Holy Crap! There is just too much to get done! Since I got back from NAB a few weeks ago, business is booming. This is fantastic for LooseKeys but for me it’s another story. Projects don’t seem to be moving as quickly as they should and I feel like the work isn’t looking as good as I want or its taking longer to get it to look good. I know everything will get done, I’ll make it through but there’s been a moment everyday for the last week where I just freak out. These moments don’t really help because I end up shutting down and they just make me more stressed about the projects. Isn’t this the reason I started running, to help manage this stress? But lately I’m at a point where I’m worried about running because it’s taking time away from me working. Also there’s been too many nights of little sleep and that doesn’t help get things done either, at least in the long term. Thank goodness I love what I’m doing but I need to make sure I’m using my time efficiently and focusing. So I’ve been trying to turn off Twitter and Facebook; I know there isn’t anything that’s going to happen I’ll miss. And I’m making lists… have to keep those to-do lists and ask for help when it’s needed. 

All right, I really should be working and not blogging… back to it. 

If you know me or at least follow my work and my work online, you know I often have a lot of projects happening at once. Not just with LooseKeys and the Hop Cast but with other fun personal things I’m exploring or trying. With all this going on there are times where I worry about over promising what can be delivered. Which is a terrible thing to do for yourself or your business, it just leads to stress and anger from clients. 

For me, I try to be honest and keep every project in check. If I feel like I’m falling behind or I’m not going to make a date for a client, I let them know as soon as possible. Sometimes it’s hard to face the reality but the more you keep clients updated, the less likely you’re going to make them feel like you let them down. Especially when having that extra day or two is going to allow you to give them a better product then something that is slapped together for this arbitrary date. 

If for some reason I did feel like I had over promised a client, I have a get it done at whatever cost attitude. I call in reinforcements, maybe a freelancer or two. I’ll sacrifice some sleep or whatever needs to happen to make sure that they don’t feel like I let them down. 

Making smart decisions is the best way to avoid over promising and then paying the price. 

You can label yourself any way you want, whether it’s self-employed, a freelancer, an entrepreneur or a business owner. You’re making an independent living by yourself and from the business you’re building. I was a freelancer for awhile as I was getting LooseKeys rolling. I knew when I left Daily Planet ltd. that I didn’t want to just be a freelancer; I had already done that for a few years and knew the challenges I was going to run into.

One challenge you face as a freelancer is that you’re going to reach a point where you can’t earn any more income. You can always be working harder but there are only so many hours in the day and your rate can only be so high. Instead, I wanted to build something and to work at starting a business that one day could run itself.

Over the last couple years at LooseKeys  things have been going well and I’m very happy with the people I’m working with, the work we’re doing and the direction we’re headed.

Maybe one day you’ll decide that you too want to go beyond freelancing at a new company every week and decide to go out on your own and start a business. There are many challenges you’ll confront when making that move. 

The difficulty I faced was in that transition from a single freelancer to a business or a brand I was selling to clients. As a freelancer you may be lucky and have a dedicated number of clients who continue to call on you because they are happy with your work. I didn’t realize how difficult it would be to explain to clients that it’s not just me doing the work, that I run a business now. These previous clients who have hired you for freelance in the past know you and trust you. So they contact you for a freelance job but you have to let them know that you would be taking the job on with your team. It took at least a year to shake that freelancer idea from my past clients; you have to educate and promote your business. Work on it everyday. 

Most of the questions I got were “Now you’re working with other people?” “Can your old clients trust these people?” “Can they do the same work that they see in your portfolio?” 

Speaking of a portfolio; when you do transition to running your own business, you have to build your new businesses portfolio from scratch. More than likely you can’t show any work you did at your previous employment because that’s not your new businesses work, that’s work you did at another company. Depending on where the work was done, you might be a able to work out a deal but usually company X isn’t going to like to see that your new company is saying they did that work. It’s a Catch-22; you can’t get clients without a portfolio and you can’t build a portfolio if you don’t have any clients. 

I’m sure the same thing happened when you first entered the working world. What did you do to build your name and promote yourself before? You sold your skills and created your own projects. You have to do the same for this new business with your team of people. You need to be getting these jobs and then have your team work on them. Sell, then delegate the work that comes in. Jump in when you can but you’re not a freelancer anymore, you have people working for you who want to do the work. Give them work to do. If you love doing the work too, then hire someone to sell. You have to be delegating the work in order to grow and build a business. 

These are different challenges than being a freelancer but nothing that’s too complicated to overcome. It takes time and I still get emails and calls asking me to freelance on jobs. I make it clear that me and my team at LooseKeys can do this yes, but it’s a team, it’s a WE not an I anymore.

If you’re interested or thinking about making the move from the freelancing life then start by getting a few bigger projects and out-sourcing some of work. See how you like managing a project rather than just being the one doing the entire project. 

With every project I work on I try to make sure there is something that is reel worthy but sometimes it just doesn’t happen. Maybe the client killed that one awesome piece or perhaps the subject matter of the video just wasn’t something I was that into. No matter how much I want to show every project I work on there are a few that I tend to just sweep under the rug. I’m not ashamed of them but they perhaps just weren’t my best work or not the work I want to be doing. We all have a few of those jobs from time to time and it’s alright, they all can’t be winners. Don’t feel like you need to be showing off everything you’re working on just to show something. A bad or sub-par piece of work is going to hurt your portfolio and brand more than posting nothing.  

Are you excited to wake up in the morning? Happy to take on the day? Thrilled to see what might happen? Or dread waking up and just want to pull the covers back over your head?

I’ll often stay up late working on different projects or reading articles. There is just so much I want to accomplish everyday and going to sleep just isn’t one of those tasks on the to-do list. 

The same holds true for the morning, well, sometimes it’s a little hard to get moving in the morning especially depending on how late I stayed up the night before. I’m really just not an early riser, no matter how much I try. Even if I’m not jumping out of bed at 6:00 AM, when I do get up I’m ready to take on the challenges of the day. It’s that motivation to get going on the days task that gets me out of bed.

When you can find that thing that’s going to get you bouncing out of bed in the morning and head to work, you’re in a great place.

So you lost a project to a competitor? Why? What made the potential client pick them over you? Was it just price, time it took you to answer emails, or does your competitor offer something you don’t?

I’ve missed out on a few projects but I typically know why and most of the time I’m alright with that but sometimes it really baffles me and I have to stop and think about what made that client pick the other guy for the job.

The best way to think about this is to take the time and write down the services you offer and then write down what the competitor offers. A venn diagram works out nicely for this. It will help so you can clearly see the differences and the overlaps as well. By breaking down what you and the competitors are doing you can see what your strengths are and learn what you could improve or focus on so the next time you’ll win the job over them.

It may be crystal clear to you how your company is different, but I’ve learned that you need to spell it out. When you’re able to highlight your strengths, it’s going to help you stand out and this new client is going to see your value.

When you have a good understanding of what you offer that’s unique to your competitors you then have some key talking points that you can focus on to help new customers understand your value which will help them make a better decision.

If you were advising a friend, in what situations would you recommend your competitor over you? Is this an area you should improve on so you’re not missing out on that work? Maybe it’s not the work you want to focus on and that’s fine. But when you understand where you overlap with your competitors and how you differ it will help you answer why a new client should choose your service over the others.

There were a ton of highlights in 2012 and only a few missteps or miscalculations. Which is good; its better to finish up, then down. 

I decided to shelf CellarCaptain. It’s a project that I’d still love to see happen but right now I decided to not worry about it anymore. If something happens and I find a great developer to help maybe we’ll see what we can do. You have to know where to focus your time and energy and this wasn’t it.

Another project that was a bit of a time suck that I would love to see more of and I know many of you would is Cellarz. But man just that one episode was a lot of work. 

I think the common theme of this past year has been that I need to make sure I’m focusing on my direct goals. I love experimenting with side projects and seeing where they go but sometimes when they begin to suck up too much time or aren’t working, you have to drop them. 

I try to take advantage of every day I have available to get work done. Anyone who knows me, knows that I’m terrible at taking time off and relaxing. I’m always working on new projects and ideas. Heck, I even squeezed in a little work in during the honeymoon. Why not take advantage of the time when it’s available. That’s why I love Sundays and use them to take care of a lot of clean up and planning of what needs to get done. If I’m lucky, I’m not trying to finish up a job for Monday which seems to happen at least one Sunday a month. The rest of the Sunday I’m usually making a plan for the week. Sundays are quiet and relaxing. Most people are using the weekend to get away from their work. But when so much of my work is done in front of the computer it’s easy to sit on the couch and watch a movie and passively update the calendar, base camp and invoices. These actively don’t take a lot of focus but they take awhile and will always take time away from what you love doing, whether it’s animating, writing or filming. 

What separates the best from the mediocre is how quickly they can get back up when they fall down or hit a wall. There was no time to waste after coming back from my honeymoon this week, work was calling. I had to get up to speed quickly and jump back into it. There wasn’t any time to ease into things. 

There was a project that had been going on while I was gone and a couple that needed a jump start now that I was back. I didn’t want to see any of these projects stall or fall behind so I made sure I was back at the desk animating, making phone calls and sending emails right away. It wasn’t completely easy for me to get back into the groove at first; I had been away from those steady work hours for awhile. The first morning back I had a lot I needed to get accomplished so I pushed through it. Even though it was a bit of a struggle to keep focus and get back into my creative space, I just kept working until I found my groove again.  

Writers have writers block all the time and some of them never are able to recover from this block but the good ones (or maybe the lucky ones) get through it fast and overcome their condition. I run into issues all the time whether it’s with clients, computers or even animation hurdles that need to be defeated. Maybe since I am constantly being confronted with new challenges on a daily basis, this made it easier for me to bounce back quickly and soon it felt like I hadn’t been gone at all.

Openness has become an important way I work and live. I share a lot about what I’m working on and where I’m working at. Since I am often working on projects alone it’s great to use the community online to get feedback on designs or ideas I might be struggling with. Being able to share allows me to get feedback quickly to see if this idea is working and what’s not. What I might think is a great and new idea might be dumb and a copy of something else out there. You need an outside point of view to critique and make sure you’re creating the best work possible. If someone is able to point this out to me before I spend too much time with it, I’m able to adjust before too much time and energy was spent on a bad idea. When an idea or style gets positive feedback, it can feel good knowing that I’m on to something and on the right path. Of course whatever I share I make sure never to give out much sensitive information on projects; a client wouldn’t like all their secrets exposed. Instead I share just enough to give a tease and get some initial feedback. With the speed at which work is watched and copied. Why not share early to make sure you’re creating the best work for the client?

Seeing how the workplace has evolved over the last few years is really amazing. We are able to work and collaborate from anywhere and this has changed how, when and where business gets done. Having an office for your entire team to go to everyday is becoming less of a necessity. This has a ton of benefits and sometimes a few unique challenges. At the core LooseKeys is built on freedom and flexibility. I’m able to work with and collaborate with anyone, wherever they are. This gives me the opportunity to work with the right people for the project even if they aren’t located in Chicago. This is something that even three years ago may not have been possible. The tools I use to make sure a remote team works well together are Dropbox, Basecamp, Google Docs, Skype and email. Now a lot of times email is replaced with a Google Talk or AIM but for just sending a quick private message or updates email still is a good option. Skype is used for quick calls or chats if needed. Sometimes having that quick call or face-to-face chat can really help the project run smoothly. Google Docs are used to collaborate with others when writing scripts and creating contracts. It’s nice to be able to open up a document and edit it without having to download a new version every time. Basecamp is used for tracking most projects. Getting some clients on board with Basecamp is at times tricky but when you have them there, they really see the benefit. Not only do the clients see the benefit, other people working on the project are able to stay up to date on the status of things without having to send an email and check-in. Then there is Dropbox. I don’t know if LooseKeys would have existed without it or something like it. It’s hard to remember a time when I was constantly uploading and downloading projects to and from an FTP. Having Dropbox there to sync between all the people working on a single project really can’t be beat. If you’ve ever worked in a large or mid sized studio where all the projects are kept on a server and the entire team can work on a project together then you’ll instantly see the benefit of Dropbox for your remote business and team.

Just because someone can’t be in the same office with you doesn’t mean they can’t work as if they were. There are a few other tools that get the job done but these are the five main ones I use to make sure the LooseKeys remote team is functioning at 100%.