Change sucks. The only reason to ever change anything in your creative business (or your life for that matter) is if the (potential) benefit outweighs the pain you will have to go through to get there.
The part to remember is that there is never change without pain. Necessarily you will be giving up something in the hopes of attaining something else. For some people, ripping the band-aid off is the way to go. Radical surgery that is a ninety degree turn from where you are today. For your business, it might mean firing long-term employees, shutting down a particular area of the business that no longer serves you or your art, going all in on a particular way of doing things.
Other artists, however, cannot go all in and need incremental change to get where they are going. They can deal with sustained pain, just not intense pain. These creative business owners scale back a business line, limit an employee, raise their prices slightly. The goal is to change but not risk everything in the process.
My deep preference is for radical change, where you give yourself no option but to stand in the light YOU choose and live with the consequences of others either not believing you, or worse, not caring. You leap fully aware and conscious of the intense pain you are about to endure with the faith that the other side is available and valuable to get to where you need to be on your journey as an artist and creative business owner.
I do, however, have appreciation for those that need to move slower, to dip their toe so to speak. Provided they have the same commitment to fundamental change as those who would leap, those who hop can get there too. Like leaping though, if you undervalue the depth of pain you will feel or overvalue the change you are actually making, you are likely to get nowhere. Incremental change is an oxymoron if it keeps you in the same place with new clothes. If you want to be perceived as luxury or power luxury, and raise your prices twenty percent to get you there, you did nothing but drive the point that you are who you have always been, all the while validating those who wish to be you.
To make change, you have to be committed to the pain of change. You have to endure what is in front of you with the understanding that many will be wishing you to be as you always were. And yet. If the promise of your art and your creative business is to be better tomorrow than you are today, you must embrace the work and challenges ahead to be more authentic, more focused, more willing to reject those who would see you as other. You cannot be simultaneously the comfort of what was and relevant to today. The comfort of what was can drive you to today, of course, but leave the same as it always was to the diners and delis of the world.
Whether radical change or more subtle shifts, awareness and intention matter. With awareness and intention, you will close the door behind you and seal it shut. This is the place of abject fear for us all. True change, no matter the form, means giving up the idea that you can ever go back to what was. It means losing all of the back doors embraced in the phrase, “we can do that too…” No, you can only do what YOU do, the too part is for some other artist as it is what THEY do. Even if you wind up going back to the way you once did things, it will not be as you were but you are now. The story of the Phoenixis resonant and should be a guiding light as you seek to evolve your art and your creative business. If you have truly embraced change, the phoenix has burned and there is no longer any there there only what is here. Change from here has vastly different implications than change from a there that no longer exists or is available to you, your art or your creative business.
Knowing what is right for you is different than having the courage to live there. Then again, the courage should come from the idea that you really do not have a choice. When you hide, you give others permission to take the light that is yours. That is not sustainable. The light will be either permanently lost or you will reclaim it as yours. Hiding serves no one, least of all, you.
