In praise of Verizon

I resisted getting our two teenagers cell phones for as long as possible, before finally relenting a few months back. I pretty quickly regretted my decision when I received a Verizon bill for several hundred dollars for going over the limit on texts. Yeah, call me Naive Dad, Poor Dad.

But there was a catch — in previous months, when they'd exceeded the allotted number, I'd received a warning from Verizon so I could tell the kids to cool it. This time, the bill came through without a peep.

I called customer service to plead my case. The first person I spoke to offered a 50% discount. Thanks, but no thanks. Moreover, she basically blamed me for not keeping track of the account usage, and said the warnings were at Verizon's option. I asked to speak to a supervisor, but she was at lunch, so she would call me back later. She didn't.

A few days later, I called and pleaded my case to a different rep. This guy repeated the same 50% offer, which I declined, but also took the extra step to inform me of a better plan for our usage pattern. I signed up immediately. Again, no supervisor was available, but someone would call me back.

And again, no callback came. So, this weekend I made one final call and finally hit paydirt:

• The rep, Pam, heard me out without interruption or a guilt trip.
• She agreed that the situation was not right.
• She apologized that I had received poor customer service from previous reps.
• She immediately put me on the line with a supervisor.

The conversation with Vonda the supervisor lasted about 2 minutes. I gave her the Reader's Digest version, she was profusely apologetic, and credited my account as I'd been requesting since Call #1. I thanked her and let her know that she had renewed my faith as a longtime and loyal Verizon customer.

Was I disappointed that it took so long to resolve my issue? Sure. But I'm a cheap SOB and nothing if not persistent when it comes to a couple hundred bucks! The customer service lesson in here is a familiar one: Ask the person what he or she wants, and solve the problem on the first call if you can.

Go ahead, go on strike

The Huffington Post blogger brouhaha has descended from farce into...whatever the heck is one step stupider than "farce."

Here's the most recent bit: "Arianna Huffington: 'Go Ahead, Go on Strike -- No One Will Notice.'" (Practical question: Can you really go on strike from a job that you weren't even paid for?)

Sorry, bloggers-for-nothing: You've been pwnd. You voluntarily chose to work for free, in the naive hope of getting famous. Nobody forced you to do it. Your boss-owner may not be the most gracious person in the world, but she made a zillion dollars, and you'll see none of it, regardless of the lamentations of The Newspaper Guild, California Media Workers Guild, and National Writers Union of how unfair it all is.

You cut your own deal, and it was an epically crappy one from a business perspective. And quite frankly, you pretty much piss me off, since your lack of business acumen devalued what freelancers do.

Suckerpunched (or Why Friends and Family Make Lousy Clients)

Dante's circle for unscrupulous businessmen

Tim Berry at Planning Startups Stories wrote a nice post earlier this week titled "Tip: Mistakes are more fun than tips." In that spirit, allow me to share a doozy of a stupid that I committed a few months ago that finally imploded yesterday.

As a general rule, I don't do paid work for friends and family. My experience is that they expect too much for too little, and emotions play too much of a role — i.e., they're lousy clients.

But in late fall, during a slow week and as a favor to a family friend, I took on a referral for writing the content for a small website. The owner seemed nice enough, her website was ghastly, and she needed a few business letters written. I offered a modest bid. Which she promptly accepted.

The two business letters were the top priority, so I promptly and heavily rewrote what she'd sent me, and she signed off on them after a round or two of revisions. So far, so good. I commenced on the website copy, and she seemed to be happy with the initial two pages.

She's an event promoter, so the remaining items were brief summaries of the various events she handles. And that's where things got sticky. It turned out, there really wasn't any source information on the events other than what she'd posted in previous years, and some of the events had no information at all. So, I asked if I could interview her in order to gather some raw ideas about what she wanted. She was unresponsive. I MacGyvered it as best I could, but she wanted more and fresher information. I reminded her of my offer to do it interview style, and again, she just seemed more inclined to grumble than to help me help her.

At this point she wanted to know exactly how much her tally was. I provided a summary, subtracting out what she claimed was unusable. She asked me to send an invoice, and I did.

Then I didn't hear from her. Then I sent a second notice, and a polite email asking when I could expect payment or if she'd like to break it up into two installments. No response.

Fast forward to yesterday. I called her, and again, as politely as possible, inquired about the status of the invoice. At which point she informed me:

• She had to heavily rewrite the letters I'd given her (which was news to me, since she'd approved them)
• She had to rewrite the copy I'd provided for the web page (which was an outright lie, based on comparing what I sent her to what's currently posted on the site)
• She had shown my invoice to another writer she knows (!) who thought that it was too high (unsurprising, given that the other writer charges her about half my hourly rate)

I'd been suckerpunched. I asserted that she did indeed sign off on the items I'd provided, and she retorted, essentially, "Nuh-uh-no-I-didn't." I stood by the invoice, in which I'd been painfully generous, and she basically spat on it. After a bit of back-and-forth, I simply said, "You know what, Sandy [not her real name], clearly we're not getting anywhere here. I think it's best if you just send me a check for what you believe you owe me. If that's $0, that's your prerogative."

I've already wasted the time, no sense in wasting further mental energy, and the piddling amount isn't worth pursuing legal action. Even after full-time freelancing for almost 12 years now, evidently I occasionally need to re-learn stupid mistakes in order to remember them. Tattoo it on my butt and carve it on my tombstone: No more friends and family clients.

Why hasn't Apple thought of that?

When things are moving fast and furious around here, I tend to be pretty quick on the "SEND" button...which means that I'll occasionally send an email without an attachment. No harm done, and I'll usually just make a joke about it with the client.

Anyway, I use Apple's stock Mail program for my everyday correspondence. I have one client, however, who's big on Google chat, so I use Gmail when I email him because it's more convenient. Imagine my surprise when I just went to email a file to him and the following error message pops up:

Did you mean to attach files?
You wrote "I've attached" in your message, but there are no files attached. Send anyway?

Sure enough, Gmail had prevented me from a minor faux pas. It ain't rocket science, but it is a nice safety valve for those of us with an itchy "SEND" finger. So, whaddaya say, Apple? You already warn me if I try to send a message without a subject line. Think you might implement a no-attachment-preventer in Mail Version 3.6.1?

Disposing with dignity

Hold on a sec. Not talking about eliminating dignity, here — I'm referring to throwing away things on your own terms.
We recently moved, and part of that process included disassembling my office over THERE and re-creating it over HERE (in a slightly smaller space). As I gazed upon the stuff that had accumulated over the years, I knew that there were a couple of Hefty bags in my future.

Which brings me to disposing with dignity. With some items -- boxes for electronics past their warranty, faded neon paper that I used for a long-ago direct mail campaign, several miles' worth of USB, Firewire and ethernet cable — it's not a hard decision to pitch.

But then you get to those things that may once have held some meaning but now just collect dust: stacks of photos that didn't make the cut into an album or onto a wall; silly awards; CDs of stale computer archives; and, perhaps most painfully and poignantly for a freelance writer, stacks of magazines, samples and old clips that are way past their expiration date.

I threw it all away. The "disposing with dignity" principle is something my wife and I formulated and have employed (usually when moving), and it comes down to this: As the owner/possessor of an item that has some emotional value to you alone, it's best that you are the one to throw it away. Not to go too morbid on you here, but if you were to die tomorrow, this is stuff that would be chucked away without remorse. In fact, it might only serve to annoy the people who wondered why you kept all that crap.

In any event, purging felt good. I had one final chance to pay my respects and reminisce on those things that I didn't really need anymore. I just heard the garbage truck do its pickup...but I still have my memories.

I am MacGyver

No, I'm not talking about the mullet I wore back in the late 1980s. I'm talking about the fact that, as a freelance writer, there are going to be times when you're given a piece of dental floss, a stick of gum, and a Bic lighter, and you're expected to create a nuclear weapon a brochure or ad campaign or website out of it.

Earlier this week, I started work on a project for a longtime client. He's a great guy, funny as hell, and I know exactly how he works: It starts with a kind of fuzzy, two-sentence email about what he wants the project to be. That's followed up by me giving him a call to find out the details...only to find out that there really aren't any yet, just kind of a big picture this-is-what-I-want-it-to-be. Next, he sends a couple of links to websites that kinda do what he wants to do, but not quite. Similar, but different.

Day two, he sends me a follow-up email to find out how it's going. Which prompts another call from me to say I need more information. Now, I click on the digital tape recorder, and play Mr. Reporter for a while, asking as many questions as I can, grasping at threads. The conversation ends, I transcribe the file, and I'm marginally farther along.

I start writing babble-style, then suddenly the piece starts to take form. Hmmm, not half bad. I shoot him the draft, he shoots a bunch of holes in it (as I mutter to myself, "Why didn't you tell me that earlier?), and I give it a rework. In the end, he's happy, I'm relieved, it's all good, another one's in the books.

The reality is, I wouldn't put up with these antics if I didn't genuinely like him and know that it's just the way he is. It wouldn't do me any good to try to change his style, either. I simply accept it, and I know I'll provide him a product that does what he needs it to do.

And the other reality is, it's kind of a kick to strap on my MacGyver mullet-wig, and create something explosive out of damn near nothing.

Now, where the heck did I put my Bic?

Losing a loyal client or editor

It happens to all of us eventually: Losing a loyal client or editor to a new position elsewhere. But hey, I'm nothing but an undaunted optimist — in fact, it can be a bit of a Johnny Appleseed opportunity, with new work and opportunities in a new company with an old friend. Developing a strong client relationship, always, always, always, is a freelancer's best business strategy.

More details and thoughts on how to handle a client/editor departure at my newest Freelance-Zone.com post, "Losing a loyal client."

Lessons in self perception

It's a bit hackneyed to say that playing a round of golf with people will tell you everything you need to know about what they're like in business: Are they fun? Do they cheat? Are they a stickler for the rules? Do they take stupid risks?

I'm reminded of all this as I recently returned to playing golf after a 16-year hiatus. I used to be halfway decent; in fact, my first two editorial jobs were with Golf Digest and Golf Illustrated. Today, I have several clients in the golf business, so I've committed to bringing my game to an acceptable standard.

But coming out of retirement has been a reality check: I am older, weaker, less flexible, and have worse depth perception. On the flip side, I'm also a bit wiser, slower to anger, and more patient -- funny enough, much like I have become in business. Recognizing that I was getting worse with each progressive round, I knew that I needed help, or I might just abandon the game again for good.

So, I paid a visit to a pro at the local municipal course last night. Before doing anything, she asked me to hit a couple of balls to see what my swing looked like. Stage fright took over, and I hit a series of awful-looking line drives and topped shots that bounded feebly down the range.

After making a few quick technical adjustments, though, we spent the next hour working almost exclusively on perception vs. reality. What I thought I was doing was pretty different from what I was actually doing. Really, you kind of need to trick your brain into rethinking its understanding of alignment. One hour didn't get me back to 1994, but I was amazed at how much more comfortable I felt. There's hope for me yet.

Your mileage may vary, as far as using golf (or any activity) as a way of judging personality. But the business lesson for me was very personal: Getting to the end of my rope, and seeking out the help of a skilled third-party professional, was a reminder that we're often terrible self-judges of what we're doing.

And perhaps more important, that asking for help is not a weakness, it's a strength.

The psychology of "inclusive we"

In grammar, there's an inclusive we, which means you're including the addressee, and an exclusive we, which means you aren't (not to be confused with the royal we, which is just...you, being snobby). Wiki's definition does a good job of illustrating the distinction.

What I'd like to throw out for consideration today is the power of using the inclusive we during the sales process—and I believe it's critically important for a freelancer. When I'm in a prospective client meeting, the sooner I can get a prospect to think of me as a member of his or her team, the better. As an example:

• Outside Consultant Voice—"Your large email database makes an e-newsletter an affordable option."
• Team Member Voice—"It'll be a slam-dunk to generate ROI for our e-newsletter." 

Or...

• Outside Consultant Voice—"What's my deadline?"
• Team Member Voice—"What's our timeframe on getting this completed?"

It's a subtle shift in psychology by being conscious of the words you use. On the other hand, you don't want to overwork it, or make the shift too soon, lest you come across as presumptuous (or pompous, a.k.a., being mistaken for the royal we). You need to have established some basic rapport for it to be credible; which means being sensitive to the client's demeanor. (Which is what it all comes down to in sales, anyway!)

So, are we on the same page? I thought so.

Writing in your head

On my old web site, I used to have a collection of a dozen or so sayings about the craft of writing. One of them ran to the effect of "If you sit down to write, but don't put anything on the paper, your intention was not to write." I've googled and can't find it, and I'm on my laptop without access to archives, so I can't dig up the original. So it goes.

But the point of it is this: You should never confuse thinking, pondering or musing with writing. And there is value, for me, in thinking without writing. If the definition of an extrovert is a person for whom no thought goes unverbalized, I don't necessarily feel the compulsion as a writer for my every word to exit my fingers into a keyboard or pen.

Sometimes, thinking, and being alone in my thoughts, is exactly what I intended to do.

Customer relationship lesson: For want of a penny

I've been a loyal customer of a local credit union for nearly 20 years now. In light of the government-funded shenanigans at the Too Big To Fail banks, I'm even more committed to keeping my money local in my own quixotic attempt to starve The Beast. And an experience yesterday underscored my beliefs that you get better service from a bank you have a relationship with.

In addition to our primary checking account, I keep a small emergency business fund at this bank, right at the limit which avoids the monthly service fee. A few months ago, they raised the limit by $500, and dutifully, I added $500 to my account.
The problem was that my average account balance still came just under the limit for the month—and by deducting the $10, it put me under the limit for the following month by $0.01. Yes, a penny. That, of course, resulted in another $10 charge that put me further under the limit. You can see where this was headed.

So, I called and pleaded my case that it seemed pretty cruel for a 1-penny shortfall to result in a cascade of $10 charges, and reminded him that we've been long-term customers and keep a fairly large overall sum at their bank. The customer service agent stuck to his guns at first, and there was a bit of back-and-forth.

Ultimately he asked what I wanted as a solution; I said I didn't even care about the original charge, that all I was interested in was the $10.01 which would put me back above the line. He put me on hold and came back with more than I asked for: They wiped both charges. Based on past experience, I am confident that there's no way in hell Wells Fargo or Citi would have done that.

The customer service lesson here is that asking your client what they want is often the fastest route to resolving a problem. The fact that the credit union actually gave me more than I asked for, well, that was just icing on the relationship cake.

Client communication 101 (and Schrödinger's Deadline)

I was recently working for a client for whom English is a second language, quickly discovering that our easiest form of communication was chat. The project at hand was hot, requiring a good chunk of my time several days in a row. On Day 2, he asked me how long I thought a certain section would take to write, and I answered, "Oh, about an hour." He responded that he thought that seemed fast, and I typed back that it might take a bit more time in revisions, but the first draft would indeed take around that long.

The next day, panic struck. I found out through a third party that I "wasn't hitting my deadlines." I was a bit dumbfounded, since I really hadn't been given a specific deadline in the first place. How can you miss a deadline that you didn't know about? (I'm coining it a Schrödinger's Deadline™, in tribute to the famous thought experiment with the cat in a box that might be dead or alive depending on whether a radioactive source had broken open a flask of poison. It's a quantum physics thang.)

Anyway, I puzzled for a while before coming to the explanation: He had expected to have the piece in his hands 60 minutes after our initial conversation.

I sent this knowledge back up the chain of command, and as far as I can tell, everything was effectively patched up. What I do know for certain, even if I'm still unaware of a deadline, I know in the future to cite not only the duration, but the projected time of arrival.

In praise of a PR pro

Public relations and its practitioners often get a bad rap. (I still have scars from a quick stint in corporate PR back in the early 1990s.) Sometimes it's self-inflicted--Exhibit A being the follow-up calls to ask "Did you get my press release?"--but just as often, it's the nature of the beast. Particularly in unskilled hands, PR comes across as a "push" industry in a world that favors "pull."

Today, I encountered a PR pro at the top of her game:

• She wasn't dismissive or irritable when I told her my deadline is next week, even as she admitted that she couldn't get the interview that I was hoping for. I could tell she sensed I was in a bind, and guilt-tripping me wouldn't do her any good. It's amazing how many PR folk get crabby with an on-deadline writer...and equally amazing how much farther empathy, support and treating us like customers would get them and their clients.
• When I asked her about the availability of hi-res photos, she had them and a media kit in my email box in less than 45 minutes. (And based on her time zone, she probably stayed late at the office to do it.) No effort required on my part, compared to the many resources nowadays that demand written requests in order to acquire a photo. 
• She didn't ask to see the article, which a surprising number of PR people do. (Most magazines don't permit anything but direct quotes to be reviewed by sources.) This is such an important issue, I'll dig deeper in an upcoming post.*
• What impressed me most, however, is how she clearly delineated what makes her company different, without lapsing into a sales pitch. The way she described the industry and how her company fits into it was brief and objective; her presentation was confident, smooth and simple, she didn't really need to brag.

I'm still writing the story, so I'm not at liberty of naming the person and her company. I will do so at a future date. In the meantime, I just thought it would be a proper thing to end the week by spreading some good karma, as well as sharing the handiwork of a skilled professional.

*3-18-10 UPDATE: Followup to bullet #3 can be found here: "3.5 reasons I can't show you the story."

What your business can learn from another roadside attraction

On the Trans-Canada Highway in New Brunswick just shy of Nova Scotia, there's a tourist attraction called Magnetic Hill. It gained fame in the 1800s as a place where your horse cart would appear to roll uphill, though today it's arguably better known as an amusement park/water slide/zoo complex that also holds rock concerts for long-in-the-tooth headliners like AC/DC. There are enough "gravity hills" in the world that Wikipedia has an entry for the phenomenon, though the one from which this particular site takes its name is pretty well an afterthought at this point.

Like so many roadside attractions, Magnetic Hill is, alas, a tad underwhelming. You pay your five bucks, get your instructions from the hill attendant (a frontrunner for Boringest Jobs in North America), and drive to the appointed marker a hundred meters or so in the distance. Put the car in neutral, crane yourself around so you can see out the rear window, let off the brake and, voila, your brain thinks you're coasting uphill. The illusion isn't terribly convincing--as my teenage son put it, "I think it's more like Momentum Hill."

So, the business angle. You always hear experts say that you should never overpromise and underdeliver, but that's the business plan of just about any roadside attraction, isn't it? Their marketing abilities deserve the utmost respect, surviving on no more than an endless tease of billboards and quarter-page ads in local tourista publications. Because they're dependent on a fool-me-once clientele, the "underdeliver" part doesn't really matter. Repeat customers, on the other hand, require reliability and trust. The lesson in here for freelancers, or for that matter any type of businessperson, really comes down to promising and delivering. Say what you're going to do, then do it, and you'll have a good chance to do it until you don't want to anymore.

Then again, you could argue that our family has derived far more than our $5 worth of laughs since being lured off the highway on that fateful summer afternoon. Unforgettable experiences come in a variety of packages, eh?

Thankful

When our kids were small and subject to dwelling on a bad day, we instituted a rule at bedtime: Each of us, including my wife and me, had to name the best thing that had happened during the day. If you wanted to list more than one, that was OK, but the idea was that you went to sleep with a clear positive thought even if you'd had a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. Nowadays our kids are up later than we are, and therefore no longer tuck-inable, but hopefully it is a principle that they can carry through the challenges that lay ahead in adolescence, young adulthood and parenthood.

It's a fine way to end a day. There's a great deal to be said for appreciating people and events that make us happy.

I'll be traveling tomorrow and unlikely to be online, so an early thanks to my readers--family and friends, peers and partners in all of your various media and with all your myriad talents, clients and your ideas and spirited approach to business--as we head into the holiday weekend. Happy Turkey.

What's so funny 'bout peace, love and understanding?

I took a deep breath. I had scheduled a phone appointment with someone for a company newsletter article, but when I call, I get dumped straight into voicemail. When I finally reach her, 45 minutes later, she's in a meeting and...let's just say her demeanor is "gruff."

I provided an escape clause, "Is this an OK time? I'd be happy to reschedule," but she stepped out of her meeting and we did the very brief interview. I wrote up the article, and sent it to her for review the following morning.

To my amazement, she responded quickly, was complimentary and didn't have a single change. Interestingly enough, she also thanked me for "being patient" the previous day--so she evidently recognized that she'd been out of line.

I find it odd when people for whom you're essentially doing a favor act as if you're inconveniencing them. I was writing an intercompany article with the sole purpose of making her and her department look good. We'd booked a time that she neglected to put in her calendar--no big deal. Once you've blown it, however, in my version of The Game anyhow, you're supposed to default to an immediate, on-the-spot apology. You only get partial points for a day-after one.

I was "patient" because I recognized it as the only way of getting the job done, not because it's my preferred mode of operation. We're all busy, but courtesy makes life a lot more pleasant--and a much better impression.

Heading into the weekend, a video tie-in to the post headline. Elvis Costello cut the most famous version of "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding," but Nick Lowe (who wrote the song) sets a more leisurely pace.

Horror story

With Halloween lurking, I believe it's fitting to share the scariest moment in my freelance career. Back in the Early Aughts, I'd been assigned to write a profile of professional golfer Tom Lehman for a now-defunct magazine called 85255 (the ZIP code of a tony North Scottsdale, Ariz., suburb). The interview would take place at Tom's house, and would be simultaneous with the photo shoot--never ideal because of the mayhem, but you take what you get.

The interviews with Tom and his wife went smoothly, and the photos, including a shot of the whole family jumping on their backyard trampoline, were perfect. Energized and excited, I hopped in my car to drive home, and started to play back the interview tape so I could brainstorm the story.

It was empty.

I turned the volume all the way up till it was hissing. Nothing. To my utter and complete horror, I saw that I hadn't flicked the switch back from using it in "phone in" mode from a prior telephone interview. The cassette hadn't recorded a single word.

Heart pounding, I pulled onto the shoulder of the desert road, and frantically scribbled chunks of remembered dialogue and anecdotes on my yellow legal pad while they were still fresh in my head. (Mercifully, I had jotted a few notes during the interview, though not nearly sufficient to write a 1,000-word story.) I sat there for an hour, racking my brain to try to recreate the past hour's conversations.

Amazingly, augmented with a brief call to Tom's wife the next day to clear up some timelines, my scrambled roadside effort was enough. (Had I not discovered my error till a few days later, it would not have been.) Evidence, I suppose, that God looks out for widows, orphans, drunks...and freelancers.

I no longer own that old-school microcassette recorder, though its lessons of doing a sound check and having hard-copy backup are scorched into my brain. My digital recorder, which I wrote about over the summer, offers the peace of mind of a visual level monitor. But until I've completely transcribed an interview, and backed it up in my Time Machine, I have to confess: This experience always haunts me, and always will.

Do you have your own horror story, about a nightmare client, evil assignment or deadly deadline? Enter it into the Freelance Writerville II Scary Freelancing Story Contest (registration required)--in addition to fame and fortune, you could win a $10 gift certificate to Amazon!

Danger sign: The third wheel

If you could invent a client Geiger counter, the sudden appearance of a third-party consultant would ring it like a freshly unearthed chunk of uranium.

It's only happened to me a few times, but I was reminded of the dangers a few weeks back in a first-meeting conference call. Everything was going swimmingly, until the client offhandedly mentioned that she had hired a marketing/branding expert to help hone her company image.

Uh-oh.

Our creative team gamely put together the folder and brochures on a rush schedule, but the die had been cast. The addition of another party--with a vote on our fate but with whom we had no contact or collaboration--created a process akin to doing microsurgery with mittens on. You just can't do it. We ended up getting paid for our time, but in the big picture, everyone's time was wasted. Ours. The consultant's. The client's. She would have been better off simply hiring the marketing/branding expert to provide the creative materials from the outset.

The moral of the story? The only time a third wheel makes sense is if you're building a tricycle.

"You don't have enough talent to win on talent alone"

Posting about Miracle last week got me to thinking about my single favorite Herb Brooks quote from the movie. "You think you can win on talent alone? Gentlemen, you don't have enough talent to win on talent alone"--as he runs them through interminable, brutal drills immediately after a distracted pre-Olympics effort against Norway.

The point obviously applies as well to business as it does to sports, maybe even more so, because sports is more meritocratic. It's generally easier to judge athletic performance in terms of scoring, defense, and times than it is to measure business outcomes at a personal level. In the corporate world, there are usually too many variables (unless you are a front-line salesperson), and that dynamic compounds for creatives, because we're usually several steps removed from the sale.

So, what lies in the abyss beyond pure talent? Here are two thoughts...

Measure what you can, when you can: Marketing master Denny Hatch always talks about how direct mail is the acid test of creative skills. It is nothing if brutally honest, because it proves whether something got read and provoked an action. Even if you're not working on a direct-response project, is there something about your project you can measure? Can you test Sample A against Sample B? Did you create a more-efficient process that saved a quantifiable amount of money? (For the love of all that's holy, no focus groups, please.)

Augment your talent with superior internal or external customer service: Let's face it, creative brains come preinstalled with a hypercritical streak; some of us just do a better job of hiding it. A crabby SOB like baseball pitcher Randy Johnson can get away with it because he throws 100 mph, and people indulge photographer Annie Leibovitz's tantrums because of her skill behind the lens. I don't have that option. Whether you're a solo act or in an agency or corporate creative department, you can set yourself apart by developing a reputation for being easy to work with in addition to being talented. Take criticism objectively. Be flexible and come up with alternatives pre-emptively. Chant "Serenity now" until you've chased away the demons.

***

Follow up: Some interesting background about Friday's video in this article, How 4-year-old boy mastered 'Miracle' speech in YouTube hit.

Eight wrongs don't make a right

Came across this little beauty in the UK-based Times Online about the New York Times' error-riddled obituary of Walter Cronkite. The correction, one of history's longest and, as the Times Online notes, frankest, read as follows:

An appraisal on Saturday about Walter Cronkite’s career included a number of errors. In some copies, it misstated the date that the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was killed and referred incorrectly to Mr. Cronkite’s coverage of D-Day. Dr. King was killed on April 4, 1968, not April 30. Mr. Cronkite covered the D-Day landing from a warplane; he did not storm the beaches. In addition, Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon on July 20, 1969, not July 26. “The CBS Evening News” overtook “The Huntley-Brinkley Report” on NBC in the ratings during the 1967-68 television season, not after Chet Huntley retired in 1970. A communications satellite used to relay correspondents’ reports from around the world was Telstar, not Telestar. Howard K. Smith was not one of the CBS correspondents Mr. Cronkite would turn to for reports from the field after he became anchor of “The CBS Evening News” in 1962; he left CBS before Mr. Cronkite was the anchor. Because of an editing error, the appraisal also misstated the name of the news agency for which Mr. Cronkite was Moscow bureau chief after World War II. At that time it was United Press, not United Press International.

It was so bad that the paper's public editor felt obligated to write an op-ed, "How Did This Happen?" Well worth reading...particularly by the Times staffers.

But wait, there's more! From Gawker, which has apparently been beating on Alessandra Stanley for years: Play-By-Play: The Self-Loathing NYT's Ultimate Alessandra Stanley Flogging