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Web Site Strategy ~ $25,000

Happy Board of Directors ~ $100,000+

Ah-ha! Moment ~ Priceless






I'm a business person. A marketer. I have always believed - even taught - that price should be set according to value. Value, of course, is a very relative concept but this has never stopped me from managing the economics of it, evaluating costs vs. benefits to set prices. This methodology has helped me put a monetary value on all sorts of things, including my own consulting services. It's how the business world works. And it has worked well for me, until one day I evoked in a client something truly priceless - a genuine, eyes-wide, heart-opening, spontaneously smiling, world-view-shifting, light-bulb shining, Ah-ha! Moment.

Oops.

That sound you hear is my brain breaking.

Why? Because my client's Ah-ha! Moment - spurred by something I'd done - occurred within a nanosecond of time and had impossible-to-measure-in-the-moment consequences, and yet the expression on their faces made it clear that there was a lot of value in that nanosecond's insight that hadn't yet proven its worth. Because I couldn't ascribe a "price" based on resources (i.e., time, materials, effort etc.) and results (i.e., profit, savings, capacity etc.) - the two primary units of value -  to something so clearly valuable, my brain really has to bend a bit to think about how to "price" what is "priceless". Being a pragmatic businesswoman, I quickly turned my ability to evoke Ah-ha! Moments into part of my value equation as a rationale for charging reasonably high fees (though not as high as many.) Incorporating Ah-ha! skills, my business objective, became to "under-promise and over-deliver" by promising a strategy and delivering a strategy+Ah-ha! Moment.

But here's my Ah-ha! Moment after working this way for a while: sure, my clients value the Ah-has! But I'm learning that I value them at least as much, if not more. I value my ability to produce income which helps me feed and care for my body and family, but when I tap a creative place in myself to help produce an Ah-ha! Moment, it soothes and delights my spirit. If money feeds my body, then Ah-has! feed my soul.

Soul-feeding is not something we usually discuss in business circles, but it should be. Business Schools crank out capable managers who can monitor and moderate resource expenditures against objectives and plans. All good, except that truly outstanding businesses employ and nurture other qualities as well, including creativity and values. Business types call creativity "out-of-the-box thinking," but that's a bunch of hooey.

Creativity, so key to excellent businesses and happy souls, is not a "thinking thing," it's a "spirit thing," which is also rarely discussed in the Board Room. By "spirit" I mean that ethereal connection between the mind, heart and outside world that isn't entirely your brain or your body or "the Universe", but an ongoing conversation between them that you are only just barely aware that you are participating in. Listening in on that dialog - and participating more consciously - allows we humans to bring creativity and fresh approaches into our world, the world we shape and measure and value. But the ability to work creatively so that it enhances the business value of our output still challenges traditional economics, because creativity is simply not an economically measurable activity.

This is my second Ah-ha! There ARE no economics for the creative act itself.

Yes, that is my brain still breaking.

Those who create for a living - artists, designers and writers - know this challenge well and have found various business models to capitalize on their creative skills. These typically involve work-for-hire scenarios which are dollars-per-hour based or (maybe more often) purely results-oriented, putting a market-based price tag on something regardless of how much time and effort it took to create.

Making jewelry is my first experience with the latter business model. When I went to price my first set of earrings, I did my traditional business math and immediately blanched. No WAY could i charge for my time - working on-and-off for days to arrange little sparkly stones until they came into the perfect alignment to make me (and others, I hoped) happy. I realized, doing a quick market survey of my earring-buying life experience, that I would be lucky to be able to cover the price of my materials. As the economics of my situation became clear, I briefly contemplated simply not making and selling jewelry, but something stopped me.

And this was my third Ah-Ha! The money didn't matter as much as the joy I took in creating beauty, and sometimes seeing that joy in the faces of others who also found it beautiful.

It was at that moment that I truly understood how important it was for me to engage in a creative act that fed my spirit - acknowledged my soul's connection to that barely-perceived dialog with the Universe. More than just acknowledging the connection, my decision to keep investing in my own creativity opened me up to more spiritual connection, allowing my soul to draw upon it, flowing it's energy into me and fueling ongoing inspiration on all parts of my life. I became addicted to creativity and am now committed to it regardless of the really bad economics of it. I'm proud of my upside-down jewelry-making business plan (which I've asked my husband to help me invest in for the tax write-off), because it is an ongoing commitment to feeding parts of me that have long gone hungry.

These realizations are why I'm more intrigued with creativity than craft these days, but it has only made me hungrier to find ways to infuse the professional work I do - which does have measurable economic value - with more and more creativity. In my perfect world, I get paid money to engage in spiritually fulfilling, shameless acts of creativity. After all, if creatively derived Ah-ha's! are valuable to me, I bet they're valuable to others - like my clients - as well. I'm still working on that particular business plan, but the relevant Ah-ha! here is that I now know what I want. And, once enlightened as to my objective, I'm usually very good at achieving it.

Stay tuned.

Photocredits: "Aura" Sculpture by Sean Hennessy, (c) 2008 (with permission)
This mixed media art is one of many wonderful pieces on Sean's Etsy site, Scenic Artisans
"Let There Be Light" Quickdraw sketch by Block Party Prints on Etsy.