Digital Hitchhiker

It’s hard to believe that its already been a year since I left Daily Planet Productions ltd. and started my own business, LooseKeys. Going from a secure job with benefits and a guaranteed paycheck each week to… well, no job security, no benefits and if we don’t get enough work, there’s no paycheck at all. Its been crazy but at the same time exciting. I have no regrets for making this change and starting this venture. This year has flown by and has been one of the most exciting times of my life. Every day has proven to be a new adventure and I don’t see that changing anytime soon. You can only be prepared so much for starting your own business. Having Maeve there with me along the way has proven to be an extra benefit, without her by my side, everything would have been twice as challenging. Over the last year I’ve had the chance to work on some amazing projects for LooseKeys with some great clients.

Its been a crazy ride these last twelve months, but we’re only getting started. I’ve built some solid relationships already and I’m looking forward to strengthening them even further. So get ready for some big things from the LooseKeys team.

Thank you all for your support in helping to make LooseKeys a success!

Lately I’ve noticed that a lot of people using social media are being relativity positive. I’m not saying everyone is, some use Twitter and Facebook as an outlet to vent. Sometimes it just feels easier to be negative and complain. But I personally see a lot more positive tweets and updates in my stream. I guess it comes back to the if you don’t have anything good to say, don’t say anything at all. Do you think anyone really wants to follow or be around you if you are always miserable or taking out your problems on the world? Uh, no. I wonder if there is a way to take the positive attitude we all put forward online and move it to our everyday life?

Yesterday when I was riding my bike I hit a pot hole and got a flat tire at the same time someone drove passed me in their car and yelled something about bikers. My day was not off to a great start. I started to tweet something like “Not a fun way to start your day… hit a potholed and got a flat tire. #FML.” Instead I spun it and said “First flat on the new bike. Looks like I’ll be switching these to armadillos when I make it over to the bike shop.” Although I had to walk a few blocks, I decided to take the positive and not have that event mess up my entire day. The day turned out to be a pretty good one and it was very productive. Don’t think it would have been that way if I had complained publicly.

If you handle what life throws at you with a more optimistic and cheery outlook, positive people are going to want to be around you, all the time. Wouldn’t that be a lot more fun to be around then someone complaining all the time and being negative about their lives. If you’re being positive online take it offline and enjoy life that much more.

Don’t kid yourself, you physically can’t do it all by yourself and don’t worry it’s not a sign or weakness or failure to ask for help. For many of us, asking for help can be a difficult thing to do. Sure it may be hard to admit you need a hand, you’ve been making it work this long without that help but at some point there comes a time when you’re better off getting things off your plate and your mind. If you’re getting better at your work or your business is growing you’ll need to use your time to focus on harder, more time consuming things. It doesn’t mean you failed or couldn’t cut it, your efforts were just focused someplace better. But figuring out which tasks to give up and hand off is the hardest part and this is what I think makes a good leader or great boss.

That’s the fight I’m having with my work right now and its something that needs to happen if I’m going to grow LooseKeys. Most of the time I can be a “lone ranger” of sorts and do everything myself. It’s not because I’m afraid to ask for help but more often then not its because I want to prove that I can do it all myself. But it’s gotten to the point that I need to figure out the best way to scale up or pull back a little. More and more I’m starting to see the benefit of asking for help to get the work done. And I’m finding in most cases that the work is better when you are putting faith and trust in another person. The people I’ve chosen to work with have been doing such great work with each and every video that I’m receiving more requests with even larger projects on the horizon. Now I’ve always been a team player and love working with others but it’s a different thought process when it’s your team and it’s your job to figure out how to make it all work. At times I have it in my head that I’m the only one that knows how to do it the right way. But you can’t play a game of baseball by playing every position on the team so why am I thinking of the business as a single man game. Just sitting down and creating the work or doing the sales is the easy part but being the leader and finding the right people to make your team great is trickier then you’d think. If you just ask, you can quickly find some great people out there that are willing to help you in any way they can. You just have to ask for it. You’ll likely see me giving up more responsibilities on some projects and trusting the team I’ve been putting together to handle more so I can focus on other parts of the business that might not seem as exciting but are crucial. Success is almost never forged alone, there is always a team right there with you, you just have to know when to ask.

Everyday you should be pushing yourself to create better and better work. It’s a good sign if you happen to look back on the work you created last year or even last week and you don’t think it’s good. It shows that you’ve gotten better and your skills are improving. But why look back at all? Just to pat yourself on the back and say look at that, you’re way better now. Why waste your time looking back at all? Why not just keep pushing forward and know you’re getting better. The Minnesota hiphop collective Doomtree has a great line. “We don’t watch the reply ‘cause we too busy playin”. It’s such a prefect line, focus on what you’re doing now and when it’s done, move onto the next thing. Don’t worry about how it turned out or what people are saying about it in a year from now. Do you really care if someone in a year or two from now likes or dislikes what you created? Don’t be that high school football star remembering that one touchdown he made at the homecoming game. Live in the present and push yourself now because what you did before is just a small footnote in what you’re moving towards. Everyday look forward and push yourself to create great work and don’t waste your time worrying about what you created in the past.

I’m just getting done with a rush job and the coffee and adrenaline are still at peak levels. Rush work is work with an extremely short deadline, a deadline you usually would have never agreed to. As I’m wrapping it up I’m wondering if it was really worth it. I either take on a rush job because it comes with an extra bonus or it’s for a client I have enjoyed working with in the past and want to help them out. More often it’s the cold hard cash that really makes the deal seem sweet. However, after this job and years of accepting rush work it has really started to seem like a mistake. First and formost it really wears on you and burns you out in the long run. Was the extra cash really worth having to take a week or two off because you needed to recover? Wouldn’t you have been better off taking on a job that didn’t come with that bonus but allowed you to still enjoy the project and your life? The other reason I’m really over rush work is because the clients start to expect it. They know that if they kick a little extra cash your way you’ll bend over backwards for them. If every job comes with a bonus, is it really a bonus?

Don’t let the money blind you from seeing the amount of work the projects going to take. And no job is worth missing or spending time with your family. Talk with the client first and find out why it’s needed and when. You’ll find that even those tight deadlines can often be negotiated.

Sitting at your desk or even worse your cubical for 6 - 10 hours a day is enough to break the most positive spirits. I know I don’t do my best work when I’m stuck eating lunch at my desk in a windowless office. That’s why I try to make time to play in the middle of the day. “Play” covers a lot, but really it’s anything that isn’t work. If it’s going out to lunch, getting coffee from the coffee shop a couple blocks away, an afternoon movie, hitting the gym during lunch or even going to the park and flying a kite. Just getting away from your desk for 30 minutes or an hour will allow you to come back with new energy and new creative juice. So play in the middle of the day and enjoy life, it’s the only chance you’ll get.

We need deadlines to get work done so I’m not saying we should get rid of deadlines all together. But I believe we should get ride of those hard deadlines we set. For instance, telling someone “I’ll have that for you at 1 PM on Wednesday” or “5 PM on Friday”. You now made yourself two deadlines, you have to have whatever you’re working done on that day but also at that time. Those sort of things are going to drive you crazy and just make you stress out. If you aren’t able to hit that 1 PM deadline you are going to have to email the client and let them know when its coming. Why couldn’t you have just told them to look for it in the afternoon on Wednesday? You would of saved the stress and avoided wasting your time having to send that email. I personally try and set much more relaxed deadlines; that’s one of the luxuries I have working for myself. I spent years living with hard deadlines. Clients emailing and calling every 15 minutes because they needed a spot by a certain time so it would air for broadcast the next day. I knew that wasn’t how I wanted to run my business. Instead I say, “I’ll have that for you by the end of the week or end of day”. It makes for a lower stress level since “end of the day” means different things to everyone and I’m not setting arbitrary times since I know most of my clients are in different time zones anyway.