Author: Leslie Burns

Lots of you complain about not being very productive. I have two suggestions for this issue.

First, assuming you already have set actual work hours (and if you haven’t, you need to), try starting much earlier in the day. I know for many of you that will sound impossible, but I swear it is completely possible. I know, I’ve done it.

I used to be a stay-up-late kind of woman. Mornings were, thus, hell. I made the conscious choice to change that. A good way to make that happen is to not only have a set bedtime (which is good for your health, by the way), but to move that bedtime up by 15 minutes every couple of days and your wakeup time as well. Before you know it, and without feeling like you have been through some sort of withdrawal, you’ll be getting up as early as you choose.

I get up usually at around 5:45a now and rarely have to use an alarm to do that. I can get a run in, or other exercise, and still be at my desk working by 7:30, if not even earlier. I get more done before noon every day (and especially before 10a) that I ever do in the afternoon. There are lots of reports and articles (like this one) suggesting that is pretty normal–that is, that one gets more done early in the day.

Yes, even creative pros.

Second suggestion for productivity? Turn off social media and email for most of your day. Those “tools” are big distractions and pull us away from what we need to focus on, including creative work. If you need to, set a timer and work for, say 50 minutes then take a 10 minute break to check FB, etc. If you have to post things for your work, schedule that as well and do only that–make your posts then get off the computer (at least get off the social media). If there are posts or links you want to check on, make them for later… for your break time.

Basically, we’re talking about a sort of discipline to your day. Creatives, especially younger ones, often fight this idea as they think artists aren’t supposed to create on a schedule or something. The reality is, the most successful artists are disciplined and schedule their lives and their work. It’s not selling out to the man to actually treat your job like a job–it’s possibly one of the best things you can do for your business.

This morning I learned about the death, at far too young an age, of a lovely woman, a photographer, one of the thousands of you who never got famous, never got rich, but continued to make her work because she loved it. One of her colleagues called her “the Weegee of weddings” and although that sounds virtually impossible, her ability with black and white warrants such praise.

“A short battle with cancer” says her obituary.

This morning, before I learned this, I ran again for the first time in a while. I was starting (again) an exercise and diet program. Day 1. I had decided over the weekend that it was important to me to lose the few pounds that have been bothering me and to get more exercise. It matters and I needed to stop putting it off.

We put things off, thinking we can do it later, tomorrow, whenever. We always think there will be time to quit smoking, to make and send promos, to shoot that personal project, to take that vacation, to tell someone you love her/him. At the same time, we check email, Facebook, tweet about nothing that really matters, watch every episode of whatever tv show we like back-to-back on Netflix, and surf the ‘net for more. Somehow we make time for the unimportant, but the stuff that matters we put off.

Don’t wait on the important stuff. Maybe it’s hard stuff, but do it now. Maybe it means facing your fear, but do it now. Maybe you’ll be the only person doing it, saying it, being it, but do it now.

Commit to your life.

If it matters, do it now.

Today, the US Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit issued a ruling that includes the following:

We therefore hold that an electronic agreement may effect a valid transfer of copyright interests under Section 204 of the Copyright Act.

This is a very big deal for any copyright owner… more so than it may at first appear.

As many of you may know, you cannot transfer ownership of your copyright without a signed writing. Until now, most read this to mean that you needed an actual piece of paper with an actual signature. Not according to this court.

Under this ruling, the court says that it is possible now to transfer your ownership by clicking “Yes” or “Agree” on a properly drafted Terms of Use/Service agreement that includes a copyright transfer (there is a footnote, number 13 in fact, that speaks to that “properly drafted” bit, if you want to get picky). This ruling says, in essence, that the E-Sign Act, which permits electronic signatures on most documents, applies to copyright transfers.

So now, when you click “yes” or “agree” on a Terms of Use/Service and uploading a photograph, you could be giving away your ownership of that photo.

Yes, this is only one circuit, but other circuits can follow that ruling so, as they used to say on Hill Street Blues, be careful out there.

I recently had one of those moments when one suddenly realizes how important it is to explain things you think are really obvious to your client. That is, as we become more expert in what we do, we forget that our clients don’t know what we know and that can lead to unnecessary stress, and sometimes worse.

In my case, it was a legal client I’ve been working hard for. It’s a complex matter and I’ve spent a lot of time and effort for my client, so I was more than a little surprised to hear some of the complaints. As I listened to my client, however, it became clear that I was not doing my best job in informing my client of all the details. Oh sure, I’d given regular updates, but I was missing information that (in retrospect) I should have been sharing. Stuff that seemed spectacularly obvious to me was, to the client, completely unknown and unknowable. Without that data, it was perfectly reasonable to complain!

So I (and my colleague) explained that what the client was feeling was totally understandable, then went on to explain the bits that the client didn’t know. Some of it seemed like stuff the client didn’t really need to know–technical stuff, for example–but better to give too much information than too little, particularly if there was any chance in helping the client understand and, by extension, feel more in control. And yes, as soon as we shared that information, you could hear the difference in our client’s voice. In a very brief time what had been some pretty serious anxiety and frustration melted away and the end of the call was a very different tone from the start.

We’ve all been in that client’s shoes. Who hasn’t been frustrated by (for example) some doctor who doesn’t tell the whole story? If the doc is smart, s/he will politely fill in the blanks and then even not-great news is better tolerated. But if the doc is a jerk, s/he acts like the patient is an idiot for not knowing something that to her/him seems obvious and the patient gets angry and frustrated.

Same thing can happen in your field. When a client gets pissy, take a second to really listen to the problem and see if maybe you are “assuming facts not in evidence,” so to speak. Maybe it’s not that your client is being a jerk at all, but rather that you aren’t being fair to your client by not sharing all the relevant info. What you think is relevant or important isn’t the same as what your client thinks is relevant or important. Listen to him/her. Put yourself in her/his shoes. Your client might not need to know (in your opinion) the steps involved in getting a permit from the city for a shoot, for example, but once you tell him/her about the whole process s/he won’t expect you to have it in 30 minutes.

Listening is, in short, the best way to be able to manage client expectations and restores a sense of control to your client. None of us like that out-of-control feeling, especially when money (or one’s job) is on the line.

When you take the time to think about what it is like to be in your client’s position and really see the situation from her/his perspective, mostly by listening to her/his concerns (and then addressing them rather than judging them), you are much more likely to have a happy (and repeat) client.

Today is the first of July.

The year is half-gone, but rather than look back at what you may not have done that you intended to do in the first half of 2013, be here now and, if anything, look forward.

I know whereof I speak, as they say: my first half of the year has not been what I hoped in some respects. There are some things I meant to get done that I didn’t do, some things I had no control over that impacted the bottom line, some things not started. This is all pretty normal, but in looking back it’s easy to get sucked into the negative of “failure” if you are not careful. Instead, I suggest recognizing the past but, like one does in meditation, see it for what it is (the past) and bring your focus back into the present.

Now is, well, now. It’s a clean slate. Just as you are the sum of your experiences to this moment but can’t go back and change any of them, so it is for your business. Everything from the past has informed the present; but, it all remains in the past–done deal. Over. Right now, you are in control and you get to choose what to do with the next 2 minutes/hours/days/years/decades of your (business) life.

Today is the first day of the month, first day of the work week, first day of the second half of the year. Today you can do whatever you choose to make it the first day of a better second half of 2013. Starting from now, this moment, make a choice to do something that would be positive for your business or choose not to do something negative that you have been doing. Choose to do things like (and the dates/days are only there to show you how to fame these active goals):

• to start doing all your paperwork for the week (invoicing, paying bills, etc.) on Wednesday mornings
• to shoot for yourself every Thursday afternoon
• to call 3 targets a week on Tuesday mornings
• to let go of trying to please those lowball clients you actually hate working for
• to turn OFF your computer at 6pm every day
• to blog every Friday
• to register your copyrights every month on the 15th
• to read a book just for the pleasure of informing your mind (that is not for work)
• to stop hating that guy who gets the fabulous projects even though his work is only meh
• to say no to at least one thing that you know is bad for you every day (like taking that project you will hate)
• to give yourself time off (totally off)…

You get the point.

You are in control of what you do now. You always have choices but sometimes we forget that as we get caught in the panic of what we call our busy lives today. Even when you feel like you are drowning in the list of stuff you should have done already this year, you have total control–because you can choose to be present, to be here now, and to make choices about what to do next.

Today is the first. What shall you make of it?

 

There is a Buddhist tale of an arrogant woman who sought enlightenment but who instead ended up with a demon chasing her with a stick, yelling “Now! Now! Now!” These days, I think social media is that demon.

I was brought to mind of this a few times recently when I noticed that people want “the news” now. Right friggin’ now. Not in 15 minutes and certainly not the next day, but now. And by “the news” they mean the details of some event as it is unfolding, even (and here’s the kicker) if they have no real connection to the event.

This seems to be the new normal. Some event takes place, something that a few years ago we would have been perfectly satisfied to hear about on the next morning’s news show or, a few years before that, to read about in a newspaper the next day. But today, people want to know every minute detail and they want it real-friggin-time and if they don’t get it it’s as if people have lost some fundamental right.

Last night, for example, there was a debate and filibuster in the Texas legislature about a bill that would severely restrict abortion. For people living in Texas, this is an important event. But for someone who isn’t a resident and who has no closer connection than knowing people who do live in Texas, this isn’t urgent news. Actually, even for Texans it wasn’t urgent. I mean, it’s not like a tornado bearing down on a population center or a crazed shooter on the loose. There is nothing that anyone, other than the legislators themselves, could do about the event. Either the filibuster would be successful, or it wouldn’t, and no amount of tweeting about it would change that.

And yet people were tweeting like mad last night, mostly rumors and RTs from citizens on the scene who were not professional reporters, who did not have a grasp on the whole story, and who didn’t fact-check. This drives me crazy as the worst evidence for accuracy is often eye witness testimony. We simply get it wrong. We don’t see the story. But Twitter was packed with this crap.

Thing is, I did find legit news last night. I found Texas publications and local TV news divisions and I checked their tweets. I’m one of those people who was only interested because I am interested in the law and how it affects reproductive rights. The Texas law wouldn’t affect me directly. I was one of those tertiary people for whom it was news, small-n. For me, I knew I’d get the story when I got the story and I knew that if that was now or in 15 minutes or in the morning it wouldn’t make a real difference–I’d still learn what happened.

Anyway, like I said I found legit sources and sure, their tweets were not immediate, but they were only delayed by what I image was the time required to fact-check and confirm from multiple reliable sources. Most importantly, these tweets were accurate.

Today, people I know, non-Texans, were complaining that they couldn’t find real-time news of the goings on and that social media had displaced the legitimate news sources since one could only get information from sources like Twitter. They acted like the news organizations of the world had screwed them but good, because they didn’t get it now, now, now, and legitimate news organizations like the AP had become “useless.”

This is beyond sad. This is why journalists, including photo journalists, are losing work. We have lost our perspective on what news is and when we need to get that information. We have sacrificed accuracy and depth for the demon of now, now, now. Journalists need time to do their work. They are trained and have the experience to see the story and to tell the story, but they need time to make that happen. Even photojournalists who capture events that happen in a split-second often tell a bigger story with more images that give the “money shot” its context. Again, time is required.

We all have heard the old saw Fast, Good, Cheap… pick two. That’s as true for journalism and the media as it is for advertising and any other business.

Think about your own behavior and see if you are contributing to this downfall, this acceptance of crap “citizen journalism” that now replaces legitimate reporting far too often. Do you really need to know something now, or will it not make any difference if you don’t get the information for an hour, or a day? Call out your friends who add to the noise without actually contributing to the understanding of the story.

Almost always, it won’t kill any of us to wait.

Yesterday, I saw that a promising reporter was killed in an auto accident in Los Angeles. He was 33. This morning, there was news a best-selling novelist had died of an aggressive cancer. He was 47. And now, as I sat down to begin writing this piece, the news confirmed that James Gandolfini (star of The Sopranos) had died. He was 51.

I share this data with you not to depress but to remind you that life is unpredictable and often way too short. So, what are you waiting for?

Are you afraid of failing? Why? What is the worst that will happen? You’ll lose your home and end up living under a bridge someplace, and you have kids?

Lame excuse.
You read me right, that is just lame.
Guess what, you can do everything right and that dark future can still happen.

Or you can do everything right and get hit by a bus. Or have a heart attack or get cancer or, well, just about anything.

You have one chance at this life (well, one conscious one, if the Hindus and Buddhists, et al., are right) and you have no control over when it will end. So, I ask again, What are you waiting for?

You chose to be an artist and with that came the requirement that you have faith. Not faith in a god (not that you can’t have that) but faith in yourself, in your art, and that somehow you’ll make it all work. That fabulous. It’s amazing. It’s actually empowering if you stop shaking in your boots and look at it.

Being an artist requires you actually acting on that faith. You can’t say “I choose to be a photographer/designer/writer…” and then play it safe. You have to do. You have to leap. You have to try and fail (or succeed) and try again and fail (or succeed) and keep doing that over and over again.

For the rest of your life.
That is the bargain you agreed to when you chose to be a professional artist. You have to make, and do, and (sometimes) make do.

The one thing you cannot do is wait for things to be perfect before taking the next step. I’m sick of hearing artists say “I can’t send the promo because the site isn’t perfect” or “I’m not sure my list/promo/portfolio/edit/studio/haircut is perfect so I can’t____.” I can’t. I can’t. I can’t.

If you make some excuse for not doing, then get a real fucking job because you don’t deserve to be an artist. You don’t have the guts.

I say that with love (you know that, I hope, by now).
But it is true.

Frankly, it’s true for any profession. It’s as true for me as it is for you. We have to get out there and do. We can’t be bound up by the fears of getting stuff wrong (which, by the way, is much worse in my profession than yours) or failing. We have to do and leap and try. Every bloody day.

Not only will doing this give you your best shot at being successful (and it will), it will make you happier in the process. Following your dream, doing what you love, isn’t that worth the risk of trying? Why be an artist if you never get to make your own art?

Life is (sadly) short for too many people. We don’t know when our last breath will come. No matter how well we treat our bodies, it is ultimately out of out control when Death will come. And each of you deserves to have loved the life you have. The only way for that to happen is to try, to do, to make your art, to follow your dream, to risk, to fail, and to do it all again the next day.

So, what are you waiting for?

 

When I was doing the dating thing not too very long ago (I’ve been seeing one person for some months now), I paid particular attention not only to how any date treated me, but how he treated the waitstaff and others “in service.” I waited tables for years so I know this is a good measure of the jerk-factor and I was pretty much spot-on with that test.

This recent article by the Harvard Business Review mentions that same test as well as some others to see whether you are hiring or working with the best people. See, it not just a case of what training someone has had or what their technical skills are, a person’s humanity is quite important too.

It’s important for you not only in the people you hire or choose to work with, but also in how your potential clients see you. Would they want to hire you–you the person you put out there?

So read the article and look at your own behavior and habits. Do you get frustrated and snippy fast with gate agents or waitstaff, or do you treat them with kindness and compassion (even when they screw up)? Do you complain about changes in a project or do you go into let’s figure out how to make it work mode? Do you hang out with people who are jerky or who are kind? Do you spend your off-hours reading interesting stuff or sitting like a lump watching reality tv or something?

If you find that you may appear less “humane” than you thought, you can change that. Start saying “please” and “thank you” more to everyone. Smile. Choose to let go of the frustration of change and instead embrace its challenges (especially on work projects).

Being a kinder, more compassionate person will draw people to you, including clients.

Yesterday I had a Twitter “spat” with the representative (unnamed) of a new company called Kunvay. The interaction on Twitter, and the company’s website, show how language can be used to manipulate very effectively. Under the guise of being “open” and “helping” this company is really just another tool to make it easier for creatives to lose out.

This company spins itself as, and I (sadly) quote, being “on a mission to make the world safe for creativity.” How do they do this? By offering a “service” to make it easier for creatives to sign away their rights, their full copyrights, to client/buyers.

Do they negotiate better deals for creatives?
No.

Do they encourage creatives not to give away their rights?
No.

Do they make it sound like they are empowering creatives?
Yup, and they make it sound like they are doing it to help by making it free for the creative.
Gee, thanks… at least you aren’t making the creatives pay while they lose out by selling off (or giving away) their most important assets!

 
One of the things that came out of our “spat” was that they got legal advice from “Silicon Valley lawyers.” This alone should be a big frickin’ red flag to any creative professional. Another thing that was revealed was that they don’t even know that the plural of “attorney” doesn’t include an apostrophe (brilliant). Another was that they challenged me to prove I was a licensed attorney, even though you can look me up on the California Bar website and my Twitter profile says I’m a member of the CA Bar–and all this while never even giving me a human name (for whoever was writing their tweets). I was challenging their business model but they were attacking my professionalism and credibility.

Possibly the most offensive thing was that they asked why I had such an interest in copyright, saying that I seemed terribly strident and asking “Did you get burned?” This is covert sexism. I’m vehement about my pro-copyright stand and therefore I must be acting out from an emotional hurt? Really? I know they never would have written that if I were a man. No question. But as a woman, in their eyes, I couldn’t possibly just be a professional who cares about artists and their rights because, hey, it’s the right thing to do.

So, again I’ll write here what I tweeted: stay away from Kunvay; keep your copyrights. Creative professionals don’t need help to give away their rights–it happens every day. What creative professionals need are tools to protect their rights, and people to advocate for continuing strong copyright.

 

It’s half-way through the year…time for a tune-up! Now is the time, before hitting the often slow late summer, to make sure you are doing all you can to keep your business purring.

Here are some options:

1. Send me 50 images (pdf) for my offline review then we’ll have a 30 minute phone consultation: $100.

2. Website review, with a 45-minute phone consultation: $200.

1+2 Combo: $250.

3. Online presence review: website, Facebook, Tumblr… whatever tools you are using, with a 45-minute phone consultation: $350.

1+3 Combo: $400.

Or, of course, we can work out something custom.

Book me now so you can be sure I can schedule the work. Shoot me an email to leslie@burnsautoparts.com for details or to book.