Justin on March 12th, 2010

When you freelance for a living, your goal is simple: make as much money as you can without going insane.

That insanity comes from being overworked, underpaid or searching fruitlessly for reliable sources of income.  And while each of those is a problem unto itself, they all share a common cause:

You can’t succeed if you don’t have enough time.

As a freelancer, how you manage your time is more important than any other aspect of your business — more than your actual skills, your contacts or your rates.  We all start each day with the same 24 hours, and the better you are at maximizing your time, the more likely you are to dine on something other than Ramen.

Which is why you occasionally need to turn down bad jobs in order to have the time and energy to expend on the good jobs.

Our Logo Is a Giant Red Flag, and… Wait… Why Are You Running Away?

When your income isn’t guaranteed, saying “no” can be scary.  If you pass up a dubious job, there’s no guarantee that a better one will present itself before your rent is due.

On the other hand, if you’re saddled with time-consuming work that’s creatively unsatisfying and emotionally draining, you won’t be able to land the better jobs because

  • you won’t have the time
  • you won’t have the resources, and
  • you won’t have the portfolio that attracts the worthwhile clients

Thus, by accepting the questionable jobs that help you pay the bills now, you may be discounting yourself from the dream jobs that help you define your career later.

Solution?

Define your career daily, starting now.  Because the standards you hold yourself to today — or the concessions you’re willing to make — will be the standards and concessions that future clients will expect from you tomorrow.

To help you follow your instincts and find your comfort zone, feel free to filter your new business opportunities against this handy common sense checklist.

10 Reasons to Say “No” to a Client

  • A proposed deadline leaves no room for error.
  • You’d need to outsource work for which you have no trustworthy contacts.
  • You’re unfamiliar with the required tools, but think you could “learn on the fly”.
  • The proposed budget for the entire project is less than your equivalent day rate.
  • Despite your fees for additional revisions, their review process is never-ending.
  • As proposed, the finished product would never be included in your portfolio.
  • Your expenses, rental fees, licensing fees, etc., would exceed your profits.
  • People you trust have had vocally negative experiences with them.
  • Their projects tend to exceed their initially-proposed scope.
  • Your creativity would be limited to pushing buttons.

I realize that some of the above don’t actually seem like detriments.

For example, you may view a client who perpetually requests reams of revisions as a cash cow, because your cash register dings every time they want to change the font (again)…

… but if you end up half-assing someone else’s project because your attention is being continually diverted by a client who can always afford to dither, you’ll never be able to focus on the projects that could be done right the first time.

Or, you may be thrilled to land easy work that requires zero creativity on your part…

… but your portfolio will pay the price, and your dream clients are unlikely to be impressed by your template-deploying skillz.

Obviously, your own criteria may differ from mine.  In fact, the most universally relevant advice I can offer you is this:

Be sure you have some job-evaluating criteria in place — whether it’s mine, yours or this guy’s — before you start saying “yes” to every job you stumble across.  Otherwise, you’ll end up saying “no” to the ones you really want, because you’ll be stuck in Yes Man’s Land.

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Admit it: deep down, you’ve always known that the world works differently for The Important People.

You just hate it when the world proves you right.

Take Conan O’Brien, for example.  The guy sends out a single tweet and he changes this girl’s life.  Meanwhile, you desperately retweet your own blog posts 14 times a day in the empty hope that Chris Brogan will accidentally click the retweet button while his cursor is hovering over your name, thereby unintentionally beaming your essay about hashtag etiquette to his thousands of rabid followers.

And sure, you have a few close friends who seem to listen when you talk, but some of these people on the Internet — people who are just like you — are listened to (and trusted by) by tens of thousands!

How much cooler are their lives than yours?

Well, as it turns out… not that much cooler at all.  But possibly more productive.  And that might be the real dividing line between you and Them:

While you’re just trying to get people to notice you, they’re trying to get you to notice other people.

So… How Do the Cool Kids Use Twitter?

In order to learn a bit more about this perceived difference between the social media “influencers” and those of us being influenced by them, I contacted 40 Twitter users with followings over 10,000.  Of those 40, fifteen responded, and thirteen of them had the time to take my six question survey.

[DISCLOSURE: Of the 15 respondents, I've met 6 personally.  Of the 25 non-respondents, I've met 7 personally.  Conclusion: knowing me is irrelevant.]

The respondents (in alphabetical order):

What follows are the most pertinent responses to my 6 questions, along with my own summaries based on their composite experiences.

Q1: “Did you make a conscious effort to grow your Twitter account?”

Since so many people do invest time in growing their Twitter following, whether organically or by nefarious means, I was curious about the degree to which my respondents had “worked” for their authority.  The results ranged from the conscious…

I joined Twitter in July 2007 with the goal of marketing and networking.  Initially, it was important for me to grow my following, especially since there were very few people from my home state of Hawaii and zero from my existing network on Twitter at the time.  I watched the conversations on Twitter, and I followed those [whom] I was following on their blogs, in forums, webinars, livestreams, etc.  I engaged in conversations as often as I could, outside of Twitter.

A few months after joining, I had my first tweetup (before they were called tweetups) with Guy Kawasaki. It was very brief, but it led to a lifetime opportunity to work with him on Truemors, and I continue to do so on Alltop.
@NEENZ

… to the incidental…

God no. I’ve always had the same approach to Twitter: I say whatever comes to mind, share links that I find interesting and RT anything that catches my eye that I think others will like.

I’ve never paid attention to the numbers, and when they started going up, it was very strange.  A couple of times, I asked why people followed me and I always got a variety of answers.  Most of them come from listening, reading or watching a piece of content I produced somewhere else, and they want to stay up to date on what I’m doing.
@cc_chapman

… to the accidental.

No.  I had 30,000 followers built one relationship at a time and [through] word of mouth.  In Oct 2009, I got on Twitter’s SUL [Suggested User List] and grew.
@kanter

Conclusion?  There’s no “guaranteed” way to grow a massive following, but most respondents do share two common traits: providing information that others consider valuable, and being authentically interested in meeting new people.

In other words, they caught their flies with honey, not with endless claims about how wonderful their own work is.  On Twitter, finding the right mix of humility and hubris is key.

Q2: “How has your experience as a Twitter user changed due to the growth of your followers?”

If you’ve never had 10,000 people on speed dial, you might have a romantic idea of what that experience would be like.

Alas, my respondents claim you’d be disappointed…

It is MUCH harder to have conversations and track what is going on in the marketing, communications and PR communities. I miss a lot of news, updates, blog posts, etc.
@BethHarte

… and aggravated:

I’ve also had to accept that I just can’t respond to everything, and deal with the sometimes snarky fallout that ensues, like folks claiming I’m a “twitter snob” or “not engaging”.
@AmberCadabra

… or even nostalgic:

I’ve lost track of my original crew, but I’ve met very interesting, cool people along the way. That, coupled with working harder than ever at my job, means [I have] much less time for longer discussions on Twitter.
@newmediajim

… except for those times when it’s freaking wonderful.

b/c I have so many followers and [so much] influence, I get invited to events, freebies, projects, etc. It’s a lot of fun being treated like a celeb, but also weird.
@MayhemStudios

As expected, the volume of incoming information makes meaningful conversations harder to come by.  But there are solutions.

It’s made me focus on the people that actually interact with me. They stand out from the crowd, and I try to follow anyone that interacts with me.
@MackCollier

Conclusion?  Sean Combs was right: mo’ money (or mo’ followers) creates mo’ problems… but also mo’ opportunities.

Q3: “Do you receive more meaningful feedback as a result of having your tweets circulated to more people?

All but two of the respondents said “yes” to this question, including:

I am very grateful for my Twittersphere.  They’ve often been able to provide me with solutions during times when I’m traveling [or] different tools to use to improve my business.  One time someone from MN sent me the number to a locksmith in Hawaii when I locked myself out of my home!
@NEENZ

… and:

For sure. I’ve had a lot of doors open for conference, clients and opportunities from more people retweeting or sharing my tweets with other people.
@cc_chapman

… although not everyone is convinced that increased reach is a good thing.

I get a lot more criticism now than I ever did when I say something off-color.  Is that meaningful feedback?  Maybe.  I do see a lot of re-tweets of my posts and shares these days, but that’s just a matter of scale, I think.  It’s nice, but I pay as much attention to flowery compliments as I do the haters.
@JasonFalls

I suspected this answer might be self-evident, and I was (mostly) correct.  Therefore, I owe myself a Coke.

Q4: “How has a larger Twitter following changed other people’s perception of you?

Refreshingly, nearly everyone reported a healthy dose of skepticism associated with their own public perception:

I’m not sure. Perhaps some people think I’m some sort of social media “whatever” because of a larger following, but it took over three years to get here.
@DougH

People think I’m more important than I am.  I’m still just a dumb guy with a blog.  Sort of.
@JasonFalls

I have no idea if it has, and it really shouldn’t since anyone can have a larger Twitter following; just follow more people!
@MackCollier

Some were even skeptical of the “influence” metrics themselves:

To the plus (and not necessarily accurate), I’m looked at as some kind of a “model” for what to do, and how to use Twitter well — and therefore one of those dreaded social media experts…  I also think it tends to falsely inflate my “influence”, with things like Twitter lists, rankings, and the like.
@AmberCadabra

Jim Long may have summed up our misplaced Twitter valuations best:

It’s funny.  More and more people that I meet, whether online or in real life, will say things like: “Oh, newmediajim, you’re great!”  I find myself pretty unremarkable.   [But] I think what I do for a living allows me to share pretty remarkable experiences.
@newmediajim

… unless you happen to be in the business of managing other people’s perceptions, like our anonymous respondent, who may have offered the shrewdest response:

My clients see it as a selling point. The more followers I have, the more important I am to them. Why? Because they don’t know any better, yet.
[Anonymous]

Q5: “What are you able to accomplish today that you could not have accomplished with a significantly smaller Twitter following?

And here’s where the answers get really interesting.  (NOTE: I’ve emphasized the elements of their responses that I find most compelling.)

Hmmmm…..informal research is the only thing that comes to mind specifically for Twitter.

What I mean is that because of my large number of followers, I can throw out a question for a client, for curiosity, or any other reason and be sure that I’m going to get back a handful of really solid answers.  That isn’t possible without such a big pool to fish in.
@cc_chapman

… or:

Driving a fair amount of traffic to other people’s great content. I had a spirits blogger email me one day in a stupor because he’d gotten the single largest traffic day in his blog’s history, all because I shared his post on Twitter and Facebook.
@JasonFalls

… or:

Today I can ask for the answer to a question, or a contact at a company, and have several answers within seconds. That obviously didn’t happen when I had a much smaller network.
@MackCollier

… or:

It gives you much more influence. Makes it easier to help with charities, getting work, people / companies listening & reach out to you. I’ve even done some design work for Guy Kawasaki b/c of Twitter.
@MayhemStudios (and yes, if you’re counting, that’s 2 respondents who’ve obtained work with best-selling author Guy Kawasaki because of Twitter)

… and:

I have a larger base of intelligence and insight upon which to draw. I can get faster and broader exposure for an idea, [whether it's] mine or other people’s. I can help truly have an impact on other people’s work, and point more eyeballs to people doing significant things. And I can solicit broader and deeper input and feedback from broader audiences across many industries and disciplines that I couldn’t before.
@AmberCadabra

See a pattern?

The people with large audiences are most interested in using their audiences to aid and empower other people.  Twitter analysts like Dan Zarrella have noted that talking about yourself is a less-successful Twitter strategy than talking about others; now you see this truism remains ingrained in users’ behavior (and personalities) even after their popularity has been confirmed.

Conclusion?  You can buy followers, but you can’t buy humanity.

Also, there can even be hidden benefits to having such a large following, like…

Support when I get attacked by a detractor. I’ve had folks defend me without me even asking them to, or knowing that they had. That can’t be bought or gamed…it needs to be earned.

I also think having a large follower count allows me to NOT be on Twitter as much as I was a year or two ago.
@BethHarte

On the other hand, there were also respondents who reported no significant changes whatsoever, like:

I’m not sure that there is anything that I’ve been able to accomplish today that you could not have accomplished with a significantly smaller Twitter following.
@newmediajim

… and Beth Kanter, who — despite being followed by over 300,000 people as I type this — simply answered: “Nothing. Except been offered some review copies of books.”  (Admittedly, in Beth’s case, it’s entirely possible that her exposure via the Twitter Suggested Users List bloated her network with people who don’t demonstrably add value to her efforts in the non-profit world.)

Which brings us to the unasked question: is quantity more important than quality?  Mitch Joel, for one, doubts it.

I’m not sure size/amount has anything to do with anything.  It’s about “who” I’m connected to.
@mitchjoel

Ah, but who would Mitch Joel be connected to if he weren’t Mitch Joel?  Chicken, meet egg…

Q6: “Any observations, insights or opinions about Twitter that weren’t appropriate for the questions above?”

Several respondents added some food for thought, including:

My only thoughts around Twitter are, what other plans do people or organizations have for the day when Twitter ceases to exist (if that day ever comes)? Meaning, I see a lot of eggs in one basket and Twitter being used as an end-all channel.
@BethHarte

After the first 300-700 followers, it doesn’t really matter. The only thing that increases is the potential “touches” – which is great, but you get decent breadth for most uses from that number.
@DougH

I just wish people would stop trying to set the “rules” for Twitter. It’s like trying to set the rules for the city park. People can use it however they like. If you don’t like the way they do, don’t follow them.
@JasonFalls

The way I use Twitter continues to evolve and change. It’s always been a state of constant flux, what works for me today could be completely wrong next week. So it’s a state of constant learning. Damn, so much for being a Twitter expert.
@MackCollier

And, echoing his disbelief at his own popularity, Jim Long ends on a philosophical note:

Despite having as many followers as I do, I sometimes feel like I’m by myself out there.
@newmediajim

And there you have it, folks — authoritative proof that at the end of the day, no matter how many people you have hanging on your every tweet, we all take our pants off one leg at a time.

Unless your legions of Twitter groupies have stalked your every move on FourSquare and are tearing them off for you.  But that’s a popularity problem I can’t possibly help you solve.

And I doubt you’d want me to.

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Last Thursday, I attended the fifth installment of Ignite Baltimore, an event designed to get people excited about creating positive change in Baltimore.

And yet, somehow, the experience had the exact opposite effect on me… and this got me thinking about HOW we talk about the things we most care about, and why we might want to change our approach.

How an Allegedly Inspirational Event Turned Me Into a Loathsome Beast

Ignite is billed as a rapid-fire salon of ideas, in which a dozen speakers talk for 5 minutes (and 20 Power Point slides) about a subject they’re passionate about.  For the most part, the presentations on this night were somewhat insightful, occasionally incoherent, but mostly harmless.

And then something happened that I’m still trying to process, because it altered my perception of reality.

15-year old environmental activist Hannah Freedman took the stage and delivered an eloquent, well-rehearsed, mildly convincing argument for the importance of youth activism.  I was impressed by her chutzpah, and I was clapping at all the times when I was supposed to be clapping.

And then I noticed the body language of the couple in front of me.

Slumped.  Stoic.  Slightly pained.  They looked as though they wanted to be anywhere but here, and they projected a stark resentment of everything Hannah — and, by extension, Ignite itself — stood for.

This momentarily irritated me, and I thought about reveling in my ethical superiority for being able to appreciate something as fundamentally galvanizing as youth activism.

But then I tried something different: I adopted (what I presumed was) this couple’s point of view.

I sat there, slumped and indifferent, to see how it would feel to resent a teenager for having the temerity to care about her own future.

I found it alarmingly easy to do.

In fact, the only more alarming part was how hard it was to shake that point of view.

When Hannah concluded her speech with something like, “Because we are the future, and you can either complain about it or you can help us,” I almost shouted something at the stage, Joe Wilson style.  That’s when my girlfriend realized she’d have to psychologically restrain me for the rest of the event.

All night long, I found myself unable to resume my traditional worldview.  Anytime someone took the stage, I implicitly rejected their claims as false because they didn’t jibe with my newly-adopted values of capitalism and protectionism.

I started to hate the arts, the government and people in general.

I refused to smile or applaud.  My girlfriend Ann and our friend Maya, seated on either side of me, went from being annoyed at my behavior to being angry at my obviously negative judgment of the event, concerned that I might ruin it for someone else.

Even Dave Troy, who’s well-known as a tireless cheerleader for Baltimore’s future (and who was sitting directly in front of me) moved a few seats away.  Granted, that could have been due to any reason, but I can’t help but feel that my aural negativity drove him to seek shelter.

My Newfound Hatred, in a Nutshell

My visceral reaction to the night can be summed up by a recap of the presentations.

Of the 13 talks delivered:

  • 4 of them either directly or indirectly urged attendees to fund the arts
  • 2 of them urged adults to take children seriously
  • 1 of them urged attendees to donate to Haiti
  • 1 of them urged attendees to donate used cell phones to Africa
  • 1 of them urged the creation of a federal Department of Peace
  • and 1 of them explained how Wolverine embodies the American ideal

As a social liberal and fiscal conservative, I would normally have appreciated the pluck of the presentations, even if I would have doubted their ability to make a damn bit of difference.

But on this particular night, thanks to my newly aggravated and seat-slumped soul mates, I left the auditorium irate at the audacity of the speakers.  Namely:

  • If the arts are so important, why can’t they MAKE MONEY without begging me for it?
  • If MORE government is the solution to anything, I’ll eat my hat.
  • If dying Haitians and Africans need help, why don’t they just GET JOBS?
  • If kids are our future, why can’t they prove their merit without COMPLAINING?

In short: stop telling me why I should care about your problems; SHOW ME WHY IT’S RELEVANT TO ME.

BE RESPONSIBLE.

PROVE THAT YOU’RE DOING YOUR BEST, and maybe I’ll feel like your cause is worth my time / effort / resources.  (But, honestly, probably not, because I work hard for my money and I’ll never warm to the idea of you begging me for a handout.)

Nonetheless, MEAN SOMETHING to me, and maybe I’ll care.

(And for fuck’s sake, Wolverine is Canadian.)

So… About Last Night…

Needless to say, I woke up feeling “normal” again on Friday, but it still took me a few more days to wrap my head around why I was so upset on Thursday.  And I think it boils down to the following:

  • I cannot believe how easily I adopted a POV I normally reject as inhumanely self-centered.
  • That kind of ingrained resistance to change is addictive.
  • Hating everything didn’t make me feel better about myself, but the alternative didn’t make any sense either.  Thus, I was trapped in an illogical whirlpool of loathing.

All of which made me realize that liberals will never be able to convince the conservatives of the world that liberal ideas are valid because conservatives and liberals don’t even see the same reality.

If two sides can’t agree on the facts, their shared needs and the benefits of the most likely outcomes, there’s no hope for “bipartisanship,” much less a civil discussion of what we as a country (or a city) need in order to prosper (or even survive).

So, as a way to make up for the karma I likely burned during my Thursday night shitstorm, here’s my morning-after pitch on how we (usual) liberals can better bridge the gap between what we think matters and what everyone else thinks is important.

3 Ways to Keep the Haters From Dismissing Your Worthless Ideas

1.  Stop treating the arts like a helpless, valueless charity. The arts have been around for as long as we’ve been civilized.  But to hear modern arts professionals explain it, the arts will shrivel and die unless bleeding heart patrons (and our own tax dollars) can keep them on life support.

If the arts aren’t at least partially self-sufficient, no amount of hand-wringing will convince the people holding the purse strings that they’re worth supporting.

Here’s a secret: no one wants to invest in something that doesn’t believe it can survive under its own power.  People are funny; once a charity or an artist proves it can keep itself alive no matter what, we’re more inclined to support it with our own donations because it respects itself.

Begging?  Never sexy.  And if you believe that opera, theatre, live music and visual arts are sexy and life-affirming, you need to start by affirming your own will to live.

2.  Kids: Stop Talking Down to Your Parents.

Listen, I know we live in a fucked-up culture where the opinions of 14 year-olds are more highly-prized than the opinions of 65 year-olds because those 14 year-olds have access to more disposable income than the Medicare generation does.  But just because we who market products to children tell kids that we value their opinions, that doesn’t mean we really do.  At least, not beyond the ways in which their opinions can be exploited to make us rich.

If you’re under the age of 22 and you want to change the world, be my guest.  The world could use a good sprucing-up.  But you won’t get there by admonishing the adults for ignoring you, because the fact is, adults ignore everything, including their own consciences and common sense.

Revel in your youth.  Then do something.  We like to say “actions speak louder than words” because, like most cliches, this one is always true.

3.  Lead by example.

One of the best presentations of the night, even despite my hate-induced stupor, was delivered by Ellen Worthing.  It was about “bushwacking,” the art of (literally) going off the beaten path to discover something all your own.  In Worthing’s case, she detailed her frequent excursions into the bowels of Maryland, aided by her GPS unit and a suspicion that something more interesting was “out there.”  And she was usually right.

Ellen’s presentation filled the audience with admiration for her rugged individualism.  She tacked on an obligatory “follow your own path” generalism in her last slide, as a way of making her presentation about “us” instead of just her, but it was unnecessary; by showing us what she was capable of, she ignited more inspiration in her 500 listeners than anyone else did all night.

And, best of all, she didn’t ask anyone for money.

In Conclusion…

I’m sure Ignite Baltimore got a lot of people talking, which is the whole point.  (Technically, the whole point should be getting people to take action, but that’s a little too optimistic for a $5 event with a cash bar.)

And maybe the ideas people absorbed that night will get them moving.  Maybe some old cell phones will get donated to medical workers in Africa.  Maybe a few more people will pay for a night at the opera, or will venture out to an art event they might otherwise have ignored.

But if we really want to ignite Baltimore and get people moving in a positive direction, what we need are more people who lead by example and fewer people trying to guilt the public into a handout.

Because the only thing more addictive than doubting the relevance of everything is being inspired by seeing someone else exceed our own pessimistic expectations.

* If you’ve ever seen an episode of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, you know what I’m talking about: anytime Will Smith’s friend (and real-life DJ) Jazzy Jeff says or does something inappropriate, Uncle Phil bum-rushes him out of the house, limbs flailing.

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