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Topic: Keeping balanced as a publicist
| Author | Message |
| lara12 | Posted – 5/25/2008 11:54:30 AM | show profile Hey all! I quite my job as the Director of Communications a while ago and decided to start my own company. Currently, I am a company of two, me and my assistant. Im working from home right now. I have 6 paying clients and am really happy about that. I dont want to grow any bigger right now because I am having a really hard time keeping balanced. I get calls and emails 24 hours a day from them and others. I am working 12-14 hours a day. However, I have never been happier in a job. I would love to start a discussion on how you keep a balance in your life if you are in the same situation. Next week starts my busy season and it will last for 52 days. Which will be 52 days of straight work. Im dreading it a little. Let me know any suggestions you might have. Thanks! LM |
| dmaw | Posted – 5/26/2008 8:48:59 PM | show profile | email poster keeping balanced a publicist I was a Director, Public Relations at a television network for 16 years and I got laid off last year. I have been able to take on clients in the industry so freelancing has been a good option for me (I also have small children). I work from home as well. How to stay balanced? Learn how to walk away from your work. Be very structured - start your work day at 9 or 9:30 am when you usually did in the corporate world - take a short lunch hour - and then go back to it until 6 or 6:30 pm - and then call it a day for a few hours to make dinner, have time with your family - if you need to look at email at 8 and 10 if you have west coast clients, then do it, but remember to try have to a life for yourself. It seems to be working for me - there are more important things in life than work. Also, I am an entertainment publicist - if you have any need for a freelancer down the line, please let me know and we can chat about my background. Good luck. |
| lara12 | Posted – 5/26/2008 9:23:07 PM | show profile All very good tips! Thank you! I too am strictly entertainment, so my individual clients do call me at all hours and every day. I guess I struggle because I want to be available to them. I am also single with no kids. Anyway, thank goodness for today, its been blessedly quiet. Thanks again! LM |
| midian | Posted – 5/27/2008 10:09:19 AM | show profile Keeping balanced as a publicist I can definitely relate to all the above. I too am a publicist (entertainment & corporate). It took me sometime to develop "balance" in my life and schedule. As you both probably know, all clients are not created "equal"...some clients just "flow along"...while others are very "high maintenance" (smile). The most important thing I did was to start setting parameters with my clients in terms of hours and time -- and so far it's working. |
| lara12 | Posted – 5/27/2008 12:48:23 PM | show profile I definetly will be doing that. I have one clients that is extremely high maintenance, I love him, but calling me at 10:30 on a Sunday night isnt necessary. :) |
| Guyarthurthomas | Posted – 5/27/2008 2:08:03 PM | show profile lara, Consider thinking about your time management like your financial management. The best way you will achieve balance is through planning. You obviously are married to a calender (or should be) since you have a high demand and fluid schedule. Therefore the first thing is sitting down and writing down, just like a financial spreadsheet, all the demands or "time bills" you have to pay in the next 90 days. You then have to determine if they are daily, weekly, monthly or periodic during the year. After sketching in those "time bills" to be paid you need to see what is left over and attempt to concretely and/or lightly place in your "time economy" some "time receipts" or times set aside for you. Your time allocation also has to have been written out. What is essential all the way to the most expendable yet desired activities. Self, family, friends, spiritual renewal, intellectual pursuits and so on. Once you have recognized those you can begin filling in your time budget or economy with those receipts. There are times when bills are heavy and times when receipts are greater. It appears your time bills or debts are heavy right now. That is fine, paying such time bills opens the door to time receipts that you can spend relaxing. The reason it needs to be written out and followed is because in truth that is how humans work. If you do 90 days at a time, that usually works best with an entire year lightly sketched for distant time goals. Think of it like going shopping also. If you have a budget and a time limit you will both enjoy yourself and yet will be less likely to injure yourself with excess because you have a boundary established. While no time budget is perfect it sets boundaries and establishes goals and helps you manage both yourself and others. |
| cori | Posted – 5/27/2008 5:14:07 PM | show profile Lara, my two cents... I agree with what others posted here. I have worked freelance and had my own event planning biz in L.A. for several years. My advice is to find time every week to have lunch or drinks with a biz friend -- someone who understands what you do and can be a good ear if you need to talk. Six clients is a lot to juggle and as someone else posted, some clients are far more demanding than others. I'd set a limit as to the time clients can check in with you and I would also set a time limit to when you will check your emails for the last time each day/night. When you work from home it is very hard to shut down for the day. It's easy to get stuck on the computer or on the phone. Give yourself a limit and let the clients know you are reachable until (fill in the blank PM), then honor that. Of course, in emergencies, they should know they can reach you, but after years in the biz, I ask what kind of emergency crops up after 9pm that can't wait til the morning? Good luck to you. |
| Ladyj007 | Posted – 5/28/2008 11:38:48 AM | show profile | email poster Balance w/bounderies I agree 100% w/everyone here and I too..lol..am an entertainment publicist who freelances. When I 1st started I was very eager, so I wanted to keep the client happy but I was also so excited in what I was doing. However with time you realize that you have to ste bounderies. Because what happens when new things come into your personal life? what if you're married or you get involved with someone, you may want to have seperate alone time for that or if you have family or maybe you just want some "me" time. Anyway the point is that at some point you will want that line divided between work and personal time. Thank god for voicemail. People will get the hint that if they call you lets say from 8:30am-7pm you always answer, but when they call after 7pm you never answer. They'll get the hint thru the form of conditioning that this person does not accept calls after a certain time. Plus they can send an email or you can check vm's and if it's that urgent you call them back. Thats just me of course if I have a big event and its like 1-2 weeks before at those times I may work around the clock kinda like working on a school project when you were a kid. At the end of the day you're doing something you love and what more can we ask for? Perhaps we should start a Publicity Group ;-) J. |
| df | Posted – 5/28/2008 1:07:39 PM | show profile hi, I have to present the other side of the coin - I never have enough time for myself, since I am always working. And instead of the workload getting better, it is getting heavier for the same amount of money. I am in the biz for 20 years, and own my small agency for 8 years. I have never worked so much and so hard, even when I just started it. I think in theory the time bill thing sounds great, but many times I don't have enough time left at the end of the day to sync my phone with my calendar. so when for heavens sake am I supposed to fill in time bills? I already tried everything, I am super organized, have two employees to whom I delegate a lot, and still it has become impossible. Not only do people call and email at all times of the day they do so in mass amounts. My email load has increased from about 40 to 50 emails a day to about 80 to 110 per day with the same clients, and the same amount of work/projects. Also I find that people have become increasingly more entitled and more nasty easily. I just had a conversation with a friend of mine about this - she's a famous event planner - and she also said it has become trying every time not to loose it. it used to be 1 out of 10 clients who was super high maintenance and nasty, now its the other way around. Anyway, I just think there's really no life/work balance possible, if you are self employed and live in a metropolitan city (NYC, Chicago, LA) with a high competition factor. |
| lara12 | Posted – 5/28/2008 1:11:59 PM | show profile You all are so terrific for responding! One of the other things Ive decided to do is weed out all of the "takers". You know...the people that want a free-ride. The ones that still think you can get something for free, well maybe they can, but it always ends up costing me. Because I live in Vegas, I get 10-15 calls a week from "friends" that want something. Im not even going to answer calls like that anymore. Also, I found myself anwering an email from my blackberry while using the bathroom yesterday, that will have to stop :) Thanks again! Lara |
| Site Optimized | Posted – 7/17/2008 3:16:28 PM | show profile | email poster Keeping balanced as a publicist LM if you are SERIOUS about having more balance in your life, another good idea is to become a part of the co-working movement and rent desk space (usually VERY cheaply) with other freelancers and do NOT bring your work home with you. Here are some great resources on it: http://wwwnytimescom/2008/02/20/business/businessspecial2/20coworkhtml?pagewanted=1&_r=1 http://wwwnwcncom/video/featured-indexhtml?nvid=180486&shu=1 http://nutopiaus/ http://wwwhatfactorynet/ http://wwwbusinessweekcom/smallbiz/content/feb2007/sb20070226_761145htm http://wwwcnncom/2008/LIVING/worklife/04/07/coworking/indexhtml http://thewerksorguk/space/coworking-space https://coworkingpbwikicom/My+Day+Office http://wwwworkatjellycom/ http://wwwcubesandcrayonscom/indexjsp http://wwwnwcnycom/ http://wwwcoworkingcom/indexphp http://wwwgothamgazettecom/blogs/wonkster/2008/04/23/working-from-home-get-out-once-and-a-while/ ------ ----------- www.SiteOptimized.com |
| jbrandeis1 | Posted – 7/17/2008 9:07:33 PM | show profile | email poster Lara12 and DMAW Seems like the three of us have a lot in common! Let's meet soon for lunch or coffee in the city. www.jblhcommunications.com |
| thestudent | Posted – 7/28/2008 5:02:22 AM | show profile Setting and maintaining regular contact hours is a must. I'm very upfront about it and as someone all ready mentioned, I too condition my clients to know when to contact me. I have a client that likes to call me on the weekends. The way I handle it is by keeping my responses brief and letting him know when I can get back to him to work something out. I also do not answer the phone but am quick to return the call the next weekday morning. So far, it works. And it shows that publicists are busy. It's difficult to secure coverage if the client doesn't give you time to work, nap and enjoy life. |
| scottlt | Posted – 7/29/2008 10:06:53 PM | show profile | email poster Rearrange the internals Add me to the list of freelancers who have struggled with keeping balanced. There are many approaches to life/work balance: time management, diet and fitness, simplify-your-life experts... And there are some pretty typical, good ideas here for managing client expectations, time, etc. But all of them focus on changing the externals of our lives. I would add trying to incorporate a spiritual practice, and especially a contemplative discipline like meditation. I have an Australian client who is an independent PR guy, much like us. But he's also a longtime meditator and wrote a book about how his Buddhist practice effected his professional and personal life: Buddhism for Busy People (http://tinyurl.com/5759m8) -- an apropos title for this group. As he says, "Very often we have only minimal opportunity to change these externals, but we can still change the "internals" -- i.e. instead of trying to change the world, we can change the way we experience the world, which is a far more powerful proposition." I have a fairly solid meditation practice and can concur my him. After a while the balance comes naturally, you work smarter, more focused, more prioritized. Just a thought. scott. ------ ~// antidote collective [ www.antidotecollective.org ] ~// socially conscious communications . apply liberally - -- - t h i n k / f e e l - -- - Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing. (Arundhati Roy) |
