What Are You Worried About?

Here comes that time of year again. 2016 looks good but the proverbial phone is not ringing enough. Money is running low –   holiday hangover, taxes coming due, deposits spent. Water is rising and you worry you are going to drown. After all, that prime date, time for the plum project, pending business deal are all still open. Hey you cannot eat potential anything. And you are getting hungry.

Clients, specifically awful, soul-sucking clients, smell panic and worry better than sharks smell blood. Their money looks greener than anyone else’s because you can see it, taste it, even touch it. Bird in the hand right? Hearing a yes and watching your bank account rise is there to ease your worry. Every year you tell yourself you will not go down this road, but oh the temptation, the “need” to take care of things. This time will be different. Without the worry, you can work on getting the “right” clients and they will magically appear. Just like the confidence fairy.  Ouch.

The best part of all creative businesses is that they are entirely based on the irrational. I cannot say it enough. No one needs what you do. No one. And yet, if done well, a client’s want feels like a need – to both of you. The point is to honor the irrationality of creation and stay there. When you go down the rabbit hole of worry, you look for the way out and rationality, delusional as it might be, looks like the way. So you take business that does not fit simply because it takes irrational worry away. Circular logic to be sure. You need money, so you compromise your integrity to get it, convincing yourself that, when you have the money (which is not real by the way), you will have your integrity back. Yeah, not so much.

Of course, if you are starting out, you do what you have to to make your way. Practice, desire to find recognition, sheer hunger, lets you do things seasoned pros might not touch. We all walk through fire if we want it badly enough. This post is not for you. We will call you three years and younger creative businesses.  Keep doing what you are doing so that you can stand up and be counted much sooner than later.

If your creative business is older than three years, a) congratulations you have made it longer than most start-up businesses, and b) time to put on the big boy/girl pants. You can stand in your own light or you cannot. You have to be able to be paid for the art you create in a manner that is self-sustaining or you need to go away.  Sorry not sorry for being so blunt.

The concept of a starving artist has no place in creative business. The key to great work is great work. Great work requires that you serve your own muse first and foremost. The intrinsic why of your art and your creative business. You get paid for the why and your process is built around it.  Integrity has no trap doors, no rationalizations for the irrational, just faith that great work borne of a process iconic to you and you alone will be its own reward. Only talk to the clients that matter. It does not mean do not talk to everyone, just sing the same song regardless of who is in front of you. The clients who care are those that will sustain your art and your creative business. They are also a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Worry is contagious. We all catch it and it sucks. We know it is fruitless and yet we all persist. I am not here to tell you to stop. I can worry with the best of them.  Let all those much wiser than me guide you there.

Just worry about something else, something that will make a difference to your creative business: whether or not you are being true to yourself, your art and your creative business. Worry that you are not being irrational enough. Do you know matters most to your clients?  How far are you going to communicate your value? Is that how you are paid? Is it truly what you need?  Can you sing your song ever purer and more confidently?

Tomorrow can never take care of itself if you are busy selling it out for today’s worries.