160: The Biggest Mistakes Creatives Make

"If you are a creative and you want to make money with your art, you gotta do this one thing."
If you are a creative and you want to make money with your art, there’s one thing that you HAVE to do and another thing you must absolutely AVOID.

Over the past 20 years that I’ve been making art, there are a few things that really have made me lose my cool — like, really, really made me frustrated. When I’m working with somebody and they do one of these things, I just don’t understand why they would do this to themselves. 

By making this one mistake, they begin to ruin their reputation, their work, and even their art. 

In this episode of ONKEN RADIO (formerly NION Radio), I’m sharing the biggest mistakes that creatives make. My hope is that this episode inspires you to avoid making those same mistakes and, instead, do the very opposite so that you can establish an impeccable reputation as a Creative Alchemist in your space. Let’s get started —
The ONE Mistake You Should Never Make
First of all, I want to say that this mistake doesn’t just apply to creatives — this extends into everyone’s life and career. If you continually make this mistake in your business and personal life, fewer people will trust you, value you, and give you their business.

I believe that dishonoring your word is probably one of the most harmful things you can do. 

Dishonoring your word can mean a lot of things, but in this context, I mean not delivering on the expectations that you have set for the job you’re completing. This looks like going past deadlines, charging more money at the last minute, or just not being able to do what you said you could do for the client. In your personal life, this may look like going back on a promise, not supporting a friend in need, or just being dishonest.

Have you ever been on the other side of this? Someone said that they would do X, Y, Z for you, but they never delivered on their promises? Or maybe, they said they would have your project done by a certain date, but they’re constantly pushing the deadline back? It’s probably one of the most frustrating things I’ve come across in the creative sphere, and I’ve seen it ruin careers. 

I’ve hired a lot of creatives myself, such as graphic designers and web designers, who I’ve had to chase down to get the finished product. And a lot of times, hiring creatives is an expensive investment, which means it’s imperative that I get what I paid for. Sadly, it doesn’t always work out that way. 

For example, I hired this guy to redo my website, and he promised me that he was going to do SEO optimization, create graphics, design WordPress themes, coding, and everything else of that sort. He assured me that he had a full team to do all of these specialties, and he said it would be $10,000.

He gave me a contract saying that he would deliver the first round of updates within a month. So when that first month came around, I emailed him. I didn’t get a response. I emailed again, and he came back a week later, saying that he needed more time because “something” came up. 

Naturally, I was frustrated. This went on and on, and then I found out later on that he was doing everything himself — the SEO optimization, coding, design work — everything! He was a team of one. Obviously, you need to have a team of multiple people working within their own zones of genius to make a project like this work. No person can do all of those things really, really well, and he had promised to complete all of those things at a professional level.  

Eight months later, I have nothing. I don’t even have an outline of a design for the website. Remember — his original promise was that he would have something for me within the first month. 

Finally, I got a hold of him. He said he was still working on everything. I told him he needed to hire a coder to help him out. Eventually, he just dropped off the planet, and I never heard from him again. I’m still out $10,000 because of this guy.