Nothing Beats Human Interaction

When I started my career in the creative industry I sometimes wondered where did people go to meet like-minded creatives. I would spend tons of hours online trying to get a hold of people that I could offer my services to or to collaborate with or simply people to exchange ideas with, but I soon realized that even though the internet does an amazing job at connecting people, the real connections are still made in person. It wasn't until I discovered networking events that I started to build a real network. Nothing beats human interaction.

Last night I attended the Creative Industry Hub's networking event "Strictly Go Networking For Fashion Professionals", suggested to me by shoe designer Aksha Fernandez. I have to say that I was impressed as I hadn't attended a networking event like this in more than a year, with so many people from within the fashion industry and with interesting talks from established fashion professionals.

Last night's speakers were Lorelei Marfil from WWD and Kathleen Mitchell from Stella&Dot. Lorelei Marfil is the General Assignment Editor for Women’s Wear Daily and she spoke about the importance for fashion journalists to do responsible journalism by checking facts and contacting sources rather than reposting what is found in other media outlets. Kathleen Mitchell, leads the international business for Stella & Dot and she spoke about how their brand helps to solve the modern creative’s dilemma: achieving success and balance through a career you love.

Both talks were really inspiring but the best part of the event was the actual networking. I met so many interesting people who were really keen on making connections and on this day and age when everything is virtual and online it was really refreshing to find people who were enjoying a face to face in person chat.

Photo credit: Photo of stylist Maria Bello (center) and I having a chat with a designer during the event taken by midnightpulse.co.uk

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"Today Everything Exists To End In A Photograph"

The title of this post is a quote from the 70's from Susan Sontag's collection of essays entitled On Photography. "Today everything exists to end in a photograph", she wrote. And 40 years later, this is truer than ever. But sadly, we live in a world so saturated with imagery that it seems like we don't stop to pay attention to photos anymore. We are numbed by images and sometimes we just take them for granted. Has photography lost its power as a visual language?

Last weekend I went to the Vogue Festival 2016 and had the opportunity to attend Vogue America's Creative Director Jamie Perlman's talk on fashion photography today. During the talk she addressed the sameness that we see in fashion photography nowadays where everyone seems to get inspired by each other (or copy each other) resulting on imagery that has lost its edge and its appeal.

According to her, and this is something that I strongly agree with, the challenge in fashion photography today is breaking away from the feeling of perfection and cleanliness that has dominated the medium these last few years and going back to more raw and natural looking images. She praised photographers who have gone back to film because of it's distinctive and less polished aesthetics.

It feels like today more than ever we as creatives working in the fashion industry should focus on developing our own style rather than trying to copy someone else's just because they are getting all the work and we are not. There is a clear shift in the industry and only those who produce work that stands out from the rest will stay in business.

Photo credit: Matt Dowling from The Freelancer Club (left) and I having a chat during one of the club's masterclasses.

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Sometimes A Rose Is Not A Rose

In her poem Sacred Emily, Gertrude Stein wrote: "Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose," implying that things are what they are. But sometimes a rose it's not just a rose. This is especially true in photography, where a photograph of a rose and the actual rose are two very distinct things. Not only because one is bound to perish and the other one is immortal, but because only one of them is shown to us through the eyes of another person.

When we look at the world around us our brain is interpreting everything that we see based on what we know and our own experiences from the past. But, when we look at a photograph we are looking only at what the person who took the photograph wants us to see. It doesn't matter if the person who takes the photo is a selfies snapper or an established artist, the reality of the subject is distorted by the message that is being conveyed. Quoting photographer Gary Winogrand: "photography is not about the thing photographed. It's about how that thing looks photographed."

Appreciating photography is like receiving an invitation to experience the world walking in someone else's shoes. The photographer is basically telling you: "here, take my eyes and see through them and understand why I chose this subject in this light at this location to visually explain this story." And to me that creates a deep connection between the photographer and whomever is looking at their photos.

So the next time that you are looking at a photo, try to ask yourself: "what am I really looking at? what am I being told?". You might end up discovering what is hiding beyond the rose.

Photo of people looking at my photos exhibited at the AOP Awards 2015 ceremony taken by Shaun Bayliss.

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The Real F-Word

We have all been there. It's the night before a job and you are about to go to bed after spending the whole day making the final arrangements for the next day. All of the sudden, you feel a ticklish sensation on your throat. You try to ignore it, but as the minutes pass it is getting worse. You start to get the shivers and snug yourself into a sweater even though it's 30ºC. "Maybe it's just a draught", but there are no windows open. Before you know it, you are tugged under the blankets and your head is about to explode. You have got the flu.

So, what do you do? You rush to the medicine cabinet and knock yourself out with whatever you can find. "I can sleep through this and tomorrow I will be better." But now it's 5am in the morning and you haven't been able to sleep from the fever when you finally realize that no matter what you do there is no possible way that you can get up to work at 8am. "I'll have to call-in sick... Wait! No, I can't! I'm a freelancer!" So now you have three hours to gather all the energy left in your body to find someone to replace you on the job and to call the client and the rest of the team and explain the situation hoping that the worst that happens is that you loose money but at least you get to keep the client.

When you start freelancing nobody warns you about it. Apparently, our work environment and our laws don't take into consideration that freelancers are humans and as such we are allowed to get sick, or have accidents or have something happen to us that forbids us to get the job done. So we have to take matters into our own hands and prepare ourselves for when the worst happens:

• Get protection. Have an emergency fund and a disability coverage from the beginning of your freelancing career.
• Build contacts. Have a network of people that you trust who can take over your clients in moments like this. Offer to do the same for them.
• Stay safe. Don't put your health at risk by trying to do the job even if you are ill. It's better to loose a job than to loose your whole career. As a freelancer, you are your most important asset. Besides, if you have something contagious, it would be extremely irresponsible of you to go to a job spreading germs around.
• Be transparent in your communications. If you will not be able to do the job at all, say so from the beginning. Managing your client's expectations in moments like this is crucial.
• Do what your mom says. Or the doctor... or your spouse... stay in bed, take your medicines and let yourself be taken care of. No matter how badly you want to recover there is nothing you can do to make the healing process faster.

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Assumption Is The Mother Of All Mistakes

The Cambridge English Dictionary defines the word 'assumption' as something that you accept as true without question or proof. Which basically means that when we assume something we are lying to ourselves. And sometimes assuming can be helpful, like when we research our target or when we handle statistics: it is impossible to have the 100% of the facts. But other times, specially when we are dealing with people, assumptions can lead to terrible mistakes.

This is particularly true with clients. A couple of weeks ago I was a bit dissappointed because I have been trying to work with a potential client for a while to no avail. And to be perfectly honest, I am not getting any feedback at all. So I decided to stop reaching out because I assumed that if they hadn't answered any of my emails it was because they didn't want to work with me. And then I read this post on the Marketing Mentor blog and I realized that my assumption was making me self-boycott my business.

You see, my assumption made me believe that I had the power to get into other people's mind and know what they were thinking. I was convinced that the only reason why this potential client was not replying to my contact attempts was because they didn't want to work with me. I am not good enough, my work is crap, nobody knows who I am, I don't have enough following on social media... All the ghosts in my head materialized and made me formulate my assumption. And it's not that these might not be valid reasons, but my insecurities blinded me from seeing all the other reasons why they were not getting back to me: wrong timing, too much workload, forgetfulness...

My friend whom I go jogging with every morning also pointed out that they haven't said yes but they haven't said no either. So she adviced me to keep on trying. And the truth is that some people need some insisting before they make up their mind about something. So I will keep on trying until they tell me 'no'... because until that happens, there is always the possibility for a 'yes'.

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What I Do When Nothing Happens

Anyone who has ever done freelancing knows that there are times of the year when you are swamped with work and there are other times when it feels like the world has stopped turning. If you have planned for these down times properly, you might have some money saved on the side to cover you through the slow season. But for me, even if I am financially covered, having too much spare time can be my worst nightmare. Am I the only one?

You can call me workaholic, but I like to consider myself a productivity addict. I am one of those persons who is always calculating the least amount of time possible for any given task and how many tasks can be done at the same time to maximise productivity. So you can imagine that when I have spare time in my hands I quickly fill it up with things to do so that I don't waste a single valuable minute of my diary. But, don't get me wrong. I do enjoy off time: I reserve at least one day a week to relax and spend with my family and friends and I like to plan a few trips every year to go abroad and see some world. The thing is, you mustn't confuse the slow season with taking time off for yourself: the former is unpredictable and unwanted; the latter must be planned for and it is pretty much needed.

Anyways, if you are not like me and you take advantage of those slow times to sleep until late or to stay on the couch doing some Netflix and chill, this post is not for you. The rest of you may keep on reading. When you are going through a slow season the first thing that comes to your mind is if there is something that you should be doing to avoid this down time. But more often than not there is nothing that you can do to avoid these low work periods of time. They just happen and it is part of the freelancer's life. Below you will find a few of the things that I do to avoid feeling useless during the slow season:

• Get inspired: go out and visit a museum or a gallery, or a crafts market, or a crowded plaza or go for a walk in the park and get in touch with nature. Whatever helps you break away from what you are used to doing and gets your creative juices flowing.
• Take on a personal project: I am firm believer that working on personal projects and experimenting with new themes and techniques helps you fall even more in love with your craft. Take this time to collaborate with other creatives and to update your portfolio.
• Learn something new: acquiring a new skill on something that is completely unrelated to what you do is a good way of resetting the brain.
• Take care of personal matters: if like me your spouse holds the full-time job these slow seasons are perfect for tending to all those pending personal matters on your to-do list.

No freelancer likes to go through periods of time with no paid jobs, but if they come they don't necessarily have to become wasted time. Take the opportunity to invest this time on yourself and your future you will appreciate it.

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The "Why Not?" Way Of Life

When I propose someone to do something and I hear them say "yeah, why not?" it always makes me wonder if the other person really wants to do it or if it's just me forcing an idea into them. I perceive that reply as a lack of passion; the other is just letting themselves go with the flow. Sometimes, it could be out of complete politeness: they don't want to disappoint me. But other times, it's just because they don't have anything better to do. Either way, the message I'm getting is "I will do this with you but I won't put my 100% into it."

It happens to all of us that we sometimes do things "just because." But when it comes to our careers, if there is no passion there is no sustainability. Your business is doomed if you or your team are not passionate about what you do. Because when money is good that might be good enough reason to keep on going but when money starts flowing slower you need a stronger reason to keep the business alive.

Maria Mann, the director for international relations for the European Pressphoto Agency, said in an interview that we have turned into a "Why Not?" society, instead of "Why?". It sometimes feels like we are doing things just because, without a reason, without a purpose. Maybe because everyone else is doing them or maybe because it just came easy to us. But from all the things that I have achieved in my life, the ones that I value the most are the ones that I worked hard for, the ones that I had a reason and a purpose to pursue. And that feeling, my dear reader, is one of the best feelings in the world.

So maybe this is a good time to stop what you are doing for a few seconds and ask yourself "Why?" and see where the answer takes you. Oh, and the next time that you find yourself about to reply "yeah, why not?" think again and consider if what you really want to say is "no." Life is too short to do things without passion.

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This Is An Ethical Post... Or Is It?

A brand's ethos is one of its best selling points. Clients who relate to it will more than likely stick to a brand even when other brands offer a better option or price. But this is particularly tricky for freelancers as our brands are ourselves. I like to think of myself as an open and accepting human being. I value diversity, treat others sometimes better than I wish I were treated and I firmly believe that love conquers all. I do have my flaws, obviously. The self-declared ones could fill pages and pages of posts; the ones attributed to me might include that I don't like children nor pets or that I don't drink enough water. But flaws apart, I still feel that I always try to be a good person with a strong ethos and a strict set of values. But am I?

The doubt was planted in my head a few days ago when I faced a conundrum: can I accept a teaching that comes from a person who's a homophobe, a racist, a mysoginist and extremely right minded? My first impulse was to answer: "Yes! Knowledge is above all that!". But then, after a second consideration, I realised that I wouldn't accept as valid anything said by someone like Trump, Putin or Mugabe. "How interesting and contradictory of me...", I thought. Am I open and accepting until the point where the other person starts thinking completely different to me? Of course, if they were praising their own hatred agenda I would reject everything they said automatically. But what if they were proposing a cure for cancer? Would I say no to the chance of saving millions of lives just because it was praised by any of them?

This thought triggered another question in my head: how strong are my ethical values? Can I have any sort of relationship with someone with a set of values completely opposite to mine? At a sentimental level, unlikely; at a friendship leveI, I try to surround myself with diverse-minded people; at a professional level, I always say that I don't have to like someone to be able to work with them. And, as a client, I am guilty of sometimes using products or services from companies that don't share my ethos but then at the same time I have been known for not giving my business to companies who go against what I strongly believe in. Even worse, as a supplier, I am open and accepting of anyone's money. So, after putting all these thoughts in writing I realised that I might not be as open, as accepting or as good of a person all the time as I think I am.

Can bad brands do good things? Can good brands do bad things? Yes and yes. I think we draw the line on things that we are willing to accept or reject depending on the situation. Companies that produce soft drinks sell products for athletes that promote a healthy lifestyle but at the same time they sell sugary drinks that do anything but keeping you healthy.  And the list could go on... Will these brands go out of business? Not in the near future.

There is not such thing as a good or a bad ethos. There can be good and bad PR, but there will always be clients who will relate to your values and clients who will completely disagree with them. We can't please everyone. What is important is that you and your brand stay true to what you believe in... but be open to the possibility of believing something else in the future and then staying true to that.

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You Are Not You

You are not just you. You are the sum of every place where you have been, everyone that you have met and every single experience that you have had. And because of this you are unique. No one can see life the way that you do. No one can create the work that you do. And even if someone else tries to copy you or you try to copy someone else, in the end your true self will always come out. No one can be like you.

It is often said in the creative arts that you must find your signature style. You are supposed to figure out what makes you different from the rest because that is what will make you recognisable, that is what will sell. But figuring out a style is probably the longest and hardest of all the journeys of the artist and in some cases, if you work long enough, you will have many styles throughout your life.

I believe that you don't find your style, your style finds you. You don't develop a style by working on your art for one day, one month or one year. You develop a style after years of devoting yourself to your craft. And when you finally do, I bet that you will be the last one to notice. You will feel like you are just being yourself. Miles Davis allegedly said on this regard: "sometimes you have to play a long time to be able to play like yourself."

So don't force yourself to have a certain style or to try to figure out if you already have one because that will put your creative process at risk. Instead, embrace the fact that life has brought you right here, to this moment and to this place where you are working on your art and just be yourself. No one else can.

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I Want To Make 10,000 Mistakes

We all fear mistakes. I blame our parents for putting so much effort into forcing us to make the right choices all the time. "To err is human", and we as humans have come a long way by learning from our own mistakes. So, if by erring we are improving ourselves, is it smart to keep avoiding making mistakes like the plague?

Back in the 90's I used to have a boss who will always praise me because she said that while everyone else in the company took ages to make decisions I would just have things done. And it's not that I am impulsive (ok, maybe just a bit) but when faced with a decision I always consider the worst-case scenario and if it's not that bad then I just jump and do what I have to do. She would tell me that she didn't care if I made mistakes or not, for her it was far more important to have decisive people in her team who weren't afraid to err.

In 'A Farewell To Arms', Ernest Hemingway wrote: "The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places", meaning that we are stronger in the places where we have been broken. Only by making mistakes are we able to learn and grow. It doesn't matter how many business books you read, how many marketing blogs you follow or how many tutorials you watch online. You won't learn from them until you start practicing what you have been taught and start making mistakes.

Thomas Edison allegedly said: “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” How many ways that won't work have you found so far?

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Let Yourself Be Surprised Again

Being a freelancer is not easy, specially if you left the security of a steady job in order to become self-employed. When you work for others, everything is done for you: you just need to show up and do what is expected of you and you will get compensated for it. But when you are a freelancer, you are the boss, you are the employee, you are the sales team and you are even Janice in Accounting (hello John Oliver!). It takes a very special type of person to be able to run a succesful freelance business, because on top of all that you also need to be committed, be good at your craft and be self-motivated.

There is a lot of perks in being a freelancer, don't get me wrong, like the feeling of freedom that you have by having control over your life and your business decisions. Quoting Isaac Mizrahi: “Even when it sucks, it's worth it”. But I feel like you have to work twice as much because you are wearing so many hats and you are basically on your own. Besides, you usually don't have the support system that you have in an office job to keep you motivated. So even when things are going great, when clients keep on coming and when money keeps flowing in, you still need a strong will to not fall victim to monotony.

The Merriam-Webster defines monotony as "a lack of change that makes something boring", but I have an uncle who has his personal definition and I feel like I like his better: "monotony is the loss of the capacity to be surprised". Because when you go to bed at night after an uneventful day that seems to be repeating itself like the groundhog day for you-don't-remember-how-long, you start to question yourself about the reasons you had when you decided to become a freelancer.

Back in the day when you quit your day job to go full-time freelancer you visualized yourself shooting covers for magazines all the time, doing hair for celebrities, applying makeup on runway shows or styling and designing for the crème-de-la-crème of the fashion world. But a few years later you realize that all that is fun and games but it doesn't pay much and you need to keep your business running. So now you see yourself shooting products against a white background 300 times each day, doing hair for your personal clients in your living room, applying makeup in a counter at your local department store or becoming a personal shopper or designing clothing for someone else's brand.

And there is no shame on any of the above, we all have bills to pay. These sort of jobs are our bread and butter and at least you are still able to do the craft that you love. Sadly, there are so many freelancers, specially in the creative fields, that can't take this for too long and decide to quit and to go back to working for somebody else. So before you give up and take an extreme decision, there are many things that you can do to put your freelance career back on track:

• Decide who you want to work with. The awesome thing about being a freelancer is that you can decide who you want to have as a client and who you don't. Figure out who your ideal client is, make a list of some companies that fit that profile and target them on your marketing strategy. By targetting your ideal clients sooner than later you will start doing the types of jobs that you want.
• Don't give up on your bread and butter clients. We still need those jobs as a steady income source, but don't allow them to take more than 20% of your active clients list. That way you can still work with your ideal clients 80% of the time.
• Get involved in interesting projects, even if they pay little or don't pay at all. The creative side of your brain will thank you for it and you will get to do stuff that will push your skills forward.
• Do personal projects to keep the creative juices flowing. Do a photodocumentary on the eldest people of your community, do hair tutorials on youtube, apply makeup in hospitals to cheer up patients, write a blog on styling, teach people how to make new clothes from old ones if they can't afford to buy more...

These are only a few ideas of things that you can do to get your motivation back and to fall in love with your job again. Having a freelance career is like being in a relationship: if the other party stops being appealing to you, the relationship wont last much longer.

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One Today Is Worth Two Tomorrows

More than 250 years ago, Benjamin Franklin wrote in his book The Way To Wealth: “One today is worth two tomorrows”, and whether you praise his accomplishments or despise his ethically dubious behavior, you can't deny that the phrase is one of the best advices ever given. And even if the words aren't his and he just happened to put them on print does not make them any less valuable, because today is a sure thing but tomorrow might not happen. Stop what you are doing right now and take a few seconds to think about how long your to-do list is getting... how many pending matters can you attend to today?

It's no secret that I follow Ilise Benum's advices down to the last comma. She taught me, among other things, to divide my to-do's in doable tasks and to go at them a little each day by setting up reminders in my calendar to avoid forgetting about them. If you open my calendar you can see that I have events that repeat every week reminding me of the the things that I have to do. For instance, I have setup an alert that reminds me every morning to keep the receipts when I make business purchases, and another one that reminds me every Tuesday that on Wednesday I have to write on my blog. And as improbable as it may sound that I would forget to write on my blog, there are weeks that my diary is so full that if I don't have that reminder it might just happen.

But this technique not only works on simple tasks but also on more complex matters, like my self-promotion. Ilise also taught me how to divide my marketing strategy in daily actions and to setup reminders in my calendar to force me to do them: Mondays are for researching new clients, Tuesdays for approaching them, Thursdays for follow up, and so on.

It doesn't matter what system you use to remind yourself of doing the things that you must, the important thing is to actually do them. So why don't you setup a reminder on your calendar for every pending item on your to-do list this week and see how many things you can accomplish. You might be pleasently surprised.

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It's Not You, It's Them

You will often find people who will try to discourage you from following your dream profession: "there is too many photographers!", "there is too many makeup artists!", "there is too many designers!", "there is so much competition, you will never make it!". You find them in your family, in your circle of friends, in your current job and even in your profession-to-be. But when I hear things like these I always wonder: has there ever been a time when any of these were true?

Back in the 90's when I was in the university (I will save you some time trying to figure out my age, I'm 40) I studied Systems Engineering and everyone would tell me "why are you studying that?? There is too many computer people out there, you will never find a job, nowadays even a 9-year-old can do your job!". But during the 20 years that I worked in IT I never struggled to find a job and there was always a place for me in that industry. And then I changed professions, I became a photographer, and when I started out in 2012 I found out that people would tell me the exact same things. Which made me realize that no matter which profession I chose or which decade I was living in, people will always say these things.

You see, in the early 1900's, when cameras started to be widely available to any enthusiast, the professional photographers of those days believed that now that anyone could take photos the industry was going to be doomed. There were going to be too many photographers. But nothing really bad happened and a hundred years later, when we look back at those days, we think of them as the glorious past of our profession.

So, why then, do we still find people who think this way? The answer is fear. On the one hand, you will find people who care for you and fear that you will fail and they will do anything to try to avoid that. On the other hand, you will find people who only care about themselves and fear that you will make it and they will do anything to discourage you from becoming their competitors. Either way, the fear is theirs, not yours, so don't let it affect you.

If you have a dream and you have a plan to make that dream come true, don't listen to anyone else. Just go for it. There has always been too many of every profession, but too few who actually are brave enough to follow their dreams.

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If I Walk Slow Is Because I'm Going Far

We all want to see immediate results for our actions, but like I've said before: freelancing in the creative industry is more of a marathon than a sprint. Your business is like a living creature in the sense that it needs to learn and grow before it can survive on its own. It takes a lot of persevearance and hard work to make it through those first years, and once it's up and running, it takes a lot of persevearance and hard work to keep it alive. But even with all the patience and the sweat things can go wrong, which brings me to the question: why do freelance businesses fail?

According to the RSA Group, the UK’s largest commercial insurer, the UK has become a nation of micropreneurs, and the statistics seem to support this. The Department For Business Innovation & Skills show in their 2015 report that 99.3% of the private sector businesses were small businesses and 62% were sole proprietors. At first sight, these figures suggest that the UK is a great place to be a freelancer. And it's true, it is. But still, according to the Office for National Statistics, about 50% of the new small businesses don't make it to the 5-year mark. These doesn't necessarily mean failure, some of them might have voluntarily closed even if they were being successful, but for the purpose of this post I'm more concerned about the ones that actually failed.

So, what are the main barriers for small businesses to survive in the UK? Well, according to the RSA Group research, these are the most mentioned ones:

• The UK tax system
• Lack of bank lending
• Too much red tape
• The cost of running a business
• Late payments or cashflow

Which seems to prove that while we are striving to make our business grow by focusing on the quality of our product/service, its pricing, the market and the competition, we are not paying enough attention to other factors that can also bring our business down.

A successful business is not the one that sells more and grows faster, but the one that is sustainable in time. Maybe it's good to slow down from time to time and check how healthy our business really is before continuing with the race. See you at the finish line.

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Don’t Create A Reputation And Go To Bed

Whomever thought that running a successful business was only about offering a quality product or service has probably already gone out of business. If you want “what you offer” to reach “who will pay for it”, you must create some sort of channel of communication between the two of you. Because if you want the world to know that you are in business, you must go out there and tell the world.

In Spanish there is a saying that goes ”Create a Reputation And Go To Bed” (Crea Fama Y Acuéstate A Dormir), which is the equivalent of saying ”Give Dog A Bad Name” or ”Make Your Own Bed And Lay On It.” What all these sayings basically mean is that once you have a reputation there is nothing else that you can do. You are stuck with it. For good or for bad. But I don’t believe this to be true. You see, if you have a very bad reputation (and I don’t mean being a badass, but really sucking at what you do) you can always correct what you do wrong and tell the world that you have improved. It will take some time, but eventually someone will trust you again and with hard work you can clean your reputation. And on the other hand, if you have a very good reputation (you are the best at what you do) and you just rely on word of mouth, eventually someone who tells the world that they do it better than you will make everyone forget about you and your reputation. So, in the end, if you have a reputation (good or bad) you must work hard to improve it or keep it. Either way, you have to market yourself and definitely not “Rest On Your Laurels” ( I can’t help it! I just love the wisdom of popular sayings).

The question is, as creatives, what sort of things can we do to market ourselves? The answer is: tons! Here are just a few examples:

• Photographers, Graphic Designers, Illustrators: create an online portfolio, collaborate with as many creatives as possible, create an online presence through relevant social media channels, write a blog, create a newsletter and send it to prospect clients, contact creative agencies and reps, make print promos and send them to prospects that you can’t seem to reach online, print business cards and go to networking events, send your work to magazines and contests to gain exposure…
• Makeup Artists, Hair Stylists, Fashion Stylists: test with as many photographers as you can, create an online portfolio, create an online presence through relevant social media channels, write a blog where you promote yourself as an expert in your field (putting looks together, making tutorials, reviewing products), contact creative agencies and reps and if they are not taking more creatives at the moment offer yourself as an assistant to the ones they have, print business cards and go to networking events…
• Fashion Designers: create an online store, create an online presence through relevant social media channels with links to your online store, create contents on your online channels that engage your specific audience (the story of your brand, how you make your pieces, how to style your clothes), collaborate with as many creatives as possible, have a network of stylists that can push your work to publications that target your customer, collaborate with relevant bloggers, wear your designs everywhere, create contests targeted at your audience and gather their emails so you can send them monthly updates via newsletter, dress influencers with your clothes, if you want to do wholesale, pack a bag with your samples and go knocking on the doors of the stores that you would like to have as customers…

These are only a few of the things that you can do to promote your business. Don’t do just one, pick several and mix and match until you find the combination that best targets your audience. Some of them cost less, some of them cost more, none of them are for free (remember that even if you don’t have to pay in currency, your time is money and self-promotion requires heaps of it). But if you want to make some, you have to spend/work some… Happy Marketing!

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Where Do You Go From Here?

Have you ever looked in the mirror and asked yourself: What am I doing? Where am I going? Who do I want to be? I spent 20 years of my life stuck in the wrong industry and not because anyone was forcing me, but because I didn’t know how to make the switch. I believe that most of the times the solutions to our problems are so hard to find because we just don’t know where to look. And when we start looking, we feel like we have been left stranded in the middle of the desert without knowing which way to go. But more often than not, the correct way is not taking the right nor the left but going inwards. If you want to change your world, you have to start with yourself.

Who am I? Who do I want to be? In Pedro Almodovar’s movie “All About My Mother”, the character of Agrado has a line where she says: “…you are more authentic the more you resemble what you’ve dreamed of being.” After a long time of asking myself these questions, I realised that I knew who I was: an IT guy; I just needed to figure out who I wanted to be: a Photographer. Once I was able to answer that second question, I felt like the hardest part was over. Now I just needed a plan to make it happen.

Venturing into the world of Photography, all of the sudden my whole future became uncertain. Back when I was working as an IT guy, I had a steady job with a steady income and a good progression in my professional career. I wasn’t a 100% sure of what the future might hold but I had a sense of security in my life. When I became a freelancer, that sense of security vanished in the blink of an eye. So I had to make a commitment to myself and I wrote down the basis for my new adventure:

• If I was going to do this, I was going to do it 100%, full-on mode. This was not going to be an expensive hobby, but a proper business with a proper structure (accounts in order, sales oriented, marketing minded).
• I was not going to give up easily. Like any other business, I knew that income and profit would take some time to come so I needed to have enough funds to survive and also I needed to manage my own expectations. How long was I going to do this for before deciding that it might not have been a good idea? I gave myself 5 years.
• I needed a plan, a business plan that is.

Before becoming a photographer, I had never been a freelancer in my life. I had always been employed by someone else so I had zero idea of what running a business was like. And I was not only going to start my own business, I was going to do it in a completely different industry that I had no clue about and in a culture alien to mine: I had just moved to another country. So in order to make this change more digestible for myself, I sat down and wrote a roadmap of how I was going to approach this. Or what I call: “The Plan.”

This is how it looked like:

• Year 1 - Creation of the business: during my first year I was going to do mainly research. I was venturing into a new industry in a new country so I needed to find out how things worked. Also, I knew absolutely no one in this new industry so I had to network like crazy. These two things were going to go hand in hand because I knew that the more people who worked in the industry I met the more I would understand how everything worked. And where would I find those people? By googling “networking events” and going to at least 1 each month, by going to job search websites and finding photographers who were looking for assistants and learning from them and eventually by doing my own shoots and sourcing creatives who wanted to do stuff with me. Once I started figuring out how things worked, I would be able to start defining the services that I was going to offer (my portfolio), who was I going to offer them to (my target), what was I going to expect in return (my rates) and how was I going to reach those people (my marketing strategy). 
• Year 2- Opening of the business: on my second year I was going to officially open the doors to the public. I was going to roll-out the marketing strategy that I had created (strong focus on social media), and I was going to self-promote in various channels to start getting paid clients. Also, I knew that I couldn’t stop networking so this time I would go for both industry contacts and prospect clients. 
• Year 3 - Focus on clients: by the third year I would focus on turning previous clients into returning clients without forgetting about getting new ones. 
• Year 4 - Focus on scale: now that I had been working with clients for a couple of years, it would be time to focus on getting bigger projects and bigger clients. 
• Year 5 - Consolidate: if the second year would be the one when I would start seeing income, the firth year I should start seeing profit and focusing on the 20:80 rule to run a healthy business (20% of your clients should give you 80% of your income). And by the end of the fifth year I would focus on opening my own studio.

As you can see, it was a very simple business plan but it gave me the guidance and the focus that I needed in order to answer the question: where do I go from here? If you are struggling because you don’t know how to answer that question, the internet should become your new best friend. There are plenty of resources online, these are only a few to give you a head start:

• The Freelancer Club: Matt Dowling and Nina Malone created The Freelancer Club based on their own journey to help creative talent achieve their goals.
• Marketing Mentor: Ilise Benun is a Marketing Mentor. She has been successfully self-employed for 25+ years and has guided thousands of creative professionals toward growth. She changed my life.
• Crunch: they take the stress out of accounting and bookkeeping for freelancers, contractors, startups or just about any small business.

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Impossible Until It’s Possible

A goal is impossible until it is achieved. And in order to achieve it, we must take the first step towards it. But even if this sounds so simple, most of the times we don’t take that first step because of fear. Fear that we won’t be able to accomplish what we set ourselves for; fear of not knowing what to do next if we manage to achieve our goal. We tend to describe successful people as fearless, but I’m more than sure that they have the same fears that we have. They just know how to deal with them better. So, how do we turn fear from a paralysing feeling into a driving force?

I believe it is all a matter of perspective. On the one hand, we have the fear of failing, the fear of working so hard on something and wasting all that precious time. But if we think like this, we are looking at failure the wrong way. Failing can teach us valuable lessons and allow us to learn what not to repeat in the future. If we go through life without failing we are definitely not pushing ourselves that much.

On the other hand, we have the fear of succeeding, the fear of discovering our own potential and not knowing what to do next. And I would say that there is more people afraid of this than we might think. What happens if I get all those clients? What happens if I get that promotion? What happens if I can’t handle all that workload? I’ll tell you what will happen: you will figure it out. The same way that you have been able to figure it out to get where you are right now. Don’t underestimate yourself and above all, don’t be your own biggest obstacle.

Right now, if given the two options: A. Make things possible, B. Leave them Impossible, I will always choose A. Because while trying to make my goals possible I will either learn or succeed, and to me that sounds like a Win/Win.

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Wisdom Comes From Unlikely Places

We tend to only learn about the things that we like or that we work on, we usually engage in activities in our spare time that we already know will amuse us and we hardly ever surround ourselves with people from other industries that we don’t care for or that we just don’t understand. We have limited our lives and jobs to what our work involves because, to be honest, it consumes the majority of our time. But as creatives, aren’t we putting boundaries to our vision by just allowing ourselves to experience what is related to our craft?

I am guilty as charged.  More often than not, I find myself reading about photography, following fashion publications or attending industry events. And that is all good as it helps me grow as a professional, but I also want to grow as a person and as a creative. I should read about other industries and see how they do business and apply their best practices to my own. I should learn something that doesn’t involve photography nor fashion so that I can acquire a different skill. And I definitely should get out of my comfort zone and go out and do activities that have nothing to do with what I do even if it’s just for fun.

I should and I will, because every new experience is a learning opportunity and one never knows when the answer to any of our struggles lies outside of our current scope.

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Professionalism Is Undefinable… But Priceless!

Darth Vader would find some people’s lack of professionalism disturbing. And I do too. But sometimes I wonder if it is just me judging others by my own standards. If I give my 100% on any project that I get involved in, paid or unpaid, why is it that sometimes others give me their 50%? Is it out of unprofessionalism or is it that what I consider their 50% is actually their 100%? Could it be that there is not a proper definition of what being professional is? Or like Groucho Marx, could it be that people have different standards depending on who they work with?

In my quest for understanding what professionalism is, I decided to look for a definition of the term and to my surprise it is all very subjective:

• The Merriam-Webster: “The skill, good judgment, and polite behavior that is expected from a person who is trained to do a job well.”
• Oxford Dictionary: “The competence or skill expected of a professional.”
• Cambridge Dictionary: “The combination of all the qualities that are connected with trained and skilled people.”

And if we dig a little bit deeper, it does not get any better. The three dictionaries define a professional as:

• The Merriam-Webster: “Relating to a job that requires special education, training, or skill.”
• Oxford Dictionary: “Worthy of or appropriate to a professional person; competent, skilful, or assured.”
• Cambridge Dictionary: “having the qualities that you connect with trained and skilled people, such as effectiveness, skill, organisation, and seriousness of manner”

If the dictionaries cannot give me a unified definition of the concept, how can I expect other persons with different backgrounds than mine to have the same professional standards that I have? Can I rely on common sense when we all know that such thing does not actually exist? Some organisations opt to write their own Codes of Professionalism for their members to know what is expected of them. And in some industries, people who work in a profession have a common code to abide by as well. But for the rest of us, specially those who work freelance and worldwide, such types of code do not exist.

Thus, out of a lack for a standard definition of what being professional means, I decided to write my own based on what I expect from myself. For me, being professional means:

• Being committed: if you say that you are going to do something, you do it, and you do it all the way through the end.
• Being punctual: if you say that you are coming at 8, come at 8. Not at 8:15 or 8:30, but 8.
• Being reliable: if you do a job well one time, you should do it the same way all the time.
• Being responsible: you should always be accountable for your actions.
• Being respectful: value others and their time.
• Being honest: telling the truth can get you second chances. Being caught in a lie will harm your reputation.

These are the minimum traits that I feel a professional person must have. For me, having professionalism has nothing to do with being friendly, or hard-working, or even the most skilled at what you do. Not everyone likes an outgoing personality and not always being the best in your industry guarantees that you will land the jobs. But I believe that having at least these traits will make you have a good reputation in your field.

Feel free to share your own definition of professionalism below.

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The Future Is Now

Cliché alert: Today is the first day of the rest of your life. And before the daily phrases police comes to arrest me, I have to admit that there is a lot of truth behind this phrase.  If you want something in your life to change in the future, you need to change something in your life today. Because nothing will ever happen if you don’t make an effort. So, what have you done today to make that change happen?

It is a very overwhelming feeling when you want to achieve something and you just don’t know where to start. And it’s even worse when you don’t know exactly what is it that you want to achieve. But dwelling on this thought and constantly banging your head against the wall in frustration won’t get you anywhere. I have been there. I went to school, I was taught to graduate, get a career and work in it for the rest of my life. But the rest of our lives today is very different from the rest of our parents or grandparents lives. They either didn’t have the choices that we have or had shorter careers due to lower life expectancies. And then reality struck and I found myself dreading my career and my life choices. Luckily, I didn’t let my frustration paralyse me, at least not for too long, and decided to turn my life around. It was a slow process, with little actions here and there, but after 5 years I was able to switch industries and start a career in something that I am passionate about. And I can’t be happier. And all it took was taking the first step.

Whatever you want to achieve, it doesn’t matter how big or small the challenge is, you have to do something about it right now, as soon as you finish reading this post. Do you want more or different clients? Change your marketing strategy. Do you want to have different skills? Go back to school or google tutorials and learn them. Do you want to change your life around? Research people who have done it in your industry or in a different one and get inspired by them. You can start here.

But don’t let fear stop you from doing what you want to do. The worst that can happen is that you fail and the best lessons are learnt from failing. Like Dolly Parton once said: “‘If you want the rainbow, you have to put up with the rain.”

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