Tag Archives: kelly-cline

Life, Business and Bad News

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In the last few weeks it seems my world has gotten smaller in almost every sense. It started when my wife’s health took a hit and she was diagnosed with not one, but two serious conditions, one of which was cancer. This kind of news will make everything else seem unimportant, all of a sudden. The fact that I lost my mom to cancer in May is probably not helping any.

The good news is that they caught it super early, and that the doctors are expecting a full recovery from the cancer part. There’s still the other issue of course, which will require surgery and several weeks of recovery. The ugly kind, where they give you hardcore meds just to deal with it. Right now, we are both mentally and physically preparing for what’s ahead.

Since we are both independent businesses owners, this situation has another effect on us – neither one is working much, while the bills keep piling up. This is added stress that we really don’t need. We are not on the brink of starvation or anything like that, but we are definitely feeling the crunch. Which is what led me to write this post.

If you are a freelancer or a one-man band, do yourself this favor: cover your bases in case of an emergency. Get health insurance. Let me repeat that. Get. Health. Insurance. As an independent, insurance is expensive and if you’re bootstrapping it is easy to tell yourself you’ll add it later. Don’t. Bite the bullet and pay the man. Cancer doesn’t wait until you’re ready.

You’ll want a support network. We have had daily messages from friends and family, checking in and offering help and encouragement. This support is crucial, especially if you’d like to try and stay positive.

Anybody working for themselves will be used to being immersed in the work, and powering through to get the job done. You may even enjoy it. But when illness hits the household, that is taken away. Focus shifts, and staying on top of business quickly fades into the background. It has to. If you can, put a little aside for a rainy day. You might even look into getting a backup in place, if you have clients who need regular pampering or can’t be rescheduled.

Whatever you do, don’t just sit there thinking it will happen to someone else. It’s not a gamble worth taking.

Focus on Another Passion

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Some time in the mid 90s I began toying with the idea of publishing a magazine much like the arts and culture section of a newspaper, without all the other, uninteresting stuff. Throughout the years, I have filled many a notebook page with different ways to approach this idea. At one point I researched the cost of a small print run, and quickly decided the web was the way to go.

Finally, in January 2010 I fired up a blog — Another Passion.

Since day one I have run Another Passion magazine style, with lots of interviews combined with portrait photography, and editorial posts, all of it somehow relating to the life and work of artists and creative professionals. Along the way I have met many talented and kind people, and gotten to see things I otherwise wouldn’t have. But as a lone wolf I can only do so much, and a one-man show was never what I had envisioned.

Early on I gave the blog 3 years to grow and with the Fox/Tribune syndication deal, I was off to a good start. In late May of 2011, well into the site’s second year, I started seriously working on ways to grow Another Passion. It was that or shut it down and incorporate the content into this, my personal blog (for which I have no other goals than to share whatever I feel like).

In late June, I hinted that changes were coming. At that point, I had a couple of possible outlines and scattered notes but had kept it all pretty much to myself. Putting it into words made it real and no doubt sped up the process. I was shooting off more e-mails than I had in years, asking help and advice from friends with any related experience or talent. That was just a few weeks ago, though it seems like a lot longer.

Three writers were quick to rally under Another Passion’s banner. So far, only one has been published, but that’s one more than before. All are talented people I know can help boost the rate of publication while also raising the content quality.

Based on advice and research, I set up memberships and sponsorships/ads to at least make it possible for revenue to start coming in, and I wrote my first ever manifesto – a surprisingly fun and inspiring exercise, by the way. The first 2 members signed up within minutes, essentially paying for nothing, since I had no exclusive content yet. These people gave me a vote of confidence, and for that I thank you. A few more have since joined, enough that I’m feeling a bit of pressure from it, which is good.

A big part of my renewed focus has to do with my mother’s passing in early May. Her death made me re-evaluate my own life. I’ve been fueling a lot of that energy into Another Passion. She was a big fan of the project, and she would be proud to see it grow. And so I do it in her honor. I’ve spent weeks of 10+ hour days and more money than is probably wise, hoping to give Another Passion the boost it needs. I am far from done, but I could not have done any of it without the support of Kelly Cline. She has been a rock, an anchor and the best friend I could have ever wished for in my greatest time of need.

I do believe that steady flowing, high quality content will carry the site to (some form of) greatness, but only if I can get it off the ground. Three writers is good, but I need at least twice as many before I am really happy. And though I have started producing members only content, there is little time to promote memberships and advertising. Content is king and until it starts flowing, my focus is there.

My First HDDSLR Production

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At the start of this month I put out the first “real” video shot with my new HDDSLR setup. Real, as in something more than a casual dabble. It was shot over two days, with no script or real story at first – only a want to document and celebrate my wife’s work, and try the new gear. Every month, Kelly Cline designs a new recipe for Blue Moon Burgers to use as their Burger of the Month. I like burgers, so this is already a great deal for me, but it got even sweeter when they let me film her working on the Bomb-Mi Burger, featured throughout the month of June.

About half-way through the first day, I realized focus was going to be on Kelly herself and her powerful presence in the kitchen and restaurant. She develops the recipe at home and only comes in to teach it, tweak it and let the others taste it. This forces her to take control when she comes in, and when she does that her passion for food really shines. Also, here was a rare opportunity to show her recipe development alongside her work as a photographer.

Secondary, and this was really cemented during the second day of filming, there was a pattern of reactions I noticed. Everyone who tasted it reacted with either an “Oh, wow!” or an “Oh, yeah!”. I thought that was funny and not a bad way to convey the flavor through video. So I emphasized this in editing.

Finally, the owner Charlie Olson is a bit of a goofball (I’m sure he wouldn’t mind me saying that, either), always good for a silly remark or a dirty joke. So I picked 3 short clips of him being silly, and put those in there as well.

Part of this test was to see how much goes into even a small production like this. I definitely see producing promotional videos for busines as a potential market, but it comes down to quality vs. price. I wanted to see how good I can make it without an assistant or budget, how long the editing would take and so on. This particular video ended up taking about 12 hours to make. Basic pre-production, like a shot list and a loose script would have probably added another couple of hours and would have streamlined the final result some.

I am working on the pre-production of a second video featuring a local business right now, as a second practice run. This time, I am going a little slower and paying more attention to detail, to see how much time that adds. Learning by doing, while hopefully building a useful portfolio.