Best Business Practices for Photographers [34]
The follow-up questions become how do we discern this information, and why would we want to in the first place?
To start, grab a notebook—one you can carry around easily. Begin by jotting down everything you do for the next two weeks. Fifteen-minute segments work. Note personal items as such. Use categories such as paying bills, billing clients, doing paperwork, having client conversations, doing other paperwork, researching online, eating, traveling (in your car/bus/plane), doing post-production, marketing, networking, and so on. Oh, yeah, include actually making pictures, too.
At the end of the two weeks, I think you'll be surprised by the numbers. You will learn that the day-to-day small stuff gets in the way of all that. Don't take my word for it—try it on your own and see for yourself.
Learn how to outsource the distracting tasks you're doing. Just as we outsourced color printing and slide processing back in the day, and we continue to outsource having our dress clothes dry-cleaned, so, too, is there value in outsourcing things that are not directly related to growing your business or making photos.
Begin by contemplating outsourcing your scanning of analog-to-digital files, if you still have any. Consider bringing in someone to do your post-production work and take calls when you're out of the office—even if that office is a small portion of your home.
You've got a pretty good list of the distractions from your two-week research. Begin by determining what you could outsource immediately and what you could outsource if you invested time in training someone to do it the way you do.
The Conundrum of Doing Nothing
A few years back, I was on assignment photographing Arlo Guthrie. That week, it was among the assignments I was most looking forward to, hopeful that he'd sing "Alice's Restaurant." Alas, he did not, but he did posit a thought to the corollary:
The problem with doing nothing is that you never know when you're finished.
During the time we were together, Arlo and I had a chance to talk, and one of the things he said was:
The art of doing nothin' is probably one of the most profitable things you can do, because it sets you up to be doing something.
This then begs the question, "What should you be doing?"
Well, the right thing, of course. But what exactly is the right thing?
Well, in the abstract, when you justify taking an assignment for fees that are too low or that has an excessive rights grab by saying, "Well, it's better than doing nothing," that should be a sign to you that Arlo's thinking should be kicking in.
If your justification for taking an assignment worth $1,000 and doing it for $200 because the client has said, "Two-hundred dollars, non-negotiable, take it or leave it," and you said to yourself, "Two-hundred dollars is better than making nothing tomorrow," then you might need to be thinking like Arlo.
If your justification for taking an assignment and being paid $400 but having to transfer copyright is because "Four-hundred dollars for images that have little resale value anyway is better than not making the $400," then you might need to be thinking like Arlo.
Arlo was talking profitability by "doing nothing." At first blush, it seems contradictory. Yet upon further reflection, it's not. Instead, free yourself up on that day to seek out a better paying client base, and one that does not demand an excessive rights package. These clients are the ones who respect you and your work, and thus your constitutionally guaranteed right to control the rights to your work.
A few days following that assignment, I had a most unpleasant conversation with a client for an assignment the next day, who, after his subordinate signed my contract with a rights-managed rights package, called to say, "I just want to make sure we own all the rights to these photos." I had to explain that this wasn't