Rachel C. Weingarten muses on Marketing, Manners and Modness

I was recently house-sitting for a friend blessed with not only a fabulous home, but a television screen larger than my entire apartment.  While I’m not generally a fan of TV, during the course of the weekend I found myself returning time and time again to one of my guilty pleasures Home & Garden Television AKA HGTV (another HGTV inspired post later in the week ) and obsessively watching as people attempted to sell  or prepare their unsellable homes for sale.

There was something gnawingly familiar about the process of watching these people struggle to let go of their pasts as embodied by a tangible structure.  Of course it was clear on the most basic level- the memories formed in those homes, both good and bad, made it more than just a structure and instead the physical embodiment of decades of memories.

How sweet.

In other cases though, it was almost pathological to see how some of the homeowners refused to let go, even when they were ostensibly desperate to sell their houses and move on to the next.  They expressed panic or great distress that their homes wouldn’t sell, while rejecting every logical shred of advice on how to make them more salable.

Instead of creating a neutral or welcoming atmosphere for potential buyers, they fought tooth and nail to have their homes retain every irksome vestige of their personality or taste.  Garish colors, aggressive groupings of family photos and other intrusively personal details made it hard if not impossible for a potential buyer to imagine themselves living there or wanting to own the space.

I suddenly realized that it was behavior exhibited by too many creatives that I know or have worked with.  The inability to separate the product from self and to release it to the client upon completion- if in fact they’re able to reach resolution or completion.

The dichotomy of the creative professional is understanding just how much of one’s self goes into any given project.  After all, they’re hiring you because they want to work with you and want your special spark and brand of creativity.  Until they don’t.

While the work universe has opened up to create stunning opportunities for entrepreneurs, there are also a whole new universe of personal/professional guidelines to keep in mind.  Some that spring to mind:

1. Be as hands on as needed -Don’t hover, pout or refuse to let go if your client’s vision doesn’t match your own
2. Good enough is really good enough- don’t keep tweaking and re-tweaking a project until your client loses patience with both you and your process
3. Leave your mark in subtle ways- think watermark not billboard.  If you’re good and meet their needs they’ll keep coming back, aggressively marking your territory won’t bring them back any sooner.
4. Learn to move on- We all have favorite projects or clients that we remember fondly, but like most good things those relationships can come to an end.  Stay in touch and on good terms so that you’ll be their go to person the next time around, but don’t professional stalk them- it’s creepy.