More on Process

Process matters. What your creative business does, how you communicate with your clients, your staff, your colleagues, and your vendors is just as important as the art you create.  Moreover, each step of your process has to be deeply reflective of the ethos of your creative business.  This much I stressed back in June.  However, what I did not talk about was that your process has to be forward looking.  It has to reflect your creative business as you want it to be as much as what it is.

For instance, if you are trying to expand your services to include product sales with your service (i.e., a planner selling wedding gifts, an interior designer selling fabrics, a graphic designer selling branded items), then you have to provide a grounding for why your clients should want what you are trying to sell them.  You cannot just expect clients to get why you are changing.  It has to fit.  You might have the finest linen, stationary, furniture, accessories, etc. to go along with your design, but why yours is the best for your client has to be because it is in the fabric of your business not just because they are great products.  There are a lot of great products out there and if you do not incorporate yours well, clients will be alienated and feel like you are trying to “sell” them something.  Not only will you not get the sale, but you will undercut their trust in you as well.  You lose twice.

A great process should always answer the “why” of all that your creative business does or does not do.  Your job is to identify the need your clients want filled (note: do not ask them, they do not know) and fill that need with the value only you and your art can bring.  You cannot do it in a vacuum or only one time.  Your core value proposition has to be related, integral and identifiable throughout your business process.  Your business model justifies your price only if it validates your core value proposition.  If you are Colin Cowie, you can charge a large design fee because his premise (validated by his superstar clientele) is that his designs are unparalleled.  If, instead, he chose to mark up everything 300% when the market is closer to 100% then he would be undercutting his value as a designer (a wholly subjective notion) by being outrageously expensive (an objective definition).  When (and if) Colin ever decides to shift his model, he will have to make sure the new process reinforces the subjective and not the objective.

Competition and the economy have forced all of us to reexamine our business models.  Any identifiable process is better than none.  However, your long term success will be based on your ability to have that process drive change in your creative business, not the other way around.