SEEK OPPORTUNITY, THE REWARDS WILL FOLLOW

SEEK OPPORTUNITY, THE REWARDS WILL FOLLOW

I see it all the time.

Discussion after discussion on how hard it is to find work, and how hard it is to get paid, and how hard it is doing hard stuff.

OK. I get it.

It’s hard.

It is generally hard to do something that is so much fun, so exciting, and provides a creative outlet for your abilities.

But see here’s the thing.

If no one wants to hire you, there are reasons.
If you cannot find work, there are reasons.
If you cannot get paid, there are reasons.

These things do not happen in a vacuum, or without your active participation.

REASONS.

Perhaps your portfolio isn’t up to snuff.
Perhaps your marketing is lame.
Perhaps your personality is off-putting.
Perhaps you are doing something in the periphery that makes them less likely to hire you.
(There are, at last count, 365,209 ways of offending people. Just sayin’…)

Or perhaps they do not believe your work is worth paying for.

I counseled a young lady when she asked for help; “No one will hire me to do photographs for them, I cannot even get my family to let me photograph them for free!”

I took a look at the work, the website, the social media… even though I really didn’t have to go past the website to see what was happening.

She simply was not good enough for people to hire her. She was barely good enough to do free photographs. Her longevity in the business was less than a year and she only shot on weekends… with people who would pay her.

Must have been a lot of Netflix binge-watching because there was damn little photography going on.

But she felt that because she announced to the world her intention of being a photographer, that was all that was needed to “command a good fee”.

The truth was her work needed work, and at its current state it really was worthless.

Value must be earned. We are only allowed to charge what others feel that the work is worth.

I can say I want $600 for that 8×10, but the client must feel that the value is commensurate with the $800 they are gonna plunk down on my sparkling new counter.

If they do not, then it is not sold.

Unfortunately, she did not want to hear that and I had to tell her that I was sorry that she didn’t take my critique to heart. I wasn’t saying that to be mean, I was telling her what she needed to hear so she could fix the situation.

Every situation I work with as a fix.

Not everyone I work with wants to fix it.

Cause very often It is hard to fix.

(I saw a clever meme the other day. It went something like this:
“You spend $10 a day on lunch. That comes to $2400 a year. You can afford a motorcycle, you just don’t want to make sandwiches.”)

Priorities matter.

The problem was not just that she wasn’t ready, it was that she was seeking the reward instead of seeking opportunities to do excellent work. She felt that the reward was due her because she did something.

Period.

The value of which was actually nothing.

Focusing on the reward is NOT what gets you the reward.

Focusing on the work, the process, the OPPORTUNITIES to shine is what gets you the reward.

We read about stand-up comics working for nothing for years, decades even. Along the way they seek opportunities to take the stage. The reward is shit. $20 for a set here, $40 there.

They do not get to Kimmel by refusing to work for nothing, they get to Kimmel by working their ass off for nothing but the opportunity to do great work.

Steven Pressfield (https://stevenpressfield.com/) wrote and wrote and wrote for nothing. He created content that would never see the light of day. Book after book. He tried publisher after publisher. He wrote for magazines, journals, reviews, and most of it was for free or nearly free.

What he didn’t do was write a novel, then call up a major publishing house and demand payment so they could publish his self-proclaimed masterpiece.

Imagine how looney-tunes that would sound.

“Hi, my name is Steve and although I have never written a novel before, you guys need to send a check my way for $1,000,000 and I will let you publish my masterpiece.”

Yeah… that’ll work.

Artists of all professions make lots and lots of art before they get to the part where someone says “wow, that’s really good, may I buy it?”

And bam… the ‘overnight success’ is created.

At least that is what we are told. We get to see the success,  we see very little of the hard work that creates that success.

“Never work for free” say people who are either not in the business or are lying through their teeth if they are telling you they never worked for nothing.

I say work for opportunities.
Access is an opportunity.

I say work for the opportunity to work.
(However, I do not advocate being taken advantage of, or treated poorly. You must know the difference, and that takes – well – experience. When in doubt, call someone who can help.)

One of my students had an assignment from me to shoot some industrial work. She wanted to shoot the solar panels at the regional power plant.

“How would I get permission to do that” she asked?

“By asking for it” was my answer.

So she did.

And she got permission to do some work with the marketing VP at her side.

He asked to be able to use some of the photographs she took and she said ‘of course’.

Then he called her to shoot – for rate – some small ads, then the annual report, and then to go to various locations to shoot executives and basically they are hiring her – at rate – for several days a month.

She shot for free.
She took the OPPORTUNITY to show them what she could do.

Another photographer I work with heard that one of the biggest manufacturers in his city was going to be doing some new product releases. They make windows.

So he went out over a period of a couple of days and shot a bunch of lovely window installations at all times of the day and evening, all over his town.

On his own dime.

We put together a PDF – 16 pages – of his window shots and he sent it to the marketing people hoping they would take a look.

And they did.

And he got his first big account. Three days of shooting.
Then another call from them for three more days.
And another for two days.
And another to discuss some future work.

He took an opportunity and made it his moment to shine.

He showed them what he did on his own.
He showed them how far he would go.
He showed them why they should work with him.
He showed them that he really wanted to do a great job.
He showed them what he could do for them.

And they responded with the trust that he would be what he promised.

Opportunities are everywhere.

The opportunity to do a fantastic job on a piddly little assignment.
The opportunity to make something amazing when all they wanted was good.
The opportunity to do more than the client asked for.
The opportunity to do something just for the sheer hell of it… and give it to someone who would do something cool with it.

Working for free?

Hardly.

Working for the opportunity to work.

The opportunity to make something wonderful.

Every opportunity is a notch closer to that moment when they say…

“Hey, this is really good! Can we hire you to…”

“Why yes, yes you can.”