Tim Wilson
3
COW Coins
Forum Replies Created
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[Kai Cheong] “Funny you’d mention badminton”
I used to snicker at badminton – especially at my friend in college who used to compete on the university team. On one hand, he looked kind of badass walking across campus in his whites with a couple of rackets under his arm. On the other hand, DUDE, it’s BADMINTON!
Guy was totally unselfconscious. Wasn’t the least bit defensive. It didn’t even occur to him. As far as he was concerned, he was an elite athlete, and that was that. Not the tiniest bit of arrogance.
Then I saw him play. Goodness, he was a demon! Very truly one of the most athletic guys I’ve ever seen.
Except maybe for the classmate who was an alternate for the Olympic handball team. Handball? Dude, SERIOUSLY? And then I saw him play. Sweetest guy you’d ever want to meet. A beatific smile, genuinely hilarious, humbly spiritual. He became a missionary. Yet, forever after seeing him play, I was a little afraid of the guy.
And it turns out that, aside from squats, jumping rope is the most demanding exercise I’ve ever done. So there you go.
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[Adrian Smith] “They are very keen on cooking shows apparently.”
And petunias.
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[Christopher Wright] “There really is no right or wrong in this equation”
Actually, I think you gave EXACTLY the right equation. I started this thread with a sly wink to the hostility to project pricing I’ve seen in this forum.
My specific variation on your observation, Christopher, is to move clients out of hourly pricing as quickly as I can.
I NEED to have an accurate sense of my incremental cost/profit ratio, then add in expenses to cover myself that I’ve learned that clients don’t want to be bothered with. For example, the government jobs I bid on were typically in the six figures, and were 100% project-based, period. I found the same in the six-figure range of corporate video. The budget is the budget. Deal with it however you have to, but don’t talk to me about your HOURS.
Not that I didn’t have plenty of hourly customers. Your mileage will vary, but to my way-too-much mileage mind, the only right formula includes both…and offers more opportunities for bigger money with project pricing.
Think bigger than the clock.
Tim Wilson
Creative Cow Magazine!My Blog: “Is this thing on? Oh it’s on!”
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[Ron Lindeboom] “then how will our clients eventually see us? Especially when they look us up and we are not to be found”
Clients are not to be trusted. How can they be, when they don’t do exactly what you tell them to do? You can only raise them right, and hope they grow up to make their own decisions wisely.
So start by building the kind of marketing that you want your clients to deploy. To use one obvious example that ties directly to social media, are you really going to advise your clients not to have a website? Are you going to advise them to make sure it stays out of date?
No? Then make sure you have a website good enough to serve as an example to them, at least in form and timeliness. Here’s how to use text, here’s how to use pictures, here’s how to use video. Here’s how to update it. The specifics will vary widely, but best practices are best practices for a reason.
re: social media in particular, learn enough about it to have something wise to offer. Not just your own experiences. Learn why and how specific forms of social media can play a role in marketing, maybe even sales.
We have observed in many other threads in this forum that there was a time not that long ago when the web was solely the domain of UFOs, Elvis, kitties and vacation photos — often some combination of all of them.
Ron was actively and aggressively derided for stepping onto that ridiculously shaky platform that NOBODY would EVER use for professional communication. Seriously. It rained down like brimstone. That has obviously changed as the web has become “use it or LOSE” for most businesses…
….and many people have never forgiven Ron for being right.
This pattern will absolutely repeat for the tools that extend networks in new directions…because networking ain’t going away. Virtually nobody needs to use EVERY outreach platform, yet virtually nobody can afford to dismiss social media out of hand.
Which is a typically long-winded way of asking in return, how much outreach to other people can you afford NOT to make? People are using social media because they WANT to make connections. That includes your current and future clients. Will you be there to meet them?
The idea is not to find reasons for rejecting new outreach platforms, but to find ways to exploit them to your benefit.
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Podcasting is still in its toddler stage — mostly walking, but not quite toilet-trained.
The thing is, people are only now figuring out that you can’t just throw up a podcast and expect to make money from it — any more than you can put up a web page and start making money.
I mean, if you earned $1 more than you spent this year, you made more profit than Google has from YouTube. Not that Goog WON’T profit from YouTube….I’m just saying.
(In fact, one source of money: YouTube is working on licensing movies for rent, something they’d started before the Goog.)
So, to your original question about podcasting being dead, I don’t think so. I think that as the hubbub dies down, people are learning yet again that nothing is easy or obvious. New platforms call for new business models….or become part of the business model that all platforms are useful only to the extent that they drive more people to the stuff you’ve been doing all along.
Tim Wilson
Creative Cow Magazine!My Blog: “Is this thing on? Oh it’s on!”
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[Mark Suszko] “That turned me up in some COW threads, and he decided I looked like the guy he needed for his project.”
That was my point in referring to Walter: your posts at The Cow become not just part of your resume — they become part of your references. People can see whether you know what you’re talking about.
They’ll see for themselves whether you can DO what you’re talking about. The Cow just helps with the talk.
I’ll let him elaborate when he gets a chance, but Walter has said elsewhere in the Cow that folks working on Good Eats at the Food Network saw his posts in the Cow, and got him to work for them. He also had one of his clients refer Walter to someone else, telling the guy to check out Walter’s posts for himself.
My general feeling about social media is that it’s only as fluffy as you make it. “Social” is just people. “Media” is just media. Do you work with people? Using media? Then maybe some aspects of social media can work for you.
But if you’re working in media in this field, then READING the Cow provides one kind of help. POSTING in the Cow can provide another.
Now, Cow self-promotion aside, I’m interested in hearing more about what folks are doing, and what’s working.
One example I heard from the fine folks at Molecule in New York. (Their current gigs include VFX for “Rescue Me.”) They use Twitter to push subscribers to their blog, where they post really (and I mean REALLY) compelling write-ups of their own work. The idea is to remind customers that Molecule is there, and that they do great work.
The way I heard of Molecule? via their reel in the Cow — which, even though it was posted only 14 days ago, is rated just below their company’s own website at the GOOG when you search for “molecule VFX.” Check out their reel, which is of course connected to their Cow Services page.
Not that we’re not happy to help, and their use of them is still evolving, but they’re figuring out how to combine Twitter and their blog into hardcore marketing tools that are bringing them business.
Anyone else?
Tim Wilson
Creative Cow Magazine!My Blog: “Is this thing on? Oh it’s on!”
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No matter how much you decide you need, and which ones to take advantage of, please consider this:
1) Upload your videos to the Cow. Your reel, shorts, spots, trailers, etc. They look better than the other services. You can go bigger. More secure, you can embed them in your own site, blah, blah, blah. But seriously. Upload your videos to the Cow.
2) Tie your reel and other clips to your listing at services.creativecow.net.
Why? Video hosting and service listings are free. You can extend them and integrate them in a variety of ways, anchored around your profile page.
Google yourself. The #1 result is your Cow profile page. There’s no need to make potential clients follow a link if the information they’re already looking for — your reel, services, resume, etc. — are already here.
Your profile can also link to your LinkedIn account, Facebook page, your blogs, your Twitter feed, etc. — all in one place, along with all the other stuff I mentioned, in the place that most people are likely to find you.
3) Heck, they can even read your posts. Perhaps, Walter, you can tell the rest of the class how effective posting at the Cow can be for building your business. 🙂
PS. It’s not shocking that the #1 Google return for you is the Cow, Milton, since you’ve been here long enough to make nearly 500 posts. We’ve seen it happen for other people within a small handful of posts. Silly not to take advantage of it.
Tim Wilson
Creative Cow Magazine!My Blog: “Is this thing on? Oh it’s on!”
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[Richard Kuenneke] “I know all the cable shows fuzz out faces and license plates – but to me that’s done to avoid a frivolous hassle from someone with a lawyer who is looking for a quick buck”
Take a look at the Best Practices guide linked above. There are ways that you can use crowd shots, background art, license plates, etc. — and ways that you absolutely can NOT.
Copyrights, personal stuff – that’s bad. Maybe very bad. Trademark violation? Fall afoul of somebody big, and they’ll own you. The courts can hold you responsible for the value of the trademark to the trademark holder TIMES THREE.
That sounds dire, but as mentioned above, it’s the same reason that every trade practitioner takes out insurance, and why many venues require it of you — any mistake is going to fall down on YOUR head. Your client pays their lawyers good money to make sure of it.
Pro or not, small-time or big-time, as soon as your work steps out into public, the size of the error is all that matters. So the question to ask yourself isn’t, “Is a few dollars a day more than I feel like paying for insurance?” The question is, “How much can I afford to lose?”
I guarantee that your first loss will be bigger than what you’ve spent on insurance.
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[Tom Adams] “sorry, but I have to disagree with A LOT of the article. I think email is MUCH more important than you give it credit for.”
You have to take a look at the thread in context. It follows an entire thread on how important email is, and precedes a thread on the best ways to leave telephone messages. We’re all about telling the whole story here.
And if we can have a little fun along the way, all the better.
tw
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[walter biscardi] “[Tim Wilson] “I couldn’t disagree more. Lawyers and agents are just like you and me – paid to work for clients…”
Yep, have to agree here”
Upon further review, I wouldn’t be surprised if David’s note about the evils of lawyers and agents isn’t a little Hollywood humor, in which case mine was an even more hair-triggered response than usual.
In the context of business and working in the field of political spots, I want to also underscore Nick’s point: candidates have always come to me with money in the bank, ready to pay on the spot. They NEED to spend that money.
Even the ones who have their pitches already in hand, handlers with strong opinions, etc. have typically been very open to my suggestions for “looking better” — much more so than commercial clients. So as a producer, I found them very, very easy to work with.
It can be especially rewarding to work for people that you strongly believe in…but to my point about the wheel of karma, I had to be honest with myself about all this:
1) The hospitals I worked COULD have killed a lot of people in short order, let them die from negigence, crippled them with bad drug interactions, and a host of other real-world, right-now mistakes that could never be corrected.
2) The resorts I worked with surely served underage drinkers now and again. They were probably mostly fine with letting impaired drivers get back in their care.
3)Restaurants I worked with almost surely passed along virulent pathogens, just because they paid too little for their fish or didn’t make sure their staff washed their hands before they washed the lettuce.
See what I’m saying? I could easily have checked this stuff – but I didn’t. Those businesses had ethical responsibilities that they did not have lived up to – but I didn’t feel it was MY ethical responsibility to check them out.
Maybe I was taking the easy way out, but seriously, I didn’t have time to apply this level of scrutiny to ever potential job. It just wasn’t worth it to me.
So for clients of every stripe, I set up a general sniff test. Since my first sniff test involves whether they’re going to pay me, and candidates ALWAYS did, 100% up front, I was able to move through a lot of the other sniff tests with candidates in pretty short order — with no more or less effort than I put into every other kind of client.
THAT’s my point. Set whatever standards you want, but my recommendation, like Todd’s, is not to overthink this.
FWIW, the only kind of work that I categorically turned down was weddings, and it had nothing to do with my feelings about marriage. It turns out that some of them folks would have been just GREAT for repeat business. 🙂
Tim Wilson
Creative Cow Magazine!My Blog: “Is this thing on? Oh it’s on!”