[Tim Wilson]

Howdy Tim,

Tens of thousands of people are going to see your post in the next few days, but I doubt that many of them have case studies on hand. Besides, case studies aren’t as useful here as elsewhere. There are only a handful of ways to be a bank, for example, but a virtually infinite number of ways to get from where you are to where you want to be.

However, as you’ve seen here, we’re all quite chatty. Ask a specific question or two, and we’ll have at it!

In the meantime, follow the Tutorials link in the orange navbar to find a wealth of business articles in the Cow library. Then follow the Podcasts link to hear some great stories and advice.

Best,

Tim

Tim Wilson
Creative Cow Magazine!

My Blog: “Is this thing on? Oh it’s on!”

Don’t forget to rate your favorite posts!

[Tim Wilson]

[Mike Cohen] “If you charge by the project, you charge enough that the client can work on their schedule and you are compensated enough to not worry about cancellations.

If a client cancels on me, I get to spend that time doing something for myself (learning), for my business (marketing) or for another customer who will be happy to see their next deliverable a day sooner.”

I added some boldface to Mike’s quote because it nailed my own view on this.

1) The only clients of mine who charged hourly were lawyers, and they KNEW they were constantly angling. Talking on the phone while driving allowed them to charge twice for the same minutes. Their clients might not have witnessed this double billing, but every one of them understood that incremental billing always worked in the lawyer’s favor.

Other than them, none of my clients earned their own livings hourly. None of their secretaries got paid hourly. Their electricians and dock hands were all on salary. Even waiters worked on tips, not unlike the commission that their salespeople worked on. The only people in their sphere who worked hourly were the cleaning staff and temps.

Shifting away from hourly billing completely changed the dynamic of my client relationships. It established that I wasn’t a hireling. Working as one professional to another, I found that the client tried harder to keep up their end of the deal. Work got done more quickly, with fewer hassles.

b) I thought of cancellations kind of like snow days. You still have to go to school for the same number of days, but an unexpected cancellation FEELS like a vacation….even if there’s a ton of stuff to do.

My top things to do during cancellations, in order: banking/post office/shopping; chatting up/buying lunch for prospects; working on my tan. Downtime can be your friend.

Third, no first-time clients got any grief for me for anything. We have no relationship yet. The project hadn’t begun.

And once the relationship/project got started, there was no upside in being the one to turn the thing into a line-item hassle.

Why? Because once you start line-iteming, incrementalizing, minutely detailing your billing, you give them permission to do the exact same thing back to you.

In other words, the level of detail of your billing is directly proportional to the number of things they get to argue with you about.

Don’t open this door if you don’t want to go allllll the way through it.

[Tim Wilson]

I’ll offer some alternative perspectives. None of this is intended as scolding, or any suggestion that you’re doing the wrong thing. You’re doing the best possible thing by asking.

I just don’t know that I’m the one to give you an answer that you….or anyone else here….might have any use for. 🙂

Having a client big enough to create their own weather systems, their own centers of gravity, means they got to write their own rules. I had one like this, who did indeed make a huge difference to me.

First, a general principle that applies no matter what size the client:

If you haven’t told ’em up front that you’ll charge them if they hold you up, and they haven’t agreed to it in advance, in writing, you’re stuck.

Put it this way. If a client tried to throw up a new rule that you hadn’t agreed to in advance, you’d be on this forum SCREAMING….and you’d be right.

Not that you can’t mention it, but frankly, I wouldn’t. In similar situations, I didn’t. If they really are big, and you really do hope to work for them for a long time, take the money, and get used to be being pushed around. It stinks, but this is why they call it work.

Look, I know that we’re all about the “treat me like I’m a professional” thing here….but seriously, one of the things that professionals do is suck it up in front of the client, then come here to rant. We start businesses because we want to be our own bosses, which hides a couple of hard truths:

–We are not our own bosses. Every monkey with a checkbook is our boss.

–We don’t like taking orders, which makes us absolutely useless for “real” jobs. When you get a client capable of paying you as if you had a real job, act like you have one. They call it WORK, because it ain’t easy.

Now, here’s the other side of this. Sometimes they kept me waiting for forever. They canceled on short notice, WANTED me on short notice, had me work with contacts in the organization who hated me…well, that’s strong language. They held out on me, obstructed me, and didn’t respect me.

So what did I do? I did my job. I smiled like a monkey. I gave them more than what they paid for.

What did I get for my trouble? They came to support me in every aspect of my work. They gave me more and more creative freedom. They paid.

They became dear friends – not just the big client, but also people like the “gatekeeper” who banged on the table and said they’d make sure the client never approved the first deal. I can’t begin to express how bad it was, and how good it got.

Seriously, we got a LOT of advice to steer clear of this deal, and some of those people respected us a lot less because of how well it worked out for us.

Here became the “hardest” part of the job: the client had hotels, restaurants, boats. Sometimes they wanted us to go out with them when we really wanted to take a nap. Or, to be less flippant, when it meant we’d have to stay up all night to finish another client’s work.

I’m going on at way too much length, but my experience is that there can be plenty of upside to playing along. Taking money for work you enjoy, and enjoying the people you work for – anybody here have a problem with rearranging your schedule for that?

If it works out, you’ll find them apologizing for things like standing you up. If it doesn’t, well, you’ll fire them and that will be that. But my own first step would be to let this one go, and never mention it.

It worked for me. Made all the difference in the rest of my career. Your mileage will vary.

[Tim Wilson]

If you haven’t taken a look at Grant Petty’s interview re: DaVinci here at the Cow, by all means do.

While he’s talking about bringing prices down some, he’s very clear that their interest in DaVinci is that the products are ridiculously powerful – he spoke about realtime stereoscopic 4K with the typically Resolve-esque multiple effects. That’s just not going to happen in software.

He also mentions that he hopes that completing a transition to off-the-shelf hardware will bring the top of the line down to $500-600,000 (not that this has been established). When I finish editing an expanded version of the interview, he also mentions that entry-level systems will still be $100K+.

He refers to future technologies that will bring the price down some more, and acknowledges that Color and others are exerting the same kinds of downward price pressure that BMD has in other arenas…but that that’s a secondary goal to 1) increasing power and flexibility, and 2) updating interfaces and feature sets.

Ron S. and others – don’t forget that the way this came about is that the Blackmagic post house has bought FOUR systems. (Two Resolve, two Revival.) They only found that the company was for sale because they were pestering DaVinci about fixing things. So while nobody can know exactly what it means in the long run, the people that bought the company have also bought systems for their own use.

(Just for grins, you should swing by the post-house page at BMD’s website.)

Anyway, I’m just summarizing what’s in the article and what you’ll see in the expanded version underway…but they’re being quite open so far….

tw

[Tim Wilson]

[Mark Suszko] “can now afford a used one to indulge side projects or rent out.”

You can get a box of Media Composer 4, which supports real-time stereoscopic 3D editing among other slick things, plus a 4TB raid, an external Blu-ray burner and a spindle of Blu-ray disks for $2999. (Videoguys are among our advertisers who can make you this deal, but there are others.) Run it on your laptop and desktop, even if they’re on different OSes. Affordable, high-powered, contemporary Avids are plentiful.

And Casey, you can upgrade for $495. 🙂

[Timothy J. Allen] “Have you considered donating it to a school? (or a museum?)”

re: the school, an exhortation to everyone considering donating to schools – a noble concept, but almost always a bad idea. If I ask you to make a list of the reasons why, if you’re honest, you’ll come up with a dozen reasons why your system is the wrong one for those students to use.

It can’t hurt to ask…but I worked with a high school that didn’t want to say no to ANY donations, but wound up throwing away all the donated computers and peripherals. Just too much trouble in the age of iMacs and DV cameras.

re: museum, I get what you’re saying TJA, and I know Casey does too, but systems of this vintage are more common than you’d think. They WORK, which is worth a lot.

Hey, ask Thelma Schoonmaker. She still uses a Lightworks system. (For your trivia notebook: the last Lightworks product manager is now the product manager for Adobe Premiere.)

Obviously oversimplified for rhetorical purposes, but you get the idea. People are slow to let go of largely bulletproof systems.

Anyhoo Casey, you should definitely list the system for sale here at the Cow and on ebay. Spare parts are worth a lot, and working SCSI storage is worth its weight in gold for people who need it. I wouldn’t plan on getting a lot for it, but I’d be surprised if you didn’t get some interest from some corner of the globe.

Good luck!

Tim

[Tim Wilson]

[Neil Sadwelkar] “…dishonesty…I know calling late payment dishonest is a bit harsh”

Sometimes, it is exactly the case. You don’t have to go very far back into the past to find many posts along these lines. There are clients who are late just on principle, to arbitrary exercise power and to remind you who is the boss.

Your idea is always my favorite. Make plain on the bill that there is a price for paying in advance, paying on completion, 30 days, 30-60, 60+, etc. Let them know EXACTLY what they can expect, get their signature, and there’s no ambiguity.

Not that this has any bearing on Kenton’s original question. 🙂 But good practice going forward.

tw

Tim Wilson
Creative Cow Magazine!

My Blog: “Is this thing on? Oh it’s on!”

Don’t forget to rate your favorite posts!

[Tim Wilson]

[Mark Suszko] “it’s the most stable situation with the greatest creative freedom and level of personal control you can expect to have, outside of funding your own studio from a massive lottery win.”

The massive lottery win is the key, especially if you have enough money that you never have to work again. You don’t have to look too far around the Cow to find lots of well-funded studios that simply don’t have clients walking in the door. All the experience, expertise, awards, freedom, and self-determination that comes from owning your shop mean NOTHING if there’s nobody coming in the door.

Unless of course you have enough money that you don’t need to work.

There are obviously plenty of reasons to strike out on your own, and lots of people here have. But you can also strike out, period. Solid is a good thing.

[Mark Suszko] “You want more “glamour” or something? “Glamour” jobs in broadcast and advertising mean more money (sometimes) but also high turnover, lots of travel, no job security, high stress.”

Glamour jobs don’t necessarily mean more money anymore — especially as companies are increasingly taking formerly glamorous work in-house!!! Leaving an in-house gig is going exactly the OPPOSITE way the industry is going.

Swimming upstream can be fun, but there’s a reason that salmon die when they finish the trip up the river. No job is all gravy — that’s why they call it WORK — but you might be able to have a longer, happier, more productive and creative life with a steady job in corporate/non-profit/in-house work, and work fewer hours, with actual benefits and paid vacation.

You’re young now, but you have no idea how much these things are worth. That’s not to say that this isn’t a good time to be bold and start something for yourself — but it’s virtually certain that when you get older, you’re going to look for a job that’s exactly like the one you have now.

As ever, yr kindly if sometimes cranky Uncle Timmy.

Tim Wilson
Creative Cow Magazine!

My Blog: “Is this thing on? Oh it’s on!”

Don’t forget to rate your favorite posts!

[Tim Wilson]

[Scott Carnegie] “Critique, commentary, review and satire are all legit aspects of Fair Use.”

Yes, agreed, hence my delight that this was a post about ACTUAL fair use.

(It’s worth noting, though, that while satire is covered, parody is typically not.)

If you search the term through the site, though, the number of people with genuine concern for doing the right thing (even if they ask about something that turns out not to be fair use) is outnumbered by people looking for permission to cut corners.

tw

[Tim Wilson]

Best career advice EVER for 2010: keep your job. Don’t sweat the rest.

[David Roth Weiss] “there are only like two “Hollywood” directors who have control over the production process”

I remember hearing Robert Altman say that he never had final cut. Never.

He wasn’t complaining exactly. He was saying it with a sigh. He came up in the studio system where directors had little control over ANYTHING, but he was obviously still something of a lion heading into the 1970s, and saw what the kids were getting. But he was willing to trade freedom for resources.

So yeah, if you have control, you have more than Robert Altman did.

And you have resources, which is to say, a job with benefits, and somebody paying you to be nominally creative.

If you ask your question another way, it might be, how can I find creative fulfillment within a corporate environment?

To reframe Bob’s advice, what kind of work do you want to do? Then do it. Do it in your current job, where they will pay you to get better at your job.

Here’s the deal. Even if they’re telling you now, Take it easy son, nothing fancy – ignore them. Use your free time (nights, weekends) to make beautiful logo treatments. Easy way to get started, and makes a big impact fast. These guys watch TV. They may even go to movies. They’re not going to object to seeing something beautiful, something “major market,” something “Hollywood.” And even if they do, it still goes on your reel.

When shooting interviews with yawn-inducing bosses, make your lighting better each time. Really WORK at it. Then practice doing it more quickly every time. Then add in some green/blue screen and add in some beautiful backgrounds that you’ve created and animated.

Make your lower thirds GORGEOUS. Maybe “elegant” is the word you prefer. Even if the animations are simple, you can practice keyframing and compositing.

I bet you’re going to start getting traction with this. My experience is that value begets value – they’re soon going to want EVERYTHING to look good, and they’re going to start expecting to see this kind of stuff at your desk when they walk by. Since you’ve been practicing this all along, you’re getting faster, sharper, and can now do everything you want to do ON THE CLOCK.

And you’re putting it all on your reel.

And you’re getting SALARY, and health care, and you’re living where your wife is happy. Good god man, this may be the best gig you ever, ever EVER get.

The best gig ever that you get after this – in-house corporate video with somebody else. Now with a staff.

You feeling me?

I knew a guy who did in-house corporate video for Chrysler. He’s probably long gone now, but here was the set-up.

Five full sound stages, two of them cycs with curved wall/floors.

They were doing HD VERY early on, because it was all in-house. Bob will tell you, some of these companies use closed systems to their advantage in a big way.

They did two newscasts every day, in both Spanish and English (a total of 4) that went to facilities around the world – manufacturing, dealers, partners, etc.

They did scores of demo videos – here’s the new ordering system for the Jeep Cherokee spare parts, here’s how to calibrate this new machine, etc.

They had a bunch of Avid Media Composers, a couple of Autodesk systems (then discreet – flint, flame, smoke), and all the storage you want.

On and on and on.

I wouldn’t be shocked if my boy got his job with a corporate video demo reel.

Now, gigs like that are few and far between, but you can easily wind up with a smaller-scale version of this – 3 or 4 guys under you, doing pieces for the company meeting, fundraising pieces for investors, interviews with bosses who WANT to look like movie stars, etc. etc.

Figure out the kind of work you want to do. Then do it. NOW.

Seriously. You have arrived at nirvana. Embrace it. Cultivate it. Grow your skills to inhabit this land of milk and honey and SALARY and HEALTH BENEFITS, and a 401K, and a HAPPY WIFE.

You may be the luckiest SOB in this forum. Today. If you ACT like you are.

Yr pal,
Timmy

Tim Wilson
Creative Cow Magazine!

My Blog: “Is this thing on? Oh it’s on!”

Don’t forget to rate your favorite posts!

[Tim Wilson]

To be a little more specific, that GOOGer said that Google doesn’t use *keyword* metas to affect rankings. This is indeed a pretty big deal…although if you read the comments to the article, this has been well known – at least among the SEO crowd – for years.

Even for search engines, like Bing, that acknowledge keyword metas, they’re down the list of things to do, after things like !DOCTYPE and title tags. They also acknowledge, however, that keywords aren’t particularly effective for SEO.

On one level, there’s no need to overthink this. Keyword metas don’t hurt anyone, but other tags are more important.

But the big takeaway from all of this is that no search engines pay more attention to tags than they do to the content of the pages. If you want to appear relevant to search engines, BE relevant.

Pirates are always looking for shortcuts. In the years since keywords have been useful, using links to increase relevance has turned into its own brand of monkeyshines. We’re still in the days when SEO pirates are throwing random links all over the place, although the time will come when irrelevant links are as useless as irrelevant tags.

In the meantime, relevant links are VERY relevant. I know you know this Brendan, so if I may turn to the rest of the class to make an observation: a quick Google check for Brendan has the Cow as the top returns, followed by (in order) LinkedIn, Facebook, Whitepages.com, and IMDb.

So maybe THAT’s the real takeaway. If you want to be visible to the world, post in the Cow. No kidding.

More notes:

1) Brendan’s top return is for an article he wrote for us. We’re always looking for writers, and will happily help anyone get started.

2) Forum leader Walter Biscardi’s top return is his company site, Biscardi Creative Media. Hmmm, notice anything about THAT?

Number 2 is his Cow blog. If you have a Cow membership, you have a Cow blog. Go to blogs.creativecow.net, and start writing stuff in it that you want the world to see…because they WILL.

Walter’s next result, btw, is for an article in the library. Seriously, if you want to be seen in this industry, write for the Cow.

Needless to say, both Walter and Brendan also have plenty of links to posts. I’m just saying.

3) Most of the rest of us across the top of the page here in the Business & Marketing forum have relatively common names. But adding the words “video production” vault Nick Griffin ahead of the comedian and US football player, and just behind the very controversial BMP of the same name (speaking in a VIDEO about food PRODUCTION…sigh) to the top of the ranks.

———Note that for many people, their highest Goog ranked page is their Cow profile page. Please take the time to fill this out in a way that will tell people what you want them to know about you.

4) That’s using search, of course, for something you know to search for. My point is that if people are searching for YOU, they will find you HERE, long before they find you at LinkedIn or Facebook.

What about browsing? What if you were to search for, say, “Bellingham, WA 3D Animation.” The top return? Hand Crank Animation. The site they’re listed at? Not their own. Not Production Hub. The Cow. That’s right – services.creativecow.net.

If you try this search for yourself, you’ll note that a general WA directory listing comes up in Production Hub at the top – not shocking, since they’ve been listing services for 10 years. We’ve been doing it for around a year. We’ll pass them soon enough. In the meantime, the top return for a specific company is still at services.creativecow.net.

I hope you’re starting to see the pattern. You can spend a lot of time finessing keywords and metas, or you can get visible in the Cow. Or you can do both. But keywords and metas alone won’t do the trick. The Cow WILL. If you’re serious about being visible to the world, get visible in the Cow.

5) How is this possible? Because Google says that we’re getting just under 1.9 million unique visitors a month. That’s pretty relevant.

6) So what about Bing? Well, putting in Brendan Coots returns IMDb first (bastards!), followed by his Cow Profile page (told ya), his listing of Tagged posts (the posts marked most helpful by other folks visiting the Cow), and his articles page in the library – that’s 3 separate listings – before we get to Facebook, LinkedIn, and then another Cow article.

Walter at Bing: 1) His profile page (I’m telling ya, fill out your profile pages!), 2) Another Walter Biscardi (wtf?), 3) OUR Walter’s Cow library listing, 4) Walter’s Cow blog, 5) BiscardiCreativeMedia.com, 6) IMDb.

So, while not identical, the pattern holds: visibility@Cow = visibility@world.

7) Last but not least, here was the front page of Bing when I went to make these searches just now:

That’s right. Cows. I’m not making this up.

See you at the top of the rankings, kids.

Yr pal,
Timmy

Tim Wilson
Creative Cow Magazine!

My Blog: “Is this thing on? Oh it’s on!”

Don’t forget to rate your favorite posts!