Finding Work

[staceyrebecca]

What if you were able to do your full-time job from home? Like, could you get something thats programming & do it remotely?


Yeah, You almost need to bill them together just so people know you're doing both.

 

[mrhogg]

I do that as a freelancer, and I actually had that setup for a while (until the job stopped being workable, for a variety of reasons). The problem with that, for me personally, is that I tend to have the laser-like focus, obsessively so, and if I am right beside the fun stuff, and it's quiet for a moment, I'll go do that, and coming back to the money stuff gets really difficult.

 

[ravagefrackle]

Freelancers often have multiple sources of income, whitch make it **** come tax time,

but the reality is thier are only so many hours in a day, and to crank out high quality TV,Video ready puppets you need to devote a lot of time, and effort , a couple of hours at night isnt going to cut it, i spend any where from 8 to 9 hours a day on one particular puppet , you can not rush quality.

 

[Buck-Beaver]

It does seem like in business as soon as you say "puppets" either you loose people or they have no understanding of what you do. Just the other day my girlfriend - who's a puppeteer and teaches part-time - was telling me about how she gets annoyed when she mentions to people that she's a puppeteer and immediately gets invited to do kid's birthday parties.

My theory is that people will gladly watch puppetry (even if they say they don't like it) if it's good, but there's something about the label "puppet" that turns people off. Maybe the trick is to do puppetry, but just call it something else to avoid preconceptions.

 

[Toasty]

Brian,

You might be able to work a catchy ad pitch on the promo piece you are developing. I'm thinking create a short film (ie: a 30 sec commercial) that sets a scenerio involving a "typical web client looking for work" and use your puppet actors to pitch the ideas like "So ya need flash programming, eh? We DO THAT!" "So ya need flash with puppets? We do THAT, too!" "So ya don't need any web stuff at all, but want to impress the heck outta your customers using puppets? (and c'mon, EVERYBODY loves puppets!) Well, you're in luck, Slappy! WE REALLY LOVE DOIN' THAT, TOO!"

Check out Jim Henson's pitch film he created to sell the idea of Sesame Street to PBS back in the day (it's on Sesame Street Old School DVD set vol 1). It uses the same notion that I am referring to here: use your stuff (ie: skills, puppets, etc) to turn potential client onto your stuff, which, in turn, makes them want to use your stuff to improve and market their stuff.

 

[mrhogg]

I've seen the Muppet show pitch video, which I liked.

The demo reel/pitch video wouldn't be just a collection of video I've done, it would need to be a showing of the best of what I can do, which is better than when I did dotBoom. I'm thinking of having some character walking through "the studio" to find a specific production, and having the character walk through a variety of sets, each one stylistically different, detailing a different way we can do stuff. It would/will be crazy complicated to make, as I'm thinking of doing a fake single-take kind of thing, but if I pull it off, it would be amazing.

At the end, there'd probably be some kind of reveal showing that the complicated filming was all done by just a couple people in a very small space.

I'll probably avoid any overt "we can do that for you!" kind of stuff, if I'm appealing to jaded advertising folks. I might throw a bit in, if for no other reason than to show that I've got a range, of course.

 

[mrhogg]

Andrew, what term other than puppets might you suggest? I agree that the first thought people have when you say puppets is that you're doing kid stuff, which can work to a person's advantage in the end product, as you're able to deftly subvert expectations, but getting to that point becomes trickier.

If you were to call them something other than puppets, wouldn't you then have to spend time explaining that they're really puppets?

 

[Buck-Beaver]

I don't know if there is another accurate term for puppets (animated sculpture?), but I am thinking more about positioning and how you present Hoggworks as a "brand".

When I worked for a black light theatre company years ago they always referred to themselves as a theatre company rather than a puppet company because they had found people had a lot preconceived notions about what puppets were. All they do is puppetry, but they focused on the black light aspect of their work because it was unique and different. The Lion King was primarily a puppet show, but it was sold as a musical and an adaptation of something people were familiar with (the Disney movie).

If someone says they are selling puppets they can only sell to people who need puppets and that's a limited and usually not-very-profitable market. A puppet has very limited value on it's own. On the other hand, if someone is selling a marketing service or a communications tool there is a much larger and better paying market for those kinds of services.

So the question to ask I guess is what is it you are really selling? Puppets? Performing? Design? Production services? Or some combination? Who is your customer? What need are you fulfilling?

One of the key tasks when writing a business plan is to come up with what's called a "unique value proposition". Starting a new business an entrepreneur has to figure out why someone should hire them...especially over and above more experienced companies with more credits and a longer track record.

You've got such an interesting mix of skills - flash, puppetry, podcasting, etc. - there's tons of reasons why an advertising firm should hire you. I imagine the challenge you have is to identify what those reasons are, figure out what you're really selling (I think it's much more than puppets) and then identify specific problems that the ad industry has that you can help solve.

 

[mrhogg]

That's a very good, very thoughtful reply, Andrew. Thanks.

I get what you're saying about puppets, and I suppose it was unnecessary flippant of me to suggest that you were thinking solely of a new name, and not a new description for the puppet-related services you're providing.

I think it's absolutely about more than puppets, in the same way that a contractor doesn't simply sell wood and nails; he sells a home. I'm trying to sell effective advertising, stories told using puppets, because puppets connect with people and their more youthful sides, engaging their sense of fun and whimsy. A person shuts off so much of their critical faculty when they see puppets -- because they think of puppets as inherently childish, they view them in that context, which allows whatever your message is to get in past their filters. This makes the presentation of the message so much more effective. I'm trying to sell a conversation with the viewer that can't be as effectively or efficiently done with anything other than puppets.

 

[mrhogg]

A formal business plan probably does make a lot of sense. I need to make one of those.