not think so. The future asks you to do the hard thing.
Most often, this means reinforcing the foundation you have built. This is challenging, mostly unheralded and a long term investment. It is not nearly as gratifying as raising your prices 10% because the calendar turned the page. Sometimes you have to tear the whole house down and that is a whole other conversation. Today though ask what will make you strong in the face of those who would seek to turn the irrational, rational. There really are no short cuts and just because somebody throws out a trope that works for them, does not mean you have to engage in myopic conversations. You are all better than that. If you are talking about how you charge before talking about why, we are doomed to oblivion. Why means that if you can be shown that there is misalignment between your intended why and how it is received, you need to change it, even if (well, especially if) it is “working” for you, your art and your creative business at the moment.
It brings me to my core philosophy: dig in, fight with all you have to be right about what you believe, ask those around you to do the same. Always be willing to be wrong. It is not personal, it is information. Appreciate the uncertainty of art is a necessity for your business most of all. Better tomorrow than today requires you to move perpetually towards why, fully knowing there will always be another why.
If the aim is to be as you intend, then all things based on derivative value will shrivel the more we know about the object. In the end, you are going to have to defend your value as it is. The thing is that COVID just brought the end forward a generation. Time to stand in your own light or be overshadowed by those that do.
