Saying Goodbye and Hello

How we turn the page defines us.  Friendships come, evolve, some stay and some go.  None stay the same.  Children grow up.  Those nearest and dearest to us die.  We will have to leave the people we love most when it is our time.  The grace with which we can say goodbye and hello is our lifelong challenge.

How we grapple with the challenge personally is for each of us to discover in our own time and our own way.  However, as artists and creative business owners, there is a different sort of pressure.  Personally, we are hopefully surrounded by those who love us unconditionally or endeavor to do so.  They allow us the space to come to our goodbyes and hellos in our own time.  Not so in art and business.  We exist in our clients’, employees’, colleagues’ and vendors’ lives to serve a purpose – to create art, provide meaningful work and fuel the industry we belong to.  So if you do not learn how to effectively and meaningfully turn the page in almost every aspect of your creative business you will jeopardize all that you hold dear.

Examples:  How do you fire an employee that is not working out?  Is it all their fault and you are literally getting the monkey off your back?  Or worse, cleansing the toxic air so you will be free to breathe again?  Hmmm.  Pretty sure you did not hire him or her with that in mind or else you probably would not have hired him in the first place.  So when it does not work, what did you bring to the table?  And more to the point, what did your creative business bring to the table?  Did you ask for an entrepreneur but got a functionary, or vice-versa?  What platform does your creative business support?  Which one do you want?  You cannot truly say goodbye unless you actually know what you want to say hello to.  A mis-fit employee is never the whole problem and often the smallest symptom of a much much larger disease. It is a lazy excuse to believe otherwise.  Your work has to be to say goodbye with as much grace and enthusiasm as you did when you first said hello.

How about a business that does not fit anymore?  A retail store, wholesale delivery, day-of planning, click through advertising, commissionable sales are all great examples.  Do you close down the business right away or figure out how to integrate it into another part of your business?  Or do you ignore the reality and allow the “black-hole” to fester?  Although you are most certainly killing an aspect of your creative business, you must know that all things have their time and failing to acknowledge this truth, especially when the time has past, is a sure way to stay stuck.  Those of you who might think that this is obvious are probably only thinking about aspects of a creative business that do not make money and/or are huge problem areas (i.e., too much labor, time, etc. relative to psychic and financial return).  However, what if the part of the creative business we are talking about is profitable (psychically and financially), but just does not fit into the future you envision for your art and your creative business.  For instance, if you are heading to all things digital, maybe doing your own letterpress is not the best idea no matter how much you rely on it.  No one said saying goodbye was easy or even strictly rational.  But if you are to live the truth you choose, you must say goodbye no matter how hard.

The last example is the inspiration for this post:  saying goodbye to the wrong client.  Whether your (potential) client cannot afford you, does not “get” what your art is all about or is simply unwilling to respect how your creative business works, how you say goodbye is what defines you.  If you take on the wrong client for whatever reason (money, fear, etc.), you will pay much more than you receive.  On the other hand, if you tell your client to effectively jump in a lake, shame on you.  I was watching an episode of Million Dollar Decorators (such a guilty pleasure) and was horrified at the way one of the designers told a potential client she did not want to work with her.  She lied (said she was too busy), told her to go talk to other designers without referring any to her (so arrogant), and she did it all on national TV (how shaming for the client).  Oh, and the client had a million dollar budget.

Saying goodbye with grace, honesty and humility is what we all deserve as human beings and to strive to do anything less in your creative business is an opportunity lost.  Designers I have worked with, to a person, would have done their very best to help the client understand why the relationship would not have worked, tried to find her the relationship that would and been available if the first referral did not work.  For them, a client is a client as soon as they pick up the phone.  If you work very hard to say goodbye well, the next hello almost always will be terrifically sweet.