Media Artist Secrets TV #1 – We Teach What We Need To Learn
I have always wanted to do a video version of my Media Artist Secrets podcast. This new video show will cover a lot of the ideas and concepts from the blog but also branch off into new directions. The show will feature creative career development and inspiration, cool guests, new thoughts and ideas. Join the conversation by leaving a comment, let me know what you think.
Franklin McMahon Show – Episode 1 – We Teach What We Need To Learn
I will also be looking for guests to interview in the coming weeks, if you are interested, leave a comment with your links. The show will be a work in progress, but I will work to make it informative and fun.
Thanks for checking it out.
You can also watch the show in HD on Facebook or YouTube
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Get Obsessed And Move Into The Creative Zone
Have you ever wanted something really bad, like really fixated on it and did everything in your power to get it? I am not talking about thinking about something and wondering that it would be nice to have. I am talking about obsessing and really focusing, having drive and a laser focus on the end goal. The term “peak performance” is a term used a lot with athletes, but it can also apply to media artists. Having a very strong drive towards something in your career or in your life is very compelling. It could be a new client you want to get, a new piece of equipment, a new workspace, a new service you want to ramp up. It could even be starting a business, leaving the process of working for others behind.
Let’s call this being in the zone. You have no doubt experienced it. Your drive is so strong and your focus so tuned that you accomplish what you set out to. For some creative artists, being in the zone happens periodically. In the day to day and week to week process there are these spikes where the drive is very high. It could be due to excitement, too much coffee, a deadline pressure, lots of factors. Athletes always work to be in the zone whenever they perform. Each and every time. But for some media artists, it happens here and there, usually looked at as a “good day”.
What if every day was a good day? What if you were in the zone on a consistent basis? The people who succeed and ramp up their career dramatically over time share a lot of qualities. They are driven, passionate, focused and obsessed. They pick a path and rapidly follow it with a clear end goal.
This has nothing to do with talent or abilities. It is only about producing consistent forward momentum in the directions they want to go.
Every step of the way there are opportunities to take you out of the zone. Your clients are not that exciting, you are in a rut, you are not exercising, your diet could be better, you see others making more progress. A lot of this occurs because your work day is focused on others, clients, phone calls, emails. The switch that needs to happen is focus on your own goals that will make your creative business grow. This may mean having a client wait just a bit longer while you block out some time to explore a new opportunity or move on a plan you have been thinking about.
You’ll know when you are in the zone. You will feel it. Media artists need to be in the zone more and on a consistent basis. However there needs to be time and room for this to happen. Take a project or idea that has been on your list for months and suddenly put a large amount of focus on it. It will suddenly go from a nagging thought never realized to an exciting option with a lot of momentum. Pick something new to focus on today.
Get obsessed, get focused, get rolling on the things you want to be doing in addition to the things you need to be doing. Move yourself, and those important items, into the zone.
Anticipating Change On The Road To Success
We have all heard that when you are in a creative career, or any career for that matter, an important consideration is to be ready for change. Always be alert to changes in the market, in what your competitors are doing and things that come up you do not expect. While it is a good goal to have, there is an even higher level to consider. Looking at what will change in the future.
Think of your creative career as sailing in the ocean. You can be sailing along and brace for rough seas, you can be alert and ready for sudden changes and adjust accordingly. But your scope of vision is somewhat limited. Now imagine a live satellite image of the ocean from a mile above. Suddenly everything is much more clear and you can adjust accordingly.
Say you are driving. You are heading down roads, making turns, making progress while exploring. Now imagine you have a map or GPS system. Suddenly you can plan, you can strategically chart your direction and look for various landmarks. Now you can see the big picture.
Many creative artists are busy with clients, hitting deadlines, somewhat braced for change, but often not looking at the larger view. They know how the week will end up but not how things six months from now will turn out.
Ever decide you want a certain car and then you suddenly see that model all the time on the road? Trends are the same, you won’t see them until you start looking for them.
Take some time and really examine some trends in your industry and in your career. What will change? Will anything be different six months or a year from now? Anything winding down or ramping up? Where does your focus need to move to?
Very successful people can look at an industry and try to anticipate the next big thing as well as visualize where the market is going. Try looking at the big picture of your creative career as well. Often you may be right and have the enormous leverage of being in the right place at the right time.
Are You Dressed For Success?
We all like to think that it’s really about our talent and not how we look. But the fact of the matter is you will often be judged on your appearance as you work your way through your career. Sure it’s not fair but the important thing is to be aware of it. Now I am not necessarily saying you need to dress up in a suit everywhere you go, but certainly take some time to think about how you are perceived to the general public. You may spend a lot of your time in a studio or working for yourself or with a small team. Comfort is one of the luxuries we have when building our own empire. The difference is when we walk out into the world, when we network, attend functions, interact with people.
One of the best things you can do is convey a sense of confidence and success. A lot of this is attitude. Talent with a dash of ego, in moderation, is not a bad thing. But keep in mind as you ramp up your career you will be ramping up the quality of your contacts. It may be inevitable that you will be in scenarios where the attire is getting better and more official.
Stop to think about some of the most successful people you know. What are they wearing?
I discussed this topic quite a while back on my Media Artist Secrets podcast (iTunes) and got a huge response. Half were agreeing with me and the other half were very against, saying that being successful is based on skill and not about certain clothes worn. And again I am not saying wear a suit everywhere, but really start to think about what you are conveying with your attire. A lot of times you will go to functions and feel overdressed or underdressed. In fact before you even go you may be wondering if you should dress up or dress down. I suggest going for the dressing up part. You’ll never offend anyone by dressing up and you may get some new respect just from some presentable threads.
You have to remember that most of the time when you are networking, a lot of people don’t know you. And as your career ramps up you may be in situations that are basically more dressy. Ramp up your attire to coincide with your ramping up career. Dress “up” when your career is going “up”. It may be cool to dress down and be hip, but what is hip to you may not be hip to others. If you want to close the deal, connect with better clients and ramp up your career, start to really think about how your dress code is in sync with your new business paths.
How do you dress for your industry? How does your industry dress? Do you have a clothing budget as part of your empire?
Are potential clients you are connecting with dressing better than you?
How important are your clothes as a marketing element?
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Franklin McMahon – Media Artist Secrets Now Available On Kindle
Now you can take the blog portable on your Kindle. Check out the new version designed for the Kindle reading device over at Amazon.com. You’ll get all the daily content updated wirelessly and get career development advice on the go! You can also get a free 14-day trial, so how can you beat that? Enjoy!
Franklin McMahon – Media Artist Secrets for Kindle on Amazon.com
Letting Clients Go To Grow Your Creative Career
As your empire ramps up and you develop bigger clients, the current stable of clients, that have been a real feather in your cap, may unfortunately need to be let go. If a client has been with you since the beginning, there is often nothing more difficult than moving your creative career up to a higher level and having to leave existing clients behind. It’s a tough move, but needed for your career to grow.
It does not really matter what you do, it could be producing graphics, animation, music creation, video production, audio producing, web design, traditional arts, whatever you are doing to provide content or a service, as your career ramps up you’ll get bigger and potentially better clients. This is actually a good thing, as your skill set increases, so does your rates. You start to get the type of clients on your radar that would not have even been considered by you a few years back. Your business is growing and as you move up, you move towards a higher end client. They are ready and so are you, thanks to your body of work, years of experience and newly minted quest to achieve more in building your empire.
At least that is the plan. Some will work in the opposite direction. Jobs come a little less frequent, you hit a slow patch, you want more clients than you actually have. You start to drop your rates, you take on clients that now take up huge amounts of your time, clients that you would not normally take on if business was better. You are making less and working more than ever and you can’t really understand why.
The reason is you are scaling downward instead of upward. Keep in mind, if you do anything for say five years, at the end of that five years you usually have much more experience, lots more skills, you are just better in many different ways. Your rates and services should absolutely reflect that.
Some creative artists get stuck in a rut. They never can quite get out of their current client base, they strive to do more, charge more, and get higher end clients. But the quest to achieve that often does not materialize. Of course it takes drive and ambition, but it also may be something that is holding you back, it may be your current client base.
And the process of weeding out current clients need not be a difficult one. Be direct. Let them know that you need to raise your rates for your business to thrive, to remain competitive. Convey that you are no longer able to work with them on their projects and provide suggestions on other creative producers who may be able to help them out. Remember, the apprehension is often always worse than the implementation. In this case you will typically find out that clients will support you in your career move. They will miss working with you, but they will generally understand if you convey it properly.
Everyone wants their business to grow and a lot of times your client base has to grow with you. You can’t let it hold you back. Raising rates and moving on from some of your existing clients is one of the hardest things you’ll have to do as a creative professional. Believe me I know this is not easy. But you need to flex new creative muscles, you need to break into new client challenges, you need to ramp up and reach higher to keep your path of success constantly reaching upwards. Often it’s not enough to want it, you have to be around people, clients and contacts that will help pull you along and move you there.
Are you ready for the next level of clients? What can you do to move to that level?
Media Artist Secrets Episode #75 – To-Do List Overload vs. Golden Tasks
This episode: To do list overload, golden tasks, 3 story house mode, idea bin, trim and set creative project priorities and much more – franklinmcmahon.com – The Podcast for the Creative Professional
Media Artist Secrets (iTunes link) is an audio podcast I do that is focused on career building, getting things done and ramping up your empire. This new episode is focused mainly on to-do lists and how quickly they can completely overwhelm us.
The main problem with a task list is every time you add a new task, you take a little priority away from all the others. If you have 3 tasks that are all pretty important and then you add another, and another, soon you have 10 or more tasks that are trying to share the spotlight. 7 tasks that are pulling you away from the 3 major ones.
We’ll call these top 3 tasks “Golden Tasks”. These are the cream of the crop. In any given day, these are the top 3 that are going to give you the most payback, the most traction and the most impact. The key is to trim down your task list to the most important. It’s OK to have ideas and things that pop into your mind, but those should be stored separately. Not jumbled in with your Golden Tasks.
At the end of the day, if you complete the 3 major tasks, you’ll really feel like you have accomplished a lot, as opposed to having a list of 10 or 20, and only working through half. If your list is 12 and you only do 9, you’ll feel like you did not complete it. If your list is 3, and you did those 3 plus had extra time to complete 2 more, you’ll feel tremendously better.
So focus on your Golden Tasks first above all. Let me know how you work your own To-do list.
Is it focused on a small number of goals or is it lengthy with minimal priorities? Do you have any tips or ideas on organizing your own task list?
Branding Your Name On Social Networks
These days your brand is often you, it’s you and you alone. Even if you work for a large company, are part of a big enterprise or have a successful company that has a distinct name, when you are online, you are known by your name. Often on networks like Twitter, people will use usernames or handles, such as kim345 or tedphotoguy. These are great for log-ins, but don’t do much to extend your brand.
Facebook ensures you must use your real name, but it is more flexible with creating Pages, you can pretty much name them anything. But keep in mind that your name will never change (well marriage may alter that..) even as you move to different companies and get involved in various enterprises. In fact someday if you move from working for “the man” to heading up your own empire, you’ll want to ensure that your actual name has a good brand and a great following. If your current online name is based on an industry or company, remember that in 5 or 10 years you may be completely done with it. Maybe less.
So as you create accounts, as you dive deeper into the vast array of social networks, as you register a domain name, as you create a new account, remember that your name is the brand. FirebirdConsulting.com is nice, but KimSanderson.com is a lot more personable and recognizable. It all starts with you. It all starts with your name. People may remember your clever handles or usernames, but they will never forget you.
Are you marketing your name?
Have Too Much Web Info and Not Enough Outfo?
Most of us read blogs daily, check out websites, catch up on news. Even though the web has made it a lot easier to access news quickly, it also spirals into reading more and more info. A quick trip through your Twitter feed will no doubt have you exploring some interesting links, links to new sites, links to more news. You may add a few more sites to your RSS reader, you may bookmark some new ones, you’ll discover information avenues you did not know existed. The problem comes when this is done daily, weekly, monthly…the info really starts to stack up. You may have started visiting your 5 favorite websites, but now it has expanded to checking in on 20 sites every day, several times a day even.
I just wanted to let you know: you don’t need them all. The fear settles in that you may miss something. Well you will, but that’s OK. The bottom line is you may be sifting through huge piles of info for one or two pieces that are actually relevant. I recently discovered this with a tech news blog I liked to frequent. I started to count how many items I was actually interested in, as opposed to how many I was actually viewing. The score was dramatic, it averaged that I was looking at 20 posts when I would find one that I was actually interested in. Now if you multiple this times 5 sites, or even 20, several times a day, you begin to realize that you have moved from getting the news to a daily quest to find tiny nuggets of information.
All of this results in an amazing waste of time. Time when you could be producing content. We’ve all seen the alarming statistics about how people watch hours and hours of TV per day. Just zoning out and absorbing. We all think “that’s not me” as we spend hours and hours zoning out on the web. Yes we gain info, but not all is relevant and that time could be spent building our empire, producing content to engage our own audiences. You may spend two hours a day exploring websites, while your own website or blog has not been updated with your latest projects and info in several weeks. You’ll realize this when you meet people in person and they say “So…what have you been up to?”. I assume you won’t say “Surfing the web!!”.
I feel your pain. I know, I know. You love the web! I love the web too! I am just suggesting a balance, between producing and collecting.
To eliminate info overload, one tactic I do is to periodically purge or delete all my feeds and news site bookmarks. The ones you really find valuable you will remember and add back in. A lot will fall by the wayside. But you won’t miss them too much.
I realized that I myself was spending a lot of time pouring over gadget sites, reading reviews, spending more time looking at what other people had linked to and produced on news and social media sites. I decided to take that time and focus on creating a blog, to offer some advice and tips on being a better creative media artist. Remember it’s good to take in info and be informed. But when that process is taking more time than actually producing content, building your empire online and getting work done, you could be wasting huge amounts of very valuable time while leaving little to nothing for a digital legacy.
Do you absorb more info than you will ever really need? Is it worth trimming back incoming to focus more on outgoing?
