I am obsessed with the New York Times Crossword Puzzle. I worked on at least one puzzle per day since 1990 – that is over 7,700 puzzles and counting. I can finish most days (even Saturday) and find it a personal challenge even after all these years to see if I can finish. When I started, I could only get a few words even on Monday (the easiest day). I am tenacious and proud of it.
Then again, I have also gone down (and down and down and down) the same road thinking that my intuition/idea/belief was spot on no matter the evidence to the contrary. Whether a business idea, personal matter or just a bad habit, I persisted far beyond any rational measure that would have told me to stop long ago. I am persistent and not so proud of that.
Were that we were all able to tell the difference between persistence and tenacity. Persistence is beating your head against the wall most often because you think there will be an answer (other than a concussion) if you just beat your head enough. Tenacity is the intuition/faith/determination that the access is there if only you work hard enough to find it. You must be flexible, willing to stop, try another way, look at all the angles, think things through to find the key, all the while knowing that you may never find your way in.
Persistence challenges nothing. You always can point to your effort as evidence of your desire. As if effort alone was any meaningful measure to success. You can chop wood and carry water as much as you want, it will not matter if you live with indoor plumbing and gas heat.
Tenacity, on the other hand, calls you to yourself, brings out every emotion you have, good and not-so-good and, most of all, requires you to move past yourself. You cannot say look at me at the same time you are deep in your search for access. There are only about 20 or so slips per year in the NYT crossword puzzle, most noticed by only one or two people. And yet I used to always think there had to be some kind of mistake since I could not solve the puzzle. Oh, the ego. To be truly tenacious, you have to be willing to admit you do not know, or worse, that you are dead wrong. Then you change course and look for another way.
I saw an expert offering to solve the problem of whether an interior designer should charge fees or hourly as part of her business summit. Two choices, one right answer. Once she gives you the right answer, she expects you to be persistent in your effort to follow the formula. Chop wood, carry water. Will it work? Who knows. Does it have a deeper call to those who might choose to be tenacious? Probably not.
I am me though, so let’s have a deeper look. For interior designers, there is inherent conflict in any pricing model. The conflict has to be resolved through a transparent value equation that justifies the conflict. If an interior designer charges a flat fee or a percentage of items purchased, time is her enemy. One hundred dollars earned in a month is much better than one hundred dollars earned in a year. So if the business is not built to accomplish its work quickly, there will be tension. Collaboration, multiple shopping trips, choice after choice after choice is a disaster for the fee/percentage based designer. The premium has to be on effective presentation, quick, permanent decisions by the client and very little interference with the process.
On the other hand, if the designer charges by the hour, the incentives are the exact opposite. More time she spends the more money she makes. Collaboration, availability and access to items is what matters here.
So the right answer (as if there was one) to whether you should charge fees/percentages or hourly is actually understanding that it is the wrong question. The real questions are what kind of designer are you and what do you do to support how you charge? Tenacity.
Every artist and their creative business are tenacious by nature. Fear makes them persistent. My hope, for myself most of all, is that the joy of tenacity will forever call me away from the comfort of persistence.
