Category: Freelancing

This year could have started better.  I just cancelled my flight, hotel and other arrangements for CES in Vegas next week and I’m not too happy about it.

I was supposed to be working in the Wacom booth for the Consumer Electronics Show next week, leaving Monday morning, coming home on Friday.  While I did a demo presentation at their booth at Photoshop World last year,  I wasn’t compensated for that appearance, so it didn’t pose a problem.  For CES, however, Wacom was sending me there and we overlooked something very important.

Canadians need a work visa to work for an American company in the United States.   I honestly didn’t know this and neither did Wacom, as this was a new experience for both of us.  My research over the past 24 hours has shown that most Canadians who get paid to travel to work at trade shows, do guest lectures, and speak at U.S. conferences are completely unaware that without a work visa, they’re doing so illegally.  If you’re compensated for your appearance, even if it’s just your expenses, you need a work visa.

Believe it or not, this came to my attention just yesterday while my wife and I just happened to be watching a National Geographic Channel series, “Border Security” which looks at the challenges faced by Canadian Border Services at the three different types of entry (air, sea, land) into British Columbia.  An American traveling to Canada needs a work visa for trade show work, guest lecturing, speaking, etc. as well.  One particular case sounded so similar to mine, and the person was denied entry into Canada, that I started looking around and found out that I was in trouble.

Had I shown up at the airport and told them what I was doing, completely unaware that I was in violation of Immigration Law, U.S. customs would have likely denied me entry into the U.S. and I’d be doing a quick turnaround heading right back home, my file flagged for all future border crossings.

My research, of course, found plenty of examples of people saying they just say they’re ‘attending’ a conference, rather than working it, and that’s how they get around the rules.  Then there are the people who’ve been caught lying to border security who caution against that tactic.  Border security officers are trained and experienced to know when you’re lying and I’ve always said I’d be a bad poker player.

I have an over-developed sense of ethics that has served me well throughout my life, but I’ll admit it makes me feel like a bit of a pushover sometimes when so many others regularly break laws like this and get away with it.

But here’s the thing.  If I tried to skirt the U.S. border laws by lying about my reasons for heading into the U.S. and they caught me in the lie, I’d be banned from travel to the U.S. for 1-5 years with no opportunity to appeal.  They don’t even have to prove you’re lying, they just have to think you are.  That means I couldn’t even land in the U.S. enroute to somewhere else.  And anybody who has ever had issues crossing the U.S. border will tell you that all it takes is ONE incident and you’ll have issues for the rest of your life, because they make a note of it on your file.  This would be far more damaging to my life and career than missing three days at CES in Vegas next week.

Just the fact that I called the U.S. consulate this morning to confirm all of my concerns, and they won’t even talk to you without your giving them your passport number, means I can expect that the inquiry alone is now on my file.  Any entry into the U.S in the near future will be met with additional scrutiny, I’m sure.

There is obviously a lot more for me to learn about this situation.  While the U.S. Consulate in Canada did answer some of my questions, they weren’t very helpful and seemed to have no sympathy for my situation at all.  Just getting to talk to a real person took me four or five different phone numbers and about 20 minutes playing touch-tone Olympics getting through the various menus.  Hitting zero just disconnected the call.

As it stands now, I need to talk to the U.S. Consulate in Calgary to find out exactly which visa I need (there are several kinds), make an appointment for an interview (in person), pay the fee if I’m accepted, obtain letters from any U.S. companies I’m working for, etc.  There are a couple of visas I may need, however, that require this work to be initiated by any company in the U.S. that I’ll be working for on U.S. soil.

Canadians have gotten comfortable with the fact that we are such close friends and neighbours with the U.S. that we’ve started to think that we have certain rights when crossing into the U.S. and it’s just not the case.  The United States is solely concerned with looking after Americans.  While Canadians may have a more trusted status in most cases, we are still visitors in a foreign country.  We can be refused entry for any reason deemed appropriate by the U.S. government and they don’t have to justify it to us.  In today’s charged protectionist climate, the rules are stricter now than they’ve ever been.

The same holds true in reverse, something that surprises many Americans when they travel to Canada as well.

So I’ve learned a valuable and humbling lesson this week, and as with most hard lessons, I’m paying for it by not going to Vegas next week, and worse, not working with Wacom while I was there.  Gut feeling, I did the right thing and even though I’m not a happy camper today, things could have ended up worse in the long run.

If there is a bright spot in all of this, it’s that I found out now, so I could cancel my flight and hotel and only be out a couple of hundred dollars in non-refundable fees.  Had I shown up at the airport and been denied access to the U.S. for lack of a work visa, I would have been out the cost of my flight, first night’s hotel, and the return fee for the airport shuttle I was taking Monday morning to Calgary.

There are a couple of days off in my immediate future.  Self-pity will likely be involved.

There’s an old saying that says, “Do what you love for a living and you’ll never work a day in your life.”

There’s  another old saying, “Be careful what you wish for.  You just might get it.”

With the accessibility of training, the affordability of equipment and an endless string of stories of people who have turned their hobbies into their living, it seems that many have become convinced of that being the end goal for any creative pursuit.  If you can draw, write, paint, play music, act, sculpt or create anything, you’re supposed to be working to make that your profession.

As someone who made that very choice and is creative for a living,  I consider it a great job, but it is still very much ‘a job.’

Right about now, you’re likely thinking this motivational blog post just went wildly off the rails.  My apologies if you’re disappointed, but there’s plenty of ‘you can do it!’ advice out there and too few reality checks.  Brace yourself.

Now, I don’t want you to think that I’m not comfortable with my choice to be an artist for a living, because I am.  I make my own schedule, I answer only to whom I choose, and if I sense a job is going to be a nightmare, I’m in the enviable position that I can turn it down.   Lately, however, I’ve been experiencing an uncomfortable anxiety about my work.  While there are going to be bad days  in every profession, regardless of how much you like it, there seem to be many more days lately where I get up in the morning and just don’t feel like drawing or painting.  For somebody who used to find any excuse to do either, that’s disturbing.

I used to work at a hotel in Banff.  As far as jobs go, it was a very good one with good people, and I look back on my time there fondly.  During my six or seven years at that hotel, I ran a waterslide facility, then worked night audit, front desk and eventually became the accounting clerk.  During the off season, there was more than the usual downtime.  Sometimes, after all of the cleaning was done each day, I might be alone in the waterslides for an hour or more, just sitting at the desk.  It was then that I’d doodle and sketch and it would pass the time.  When I worked night audit, I would arrive just before midnight, run the reports and balances until about 2:00 AM and then just babysit a sleeping hotel until about 6:00 when people would start to be up and about and the day staff would come in.  That gave me about four hours to read, draw and sketch.

No deadlines, no expectations, just enjoyable drawing.  It was a nice hobby.

During that time, I began drawing one editorial cartoon for the Banff Crag and Canyon, the local weekly newspaper.   Not very well drawn, not very insightful, but no real pressure.  It wasn’t the National Post.

I could write a whole volume about what has come between then and now, how one thing led to another and how I ended up being a full-time artist.  Let’s enter that as read and we’ll jump ahead to the present, shall we?

I can’t remember the last time I drew something simply for fun.

You see, these days, everything I create is part of an end product.  If I’m sketching or drawing, it’s for an editorial cartoon or illustration.  If I’m painting, it’s for promotion, a training video or DVD, or an image I will sell or have been commissioned to do.  Everything feeds the constant deadline.  I realized this recently while working on my last couple of Totems and a commission piece.  There was something missing in the enjoyment of it and it was unsettling.

At the beginning of this ride, there was excitement in the scramble of it all.  Getting that new newspaper, having a magazine print an image, being recognized by a publication or resource.  I was younger, hungrier and enjoyed the competition.  After you reach a certain level, however, it’s no longer a thrill of being ‘on the way up’, but the maintenance required to ‘keep from losing any ground.’  The same old drug dosage is no longer providing the high that it used to.

Continuing on with known sayings, how about this one? “When your hobby becomes your job, you need to find another hobby.”

I used to have full-time day job, and editorial cartooning was the fun gig on the side.  Then it became ‘the job.’  Illustration was then the fun side gig, then it became part of ‘the job.’  Painting became the fun side gig…you can see where I’m headed, here.

Being an artist for a living is great.  I wouldn’t want to do anything else and I would still say that even when I’m having a bad day.  But if you’re considering that leap, go into it with your eyes wide open.

The truth is that business and marketing is where success lies as a creative, not doing what you love.  I’ve seen artists so much better than myself and others, fail to get anywhere because they don’t know how to sell and manage their business at all, or ignore the necessity of it.  I know some self-employed people who are three years behind on their taxes and are living under a ton of debt they’ll be lucky to ever crawl out from.  They wonder why they have no money but they haven’t done any invoicing in months.  I speak to school classes regularly and one question always comes up about whether or not they should go to art school.  I tell them to go to business school.  If you love art, you’ll do it anyway and will find the resources to become better by yourself, but where most artists fail is running their business and selling their work.

You have to be every department as a freelancer.  Accounting, PR, sales, admin, and creative.  Invoicing is done immediately or at the end of the month, without fail.  GST payments are never late.  Tax installments are never late.  You must foster relationships with your clients all the time.  If they know you and like you, they’re unlikely to replace you.  I would estimate that I spend only half my time drawing and creating, and the other half of my time running the business.  All of that comes with expenses, too.  Website design, printing costs, accountants, bookkeepers, lawyers, etc.  Even designing your own budget website will cut into the time you’d rather be working on why you’re in business in the first place.

If this is what you want and are prepared for what it takes, then more power to you.  I would encourage anybody to give it a shot because I prefer these long hours working for myself than shorter hours, vacation time and weekends off working for somebody else.  If, however, you just love to draw or create, seriously consider if you really want to risk that by turning it into your job.  When your hobby becomes your work, it will change how you feel about it and it will no longer be that which you do in order to relax and unwind.  While compromise is always a part of life, decide how much you’re comfortable with.  There is no right or wrong answer, but there is a choice.

I will still write inspirational ‘you can do it’ posts here and elsewhere, and if you read one of those, don’t doubt that I mean it, but success stories will always be about hard work.  In this age of instant celebrity with folks believing they will be ‘discovered’ on shows like American Idol or YouTube and that they deserve to be successful by the simple virtue that they exist, inspiration needs to be tempered with reality, too.

Finally, a word of caution in the form of one more old saying.  “Judge your success by what you had to give up in order to get it.

This was a cartoon I did just for fun and for my fellow freelancers, whether they’re photographers, designers, illustrators, or any of the myriad professionals out there who make their living doing piecework for clients.  Ask any freelancer that’s been in the business longer than five minutes and they’ll have a story (probably many of them) of clients who’ve tried to pay with exposure.  For the uninitiated, that simply means that instead of paying for the work, the client cries poverty, but offers to put a link to your website on their website (or Facebook page, or Twitter feed, or on their bathroom wall) so that others who do have money will find you and hire you.

Most of us have fallen for this at least once.  Some of us more than once.  A certain cartoonist painter type I know (who shall remain nameless) has fallen for this at least a few times, because I’m such a…I mean he’s such a nice guy.

Unless the exposure comes from a company that has a lot of clout and comes in the form of more than just a link, but an actual testimonial, blog entry, press release or genuine concerted effort on their part to let others know about you, then exposure isn’t worth the paper your bounced mortgage cheque is printed on.  If you do end up working for a big company whose reach with all of that press is genuine, it’s a safe bet that they’re already paying you or offering perks that really do benefit your business.

To really see the value of exposure, consider the average Joe searching for an accountant in the yellow pages or online.  Joe gets the website address, goes to the site, finds the contact info and just before he phones or emails the accountant, he stops and thinks, “well hot damn, who designed that logo?”  or “who took that photo?” or “who designed this website?” and instead of calling the accountant he desperately needs to ward off the tax man, Joe clicks on that tiny link at the bottom of the page with your name on it and not only hires you, but pays you well for the privilege.

Those stories usually begin with ‘Once upon a time…”

That’s the sales pitch that exposure clients are basically giving you.  The irony is that the freelancer works long hours on the project that ultimately isn’t appreciated by the client (because they didn’t pay for it) and when the exposure results in absolutely nothing, many freelancers blame the client.   Worst of all, even if the exposure does result in a referral, it’ll most like be for another client who doesn’t want to pay you anything for your work.  Cheapskates tend to associate with other cheapskates.

Freelancing is a tough profession, and not for the thin skinned.  Most people will not value your services as much as you need them to and you’ll have to say “No” to a lot of people who want something done for nothing.  At least once a week, I get kidded about not having a real job because I draw cartoons.  I have a sense of humor, so I’m used to it, and usually let it roll off my back.  Occasionally, if I’m caught on the wrong day, I may get defensive, however,  and tell them in no uncertain terms,  they have no idea what it takes to do my job.

But I love my work, and many of my freelancing friends feel the same about theirs.  Sure, we’ll complain about it sometimes, just like everybody does about their job, but for a certain personality type, working for somebody else from 9 to 5 is one of the seven circles of hell.  We still have our bosses, though, they’re just usually temporary.  The big difference, however, is that we hire our bosses just as much as they hire us and when one of them pulls the exposure card, the correct response is, “I’m sorry, you’re just not the right fit for this company.”