Risk Revisited

September 27, 2018

Every creative business is about communication and risk and most often about communicating risk to clients, employees and colleagues. The difference between creative business and other businesses, however, is that, at its essence, risk is emotional, entirely personal and wholly irrational (and perhaps illogical). If an interior designer needs to focus on the flow of […]

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Buzzwords Are Cotton Candy

September 20, 2018

Simon Sinek’s Why, Seth Godin’s Linchpin, Value, Storytelling, Mission Statement, Confidence, Margin, Blue Ocean Strategy.  These are all amazing ideas and I literally just watched a webinar where a business consultant threw all of these concepts out there to say this is how you get the right price.  She talked about not caring about the […]

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To What End Gatekeeper?

September 13, 2018

This articleabout how a Maui venue, Haiku Mill, is redefining the fees and obligations it requires of its preferred photographers.  Photographers have to pay a fee to shoot there, keep the venue in the loop on all email conversations, get approval before posting images and include venue required shots in their shot list.  While this […]

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Compromise and Accommodation Are For Suckers

September 6, 2018

Negotiate, be flexible, make the deal, do not let the client go. Or, better, these are friends, relatives, colleagues of your biggest client.  If you want to impress the real client, best to take care of these associations. Amateur hour. Why? Because amateurs have not done the work of understanding who they actually are as […]

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What You Need Really Matters

August 30, 2018

In my Business of Home column this week, I talked about when it might be time to call it a day.  On Facebook, there was a ton of conversation about how a baker decided to stop making wedding cakes because she just could not make a living doing it.  Unfortunately, she took down her post describing […]

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Expanding Your Creative Business

August 23, 2018

Before we jump into the conversation about expansion, let us first define some terms.  Expansion as we are going to talk about here is going into another line of business, hopefully based on your current line of business — a wedding planner doing day of coordination, an interior designer doing styling.  An entirely other conversation […]

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Managing Production

August 16, 2018

Here we are in the dog days of summer and out comes the, well, outliers.  People behaving badly, meaning those clients who look for cracks, find them and turn on the jackhammer. Whether it is a client refusing or just plain ignoring the necessity of having to make decisions to move your design process along […]

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To What End?

July 26, 2018

Seth Godin had a great post on Wednesday about the power of productivity talking about business/busyness.  It really is a conversation about intention.  Are you able to move towards the goal you set out for yourself with singular purpose?  Yes, I am a powerCapricornso this everything to me.  However, even if moving towards an intended goal […]

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Transition

July 18, 2018

Change sucks.  The only reason to ever change anything in your creative business (or your life for that matter) is if the (potential) benefit outweighs the pain you will have to go through to get there. The part to remember is that there is never change without pain.  Necessarily you will be giving up something […]

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Pricing In The Luxury, Power Luxury, And Ultra Luxury Market

July 12, 2018

All luxury is not the same.  We as creative businesses need to better at saying what area of luxury we inhabit.  There are three categories that come to mind: luxury, power luxury and ultra luxury.  Each of these markets demand a different business model to reflect the needs of the clientele who inhabit each level. […]

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