David Saxe, over at Black Star, writes about the need for proessionalism. Can it be that unwittingly you are carrying a “difficult person to work with” label that may be holding you and your photography business back?
Read the article at: Black Star.
I remember once working with a very talented programmer, but he never kept his word on when he would be finished with a piece of code. There was always an excuse and, when it was finally delivered, nine times out of 10, there were bugs. You can understand the frustration and mayhem that this caused for the project as everyone waited for his stuff to fall into place.
But when the code worked, it was brillant. I never understood why he had to lie about when he would be ready because we were more than willing to accomodate him. After all, the reason why we hired him was because he had come highly recommended for his coding prowess. However, even when we explained to him that all we needed was a good enough estimation, he would just throw out a date and not make any effort to keep it. Either he did not know how to estimate or, more to the point, I guess he knew how good he was and other people had to put up or shut up. We put up as long as his contract lasted and then he was gone.
There are people like that. They are so very good and rare, and we do have to put up if we want what they have to offer. But unless you are the VERY best — the “Soup Nazi” from Seinfeld comes to mind — we might find it advantageous to tone down the attitude and be a bit more professional in our dealings with others. The Golden Rule of treating others the way you would like them to treat us is always good advice.
Now the title of this article is not saying that if you are the very best, you do not need to be professional — simply that you may get away with it. But professionalism + [a little bit of] genius = successful business.