I was sitting in a local pub listening to a photographer explain why they were upset at the way their business was starting out. He was pouring out about how there was no work in his town and how impossible to get anyone to look at his book. When I asked how long they had been working at it, they said “two months”.
Two months.
A photographer at a workshop who was very successful sat there bemoaning that two years ago he made $4M, but this year will be lucky to clear $3M. “This business is going to shit…” he explained.
Three million dollars.
A photographer on my FB page was super upset that someone had stolen his image for a high school newspaper, and he was tired of how terrible the business of photography was.
A high school newspaper.
Seems that a lot of photographers who were not ready to be photographers shut their doors.
And then they told the world that failure was inevitable.
They proved it, right.
Nobody can be a professional creative anymore.
Nope. Sorry. Wrong.
Becoming a full-time creative has never been easier or more empowering.
What used to take years can take far less time. But that time must be spent in deliberate practice.
Deliberate Practice.
That is the part that is too often left off when people are discussing the “ten thousand hour rule” mentioned by Malcolm Gladwell.
It states: “It takes 10,000 hours of practice to become world class level.”
Missing part: “As long as the practice is deliberate, consistent, and correct.”
If you practice 10,000 hours doing it wrong, then you will do it wrong… with world class panache.
Learn all you can about what you want to do. Practice it every day. Find a team or tribe that you can lean on for those times when you need some extra push. A good coach or mentor will help.
If you want to be a full-time creative these days, there are many ways to do it. Forget looking to the past for ALL the answers. Some answers haven’t even been thought of yet. But when they are you want to be in the thick of it instead of standing on the sidelines waiting for that perfect moment to step in.
Then when you know you are ready, you make the jump. Clean.
There is no perfect time.
There is no terrible time.
There is only this time. One timeline for each of us.
It has a beginning and it has an end. For all of us.
Our focus should be on what we do with the middle.
That is OUR time. And we have no guarantee on the duration.
There has never ever been a better time to be a photographer, designer, writer, creator of any kind than today.
Right now.
In this time.
Stop focusing on what could go wrong and focus on what could go right.
Because it can always go right.