Process

Your art is ephemeral, random and of the moment.  Your creative business is not.  In the short term, you might be able to overcome a bad (or non-existent) process with the strength of your art.  Long term, though, there will be a cap on how far you can go.  Without process, you will find yourself struggling and will probably never get to the “next level”.

Process is simple:  it is what comes next.  It starts from the moment you are contacted to the moment your work is done with your client.  You have to know where you are with your clients always and have to be able to communicate what happens next (and when).  For smaller businesses or ones that work with only a few clients at a time, this may not be such an issue.  But what happens when five clients become ten, ten twenty?  Will you still be able to communicate the same way?  If not, then you need to set the stage now so there will be no “dropped ball” and things will not “slip through the cracks”.

And just having a process is not enough.  Your process needs to reflect what your art and your creative business are all about.  You are in the business of trust.  If what you do next undercuts that trust, then something is wrong with your process.  Example:  if you are a designer (interior, event or graphic), your success depends on your clients believing that you “get” what they want you to achieve for them. My guess is that the first thing you do, before you are even hired, is to listen, relate and even show a few examples of what might be possible.  This initial dialogue is incredibly personal and is the foundation of your working relationship.  But after your first meeting (or call) you email your proposal written in dense legalese with a conciliatory, “please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any question or comments to the attached.  I look forward to working with you.”  You can kid yourself all you want that this is the way it has to be, but a beautifully written proposal that spells out in plain English everything you will do and expect from your client is just as powerful and legally binding as all the heretofores, whereases, etc. that I read every day.

My question to you is how would you feel if you got an impersonal, stuffy proposal after you just sat and shared your innermost hopes and dreams for the art you want?  Especially if the artist you just met with did not (or would not) take the time to walk you through the dense forest of arcane words so you can understand why it is what it is?  I, for one, would feel alienated.  I might hire you because you are just that good, but I will have my doubts.

Another example: you are a producer of high art (a photographer, jeweler, sculptor, cabinet maker) and you deliver your work in a package far beneath the quality of the work.  A simple album, a Fed-Ex package, a cheap jewelry box.  What does that say about how you feel about what you have created?  Don’t you want to show it off in the best light possible?  If you are getting paid to deliver the art, the act of delivery should be high art too.

The disconnects, no matter how slight, are like spider cracks in glass: eventually the whole pane will shatter.  Having any process is better than none, sure, but only marginally so if you literally undercut yourself every step you take.  Process has to be about how you demonstrate the best version of you, your art and your creative business to your client.  Your goal should be to make sure each step builds on the next and that any misstep (as there will always be) is an opportunity to make the next step even stronger.  Keeping any part of your process just because you think it is what you have to do is, at best, silly, and, at worst, self-destructive.  Your process, like your art, has to be an honest reflection of the integrity upon which it is based.