As a small business owner in a creative industry, I realized long ago that I’m not able to please everyone all the time, but it wasn’t easy getting to that realization.
Especially as a creative, often much energy, time and heart goes into a design or an event, and if a client is disappointed, which has fortunately not happened often, but when it has, it can send on a brief case of the blues.
Naturally, there are different ways of dealing with the disappointed client, albeit some you simply are unable to please, but most of the time some part of the client’s experience can be salvaged.
Wedding designer extraordinaire (check out his Portfolio on his site!) Preston Bailey has even said, “I’ve done more than one wedding that had all of the best vendors on the job, and, yet, a single error — maybe the lights were too bright or the music too loud or the food too cold or the room too hot — was the only thing the client remembered. What they say is true; it’s impossible to please everyone 100% of the time.
I even had a client once who told me that everything was perfect except she prefers her flowers tight and the flowers I used were too open. Sometimes, you just can’t win!”
Of course, that kind of disappointment–the kind in your work–is much different than when others may be disappointed with an aspect (or all) of you. That can be much harder to learn to live with as it is more about your being, your personality, than an external product or service.
But either way, when someone else has been disappointed in my work or in me, I haven’t liked it, and from young childhood onward I would have to repeat various mantras to myself to get through. Y’know, stuff like: I am good. I do good work. I am strong. I never give up, etc.
So, imagine my delight when two of my pop culture faves, Sesame Street & will.i.am sang his song “What I Am”. Yep, it’s from last year and I’m just seeing it. But I simply love this and I have to share it with you.
Be uniquely YOU. Be UNPOPPABLE!
