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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What’s The Rush?

The limits between the old year and the new one have been erased from the Fashion Industry’s calendar. We had just come back from the holidays break and it was already LCM in London. No time to get comfortable in our desks or recover from the vacations hangover, it felt like we went literally from zero to a hundred in one second. And, paraphrasing Suzy Menkes, in the following weeks we have the haute couture shows, then March is ready-to-wear, May is cruise, June is LCM again, July couture again, September ready-to-wear, November resort. “Or is it cruise again?”. And then back to square one. It is as if we are all running a race but no one really knows where the finish line is. We just follow the money and see where it takes us. Fast is the new black, and if you can’t keep up you better step aside.

But, if Fashion in 2015 taught us something it’s that we are only humans and there is only so much pressure that we can take. Last year we saw the departure of the Creative Directors of some of the big fashion houses: Raf Simons from Dior and Alexander Wang from Balenciaga, both after only three years, Alber Elbaz from Lanvin… whether they left or were made leave, what’s undeniable is that the pressure that these designers are exposed to has a high toll to pay. And none of them want to be the next John Galliano or in worst case scenario the next Lee McQueen. Raf Simons told Cathy Horyn: “This is the feeling I have all the time, there’s never enough time.”

I was having a chat the other day with my friend, who is also a creative, and he was concerned that he was too old to not have accomplished anything yet and life was passing by in front of his eyes. He is only 25. And I bet this reality applies to other young people in and outside our industry. Where are we all running to? Where do we think this race takes us? What’s the rush?!

What’s funny is that we like to think of ourselves as living healthy lifestyles with our cross-training and our juice cleanses, but there is nothing healthy in the reality of our jobs and it is driving us to insanity. Why do we avoid Fast Food like the plague but think all this Fast Fashion model is harmless? I think that before the year goes any further we all need to take a break, have a sip of tea and remind ourselves that it is the journey not the destination. Especially if we have no idea where this road is leading to.

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Information Overload: How Much Is Too Much?

Former Secretary General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, addressed the attendees of the World Bank Conference ‘Global Knowledge’ in 1997 saying: “Knowledge is power. Information is liberating.” In the following decade and a half we have seen how the internet has made information available to anyone with a device capable of connecting to the web. If these days you want to find out about something, the answer is just one click away. But with so much information at our disposal, when does so much become too much?

When I decided to start my photography business, I literally had no idea of what I was getting into. I knew that I wanted to take photos for a living, but I had never been self-employed before and I just didn’t know where to start. My solution was to go online and google keywords like “photography business”, “freelancing in London” or “taxes in the UK”. I found hundreds of thousands of resources to research from and it was frankly very overwhelming. I was on my own and all of the sudden I felt like I needed a whole team of people to take care of my accounting, my marketing and my sales while I was out there taking photos. It was just too much for a person to take in. And sometimes one information contradicted the other.

That’s when I realised that I needed an action plan, part of which I talk about in my previous post ”The Man With A Plan”. I took all this ocean of information and divided it in little pieces to set myself attainable learning goals. And I started studying and learning bit by bit all the different aspects of the business to help me devise a coherent business plan.

One of the first things that I did was to decide which were going to be my trustable sources. I figured that the information needed to come from somewhere closest to the origin. So I did my research on taxes at the HMRC website and read everything about the business on the book ”Beyond the Lens” by the Association of Photographers of the UK.

Then I thought that if I wanted to learn about other aspects of the business, I needed to learn it from people who were actually working on those parts of the field. So I contacted the people from The Freelancer Club for mentoring and advice, started following Crunch’s blog for everything accounting and trusted my marketing learning to experts like Ilise Benun.

So by narrowing down my sources to fewer experts I was able to take all that information and turn it into digestible pieces. And by subsequently creating a business plan for myself with realistic goals I was able to put the fears aside and worry less about the business side of the craft.

In future posts I will talk about the goals and the timeline that I set myself as part of my plan.

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Happy New Year 2016!

I have no words to express my gratitude to everyone who has been by my side and who has given me their love on 2015. I send you all lots of love for 2016! Happy New Year!!

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My Grandma’s Turkey Recipe

To show my appreciation for all the amazing things that have happened to me in 2015 I am giving you my grandma’s turkey recipe so that you can share it with those who you care for. Doesn’t it look mouthwatering? I know, I am no food photographer, my business is Fashion, so instead of pretending to be one I just took a snap of how our table looks like during the season. 

My Grandma’s Turkey Recipe

Serves: Aprox. 8 people 

Ingredients: 

• 4 kg (8 lb) Turkey 
• 2 Heads of Garlic 
• 2 Tablespoons salt 
• 1 Teaspoon Ground Black Pepper 
• 175 ml (3/4 Cup) White Wine 
• 175 ml (3/4 Cup) Orange Juice 
• 120 ml (1/2 Cup) Lemon Juice 
• 60 ml (1/4 Cup) Melted Butter 

Preparation: 

• If you are using a frozen turkey, thaw the turkey in its bag in the refrigerator for at least two days before baking. 
• Make sure that the bird is completely defrosted and that there are no ice crystals anywhere in the bird. 
• The day before baking, remove all packaging and the neck and the giblet pack from the cavity. 
• Place the turkey, breast side down, in an oven proof roasting tin. 
• Mix together the crushed garlic cloves, salt, pepper, wine, the orange and the lemon juice. 
• Pour the mix into the roasting tin around the turkey. 
• Cover in plastic wrap and put back in the refrigerator. 
• Let marinate for at least 12 hours. 
• Then turn bird and let marinate in the fridge for the remaining of the time until baking. 

Cooking: 

• Preheat the oven at 170°C (325°F). 
• Remove the turkey from the fridge and take out the plastic wrap. 
• Brush the skin of the bird with the melted butter. 
• Loosely cover the turkey with foil and place into the centre of the preheated oven. 
• Cook for 4 hours. 
• Periodically baste the bird with the juices at the bottom of the roasting tin. 
• Remove the foil 1 hour before the end of cooking. 
• Once is cooked, remove the turkey from the oven and cover with foil. 
• Leave to rest for 30 minutes before carving. 

Bon Appétit and Happy Holidays 2015!

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Know Thy History

“Those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it”, according to Edmund Burke. And those who know history, according to me, know what to repeat and what to avoid repeating. And can even figure out what was not tried in the past that might work in the present. But in a society only concerned about the latest this and the latest that, how relevant is it to know about our past?

Very relevant, I would say. And more than necessary, mandatory. One of the first pieces of advice that I received when I started shooting fashion was “Study the classics”. And some might argue that knowing the life of Elizabeth Arden won’t make you a better makeup artist, the same way that knowing who Stieglitz was won’t make you a better photographer. But the truth is that knowing where your craft comes from, how it all started and why it is the way it is nowadays will definitely give you a deeper understanding of your industry. And hopefully help you make better business decisions.

Here are a few resources from where to take a little peek into the past of our industry:

• Fashion: http://www.businessoffashion.com/education/courses/fashion-history
• Photography: http://photohistory.jeffcurto.com/about
• Makeup Artistry: http://www.historyofcosmetics.net
• Hair Styling: http://www.ukhairdressers.com/history%20of%20hair.asp

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Deeply Superficial

Andy Warhol famously said that he was deeply superficial. I like to believe that I am the opposite of that. And even though our industry has a reputation for being shallow, I feel like most creatives don’t relate to this quote. And that is why it is so hard for us to sell ourselves, because we are afraid of sounding fake, egocentric and self-centered.

A couple of months ago I wrote the post ”Are Creatives Sales-Challenged?” about the challenges of selling yourself as a creative. At the end of the post I encouraged everyone to try and do these four things as an exercise to make you feel more confident when talking about your business:

1. Know your business to the last detail.

2. Believe in yourself.

3. Find out what others say about your business.

4. Speak of yourself in the third person.

So I decided to put them in practice myself to see how that changed the way I promoted my services to others. If you have been following my blog you know that the first two points are basically what I have been praising and putting in practice for a long time so I skipped straight to the third one. I went ahead and asked for client recommendations and took out some keywords from the things that they said about me:

• creative
• easy to work with
• understanding
• patient
• good eye for detail
• talented
• enthusiastic
• motivated
• committed
• organised
• hardworking
• professional
• honest
• clear

Then I tried step four and put all those keywords together in a phrase talking about myself in the third person as if I were recommending a brand to someone else:

“Grey Pistachio is a creative and talented photographer with a good eye for detail and a commitment to bringing your brief to life. He is clear and honest and patiently takes the time to understand your brand and your vision. With more than 20 years of experience managing projects, he is a hardworking and organised professional and his motivation and enthusiasm make it really easy to work with him.”

Not bad, right? I know that it’s still a work in progress but I went from not knowing what to say about myself to a whole paragraph on the benefits of working with me just by asking my clients what they thought about me. And by putting everything in the third person I didn’t feel like an egomaniac while talking about myself.

So now that I have all these selling points that I didn’t even know that I had I can go out and better promote myself. Not as a fake sounding elevator pitch but more like the strengths that my brand has. I will keep on working on this exercise and will definitely write my findings on future posts.

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To Blog Or Not To Blog: That Is The Question.

I have been writing this blog for more than a year now. It all started as a way to remind myself where I had been and how had I gotten to where I was. But it ended up being a resource for starting creatives, because while I was telling myself all the steps that I followed to become whom I wanted to be, I was actually creating a source of information for people who are where I was back then and didn’t know how to make their career dreams come true. But today my blog is much more than that. It has evolved into a key piece of my marketing strategy with results that go far beyond my initial expectations.

Writing a blog, no matter the subject, is hard work. It’s setting some time aside every week to spill your thoughts on the blank page. And sometimes you have loads of things to say, but other times you are so busy with life that your brain just doesn’t seem to be able to put two thoughts together. It requires commitment, because if you promise a post every week you can’t skip a single week or you will risk disappointing and loosing your readers. It requires research, because even though you should talk about the things you know, you must contrast your information so that you don’t mislead your followers. And it requires love, love and passion for what you write about, because it will be the only way to engage your audience.

But not matter how much work and effort it takes to put a blog together, the rewards are bigger than the sacrifices:

1. Writing my blog has helped me show my existing and potential clients how much passion I put into my craft and this translates into the trust they put on me.

2. There is no better life led than the one that is led trying to help others succeed.

3. The traffic on my website has grown from 10 visits a month to 200 visits a week since I started writing my blog. And on the day that I post I get an average of 71 visitors on that post.

4. But most importantly, it has helped me grow as a person and as a professional. Because by wearing my heart on my sleeve every week I have learned so much about myself that it has helped me work on my weaknesses and improve my strengths.

So if you are thinking on a way to diversify your marketing strategy, writing a blog can be a good idea. My last piece of advice would be that if you decide to do it you have to go all the way or you will do your brand more harm than good. 

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21 Documentaries For Fashion Creatives

The Fashion Industry has often been described as shallow and frivolous by those who are looking from the outside, but the people in these documentaries will let you take a peek into what is really like to live their lives, walk their paths and have their fears and their dreams. 

On The Industry

Future Of Fashion: It began with Alexa Chung approaching Vogue over coffee, with the desire to tell the truth about fashion as she found it. The plan was to show this world from the inside out, to dispel the myths of a frivolous unprofitable industry and introduce young people to exactly what being in fashion means today and what opportunities there are for everyone.

The True Cost: The True Cost is a documentary film exploring the impact of fashion on people and the planet.

On Designers

L’Amour Fou: A documentary on the relationship between fashion designer Yves Saint-Laurent and his lover, Pierre Berge. 

Ultrasuede - In Search of Halston: No one represented the 70 s quite like legendary designer Halston and, in his new documentary, Ultrasuede - In Search of Halston filmmaker Whitney Sudler -Smith takes us on a fabulous fun-and-fact filled journey through that man s life and times.

Dior and I: Dior and I brings the viewer inside the storied world of the Christian Dior fashion house with a privileged, behind-the-scenes look at the creation of Raf Simons’ first haute couture.

Valentino: The Last Emperor: A look at the life of legendary fashion designer Valentino.

Paul Smith: Gentleman Designer: An intimate and provoking portrait of “Lord Paul Smith”, quirky designer and formidable businessman, through exclusive access to a poet of British fashion.

On Creatives

In Vogue: The Editor’s Eye: Documentary film takes a look at some of the world’s most influential fashion images as conceived by the magazine’s iconic fashion editors.

Helmut Newton: Frames from the Edge: A camera crew follows Helmut Newton, the fashion and ad photographer whose images of tall, blond, big-breasted women are part of the iconography of twentieth-century erotic fantasy. 

Bill Cunningham New York: A profile of the noted and extraordinarily cheerful veteran New York City fashion photographer.

Annie Leibovitz: Life Through a Lens: This film traces the artistic self-realization of Annie Leibovitz, from childhood through the death of her beloved friend, Susan Sontag, and includes snippets of Leibovitz’s last visual memories of Sontag.

Vidal Sassoon: The Movie: Vidal Sassoon is more than just a hairdresser-he’s a rock star, an artist, a craftsman who “changed the world with a pair of scissors.”

The Powder and The Glory: it tells the story of two of the first highly successful women entrepreneurs in America, Elizabeth Arden and Helena Rubinstein.

On Magazines

Diana Vreeland - The Eye Has to Travel: A look at the life and work of the influential fashion editor of Harpers Bazaar, Diana Vreeland.

The September Issue: A documentary chronicling Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour’s preparations for the 2007 fall-fashion issue.

Mademoiselle C: A documentary focused on former Vogue Paris editor-in-chief and fashion stylist Carine Roitfeld as she moves to New York to launch her own magazine.

On Style

Iris: A documentary about fashion icon Iris Apfel from legendary documentary filmmaker Albert Maysles.

Advanced Style: Advanced Style examines the lives of seven unique New Yorkers whose eclectic personal style and vital spirit have guided their approach to aging.

On Shops

Scatter My Ashes at Bergdorf’s: A documentary on the Manhattan department store with interviews from an array of fashion designers, style icons, and celebrities.

Secrets of Selfridges: The story of the innovative retailer, Harry Gordon Selfridge, and the landmark department store he founded.

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How To Predict Your Future

Welcome to the DIY era, a time when you can be whomever you want to be. You don’t know how to take photos? There is a tutorial for that. You have never applied makeup? There is also a tutorial for that. You want to become an astronaut? Well, this one is tougher, but one day I am sure that we will learn how to pilot a spaceship on youtube. In this day and age when the access to information has been democratized, is the excuse of not doing what you really want to do with your life relevant anymore?

For the longest time in humanity, our professions were determined by what our parents did. Then times changed, and we were made free to decide our own future and become whatever we wanted to be… but with a twist. It was reserved to those who could afford it. But not anymore. The internet has really set us free and with so many people sharing their knowledge and experience online these days if you really want to learn something you don’t have to leave the comfort of your home anymore.

So to all those people who have been stuck in careers they wrongly chose or in jobs that they have hated for the last decade and still think that the only way to change paths is by spending tens of thousands in studying something else, I say: you are looking at the solution the wrong way. 

The DIY life is about taking control of your life, creating your own career, your own path. It’s about waking up one morning and deciding that you want to become something different, whatever it is. And going online to research what that new path is and what working in that field means. And then creating your own plan on how you are going to approach your change of life. And reading a lot, studying a lot, researching more, watching tutorials, watching TED talks, following industry news, going to industry events, meeting people in this new industry, interning with them and learning the craft, and before you know it you will be part of the industry as well.

Stop dreaming of a different life but be afraid of venturing into the unknown. Like they say, the best way to predict your future is to create your own future.

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You Already Have The Best Camera

People who work for camera manufacturers are like all of us: they have bills to pay and they need to make a living. And in order to do so, they need you to buy their cameras. So they have to convince you that owning their latest model is the only way to take great photos and if you stick to your old camera or buy one from their competitors, you are a loser. And a bad photographer. And if you want to be an even better photographer, you have to change your camera every year to stay up to date with the latest technology. 

The reality is that you already own the best camera available: your own eye. And as clichéd as this may sound, it is true. A camera on its own doesn’t do anything. It’s just a tool. And someone who doesn’t know how to take photos won’t be able to take a good photo even if you give them the best camera in the market today. And what is great about the eye is that it doesn’t matter that we all have them and that its technology has been unchanged for millennia. It was, it is and it will be, at least for a very long time, the best camera out there.

And what is even better about the eye is that it will never take two photos alike, not even when a group of people are looking at the same subject at the same time. Because the beauty of this technology is that it’s connected to our brain and in consequence to our emotions and experiences. Thus, the image that I see will be based on everything that I have lived in my past. Which is completely different to everything that you or any other person has lived. And this makes the resulting image a unique piece of art.

Oscar Wilde in “The Decay of Lying” wrote:

“For what is Nature? Nature is no great mother who has borne us. She is our creation. It is in our brain that she quickens to life. Things are because we see them, and what we see, and how we see it, depends on the Arts that have influenced us.”

If you feel that your photography is not at the level that it should be, I’ve got news for you: I’m 99% sure that it’s not your equipment. And I don’t say a 100% because there are photographers who from the nature of their work need specific equipment. But the majority of us out there are able to take great photos with the camera that we already have. We just need to push ourselves and our craft further.

There are various elements that make a photo great. And none of them involve the tools:

• have an identifiable subject.
• use good composition. And I’m not talking about the rule of thirds. Research composition in classical painting and train your eye.
• learn how light behaves. Photography is nothing without light.
• location, location, location.
• and if you shoot people, like I do, learn people skills and do not take for granted good makeup, beautiful hair and great styling.

If you master these basic elements, you are going to be able to take unbelievable photos, even with a smartphone. And of course, I am not saying that it is not worth it to get a great piece of equipment. But only invest on it when you really need to. I know that my business doesn’t need me to spend 40k on a camera at this point in my career. I will get there, eventually, but at the moment my current camera has still a lot of years of shell life ahead of it.

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From Zero To A Hundred In One Second

This is the third and last part of my posts regarding the key elements to a marketing strategy. If you haven’t read the previous posts, read first Part 1 and Part 2. 

I am a sucker for quotable quotes. And there is no better quote to exemplify the topic of this post than this one attributed to Eddie Cantor: “It takes 20 years to become an overnight success”. The third key element to a successful marketing strategy is managing expectations. Overnight success is the result of years of sleepless nights and hard work.

After you have come up with your plan and started deploying your marketing strategy you have to arm yourself with a lot of patience. Very rarely you see immediate results and even if you do you have to try to build a sustainable business. This is a marathon, not a sprint.

I see a lot of my peers who get discouraged at the very beginning because they don’t see enough business to make it worth their whiles. And maybe it is true, in the end we all need to pay our bills. That is why we need to plan ahead and take all these things into consideration when we are building our business. Sometimes we need to keep our day jobs for a while until we can go full time freelancing. And there is nothing wrong with that.

Having clear expectations will help us keep calm as we are navigating the ups and downs of building our business. It will be the only way to keep ourselves motivated on those first few years when we see that we are putting a lot of effort into our promotion but the results are far from great. I know, easier said than done. Here are a few pointers to help you manage your expectations:

• when you are putting together your plan, it has to be realistic, reachable and adapted to your reality. Don’t copy someone else’s plan because their lives are different than yours. You can get inspired by them but you have to adapt it to your current situation.
• define short, medium and long term goals to be able to keep track of your progress. For instace, lets say that your goal is to be able to open your own studio in three years. That would be your long term goal. What do you need to do to get there? Have enough clients and big enough projects to be able to afford it. So this would be your medium term goal. And how do you get those clients and projects? By reaching out to that target via your marketing strategy. There you have your short term goal!
• think of yourself as a business. And like a business, you can’t expect to have profit on your first year. You may have income, but it will most likely go to pay expenses or to reinvest it on the business again. So plan ahead for the following 3-5 years. 

So there you have them, these are what I feel are the key elements to a successful marketing strategy:

• having a plan 
• being consistent with the plan 
• managing expectations

At which stage of your marketing strategy are you? Is there anything in particular that you have done for your business that can complete my key elements list? Share your comments with us below!

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I’ve Got 99 Problems But Inconsistency Ain’t One

In my previous post ”The Man With A Plan” I spoke about what I feel are the key elements to a successful marketing strategy. These elements came to my mind while chatting with Marketing Mentor and Business Coach Ilise Benun, the author of the Marketing Plan + eCalendar that I used as a base for my marketing strategy and of which I spoke about in my post ”Your One Person Orchestra”. They are:

• having a plan 
• being consistent with the plan
• managing expectations

I have already covered what having a plan means. If you haven’t read it, please pause, click here to go to my previous post, and then come back. I will be waiting for you.

You read it? Good. Because having a plan is crucial. But just as important is following that plan consistently. If you are marketing yourself today as a fashion photographer and tomorrow as a landscape photographer, then your prospect clients will never know what to hire you for. But even if your offer is always the same, if you apply your marketing efforts for a week on your social media and then the next week on your print mailings and then stop for a while and then next month you decide to go with e-mailings, you might as well save yourself all the trouble because you will not get anywhere either.

What does being consistent mean? It basically means that after sitting down, doing your research and creating your marketing plan you must follow it to the last comma. Or at least for as long as it works. You are allowed to make amendments, but you just can’t go changing it every other day. It confuses your audience:

• Your message should be clear and free of confusions. You don’t want to send your audience mixed messages. If you are a makeup artist, advertise yourself as that. If you also do nails, say that you also do nails. But don’t say today that you are an MUA and then next month say that you are a Nail Artist. Your audience won’t know if you changed paths or if you are just being inconsistent. Either way they won’t hire you.
• You must choose your channels wisely and stick to them. Doing some trial and error is fine, but past the trial period you have to make up your mind. If you have done your research and you know that your audience is always on XY social network, then apply all your efforts in there. You don’t have to be in every single channel, you just have to choose the ones that the audience that you want to reach follows. And when you do, stick to those channels. If your audience follows your channel and you never post to that channel, they will get bored and leave. And they will never come back.

And with great consistency comes great regularity. You have to be both Consistent and Constant. If you are going to do this, you have to do it every day. Not just when you have the time or when you feel like it, but every-single-day-for-as-long-as-you-want-a-succesful-marketing-strategy. Period. Because results don’t come overnight, or at least not for the grand majority of us. Results are like the constant dripping of water that wears away the stone. And in this day and age, that stone is tough to wear.

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The Man With A Plan

My photographer friend Ben refers to me as “the man with a plan”, which I find hilarious and flattering at the same time! I am so happy with my job that I just can’t stop talking about it! And every time that I learn something new or when I find out about an interesting event or even when something that I have applied to my business works out perfectly I just feel the need to share it so that others can benefit from it. That’s just who I am, I believe in the community. 

And when he says that I have a plan it’s because I actually do. I don’t just sit around waiting for someone to come hire me. I actively promote myself via various channels so that my potential clients know that I exist. A couple of weeks ago I had an interesting conversation with Marketing Mentor and Business Coach Ilise Benun, the author of the Marketing Plan + eCalendar that I used as a base for my marketing strategy and of which I spoke about in my post ”Your One Person Orchestra”. During our conversation I told her about how I feel that the key elements to a successful marketing strategy are:

• having a plan 
• being consistent with the plan
• managing expectations

Having a clear plan, even if it’s a mental plan, will give you a structure and will help you stay focused on what you want to accomplish. You can’t just do random marketing actions and then complain that you aren’t getting any results. You have to do your homework, research what others are doing, what is working and what is not, talk to people in both your industry and other industries to gather ideas, follow blogs from marketing experts like Ilise, sit down and write down what you have learned and define short, medium and long term goals to keep track of your progress.

Your plan must include at least:

• What: What is your goal? What do you want to accomplish? More new clients? More returning clients? More visibility?
• Why: Why would others want to know about you? What is your contents? What is your message? What do you want others to know about yourself and about what you offer?
• Who: Who is your target? Who is the recipient of your message? Who are you talking to? Are they all alike or do you have to segment them?
• When: When are you sending your message? Once a year? Once a trimester? Will it be the same message or will you adapt it to the time of year when you are sending it or to the target that is receiving it?
• Where: Where are you applying your marketing efforts? What are your channels? Are you doing mailings? Email or print? Are you using social media? 
• How: Do you have a budget? Are you doing this alone? Do you need guidance?

It might sound a bit overwhelming at first but once you start asking yourself all these questions you will realize that you know most of the answers. You just need to put them in order and create a structure that you can follow. I know that as creatives the business side of our jobs is boring and sometimes confusing. But if you take your time to create a plan that you can realistically stick to you will not have to worry about not knowing which steps to take in the future. You just follow the plan.

In my following posts I will talk about consistency and managing expectations.

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“It’s Not Personal, Sonny. It’s Strictly Business.”

This famous line by Al Pacino from the movie The Godfather exemplifies perfectly the struggle of every freelancer. There is a very fine line dividing personal life from work life. And it gets even worse for creatives. Everything we create is an extension of ourselves so when someone dislikes what we make or speaks badly of what we do, we take it very, very bad. Our creations are our babies and nobody wants to hear that they have an ugly baby!

We must learn to separate ourselves from what we create if we want to survive in the creative industry:

• Managing rejection is key for any creative. We have to be able to see that if someone doesn’t like what we do or how we do it, it only means that they are not our target. It’s not us, it’s them. You can’t please everyone; someone out there will like what we do, we just need to keep on looking.

• Learning to see ourselves as brands and as businesses makes it easier for us to sell ourselves. We are no longer trying to sell how good we are at something; we are now saying how our client will benefit from hiring our brand.

But even if we achieve to separate the person from the business, we should never forget that this industry is made out of humans. Quoting another movie, this time Jerry Maguire: “The key to this business is personal relationships”, said Tom Cruise. That everything we do is strictly business doesn’t mean that we have to dehumanise our brand. It only means that the person and the brand must live separately but in harmony… like the ying and the yang.

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Copycat… Copycat… What Are They Feeding You?

They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. I say, imitation is inherent to all animals, including humans. We learn to walk by imitating others, we learn to talk by imitating others, all the skills that we gain in our learning process we get by imitating someone else. But while we are growing up, we take a little bit of what we imitate from one source and a little bit from another source and we build our own personality. And then we become an individual. The same applies to creative endeavours: we see something that inspires us, we replicate it to try to understand it and then we add our own personality and create something new. But, do we?

Quoting Iris Apfel: “There’s so much sameness these days. Everything is homogenized. I hate it.” Everywhere you look singers are singing the same songs, designers are designing the same clothes, high street shops are selling the same styles and even we photographers are taking the same photos over and over again. Imitating and getting inspired by others is not bad, it’s part of the creative process. But repeatedly photocopying what sells more or what magazines want more or what made someone else successful or famous is making this world boring.

Vivienne Westwood famously encouraged aspiring designers to copy, copy, copy in order to learn new techniques. But once you have mastered the craft, you have to add your personal touch. You can find inspiration anywhere, even outside of your industry. Like Anna Wintour said “I really think you have to go out and see things - screenings, theatre, exhibitions (…) Every time you go out, even a walk in the street, you have an idea.”

My former boss used to say that trying to be the best at something is the easy path; you just have to do it better than the rest. But the challenge lies in trying to be different, doing what no one else is doing. Instead of offering our clients the same thing that everyone else is offering only at a different rate, our aim should be to offer something different. Let’s all take a few minutes to review our body of work and compare it to what everyone else is doing. Does it stand out? Does it get lost in the crowd? Does it have a soul?

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Are Creatives Sales-Challenged?

Last week I had an interesting chat with Marketing Mentor and Business Coach Ilise Benun, the author of the Marketing Plan + eCalendar that I used as a base for my marketing strategy and of which I spoke about in my post ”Your One Person Orchestra”. She was interested in knowing how had I adapted her plan to my business. And while we were discussing that, I told her that her guidance was much appreciated because I am a really bad at selling myself. This was not the first time that she had heard this statement, and our conversation inspired her post ”Lame Marketing Excuse #1: ‘I’m really bad at selling myself.’”.

The questions that remained in my head after we finished our call were: do I think that I am bad at selling myself because I can’t sell anything or because I haven’t learned how to do it? And if it’s only that I can’t sell myself, is it because I can’t/don’t-know-how-to do it or because i don’t know what to sell? Most creatives struggle with the business side of the craft because there is a lack of business knowledge in the creative industry. But when someone asks you to recommend a good restaurant or a good movie, you don’t need any business knowledge to sell the one that you think is the best. Are we creatives doomed from the beginning because we have made ourselves believe that we are not business people?

All of this made me arrive to the conclusion that most of the times we think that we are so bad at selling that we can’t even sell water in the desert, when in reality the only problem is that we don’t know how to do it, not that we can’t. Take my example of the restaurant recommendation. You like that restaurant that you went to so much that you would speak about it and recommend it even if no one has asked you for your recommendation. And some of the people that you talk to about said restaurant will buy into your pitch and actually go to the restaurant themselves. You’ve sold it! So why not sell yourself the same way?

I think that the issue here is that when we speak about another brand’s benefits we do it in the third person, but when we speak about ours, we do it in the first. It then becomes personal, and by trying to protect our ego from rejection we convince ourselves that we are bad at sales so that we don’t have to be in a uncomfortable position. If the other person doesn’t like my restaurant recommendation I don’t feel hurt, but if they don’t like my pitch on my brand I feel like a failure.

The solution to the “I can’t sell myself or I don’t know how to do it” dilemma might not be an easy one to find, but there are a few things that I think we can start doing to make it easier on ourselves when we have to pitch our brand to someone else:

1. Know your brand to the last detail. The more you know about your offer, your rates, your skills, your strengths and your weaknesses, the easier it will be to talk about what you do.

2. Believe in yourself. I talked about this in this post and I can’t stress it enough. Everyone else’s opinion of our products or services is subjective. Whether others like them or not doesn’t mean that they are good or bad. It just means that they are not the product or service for them. If you believe in what you do go out there and talk about it. The more you sell yourself the more odds you will have of finding those who like what you offer.

3. Ask for clients recommendations and see what they say about you. This might give you ideas of the things that you need to start telling about yourself.

4. Try to speak of your brand on the third person as an exercise and see what selling points you come up with.

I will put these four points in practice and will write about my experience in a future post. In the meantime, do you have any tips that you can share with us on selling ones selves?

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We Are All A Work-In-Progress

A few days ago I was watching Linda Cliatt-Wayman’s TED Talk on being a principal in a failing high school and how she managed to fix a broken school. One of the things she spoke about was how failure is not a permanent condition and it got me into thinking about my own life and my journey so far. You see, I left my country 15 years ago today and there has been plenty moments where I felt that I had failed in finding the right country to live in, or finding the right job, or starting a life with the right partner, and it was only through understanding that my whole life was a work in progress that I managed to get myself out of the hole and push myself to keep on trying. Failing in whatever we put our efforts on is not bad; not knowing what to do with the lessons learned from failing is catastrophic.

We are all a work in progress… and that is ok, because it means that there is room for improvement and we can always become better. Don’t be afraid to acknowledge your failures or your deficiencies. Everyone has them! Even the people who you think are the most accomplished persons in the world struggle with them. The difference and what makes them successful is that they act on them, they not just dwell on them.

We are not there… not yet! But we will! If we want to and if we work towards that goal and have the patience and consistency to do it. Repeat in your mind: “not yet”. As long as we let ourselves know that there is a possibility to reach our goal we are automatically giving ourselves the chance to reach it. And when we do reach it, embrace the feeling of accomplishment and let yourself understand that once you reach a new level there is a whole new set of challenges to overcome. And that is ok. That’s life.

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Believe In Yourself

The guy in the photo is me, circa Autumn 2013. I had just finished photography school and was desperately looking for work experience in Barcelona. But we were just at the peak of the recession and the creative industry was badly affected. People around me doubted my decision to become a photographer (except for my husband) and life seemed to be proving them right. But thankfully I am stubborn, and when I set my mind to something there is no going back.

It’s been two years now since that photo… and now I live in a different city, I am a full-time photographer and I am at the happiest moment in my life. And all it took was having a clear vision of my goal, a lot of guts to pursue it and listening to no one except for my inner voice. It’s crazy how much you can accomplish when you believe in yourself and how much can change in such a short period of time.

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I’m A Finalist! 32nd AOP Awards

I’m thrilled to share the news with you all! My photos have been selected as finalists for the 32nd AOP Photography Awards! The Association of Photographers - AOP - was formed in 1968 as the Association of Fashion and Advertising Photographers and is one of the most prestigious professional photographers’ associations in the world. 

All the finalists’ photos will be exhibited at The Old Truman Brewery, Brick Lane, from Thursday 8th October until Sunday 11th October along side ShootLDN as part of photoblock. 

I am so humbled and feel like just by being selected as a finalist I am already a winner… I would love to see you all there during the days of the exhibition.

Thank you to everyone who has supported me throughout my creative path these past few years.

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