Every morning my alarm clock goes off, waking me to the sound of Dave Ross’s voice on KIRO news radio. There have been times when I think I should change the station. It seems like every day I wake up to his voice rattling off the number of jobs that were lost that in the days before. I hear him talking about the stock market losses and the overall impression I’m left with is that things are not looking up. It’s depressing. Sometimes I think I should change the radio station.
It’s terrible to know that things are getting as bad as I hear they are. That’s just it though; I hear. Having not experienced any of this downturn personally, I consider myself very fortunate. In October, when it was big news, I remember hearing talk of it everywhere I went, never saw it though. My schedule in October was busier than it had ever been. Yellowbook shoots, the Sweet Adelines concert, and none of it showed any signs of slowing down. I even booked a wedding for November, something unprecedented for me. As bad as I heard things were getting, I still didn’t see it.
Toward the end of November and the beginning of December things slowed down. The Yellowbook shoots fizzled to non-existence. Weddings stopped. There were no gigs forthcoming. I was fine with that because I was prepared for the reality that November through March are my slowest months. Before December was out, I had booked two more weddings. January enters, and 2009 is upon us. I’m taking it slow, starting to crunch my numbers for taxes. I purchased my first print advertisement in The Olympian’s Bridal guide. With one purchase, ’09′s advertising budget had already surpassed ’08′s.
Going in to February, I’m getting e-mails and calls about doing weddings and other gigs. The yellowbook shoots came back; with a vengeance. All in one week! Things are seriously blowing up.
I know that economic downturns are a chance for new and innovative ideas to really make their marks, and I feel like I have some of this within that I want to bring to the table. Trouble is, what I thought was going to be a slow time is turning out to be much busier than anticipated. There are interesting new methods I’ve wanted to implement in my marketing strategy, along with updating my website. Apparently the time I was looking forward to resting on my laurels has come and gone.
Why? Quality? Pricing? I think both. The work I offer is on qualitative par with people charging double what I charge. I didn’t drop my prices for the depression, they’ve been set since spring ’08. I think my quality will show, and my prices will win major points. Because I’m not doing this out of greed. I’m not trying to pay off a Cadillac Escalade, or a similarly ridiculously large and overpriced house. I’m doing this because it’s really what I want to do.
Every day.
