“This ‘telephone’ has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us.” A memo at Western Union, 1878 (or 1876).
At the time, Western Union was the one of the world’s largest corporations and Alexander Graham Bell was having issues with his patent for the telephone. He wanted to sell it to Western Union for $100,000. The above quote was their response. A few years later, Western Union’s president said he would consider the patent for the telephone a bargain at $25 million.
World history is littered with these examples — where someone says that they just know the answer for the future. Except they do not and their vision is clouded, ironically, by the size of their own (mis)perceptions. In some form, we all suffer from the same myopia. Our worldviews, our history, our bias, our neurosis, all blind us from what is other even while we swear up and down that it does not.
There is no such thing as a straight line in creative business. Any investment you make – website, new office, new computer, new promo video, new employee, new anything offers you absolutely no guarantee of success. The past might help you go one way or another, but it too is no arbiter of success. So dispel yourself of the magic bullet. There is none. What there is instead is the willingness to be wrong, to put out your best work without expectation and stand tall for what you believe in. If you view success and failure by the number of projects you book, you just lost. Instead, view success with how many people get it (i.e., you, your art and your creative business). Everything else will follow. And if they (clients, media, employees, colleagues, etc.) do not get it, that is on you, not them. Work harder to communicate the underneath, the meaning between the words, what is not plain to see. Ethos is never obvious.
The beauty of not knowing the future is that you actually do not know. That said, a car with no brakes at the top of the mountain is not one you want to be in. The right car is the one that comes from your core and that of your art and creative business. I say it over and over and can never say it enough – be relentless and uncompromising in what you stand for and apply it everywhere. If there is even a sliver of a disconnect in how you operate and what you stand for, fix it. Designers design, producers produce, artists can be both but never at the same time. Question everything in the context of today, what matters to you now, not so much for the right answer but for happy. Such is the difference for creative business: if there is no happy, you will die. Value happy at zero at your own peril.
The future unfolds of its own accord. We will all be wrong at some point. Focus on what you really care about, who matters today and the outcome will satisfy you. When you set a vision of what you want your future to be it is almost always too small. A million dollar client? Twenty projects? Five employees? Even though you cannot imagine it does not make its possibility any less so. Just ask Western Union.
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This actually helps explain why the absolute best approach is to focus on the problem, not possible solutions (when you’re first starting out).
You can’t go to a potential audience and ask them what they want, because they – just like you – can’t predict the future. They don’t really know what they want.
They do, however, know exactly what they don’t want.
So find the pain points, look at your own problems and issues. Address those and you’ll have something that will at least be worthwhile for one person, maybe even a few hundred, thousand, or more.
The future seen as limitless possibilities is a future of limitless probabilities. It is not so bad to be wrong or to fail if you fail smart and fail fast. The secret to failure is not to dwell on what went wrong but to identify what actually worked.