Will You Be Able To Say No?

Of course, I am writing in the context of the world-altering (world-defining?) Coronavirus pandemic, but I am also writing for something bigger — a philosophy that I own.  Everything I do and have said for the past sixteen years of working in and with creative businesses has been about niche.  Talk to the smallest possible viable audience and develop a relationship with that audience that is rooted in a singular purpose — to create joy.  Create joy, two words that are everything.  Create — to bring to life that which has not ever existed before other than as you intended.  Joy — the deep abiding sense of what we all seek as humans — connection, groundedness, community, love.  When you create joy we, your audience, find the place where we belong and from there we all catapult forward.  Nothing about the current global crisis has changed any of these sentiments.  If anything, it has just exploded them.

So time to walk the walk.  My prayer is for creative business owners to simultaneously hold two seemingly contradictory thoughts — horde cash and dream about tomorrow.  Many people have advised incrementally scaling back so that you are ready when the lights go on.  Cut salaries 25% when 75% is on order, week by week scaling back, borrowing money to try to maintain the status quo as much as possible.  I respect the idea and can see the logic but I am wholly on the other side of the trade.

As a people, a culture, we tend to underestimate the depth and length of pain necessary and overvalue hope, especially when there is an outsized shock to our system like CV.  Simply, what if it is a year before your world appears anything remotely close to normal? Two years?  From 9/11 until 2007 the airline industry lost $40 billion because people were too afraid to travel AND the imposition of travel (i.e., the TSA) (never mind what happened in 2008).  Do you really think the emotional overhang will not affect all things creative in a similar way?  I have yet to be convinced by any metric that there will be a magic V curve no matter how much we wish it to be so.  

Man-o-man do I want to be wrong. Dead wrong.  But if I am not and you have nothing left because you chose incremental change over life-support, then the ripple effect will be that much worse as your desperation will be as contagious a virus as we have ever seen.  Sharks smell a drop of blood in the water from a quarter of a mile away.  Just saying.

Sorry for the doom and gloom but it had to be said because I want all creative business owners to know this: no you, no business no matter how big your staff is.  The last person to sacrifice everything is you.  I say this will all kindness to those of you who have to cut employees who are like family (maybe even are family); to make the hard calls to pay as little as you possibly can.  I will get a lot of grief for this but so be it.  If you cannot have your business take care of you, even if only a $1, then you are absolutely saying that you exist to nourish your creative business and not the other way around.  Financially, psychologically, even spiritually this is just wrong-headed.  You will be depleted and you will increasingly resent those you are sacrificing yourself for and you will be, in fact, starving, day by day by day.  Suffering first and worst is no way out.  How could you be anything other than desperate when even the slightest tap turns on? A glimmer of hope that you will somehow be able to pay yourself?  

I am speaking to those of you who have turning the corner from starving artist to hungry artist.  The ones who know they and their art matters to their clients, colleagues and employees alike; the ones who have already made it onto their stage.  Those seeking to make it in the first place are not included here for a reason — their day has not yet come and they will have to do much much more to find their moment.  No, I am talking to those for whom going back to being starving is its own demise.  So give yourself the best chance to create joy by acknowledging and living in the idea that your creative business exists to nourish you, not the other way around.  Yes, horde cash and be sure to nourish yourself.  And, no, I am not saying do not cut back deeply, I am just saying do not wholly sacrifice yourself for the sake of your business.  You first.

You first because you need to start to work on tomorrow.  Now.  Start a podcast, a YouTube channel, a blog.  Tell your story about how you are going to contemplate a world that will need to restart, a world that will need your voice to be different from what it was yesterday.  Tell it over and over and over until we are ready to hear you.  Simple example — you are an event planner accustomed to doing 200-400 person events.  What happens when no one wants to gather in groups more than 60?  Will there be multiple events?  How will you contemplate social distancing? How exactly will you create community? A spirit of celebration?  Prophylactics are not going to cut it.  

See, the reason to horde cash and nourish yourself today is so that you can live in your tomorrow beyond those that will be desperate for any morsel that might come their way. Yes, “no” will be the most important word in your vocabulary when the world starts again.  No, you will not work for half price; no, you will not do the powder room alone; no, you will not sacrifice the depth of your process simply because the shark is done eating. You will own that tomorrow has then come, having been consistent in your new story and you will be there to do what you have always been tasked to do: create the joy we will all need for humanity to move forward.