If I were able to go back to when I began as a personal historian, what’s the best advice I could give myself? Here’s what I’d say…Read more.
Posted in Business, How to, Marketing, Personal historian, Resources, Self-employed, Tips
Tagged advice, best, best advice, Business, Business plan, How to, humor, key, Marketing plan, Personal historian, personal history, self employed, small business, Tips
I’ve just finished Jennifer Campbell’s recent book Start and Run a Personal History Business published by Self-Counsel Press. If you’re thinking of making personal histories a business, you owe it to yourself to get this book. Jennifer knows her stuff. She’s been a professional personal historian since 2002 and prior to that had a 25 year career as an editor, writer, and interviewer… Read more.
Posted in Book reviews, Business, Home Office, How to, Life stories, Marketing, Memoirs, Personal historian, Promotion & Publicity, Resources, Self-employed, Tips, Writing
Tagged Business, Employment, family stories, free resources, Home Office, How to, Jennifer Campbell, memoir, Personal historian, personal histories, personal history, personal history business, self employed, small business, start and run, Tips, Writing
When I launched my first business venture as a documentary filmmaker over 30 years ago, I wish I knew then what I know now. It would have saved me a lot of grief. I’m older and “somewhat” wiser now and hope that these lessons learned from the trenches will be of help to you.
Here are 10 mistakes to avoid.
1. No savings.
Don’t do what I did. I catapulted myself into the world of independent documentary filmmaking without a dime in the bank. It was gutsy but unwise. I spent several years, desperate and struggling. Getting a personal history business up and running is going to take at least a year or two of hard effort. Give yourself some peace of mind by knowing that those lean years are covered by your savings. You’ll sleep better at night.
2. Not charging what your worth.
Lowering your rates in the hopes of landing a contract is a recipe for failure. Once you’ve set low rates, it’s hard to increase them. You’ll end up not making enough income to support yourself. Overworked and burned out, you’ll eventually give up. Remember you’re a professional with years of experience. Being underpaid does nothing for your self-esteem and nothing for your business.
3. Choosing the wrong business partner.
This is another mistake I made. I spent too much of my emotional energy resenting the fact that my partner wasn’t carrying a fair share of the business load. After a year I got out of the partnership and never looked back. Don’t get me wrong, a business partner can be a great asset but choose wisely. Look for someone who shares your values and can assist you in areas where you’re deficient.
4. No contract.
You don’t have to produce a “door stopper” legal document. But minimally you need a letter of agreement to avoid complications. The agreement include a project description, fees, timelines, and terms of payment.
5. Failing to say ‘no’.
When you’re starting out, it’s tough to say ‘no’ to a low paying job or to say ‘no’ to a troublesome client. You reason that working for something is better than nothing. But time spent laboring for ‘peanuts’ means missed opportunities to land some major contracts. And just because you’re starting out, doesn’t mean you have to suffer the “client from hell”.
For more on saying ‘no’ check out my previous article The Power of “No”.
6. Doing everything.
I’ll admit I still tend to try and do everything. And part of that is okay. What I like about being a personal historian is that I get to wear different hats. But doing everything becomes counterproductive when you take on tasks for which you have little skill. For example, I’m not adept at bookkeeping which is why I have an accountant. And while I love graphic design and have a reasonably good eye, I would always hire a designer for a major book project.
Play to your strengths and hire out to manage your shortcomings.
7. Failing to keep detailed records.
Throwing receipts into a shoe box and then hauling them out at tax time is no way to run a business. I’ve done that! You need to keep an electronic record of your income and expenses on a monthly basis. This not only gives you a means of assessing the health of your enterprise but also provides accurate records for your tax return.
8. Not putting money aside for taxes.
I know from experience this can be tough. If you’re barely able to pay your bills, setting aside money for the tax man seems like a non-starter. But getting to the end of the year and finding you have a tax bill of several thousand dollars and not a penny to spare is devastating. It can lead to bankruptcy or giving up your dream to take a job to pay your taxes.
9. Failure to devote enough time to marketing.
Most personal historians I know would rather be cast off on an ice floe than market their business. Including me. But the truth is that unless people know you exist, they won’t be able to hire you. And your business will fail.
The start up for any business requires extra marketing effort. This means more than putting up a web site, printing business cards, and sending out a press release. The trick is to get out of your office and go where you’re clients are likely to be found.
Here are some previous articles I’ve written that you might find useful:
10. Pretending to be something you’re not.
When you’re starting out, it’s natural to feel vulnerable. You worry that people won’t take you seriously if they know you’re a one-person operation. So there’s a temptation to create a “corporate” identity that projects an image of “we” rather than “I”. But honesty is the best policy. It builds trust. In today’s world of box stores and indifferent mega corporations, your strength is the personal, caring attention you bring to your clients. Be proud to be a solopreneur!
Also, don’t pretend you’re multi-talented if you’re not. If your cash flow is drying up, it’s tempting to take on a lucrative project even though you’ve little or no expertise to pull it off successfully. You’ll end up with disappointed clients and bruised self-esteem.
Conclusion
Avoiding these mistakes won’t guarantee success. But they’ll make your start up more enjoyable and less likely to fail.
What are some of the lessons you’ve learned the hard way? Please share them. Your experience will benefit all those newcomers to the personal history business.
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Posted in Business, Personal historian, Self-employed, Tips
Tagged Business, Business plan, common mistakes, How to, Marketing, new business, personal history, Resources, self employed, small business, Tips
What do you do when you’re between major personal history projects and your bank account is dwindling? If you’re like me, this can be a stressful time. One solution is to look for smaller projects that can be done relatively easily and quickly to tide you over. Here are a few things I’ve done… Read more
Posted in Business, How to, Marketing, Personal historian, Self-employed, Tips
Tagged Business, cash flow, How to, income, Marketing, Personal historian, self employed, small projects, solutions, Tips
A successful personal history business is like a three-legged stool. Take away one leg and you fall on your butt.
So what are the three legs? Simply put, they’re passion, perseverance, and planning or the 3P’s as I like to call them.
Merriam-Webster defines passion as a strong liking or desire for or devotion to some activity, object, or concept.
You’ve got to have a strong desire to tell people’s stories. It’s what makes you want to get up in the morning and get to work. It’s what gives you that extra boost to push you through the hard times. And believe me, there will be hard times.
Without passion you’ll find your work becomes a chore. Your lack of enthusiasm will inevitably lead to fewer and fewer clients finding their way to your door.
Passion is the juice that keeps you going.
Perseverance is that ability to keep going in spite of setback and difficulties. It gives your passion its backbone.
Research from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics suggests that “most failures of American startups will occur in the first two years of their existence.”
If you’re expecting to turn a profit within a year, you’ll be sorely disappointed. It’ll take at least two years or more to get your personal history business up and running.
Without perseverance it’s all too easy to give up when the going gets tough.
Planning is an unnatural process; it is much more fun to do something. The nicest thing about not planning is that failure comes as a complete surprise, rather than being preceded by a period of worry and depression. (Sir John Harvey-Jones)
There’s wisdom in Sir John’s tongue-in-cheek put down. It’s true that doing something is much more fun than planning. That’s why I suspect many small business owners don’t have a business plan.
But if you don’t have a business plan, it doesn’t matter how much passion and perseverance you have, you’re rudderless and you’ll almost certainly run aground.
I’m not suggesting you have to take a year to write a 40 page monster plan. What you need is something that’s relatively simple. According to WiseBread your plan should address such questions as:
For more help on planning check out these resources:
I see newcomers who go into the personal history business, full of passion for helping people tell their stories. This is good but it’s not enough. It’s just one leg on our three-legged stool. Without the other legs of perseverance and planning some of these same people sadly give up their dream.
What leg on your personal history stool is wobbly? Please share your thoughts by writing a line or two in the comment box below.
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Posted in Business, How to, Personal historian, Tips
Tagged Business, Business plan, home business, How to, keys, passion, perseverance, Personal historian, planning, self employed, small business, successful, Tips
Thanks to all of you who took the time to comment on my articles. Here’s my yearly roundup of the posts that generated the most comments. These aren’t necessarily the articles that received the largest number of viewers but clearly they got people talking.
For those of you who may have missed them, here’s your chance to see what caused the flurry of comments. If you’ve already read them and didn’t comment, it’s not too late to join in the discussion! 
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Posted in Business, Marketing, Personal historian, Questions, Self-employed, Tips
Tagged Annie Dillard, CUSO, Family, fees, Ghana, Home, Life stories, Marketing, memories, No, Parenting, Personal historian, Questions, self employed, Tips, West Africa
If I were able to go back to when I began as a personal historian, what’s the best advice I could give myself? Here’s what I’d say… Read more.
Posted in How to, Marketing, Personal Care, Personal historian, Self-employed, Tips
Tagged best advice, Business, Business plan, How to, key, Marketing plan, Personal historian, self employed, small business, Tips
Want to avoid some pitfalls as a newcomer to the personal history business? Read on.
We love our work. Right? But that doesn’t mean we can’t be blindsided by some unsuspected snag. Looking back on my seven years in this work there are a number of things I wish I’d known earlier. Here are just three:
It’s true and I have the scars to prove it.
For the most part, working with people on a personal history project is a satisfying experience. That’s why early on I was lulled into a dream-like state, believing all my clients would be simply wonderful. Wrong! One “client from hell” snapped me out of my reverie.
What did I learn? I now make sure that I only work with clients that are a good fit and that I like. In addition, I’m very clear from the outset about what I will or won’t do. And I always make certain clients sign a contract.
A few years ago I invested several thousand dollars in the latest prosumer camcorder. It was a beauty. Now it’s obsolete. It doesn’t shoot in HD and isn’t flash-based. I’ll soon have to purchase a new camera which will also necessitate an upgrade of my editing software.
It’s not just keeping up with the latest equipment and software. You’ve also got to budget for these upgrades. I’m embarrassed to admit that in this department I’ve been somewhat lax.
What’s the lesson? Build into your production budget a rental fee for your equipment. Make sure that those fees go into a designated new equipment fund. And keep repeating to yourself: “This too will soon be obsolete.”
There’s no certification or governing body for personal historians. Some are experienced veterans and others are just starting out. Some charge nothing or very little while others charge thousands of dollars. For potential clients this can be confusing. They may well ask why they should pay you a professional fee when someone down the street is offering a bargain basement deal?
What’s the answer? I’ve learned not to sell myself short and not to be “nickel and dimed” to death. I sell myself on my years of experience as an award winning documentary filmmaker. I promise a professionally produced personal history that my clients will be thrilled with or they get their money back. If they still prefer to go with “Joe” down the street and are happy with a less qualified person and an inferior product, I’m not going to sweat it. Life’s too short.
So what are some of the pitfalls you’ve faced as a professional personal historian and what did you learn? Love to hear from you!
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Posted in Business, Personal historian, Tips
Tagged Business, challenges, clients, How to, lessons learned, Personal historian, pitfalls, self employed, Tips, wisdom
Why do some succeed and others fail? In a word – persistence. It’s that ability to get knocked down, pick yourself up, and keep going. Success of course is entirely in the mind of the beholder. Success to one person is failure to another.
Increasingly people find their way to my blog looking for the key to a successful career as a personal historian. I don’t have a magic formula. But what I do know from years of experience is that without persistence nothing of real value can be achieved.
There are plenty of obstacles on the road to becoming a successful personal historian. I’ve selected four. Your success will largely be determined by whether you persist and overcome these obstacles .
Your home office can be a lonely place. This is especially true if you previously worked in a business where you socialized with fellow employees.
There are ways to minimize the isolation. You can network through social media, join professional associations, and participate in service organizations. But the truth is that a good part of your personal history work will be spent alone.
Failure to overcome this isolation and persist can give you second thoughts about being a personal historian.
This is the biggest obstacle to your success.
There’s so much to fear when starting a new personal history business. There’s the fear of marketing yourself, the fear of doing the wrong thing, the fear of not having enough money to live on, the fear of being a competent interviewer, and on and on.
Fear can paralyze. An ability to keep going in spite of your fears spells the difference between success and failure.
If you’re used to a regular paycheck, get ready for a shock. For the first couple of years you’ll find more money going out than coming in.
In order to persist through the lean times you’ll need to be able to call on all your financial ingenuity. If you don’t have a reserve of funds, or a part-time income or the support of friends and family or the thriftiness of a Scotsman, you may not be able to continue.
Personal historians come from a wide range of professions but no one comes to the business fully experienced. It’s the kind of work you learn over time and largely by doing.
There are a host of basic skills you need – marketing, interviewing, editing, project management, and sales, to mention a few. Being able to clearly identify your business shortcomings and showing persistence in overcoming them spells the difference between success and failure.
Let me leave you with these inspiring words on persistence by American naturalist and author, Edward O. Wilson.
You are capable of more than you know. Choose a goal that seems right for you and strive to be the best, however hard the path. Aim high. Behave honorably. Prepare to be alone at times, and to endure failure. Persist! The world needs all you can give.
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Do you want your business to grow? Then why not apply some basic gardening know-how to your enterprise?
It’s harvest time here in Canada. And I have a bumper tomato crop. Well, it’s just one pot but it’s outdone itself. It got me thinking that running a business is not unlike nurturing a garden…Read more.
Posted in Home Office, How to, Self-employed, Tips
Tagged clients, growing your business, Home Office, Marketing, self employed, small business, Tips
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