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Sticking to rates when you’re poor and desperagte
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Thanks everyone for the advice! Ironically, the job in question at the moment is for a marketing seminar, and I’m already part-timing at a coffee shop to make my ends meet (and get health insurance). I’ve done everything I can to look, sound, and appear professional, but I’ve found that being a very young looking 24yr old female has been a major hit towards my initial first impression. I’m hoping to get a staff position in news/tv, and right now its just a matter of making rent until a position opens up.
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[Brendan Coots] “It sucks short term to lower prices, but virtually every business in the world feels the need to at some point or another just to keep their doors open.”
Truer words have never been spoken. There are proven ways to do this. They’re called promotions (a.k.a coupons).
Marketing 101:
— Product
— Price
— Promotion
— Placement -
[Craig Seeman] “Alison, to extend what Ron says, it’s not only your rate for that client that will remain low. You mention networking with her community. Given it’s her community, it’s likely you will get plenty of recommendations at an equally unsustainable low rate after they talk to her.”
To expand on the phenomenon that Craig alludes to, we have leveraged this phenomenon to a competitive advantage over the years. If we know there’s a company in our area that tries to compete against us on price, we will refer a lot of jobs their way — not ones we’d want, but ones that are not worth dealing with. These grinder jobs will tie them up as they chase their tails, staying busy but never profitable. Sometimes, they give up and find something else to do with their time.
Ron Lindeboom
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“I’ve done everything I can to look, sound, and appear professional, but I’ve found that being a very young looking 24yr old female has been a major hit towards my initial first impression.”
Alison, as one young looking 24 year old woman to another, I just want to say this: DO NOT give up on yourself. At least for the time being. It is true and I totally experience what you do in regards to first impression on a daily basis, and it has lost me jobs. Rarely do we get any competitive advantage. But I won’t let that get to me.
One thing that is super important though, and I hope you are listening, is to forget about the age/gender thing. It is hard to do, especially when it is a factor in getting work. However I have seen people get bitter and frustrated about this and you should not let that happen, at all costs. These people wait until they have aged some, got some experience, then they are a 28 year old young looking female, then they are a 33 year old young looking female, then they are a 38 year old young looking female… you know where I am going. If you carry the attitude, you ARE the attitude and soon enough you get stuck in a conundrum trying to make decisions such as whether or not you can afford/are still young enough to have kids etc.
Don’t look at this as a disadvantage, look at it as an advantage. You have the energy to work at multiple jobs, AND work on your own projects for clients too! That is the benefit of being young. People can pick up on attitudes, such as the fact that you think you are at a disadvantage due to your age and gender. So they will share your attitude, even if you are just feeling this way a LITTLE bit. If you have a ‘I have nothing to lose, nothing will stop me’ attitude, people will be drawn to the excitement of you and share that.
Don’t spend the best years of your life worrying about something you cannot control. Instead lets focus on breaking the stereotype of what people think younger women work like by leading with a great example. Forget about any disadvantage it has given you in the past, and move on from that. You will be ok!
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I agree that this particular client will never agree to higher rates in the future, it’s a law I’ve experienced first-hand.
I guess I just see this particular situation as a gamble – take a lower rate and live to see another day but ditch the idea of working with that client again, or stick to principals, lose the client anyway, and be broke.
Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com -
[Brendan Coots] “I guess I just see this particular situation as a gamble – take a lower rate and live to see another day but ditch the idea of working with that client again, or stick to principals, lose the client anyway, and be broke.”
I would agree with this in principle, Brendan, but where I see the danger in this one is that I believe that this one is the person that said she wants to grow in this market that is apparently in the hands of this grinder.
If she gives in to this price, then not only is she marked with this particular person, but she is likely to find that she is marked with many others, as well.
But as you say, it is indeed better to live to fight another day than to insist that you must win every battle.
As I tell my team regularly, “You have to choose the battles you are willing to lose so that you can win the war.”
Still, I hate to lose. ;o)
Best regards,
Ron Lindeboom
Creativity is a type of learning process where the teacher and pupil are located in the same individual.
Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
– Antoine de Saint Exupéry -
Whatever time and money he put into this demo, it is going to come back to him many times in terms of new business and publicity.
The problem with this approach is the client who sees this and says: That is fantastic work!
“Can you duplicate that for me for $500.00??”True, but sad, story.
Even with a very good demo, you need clients who can pay to play.
That usually takes years of “word of mouth” and perseverance.Dual 2.5 G5, IO, Kona LH, IO, Medea Raid, UL4D, NVidia 6800, 4Gig RAM
Octocore 8 GB Ram, Radeon card, MBP, MXO
Windows Vista Adobe Studio CS4, Vegas 8.0, Lightwave 9.3, Sound Forge 9, Acid Pro 7, Continuum 5, Boris Red 4, Combustion 2008, Sapphire Effects -
Normally, when I’m having a meeting with someone and they ask me what they can get for $200, my immediate reply is to look at my watch for two seconds (while I think) and then I look them in the eye and say “I think we’re almost there right now”.
The conversation usually ends right there and I can do something more profitable, like driving back to my office or buying a Lotto ticket.
My quote of the day: “Go ahead, do it once for a low price and establish your rate forever.” Why would you ever be worth more to do the same thing for anyone else?
My advice would be to jump in the phone book (the thick book full of phone numbers that you probably threw away) and start looking up non-profit agencies. Call and ask for marketing or for community relations. Ask them if they have any small video jobs that they need done. They always need something and they’ve usually got a couple hundred bucks in a drawer.
If you only need to make small dollars, give your precious time to someone who really needs it, not someone who wants to steal from you.
In 1997, my wife and I were buying our house and we were in desperate need for money for our down payment. A non-profit asked us in to do a video for them. They had $8500. It was a school that helped mentally disabled young adults. The CEO made $32k a year. We did the project and got everyone on our team to donate their time and gear. When it came time to collect, we donated the check back to the school. Word spread quickly that we were idiots and within two weeks, we were awarded a $250k contract with a community college district.
Coincidence? It turns out that someone on the CCD board had a child at that school. The bid came down to two companies, us and the biggest production company in town. We were able to fund our down payment. See our latest non-profit venture at http://www.vimeo.com/sntvideo St. Mary’s Food Bank.
Steve Wargo
Tempe, Arizona
It’s a dry heat!Sony HDCAM F-900 & HDW-2000/1 deck
5 Final Cut (not quite PRO) systems
Sony HVR-M25 HDV deck
2-Sony EX-1 HD . -
[Alison Grayson] “she only wanted camera on sticks,”
What a boatload of BS. The work is NOT in following her on the stage, even though that’s whay she thinks.
Let’s see:
1. Spend at least two to four hours talking to her about the job itself.
2. Gather everything up like gear, cables, tape or cards, Mapquest, etc.
3. Prep your gear, check everything, buy insurance, put gas in your car.
4. Load the gear in your car.
5. Drive to the location, find a parking space.
6. Load everything out of the car and onto a cart.
7. Haul all of it inside.
8. Find electrical outlets and the input for the mic to feed the house.
9. Set all of your gear up, white balance, test audio.
10. Find the grinder, er, client and install the wireless mic bodypack.
11. Hide the mic somewhere that it won’t show.
12. Test the sound. Rearrange the mic because she is wearing polyester and everything sounds scratchy.
13. Set up the camera, level the head, attach the zoom control.
14. White balance.
15. Discover that the lights in the room are some weird color. Whirte balance through a colored gel to get the color right.
16. Roll the camera as she is introduced.
17. Lock the camera on the podium after she steps up to the mic.
18. Go sit down. or better yet, go take a nap.
19. Stand up to run the camera at the end of her persentation.
20. When she is done, compliment her on how great she is while you have your fingers crossed behind your back.
21. When done, load the gear back onto your cart and drag it outside to your car.
22. no Cart? All you do then is make 6 trips from your car to the building, carrying it all.
23. Load it from the cart into the car.
24.Drive home in the heat of the day.
25. Unload the cart and bring it all in the house.
26. Put it away and then start to digitize the clips she needs.
27. Take your check book to the bank. Wash the blood off the check.
28. When you’re all finished, please remember that you now have to edit this thing. Oh joy!Now, how much of that do you think needs to be paid for?
Steve Wargo
Tempe, Arizona
It’s a dry heat!Sony HDCAM F-900 & HDW-2000/1 deck
5 Final Cut (not quite PRO) systems
Sony HVR-M25 HDV deck
2-Sony EX-1 HD . -
Yep, and nor do I particularly want my name attached to any “tripod and ignore” shooting. I have a feeling that she’ll end up paying a family member to hold up a shakey camera and end up with a completely unusable video. Meh.
Thanks for the non-profit suggestion (and to others who suggested the same). I never really considered that they’d have any sort of budget tucked away, and that way I can feel good about donating my time to work for less, rather than feeling like a pushover :-P.
(oh, and kudos on the Jeff Dunham quote)
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