(I wrote this while waiting for my flight out of Adisucipto a couple of weeks ago. Just had the chance to post it now.)

I just finished shooting Alferro and Shirley, on a two day photo trip around Jogja.

The images I have on my memory card, man oh man, I know people shouldn’t boasted at their own work, but let’s just say that I am very happy with the kind of work that I have been making in the last few months.

They are different, fresh, and filled with a lot of emotions and personality. Exactly the kind of work that you wanna be making if you are an artist.

At the core of that body of work, is nothing less than a series of great clients.

No matter what business you are in, no great work will ever come out of your shop if you don’t have a line of great clients.

Imagine exhibit A:
A series of clients that boss you around, that come in only because you are cheaper, that only here to make you do what they want. They don’t trust you enough to take risks so they just want the kind of work that has been done a hundred times. Money is the language they speak, and since they pay you they think they can do whatever they want.

And imagine exhibit B:
A series of clients that come knocking because they know your work and they are big fans of them. They think you know more than they do, and that’s why they hired you in the first place. They trust you completely and they want take the risk with you. They want to collaborate, they want this project to be a project that make goosebumps on their skin and on the skin of the artist. Respect is their language, and they speak it well.

Needless to say which group Alferro and Shirley belong to, along with the great couples that came before them.

 

I have been promoting about Prewedding Lokal and since I told them about it, they can’t jump into the ship fast enough. “Where should we go?” they asked right away.

If you have been following our company and this blog, you know that has not always been the case. Client Type A was creeping in on 2011 (no not you), and I just saw at that time that if I want to do great body of work, if I want to take this ship to great places, we have to do something about this. We have to change our clientele.

And we did.

Read the whole thing about The New Direction initiative, right from my promise of a revolution, to how it drove our sales down more than 80% in 2012.

What I am trying to say with this post is how I am glad that I did what I did with the New Direction.

These great line of clients that we are enjoying now is definitely the result of the seeds that we planted, no matter how painful and how hard it was when we did it.

And as a leader, let me tell you, there’s nothing like seeing your vision to become a reality. To see a seed become a tree and then bear its fruits. Nothing like it.

What I can promise you, is that we’re going to continue down this path. More people know what we are doing and are joining the journey.

Borrowing a line from the infamous Holstee Manifesto:
“If you don’t like something, change it.”

Because nobody else will.

Stay tuned. Lots of surprises coming.