Year-End Planning

Tis the season to think about next year.  Many of you will embark on setting your goals for 2011 in the coming weeks.  You will probably look back at 2010 to see what has transpired, take a look at what is already on the books for 2011 and try to figure out what holes need to be filled.  No doubt, this is a valuable exercise and certainly worth doing.  However, I would challenge you to engage in deciding how to move forward in a whole other way.  Work on your Look Book.  Peel back the “shoulds” and “supposed tos” (i.e., your website is supposed to look like so and so and you really should be doing so and so).  Dare to expose the core of your art and your creative business everywhere.  Pay attention to what the world loves about you, your art and your creative business today.  Hint: it is not what it loved yesterday.

2011 will be the year to manifest opportunity.  Circumstance has set the stage for creative business to reap very large rewards.  Although financing is very difficult for many, the cost of money is at or near its historic lows.  What does that mean?  Maybe not a loan for you or your business, but an opportunity for investment that does not come along very often.  An article in Sunday’s New York Times about the recovery in the hotel industry is a perfect example of what I am talking about.  There were words like “war chest” and “ready-to-pounce” with people like Richard Branson and Barry Sternlicht mentioned.

Then there is the wholesale shift in the way the world operates from the way it did in 2008.  Think of the businesses that have found significant traction since then: Facebook, Twitter, Apple (IPhone (introduced in 2007), IPad (2010)), Zappos, Groupon, and Gilt Groupe.  The way we communicate has fundamentally changed as has the way we buy goods and services – including your art.  Forever.

2011 offers a very big opportunity to reinforce, or better yet, redefine all that you, your art and your creative business stand for.  An opportunity I do not think will come around again for a long time.  So see your world as it is, embrace where it is heading and then shape yourself, your art and your creative business accordingly.

An example: the experts quoted in the New York Times article say that there will be much more re-development of hotels and condos than new construction.  If you are an interior designer, how do you offer your services in this arena?  New construction is easy – blank slate.  Re-development is constrained by what is there.  If you are graphic designer, how do you tell the story of the new look in a compelling way?  If you are an event designer, how can you put your spin on what events will look like at this “new” facility?  How will your brand serve the re-launch?  For all of you, if you are really interested in the opportunity, how will you align your art and your creative business to serve the coming needs of this redevelopment wave?

And, if you think this is just for the big guys, then you are being a chicken.  The trends are macro trends and they will affect your market if they have not already. You have to be able to ask for what you want, know that you have the goods and be relevant to the solution.  Need inspiration? Read Daniella LaPorte’s post on how to ask for stuff.

One of my favorite experiences this year was hearing Bryan Rafanelli talk about Chelsea Clinton’s wedding at Engage!10: The Breakers.  Someone in the audience wanted to know how he got the wedding.  Bryan said, “I asked.”  The audience member followed up with: how did you know you could handle it?  Bryan said, “We were ready.”

The point of your planning for 2011 is not to decide how to be incrementally better, it is to make you, your art and your creative business indispensible for what is to come.