I need some career advice

combatentropy said:
Since when is email expected to have a reply any sooner than 24 hours?
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I personally know 3 people who were terminated for communication inefficiency.

Of course any guidelines vary by the industry, position and market (city), but in some offices it's best to reply to your peers within the hour (if possible) if you'd like to fit into the corporate culture.

Anyone else is usually based on how much they are worth (either financially or personally), but same-day is recommended. Anything more than 24 hours is definitely frowned upon. Obviously we're discussing video production and the above is probably the case for no one here, but just wanted to share.
 
So much good advice here. I think like many here - we've been in a situation like this, or similar enough, at one point or another. Few random thoughts that mostly piggy back on what has already been said:

- Tim Ferris 80/20 rule with clients. This guy is eating up a lot of your time. It's leap of faith to "let someone go" but if you spent every hour you spent with him hustling something new, would it pay off? Probably.

- Don't mentally overstate the value of this guy to yourself. He's just a client. He is replaceable. He is not your "provider", though it seems that way right now.

- This guy needs you as much as you need him. It probably doesn't feel like that since you are desperate for cash, but then, it appears this guy is too because it takes an awful lot of energy to keep calling meetings and low balling you.

- Life is too short to put up with this. Don't get tunnel vision.

- Fear will shrink your life until there is very little left. I know this is a real condition, a close family member has something similar. You can overcome it, that doesn't mean it won't take serious effort, but it doesn't need to be accepted as your permanent reality.


- Not only do you need to stick to your rates, including your half day rates, you need to own them confidently. No shame. The problem is you don't TRULY believe they are fair and necessary yourself, its why you compromise. If you could see the long term projection of this unsustainable billing, you would understand how essential they are. Believe in your worth, and then don't compromise it.

- You should have a minimum edit time. For example, you could say all edits are a minimum of 4 hours (aka a half-day). In fact, better yet, bill edit time by the DAY and not the hour, in increments of .25 days with a minimum edit time of .5 day. I do this and find it helps people to stop nickel and dining and it changes the mental paradigm. Its easier to question 3 hours of work (ie did that really take 3 hours? Did that really take 17 hours?). Reframign things as "2 days edit" sounds more reasonable than 17 hours, anyway.

- You don't need to defend your rates. one of the most freeing things I learned to do was not to compete on price so much. When someone would ask me, "why do you charge so much?" I would just say 'it's one expensive sport, and this is what I found to be sustainable for the quality of work I do." If someone said "this guy will do it for less" I just say "well, why don't you go with him instead?" (and it's usually to the effect of "we like your work more") and I then just say "I see." and remain silent. I know it's hard to do this when you're desperate because I've been there, but its actually one of the only ways forward into a non desperate lifestyle.

- I've had clients who push boundaries texting me at 9pm and getting upset when I don't respond. I'll hear from them with a text and two calls at 8pm at night, then again 7am in the morning freaking out. I text back calmly at 9am sharp, "good morning so and so, I have an opening to talk today at 11am, or anytime after 2pm. What works best for you?" Honestly, some clients are erratic and just need a little training. I tell them I am available between 9am-5pm and usually respond in 24 hours, but sometimes up to 72 hours depending on my schedule. This includes text and emails. I will make exceptions if and when I can. Some clients are safe to make exceptions with, and some clearly are not.

- He doesn't own you. This is not your emergency.

- Yes meetings are billable. You can say 20-30 minute phone calm for a new project acceptance is complementary, after that, it's billable. In office meetings are additional charge with a 2 hour meeting minimum (is it worth your time to drive across town or 30 minutes? NO!).

Long story short:

This guy is not a normal client. He is a problem client. You need to stand your ground. This isn't just about business its about life. it's like the guy in college who gets rung around by the hot girl because she's hot. She treats him like crap, manipulates him, cheats on him, and the guy still comes back. And what it shows the girl is the guy isn't worth anything, but he can fill a role in her life because he will do exactly what she wants anytime she wants.

I've come to learn in business and life that often times it is scary to break out of that cycle for fear of loss, but you will lose much more in the long run.
 
You have got a ton of good advice here. I feel for you. I've been there (well not
the fear of traveling,) but the rest of it. In my case, I lost my job right as my wife
got put on full time bed rest. A kid on the way, no job, and my wife can't work.
No skills other than doing video work. So my business was pretty much born out
of desperation.

Early on, I had my share of 'client's' who were very similar to the one
you describe. Usually some sort of 'middle man'. There was a new Low Power
TV station in my town. They were real low budget, had no production people,
but they had a couple sales people trying to sell TV spots on their new station.
If they ever got anyone to buy, they would generally send them to me.
But then, of course, they might have a hard time selling because they were
trying to sign people up for at least a one year airtime buy.....plus I charged
the end clients my production fees. Small businesses being what they are,
many balked at the price they would have to pay for a one year airtime buy
plus production costs for the spot. So the station of course, wanted me to 'work
for them' but not literally give me a full time job. Just more like.....agree to
only charge $300 per spot. So they could sell more spots. Basically they had
all sorts of 'schemes and deals' just like the guy you are talking about. All
of which benefited them and were not good for me. They of course TALKED
about how good it would be for me, but in reality it was to the station's benefit
and not mine. I learned that middle men have a job. To be get as much money
for themselves from the clients as possible, while leaving you as little as possible.
Because they are the one's 'with the client' they have the power. Which is why
I rarely work with 'middle men' any more. Direct client interaction is what you
want. Anyways that TV station ended up 'deciding to recommend' another company
to do their spots for their clients. Yup, it was scary at the time as it was one of my
only sources of income for my business. Funny aside, I do almost no TV spots anymore.
Most of my clients now, want videos for social media or promo videos for their websites.
The TV station and salespeople are long gone. I'm still here. Businesses are now paying
me more of the money they were previously needing to pay for 'airtime buys' and instead
putting the video on their free social media channels. How things change.

A couple things. First, if you can at all, get help for your condition. Not being able
to travel can severely impact your earnings. I have a couple clients who send me
on jobs.....not real often but maybe once or twice a year. These jobs not only pay well,
but are usually very good for a demo reel/promoting yourself. And then there are the
jobs that come out of the blue. For example, I got a call last month from GMA wanting
me to travel last minute for a 5 day shoot. All travel costs covered and paid about as
much as a 2 week corporate job (because of the last minute part).....that is to say pretty
decent pay. Plus I got half day pay for 'travel days.' Turning those type of jobs down would
be tough. Once people know you, if they trust you, they will often rather pay to send you
somewhere to shoot the video, than pay someone local to the area you are traveling too,
who they don't know. Because once you are 'known and trusted' by them, you have no
risk factor attached, but a 'new' guy, even if he is local and has no travel costs attached, is a
risk. So being able to travel is big if you want to run a video business.

It's a 'long game' and you have to treat it that way. Growth is slow you have to get
people to know you. When you get paying work, charge enough to put some away for
slow times. When you aren't getting paying work, use that time wisely. Promote yourself.
Maybe do a 'pro bono' video for a very popular charity (but of course invoice them with a
discount applied so that they know how much it would usually cost.) If you really need
money and have nothing lined up, go to events in your town. When I needed money and
had no paying work for months on end, I would shoot kids events, Little League games,
sports, dances, plays, or whatever and make DVD's or Blu Rays of them. I started an
online store and would sell these there (being able to buy online with a credit card is
convenient to many people and easy to set up for you.) I have probably made around
$10K doing those kids events and I'm in a small town. To me, one trick is, keeping yourself
doing video projects, even when you are not getting paying work.....but not doing it by
lowering your rates. Either you do a 'freebie' for a charity (I'll do one or two of these a year
max) or you are doing 'self projects' which might only pay a little but since you are doing it
'for yourself' it doesn't hurt your rates. So a 'middle man' ad agency offers me a $500 job.
I tell him I charge $3500 for that. So he turns me down. I go shoot a kids baseball game instead
because I have no work that day. Sell DVD's of it at $25 each and sell 15 or 20. Now I still made
close to that $500 Mr. Ad Agency guy was offering me, but I didn't compromise on my rates.
But to business clients, I don't get a name as 'the $500 guy'. Because, that other thing I did
was just me doing my own projects for my online video store. You can come up with any number
of projects around your town to do and sell on your video store. Even if they don't sell in huge
numbers, you start to be known as the 'video production company' you even have an online store!
And no-one really knows what you are making from those projects so you don't get 'typecast' as
the cheap guy who is 'locked in' to low rates.

I'm not going to lie, it's tough. If it was easy everyone would do it and sometimes it seems
like everyone IS trying to do it......still photogs, housewives with extra time, high school
and college kids, rich kids living in parents basement, etc. Biggest thing is to keep at
it. Do what you have to do for your family. Take another part time job on if you need to.
But it IS possible. I've got a family (4 kids) too so I know the struggle. If you can pull it
off it's amazing though. I've been able to be at so many of my kids sporting events and
life milestones because I run my schedule and am not chained to a 9-5 job.
Good luck, if you were in my area, I'd give you some work to try and help you
out. I know how you feel, it's tough.
 
When you are a freelancer, it's easy to forget that you are also a businessman. you are the same status as the client. They too have clients, and perhaps, you use others who have you as their client.

I try to be ethical. This means that the people I approach to do things are the right people for the job, not idiots. Clearly, I need to maximise my margins, but equally if I want to retain them on the list, I have to pay them appropriately. Sometimes, it's just not possible, so I'm honest. If the normal rate for something is say, £180, but I can only offer £150, I tell them. I am truthful - the client just won't pay the usual rate, so best I can do is £150. If they feel they can't do it for that, I understand. Smile and shake hands and find somebody less good and live with it. Sometimes, I find a local willing to take less, but not have high transport costs, and travel time that wipe out a day and a half in the diary, not just one day.

One thing worries me. You mentioned that you're developing medical conditions related to your work. Mental illness is now a serious and understood phenomena and needs sorting. I wonder if the stress you're under is contributing to this? If so - you MUST take action because it can get better. I had a short period when this happened to me about 14 years ago when trying to juggle full time work with my less hours at my embryo business. Dumping the full time job was the cure. I could cope with business once the abrasiveness of the real bosses was removed. Clients are NOT bosses - you are in control. You can be surprised when clients come back, when they realise they did get a good deal from you and didn't appreciate it.

I have always found it useful to use little hints. You know it's a four day edit. They say it's a one day edit. You simply tell them you're doing a similar job for another client and that's just gone over hours and if they're project goes over their guess for edit time, you may not have the capacity to finish it for a short period as you have other work in the diary. You might be able to shift some of that, but they'd need to commit now - only fair to the other client. Why not build in the cost. it's going to be £x if we can ghet5 the edit done in this time, but the over-run I really think we will need will be £Z. Tell them you n' work on their project for free with your other paying clients. Then if they resist, say sorry you can't help this time, and stick to it. They will come back, or not. If not, you haven't lost much really as they use so much time for no pay!

Health come first.
 
I post on an economics forum/think tank page. A couple of weeks ago, there was an exchange about the long term business relationships and contracts and one fellow, who sounded really smart, said, "Old rule - don't allocate more than 40% of your business to any single client". Yes, for someone starting out, this notion often can't be helped but it is something to keep in mind. There are plenty of historical precedents to make this point valid.
 
Paul F said:
He wants you in the office to manipulate you, which he has done successfully. It will never get better with this guy. He knows how to play you. He will do it every time you visit the office. Stand your ground or walk away.
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Just what I was thinking.
 
DLD said:
I post on an economics forum/think tank page. A couple of weeks ago, there was an exchange about the long term business relationships and contracts and one fellow, who sounded really smart, said, "Old rule - don't allocate more than 40% of your business to any single client". Yes, for someone starting out, this notion often can't be helped but it is something to keep in mind. There are plenty of historical precedents to make this point valid.
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I can attest to this. In the early 2000s, we had one client who was 60% of our business. We were billing them well over a million dollars per year. Our second big client was a local print company who shall remain nameless but had stores worldwide, we worked with their corporate HQ which was local. Great client, flew all over the country producing a quarterly video magazine for them for four years. In one year, the print company HQ pulled up stakes and moved to Texas. They didn't want to retain our services, they hired a much lower cost production company in Texas where they relocated to. Just a few months later, 9/11 happened and for those of you who were in business at that time, the entire country was paralyzed for months. Nobody could or wanted to fly, projcts were put on hold or canceled, the overall economy took a big hit as people were emotionally devastated.

So in a period of one year, our little production company lost 90% of our income, exactly because we didn't hew to this rule. Just as in investing, diversify as much as you can, cultivate as many different clients in different sectors as you can. We almost ran into that again recently, Fox was one of our largest clients, we were producing content for Homeland, Family Guy, Prison Break as well as other features and episodic that would come up. As you know, Disney absorbed Fox and lot of our clients lost their jobs. This, paired with the change in the market means that Home Entertainment and Marketing PR divisions of all of the studios have been slashed, burned and in some cases eliminated. People don't buy DVD/Bluray anymore and streaming generally doesn't need or use nearly as much BTS/Bonus content as traditional media. So we are adapting and changing. We shoot a lot more on-line content now and we are working hard toward producing and owning our own content because the market we were in for the past two decades barely exists anymore.
 
And on a smaller scale note from Pure, it puts you at the clients mercy. Clients know when they are your main squeeze, and many tend to squeeze in return. A good rule to follow if at all possible is never need someone more than they need you. When you can’t truly adhere to this rule, I’ve found personally it plays better if they believe you are in these shoes even if you secretly are not. Just make sure in the latter you take intentional steps and efforts to work out of that position as it can seem good for a season, but is wrought with problems.

Practically with a client relationship like yours this can me declining a last second rush job or over billed job by claiming you are already booked, or that you can’t accept the job at that rate as you already are filled with full rate clients. A line I like to use as well is “sorry, I can’t do that rate - the economics just aren’t there for me.” If you are going to say no to a gig, better to do it with confidence and with the appearance of being busy, booked, and non-needy rather than exasperated.
 
Keep working with this client while at the same time set boundaries and professional expectations. There's two-way management between employees/managers and service providers and clients. All interactions are a happening / both sides responsible for the shared experience. Outside of the work you are providing for compensation, spend all your free time looking for new clients. Be extremely efficient with funds, while at the same time express gratitude for what you have, while visualizing where you'd like your business and life to grow. Once you secure clients you prefer working with, you can set stronger boundaries with challenging clients. Who knows- they may change and become better clients! If not you can reduce their hours, and chose to give your time to clients more aligned with your values. If you find yourself thinking negatively about clients, instead think about how you like to see them (in the positive form). Over time if this doesn't happen, move on however do your best to never think negatively of them, only how you'd like to see them in the constructive form. This pattern applies to everything in your consciousness.

Become aware or more aware of the flow of life: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2UYch2JnO4 . Worth listening (a little over two hours), and repeated listening (or reading) over the years reveals deeper and deeper levels of useful genius concepts of pragmatic common sense. In simple terms, you become aware of the flow of life, and begin to make decisions based on this awareness. Where previously you weren't aware you were on a river, you are now aware of the river, the direction of the water, the rapids, the calm parts, the waterfalls, the forks, etc., and you can choose which way to go by rowing gently, rapidly, up, down, side stream, building a sail, or not rowing/sailing at all and going with the flow.

Anxiety: practice meditation and become aware of how diet affects your consciousness. Certain foods and food combinations can create inflammation (e.g. sugars, alcohols, and animal proteins) and brain inflammation can lead to many consciousness issues, including anxiety and depression, etc. Avoid stimulants, as well as THC (really should be legal only for medical purposes IMO). High THC without CBD can cause anxiety. CBD can help reduce anxiety, however recommend only as a short term therapy in conjunction with life long meditation, anti-inflammatory diet, and daily exercise with some aspect that raise heart rate (minimally brisk walking / jogging, cross training / HIT, weights/resistance). Many supplements can be helpful: SAMe, GABA, 5-HTP, magnesium malate, L-theanine, omega 369 oils and more are worth trying. The common themes are serotonin / dopamine modulators (neurotransmitters) and brain-inflammation reducers. A mostly organic plant-based diet with sufficient protein (full amino acids) is helpful: avoid anything processed as much as possible. Avoid TV / news / negative-social-media and listen to music that makes you happy. Have a hint of a smile all the time, and smile at strangers- keep smiling even if they don't smile back. There's positive biology in smiling :)

In addition to meditating, when you become aware that what you think on a daily basis affects your life in profound ways (especially your physical and mental health), you'll become motivated to think about what you want, e.g. creative-constructive thoughts, vs. 'not what I don't want'. For example, "I'm looking forward to working with kind, honest, fair and fun clients" vs. "I don't want to work with <insert negative traits here>". Spend time with nature, touch trees, grass, plants, swim in lakes, the ocean, go hiking, play with dogs, cats, etc. Fellowship is missing from many lives; why forums and social media are popular. Spending time with other people in person, with common healthy constructive interests is also very helpful. When you feel anxious, breath deeply and smile. Holding one's breath can create anxiety. Get a check up- make sure you're not anemic (and get enough iron (the right amount- too much is toxic) and B vitamins). Avoid all pharma and do your own research for all aspects of your life and health: what works for others may or may not work for you: become aware of how foods, supplements (rotate them and don't take the same all the time), exercises (variety), music, thoughts affect your life and adjust accordingly. Everything is changing all the time- that's the one constant :)
 
You may consider somewhat related fields, like an AV Tech role. I work as an AV Tech in my day job, and most of the big companies in my area contract AV support people, which likely holds true across other states.

My role encompasses testing the AV equipment throughout the building, setting up chairs and tables for meetings, mic'ing presenters, operating the soundboard, making sure video conferences and audio conference calls connect properly, repairing and upgrading AV equipment etc. Before that I worked as an AV installer, which along with video production, laid a pretty good foundation of general AV knowledge.

P.S. I find listening to a purring cat a great stress reliever.
 
What is the story of your life ('your' being anyone)? AKA life story. This is a filmmaking forum... storytelling in addition to collecting/trading/selling gear like stamps lol, right?

OP asked for career advice, with some drama in their life. Their life is a story, and there's drama in it. Now look at the basic structure of screenplays and movies: https://timstout.wordpress.com/story-structure/blake-snyders-beat-sheet/ . Think about that structure and how it matches with your life. One's life can be also thought of as many stories, like a series of TV episodes or movie sequels: the same thing only different, repeating.

Let's say one is going through a challenging time, how can this exercise help? If you look at your past experiences, see the 'story' in those experiences, how things turned out, then look at the pattern and structure of storytelling (as outlined by Blake Snyder's Save the Cat- see link above), you can see where you are in your current story. Where you are in the current movie, the current episode of your life. These insights can give guidance as to what to do next, since you're writing your story by your thoughts and actions!

There's also a therapy in NLP (a form of psychology) called Timeline Therapy. It's where you look at your life as a series of images / events / stories, where you can go back in time visually, looking at all those frames of your life from the point of view of a camera. You can go back to specific events, from multiple camera views looking at yourself and others in difficult situations. From that dissociative point of view you can learn things that you never saw before, because typically we look at past events through our own eyes. These new 'learnings' can then be integrated into your consciousness, the you of 'now', so that you let go of something that's been hurting you, see life in a different way, heal an emotional wound, learn how to better interact with people and situations today, etc. This same technique can be used to 'go into the future', to visualize a future event, such as closing an important deal, buying your first home, meeting the love of your life, reaching your financial/material/spiritual goals etc.

There's an entire industry of self-help, manifesting, "The Secret: Thoughts Make Things", all related to these techniques which all work on consciousness. Excellent book- worth the read, and if one commutes, a great audio book: https://www.amazon.com/Intention-Experiment-Using-Thoughts-Change-ebook/dp/B000N0WTBU/

Does this make sense?
 
Imamacuser said:
P.S. I find listening to a purring cat a great stress reliever.
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ASMR.

I can't live without it after discovering it 2 years ago. Everyone has different triggers. It's old in terms of existing and affecting humans, but relatively new for the world to know about it only until the YouTube craze.

It will eventually - if it hasn't already - make its way into therapy conversations.

Tapping and rubbing a mic (its windscreen) keeps me very calm.
 
lol, ASMR is strange. I have spent thousands of hours watching various artists and learning about it.

There is a dude with a decent following (I don't follow him personally) who appears to be video-savvy and does it with a GH5S.

With 434K subscribers, he's probably never looking back at freelancing again, ha. (If he did in the first place...he might also have a regular job, IDK.)

Sorry to go off-topic, but maybe it's still kind of on-topic and how people fall into things in life and create opportunities for themselves and find ways to keep trucking along in this thing called life.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0lNhH0Ksi8&t=551s

rig.jpg
 
ASMR whispering + 3D audio (headphones: spatialized from mono source):

Anchoring can be helpful + 3D audio (headphones: Ambeo 3D mic recording). The eye movements are also important:
 
roxics said:
I had been shooting with my GH4, which had been fine, but I decided to use one of my credit cards and buy a couple used Canon C100s.
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Don't want to derail the thread as gear purchase/financing is a different topic, and this is already water under the bridge, so please no one take it there, but as an on-topic point this can cause more stress and more over commitment. This is industry is hard enough when you're working to get ahead, but putting gear on a credit card can add to your mental stress and force you to take on gigs with a pressure you might not otherwise feel. Because now you have a high interest card to pay off, too. I would consider selling one of your C100s, do you really need 2 for the shoots you do? Maybe you do! I don't know. Just pointing out its best to scale as slowly as possible. Or, if you're locked in here, just slow down and don't over extend on any more purchases until you are really in the black for the year.

Imamacuser said:
You may consider somewhat related fields, like an AV Tech role.
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Or if you are committed to freelance, at least a part time (2 day a week) entry level gig, just to keep a steady cash flow in and help you stay sane. It's way easier to say "no" to a bad client when it doesn't mean a total cash loss for the week. On that note, don't over look this thread:

QuickHitRecord said:
There's a thread with some great advice from other DVXusers who very helpfully answered my questions about making the transition here.
.
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It might have some helpful food for thought or tips on how to break out of the cycle you're currently finding yourself in.
 
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