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One of the most popular questions I get asked is “Who should I have on my marketing list?” This is a very important question–I’m glad people are asking it. Generally speaking, I usually advocate the two-list system, that is, an A-List and a B-List.

Your A-List should be made up of the people you really want to work with. A good way to build this list is to keep a file of all the materials you see that make you think “Damn, I wish I had done that.” Note, that is not “Damn, I could have done that.” The work is something that moves you on a deeper level, where you know that your creative contribution would fit well, etc.

For example, maybe you love the photography Apple uses and you too shoot images in a similar manner. Add Apple to your list. Also add any agency that does work with Apple. You can research that information on list services like ADBASE. With that one company you now have many people to target on your A-List.

Your B-List are all the local firms or any other company or firm you have extra budget to send things to. You’re not going to spend much of your marketing dollars or time on this list. This is the “shotgun approach” list that, if it pays off and you get a gig, great, but you’re not going to work too hard at attracting these potential clients. Have extra mailers after sending to your A-List? Send ’em to your B-list.

The point is, your A-Listers are pre-qualified. You know they use good work and work like you produce. Therefore, they are more likely to be interested in your work. So, any effort you make in reaching these people has a greater possibility in paying off. Also, they are usually higher-end agencies and brands who usually have better budgets and thus who will pay you better fees.

A small, highly targeted A-List will pay off better than all the shotgun approaches out there. Start working on yours today.

I love this site. Started by a bunch of optimists who want things to be better and believe that we each hold the power to make things better, ChangeThis.com is, simply, brilliant. Read the ChangeThis Manifesto to get their rationale for the site.

Sure, I could go on with how it all works (people submit cogently though-out position papers the site calls Manifestos which are then, if approved, downloadable by the masses) and start to question the fact that the content is “donated” etc., but I would rather focus on the main point: ChangeThis is a resource, a repository, of accessible critical thinking on a plethora of topics and you can’t not learn something if you read these manifestos (bad grammar deliberate there, by the way). You’ll agree with some, disagree with others, but overall, you’ll be forced to think, and that is never a bad thing.

No quick answers. No dumbing-down of information. Just page after page of thought-out ideas and opinions. As every creative needs to think well to produce the best creative product of which s/he is capable, informing yourself this way can only be a benefit.

Okay, for all of you who moan every time I bring up how important good grammar (and/or spelling) is in business, I have real, hard proof I’m right. Big, expensive, proof.

Ouch.

(Thanks to Åsk at AdLand for the info)

Into every small business, unexpected things come up. In my case, it was a lovely attack of the stomach flu at the end of last week. Bent-over with stomach cramps, it was not the time to service my clients (or to write on this blog, for that matter). I had to cancel planned meetings and leave emails unanswered–both not great service things. But, actually, it was good service. Why? Because I knew I wasn’t thinking clearly and my abilities to focus on my clients and their needs was significantly impared. Anyone I worked with on Thursday or Friday would not have received my best and that wasn’t what I had promised.

My marketing promises my clients my best thinking. To give less than that is breaking that brand promise. Not ever good. But being honest with my clients kept the promise…and the clients.

You need to do this too. If you have the flu, stay home and reschedule a shoot or a meeting. Or get someone to cover the shoot for you, if time is of the essence. Yes, you may lose a client if someone else shoots a project (and you are definitely losing the money), but most good clients will remember that in a crisis situation, you went above the call of duty to see that they got what they needed, even when it didn’t (apparently) help you.

You can do this when a client comes to you to shoot something and you are not right for the project. If you don’t shoot people and the client needs real people shot, tell the client you are not the right person for the project and recommend someone you know and trust instead. Sounds counter-intuitive, but it’s really the best thing you can do. If you do poorly on the shoot or look like you aren’t sure of yourself, you’ll lose future business of all kinds with that client. But if you take a pass and help the client find the right photographer for the project, you’ll look great.

It’s like that scene in Miracle on 34th Street–Mr. Kringle tells a mother where to buy the right kind of skates her child wants and it’s not at the store where he is working. The floor manager gets upset, but the mother tells the powers-that-be how grateful she was for the help and how she will be back to shop in their store because of Mr. Kringle’s help. The management then makes it a policy for all their employees to tell customers where to get what they really want, if their store doesn’t carry it then tell them who does. And sales go up.
Almost 60 years later, it still works.

After months of writing, editing, and research, my first book is now available. Rather than go through traditional publishing, I chose to publish via Lulu.com, and now you can buy it in paperback or PDF form. Whew!
This book is best suited to student and emerging photographers, though pros with more experience may pick up some ideas as well. It is written in a very accessible style, because, as we all know, photographers can often get bored when reading lots of business stuff. It’s funny in places, and, as you might expect from me, pretty straight-forward.
One important note: this is not an in-depth analysis of the business. Instead it covers the basics on many important issues like copyright, paperwork, business entity types, marketing, profits, and more. I thought this was the best approach because students (not all, but most) have not been getting the basics in their coursework. This book will fill in a lot of those big blanks–giving them what they need to get started and offers other places to get more in-depth answers.

Thanks for all the encouragement in the writing of this book and your patience in waiting for its release. Now tell your friends and colleagues about it, especially those who teach the next generation!

For those of you who sought the blog over the past couple of days, I’d like to apologize. Our servers got hacked, resulting in no blog until this morning. Thanks for your patience.

It’s noon on the West Coast and I’ve been at it since about 5:15am today. Why? Because I don’t work weekends. I made this rule for myself when I started my own business. It is very rarely violated. Only when I think something is a real emergency will I work on a weekend. Not when my client thinks it’s an emergency, mind you, but when I do. Why? Because I set my business’ standards and practices, not my clients.

Of course, I’m not ignoring them–not at all! I think about their needs and their wants and I balance those out with my own, and then I set my standards and practices.

Often, what they want is not the best thing for them anyway (ex., they want to avoid making phonecalls to potential clients), so my business focuses on their needs (they need to get clients) and I have tailored how I work based on those needs. But sometimes this means doing things they don’t want–like forcing them to make the calls or not being available to them on the weekends.

This is something you should consider for your own business. Set your own rules and standards and practices and hold true to them. It pays off. I’ve never yet lost a client because I wouldn’t work on a weekend or I didn’t answer the phone after 5pm. Everyone respects that this is how my business works.

The world will not end if you don’t do all the time what your clients say they want. Sometimes, it is good to be a little “selfish.” Do what you want how you want to do it and you’ll be more productive and enjoy the process to boot.

And it’s not just me who says so. Seth Godin tells a good anecdote on the same theme today on his blog.

We hear lots of talk about copyright and intellectual property these days. For example, Kazaa just reached a settlement for lots of their piracy ($115 Million). And all that is good, but you almost never hear discussion about another part of copyright law: the criminal part.

See, these cases are mostly civil–a creator (copyright holder) sues a company for using the work without permission. But there are criminal penalties for copyright abuse. Depending on the severity of the infringement and whether or not it was deliberate, theoretically a copyright criminal could go to jail for 1-5 years. Federal prision.

I say we should lobby for stricter application of the criminal parts of the law. Think about how that would get lots of the lazy pseudo-bloggers (those who just steal material and post it on their sites) who are making money off the ads on their sites! I can think of more than a few folks who deserve to do the perp-walk and make friends with Bubba Gangthug in the slammer.
It would also make life a lot better for creatives. Think about how, as an art director, you could turn to your client and say “we can either pay for comp usage of this photo or I can do marker comps for the presentation–which do you want?” rather than using an image from a sourcebook illegally and then having your client get married to that shot.

So call your representatives and make a stink about it. Copyright crime is as much of a crime as any other form of stealing.

Today I went to the local UPS Store to drop off a portfolio I had reviewed. The photographer had provided a return label, but I needed a new UPS box into which to put the portfolio. Now mind you, the store was an official UPS Store, branded UPS, and the first to come up on the UPS site when I searched for a local UPS location. It’s not a Postal Annex or some other store.

So, imagine my surprise when the worker there told me “We don’t carry UPS boxes.”

“Wait–you are a UPS Store, right?”

“Yup.”

“But you don’t have UPS boxes?”

“Nope.”

“You’re telling me I have to buy a box from you in order to use the prepaid shipping label I have here?

“Yup.”

“I don’t think so.” I said, and headed out the door.

Of course, when I got back to my desk I called UPS to let them know about this awful service, after all, a good company would want to know that their representatives are essentially scamming their customers. After being put on hold while she checked, the nice customer service person said, “That store isn’t owned by us so they have the perrogative not to provide UPS supplies.”

I was stunned. I said, “But the store is branded UPS. That makes your company look terrible! You should pass this on to your marketing department…”

“It’s that store’s perrogative, Ma’am. There’s nothing we can do,” the voice said in an obviously bored and disinterested voice.

“Thanks.”

“Thanks for calling UPS! Have a nice day.”

What marketing or customer service department thinks that after telling a customer that they don’t care about you or how their business looks to the outside world, saying “have a nice day” is a good idea? I’ll tell you: a lousy one.

Don’t act like UPS. Even if you can’t do anything about “it,” find something you can do. If the woman had said “I’m sorry about that, can we send a driver with the box–there will be one in your neighborhood today” or “Here’s the address where you can get the supplies you need,” that would have been much better.

In business, you need to be sensible about costs. It is important not to spend unnecessarily, but being “cheap” isn’t always cost-effective. For example, maybe you’re a photographer and you can get a website designed by some off-shore company (or even one in your own country) for less than $500. Sounds like a deal, right? Not really.

$500 is a lowball price for website design. By using the company that lowballed, you are contributing to the slow death of web designers who charge legitimate prices. The value of what they do is being cheapened by your actions. Yes, you are only one client, but there will be others. You can’t control the others, but you can make the choice to “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” After all, image how you would feel if a client came to you and said “We’re going with PhotoBob because he’ll do the whole project with no usage restrictions for $500.”

But, continuing our hypothetical, you look beyond that and go ahead and use this lowballing company. They, in turn, use lowballing photographers for any of their photo needs. They will need to cut corners to stay in business at those low prices, so using cheap photography is a good way for them to do that. Guess what…you just hurt your own industry by using a lowballer in another.

That’s not good business.

In this case, your website is your most important marketing tool–why aren’t you spending appropriately? This is not the place to be cheap anyway.

But the real rub is that it is, quite simply, wrong thinking. Why do I so often hear about creatives who have no problem pirating software or stealing music or even movies and yet who scream and yell about how their own industry is being ruined by people doing exactly the same thing–just with their creative product?! You cannot complain about others lowballing you or stealing your work if you use lowballers and/or steal others’ work. Period.

Here’s a fact: in the past I used software I shouldn’t have. In the past. I stopped quite some time ago. I learned that it was wrong, and I stopped. I’m not proud that I used to do otherwise and I can tell you that the cost of Microsoft’s Office is not a pleasant check to write, but it is the right thing to do. Working honestly may cost more on the surface, but overall I am actually not only doing better by paying for these things, I can look at myself in the mirror without the guilty flinch. And I build those costs into my CODB so it is covered by my fees anyway.

By spending more money on quality creative product, whatever it is, you are encouraging the increase in perceived value of other creative products. Also, you are contributing to the economy in a positive way: your costs are passed on to your clients who pass them on to their clients, ad infinitum. Money is generated at every level. All of this is good. And all of it can be traced back to the good old Golden Rule.