What Happens When It Works?

The secret formula.  The hidden process.  The new technique. Proprietary software.

When you strike on something that works for you, your art and your creative business, what do you do?  Do you keep it under wraps, available only to you?  Or do you share, trying to let everybody in on what you have discovered that actually resonates?

Truly, no judgement either way.  If you believe that your path to success is in full lock down mode, then that is fine.  We have codified the value of intellectual property and the rewards due to the creator.

On the other hand, there is the value of the network.  The idea that if you discover a better way, sharing it, teaching it, letting it see the sunlight of everyone’s eyes is how others learn to absorb what you know and as a group we become better together.  Open source coding, of course, is an amazing example of what I am talking about.

In the end, it is about the value of the tool versus the value of the use of the tool.  If your use of the tool you created provides success to you alone, then you will keep it proprietary.  If improving the tool makes YOUR life better, you will seek to share it.  The better the tool the better you will be able to use it.

All of that said, no one has THE answer since there never is one answer to a problem where human interaction is concerned.  So leave the sermonizing to someone else, instead offer what you believe so that those that can see their way to your way of thinking might be convinced to leap.  We are all looking for the third person in.

And the biggest effort is often a single step.  Way back when Prestonand I did not know what to call him to describe what he did, despite the fact that he had been doing it for over fifteen years at that point.  Sure, he started as a florist, but had, by the time I joined him in 2003, long since transcended just flowers.  He certainly was not a planner as all he did was decor and decor specialist sounded awful.  If those who focused on home decor were interior designers, why couldn’t Preston be called an event designer since he focused on event decor?

Preston’s willingness to call himself an event designer changed his conversation with clients.  Many many others have followed suit and fifteen years later the concept of event design lives vibrantly in the event industry and has spawned many practices and tools in support of event design alone.

To which I say, what is the one thing you are doing or have changed that will have ripples in the industry if you were to talk about how it works for you, your art and your creative business?  No line-item pricing?  Getting your production budget one hundred percent up front? Using 3D rendering/virtual reality in your presentations? Creating a YouTube series?

We have all had enough of systems and programs and methods based in a pedantic view of a placebo.  Yes, the system might work for you in the short run until you are forced to explain the foundation.  If you have no answer, you can either seek the foundation or find another system.  With a foundation, you can build your own path, stand in your own light.  Another system is an answer to a problem someone else has created and solved, derivative in the very worst sense.

I said this to my son today and it is as true for creative business as it is for all of us: self-acceptance is perpetually seeking the end to a never-ending story that only gets better the harder we look. If we have others generous enough to offer what they have discovered it will only make our story better, if not change it altogether.

So go find your third person and, if ever possible, be the third person in.