Hey, creative, what does it really take to be successful in business? Like what are the bedrock truths? What are the, the foundational principles to turning your creative outlet, your art form into a business? Now, I don’t have all the answers for you, but I, uh, in my experience over 20 plus years, I’ve boiled it down to three that I’ve seen it play in my own business with. We Wall films, and I have seen it, uh, in other creatives who have become exceptionally successful. So those three elements, uh, that I see everywhere I look and I see a successful, uh, creative are to be good at something. Okay? Number one. Number two, be kind. Number three, deliver.
Be good at something. Be kind and deliver. Number one, be good at something. That’s your craft. That’s whatever that is for us. That’s film. That’s video for you. It might be painting, it might be writing, it might be music, it might be pottery. I don’t know what it is for you, but the number one rule is you better be, get incredibly good at that. I see lots of creatives out there who bemoan the fact that like they’re really upset that clients aren’t paying them a lot of money and that they aren’t getting all the jobs they want now. Um, there might be a lot of reasons for that, but sometimes you’re not good enough. It’s real talk. Your craft has not evolved enough to become exceptional at what you do to command the prices you want to get. You just aren’t there yet. Doesn’t mean you won’t get there.
It just means you still have work to do. You can’t be just okay or pretty good or even really good. You gotta be exceptionally good at your craft better than other people in your market. And if you aren’t, then it doesn’t matter. They’re gonna go with the people usually that are better than you. If you can’t find the audience that, that recognizes how good you are, you need to find another audience. But that’s the rule number one, <laugh>. You have to be the best at what you do in your market, and that many times takes years and years and years and years. Okay, so that’s number one. Be really, really good. Never stop getting better. Always upgrading your gear, always upgrading your skills. Never stop getting better. I can’t emphasize that enough. We, none of us are probably as good as we think we are or wish we were.
Okay, number one. Number two, be kind. Be kind. How many times have you heard stories about creatives who are just like this creative genius, but they’re jerks and nobody wants to be around them Now? Okay, fine. You can be like that and you can be the weird, cranky artist who nobody understands fine, and maybe you’ll do fine, but I here, I’m telling you, is for real clients and people who like, like people who don’t deal with creatives all the time. Kindness goes a long way. Remember this, people like to do business with people they like, and sometimes your kindness, just being warm and being good and being friendly can overcome some of your lack of skill. Maybe a number one that you aren’t quite maybe as good as you’re going to get, but if you’re super kind and you’re super friendly and you’re a good human being and you treat other people nicely, just like your mom said, it goes a long way.
Conversely, you can be great at something and be a jerk, and you won’t do as well as you think or not as well as you think you should. Okay? Kindness is also something that will feed word of mouth. Oh, they’re really good at that thing. Boy, they were so nice. So be good at something. Be really good at something. Number two, be kind. Number three, deliver creatives. We have a a reputation for being flaky. We have a reputation for not finishing. We have a reputation for missing deadlines. We have a reputation for not showing up for meetings or answering phone calls. Shame on us. Shame on us for that, by the way, because it’s not totally unfounded, is it? You can’t rely on this. Oh, I’m just a, I’m a creative and I, so I can’t answer phone calls and I can’t show up for meetings on time and oh my gosh, I had stop that.
We have to deliver, we have to be grownups. You have to meet deadlines. If you aren’t gonna meet your deadline, you have to explain why. Okay? It goes back to being kind and being really good at what you do deliver. If you deliver consistently over time, you don’t have to be the best marketer on earth because people are gonna tell other people that man, they’re good man. They’re kind man, they delivered. Now, think about anytime you’ve com. You’ve heard complaints about creatives. It’s one of those three things, isn’t it? They aren’t as good as they think. That just didn’t come out like, I thought this is not as good as I thought. Or, God, what a jerk, or, yeah, they were great and they were genius and they’re super friendly, but I couldn’t get the product. I couldn’t get it on time. They just never showed up. Or they, it’s almost always one of those three. Be really good at something. Be kind and deliver. You do that for a while and word will get out about you and your phone will start to ring. It’s happened to me. It can happen for you. I want it to happen to you. I love you.