Creative business demands relationship. The telephone is your second best sales tool, face-to-face is best. You build to the end not just to yes. Working on how this interaction goes from the first moment all through to the finish is everything. I do will always be a subset of this day forward.
Seth Godin had a wonderful post today (The Easy Trap) about the difference between the focusing on the first sales or the ones that will last. His point is that creating the shiny nickel will attract those that want your shiny nickel until the next shiny nickel shows up. Creating something of substance underneath the shiny will take longer but will endure.
For creative business, endurance is relationship, the ability to connect your vision, your art with the dreams of your client. Relationship is about the journey, conscious ebbs and flows from the spark of an idea to its ultimate manifestation. What it is not is a discussion of price, what your services are or the stuff a client will get for their money. No website, pricing guide, written proposal or anything of the like will ever replace your mouth.
So before you build your website, create the fancy video or make sure you have the “it” thing, ask yourself what you hope to get from it. Too often, the answer is so that you do not have to spend your time interacting. You want the “thing” to sell your business, directly convert into clients. Will not happen. Tools are tools, never panaceas. Shortcuts might get you to “yes” more quickly, but they make your road a very long and painful one.
When the phone is ringing and (wrong) clients are signing up, easy to say that you are willing to go deeper, to build relationship, expose yourself, your art and your creative business; be judged for what you are and what you are not. How about when twenty calls a week goes to three? When people who truly get what you do and value what you value about you, your art and your creative business still go away because you are too expensive?
Success arrives a client at a time. Yes, you may have to ask if there will ever be enough of the good ones, just not when you are actually with the good one. Gratefulness is about being present to fortune, not its size. How deep will your conviction to meaning be then?
This is far beyond Seth’s Dip. You are already on the other side if you, your art and your creative business are seen and validated by clients, colleagues and employees. It is just that your metric of success cannot be simply whether or not you land the client. If it is, your transition to meaning is going to implode.
Getting to yes is the easy part if all you care about is yes. If you care about relationship and meaning first, yes second, yes will become more precious. A better metric then will be whether your potential client understands what you, your art and your creative business stands for, if they value your process, how and why you charge what you do, and, most important, if they sing your praises even if their answer is no. Lest you think I am ignoring money, right clients pay exponentially more than wrong ones, they also beget more right clients.
The long burn is about focus, the calm in your belly when you know you are on your path, comfortable in relationship, grateful for what is right in front of you, confident that you, your art and your creative business are seen and esteemed. The future unfolds from integrity, talent and vision and the courage to stay there despite the temptation to make it all about yes.
