Don't Sweat the Small Stuff
It’s been a while since I’ve made one of these blog posts, for which I can only apologise! The year has really sprung into life over these past few months and I’m grateful as ever to be going through an incredibly busy period, creating video projects for a whole range of businesses.
That being said, you might be a little perplexed by the title of this blog post. Well, the reality is, despite all the successes that this year has come with, there have still been a whole host of potential projects that were rejected, vanished into thin air or ultimately just became too problematic to pursue. I know this is part and parcel of running a business, but to those creatives who linger on these things, I want to tell you to not lose any sleep whatsoever over it!
I was (partly still am) someone who would obsess over these things. Why haven’t they got back to me? Did I quote too much? Is my work not good enough? These are all questions that have run through my head in the past and to an extent still will - it can be frustrating if you feel you’d be ideal for a project, only to have it go nowhere. Over the years, I have experienced two typical types of prospect - ones who have been referred and are set on working with you and others who are coming in cold that are shopping around.
More often than not, those prospects who have been directly referred to you convert because they’ve seen your work, they know you’re good to collaborate with and there’s no real need for them to shop around. The cold enquires are a lot harder to convert because they can be more focussed on cost and may want to work with a creative organisation that has specific experience in their industry. That said, just because someone has been referred to you doesn’t make them the right fit - I’ve taken on work that initially sounded exciting, only for the project to become a relentlessly stressful experience. This could be down to poor communication, last minute brief changes, never ending amends… The list goes on. That’s the one good thing about cold prospects is that they’re trying to find the appropriate fit for them, so if they’ve not chosen to work with you, yes it can feel demoralising, but chances are you wouldn’t have been suited to that project either. I say that’s a good thing, of course getting rejected for work never sounds good, but you’ll probably look back and understand why that happened.
As an example, I was recently approached to bid for a piece of work that I thought sounded ideal. There was relevant experience in the industry, it was a type of video FOSTER Studios had done a hundred times before, I felt confident we’d end up working together! Ultimately, it never came to anything. Why was that? After going backwards and forwards over email and having an initial call, I was invited to speak to the decision makers and we never really landed on the same wavelength when having that conversation. I don’t think it was down to any particular reason, we just had different ideas and ways in which we would approach the task at hand.
I think for any business, not just creative ones, the process of pitching for work with cold leads can leave a bad taste in the mouth if it doesn’t come to anything. You’ve spent all that time emailing, planning and having calls only to see no remuneration for it. But, that’s the game we’re in.
My point to anyone reading this post would be that business can be cutthroat and moves at an incredible pace. Don’t ever linger on the prospect of potential, keep your pipeline busy and you’ll reach a stage where you won’t even be thinking about projects that aren’t guaranteed.
And remember, not all work is good work.