Hubris is a bitch.
If you have even a modicum of success in your creative business, you might live in the notion that your way is not just the best way, but the only way. You might perceive the world order as defined by your own version of success. You hear those with other worldviews and ways of doing things. You do not really listen though.
Many of you can go a long, long way with your own convictions, true to yourself, your art and your creative business. You may never have to confront the not-so-great parts of yourself and your creative business. Your art and your creative business might just be that good. For the rest of us mere mortals, there are blind spots – places where we shoot ourselves in the foot, miss opportunity, stay stuck. We confront the same problems with known solutions instead of asking a different question, solving a better problem.
The courage to shift begins with humility. Humility is the understanding that you might be wrong, sure, but also that your time for being right is ending. Humility lets you start a different conversation.
Every creative business is vulnerable today.
If you are busy defending how you do things because it has worked for you in the past, you might be lost in the notion that the past is your anchor not your ballast.
Specifically, if you are encyclopedic about your craft and that is what you sold to your clients when you started 20 years ago – I know every high end sofa on the market because I spend my time going to showrooms and talking to every dealer I can get five minutes with. How impressed do you think Millenials will be with that knowledge? They believe they can source product as fast or faster than you. And they might be right. You can get angry that you are no longer respected for your immense knowledge or you can ask a different question.
How do you express the value of your knowledge in another light? How do you own your niche in a way that becomes relatable to those whose lives have never been without a computer?
Oh, by the way, it works in reverse too. The Millenial designer who is so in love with technology and the power of information at her fingertips misses the value of experience and tutelage and education. Every great artist lives on the shoulders of giants and believing otherwise is its own demise.
We are all human. We have blind spots. They will bite us in the ass because they have to. The real question for you, your art and your creative business is will you allow yourself to see that you cannot see. From there, you can ask different questions to find answers that will bring you to a new reality, a new paradigm. Opportunity lives there.
