Your Perfect Business. Why change?

Seth Godin, New York, Nov 2009

So, there I was, in New York last week at Seth Godin’s day-long seminar/workshop getting all charged up and hyped about possibilities for my business and those of some of my clients and then… the busy life of daily work dared to intrude: a new website to design for ArtStarts, a Newcomers Children Information Exchange site for AMSSA not to mention loads of grant applications to pour through as part of my contract administering an arts program for 2010 Legacies Now and the finishing touches on the next Creative City News Special Edition.

My situation is nothing unique. Most of our work and personal lives are spent this way. It’s why it’s so hard to take the little steps that lead to the big changes. It’s why we stay stuck in our current businesses rarely changing from the inside but rather, only when external forces—like funding cuts, bad economy—come our way.

We get little moments of inspiration where we say to ourselves “yah, doing this or that would be exciting, challenging, fun and maybe even profitable,” but then a deadline comes and the steps aren’t taken.

Often, we have very productive organizations where it seems just fine to leave things as they are. After all, there’s enough work and it seems profitable. Seth Godin talked a fair bit about this. We think we have the “perfect business.” Why change anything?

I see two reasons to change before change happens to us or our organization.

If possible we should try to gaze forward a little and read the signs of where things are heading for our business/industry. Often, there’s a cliff or waterfall ahead but we don’t know that because we’re too busy hiking up the mountain of daily work or busy paddling when suddenly, technology changes and our old business is abruptly replaced by someone or something else.

When everything appears to be going along well, it’s hard to see these signs (in BC, who knew a year ago our government would so brutally reduce support for the arts).

In my case, I experienced this blindness with the small static web sites I’ve designed for ten years. In my market niche (small to mid-sized artists and arts organizations), it no longer makes sense to develop in this way. There goes a line of my business that was moderately successful and easy to carry out. I have to admit, I had an uneasy feeling for the last couple of years that this was happening but I kept ignoring the signs and I didn’t change until now.

Another reason to look at changing our “perfect businesses” is a more personal one. This is apropos for solo operators or artists. My goal is to have as much fun working on projects as I possibly can. It’s why I try to avoid clients who are not fun to work with (I’ve fired a couple). Still, it’s easy to get trapped with good paying work but not very exciting work. When this happens, maybe it’s time to move in a new direction even if the outcomes are not completely known.

So, we have what we think is our perfect business. Watch out. Maybe it’s time to make some bold steps and move in a new direction. It takes guts to drop stuff that is working, but it’s what artists do all the time.

What am I going to drop and when am I going to drop it? I’ve started some new things, such as this blog and I’m now helping clients set up sites using WordPress and other social media tools as well as offering workshops again on design. It all means I just have to learn to live with the ambiguity of it all and go for it.

Is your business about to go over a waterfall? Are you willing to change your “perfect business” from the inside before someone or something else changes it for you?