The Creative Capitalist:

While the party line says that long-lasting, solid relationships are key to entrepreneurial success–put simply, your friends are the ones who’ll make sure you’re always working–sometimes the best and biggest opportunities come out of left field, fully formed and ready to fatten up your bank account. This week has seen a lot of that.

Example 1: Way back in July (seems like light years ago), I put together a proposal for Diageo. The person at the company who requested it had been a good friend of mine for a while, had had me on his Christmas card list for five years and had often told me how big of a fan of mine he was. After receiving the proposal, he passed me along to five other people who gave me approximately a zillion noncomittal answers. The prospect of something materializing dwindled away over several heartwrenching weeks–and I never heard from the erstwhile friend again. I sat on the proposal until last Thursday, when a major travel site contacted me on the strength of one mixed-up communication. After a five-minute conversation, the editorial head asked me if I’d be interested in devising an original content product for them. I dusted off my poor, forgotten proposal, tweaked it, sent it in, and… three days later, it looks like I have a buyer.

Example 2: I’ve been pitching an urban Hawaiian culture story to Hemispheres, to Islands–basically to every domestic travel pub that supposedly knows Honolulu well enough to veer away from the “Waikiki, beaches, hula dancers” claptrap. For six months, I got no traction. A week ago, a colleague I barely know sent my info to a British publisher, who offered me the exact assignment for a fantastic rate. Then I was recommended to someone else within the company, who also is giving me a gig. Never met either of ‘em–never spoken to them, in fact. And they know nothing about Honolulu. They just know they don’t want to write the same story about it that everyone else has.

There are many other examples, but the point is always the same: No matter how much you nurture longtime connections or trust your friends, the unknown factor is always going to account for 25 percet of your business. And it’s going to be the fun part. Instead of pitching, revamping and staying awake nights hoping, you’ll just blink one day and–bzzing!–open your eyes to discover a fat little opportunity sitting comfortably in your lap. It’s almost like the universe is delivering you a hit of preemptive gratification.

I know many people who, upon receiving a few of these little zingers, take them as a signal that they no longer have to work so hard. They just sit back and wait to see what lands in their lap. Unfortunately, this tactic tends to decrease the numbers rather than increase them. To borrow a moral lesson from Pilgrim’s Progress, the hire powers, just like other powers, usually help those that help themselves.

In the past couple of weeks, I have tried to utilize LinkedIn in the way its makers ostensibly intended. I have not attempted to “connect” with people I don’t know (that is the final frontier), but I’ve experimented with all the LI capabilities that relate to people I do know.

In a most unscientific manner, here are my findings:

• Only 20 percent of my contacts are on LinkedIn.
• Only 10 percent of them are active on LinkedIn.
• Out of 350 invitations sent, 120 still remain outstanding.
• Three people have already e-mailed me directly to inform me that they don’t use LinkedIn and would like to continue communicating using traditional methods.
• Four people have said they were going to accept my invite but didn’t, so I still talk to them via Yahoo Mail, on the phone or at happy hour.
• Three people have reported that they tried to connect but weren’t able to.
• Two people have emailed me back to say hello but have not accepted my LinkedIn invite.
• Six people have said they didn’t know me.
• Of that number, two realized straightaway that it was an accident. They tried to fix the record on LinkedIn, but it wasn’t possible. Three more would probably do the same thing if I said anything, but I don’t want to deal with it because we all have better things to do right now. When I do contact them again, it will be directly, for a specific purpose other than rectifying a social networking mixup.
• I asked five people for recommendations. Of that number, three recommended me. One ignored my request but updated my website (we’ve got a trade deal, and right now I’m getting the best of it). The final person said “No, because I think LinkedIn doesn’t do justice to either the recommending party or the recommendee. I will give you any personal recommendation you want and help you in any way I can, but I will not write anything on that website.”
• I recommended several colleagues. Only two wrote back to acknowledge that they’d seen and liked what I’d said.
• I forwarded two job requests from contacts and got no responses.

My verdict for LinkedIn’s potential as a a contact management/networking system? It takes too much work.

Too much exporting. Too many notes to write. Too much managing, mollycoddling and appeasing the LinkedIn police. Seriously. In a normal world, my contacts just sit in my address book till I need them, at which point I e-mail the appropriate person and say:

Hi! Here’s who I am, what I’m working on, and what I need. Can you help?

They say yes or no, and we move on.

In a LinkedIn world, I e-mail tons of them for no reason except to say: “Hi. Do you remember that we know each other? Okay, so let’s publicly acknowledge that we know each other, and then let’s go on about our business and not ever answer our LinkedIn e-mails anymore b/c we don’t really use LinkedIn for e-mail, we use Outlook or Gmail or Yahoo like every other person in the civilized world.”

Then you sit and wait for all those contacts to jump on your bandwagon. Probably only 50 do. An additional 45 languish in your archives. If you’re me (large network, but some of ‘em I only talk to once a year), a few people will e-mail to say “How do we know each other?” You explain, they say “Wassup? Good to hear from you!” and that’s the end of it.

The final two or three say “I Don’t Know This Person,” which makes you feel unmemorable, not very charismatic and also like a LinkedIn pariah, because you know you get spanked for those IDKs. So you e-mail them and say, “What the heck, am I that forgettable?” And they say “Nooooo!” and try to fix the setting but can’t, and then everyone’s irritated.

But still. I’m going to complete the final bit of this journal soon. I will e-mail five contacts and see whether the LinkedIn job networking thing really works. Maybe it will, and I’ll get tons of gigs and be forced to take back everything I said. Wouldn’t that be nice?

In the meantime, I’ve got 120 outstanding invitations that I really need to deal with, and I think sending 120 individual notes is the only way to do it. Which really defeats the purpose of LinkedIn, but reconnects with lost contacts; which is something worth doing, regardless of the communication mode.

I know everyone else is making lists of New Year’s resolutions, things they accomplished last year or the high points of 2007. But I am not jumping on the ‘08 train just yet. Technically, yes, it’s a new year. However, I have not yet accomplished some of my resolutions from last year. I don’t feel like they’ll require an entire additional year to achieve, so I’m giving myself a one-month extension. This seems reasonable. So, at the end of January, I’ll take stock and see how many of the ‘07 resolutions I can cross off the list. Based on that, I’ll carry some items over, revise others and come up with a few new goals just for 2008.

If editors and clients can extend deadlines on an as-needed basis, why can’t I? It’s not as though I ask often. Plus, while everyone else is humdrumming through February, all good intentions forgotten, I’ll be full-speed ahead, bolstered by resolve and–I hope, fingers crossed–heartened by all the fabulous things I accomplished in 2007 (+1 month).

Note: Part 3 of the LinkedIn Diaries will post over the weekend.

Oh man, oh man. I hate writing bios. So very much. In fact, I have an entire set of rules around bio writing, which is that I:

1) do it as little as possible;

2) only for friends; and

3) never charge.

That last one might seem odd, but there’s a strange sort of logic behind it. First off, bios are typically very short pieces (at least they darn well should be–250 words is usually sufficient, and anything over 500 makes readers’ eyes cross). They’re quick to research and quick to write. In theory, they should only take a couple of hours. In reality, they tend to take twice that long, because you have to transcribe five times more notes than necessary and then rewrite the copy two times. That’s still only four hours… and even if you bill $100 an hour (which I don’t), it’s still not that much money.

However. If you bill… then you can bet your pinkie finger that whomever’s commissioning the bio will come back to you with revisions and rewrites at least four times. Maybe more. In fact, he or she might never be satisfied at all. That person will, however, feel that he or she already paid you enough (people never budget much for bios), and that you should make their tweaks for free. Ad infinitum.

So I figure, write bios as a favor, don’t accept any money, and you’re entitled to put the kibosh on rewrite madness whenever you please. But once you accept that lousy few hundred bucks… well, then you’re in over your head.

Thing is, bios are so intensely personal–a life story, a public manifesto, a distillation of character–that most people will never, ever be quite satisfied with their own. Every word in it carries great significance. Every clause gets analyzed right into the ground. And then, 70 percent of the time, the client will turn around and rewrite it, throw in 200 words extra, and tell you that that’s what he or she really wanted the whole time. (Except soon thereafter, he or she will tire of it and bring in someone else to write it again.)

Nobody realizes that there are approximately a zillion bios floating around in the world today, and unless you’re Barack Obama or Lindsay Lohan, nobody really gives a damn about yours. I mean, come on. How many of you have read my bio?

Nonetheless, I’ve rewritten my bio at least 50 times. At the moment, I have three versions floating around the internet, plus several more in print. They all reflect me. They all serve their purpose perfectly. Yet, none is quite right. Actually, I hate them all. If I’d hired someone to write these bios, I would be demanding rewrites for sure.

I’m only human.

Anyway, the reason that this is important at the moment is that I’ve just delivered the rough draft bio copy for Greg and Kevin over at Medici. I think I did a pretty good job. I tried to take good notes, use good quotes, include all the important stuff and still keep the copy tight. I feel OK about it, really.

However, I know that within 48 hours, there will be comments, questions and suggested rewrites in my inbox. Which is fine. And will be fine a second time as well. But after that, no more.

OK, well, maybe a couple of tweaks. Quick edits. Typo corrections, if need be (though I hope I’m not that sloppy). But that’s it. No, really, guys. I mean it this time…

OK, I don’t really mean that literally. I just mean… well, maybe in-person communication isn’t such a bad thing sometimes. Or, failing that, I’ve heard wonderful things about this gadget called the telephone.

Context: I, like everyone else, have come to rely on automated systems and Digital 2.0 communication devices in my day-to-day working life. I absolutely adore CMS tools–always have, always will–and am perfectly happy to work for someone for years without ever meeting them. I prefer e-mail to phone conversations for the most part, and I always request e-mail over snail mail. (In fact, I have a deep and abiding hatred for the U.S. Postal Service. But that is not particularly relevant to this story.) I don’t use IM programs, but that’s only because I feel that IM chat is as big of a time-waster as regular conversation. Worse, because my godmother would never corner me by the water cooler (she’s in Honolulu; it’s physically impossible), but she definitely would if she saw me on Yahoo Messenger.

I know I’ve driven more than one person crazy with my reticence to attend networking events, “do lunch” or “take a meeting” when I feel it’s unnecessary. Why do lunch when you can figure everything out over the phone? Why take a meeting when the project is self-explanatory? These are my feelings. And they work for me. I’m a hired gun–I’m not supposed to be on the party circuit.

However. There are times when I feel like I’ve gone too deep into Digi 2.0 mode, and it’s not serving me or anyone else. And there are definitely also occasions when I feel that others have gone too far. Today, the juxtaposition of both situations has led me to make a rather unusual decision. I will let you know whether it works for me:

Part 1: Last week via e-mail, a colleague invited me to attend a three-day meeting. I went last year and got a lot out of it, so this time, I quickly sent her a response: “Sure, would love to.” Three days later, while in Jamaica, I get a crackly phone message from her telling me that she can’t sign me up for the event. I need to go online and register. She wants to know whether I’ve received her e-mail, stating the same.

Well, no, I haven’t. I’m in Jamaica, trekking around the Blue Mountains. I have neither time nor inclination to check my e-mail, much less mess around with online forms. So I wait a few days, return to civilization, and this p.m., I fill out the online form. When lo, it becomes clear that the hotel I need to stay at is not available, and the activities on the itinerary have very little to do with my needs. Hm.

I complete the form, get confirmation, e-mail back immediately asking if someone can help me with the hotel and itinerary issues. And immediately, I get bounced back to the same colleague who demanded that I online reg in the first place.

I am beginning to feel like a handball. And the colleague no doubt wishes I would stop being such a squeaky little handball. But. If I can’t get what I need out of this event, then there’s no reason for me to go. So. How ’bout a little human touch, people?

Part 2: I have a story due day after tomorrow. It won’t require much research, but I do need to speak with about a half-dozen different sources. Given that time is limited, I decided to send out an auto e-mail to all of them. I don’t know them all, but that is irrelevant. I’ll put in an eye-catching subject line. If they ignore it, that’ll be their loss, not mine.

But then I said… wait a minute. Yeah, these generic group e-mails work well when I’m dealing with 25 different sources. They’re great when I’m not sure who’s going to be able to help and who’s not. But when I’m dealing with five people who all know the subject matter intimately, and when every one of them could potentially improve the piece exponentially… why not take the time to send individual notes? It’s true, they need me more than I need them. But I do want them on my side. So… why not treat them like the precious jewels they are?

On a normal day, I might not have felt this way. But given the e-vite, e-mail, online reg, auto-response, e-mail cc shuffle that I just went through, I’m feeling like a little extra communication at the beginning goes a long way. At the very least, it saves you doing the exact same communication several days later.

…Or does it???

I met Tim Zagat of the Zagat Guides (one of my clients) the other day. He took one look at me in my blonde, stiletto-heeled Los Angelene glory, and boomed out, “Young lady, do you like to shop?”

He had in mind that I would perhaps edit a Zagat LA shopping guide, but I had to turn him down. For a couple reasons:

1. I don’t really like to shop

2. If I did, by the time I edited a complete guide to Los Angeles shopping, I would come to hate it.

That is, perhaps, one of the greatest ironies of being a creative. You work as hard as you can so that you can do what you love…and then, when you reach that ultimate peak of being able to DO it, you become over-glutted with whatever it is that you…no longer love it.

UNLESS you can manage to limit your production, and own all your rights, and somehow still turn a profit. For writers, that’s the obvious appeal of the blog.

I’ve seen plenty of business blogs on this site: marketing, tech, PR, small biz, general interest… But the big, profit-turning blogs that I follow have nothing to do with business.

I am a sucker for gossip blogs, actually. And restaurant blogs. Travel blogs (but only the helpful ones, not the ones that talk about trekking in Nepal with goats). I actually have a dating blog myself, which will be unveiled for you shortly, and I’m launching a singles’ travel blog. So I’ve been combing through the blogosphere for weeks on end, in search of inspiration. Here are a few of my favorite just-for-fun blogs…proof that with enough time spent online, anyone can make money from doing what they love (and talking about it).

http://wickedchopspoker.blogs.com/

Owned by three guys who intentionally come off like the scummiest of potbellied, beer-drinking scumbags, but are actually all very cute and sweet and happily married. (Obsessed with cards, but nobody’s perfect.) They used to have day jobs, but thanks to this blog, two of them have moved to Vegas and are now running rawvegas.tv.

http://www.tablehopper.com/

Marcia Gagliardi did what I’m going to do as soon as I can find the time and the will. A restaurant writer who works for magazines, books and local papers, she started this San Francisco dining e-newsletter to provide an outlet for all the great stories she couldn’t sell to her clients. She sends out a weekly email and keeps back issues archived online. With a clean look, chatty voice and uber-sleuth of a head researcher (that would be Marcia, of course), this site’s a winner even without funding or a traditional publication to anchor it.

http://www.dlisted.com

This gossip site is hysterically funny though borderline filthy; it goes where Perez Hilton dares not tread. Owner Michael K is an amazing writer with a crazy off-color flaming gay sense of humor. I love him. You may not–in fact, if PerezHilton.com and TMZ offend you, then you shouldn’t even check this one out. But if you have a soft spot for dirty-minded, completely uncensored gossip bloggers, then by all means click away.

http://blogs.timesunion.com/dowdondrinks/

This is my dear friend Bill. He was an editor at a New York paper for 20 years. Recently retired, Bill is now focusing most of his efforts on this blog, which is, I believe, also syndicated in print by the Times Union papers. He writes primarily  about wine, beer and spirits (although for some strange reason, he just did a whole post on Snapple’s new juice line). 

http://www.tangomag.com/

There are several dating-related blogs on this site. Actually I used to write one of ‘em–I just quit because I was tired of talking about my personal life online. (Especially when I’ve been doing essentially the same thing for the LA Times.) But I love their “Daily Dish,” which discusses the news and entertainment gossip of the day through the dating/mating/relating filter.

I don’t know who it was that first compared corporate types to sharks, but the analogy is not at all accurate. These guys aren’t leather-skinned, razor-toothed predators of the deep. Nor are they like wolves:  rangy, mysterious, strangely loveable…. No, no, no. The more I deal with corporations, the more they remind me of giant, schizophrenic squid, with each department being its own tentacle. Massive but blundersome beasts, they float around on the economic currents, obscured by a murky PR cloud,  feeding when it suits them, listening confusedly to their various internal voices. If they were normal squid, they’d scoot along the currents purposefully, all streamlined and graceful…but they’re schizophrenic, so they can’t. Instead, they usually end up swimming around in circles while the tentacles arm-wrestle each other.

 In case you haven’t guessed, I have been in corporate negotiation hell for the past couple weeks. It started with the proposal that I sent back in September (I didn’t tell you the name of the interested party, but it’s a media conglomerate with an octogenerian figurehead founder who’s got a soft spot for Bunnies). And it has continued with two other proposals, and two other interested parties (one of whom I’ve already worked with before)–and my best efforts have gone up, down, around and ultimately nowhere at all. Must admit I feel kind of nauseous at this moment–like I tried to hitchhike a ride with a blind, jacked-up leviathan who loves me one second and can’t figure out who I am the next.

Was up till 3AM last night revising and repackaging my book proposal. Which brings me to the topic  of revisions in general.

I’ve seen many writers (or would-be writers) on message boards, email lists, in the blogosphere, etc. complain about someone asking for revisions, or rewrites, or repackaging, whatever. They think it infringes on their creative geniosity.

Well, I’ve got news for any entrepreneurs with writerly aspirations: Revisions happen. They are as much a part of life as death, taxes and traffic. Whether you’re writing a personality profile, a memoir, Web copy or the Great American Novel, you’re going to eventually get that dreaded email back from an editor, with a subject line saying Just a few questions…

Everyone hates revisions. The writer, the editors, the poor people who get cut out of the piece because they’re not interesting or relevant enough… everyone. Revisions always feel like extra work, even if they’re written into your contract. They wreak havoc on your ego, because they’re basically proof that your best effort wasn’t good enough. Without fail, they arrive in your inbox at inconvenient times. They’re hyper-critical, sometimes petty, often totally irrelevant. But bottom line, they are intended to improve the final product.

If you get revisions that you don’t agree with from an editor or a client you know very well, it is acceptable to gently question a few of them.

If you don’t know the editor well, grind your teeth, smile, and revise away in haste. Yours is not to reason why.

If a marcom/copyrighting client requests you revise, make sure that round of revisions is covered in the initial project scope. If it isn’t, then extra $$ are soon to be on the way. Whoopee! Revisions on an hourly rate are fun fun fun! For $150 an hour, I’ll revise the entire dictionary in Pig Latin. (No, that’s not an arbitrary number. I’ve really thought this through.)

If you’re working on a branding project, just breathe deeply and invoke Buddhist mantras and realize that this is a company’s IDENTITY you’re spinning out of thin air. Company owners/principals/creative overseers get extremely emotionally involved in branding, and will question every “, / and …  If you’re doing branding, you are an alchemist, a diplomat, a shrink…all rolled into one. That’s why you get the big bucks.

If an agent  requests that you revise–or even repackage–a proposal or manuscript, consider very, very carefully. Realize, you are being offered an expert opinion. Whatever you do, don’t argue. They are not trying to rain on your creative parade. They are saying, “I think I could sell this idea, and I am possibly willing to try–but we need to make it more appealing. Help me help you.” 

If a publisher requests that you revise/repackage/do naked cartwheels on the front lawn, DO IT. But only if the offer is high enough. If it’s not, pshaw, forget it. Naked cartwheels on the lawn don’t come cheap.

Now then. If you’re a die-hard, and you really believe that your idea is perfect just the way it is, and you have nothing to learn from anyone on this planet… then I salute you. I’ve never felt that way about any idea, or any piece I’ve ever written. And I will tell you now, yours is a hard row to hoe, little farmer. Maybe some agent, somewhere (oops, sorry, New York or LA or London, those are the only places that matter in agent-world) will agree with you. Maybe they will find the publisher that agrees too. And maybe hundreds of thousands of people will be magnetically drawn to your finished product, and recognize its brilliance…and they will all buy your book, and you will be rich and famous and never once have to compromise on an idea you believed in.

And then again, maybe you will be struck by lightning. Three times. And escape unscathed, except with radio signals in your fillings that allow you to speak with aliens. Because that’s probably more likely.

Or, on a realistic tip, you will self-publish, and lose some money, and learn that in the real world, no matter how good you are, you revise. You compromise. You learn. And hopefully, you someday stumble into greatness.

It’s one of life’s great ironies, isn’t it? “Creative” types are legendarily bad at business—or maybe just loathe to get involved. We (yes, I’m one of them) would much rather focus on our art, be it writing or music or pot-throwing or creative cake icing. Yet the minute that art starts turning a profit, the artist lands smack-dab in the business world—do not pass “GO;â€? do not receive $200 unless you negotiate ahead of time, invoice for it, and have a contract on file.

If you take a corporate job, your muse is on loan from 9-5, Monday through Friday. And if you decide to take the plunge and go freelance, or start your own company…well, that’s when you end up on a site like this. Because like it or not, building a successful creative business is 20% about the �creative,� and 80% about that thing we love to hate.

We’ve all heard that before. However, perhaps some of you haven’t seen it in the practical, day-to-day sense. University courses don’t teach it, and I’m sorry to say, neither do those “special seminars� that charge you $1500 and promise that you’ll soon be living on a tropical island.

That’s where I come in: As a columnist, corporate creative consultant and digital content maven, I’m constantly working on cool projects for Disney, Sony, MGM and various other big names. I do not live on a tropical island; I live in LA. And I do not work while lounging under a palm tree on a white sand beach. Sun on the monitor + white sand in the keyboard = BAD.

Maybe you’ve already guessed this, but I am here to deliver a mechanical, unromantic and decidedly un-creative account of my so-called glamorous job, from the proposal writing to the cold calls to the health insurance questions to the ongoing search for the perfect CMS tool. Sections are outlined below.

Strategery – Yes, I’m borrowing from an SNL skit. But this topic is serious. Pitching, follow-ups, networking, promotion, packaging, branding, the whole nine.

The Client Speaks – Interviews with decision-makers. These are the people who can give you the contracts. Contrary to what you think, they do not reside in ivory towers.

Laptop Meditations – I am opinionated. Sometimes I like to rant. Sometimes I like to lecture. This is the section where I get to do it. (My blog, my prerogative.)

Nuts & Bolts – The stuff we all hate, but have to deal with anyway. Health insurance, taxes, telecom, filing software, Web site management, money matters.

Meet My Network – They say you can judge a woman by the company she keeps. That’s why I’m so proud to know, and work with, amazing people all over the world. Here’s where I get to brag on their behalf.

Resources – We live in an age of information overload. Happily, I’ve spent roughly one zillion hours sifting through it, and am happy to pass the good stuff (and the “danger zone� warnings) along to you. ‘Cause I’m nice. And I enjoy making lists.