Here we are, called to introspection daily. I, for one, relate to Michelle Obama’s depression and simultaneously see the work ahead. My mother is an eternal optimist and refuses to not see a shinier side to just about anything. As with all things there is beauty and dark in that sentiment. I choose to see the light and stay there, again, for better or worse. Thank you Mom. No doubt though, it is a challenge.
I am all for doing what you need to do to find health and happiness these days. Simply to remember why you are here as being much more a notion of internal conviction rather than external manifestation. Just faith that you are to do as you are doing because it is your best nature, hopefully. If that is to create for a living, that is awesome. Equally so though if it is about practicing a craft, vocation, calling that speaks to you. The whole point is to find yourself.
The best part of any business, creative business in particular, is that it is a journey of self-discovery. Yes, you get to have your artistry and art front and center. You share your vision of what is beautiful in the hope (knowledge?) that your vision will resonate with your clients. Making your art and your creative business the purest version of how you choose to share your gift is, at base, the foundation of every creative business. Such is not the topic of today’s post though. Today’s post is about blind spots and their consequences.
Most often, your clients have more money than you do and certainly more than your employees who are responsible for communicating with these clients. Your clients are not worried about survival in any meaningful sense, while you and certainly your employees might very well be. How does it color the conversation? Intimidation? Resentment? A feeling of, “They have so much, why are they arguing with me over $1,000?” I have watched, in horror, as an employee at an interior design firm told a client, who just happened to be a self-made multi-billionaire, “not to get all business” with him. When I asked why he would ever say such a thing, his response was, “He’s rich, he should not care about what we charge, it is small potatoes to him.” Yeah, no.
Or the idea that someone who asks a million questions is a pain in the butt client, while the one who lets you alone until they do not is a dream (and then a nightmare). Fear is pervasive in all creative businesses. You are tasked with (a) creating something new and (b) creating it for someone who cannot or does not want to do it themselves. Everyone wants awesome and is terrified that it will not turn out that way. Your role is to be the guide, focused not on success (which must be inevitable) but instead on the road there. How you perceive a client’s fear (or lack thereof) is its own statement about you, not them. The gravitas of all that is done by you, you art and your creative business has grown exponentially during the pandemic. Gravitas and fear go hand in hand. Embrace it or do not. As with not testing for the virus, if you do not embrace the relationship between gravitas and fear, it does not mean it does not exist, it just means you are praying it will go back to the world of pretty where illusion was easier and acceptable. It will not.
Speaking of fear, what about your own? If you are worried about failing or competition or success, does it bring you out of yourself, your art, your artistry? How fast do you talk about money? How do you really talk about what you and your creative business are worth? What you really stand for (see above, it cannot be only about creating pretty things)? Do you want to look like a better option or be the only option?
We all stand in the way of ourselves. We are loved in spite of ourselves as much as we are because of ourselves. Creative business is about forgiveness, humility and desire to bring to life what has heretofore never existed. Too often, ego prevents a fluid response. Rather than antagonize a wealthy patron, explain why you charge what you do and why it is important to the project. See the beauty in the client willing to ask questions and encourage those with absolute faith to not be so absolute. Acknowledge your fear, live in it, then put it aside. Your creative business has intrinsic value or it does not. Harnessing and displaying the value front and center is its own reward.
The point of blind spots is to recognize that you are, in fact, blind to them. Be grateful that the pandemic exposed and continues to expose us all to our blind spots. Give yourself the opportunity to have a different conversation, with yourself most of all. You will shift, moving deeper into yourself, the essence of your art and your creative business. This work, this change is the true seed of growth. Survival is, of course, necessary but will be fleeting without growth. Yes, the tree needs deeper roots and you need to do what it takes to make that possible.
