The Why

Persistently curious, subtly skeptical is how I would describe myself.  If I do not know the answer, I will do my best to look it up.  Google and Wikipedia are godsends to me.  Equally helpful is to perpetually ask why.  Why is it done this way?  What does it mean?  What does it communicate?

What I try never ever to do is just accept that that is the way it is.  Even more important, if I do not know what it means, the why, I will not communicate the presumption that I do.  Even if dead wrong, fully informed decisions are always better than guesses.  When you ask something of anyone – clients, employees, vendors and colleagues alike – I believe you have to know the why underneath.  How the why fits into your creative business.

So let us take an inventory.  How many items in your creative business do you not fully understand the why of?  Things that are there just because.  Just because they have always been there, some expert (lawyer, accountant, etc.) told you you had to, or because that is the way the industry does it.  My guess, more than anyone would care to admit.  Hey, if it ain’t broke…

Except it is.  Communication is always in the in-between, what is not said.  An example: you want to be in the high-end social photography business.  To you, relationship is everything.  You aim to capture timeless emotion, expressions and moments that transcend the event.  You start with a long conversation, the beginning of a lasting friendship.  It always lasts at least forty-five minutes.  Then you send them the details – of course, it lists the various packages you offer and lists the stuff you get for each.  Validating to the relationship, the intimate conversation that just happened?  Not close.  But the client books you anyway, you send your draconian contract that your lawyer said you need (without one word of the relationship you now share) and since they do not say anything, all is good.  But of course the precious relationship is now a tattered version of itself and you just cannot seem to break out of the narrow range you find yourself in.  Your clients love your work but never seem to want any of the extras (i.e., the album, framed prints, etc) you love to create.  And the ever elusive high-end client remains just out of reach.

Let me see if I can find a strong enough word for how I feel about the word “package” for ANY creative business – loathe, detest, despise – jump to mind.  Package is not only a cop-out, it is the very antithesis of a creative business.  By definition, it means the client gets what everyone else gets.  No thought as to what the client actually needs, what is demanded of you, your art and your creative business.  Just a slot you into the box energy.  Clients are not farm animals and trying to herd them into their corral sucks as a strategy.  Packages work where the end product or service is defined, not where the whole point is that it is not.

Time to land the plane.  Back to the photographer.  When I, the client, ask her to go through the differences in the packages, I get gobbledy-gook.  Ten hours is better than eight because I might miss that moment at the end of the night.  But you (and your second shooter) will have probably taken over 3,000 photographs in the first eight hours.  I know you might miss something, but is it really worth the extra $3,000 to have you there?  Oh, that is not the real difference?  The number of prints is.  Ok, then why do the extra 100 prints cost $30 each?  Oh, that isn’t it either?  Then what exactly is it?

And down the package/stuff rabbit-hole goes the photographer.  The relationship suffers another blow even though it moves forward (likely at the non-premium package).  Here’s a thought.  Why doesn’t the photographer be the expert she is and tell the potential client what she thinks they need from her to do her best work and what that will cost based on the relationship she started on the phone?

When I ask the photographer why the packages are in her business, there is no convicted answer, no real understanding of why it is there to truly serve her creative business, her art.  Just the usual – so the client can compare, because that is the way she has always done it.

If you cannot defend what is involved in your creative business, the why, how can you expect your clients to have faith in your ability to take them on the journey you are asking them to?  Knowing how to meticulously follow a recipe is great.  It will never make you a chef though.  For that, you need to know the why.