“Embrace the creative aspects of business.”
Photographer Tamara Lackey
Philip Bloom has a post called How do I get into this filming lark and make money from it? It’s a good read in light of the proliferation of high quality, relatively low-budget cameras and editing systems available today. Mixed together with online tutorials and outlets like Vimeo and You Tube, it’s safe to say that at no point in the history of mankind have there been more people making films (using the term loosely here), writing screenplays, and taking photographs.
And in this multi-tasking hybrid world, photographers are now become cinematographers (or motion photographers, as they often call themselves), and now mothers with cameras (MOCs) are stealing work from traditional studio photographers (the derogatory term I just learned is momographers). And as people get better at their skill set and improve their craft they begin to wonder how they can make money with their creativity. Eventually they seek ways of turning a job here and a job there on the side into a way of making it their full time career. And that’s where most creative people hit the wall.
Yesterday, I heard photographer Tamara Lackey on creativeLIVE give the single best overview I’ve ever heard on the business aspects for creative people in her seminar Taking Care of Business with Tamera Lackey, (If you happen to be reading this on September 10, 2011 you can catch part 2 free at creativeLIVE. Or you can purchase the video of the entire two-day seminar at the same link.) Lackey points out that there are three core roles needed in running your own creative business:
1) Artist
2) Visionary
3) Manager
Creative people have the artist thing down. They’ve spent years learning their craft. Invested in equipment and have won some awards and/or started to land work. Sometimes they even have a handle on the vision side of things. But where creative people really hit the wall is in managing their business. Many don’t even like the term business. Because business has to do with cash-flow (boo-hiss, hiss), invoicing, pricing, sales, marketing, booking clients, scheduling shoots, meetings with clients, paperwork.
Tamara spent a day unpacking all of that and offering solutions, so I won’t do it justice in this short post, but in a nutshell here was my takeaway:
Focus on what you like to do and are good at, and outsource the rest. A phrase I heard many years ago was “Swing with your strengths.” What that means if you’re not good at handling the books (you don’t even want to look at QuickBooks), there’s someone out there who loves accounting. And they might even be open to doing a trade out with your skills. Or a friend who will be glad to help you out for $15 an hour a few hours a week. If you aren’t gifted at sales, find someone who is. Find someone who will work a few hours a week for a straight 10% commission. Be creative in finding solutions to making your business work better.
And yesterday Tamara did a brief Skype interview with photographer Matthew Jordon Smith who offered this advice:
“You’re always making work happen. If you sit back and wait for work to come to you, you will starve.”
It’s simply not enough to have good equipment and the right software. It’s not enough for your work to be recognized. Whether you’re a writer, a photographer, an editor, a graphic designer, or a filmmaker you have to actively find ways to make work happen—even if that’s finding creative ways to build a team to help you achieve your goals.