Getting It All Together
I think of my career more like a jazz musician rather
than a rock star. I’m in it for the long haul and will adapt.
—Pete McArthur
Let’s review. Up to this point you have acknowledged that a problem exists and a challenge must be met in order for you to live a more fulfilling life (Recognition). You have examined what you have going for yourself in terms of your skills, education, personal experience, and interests (Assessment). And you have received some very practical insights on how others have successfully made the leap of faith in transforming themselves and their careers (Planning). Now it is time for you to finally get in the assembly-and-action mode and do some work; now it is time to move into the Implementation phase of Transition Analysis.
As I pointed out back in chapter 1, “The fourth phase is the physically hardest because it is the sweat-equity phase . . .” This is where your sense of commitment becomes real as you devote yourself to the hard work of making your plan a reality. This is also where the most important factor of implementation, perseverance, kicks in. Your first task is to use the lessons you have derived from your first three stages of transition and organize them into your strategic plan. This chapter has three components that will help you to 1) identify what you need to create your new business; 2) define your work; and 3) provide a method to help you stay focused on your goals.
Probably the most effective tool for defining your business is the business plan, which will provide you with tangible milestones to mark your progress.
The business plan for a creative venture is not all that much different than one for any other business, except for the fact that your product is generally a unique expression of your creativity sold or licensed in limited quantity, and not usually mass-produced. Your business is a service-oriented occupation, where your service is measured by the fee you charge for your unique interpretation of the world. In order to convince banks and other bureaucracies that you have the elements in place to make a viable company out of your concepts, you will need to provide proof that you have a career itinerary plotted out and a plan to execute it.
Career Itinerary: Your Goals and Perceptions
Let’s take the information you have collected from the previous chapters and use it to formulate your plan. One more thing: when creating your business plan for your new creative enterprise, do not rely on software or downloadable templates. They are too restrictive and don’t have the latitude to tell your story. Just follow the points I provide, and you will have a comprehensive outline to explain where you have been, and where you want to go with your concept. This plan will not only help the “suits” understand your purpose, but it will help you stay the course and achieve the goals you have set for yourself.
Your Professional Point of View
A good business plan states up front, in clear, concise language, what the Professional Point of View is for the proposed business. As we pointed out earlier, this is the chance you have to state your Vision (why you want to do this important work) and Mission (how you intend to execute your Vision). The clearer you are the better. I have seen Vision and Mission statements that are so wide ranging no one could take them seriously. The more quixotic your statements are, the less chance you have of anyone taking you seriously. It is better to be focused and specific (and then later grow more generalized) than it is to present yourself as a generalist and not get anyone’s attention.
Begin by keeping your Vision and Mission statements to one sentence each if at all possible. That way others will be able to clearly see and remember your goals. After the introduction, you can go into more detail, with each paragraph building on the last, so they can see you have given the idea a great deal of thought—this not just some whimsical idea you dreamt up. This should not be a problem for you, since this concept is something you live for and you can’t wait to tell everyone about it. All great entrepreneurs have a sense of mission and evangelistic spirit about their products. You can describe the influences that caused you to create your new direction (keep it positive), your creative strengths, and the unique perspective you bring to the marketplace. Remember the Vision Statement contains your loftiest goals, while the Mission Statement describes your means to achieve them.
Your Market
Even the best idea is doomed to failure if there is no market to embrace it. I am sure you can think of some examples of products or artwork that never made it because the time was not right. You have to demonstrate that you have researched your market and you know its ins and outs. And the more targeted the market the better. You will have a better chance of catching on if you satisfy a core constituency. Those people then convince their friends to buy into your work.
When describing the size of your market don’t make pie-in-the-sky predictions that bend logic. Be realistic about the size of the market and the percentage you plan to capture, and how this knowledge will lead to meaningful market penetration and achievable milestones; otherwise you are setting yourself up for unnecessary frustration, stress, and possible failure. Once you have captured the imagination of the market, you can predict growth and expand your base. Keep in mind that your goal is to build a new career that won’t fall into the old familiar format of flash-in-the pan success followed by repetition and predictable, eventual extinction.
Do your homework and price your work respectably: neither too high, making your work unapproachable, nor too low, undermining the caliber of your work and the pricing benchmarks for others in the profession. If it is priced too low, then people won’t trust it. If it is priced to high, then people won’t even consider it. Do your homework and ask people you trust in the profession what a reasonable price is; then factor in whatever values you add to the product.
How do you intend to promote your services? Have a clear idea as to the most effective way of marketing and selling your work. Once you have clearly identified your target audience, do the research necessary to know what media they respond to, what outlets they pay attention to, and strive to get the most for your marketing dollar. Put yourself and your work where it can get noticed and appreciated. Build an awareness around it that matches the needs of your audience. The concept of branding comes into play here: you build a culture around your work that becomes a part of the lifestyle of your customers and eventually creates a lifelong following.
Your Competition
You should have a keen understanding of who your closest competitors are. How do you do that? When you are asked to bid a job, ask your prospective clients whom you are bidding against. They just may tell you. Many of your clients are required to triple bid estimates so they can have a range of options to choose from (and they can prove to their boss that they were diligently doing their jobs). If you find you are continually bidding against the same people, you will have a better idea of how your clients see you, and where they see you in the marketplace. As you research your competitors, you can determine what advantages you hold over them. Are you more knowledgeable, more experienced, more accessible, more flexible? Having a nicer studio and a better craft services table available are pluses, but there better be something more substantive that your client can use when talking to his or her boss to tilt the decision in your favor.
Knowing your competition is not just a matter of compiling a list of names you commonly are asked to bid against. You have to find out how they advertise and how to make your advertising more effective. You will have to track the performance of your advertising and self-promotion, so you will have to build this into your business plan and explain the costs involved.
Your Location
The location of your business may be an important factor, but this has become increasingly less relevant as the world becomes smaller due to air travel and the Internet. Still, being reachable, so you can quickly respond to your client’s needs, is a reality we all have to deal with. If your business is not convenient for your clients, you may have to go the extra distance to make yourself available to them.
When putting together your business plan, make sure you mention the other businesses in your area that provide support for your prospective business. The more support services available, the less time you will have to spend running around getting the right equipment, supplies, and facilities. And make sure to include that you have taken into consideration any zoning laws and permits that apply to your business. These kinds of details will strengthen your plan and demonstrate that you are a serious businessperson who has thought through all the elements necessary to work efficiently.
Your Management and Your Team
Another thing you will be required to address in your business plan is the structure of your company. Are you planning on being a sole proprietor, a corporation, or a partnership? You will have to define your role, the responsibilities of your coworkers, and, if you have a partner, what his involvement will be. (See chapter 10 for some thoughts on partnerships). Remember, the tone you set for the working atmosphere can make your new business into a great place to go to work or a daily ordeal. The side benefit of creating a new venture is that you can reinvent your management style along with your creative style, if your old style does not suit your purposes. In defining the roles of your new team, you can empower yourself and those around you by allowing everyone the chance to be creative and be a part of the new successes you are about to realize together. You can devise a new, leaner operation in a new environment that reflects what you want to get done and how you want to do it. Remember that your new physical space needs to express your new approach, so make it professional, comfortable, and conducive to the work you need to do.
Your Finances
Obviously you will have to put a price tag to all of this. One of the great advantages of executing a business plan is that you can determine a cost for each component you need to address; then you can total them up and have a comprehensive view of what it will cost to start and maintain your business. I like to look at it this way: all complexities are nothing more than confused simplicities. If you separate all the little confusing aspects, get a good understanding of them, get a price for them individually, and then reassemble them, you will have a realistic idea of what kind of money you are talking about. That way the whole process does not seem as complex, and you can see where you can pare down one element and shore up another to arrive at an understandable bottom line.
The first question of course is how much money will you need to get your new career started? We saw in chapter 9 that you will have to figure out your fixed and variable costs. Will you need to remodel your physical space, get new equipment, and hire personnel to accommodate your new business venture? How much will it cost for marketing, maintenance, insurances, permits, additional commitments, and to plan in savings for emergencies, retirement, and reinvestment? How do you plan to raise these funds? What collateral do you have? Do you plan on going into partnership with anyone and how will they be paid? How much money will you expect to make during the first six months, the first year, the first five years?
The key here is not to allow yourself to get frustrated before you even get started. These are real questions that have to be asked—and answering them honestly can give you motivation. The first check you need is a reality check. If that is in place, then everything else will fall into place.
Keep in mind that a business plan is intended to be a road map to success. You may take a few excursions off the main highway, but if you keep focused on your destination you can always find your way back to the main road. It is important in any business, especially a creative venture, to be flexible and available to new opportunities. But a well-formulated business plan will help you keep your eyes on the prize and the means to achieve it. Not all successful ventures begin with business plans; it is just that your chances of success increase with a clear vision of where you intend on going. As the great contemporary philosopher Yogi Berra said, “If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll end up somewhere else.”
One of the observations I made during my interviews was how the photographers perceived themselves and their work, and how that perception formed the basis for their Vision and Mission statements. Some were very clear and definitive, while others were open to letting the work define itself. In general, we don’t like labels because labels are too confining. Then again, we need labels to some degree because they help to give an identity to our body of work, and our work becomes more easily recognizable and readily accepted. Each artist has to find his own way. Let me give you some examples.
Ken Merfeld took a philosophical approach that transcended the usual categories in favor of an overall view: “My work is a fortunate blend of what I love to do. I love interesting people and beautiful light and the unexpected. And I am fortunate to have projects that combine all of those qualities. I work commercially but I also do a lot of work that is not commercially driven. I’ve always been enamored with light and lighting, and I personally have an affinity for the unexpected. I like to challenge myself to push the boundaries a little bit. I shoot other than abnormal things, other than normal people a lot and that just keeps the other side of me kind of going.”
Ken Merfeld: Superman, 1981
Ken Merfeld: Marla, 2003, Wet-Plate Collodion process
as an Ambrotype then digitally scanned
Pete Turner did not limit himself to photographic terms. When I asked him how he defined himself and his work now, Pete came right out with: “I’m a colorist. That’s what I do. People ask me that all the time. I think in terms of color. But again, I like people to know that I still like black and white, my roots were from black and white. Many of my friends do just black and white. But I’m a colorist, that’s what I see. I guess it was those postage stamps.”
Even if you don’t like labels, the world has a way of putting them on you for its own convenience. This is how Jay Maisel responded when asked how he defines himself and his work: “Well, I try not to. I mean, I was up at Santa Fe giving a lecture and they had me down as a commercial photographer. And I took a pen and I crossed off the word ‘commercial’ and left photographer. I mean there would be a guy who would say I’m an annual report photographer, or a fashion photographer, or a street photographer—I’m a photographer. I mean, I’m a generalist. I don’t do beauty, I don’t do fashion, I don’t do underwater, I don’t do food; I don’t do this, that—but if it can be photographed I’m going to photograph it.”
When I asked Bob Krist the same question he gave another twist to the topic of being a “generalist,” when he said: “I’m kind of a jack of all trades. I do a little writing. I do a fair amount of shooting. The theater training is coming back into play. In the last six years I’ve hosted two series on photography on television. I host a lot of ‘How-To’ videos for Nikon. You know, what ever it takes. The label ‘Travel Photographer’ has stuck on me most often in the last ten years or so, but I spent the entire 1980s doing corporate photography. I’ve had a lot of labels stuck on me all through my career. I’m pretty good at everything, but I’m not too good at any one thing. I can do a little portrait, I can do a little landscape, I can do a little this, a little that, but I don’t specialize outside of the fact that it’s travel I specialize in.”
When you look at Pete McArthur’s work you are struck with words such as strong, meticulous, cerebral, funny, contextual, and brilliant. But when I asked him he defined himself now as: “An experienced, mid-career professional who had a good run in the 1990s and who is in the midst of adjusting to the changes taking place in the photography markets of the last three to four years. I sometimes find myself wondering if maybe my best years are now behind me, yet not knowing what else to do this well, I think of my career more like a jazz musician rather than a rock star. I’m in it for the long haul and will adapt. Another part of what I do and have come to enjoy just about as much and sometimes even more, is teaching. I’d really like to keep doing this as long as I can, since it gets me working with young people, and I think it important to pass along what I’ve learned to the next generation of photographers.”
Sometimes we have to invent a new category if the available ones are too restrictive. This was the case when I asked Ryszard Horowitz about his career and how he managed to create and maintain his own classification for so many years. I asked. “So how long did it take you to become recognized?”
Ryszard chuckled and said: “It’s amusing to me because I see things being done right now that I did thirty years ago. And I don’t mean be a smart ass, but I feel it is really evoking. You asked a very interesting question that has to do with that, you ask, ‘How do you define yourself?’ I never had any difficulties with defining myself. I made a conscious decision early on not to follow a style, not to follow trends, not to do what is expected of me, and not to emulate people who are called ‘hot’ at a particular time. Because after a while when you live forty, fifty, sixty years, you realize that people come and go, and people who are famous at a particular moment disappear and nobody knows of them a couple of years later. It’s really very unfair and painful but that’s the way it is. So unless you create images that are lasting and can transcend fashion, it’s pretty much, I wouldn’t say meaningless, but it is not lasting. I am really proud to say that frequently I stick into my portfolio photographs that I did several years ago and people don’t realize how old they were. And that’s good, you know. And again, not that I consciously figure it out how to go about it, it’s just that it relates to the nature of my way of looking at things, and thinking and approaching things.”
Pete McArthur: Mona
Douglas Kirkland took a quality-of-life approach to answering the question. His answer embodies the spirit of why all of us have chosen a career in photography. “To begin with, at the top of the list, I am ‘lucky.’ I’ve worked hard but I’ve done it through love and enjoyment. I don’t ever want to stop. People say to me, ‘Are you going to retire at seventy years of age?’ I say, ‘Hell no. I’m not going to retire. What would I do if I retired?’ I take pictures. I do that now and they pay me to do it. There is no question that I love photography. I am sure you are the same. I find it difficult to take a vacation if there is not something to do. I am just wound up with pleasure and enjoyment.”
“The Action Board” as Described by Dr. David Viscott
Now that you have an outline for a business plan, and now that you have had an opportunity to see how veterans perceive themselves and their work, let’s take a look at the topic of achieving goals. I asked Mark Edward Harris if he had planned any of his transitions or if he acted on instinct: “I go a lot by guts. You know people talk a lot about what are you going to do in five years, and this and that sort of thing. I am not particularly great about that, although I do write goals for the next year down. I did hear somewhere, I think it was a study of Harvard graduates, or Cambridge graduates, or graduates of somewhere, that they discovered that the people who write goals down are more likely to attain them. But I tend to do those on a one-year sort of thing. And it’s interesting to look back to see which ones came true and which ones didn’t, you know it’s kind of a neat thing. I do a fairly good percentage. There are two things. One is that I am not writing tough enough goals, or I am a taskmaster enough to make them happen. Do you do that?”
That is an interesting question because I have found that a lot of artists I have talked with like the idea of organizing their work about as much as defining themselves and their work. The myth many artists live by is that they are disorganized, devil-may-care, fly-by-the-seat-of-their-pants creative types. Initially it is easy to buy into this, because you don’t have to give very much consideration to anything other than your art interest, and you don’t have to “waste” your time on any thing else.
But the truth of the matter is that we can all benefit greatly from some simple way of staying focused on the multitude of ideas that fill our heads. I am sure you will agree that one of the greatest challenges we encounter is that there are so many projects to do that we lose the ability to prioritize and lose productivity in the process. What I am about to share with you is one of the best methods of creative organization I have run across—one which allows you to maximize your time and talents. This process will help you immensely in implementing your plans and increase your creative output. This, like so many other suggestions in this book, comes by way of the late Dr. David Viscott, and I pass it along in memory of his willingness to help all people who dedicate their lives to their creativity.
One day while visiting David at his in-home office, I asked him how it was that he was so incredibly productive. By that I meant he had written something like fourteen books, had a successful psychiatric practice in Beverly Hills, had a daily radio talk show, hosted an Emmy Award–winning television talk program, conducted lectures and workshops, and was named Father of the Year, among other things. In his matter-of-fact style he said he used the Action Board. Of course I asked, “What’s that?” hoping that this would help me get my act together.
He pointed to a roughly two-foot by four-foot cork board on the wall of his office and proceeded to tell me that he had done a study of the creative process and had broken it down into six steps. This appealed to me on a number of levels, because it was about creativity, and it had steps, stages, phases, something tangible, and it was something proactive, which, as you know by now, I love.
Then he proceeded to tell me how it worked. Take a large surface (a cork board, a dry-erase board, a poster board, whatever) and divide it into six columns. Next, label the each of the columns as follows: 1) Idea/Project, 2) Research, 3) Organization, 4) Development, 5) Editing, and 6) Promotion. Like the Transition Analysis (the Five Stages of Creative Evolution) that I described in chapter 1, these six stages don’t totally define the creative process, they simply give us milestones during the creative journey so we can mark our progress.
You always have to have a piece of paper in your pocket or purse and be ready to write down any creative thoughts that enter your mind. Creative thoughts include any novel ideas that come out of nowhere, which, if they are not caught, fly off like butterflies, never to be seen again. Once you write down the idea, it gets thumb tacked or taped to the Action Board in the first column, and it transforms from an idea—a concept or abstract thing—into a project, a doable thing worthy of your time and consideration.
If the idea intrigues you, you will find yourself collecting information on that topic and doing research on it. At that point you physically move the paper to the next column titled Research. Little by little you start collecting information about the subject, and you put it into a file, and pretty soon it gets filled up and it requires a box or boxes. You find out what others have thought about it and what others have done, or not done, about it. Your research takes you to areas you never considered before, and your world expands. Just as we examined earlier during our discussion of finding your passion, you now start finding examples of your passion, your interest, all over the place. Your awareness increases and you overhear things, you observe things, you pick up a magazine and there’s an article on your topic—you experience things differently.
Eventually you have all this research accumulating and you have to give it some order. You move your piece of paper over to the Organization column. The act of organizing gives you a clearer picture of the work that has been done before. Organizing also helps you state your approach, your thesis, and infuse it with your own character and unique problem-solving abilities. Organization gives us the gift of seeing the larger picture so we can measure our thoughts against what others have had to say on the topic.
At some point during the Organization stage there evolves a commitment, a contract between you and the subject matter, and you move the paper over to Development column. This is the phase during which you “just do it.” You get your act together, load up the van, and you go on the shoot; or you sit your rear end down and write the words that accompany the photographs that go into your book; or you write the play; or whatever. This is the time when you let it all pour out of you. You don’t stop to edit or refine things, you just let it happen. And as you let it happen over and over again you tap into something larger, something self-perpetuating; something uniquely yours and not yours at all. When you are in your groove, there is something timeless so you don’t stop to let any distractions get in the way of the process. Then, when the product of your labor is over, you take a moment to look at it as objectively as you can. That is when you move that humble piece of paper to the next column, which is Editing. Now you go back and use your refinement skills, you critique it, you trim it and shape it the way you want.
But you are not finished yet. The work is not complete until it is shared. Now you can move the paper to the final column, Promotion. If you put your creation in a box and place it on the shelf, if you shove it into a closet, your work is incomplete. Your creation must be shared so it can affect others and encourage them to express their vision. You could just show it around, or hang it on your walls. Or you could have a gallery showing, or show it at the art fair. Or you could even license it or sell it outright, but whatever you do, you have to share it with others. This concept is consistent with the steps of Transition Analysis, in that the artwork must be validated by showing it to others, which then inspires them to express themselves; and that, in turn, stokes the fires of creativity in still more people, thereby insuring that more evolved work will be executed and become appreciated.
Now, an added aspect of the Action Board is that sometimes we start working on something and it just runs out of energy. For whatever reason, some ideas just can’t sustain themselves over a period of time. It is okay to leave the paper on the board for a while until the idea strikes you again. Or, better yet, it may link up with another idea and together they form a whole new idea. I am the product of a parochial-school education. There were a lot of advantages to that education and I am very grateful for that opportunity. But one thing the nuns taught me was that I had to finish one project before I began a new one. And since it came from the nuns that I had to do each thing one at a time to completion, it was something of a mandate from on high. That’s the way it had to be done, or else. I had a great deal of frustration when one idea didn’t pan out, and I felt I had to wring out every ounce of energy from it whether or not I was inspired by the time I got to that point. The Action Board frees me of that guilt, because it lets me know that I can synthesize ideas; what may have started out as an idea for a play can become a book, or a screenplay, or anything it wants to be. I am happy to say that I have become far more productive since I started using David’s Action Board. It keeps me focused, energized, and challenged.
And here’s something else. I collect those simple pieces of paper that make it to the finish line in a special folder. When I feel as though I have dried up creatively, I just open up that file labeled “Completed Projects,” and I am always surprised that I followed through on so many thoughts that started out as simple scribbling and went on stand on their own.
Whatever method you use—the Action Board, a priorities list, a job calendar, instinct—you quickly realize that nothing gets done on its own. Implementing your idea is the job you were created to do. Recently I asked a photographer who had done an amazing composite image in Photoshop how long it took him to accomplish the finished product. He thought a while and then he said he thought it took him about forty hours. “Forty hours!” I said; to which he said, “But it didn’t seem that long because I was so into my work.” Doesn’t that say it all? When you are in the process, all sense of time fades away, and you take whatever time it needs to be done correctly. Of course you may have client or self-imposed deadlines and restrictions, but you know not to take on jobs where the restrictions are too confining, because you won’t be able to do your best work.
Yes, implementation is the sweat-equity element of the cycle of Transition Analysis, and it needs to be respected, organized, and focused. But you must also spread your wings and express that which is uniquely yours.
