Gotcha culture. Being pedantic and refusing to act with any sort of context beyond your own myopia is the disease of our time that needs to end. Being uncomfortable does not mean that you need to double down — i.e., scream louder, it just means you have to admit that you do not know the future and may not even know what you let alone what you do not.
Nobody is perfect. Not everything you do as an artist and creative business owner works. You will be wrong. Especially today. More to the point, you will be wrong more often than you are right. The goal is not to be wrong less, it is to be really really right when you are right and forgive yourself for your gaffes along the way. That is the thing about trust, it is not about being right all the time, it is about coming back to get it right the next time, or the time after that or after that.
With the idea of being really right in mind, nothing can be more important than understanding the difference between humility and humiliation for creative business. If humility and humiliation were crimes, humility would be a misdemeanor where you pay a fine and move on, humiliation a felony where jail time, possibly execution are in the offing for your creative business and maybe your art.
If the pandemic and all things chaos teach us anything, it has to be that there is no such thing as right and wrong when it comes to guessing at the future, just timing. We love all things Apple today (still), but in 1986, in the age of the K Car and PC Clones, you could not give Apple away. Every dog does indeed have its day, even the mullet. So when you try to predict the future of your creative business, have a sense of humility when you get it wrong, just do not be humiliated. “I thought micro-weddings would be the answer” “I thought I would have x projects by now” or “I was just featured in a shelter magazine, just finished my book and my new website, how come the phone is not ringing” or “this project is taking sooo much longer than I thought.” It sucks to be wrong but it is not an indictment of you, your art or your creative business. You are just wrong. Today. Not necessarily tomorrow.
I have seen too many creative business owners go down the rabbit hole of doom when they are wrong. They call into question everything that they are doing, their marketing, process, structure, even the kind of art they create just because they were wrong. Trying to kill a fly with a bazooka, blowing up everything, except the fly. Can you redouble your efforts to continue to get the right business? Sure, there is always, always room for hustle and hunger. But change everything, live in despair, convince yourself that you belong in jail because of your failure? Seriously, no.
Circumstances will change (one day the pandemic will be behind all of us) and you will find what you seek provided you just keep swimming. Whether you can find it in time to warrant your survival, nobody knows. Have a look at this NYT article about what caterers are doing now to survive all that is happening to them. Luck favors the prepared mind, but it is still luck. Do the work, act as if and stay true to what you know you are tasked to do: improve the lives of your clients as only you and your creative business can. You have to be flexible and have humility that you were wrong about the future. Learn from it, pay the misdemeanor fine and move on.
Juxtapose being wrong and the need for simple humility with places where you should be authentically humiliated. These situations have nothing to do with the future, they have to do with character and integrity.
A restaurant that prides itself on beautiful, pristine food based on the highest quality ingredients runs into a hard time. The chef decides to cut corners since business is off by more than half (outdoor dining and take out only). More money flows when the cost of food goes down until customers start to catch on (or the chef says that it is what she has to do to survive (it is not)). Then the restaurant dies because its customers do not trust the promise of only the highest quality anymore.
A designer tells a client that the work will be $x and then shows $2x. Bait and switch. Maybe the designer gets $1.5x and calls it a win, until he is spending all of his time negotiating each item on the budget ad nauseum. The business might go on, but each client interaction is torturous. There is, and can be, no trust.
When you lose your way and compromise your integrity for the sake of whatever – money, fame, ego, fear, justification, etc., there may be no way back. You can kid yourself to believe it is in isolation because of our circumstances today and will not affect your overall business. Not a chance. Trust is as precious a commodity as there is. When you blow it, regaining it is almost herculean. And even if you do regain trust from your clients, employees and colleagues, there will always be the lingering notion that you might be willing to blow it again. Compromising your integrity, your purpose, the truth of what you do and why you do it, is a reason for humiliation and indictment. You will suffer and you may never come back. So here is a thought: do not do it. Ever. Not even when you can be talked into being justified for doing it. Global chaos demands purpose and conviction, not a willingness to betray yourself with the idea that if you do you can get back when it is done. You cannot and while you might one day forgive yourself, your clients, colleagues and employees probably will not.
Go ahead and be wrong – a lot. Eating crow never killed anyone. You and your creative business will be stronger for it. Humility is our guide and she is awesome. Humiliation on the other hand – suffering for your willingness to compromise all that you are – is a fate I do not wish for any of you. Keep perspective always, humility never justifies humiliation, no matter the circumstance.
