The interesting idea that confronts all creative business owners is grit to stay true to your vision when it gets challenged. So much attention is paid to marketing, to making the sale, even starting to work with a client in what will most certainly be a honeymoon period. However, when tested (and you are always tested), there is reversion to appeasement and alienation of what you need to do the work you do.
When money does not flow, what do you do? If your client backtracks on an approval? When the budget explodes/implodes? In other words, what happens when you are punched in the face ala Mike Tyson? It is too easy to say that you will stick to your guns/contract and enforce things. Most of you do not want to be the bad guy so you compromise and hope that it all takes care of itself. Sometimes it actually does. However, most of the time, things start to slip bit by bit until you feel like you are no longer in control. Then you suffer.
As with all things, festering issues grow to the precipice and force you to go thermonuclear or eat it all. If only handled at the moment, with the gravitas of understanding what will happen if left alone, then there would be options and consequences. To act in the moment though means that you appreciate how important each and every step of your process is and the value you assign to each.
The biggest lesson I wish I could impart on all creative business owners is that if you do not honor value delivered, then there is no chance your client will. Yes, different value for different moments (prepping for the performance vs. actually performing), but that does not mean you can move past the moment in the hopes that the future will preserve its value. Never happens.
Your clients will want assert value as they see it. If it is not as you would have it, then your willing to accede to their behavior is literally flipping the keys to them. Just not something you can do. So make each value point matter and enforce it with the consequence that there will be no movement until the issue is resolved.
How then do you teach resilience? You do not. You teach compassion, conviction and faith. Clients are more powerful than you. They can bully you, cajole you, even shame you. What they cannot do is actually be you. If you do not believe in the purpose of what you do and the very reason you were gifted with the talent, experience and wisdom to create in the first place, who will? This is the beauty of your creative business, only you can do what you do, how and why you do it. Learning to live that truth is a skill as much as learning to market, or to be a better artist. Due respect to those who provide advice as I do to creative businesses, ignoring the ethos of you business and the how’s and why’s of what it does in the effort to not “lose” a client (i.e., make the sale) is a foundation of sand.
We all need to improve at seeing the whole picture within the moment. The days of “trust me” are gone. You have to earn that trust every day. Gratefulness ends at the opportunity, the rest what you do on your stage. Define value, earn value, then rinse and repeat. If you go astray come back to the moment and start over. Ignore it at your own peril.
