Your creative business did exactly everything you promised. You executed flawlessly, there were no hidden anythings. Yet your client was underwhelmed. The “Wow” they wanted did not appear in their eyes. Was the project successful? Who gets to decide? Does it matter?
Easiest question first, of course it matters who gets to define what success is. If everyone is underwhelmed with your creative business and your art, you will not be around for long. The better question is whether you can let your reveal be judged without interest in any definition of success other than your own.
Here’s the thing: building a creative business on the ability to deliver a subjective “Wow” is impossible. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and all you can do is put “it” out there. If you believe in your process and all that you have done to get to here, nothing more you can do. Unless.
If you have not spent the time to define what success is and have not earned that success along the way, underwhelming at the end is a huge indictment you need to take as the wake up call it is.
Clients have their own definitions of success. For corporate projects, it might just boil down to money. Was the investment in you, your art and your creative business worth it? Did they make (enough) money on what you did for them to validate their decision to hire you in the first place? Most often, though, a client’s definition of success, even in the corporate world, is much more ephemeral than that. To stick with the corporate market, was the sales force properly motivated, the press/social media on the launch big enough? Traditional yardsticks just do not work. No straight line between your work and money. Success then becomes like the old definition of pornography, you cannot describe it, but you know it when you see it. Just not good enough today.
This then is where so many creative businesses have gone lost. Truly, it is not up to your client to define success. You have to define it for them. And to do that you have to honor the power of the journey. The milestones you achieve along the way have to be your focus. Whether you highlight the milestones by getting paid (which I hope you do) or receive some other recognition for the work achieved to date, is up to you. It is impossible to do if you, your art and your business are only focused on the finished product.
We all want the client to have their “Wow”. You will do all that you can to make it happen. However, if their “Wow” happens to not be yours and vice-versa, yours has to be the one that counts. For that to happen, you also have to be willing to share what your “Wow” is with your client and live with any disconnects. “Our process will get you here, and we will be more than satisfied when we get there. To us, a project is successful if [someone cries, dances, screams, smiles… you fill in the blank].” If success to them is that everyone cries, dances, etc., you simply cannot care.
Everything is measurable if you choose to measure it. In a nod to Gary Vaynerchuk and Seth Godin, some things are better off unmeasured. Is it absolute number of eyeballs, number of clicks, time on a page, bounce rates, etc. that matter in social media today? Or is it about meaningful connections?
For our purposes today, you, your art and your creative business have to define the measurements that matter and allow your clients, colleagues and employees alike to believe in them. Success is how you see it and can prove it. The end is hopefully inevitable, but, even if not, the journey has to be, with every step measured to illustrate its (building) value.
