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One of the great things about the internet is the access to all sorts of information. Another is that the medium gives people the opportunity meet and/or to learn from other people they might not never have known of or had the opportunity to meet. The internet can be a great teaching & learning tool, but it can also be a dangerous place.

Sadly, there are a lot of people out there who put on a great show but who are, in fact, not experts or at least who have questionable backgrounds. In fact, there is the whole range–from real, giving experts and professionals to scam artists, and everything in-between.

The trouble is, it is very difficult to tell who is who. Although there is a lot of information out there, it’s difficult to know what is legitimate and what isn’t, so whom you follow for crucial business advice may be a great resource or someone who looks great but who is a convicted con man.

So, all I’m saying is that you should do your research and not just believe what you read on someone’s blog or website (including this one!). Ask questions and ask for credentials. Be a bit skeptical. Trust but verify, as they say. It could save you a lot of pain in the end.

I bet every reader of this blog has been asked to work for free. Certainly you’ve been asked to do it for insanely cheap, but I’m betting “free” has come up at least once in your career. There are usually three contexts for this.

First, you get the client who has no budget or is a not-for-profit. This client tugs at your heartstrings with pleas of “we can’t afford to pay” or “everyone is donating their efforts for this worthy cause” or even “we’re a start-up and if we hit, then we’ll pay you on shoots–we’ll remember–just help us out!”
I’ve always advised that if you want to donate because you want to donate (and this does not apply to the start-ups), go ahead and give of yourself; but, if you are only agreeing to do it out of guilt, do not do it.

The second group are the really evil bastards who act like they are doing you a favor for giving you the opportunity to work for them. Think of the publicity! You will be connected with this person/entity in the public’s eye! Lucky you!
Never, ever fall for this. They are making you their bitch from the very get-go and you will never, ever get the slightest respect, or money, from these people, no matter how sweetly they put it. It is never worth it.

The third group are the ones who seem oblivious to the fact that this is your business, that you have to make money, and sometimes they are even shocked that you would expect to get paid or get paid anything near what your rate is. Often, this is the result of the erosion of the apparent value of the service you are providing because others have given it away for free or very cheaply.
Here, just say “no.” You can try to educate them, but likely this client is looking for free or very cheap and really doesn’t care at all about your actual value. Walk politely away.

In my business, I get a bit of number 1, almost no number 2 (with one huge exception), and a whole lot of number 3. I get emails all the time from photographers who want me to review their portfolios or websites and when I say “it’ll cost $X” they act stunned. These days, there are a ton of consultants and photographer service providers who offer free out the yin-yang, and that makes it more difficult for me when I quote my rates.

Y’all have the same problem. Because there are so many photographers who will do it for a credit line or for cheap, the rates have been depressed. You have to face that as I mentioned in the post from a few days ago. Like me, you have to find a way to differentiate yourself from the hoards. For you, that way is by making unique work. If your work isn’t like anyone else’s, you’ll be the go-to person for that work.

For me, I seem to have picked a perfect time to go to law school to add that to my quiver. I’m the only consultant/lawyer that I know of.

See, here’s the thing about the cult of free: it’s fading. As the economy continues to swirl the bowl more and more regular people are commenting on how people cannot make a living. They get it. People understand that things cost money. The Long Tail is the emperor’s new clothes (see this, and this, and most of all this) in the real world where products we buy, like groceries, actually cost money.

So while we’re still in a tough place and we all have to deal with the schmoes who want it for free or next to free, none of us are alone in it and, I think, it’s getting better.

At least I hope so, because I can’t pay my rent with only good press either. 😉

I grew up with two older brothers who were Star Trek fans so I became one at a young age. Lately, the words of Leonard “Bones” McCoy ring in my head. He used to say “I’m a doctor, not a miracle worker!” or “I’m a doctor, not a brick-layer!” He knew what he was and he was more than confident and competent at it. More importantly, he knew what he was not.

We can learn from Bones.

The internet has made lots of information available to everyone. We have access to information that used to be essentially unavailable to people not in those professions. We can find instructions on how to build a house or even a nuclear device. We can access legal tomes. We can read medical journals. However, access to these materials has not made us architects, nuclear physicists, lawyers, doctors, or anything more than dilettantes in these arenas.

Yes, I said “we” and I am including myself. Before I went to law school, I thought I knew a lot about contracts and licenses and copyright. I thought what I didn’t know couldn’t be that much because I knew so much. I did know a lot, and a hell of a lot more than most people, but it was a cup of knowledge in an olympic sized pool. I never would have known how little I actually knew, relatively speaking, if I had not gone to law school.

Why am I bringing this up? Because there are a lot of very well meaning photographers and consultants who are posting about terms of service and releases and contracts and copyright (etc.) but they do not really know what they are talking about. Why? Because even though they may have read a bunch, they don’t know the law. It is very rare when someone posts “I talked with my lawyer and she said _____.” No, instead, it’s an authoritative sounding declaration from some photographer who, meaning to help, simply gets the law wrong.

Cries of “It’s a rights-grab!” spread through the photo community via social media like novovirus on a cruise ship. Sometimes the terms at issue are bad, sometimes not, but which is which gets lost because it’s almost impossible to fix a falsity once it’s been spread. There are just too many points of spread to fix them all, and thus bad info gets out and becomes an accepted truth. Frustrating.

So, please remember, you are an artist. Be a great and confident artist. Do your profession with all of the joy and enthusiam you have in you. Don’t let anyone tell you how to make your work and, most importantly, make your very own great work.

But leave the law to the lawyers, medicine to the doctors (and nurses), accountancy to the CPAs, architecture to the architects, etc. There’s a reason these professions require years of intense study and wicked-hard tests and are licensed by the state–because the material is complex and the issues are life affecting.

So, please, don’t share tweets or posts that offer a legal interpretation without first running it by your own lawyer. Don’t accept any legal sounding advice posted anywhere (yes, even from me) without making that same check. These issues are too important to leave to well meaning non-pros. This is your professional life, and those of your colleagues, you affect when you pass on that information.

More on the Maisel/Baio situation has come out recently and what is being done to Mr. Maisel is a shame. It is, in fact, criminal in some cases, but whatever, it’s terrible that someone who did nothing more than defend his intellectual property rights has been attacked as he has.

Although it is incredibly tempting to want to, oh, smack freetards upside the head (or worse), we have to keep our fight above such tactics. Leave the bullshit attacks to them and rise above it.

What can we do? Calmly and articulately post comments and blog posts everywhere we can, defending Maisel and intellectual property rights in general. Fight against CC and the Lessigites (including groups like Public Knowledge and EFF) and call on your professional organizations to come out 100% against these IP-weakening “tools” and the groups which support them!

Don’t call names (okay… “freetard” is acceptable I think, but not much worse) but instead focus on the importance of IP in the global economy and on your personal economy. Make the case–you only can make your art if you are paid and IP rights are how that happens, etc.

Trust me, I know how hard this is. It’s so tempting to want to fight back on their terms, but don’t go there. I have been personally attacked via anonymous emails and tweets for writing against CC and Lessig in particular. I swear like a sailor in real life but some of the names I’ve been called even I wouldn’t say. Ugly is an understatement. But I know that if I start posting anonymous attacks on their sites, I will do no good at all and will, in fact, be lowering myself. No, fight the good fight instead.

These people, the freetards, the anti-strong-copyright people are tough enemies. They hide often behind anonymity. They are adept at spinning the rhetoric to make it sound like any strong copyright laws are an attack against free speech. We have a hell of a battle ahead, but the tide is, in my opinion, starting to turn for the better.

The government is understanding how much our economy has been hurt by piracy and it is trying to plug the holes in enforcement with PROTECT-IP and the like. More regular people are beginning to understand that artists of all kinds need to be paid for their work. We can win this war, if we keep fighting the good fight.

That means calling out bad terms like I did on the Assignment Wired “contest” and lauding those companies who do right by artists. It means weathering the name calling and tweetbombings and staying on message: strong copyright laws are necessary and good for everyone, even when it is occasionally inconvenient for some.

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UPDATE/NOTE

I will not approve any anonymous and/or freetard comments. I give you no space on my blog to “share.” Don’t even bother trying, okay? Thanks.

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UPDATE 7/13/2011

If you want to know why I don’t approve negative comments, read this.

There is one thing you can do, today, on Independence Day (USA), that is absolutely free and will improve your business on a fundamental level. Anyone can do this, and in so doing, you will see an improvement in your business.

What is it? What can you do?
Stop blaming anything external for the state of your business.

The economy, your family obligations, your equipment, other photographers, your clients… you name it, I can find examples of photographers blaming the outside world for their woes. And though you might feel better after a bitch-fest, it doesn’t change anything to blame anyone or anything. All it does is make you a victim… a helpless, hapless victim.

My advice? Get over it.

Instead of looking at all the crap outside of you and your business, look instead to what you can do.

• You can make images–make more of them and make them better than and different from anyone else. You have that power.
• You can call your targets.
• You can research better, more appropriate targets.
• You can reduce your costs.
• You can improve your production flow to save money and increase profitability on each project.
• You can get a second job to get the money to send fabulous promos to your A-list targets (or get a professional edit of your portfolio and/or website, etc.).
• You can start running your business like a business, with solid paperwork.
• You can register ALL your copyrights.
• You can start respecting yourself as a professional including not working with clients who treat you like crap.

And so much more.

The list of what you have the power to do is longer than you might think, especially if you are focusing on the external stuff. Nothing can hold you back unless you let it and you are not powerless unless you choose to be.

So on this Independence Day, I suggest you declare independence from your victimhood. The fireworks you watch tonight? They are for you–you live in a country that makes it (relatively–compared to many other countries, for sure!) easy to follow your professional dreams and run your own business. Celebrate that.

And tomorrow, when you start the second half of 2011, do it with all the fire and passion you ever had.

I’m hearing that a lot of photographers are getting busy again. Huzzah! That’s fantastic! But pretty much every one of them has had to lower his/her prices. That sucks.

Sadly, the title of this post is a reality and not just in photography. In 2007 if you could get $10K for a project, you might be able to get $7K today. Ugh.

Architects and designers and illustrators and writers… well, pretty much every traditionally creative discipline has been forced into lowering prices. There are many causes for this but really, none of that matters now–leave that to the economists and instead focus on your business looking forward. What matters to you is how you can do a $10K project for $7K today, so that you can stay fiscally competitive.

You can’t just drop your rates. Unless you pulled your rates out of your butt in the first place, you need to make a certain amount of money in order to be profitable and you based your rates on that. That number should be a function of your cost of doing business plus profit. And, since profit is not an option (remember no profit = no business!), this means you need to look at your numbers and see what you can do in all areas.

Start with production costs, always. When you look at how you have been producing jobs, where can you cut back without sacrificing quality? This is tough to do often because many photographers are already shooting with too-small crews.

You also need to think about where you can cut back on shoot-related creature comforts, but without making your client or your crew suffer on set. For example, can you work out a deal with someone to provide craft services for your shoots–all your shoots, exclusively for a year–at a lower rate? Maybe they get to advertise on the set (signs like “craft services provided by Betty’s Eats 213-555-1212”) more than before? Buy your drinks in massive quantities at Costco if you aren’t already. Try to work out a deal on other rentals like tents, RVs, etc. like with the craft services.

Check also that you are billing for items that the client expects to pay for, like studio rental and pre-production costs like scouting fees and assistant travel days. Even if you own your studio, you should bill a fee for its use and you should never expect (or, worse, demand) that an assistant pay her/his own way for a project. Billing for these items is common practice and a place to make some income. These items on an initial estimate show that you are thinking like a professional who understands production and they also give the client a place to ask you to cut without harming your bottom line as much.

The last thing you should look at is your profit, unless it’s been really unreasonably huge. Your net profit, I mean after paying out everything including yourself, needs to be somewhere in the 6-10% range to have a company that sustains itself and has slow (sustainable) growth.

In order to know those numbers, you need to pay yourself a salary and I know many of you do not do that. But you need to. Figure out how much you need to live on and set your salary high enough to cover your personal nut but not so high as to force your company into bankruptcy. Live by that number.

By the way, if your business does great, you can always give yourself (and your best crew!) a bonus at the end of the fiscal year.

 

Actually, it’s worse than spec. Spec implies doing work with no guarantee of payment but, if your work gets selected, then you get paid. Wired doesn’t even mention payment at all.

Wait, let me back up. I saw a tweet from Stockland Martel this morning pointing to this new Wired “opportunity” called Assignment Wired. I’m really surprised that SMart would be promoting this as there is no real benefit for a photographer. Wired is “offering” assignments for photographers to shoot and report on and in return Wired will select, publish, and critique “several” of the submissions.

You grant them the right to publish online and in print. But then again, there are no clear terms–just that they get to publish them in the mag and online.

This is crowdsourcing at its worst because Wired has a cool cache and they spin the “opportunity” so well! It sounds so tempting, but strip away the bullshit and what you get is a publication (a Condé Nast pub!) getting free content. With the complete lack of terms for submissions (used and unused) it’s particularly dangerous for photographers to fall for this.

Why? Because the submissions will fall under the general terms of use for the site and in them you will find this:

Except as expressly provided otherwise in the Privacy Policy or in this Agreement, you agree that by posting messages, uploading text, graphics, photographs, images, video or audio files, inputting data, or engaging in any other form of communication with or through the Website, you grant us a royalty-free, perpetual, non-exclusive, unrestricted, worldwide license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, translate, enhance, transmit, distribute, publicly perform, display, or sublicense any such communication (including your identity and information about you) in any medium (now in existence or hereinafter developed) and for any purpose, including commercial purposes, and to authorize others to do so.

My advice? Stay away from Assignment Wired.

I’m going to be busy moving for the next few days and as I get things running back in San Diego I’d like to focus my reborn biz on your needs and wants. In order to do that, I need to know them. So, I thought I’d ask: what do you want from me?

Okay, that’s a pretty open question, but I think it’s best to start that way. I want to know what services you’d like from me. I’d like to know what things you’d be willing to pay for, of course, but also what you expect to get from me gratis. What are your expectations? Here are a few slightly more specific questions to get you thinking…

What specific issues or topics would like like me to cover here on the blog?

What could I add to the app to make you pony up for it?

Would you like me to come to your burg and give a talk? If so, on what topics?

What sort of information would you like on the soon-coming legal site I’m working on?

Would you like me better as a blonde?
(just making sure you’re paying attention…)

Feel free to post comments below or shoot me a private email at leslie at burnsautoparts.com if you’d rather not have the world know what you want.

I have received several private emails about my post yesterday and I am very touched by the kind and supportive words. I’m so moved so many of you care enough to bother sending supportive thoughts like that. There are a lot of good people out there; in case you ever think the world is full of nasty people, remember that.

Some people wondered why I would share so much intimate stuff like that. I mean, it is showing that I’m not bulletproof and I don’t always succeed in everything I touch. Who in her right mind would put that out to the world?! Well, going beyond any of the psychoanalytical possibilities (ha!), I really thought that others could learn an important lesson from my travails.

I did it because, as a consultant (and yes, now a lawyer), I’m supposed to know the answers. People come to me for advice and when they implement that advice, they expect positive results. And they should (and usually get them). But sometimes, no matter how right you do your work, no matter how much effort you put out there, there is some factor outside of your control that can put the kybosh on it all.

And when that happens, when something fails for whatever reason, you have to learn to separate your disappointment from how you feel about yourself. The project may have failed, but you are not a failure.

That last line is really important and what drove me to write the post, because frankly I forgot that for a bit. I was so overwhelmed by the spectacular failure of this LA adventure that I internalized it and beat the hell out of myself for a bit. Crazy, really, but as I got my head out of my ass about that I decided that if I can help any of you from going there when you have something fail in your life, I’d be a happy girl.

So, I wrote because I want people to know that none of us have all the answers and none of us can control everything. This is true in life and in business. There is so much outside of our control that we can only do what we can do and, in the magnificent words of Dory the fish, just keep swimming.

I got through law school and the Bar with those three words. Every time I hit a bump, I’d tell myself: just keep swimming (in exactly the sing-song way Ellen DeGeneres said it). It was a great simple mantra to help me remember that whatever happened happened, and to go on.

I knew a photographer who, years ago, was in a sourcebook and it didn’t immediately and obviously help his business. He never did it again. I’ve known others who refuse to send mailers because they didn’t get the results they expected. Others do the same with calls or emails or refuse to take a crappy image out of their portfolios because one person one time said s/he liked it, even though it pulled the book down as a whole.  These photographers stopped swimming.

If you are in business you must be able to roll with the failures. You must keep swimming. You need to be able to look at what you did right and repeat it; to look at where you could have improved, and work on that; and, see where you had no control on the outcome and let go of that.

You must take risks, try new things, push yourself out of your comfort zone, and be able to know that if something doesn’t work, it failed, but you are not a failure. Fix what is fixable, be objective in your analysis of what that is, but most of all, just keep swimming.

I’ve been mulling it–should I write this post or not. Finally, I decided I should. It’s personal, sure, but I’m hoping it will help you…
…and yes, me.

See, I think being open and honest is the most important thing you can be today in business. I think targets want to work with real people who don’t blow smoke. And if I’m going to preach that to you all, I need to live it myself.

So, here goes: I’m starting over.

Choosing to go to law school meant that I had to put my business on hold entirely for the first academic year, and then mostly so for the rest of the time. In other words, I’ve made almost no money from my business since 2008. I’ve had a bit of passive income from my book sales, but not even close to enough to cover my “nut.” I’ve been living off my savings and running my business off them too.

In the last year of my studies, I fell in love with a man who works mostly in films and so he lived in Los Angeles. As I approached graduation and taking the Bar, we decided to get a place together in the big city as soon as I finished. This was an exciting time. It was amazing that we found each other and everyone who saw us mentioned how great we seemed together. I felt incredibly lucky and happier than I had ever been in my personal life. We made lots of plans to work together on a book and series of presentations for photographers as well as building our personal life together. I had big plans for my business, especially for if/when I passed the Bar. He was very supportive and had big plans of his own.

As I studied for the Bar, still in San Diego, I started getting rid of a lot of my stuff. It didn’t make sense to move my stuff when he had duplicate stuff. So I sold some stuff like my couch and dining room set, and gave away a lot of other stuff like my bed and cookware and TV. It was wonderful to help others by handing over the items. And, the day after finishing the Bar, smiling, I drove up to LA to our new place and our new life.

I arrived on a Friday and by the following Monday, I was already back at my desk, posting on this very blog and shilling for work. I hit the ground running and was excited for the future.

I bet you can guess the next part: it didn’t work. For whatever reason, the magic we had for the months before the move disappeared. Living together was a disaster. All the dreams and big plans fell apart as the “us” did. Although the work of building my own business went on, I lost some of my direction as I lost my partner.

I was heartbroken. I had dreamed big and, despite my best efforts, it all came crashing down. I kept plugging on, but it wasn’t anywhere near the same. Moreover, I couldn’t make any big decisions until I found out about the Bar, so I waited.

Happily, I passed the Bar. That was a big weight lifted, but it meant I needed to decide on my next steps.

Having passed, I now can offer legal services as well as my traditional consulting. Good thing, because there are a bunch more consultants out there than there were even in 2008. Lots of talented people, many of whom were Photo Editors and the like who have been hurt (downsized) by the downturn, hung out their consultant shingles in the years I was studying law. I have a lot more competition than I did. But, as I have always preached, I’m not so much worried about them as I am focused on differentiating myself and my business from theirs.

Anyway, so, for my business, I face the challenges of lots of competition from other consultants; the fact that other businesses are offering advice that used to be the exclusive realm of consultants like me (and mostly for free, like Photoshelter’s helpful business pdfs); and, the fact that I’ve been mostly off the radar since 2008. Those are some big business hurdles.

Add in a somewhat broken heart (we really wanted to be able to live together), difficult living arrangements (we’re really bad at living together), and, well, things have been tough on many levels.

But, you can’t run a business on hope alone (nor a life, btw). So, I took a look at things and made some choices. As I said earlier, I’m starting over (sort of).

First off, I am moving back to San Diego. I have more friends there and I like the city better for living in than I do LA. Besides the health reasons (the air up here is terrible!), I like the community more in San Diego and look forward to being active in legal groups as well the the photo world. Don’t get me wrong–there are lots of great photo-world people here in LA–I meant the community overall, not just photo.

I’m sure I’ll be coming back to LA lots to attend events and visit, but I want to make my home closer to the ocean and in a place where I feel more at home.

It’s going to be interesting… moving twice in one year is expensive and now, for bonus points, I have to re-purchase some of the basics I shed (like a bed). I will be living rather frugally as I develop my business and legal services. In some ways, I see this as good–it permits me the opportunity to build my own life, on my own terms, and to focus my efforts on providing better services for my clients… you.

Work is also a great distractor–it helps me to get my head out of the feeling sorry for myself place that is easy to go to when a relationship doesn’t work out.

Secondly, I will be starting up a photo/legal-oriented website soon. There are some ethical issues surrounding having a website and being a lawyer so, to be safe, I’m going to be separating out this stuff a bit more (this blog will be more general photo/creative-related, the other more IP/legal). Also, I want to find a method of being able to provide legal services to photographers and other creatives without sending them to the poorhouse. It’s a complex problem but I’m working on it. That info will be posted on the new site as soon as I can get it developed. Stay tuned.

Thirdly, I am and will continue to be offering marketing consulting services. Some people think I’m not doing this work any more but I am. I love it and don’t ever want to stop. I could use getting the word out about this–please feel free to let your colleagues know that I’m still doing consulting work and am looking for new clients (as always).

I edit books and websites and make lists and make marketing plans–all the usual consultant-y stuff. And I get strong results. Tony Blei got his book called in before it was even ready (printed) after working with me, for example.

I’m not as cheap as the services offered by the bigger companies as add-ons to their traditional services (like the list service companies). I provide value and individualized attention you just aren’t going to get from them. For example, if I build your list using your Adbase or AgencyAccess account, it’s not going to take me 10 minutes and have 9000+ names on it because 1) I know there aren’t 9000+ potential good targets for anyone’s work; and, 2) I’m picky–it takes hours to pick out the right targets and built-in lists aren’t right for anyone; you’ll never get a “recycled” list from me.

Point is, I do this work, do it well, and want the world to know I’m not only back, I have even more to offer than before.

 

So why should this matter for you? What’s the point in reading this long tale? Well, mostly I want to point out that I tried something new and risky and it did not work. I want you to use this as an object lesson that risks don’t always work, but you still have to take them.

Look, I could sit around and say I’m not going to take any risks again or feel sorry for myself, but I’m not. I’d still take the risk I did because I never would have had the chance to learn what I have without it. It’s not all bad–I got to see, do, and learn a lot about the entertainment industry and new technology creative groups and the business of magic, and, well, just all sorts of stuff I never would have been exposed to if I hadn’t taken the risk. And I learned more about myself. Plus, even in the bad, I’ve learned I have an amazing resilience and great friends who care about me.

So yeah, it’s scary as hell to take risks. Some don’t work out as you imagine. No matter how much planning and good intentions, shit happens. You can’t control everything and sometimes you will not achieve what you envision. Sometimes it will go to hell in the proverbial handbasket.

But if you don’t take the risk, if you don’t try, if you don’t go for it full-on and with everything you’ve got, you’ll never get what you really want. Success will not fall into your lap–you have to risk to get it.