Boundaries for Creatives
Why Being Admired Isn't the Same as Being Trusted
Hey Friends,
How are you spending your long holiday weekend? As for me, Memorial Day weekend reminds me of asparagus and a phrase I utter frequently. My teen was seven the first time he did it.
It was (you guessed it) Memorial Day weekend, which happens to fall at the tail end of asparagus season. At dinner one Friday, I placed three green asparagus spears on my son’s plate. He looked up with his nose wrinkled in disgust. Then, he raised his left hand and swept it from his right shoulder across his body. He uttered what would become a famous phrase in our family, “Not for me.”
He has since deployed this gesture at books pushed on him by well-meaning adults and at my playlist of disco music (which, for the record, is an excellent playlist). To this day, we as a family now express what isn’t for us in a firm tone and gesture of “Not for me.”
I’ve been thinking about that gesture of raising a left hand and sweeping it back and forth across the body ever since I sat down with interior designer Sierra Glasgow.
In episode 209, Sierra shares how she designs spaces that pull from African art, bold color, and geometry. Her work has a point of view you’d recognize from across a room. She’s now known for her style, which makes what she told me during our interview both funny and clarifying.
Sierra shared, “...it’s boring because a lot of the clients are like, ‘I really love your work, but I don’t want you to do too much.’ And I’m like, you’re hiring a risk taker — someone that just doesn’t stick to the norm.”
It’s the darndest thing when clients come to you for your work, but they may not want 100% of the thing that makes your work you.
When it comes to client management, there’s a gap between being admired and being trusted. Clients often want the results they see without fully understanding what goes into creating the work.
Their admiration says: I really love your talent. Their trust though, should say: I want you to do what you do fully, without asking you to dilute the seasoning of your special sauce.
Most of us deliver work that lingers in this gap of being hired for our artistic voice. Sadly, that voice is negotiated away in the first meeting. Conversations, then, start with your portfolio and end with their comfort zone.
My interview with Sierra poses the question: how much of yourself do you edit before the work becomes homogenous?
Over time, I’ve developed what I think of as a non-resentment rate. It’s a boundary or a floor, if you will, below which no amount of money is worth what the work takes from me.
The concept came from hard experience. There was a client whose budget was basement-level yet whose expectations were not. I needed the cash flow and knew before I said yes that there would be resentment on my part.
The job cost me time, exasperation at unreasonable asks, and creative compromise in roughly equal units. By the time I delivered the final assets, I already knew I should have pushed back before saying yes.
My friend Katy, an actor, is the benchmark of boundary-setting both at work and in her personal life. Like my son, she communicates clearly when something doesn’t work for her. In more than ten years of friendship, I don’t remember her twisting herself to accommodate others, even in her lean years when she had far less runway. Some things are simply not for her.
When a client insinuates, I love your work, but not too much of it, be wary of what you’re walking into. After all, the work you produce may be in tension with the work you’re trying to build.
What’s not for you doesn’t require drawn-out conversations. Move that asparagus off your plate and pile on what will satiate you.
How do you navigate your work vs client requests? Leave your thoughts in the comments.
As always, stay creative friend.
Martine x