Author: Leslie Burns

From a blog on the housing bubble, a commentor posted these words from one of his high school teachers:

The only thing you have to do in life is die. Everything else is a choice, so choose wisely.

 And a quote from STEP magazine, as listed on a humor blog site and pointed out by Jane G. (oh, and I think you can substitue any creative profession for “designer”):

What’s the difference between a designer and a prostitute?
The prostitute will NEVER work on spec.

If you think about it, those two quotes work together well…

I just got an email from a photographer, Stephanie Hager. It was a little email promo, to drive targets to her website, but instead of only saying something like “I’ve got new work” or “Look at my website” she also included the following:

Here are a couple of very important and fun holidays you may find of interest:
January 27 – National Chocolate Cake Day
January 31 – Inspire your Heart with Art Day

What a hoot! Odd, weird “holidays” to celebrate. I bet that increases her hits. It’s always fun to get something unusual like that. Creative clients especially love this sort of “weirdo” lore, so it makes a good connection. Way to go, Stephanie!

We’ve made another series of minor tweaks to the main BAP website and one major one: it’s got a new section called “Vroom!” where you’ll find some comments from past clients, colleagues, and people who have seen my presentations.

You all know that I take the idea that we are all in business quite seriously. I think you should too. But that doesn’t mean we should get so bound by that that we get too afraid to do anything, lest we make a mistake. News flash: you are going to screw up.

Everyone makes mistakes. Everyone. Sometimes they’ll be big, but mostly they’ll be little and pretty easily correctable. Mistakes give us the chance to learn and to grow. Also, as has been noted before on this blog, if you don’t take a chance (which means potentially making a mistake) you can’t really be successful.

But just in case you’re still feeling bound by that fear of screwing up, just take a look at this list of the biggest business blunders of 2006. You can’t possibly screw up as much as them. No way…not even close.

Next time you have an agency or client complain about using usage to figure your price, just point them to this article.

This is a fantastic sign for non-employee creatives who participate in the creation of the creative for agencies and their clients. Agencies are finally realizing the importance and VALUE of their creative work, and charging for it rather than the time to create.

Just like photographers (and some others).

Woo hoo! A good sign for the future!

(thanks to Peter Schafrick for emailing the link)

Seriously…why don’t you just get a “regular job” like most folks?

If you can’t answer this question, you shouldn’t be in business.

As a self-employed creative professional (I like the term “self-employed” almost as much as “freelance,” which is to say, not at all), what you really are is a small businessperson. To be a small businessperson, a successful one that is, you need to believe completely in your product and yourself.

If you can’t say why you’re not working for someone else, then you shouldn’t be working for yourself.

Last Saturday I took a day-long improv workshop. Yes, improv, as in acting/comedy with no script. The description of the class made it sound like it would be mostly theory and history as we were told to bring notebooks. I expected a mostly academic-type class. The fact that the confirmation email also suggested wearing “comfortable closed-toe shoes” was ignored by the part of my brain that usually screens out potentially humiliating situations. I went, prepared to learn the history of improv and to get more odd knowledge for my already overpacked brain.

What I got was maybe 30 minutes of note-worthy material and the rest of the time I was using my comfortable, closed-toe shoes to their full capabilities. I was on my feet, doing stuff–stuff that made the “don’t do something potentially humiliating” part of my brain recoil in horror. I sang (a tiny bit), I invented characters, I mimed driving a car and later throwing up (not sure if that was so much acting as just being real [grin]), and I played rapid-fire “bippidy-bippity-BOP” which is a game with rules so complex as to make your head explode but actually simple to play and “bunny-bunny-bunny” which is so simple that it makes no sense that it’s so hard.

I figured out ways to convey character, relationship, objective, and where the action was taking place in a scene, in two sentences. On the fly. With another person who got to use up one of the sentences and with whom I did not collaborate ahead of time. One of us would just say a line, the other would say a second line. And somehow, sense was made.

This was, in a very non-professional way, a day of making art. It was all about creating and taking the risks necessary to create. Did I screw up? Oh boy howdy did I! I was completely out of control–that is, I could not control the situation at all, instead being forced to react and invent. It was about flow and giving. The result was greater than its parts. It wasn’t about me yet it was all about me. It was, in a word, amazing.

You creatives get to do this every day. Each of you, in your own way, gets this gift of creating. For me, that one day was magic. I wish I could do that every day–have that feeling of come home afterwards totally exhausted and utterly enthralled with life. You get that.

If you haven’t felt that in a while, you’ve been cheating your gift. Maybe you’re playing it safer than you should. You know that feeling, when the creativity is flowing and you don’t really care about the result–it’s the process that is making your teeth sweat. Find it again. Sure, you might not get to that place on every project, but you need to get there for yourself ever so often, just to remind your creative self what can be. So the next time your boss or AD pushes you to be blah, you can push back, even just a little, to touch that gift.

…sort of, as described by an art student from Europe in a rather brilliant Quicktime film.

Why do actors now get millions of dollars per film? And directors? Simple: they are the creative backbone to the product–the film–and they now realize their value to the industry. Sure, we want to hurl when we hear about a not-so-great actor getting $20 million for a film, but when you look at what money the studios make, suddenly that $20 million isn’t quite so much. In 2003, the studios had receipts over $42 billlion. And they are making money, even with high advertising costs, salaries, etc.

Way back in 1919, people like Charlie Chaplin realized that it was they, the creatives, who made the greatest contribution to the financial success of the film industry. To more fairly distribute the funds their creativity earned, they created United Artists–in other words, to keep more of the money their creativity, well, created.

Fast-forward 90 years, and creatives in Hollywood are again getting it–the financial realities of their industry. Rather than standing idly by and cursing the injustice, actors, directors, writers and others are demanding to be compensated appropriately for their contributions. As much as I don’t care for Tom Cruise, when Paramount said “Bend to our will” he said “No” and, instead, “bought” the barely extant United Artists.

I say we should look to Hollywood as examples of the strength of individual creatives. We can, each of us, stand up for our contributions to the advertising ($240 billion, 2005 according to one source, $104+ billion for the first 9 months of 2006 according to another, but it’s probably actually more, depending on how you run the numbers), editorial, and other industries–contributions which drive those numbers.

If one actor can get a percentage of a film’s total revenues for their creative fee, why is it unreasonable to expect similar numbers for equally vital creative contributions?

If we cannot unionize in the traditional sense, perhaps now is the time to consider new, alternative methods for banding together. The money is there. Creatives deserve their share.

There have been some minor changes made to the BAP website–a few links added, a tweak to the text here and there. You may find some info you missed before and there is a new Manual posted, for those of you who don’t get them delivered directly via the Free Manuals in Your Email service (details here, at the bottom) or who signed up fairly recently.

The most important bit of news on the site is the blurb about my upcoming speaking tour. In April and May of this year, I’ll be heading east. The final details are still being worked out, but if you are in any of these cities (or nearby) this will be a chance to learn some important things directly from me (and a chance to ask questions!):
Austin, TX
Charlotte, NC
Atlanta, GA
Richmond, VA
Washington, DC
Boston, MA

Each city will also have times available for one-on-one meetings. One note: I’ll also be in Philly, PA but only for a few one-on-one meetings (no speaking engagement).

Sign-ups and more information will be posted as soon as we get the details worked out, so keep checking in!