Pain and Change

Painless change is an oxymoron.  All change in business is painful.  You are giving up the known for the unknown.  No matter how hard your current situation (save the extremes of abuse/unethical/criminal etc.), moving to another reality is always fraught with uncertainty.  For creative business, the uncertainty is a double force for inertia.

Why?  Because no one needs a creative business.  Every creative business is a want.  I want fabulous flowers for my wedding.  I want my new house to be ridiculously modern.  I want my new website to be amazing.  When you have figured out how to have clients get what they want from you, even if that want is not really what you do, moving away from that has to give you the willies.  Compare this with businesses that sell a product, a thing.  You either sell enough of those things or you do not.

Take toilet paper.  Yes, we could live without it, but let’s go with it as a necessity relative to flowers for your wedding.  The goal of those in the business of selling toilet paper is to sell more toilet paper.  So if you are not selling enough toilet paper, you change to see if you can sell enough.  All the unemotional business metrics apply.

Here is the radical statement for creative business – if your only reason to change is to make more money, you will fail.  Unemotional switches in strategy (marketing, financial, structural, etc.) are irrelevant.  The paradox of creative business is that real change is not about telling a better story, it is about telling a deeper story.  Less shining the apple and more peeling the onion.  In peeling the onion, there will necessarily be those who do not fit — employees, clients, colleagues, even friends.  Letting go of the fiction that they do fit always sucks, especially when you are not sure those who you are reaching for are the ones who actually matter.  We call it faith – in yourself, the breadth of your art and the stage your creative business belongs on.

Of course, everyone likes a winner.  If your strategy to sell more toilet paper works, you make more money.  And maybe that is enough.  For artists though, who cares?  It is still toilet paper.  The satisfaction comes from creating; doing the work you are meant to share with us all.  Being in full bloom.  Yours is to move us, to make us feel, to inspire us.  You create joy and your creation is joy.  You might think the concept of working towards joy too woo-woo, but ask yourself what your clients really pay for.  I can get the thing you create cheaper.  Period.  What I cannot get for any price other than the one you are willing to accept is your desire to create for me.

Yes, change is painful.  However, it is a move towards joy.  Not a smiling nod, a giggle at a romantic comedy kind of thing.  Instead, a deep belly feeling that you are giving meaning to those who most want it from you.  Live happy.  The money will follow your willingness to move further into your truth and that of your art and creative business.  If you knew the fulfillment would be there, enduring the pain of transition would be a breeze.  Such is not anyone’s reality.  Then again, leaping towards yourself, having your creative business jump with you is, and will always be, its own reward.  You might just find that making awesome toilet paper covers is a whole lot better than pretending you make toilet paper.