I want to sell you a brand new, top-of-the-line Mercedes. It will cost you fifty dollars. Really.

Ridiculous? Sure. Except it is the conversation more creative business owners have with their (potential) clients than any of us would care to admit. These are the instances when what you communicate does not match the value of what you provide.

It can be too much or too little. Too much: Your list of services and the description of your planning, photography, design, production, etc. overwhelms the cost. Too little: The deliverable does not justify the price no matter how well it is described.

When I was an attorney, my firm charged two dollars a page for a fax—sent and received. Making an outsized profit is a sure way to alienate clients.

Yes, disconnects create distrust between you and your client, employees, vendors, even colleagues. And distrust is the seed of discontent.

However, what is more insidious about disconnects than the distrust they cause is the statement of ego they represent. No one consciously creates a disconnect. They exist because part of the business remains unexamined. You, the creative business owner, actually believe the fiction you are telling yourself and refuse to acknowledge the mixed message you are sending out to the world.

Harsh words? Of course. The reason I use them: Your fiction can affect all creative businesses. If a photographer can give away digital files even though it takes hours to create them because she believes that that is what clients demand, then those who know better suffer for it.

Will there be opportunity for those artists willing to educate and act with integrity? Yes, but moving against the proverbial tide is never easy and gets harder with each disconnect perpetuated in a given industry. There may be no one right answer, but there surely is a wrong one.

Every time a creative business establishes a precedent that makes no sense in its industry you hand power over to those (clients, vendors, colleagues) who will refuse to acknowledge the strength of the art behind the business. It will become all about the money and the disconnect will only validate that you are just trying to rip them off anyway. So not a place any of us wants to be.

Does every artist and creative business owner have disconnects? Yes. We all live based on our own predispositions, values, teachings, morality and internal compass. Over time, we can all come to see that our worldview was off, sometimes way off. We can only learn and go forward with integrity and humility that, despite our best intentions, we were wrong.

What I am talking about here is when you are shown the other side and you choose to do nothing about it. Today, you have to work hard to ignore the feedback and information coming your way about you, your art and your creative business.

Whether it is because it is how you have always done it, are scared to change, refuse to believe anything is wrong or are too deep in the mud to hear anyone or thing, it does not matter. Your suffering will continue (and grow) the longer the disconnect stays around. When you choose to know better, you will be better.

But if you do know better and choose not to own your responsibility to rid the disconnects in your industry please do not complain when you, your art and your creative business becomes marginalized. Value is created when the story we all tell reflects the ethos of the art behind it. Disconnects undermine the ethos of a creative business’ art in their contradiction.

The biggest disconnect of all will be your belief that the disconnect others suffer from will not affect you. You are wrong. Best to do your part to stop the disconnects you see in yourself and other creative businesses in their tracks.





Sean Low is the Founder and President of The Business of Being Creative, a consulting firm focused on providing practical advice to those in the business of being creative. Prior to founding The Business of Being Creative, Sean spent six years as the President of Preston Bailey Design, Inc. representing Preston in his business endeavors around the world. Sean has a law degree from the University of Pennsylvania and his twenty years of business experience ranges from law, investment banking, financial executive to small business owner.