Living by Experience

Two years ago I celebrated my 30th birthday in Vancouver. I needed to get away from it all, and get my sushi fix at my all-time-favourite restaurant. After dinner I walked around the neighbourhood, and sat down on a small bench in the West End district to listen to some music I heard coming from the apartment building behind the bench. It didn’t take long until a lady walked by and noticed I was listening to the music. She sat down and shared the story I now share with you: the music was played by an older couple living on the top floor of the building, and they regularly played their piano and many (!) other instruments with their balcony doors wide open. On New Years Eve, every year, they would play “Old Lang Syne”, right at midnight, to ring in the new year. Although I’ve never met them, and without them knowing it, they’ve played for me on my 30th birthday – and made an impression on my special day I’ll never forget. Thank you.

This year I turned 32, and even though many things have changed, I found myself back in Vancouver to celebrate. Being the creature of habit I am I had dinner at the same restaurant, and I went for a walk in the same area after. To my surprise, I heard the music again. I sat down and listened for a while. What are the odds.

Tonight it’s New Years Eve. I’m sure they’re playing Old Lang Syne, and while I won’t be sitting on my Vancouver bench tonight, I’m there in spirit. The old couple probably will never know the impression they left with me and how they were part of two special moments in my life. I remember those moments, and this story, everytime they play “Old Lang Syne” on the radio during the holidays. The story also made me realize we probably do the same every day, all of us. Without realizing it, we’ve touched many lives with something we thought was insignificant. A friendly “hello”, a smile – you never know how far it will go. You might have just made that person’s day, because it was all they needed in that very moment. For that I thank you.

As I just got cut off in the parking lot by a lady in a company Atcogas car I was remembered how stressful this time of year is. Most people are focusing all their time and energy to prepare for the holidays. We need to make sure we get the right gift for the right person, do at least a half-decent job in gift-wrapping it, all while making sure we're not forgetting that someone special, family, friends, acquaintances, bosses, co-workers, and so on. And let's not forget the groceries and getting everything ready for Christmas dinner. Pressure is on, for sure. Especially if you work for ATCO, it seems. I really hope she gets some time off soon.

For me December is different. Sure, I do my share of shopping, cooking and preparing for my favourite holiday. But to me, this month is mainly a month of reflection. Time to look back on what happened this year. My highs, and lows. I traditionally clear my calendar the last two weeks of the year to really focus on taking stock of everything that happened - and preparing myself for the upcoming new year. It's a simple thing to do, but I've learned it's instrumental in working towards the things I dream of for the new year. It helps me to build on my successess and also to learn from my mistakes, hopefully allowing me to avoid making the same mistakes again. It all gives a clear insight that helps me to make 2015 even better.

Selling art must be one of the most interesting things to do. I've sold many things before in my life: newspapers, software, professional services, groceries, furniture, and even homes. Even though you can negotiate about the price on all of those things, there is more or less of a market value for each of them. If your price is either too high, or too low, it raises a bunch of questions. Red flags. You don't buy that convertible sportscar at a price of half the market value because where the seller got it from might be suspicious. There's many books written on buying (and selling) any of those things, and common pitfalls to avoid. Making a career out of selling art is something different though. Many artists struggle with the idea that something so close to their heart is worth money. Most true artists create their work simply because they have to - they cannot not make pictures, paintings, sculptures, or whatever it is they do. I'm no different. I love to travel, and take photographs as I go along. It started as just a way to show my friends and family what I had been up to on a recent adventure, but it turned into a way to show the world the world through my lens. It's an amazing experience to have someone pay real money for something I absolutely love to do. Buy my pictures also carry an important invitation - to go see all the beauty this world has to offer for yourself. That's what prompted me to write a book about the zen approach to travel.

But back to art. I've sold a few pieces of my work, at various places. Selling art in a grocery store (or "farmers market") doesn’t seem to work very well, surprisingly enough. People aren't there to buy art. They're there to buy their food for the day, or week, depending on how far ahead they plan. Buying art - not so much. Even though most people enjoy watching some artwork in a farmers market very few will entertain the thought of picking up a unique work of art in addition to their grocery list. Understandably so.

I’ll admit it. I use Instagram professionally. I’m a photographic artist so a social media network that’s designed to share just photographs sounds like it’s too good to be true. I don’t have to deal with uninteresting status updates, games, pokes or any other unpleasantries. The downside of Instagram for me is the amount of spammy comments - especially now my “followers” on Instagram are growing steadily I get the occasional passer-by to indulge in some shameless self-promotion. My first reaction was - How dare they do that on a profile that’s intended to promote me. And that’s exactly the problem with social media. It’s not that social. It’s all about me, me, me. We’re all connected, but no one is really connecting anymore.

The same kind of happens on Facebook. I choose quality over quantity when putting together my friends list. Because who really has over a 1000 Friends? That’s more a collection of acquaintances you’ve met once in your life. “Collect them all”. And even with my short list of Friends, it appears to be challenging to engage them in real life. Now for some that makes sense. Facebook is a great way for me to stay in touch with friends and family all over the world I otherwise might have lost touch with. But for those geographically closer to me, it’s a different story. It might be me, but inviting anyone to real life events seems to be pointless. A response rate of only one or two is not uncommon. Maybe my parties aren’t that cool after all. It’s possible, not everyone is into parties featuring free food, drinks and a world class DJ after all. I get it.

One of the things I like to do on my blog is share stories about what works for me as an artrepreneur. But this time I have one that did not quite work for me so well: crowdfunding. I actually managed to lose money by running a campaign on popular crowdfunding site Indiegogo. Which I’m not at all happy about, as I’ve let them know – but of course their customer happiness team is hiding behind their “terms and conditions”. Which didn’t make me happy at all. After some back-and-forth emailing and no movement on their part I concluded maybe I missed the fine print, which obviously would have been my bad. Sorry. But I’m happy to help my fellow artrepreneurs and be your guinea pig: behold as I share the tale of my crowdfunding failure with you, hoping you’ll do better than I did.

First of all – the big problem with crowdfunding is that all the major sites provide you with the platform to collect money. They do not at all help to drive traffic to your campaign. Over the course of my campaign, this resulted in many (many) spam messages everywhere imaginable: not only did I get spammy comments on my campaign, I also received numerous emails, as well as messages on my website, blog and social media pages like Facebook and Twitter from companies trying to sell me their promotional crowdfunding services. What a waste of my time. I created my campaign to raise funds, not to spend them on more advertising. Only once you get your “gogo factor” up high enough, the crowdfunding platform might feature you on their homepage or category pages, leading to some additional exposure (which you probably no longer need at that time).

So my kick at the crowdfunding can was a pre-sale campaign for my (now released) photography book A View to Take Home. Our team spent lots of time writing a good campaign page, and we even created a really cool video to explain the project in person. After the campaign went live we send out a press release, and fired off a social media campaign to promote the book’s presale. It all went well. We received a few minor contributions right away, but in the end only sold a few copies of the book. Still – so far so good.

The trouble started when Indiegogo paid out the funds our campaign has raised. It wasn’t much – but better than nothing. However what I didn’t notice in the above mentioned fine print, is the $25 wire transfer fee they charge (on top of their “platform fees”) to transfer the funds into my bank account. Ouch. So from the $40 dollars raised I was left with only $10. After my bank deducted their own $25 for the incoming wire transfer I was left with a negative balance of $15 dollars. Ouch again. And I still have to print and ship the few books that people bought on the site. Now I’m in real pain.

Here’s what happened:

$40.00: Amount raised by credit card

-$3.60: Indiegogo platform fee (9.0%)

-$1.20: Payment processing fee (3%)

-$25.00: Non-U.S. wire fee

$10.20: Net amount

That’s pretty sad. Almost 80% of my funds raised went right back in to Indiegogo’s bank account. From what was left my bank took the remainder as a fee for their services rendered (which equals to them waiting for money to arrive in my bank account).

When I expressed my frustration to the customer “happiness” team I received something along the lines of “Thanks for writing in about this. I’m sorry to hear about your experience. I understand that fees can be frustrating, however, you are informed about the fees during your campaign setup process on the “funding” tab and within our Terms of Use which you agree to prior to launching your campaign. As per our Terms of Use, all fees on Indiegogo are final and nonrefundable.” All of which made me extremely unhappy.

It all began in 2008, I was 26 at the time. Young, green, and very naive. I knew I wanted something different. Not because the life I had in Europe was so bad. It was pretty great, actually. The ability to just get in a car and drive to Paris is one of the many great perks of living in the hustle and bustle of West Europe. But my sense of adventure kicked in, and I wanted a change of scenery. Well, if you’re looking for scenery, Canada is definitely a place to consider.

And I did. Six years ago I left behind everything familiar to me. I moved across the Atlantic Ocean to start a new life in Canada. I adopted Calgary as my new home base. Shortly after getting my feet on the ground I bought a motorcycle, to explore Western Canada in style.

Canada has been called one of the most beautiful countries on earth, and I would have to agree. I fell in love with the exceptional things I saw and the remarkable people who crossed my path. Spending hundreds of hours on the road collecting images for this book has changed me. Photographing the stunning beauty of this country has made me feel more inspired than ever before. I’ve had close encounters with bears, roamed mountain roads lead by a pack of wolves, and I found many other little tiny wonders of nature. A View to Take Home is a celebration of life in Canada, in all it’s forms.

Today, I want to invite you to ride along with me as I explore the awe-inspiring beauty of Western Canadian provinces Alberta and British Columbia. Learn more about my journey and watch the video at www.viewtotakehome.com. This book has been about six years in the making, and it’s been a journey in itself making that dream come true. 

During one of my art events in a local farmers market this summer I ended up beside a lady who was selling vegetables from her own greenhouse. I still hear her repeat, tirelessly, all day long, “these were picked fresh this morning”. And then, when someone was looking at her tomatoes, she said “my tomatoes actually taste like tomatoes, not cardboard”. I was intrigued. Eat your fruits and vegetables, they say. Five or ten a day, depending on who you ask. But it seems to have gotten to a point where the fact that vegetables that taste like actual vegetables, has become a novelty - a unique selling point, so to speak.

The lady was neighbourly enough to give me some of her products at the end of the day that she would otherwise have to throw out. It’s not meant to be ungrateful, but really I was getting her old stuff that she didn’t want to sell anymore. And when I cooked dinner that night I learned she was right - tomatoes that taste like tomatoes are a novelty. Her vegetables tasted amazing - even the older ones that she didn't want to sell anymore. I’m curious now what it is exactly that I have been buying at the grocery store for so many years.

I watched a few documentaries on food. I learned strawberries, for example, don’t grow year round. They only grow in strawberry season. The fact we can buy them year round is because they’re shipped to us from all around the world. Most of them by boat or by truck. Now imagine shipping fresh, ripe strawberries from a sunny place like California all the way across the country. They’d be rotten by the time they arrive. So instead they’re harvested well before they’re fully ripe, and the ripening continues in the truck, using special gasses and chemicals, similar to alkaline (you know, that “healthy” stuff a battery is made of), to give them a consistent texture, color, and taste. Like cardboard, indeed.

I received an email the other day answering my question with “management is not in a position to consider that”. It made me think. If you must know, my request was to an organizer of a large trade show I had previously participated in as an artist / exhibitor. They clearly weren’t in the mood to reduce my rate, which I might not like but do very much understand. I stopped giving discounts myself a long time ago. Someone told me “you’ll stop giving discounts once you realize your self-worth”. I took that advice seriously.

People do ask me for discounts, sometimes, in degrees varying from 5, 10, or even a 100%. Because "free" is awesome. And it doesn’t hurt to ask. While I don’t entertain the thought of discounting unique artworks, I never blame management for “not being in a position to consider it”. Management is totally in a position to consider anything. Always. I’m fully in charge of my company so I can make any decision I seem healthy (or not) for my business. And if I wasn’t in charge I could definitely go ask my management to consider a customers request. It never hurts to ask.

I haven’t seen my family for almost three years now. I blame the Atlantic Ocean, and myself for choosing to live on the other side of it. It’s not easy, especially when Christmas and birthdays come around. It’s funny how the feeling of missing people is equally upsetting even if I’m the one who decided to follow a dream and move really far away. 

I try to go back every few years to visit them. With a credit card high score for non-refundable transatlantic airfare I phone them up to share the happy news. That was a bad idea. They had been planning to book a vacation at the same time, and although nothing had been booked yet the intent was, for various reasons, to proceed with that plan. Looks like I’ll be spending less time with my family than I had imagined. Good time for this black sheep of the family to adjust my expectations once again. I’m starting to get used to the fact that the only constant is change, but despite that some things never do.

A friend posted this quote to her Instagram to other day, and it was spot on with something I've believed in for a long time. Stop the madness. Stop the glorification of busy. We’re all so very "busy" with all sorts of things that fill up our calendars. Meetings, phone calls, emails - they never end, it seems. And we all complain about it, but yet seem to get a real sense of importance out of our “busy-ness”. And yet we often forget what’s really important, the things that matter most. The stuff that actually adds real value, and makes a difference in our own life and that of others around us. What’s important is personal, and probably different for everyone. But you know what it is, for you. It is whatever it is that the voice in your heart tells you. You know what it is, and what isn’t.

It’s all about priorities. What do you actually want to do? Are your choices in line with your desires? What are your goals, and do you give priority to the right things to reach those goals? If something is your top priority, you’ll somehow make the time, and find the money to make your goal a reality, on whatever scale you wish to be feasible and appropriate. Think about your priorities next time you decline an invitation from a friend because you have “no time”. Nobody really has time anyway. It’s the one thing you can’t get back after you lost it. So spend your time wisely and set some priorities. Whether it’s meeting friends for a coffee, looking for a new job, going on a trip, or whatever it may be you desire: do something different. Life starts at the end of your comfort zone. Take responsibility for your life, and make your choices your own. You are capable of much more than you realize.

Dear neighbors. Since when are”playing kids” equivalent to “screaming” - and me wondering if I should phone family services. When I used to play outside as a kid and I would start to think the amount of noise we produced was a legitimate indicator of the amount of fun we were having, my mom would strongly object against those assumptions. A firm “be quiet” would set us back on the right track.

Her approach to parenting seems to have grown out of date. When I’m working in my home office (at the front of the house) I sometimes do wonder if the neighbourhood children (playing in the back of their house) are doing ok. The amount of screaming might indicate, from a layman’s perspective, they are not. There’s a wonderful book written on Screamfree Parenting, which must be popular with some houses on my street since the parents have stopped screaming and moved that trait onto their offspring. It still leaves me wonder whether they are ok, but it seems the more fun they’re having the louder it gets.

It’s funny how useless it is to invite “friends” on Facebook to events. The response rate is less than 1%. In marketing that ratio is acceptable for cold leads - out of 100 people that never heard from you before, 10 might be interested, and 1 might buy.

The same goes for LinkedIn. When my first book got published I got really excited and wrote individual, personalized emails to hundreds of connections. I imagined they all wanted at least one copy, because I was certain if anyone of them had written a book I would certainly buy one (even if it was bad). It would just be cool to have a book on the shelf from someone you know. Also, I seem to love books more than people.

Those hundreds of messages resulted in two sales. Two. And crampy fingers. With the amount of money authors make on royalties these days I could barely afford my triple bypass frappuchino for breakfast the next morning. Self doubt kicks in. It might say something about people's perception of me, or about the quality of my writing? But then why did I personally sell boxes full of my book at markets and events? I think it has to do neither with me, nor with the quality of my writing. I’d like to think both are awesome.

I started this blog at some point by writing about giving a million monkeys typewriters. Statistically speaking one of them should write a Shakespeare novel. I realize I’m one of those million monkeys adding content onto the internets. I even wrote a book, adding even more content. There’s so much information available that it seems to overwhelm people. We don’t read emails anymore and just ignore any piece of information that doesn’t fit in our mindset, mainly for convenience sake.

It’s understandable. Almost every job ad out there promises you the ability to become part of the or at least a “Winning team”, whatever that means. Another sign I saw the other day promised me the “Leading Chinese restaurant” - which turned out to be a food poisoning delivery service. Anyone can call themselves “leading” and “winning” - and as a result all these buzzwords have zero meaning anymore. So we ignore them.

Someone told me typewriters make you think about the words you choose more carefully, because you can’t erase them with the push of a button. It’s like photography. We don’t need film anymore, which required us to think before taking a picture. Now we just snap 3000 images on an average vacation and hope some work out. Many wedding and “professional” fauxtographers work that way.

I love videos. And I love reading. So much that I regularly upload some to YouTube and Vimeo. And the reading I do inspired me to write a book of my own. Go have a look and let me know what you prefer - moving images, still images or text.

To me, they all serve a different purpose. The information I share in my book would probably not work well in a video. If I ever sell the movie rights we’d have to adjust the content for the new format. Then again, short videos are great to share some highlights from the book - and we did that. Still images can be used to make things pretty - like book covers or your walls. I’ve done that, too.

When I was looking for a piece of information the other day I was forced to watch a 15 minute video. It contained a lot of fluff, and all I needed was the golden nugget of information that was buried somewhere in the haystack. My speed reading skills don’t seem to apply to watching videos, and I was forced to waste 14 minutes of my life that I’ll never get back.

Last time I ordered my favourite Turkey Bacon Club sandwich I requested it to be made with white bread, instead of the default whole grain. I got a look as if I was committing a health crime, and with a similar snarky tone I was informed that “we don’t carry white bread”. A place where ordering your coffee with double Cream and double Sugar is something standard makes a problem out of serving me my preferred white bread. A sandwich loaded with processed meat, processed cheese, processed sauce and (drum roll) unprocessed healthy lettuce, but I can’t get it on white bread anymore because that would be unhealthy. What has happened to the world?

I like baking and cooking, and often make my own breads. Being European, eating bread is just something that’s part of my DNA. Some diets say bread makes you fat. I’m not disputing that, but I do wonder if it has to do with the breads, or the ingredients we choose to put in or on it.

When I bake cookies, cakes, or (the recent favourite) make ice cream all recipes have one thing in common: they call for sugar, and lots of it. When I follow the ice cream recipe of my all-time favourite European chef, Jamie Oliver, his custard based ice cream recipe calls for about 6 tablespoons of sugar. A North American version of a similar custard based ice cream called for the equivalent of 16 tablespoons of sugar. Another recipe for a mango sorbet called for 2 cups of sugar. That’s abut 32 table spoons, according to my personal assistant Siri.

The beauty with temptation is that you’ll never find out - unless you give in. Which seems to be a bad thing usually. Temptation has a bit of a bad name. “Thou shalt not” do a whole bunch of tempting things. But then again - you’ll never know how far you can go, if you’re not willing to risk going too far. It’s (almost) always possible to revise a decision and take a few steps back onto the beaten path.

I used to have my own art gallery, a physical retail location where I was selling my photographic art. It was a great experience, and one of the highlights of my creative career thus far. The location, a business revitalization zone, wasn’t perfect, which made it all the more interesting. People weren’t used to finding art, and I often saw them walking back and forth in front of my big windows, unsure whether they would risk entering or not. Some did, others didn’t - but walked away backwards, obviously still fighting the temptation of their curiosity to come into something they hadn’t seen on their street before. Some almost tripped over my strategically placed sandwich board. Walking backwards is an art in itself.

I would probably be a terrible coffee shop owner. Just like with photo sessions - I keep giving it away for free. Maybe it’s a Dutch thing. Whenever someone comes to the house to do something for me, whether it’s cleaning, painting, building a deck or fence - I give them coffee, for free. The good stuff too - my coffee machine grinds the fresh roasted beans for every individual cup. And I pay them too. Giving out free coffee is just the right thing to do in my caffeine induced Dutch mind.

As a photographic artist I’m always looking for places to hang my work. Many small coffee shops feature local artists, and I’ve been in my share of them. Not to sound ungrateful, because I truly appreciate the wall space in busy cafes to showcase my work, but the funny thing is - I just realized none of them ever offered me a single cup of coffee while I was working up a sweat hanging my work. I usually show my work a month at a time and aim to visit regularly during that month - buying at least a cup of coffee every time, and usually something to eat, too. And when meeting friends I try to bring them to whatever place is currently featuring my work. So the coffee shop owner gets extra business, and free high quality art work for their walls. In return I get some good exposure, but no coffee. And exposure alone doesn’t pay the bills, or my coffees :-)