Three Pillars of Creative Business

There is so much work to do.  The action items are endless.  Whether it is dealing with clients (potential and existing), vendors, employees or colleagues, the number of things we all have to do in any given day always feels like a mountain. Nice thought to work on your creative business instead of in it.  But who is going to answer all of your email while you are indulging (i.e., dreaming) about anything other than email? While nothing makes me sadder than to see a creative business owner lost in her business, it is not that I do not understand how it happens.  So I thought an interesting way to come out of the abyss or to ensure you do not go there would be to suggest what lies (or should lie) underneath.  Three pillars that can change how you run your creative business if you allow them to exist in your daily practice.  Be kind, be ruthless, create joy.

Be Kind . We all know how to be vicious to ourselves, to question our confidence, value, ability, and desire.  An unhappy client, frustration with the work, or a troublesome employee can send us all into a swirl of self-doubt, fear and maybe even panic.  Nothing like a business, creative business in particular, to bring out the depths of almost every emotion you can feel.  Often at the same time.  So be kind to yourself.  Allow the mistakes we all make to be beacons of opportunity, not justifications for shame.  Everything you do is a function of timing.  Sometimes you get it right, others not so much.  If you do not allow yourself the grace of your own value, you lose your ability to adjust your timing.  You will stay lost in the mistake and you will try to fix the mistake, curing the symptom, leaving the disease ready to maim you in a deeper, more malicious manner.  For most creative business owners, your art chose you, not the other way around.  Your talent, your vision, your desire is a gift you are meant to share.  Kindness, your willingness to listen and be heard with equal humility will take you much further than bravado ever will.

Be Ruthless. It may not all work out in the end.  Living in the fantasy that the future will take care of itself is a sure way to be disappointed.  Why?  Because you are not really here, you are waiting for tomorrow to arrive, so the present moment is a mystery to you.  You need the present moment to be ruthless with what does not matter.  In other words, you need to be ruthless with the truth.  If the truth is you have the wrong clients, the ones that run all over you and your creative business, then good chance you are hiding.  We all want to be chameleons in one way or another – whether to get the business, because you want someone (ok, everyone) to like you, or a combination of both.  Except chameleons hide to survive.  To live, you have to show yourself and risk it all.  If your day to day prevents you from being truly creative, do not kid yourself into thinking that you are doing what you have to.  You are hiding what is most valuable about you, maybe because you are scared to have it be judged.  You may not like the truth and may choose not to see it, but moving through the despair it may cause is what generates catharsis.  Only the luckiest of us can grow without catharsis.  The rest of us mere mortals need it to find our truest selves and that of our creative businesses.  Live in the despair of your own truth today so that tomorrow may evolve rather than magically appear.

Create Joy. Why suffer your own truth today?  Why be kind, gentle to yourself and those around you?  Because the whole point of all creative business is to create joy.  To surprise and delight your clients with your artistic vision.  More than any one thing you might deliver – flower, photograph, interior, stationary, logo, website, etc. —  your clients pay you for your vision, your ability to see a world they do not and share it with them.  If you are unwilling to honor the responsibility bestowed on you by working diligently on the clarity of your vision, you might consider not being a creative business owner.  Why?  Joy is the emotion, the state of being we all most deeply desire. If your creative business, your art can elicit that state of being, even if only for a moment, then we are all better off.  As much as joy is what we all seek, it is also unbelievably elusive, especially when we look for something deeper than euphoria.  Art brings us there.  You bring your clients there with how you and your creative business see the world.  However, to create joy, you must know joy or at least search for it.  So as hard as you work to create joy for your clients, be kind, be ruthless in your desire to find your own, both for yourself and your creative business.