Walking The Walk

When we make change, the biggest ones are often the easiest.  Once we commit to lose the weight, give up smoking, drinking, doing work for nothing, ending a bad personal or professional relationship, etc., the first move offers the most dramatic results.  These dramatic results are the catalyst to keep moving, keep changing.  However, once we have gone substantially down the road to transformation, there has to be a new impetus to keep going.  Yes, there is no there there.  And, for so many of us, myself included, this is our true test of whether we are willing to walk the walk or just talk the talk.

How committed are you to your choice to walk a different path?  We all suffer the illusion (delusion?) that once we have chosen, we will not be confronted with the choice again.  While you might have set new boundaries, redefined your core and that of your creative business, reconstructed your process and outlook, have a shiny new website/blog/twitter and facebook page, there will always be those that do not respect the new you.  And, of course, they strike when you least expect it.

Now that the high season is ending for many creative businesses, the question creeps in – what happens when the wrong client, in the wrong style, with the wrong attitude shows up and wants to work with you in March.  You have experienced what it is like to have absolutely no business in January and February and never want to be there again.  Do you walk away or talk yourself into how much you need the work and compromise everything?  How much do you secretly want to go back to the way things were, no matter how dysfunctional?  Most of us would say no way Jose, just look at me now, why would I ever want to go back?  And yet you leave yourself no choice.  You have to eat right?

Except you always have a choice and by living in the box you have created for you, your art and your creative business you ensure that the door never closes on the old you.  Simply because your business is seasonal does not mean your cash flow has to be.  Why are you taking a 50% deposit when you need it the least?  If January and February are your slow months and your high season is in May-July, how come you are not working to take in money from those projects in January and February? A major cop out if you say that is just not the way the business works.  Says who?  And even if it is impossible to collect money in the slow season, how about ancillary business and financing (lines of credit, etc.) that can safely carry you through?  I have yet to meet a creative business owner that can continuously and securely manage lumpy cash flow.  You just do not know what is around the other bend.  For most creative businesses, it is much better to earn $10,000 per month for the year than to receive two payments of $60,000.  Yes, getting that big check is so sexy.  However, going to bankruptcy court while you wait for it is not.

The point is is that there is no wiggle room when it comes to the integrity of you, your art and your creative business.  You can never go home again and you would not want to live there if you could.  The razor’s edge is not to know it when you see an invitation to compromise your truth, it is to remind yourself that it is there when you do not.  Closing the door is a process of perpetual self-evaluation.  Walking the walk is not so much about making the hard choice, it is about working very hard to make sure it really is not a choice at all.