Persistently curious, subtly skeptical is how I would describe myself.\u00a0 If I do not know the answer, I will do my best to look it up.\u00a0 Google and Wikipedia are godsends to me.\u00a0 Equally helpful is to perpetually ask why.\u00a0 Why is it done this way?\u00a0 What does it mean?\u00a0 What does it communicate?<\/p>\n
What I try never ever to do is just accept that that is the way it is.\u00a0 Even more important, if I do not know what it means, the why, I will not communicate the presumption that I do.\u00a0 Even if dead wrong, fully informed decisions are always better than guesses.\u00a0 When you ask something of anyone \u2013 clients, employees, vendors and colleagues alike \u2013 I believe you have to know the why underneath.\u00a0 How the why fits into your creative business.<\/p>\n
So let us take an inventory.\u00a0 How many items in your creative business do you not fully understand the why of?\u00a0 Things that are there just because.\u00a0 Just because they have always been there, some expert (lawyer, accountant, etc.) told you you had to, or because that is the way the industry does it.\u00a0 My guess, more than anyone would care to admit.\u00a0 Hey, if it ain\u2019t broke\u2026<\/p>\n
Except it is.\u00a0 Communication is always in the in-between, what is not said.\u00a0 An example: you want to be in the high-end social photography business.\u00a0 To you, relationship is everything.\u00a0 You aim to capture timeless emotion, expressions and moments that transcend the event.\u00a0 You start with a long conversation, the beginning of a lasting friendship.\u00a0 It always lasts at least forty-five minutes.\u00a0 Then you send them the details \u2013 of course, it lists the various packages you offer and lists the stuff you get for each.\u00a0 Validating to the relationship, the intimate conversation that just happened?\u00a0 Not close.\u00a0 But the client books you anyway, you send your draconian contract that your lawyer said you need (without one word of the relationship you now share) and since they do not say anything, all is good.\u00a0 But of course the precious relationship is now a tattered version of itself and you just cannot seem to break out of the narrow range you find yourself in.\u00a0 Your clients love your work but never seem to want any of the extras (i.e., the album, framed prints, etc) you love to create.\u00a0 And the ever elusive high-end client remains just out of reach.<\/p>\n
Let me see if I can find a strong enough word for how I feel about the word \u201cpackage\u201d for ANY creative business \u2013 loathe, detest, despise \u2013 jump to mind.\u00a0 Package is not only a cop-out, it is the very antithesis of a creative business.\u00a0 By definition, it means the client gets what everyone else gets.\u00a0 No thought as to what the client actually needs, what is demanded of you, your art and your creative business.\u00a0 Just a slot you into the box energy.\u00a0 Clients are not farm animals and trying to herd them into their corral sucks as a strategy.\u00a0 Packages work where the end product or service is defined, not where the whole point is that it is not.<\/p>\n
Time to land the plane.\u00a0 Back to the photographer.\u00a0 When I, the client, ask her to go through the differences in the packages, I get gobbledy-gook.\u00a0 Ten hours is better than eight because I might miss that moment at the end of the night.\u00a0 But you (and your second shooter) will have probably taken over 3,000 photographs in the first eight hours. \u00a0I know you might miss something, but is it really worth the extra $3,000 to have you there?\u00a0 Oh, that is not the real difference?\u00a0 The number of prints is.\u00a0 Ok, then why do the extra 100 prints cost $30 each?\u00a0 Oh, that isn\u2019t it either?\u00a0 Then what exactly is it?<\/p>\n
And down the package\/stuff rabbit-hole goes the photographer.\u00a0 The relationship suffers another blow even though it moves forward (likely at the non-premium package).\u00a0 Here\u2019s a thought.\u00a0 Why doesn\u2019t the photographer be the expert she is and tell the potential client what she thinks they need from her to do her best work and what that will cost based on the relationship she started on the phone?<\/p>\n
When I ask the photographer why the packages are in her business, there is no convicted answer, no real understanding of why it is there to truly serve her creative business, her art.\u00a0 Just the usual \u2013 so the client can compare, because that is the way she has always done it.<\/p>\n
If you cannot defend what is involved in your creative business, the why, how can you expect your clients to have faith in your ability to take them on the journey you are asking them to?\u00a0 Knowing how to meticulously follow a recipe is great.\u00a0 It will never make you a chef though.\u00a0 For that, you need to know the why.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Persistently curious, subtly skeptical is how I would describe myself.\u00a0 If I do not know the answer, I will do my best to look it up.\u00a0 Google and Wikipedia are godsends to me.\u00a0 Equally helpful is to perpetually ask why.\u00a0 Why is it done this way?\u00a0 What does it mean?\u00a0 What does it communicate? What […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1228","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-structure"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebusinessofbeingcreative.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1228","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebusinessofbeingcreative.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebusinessofbeingcreative.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebusinessofbeingcreative.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebusinessofbeingcreative.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1228"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebusinessofbeingcreative.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1228\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1229,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebusinessofbeingcreative.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1228\/revisions\/1229"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebusinessofbeingcreative.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1228"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebusinessofbeingcreative.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1228"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebusinessofbeingcreative.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1228"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}