Honoring Your Core

Everything you do has to come from your core.  Your core is what you stand for, what you most believe in and what it is you deliver to your clients along with the physical manifestation of your art.

Your core has nothing to do with the actual art you create.  There are lots of people who take pictures, can design anything, choreograph, perform or sculpt.  Technically speaking, they are probably better than you.  Who cares?  Your core is what your clients come to you for so that when they are able to get a piece of it, they feel better about themselves and the lives they are living.  Lest you think I am all the way out there, just look at Apple.  Better, faster, cheaper products exist for almost anything Apple sells.  Yet, Apple literally cannot make its products fast enough.  We buy Apple products because we feel cooler when we do.  Yes, the products have to be great, but the ethos behind them has to be better.  Lose the ethos, lose the product.  Can anyone even remember that the Palm owned the PDA market for over a decade?

Too often creative business owners believe their core is their art.  Be it a photograph, design (graphic, floral, interior), or cake, the work must be impeccable sure, but what goes behind it matters more.  Why? Because that is what you are really selling and what your clients cannot get enough of.  And from there I will go out on a limb — this is the place from which all of your strategy needs to emanate, not from your art.  Translation: do not sell more or cheaper, sell value.

Take Julie Goldman’s appearance on The Shark Tank last week.  Julie owns The Original Runner Co and she went on the show to ask for money to support her new line of white runners and a DIY kit. The sharks did not like her idea of going “mass” with her product, when her core high-end business was so strong.  She did get any of them to bite (pun intended).  First, I have met Julie and she is very very smart and very very good at what she does.  The Original Runner Co. is a terrific business and I am quite certain that her not getting funding will not impede her progress at all.  It is also easy to see why she did not get funding.  Very hard to invest money in a 50% margin business when your other business makes 300%.  Especially, when there is very little barrier to entry into the lower-end business, which will limit any potential upside.

From my eyes, Julie’s lower-end business belies her core.  The value of Original Runner is not the runner – it is the idea that you can make an incredible statement about your wedding simply and effectively from the moment guests arrive.  The first thing a guest sees is the runner and that sets the tone. Original Runner makes that happen for designers at wholesale and for brides that want to create it with Original Runner. Take that relationship away and, to me, you lose the business.  If Julie is bound and determined to enter the DIY market, why not create a dialogue – a service not just to show the DIY bride how to use the kit, but to talk with her as she does it.  A business much closer to Windsor Smith’s Room-In-A-Box than a here-you-go kit.  These clients will understand the value they are getting for their $150 and will not begrudge those that pay $750+.  And Julie will get to keep doing what she does best – helping brides make statements.

If you know what your core is, you can go anywhere with it, without it, nowhere.  Owning your core means never having to apologize or justify why it is that you do things the way you do.  Mostly though, with your core front and center you will be able to focus on growing what matters most to your clients, whether that is the current physical manifestation of your art or not.