The amount of emails from people asking to work with LooseKeys has been on the rise lately; I’d like to think that’s because we’re killing it.

The truth is school is ending so most of those emails are from students who are graduating and looking for work. It’s great to see that they came across LooseKeys and are interested in what we’re doing, plus I like to see who’s out there. I try to respond back to everyone, even if it’s a simple “Thanks but we’re not looking for someone now.” I do make sure I follow them on Vimeo or Twitter just to keep up with their work and let them know I saw their stuff. 

I’ve received a dozen or so emails from folks over the last couple of weeks and they all look the same, which is a bit annoying. They look like a form letter, where they just replaced the studio name and hit send. I get it, I’m sure they send out dozens of emails and hardly ever hear back. Spending the time crafting a unique email for each one is time consuming. However, it would mean a lot more if they would mention a project or something they saw on the LooseKeys site. Something as simple as I loved this one job. It at least lets me know they looked at the work we did and it gives us something else to talk about. I suggest when you email about a possible job, you think of it as an opportunity to build a connection with a person or company and a way to start a conversation. There’s no way I’d hire someone blindly just based off an email, in particular one that seemed to be pretty generic. If I take the time to read your email and look at your work, I think its a good idea that you take the time to make the email a little more personal or particular to my company. Even if it’s just a line or two in the email and the rest of the email is copy and pasted. 

Also, if you’re sending your work to a small team, especially as small as LooseKeys  don’t attach a long cover letter. I’m not going to read it, all I really want to see after a brief introduction is a reel & website. And if you are just out of school, go ahead and include what school you went to in the email, maybe I know some of the teachers, faculty or alumni. Its another way to get the conversation started. 

This is just my take on the emails I get and if you have your own studio or are in charge of hiring people, please chime in. I’d love to hear what someone else thinks when they get these types of emails

I bet when I came into a studio as a freelancer when I first started in the industry, I was pretty slow. Sure, I knew what I was doing but I had no idea how much that studio thought I was going to get done. I hope in retrospect that it was enough but you never know how people feel once you leave and your part of the job is finished. I will say I learned a lot from those first jobs I was given, they took a risk on me and I even got paid to learn. It felt pretty cool because I was just coming out of school where it was the total opposite; there you pay to learn.

What a crazy and wonderful thing when you think about it, being paid to learn…

I would never knowingly hire a new or inexperienced plumber to come in and fix my toilet. But I do it all the time when I hire a freelancer to work with LooseKeys. I’m typically hiring them either based off previous work they’ve done with people I know or off a few projects I saw in their portfolio. They aren’t necessarily inexperienced but I’m often aware of just a small portion of their work and can only guess on their skill level.

When you bring someone new in for the first time they probably aren’t going to be able to sit down on day one and knock out an animation like you would, unless it’s something simple like rotoscoping or logging footage… they better be up to speed on that. 

When you hire a freelancer you want people who know what they are doing. Depending on the project, as a freelancer when you first step into a new studio you don’t know how that team handles projects or the way they work unless you’ve worked with them before. So it can take a couple days for a freelancer to get up to speed. However, when you’re on a deadline you often can’t waste those couple days training freelancers, especially when you’re working with a tight budget too. That’s one reason I think the same people end up freelancing at the same studios over and over again. That studio and in-house team trusts them and knows that they will get the work done without having to worry too much. That’s one reason I often work with the same people, I know what they can do and how quickly they can get it done. 

Still, there are many times when I bring in someone new, either because other people are busy or I want to try someone else out. And sometimes these freelancers are new to the industry and still learning. I was given that chance to learn years ago and I know a lot of people were given that same chance too which is why I feel it’s important to try to do the same. They don’t always get done what I need them to get done and sometimes it might feel like I’ve wasted money even having them. It can be difficult in certain situations when you have tight deadlines and if you have an inexperienced freelancer working with you it can add more stress than help on the project. However in the end, I was able to introduce them to LooseKeys and the type of work we do.  Hopefully, I was able to help them get a little better by either giving some advice on their animation or workflow. By no means do I know everything, every day I’m learning. That’s just part of the industry we are in; you’re always having to learn new software or techniques just to keep up. Now that they’ve worked with LooseKeys, hopefully next time I work with them they might be that much better. 

The best way to improve is by working with people who have been doing design and animation for years, you often pick up a lot just by listening and watching.  

Over the last couple months I’ve had a handful of freelancers in to help out on a number of projects. 

There are a couple reasons to bring freelancers in, maybe it’s a project you can’t do yourself; whether it’s beyond your skills or you just need an extra set of hands with the amount of work that needs to get done. Either way, it’s more than you can handle and you need help. We’ve been in the too much work to do camp at LooseKeys for a while now and it’s awesome. I have to say it’s a pretty good feeling when everyone is liking the work you’re doing and they want something similar for their business. 

Even with all that extra help, it doesn’t mean that we’re necessarily working faster. The new people who come in don’t always know our work flow or style, so it takes time to get them up to speed. Then I have to take a step back from doing the work and become more of a “Mr. Manager”. Now my time is split between handling clients, making sure these freelancers are doing what I needed and trying to find time to get some design or animation done myself. On paper this sounds fine, other people are picking up some slack and you can focus on something else. But here’s where I’m still learning and growing; in being able to give up control. No matter what was getting done by someone else, I had things that I wanted to do on projects so I ended up re-doing or changing what they had done. I could of just articulated to them what I wanted to see happen but I felt like I was going to be faster at it then them. Which added a lot of extra stress to my plate. The reason they were there was to help, so I didn’t have to worry as much about that job. 

So, did the freelancers really help relieve some of the work load? First, I have to think about where is my time better spent? Is it animating and designing? Or is it being the manager, project coordinator and creative director?

In most cases, with the right people helping on a project, it’s the creative director. The right people, that’s the answer. Making sure you bring people on who can do the work is key but that takes time. It takes time to work with people and learn about them and find out where their skills are best applied.

I learned a lot from the last crazy month or so. Everyone works at their own pace and what I get done in a day doesn’t mean someone else is going to be able to do the same. I also learned that I need to let go of some of the responsibility and trust the people that come in to help out that they are skilled enough to handle the task. Heck, we’re not doing anything all that complicated over here. At this point at LooseKeys I do have to micro-manage all the projects but in order to move forward in the future I’ll have to take more of the creative director role and guide projects in the direction I want them to go. The right team of people can make some great work but someone has to have the map and the leadership to move it all forward.  

Today LooseKeys turns two. It feels like just a couple weeks ago that I left Daily Planet ltd. and ventured out on my own to build this business. There hasn’t been a single day that I’ve looked back and second guessed my decision. 

It’s been an amazing journey with over 70 videos in our portfolio, some awesome clients and support of so many friends and family.  

If one year ago I had felt like I learned a lot, this year proved that I had no idea what I was doing because I was presented with a number of new challenges that I had to overcome. The biggest hurdle was in management of a team. This past year the team grew and Jake Williams came onboard full-time. One step closer to world domination… The team has been building steam and hopefully I’ll be able to add another person to it in the near future.

After two years, I think we’re doing something right over here. I’m slowly making sure that LooseKeys is more than just an animated explainer business. We’re storytellers, artists and with each video we do we’re able to show why clients pick us over the other guy. 

Thank you everyone for the support!

One thing that I quickly learned after starting my own business was that you have to start small, you can think and dream big but it has to start somewhere. Just because you think you and your team can do better work than that commerial you saw on TV, doesn’t mean you’ll get to do that work. Just because you can do the work doesn’t mean you will do the work.

You’re not going to score that big client or nab those huge budgets when you first start your business. I think that’s what a lot of students or younger people realize quickly when they start out. I know I wanted to believe when I first got out of school that if I grabbed a project with Nike or Google, either on my own or working with a studio then I’d be set. But I had a lot to learn… and at the time I didn’t even realize that. By starting small you learn about your business, yourself and you get better.

If I didn’t start LooseKeys small I wouldn’t of been able to learn how to manage people efficiently. Not sure if I could of handled a team of four starting out, but a team of two I understood. Being small allowed me to take risks and test new ideas, something that’s harder to do when you’re big and worried about making sure every piece of the machine is moving correctly. At some point you’ll add people and get those bigger jobs which is what I see happening now at LooseKeys  It’s not a straight climb up by any means but sort of feels like a game of shoots and ladders. I’m working my way up and soon this small team will be a small army.

You can get stuck in a sort of bubble when you’re working especially when you’re working by yourself or with the same couple people. It’s easy to get comfortable; to compliment and boost each others egos. Which feels good but it doesn’t help you step up your game.

You’re not going to get better unless you ask for feedback on your work. Everyone isn’t going to give you feedback or give you feedback that you want to hear. When it’s good and constructive criticism it can be an incredible motivator in helping you to improve. I know I want to do the best work I can and I’m sure everyone else wants that too. I doubt any of us really want to do mediocre work. So when we’re given advice on how we can improve the quality of our work, it is typically embraced because its a motivating force that can only make us do better.

Whether the feedback is good or bad, don’t be afraid to ask for it. Even when it’s bad, it only stings for a minute.

So, go ahead, ask for feedback and use it as an opportunity to get better!

Finding the right people to hire or even just work with is hard. How do you know if they will be right or even able to do the job. I’m sure people who do a lot of hiring have developed a better instict for this but for me I’m pretty new to that area. You just sort of hope who you picked is awesome.

Recently I was watching Adventure Time and the Business Time episode came on. First off, Adventure Time is awesome and if you’re not watching this show you need to be. With that said, this might be a bit of a spoiler for this episode so be warned. In the Business Time episode, Finn and Jake find and hire some business dudes to help them out so they can just focus on the fun stuff. Which seems about right and not a bad reason to hire someone. Letting someone else take care of the work you don’t like so you can do the work you do like.

The trouble is that in this episode the business dudes end up going mad crazy, which isn’t likely to happen with whoever you hire but they could just end up sucking. When that happens, you may end up doing a bunch of extra work trying to fix what they messed up or didn’t get done.

If you do find the right person or people for your team, they can add a ton of value. Don’t just randomly pick some people that need a job because they seem like they know what they are doing. It’s never fun having to do a job over because the person you hired couldn’t deliver what you wanted.

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. 

Last night was the Chicago / Midwest Emmy Awards; LooseKeys was nominated for the :30 second BodyShopBids commercial spot we put together. We were up against some great work from some very talented people and unfortunately we didn’t pull out the win. Win or lose, it was a pretty amazing accomplishment to get nominated. LooseKeys has only been around a year and a half and we’re already playing with the big boys. Being a small company and being up against bigger teams and companies who have been doing broadcast work much longer than us is awesome.

The startup world always talks about disruptive startups; if LooseKeys isn’t destructive to the industry I don’t know what is. We’re seeing the industry change and we’re zigging and zagging with it. Showing that you don’t have to be a big studio or even TV station with a large budget in order to put out great work that can get you recognized by your peers. 

Even though I didn’t come home with an Emmy last night I’m not going to let that slow me down. Everyday I’m going to keep hustlin to make great work, share what I learn and continue to grow.

I work on every video LooseKeys creates. Whether it’s as the Animator, Designer, Producer, or Project Manager and sometimes its all of the above. When LooseKeys puts out a video sometimes there are others talented designers and animators helping bring it to life. Even if I don’t create the entire video myself, I make sure it has my mark or my stamp of approval on it. This isn’t an ego thing and I want to make sure it’s clear I’m not just hiring animators and passing the job off to them. The videos that LooseKeys put out have my name on them, it’s my reputation on the line and I want to make sure I can stand behind the product 100 %. If it turns out to be a lame video it’s on me and if its a hit and goes viral, it’s on me too. I’m taking full responsibility for the outcome and I’ll never play the blame game or point the fingers at anyone else who worked on the video. If I don’t like something another designer did or feel that it’s not right, I’m going to have them fix it or do it myself. There is no one to blame but me because every video in the end gets my stamp of approval. 

I know that when I start looking for new freelancers or even another full-time member for the team at LooseKeys, it’s not the money that’s going to get people wanting to work with me. By no means does that mean I’m undervaluing people’s work or trying to get them to cut me a deal. Since we’re working with a lot of early stage startups the margins aren’t really there. My hope is that most people aren’t just looking for pay and vacation time but that it’s more about the work and the environment. I think that’s the reality of many startups and productive studios. They are pulling in the talent not because of the pay but because people want to be apart of the work and culture. I might me hustlin’ over here on every project but it’s not always because the pay is driving me, it’s typically the work and the amazing clients that I’m able to work with.