An appetite for adventure - Photographer and Videographer Steve Zavitz
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An appetite for adventure - Freelance Photographer and Videographer Steve Zavitz
Steve began learning his craft in 2008 and took it professional in 2011. His ambition, back then, was to build a name for himself as an action sports photographer - specifically in the world of Parkour (freerunning).
Depsite knowing there wouldn’t be much money in it, Steve gave it a go anyway.
And he invested his time into a second niche, too. Calling on his background and contacts within the food industry, he began shooting for restaurants and then built his portfolio as a food photographer from there.
He explains how he presents the two sides of his work online in a way that appeals to both types of client. He also talks about finding work, figuring out what to charge and trying to move on from Instagram and YouTube.
More from Steve Zavitz
Steve’s sports photography website
Steve’s food photography website
More from Steve Folland
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Transcript of the Being Freelance podcast with Photographer and Videographer Steve Zavitz and Steve Folland
Steve Folland: Freelance photographer and videographer, Steve Zavitz. Hey, Steve!
Steve Zavitz: Hey, how's it going?
Steve Folland: I'm good. How did you get started being freelance?
Steve Zavitz: I've been freelance for the past few years. Before that I was working, like I guess many people, working a 9:00 to 5:00. I jumped around and did quite a few different jobs, so directly before jumping into photography and videography, I was working for an ad agency in media, basically doing like media planning. I was doing some campaign management, so a little bit of number crunching, dealing with clients. Then before that I was doing, I was working in food, so I was an account manager for this catering tech company. Then before that I worked for a food website that's like an eMagazine called Tasting Table, so I was doing advertising for them.
Steve Zavitz: I have a background in marketing, which has been helpful for my career. Yeah, so I was working for this media company, and one of my previous contacts, a former boss of mine actually was out to drinks with me. He was working for another catering tech company, and he was just complaining about how the photographers they were getting just were unreliable, they weren't showing up on time. They weren't sending good photos. The quality was dodgy. Basically he was just venting to me over drinks, and I looked at him and just was like, "You're kidding, right? It's like you know that I shoot, and I told you this before and you've seen some of my work." He just didn't, completely forgotten that I shot. He was just venting aimlessly.
Steve Zavitz: What came of that is eventually he basically had his team member, his person that runs the vendor side of things, the restaurant side, reach out to me. She sat down and just said, "Hey, look, if you're willing to quit your job pretty much next month, we can give you enough work to keep you sustained." Definitely a little bit of a luck and serendipity there, but it was like I built up to that point I guess.
Steve Folland: You'd obviously been doing stuff on the side?
Steve Zavitz: Yes. I actually started doing video for the most part, and I started back in like 2008-ish I would say is when I started taking it seriously. Got a nice camera and was really trying to focus on learning things and honing my technique. Professionally, getting paid to do this, probably since 2011, so it's been a good nine, nine-ish years, almost 10. Yeah, so up until that point I had just been moonlighting.
Steve Zavitz: I would shoot on weekends and nights when I wasn't working my day job. A lot of that was pro bono work, a lot of that was just for my portfolio or just for fun. Actually a big part of my early portfolio and then currently is, I shoot a lot of parkour athletes. I don't know if you're familiar with parkour. Steve Folland: Yes.
Steve Zavitz: Yeah, so my early stuff was, I was really trying to focus on doing that video work. Originally when I started filming and then getting the camera and doing all the gear and learning stuff, my original goal was to be a freelance cinematographer, doing action sports and doing mostly parkour. It's probably similar to what a lot of other creatives and people that are professional in the field will tell you is that, sometimes the things that you want to do aren't necessarily the things that pay the most money.
Steve Zavitz: Unfortunately, there's not a whole lot of money in parkour, which I knew going in, but I was hopeful. It took me a few years of getting offered $100 for like a multi-day shoot to realize that maybe this wasn't the career choice or the niche I wanted to fall into, because there wasn't a huge budget for it. A lot of that stuff I still really enjoy doing. I still really enjoy shooting movements and I do parkour myself, so it's fun doing like the parkour lines next to athletes and filming. Doing stuff that I think other videographers don't feel super comfortable doing, like getting up high and doing some of the riskier movements.
Steve Folland: Yeah, nice. What were you doing? Did you set up like a Steve Zavitz website? Where you sharing on Instagram like this whole time when it was alongside your full time job?
Steve Zavitz: Yeah. Instagram wasn't even really around back when I first started. I was just making content for YouTube for the most part and sharing it with all my friends. Parkour had a really big following on YouTube, and the focus really was mainly on doing yearly or biyearly reviews of your training. Or if you do a big trip, you'd go and film a bunch of stuff with your friends and of yourself, and you would make a large five, six, or maybe even like 10 or 15 minute video.
Steve Zavitz: Things have changed a little bit. With the advent of Instagram, it's more geared towards shorter clips and more geared towards showcasing individual movement or a quick line that you did in a spot, as opposed to doing more polished stuff. I've maintained, I've actually stepped away from YouTube and from Instagram even to a certain extent, just because I feel like my time isn't really best spent doing that right now.
Steve Zavitz: I've been pretty busy. I think of Instagram and YouTube as a passion project for me. If I have time and I have something cool that doesn't necessarily work as a client project, I'll maybe throw something together for Instagram if I have time. That tends to be one of my side projects. If another athlete comes to me and approaches me about a project or an idea, it tends to end up on Instagram or YouTube.
Steve Folland: Right, okay. Let's jump back into your story. You suddenly get offered this opportunity, that if you quit your job, basically your first freelance client is going to provide you with enough work.
Steve Zavitz: Yeah, so as I had said, I'd worked in the food space for a bit, more on the middleman or even the client side of things. I was familiar with the idea of food media and food marketing, but I hadn't really done a ton of food photography. The guy was taking a risk on me, but I knew my stuff. I knew how to use flash. I was pretty familiar with the camera systems and everything. My work, you could look at my work and look at headshots and see that I knew the technical skills. In his mind I could hopefully pick up the technical skills of shooting food and the nuance of that.
Steve Zavitz: Yeah, so basically I quit my job. I put in my notice and he started giving me shoots, and I was probably shooting five, six times a week with them. It was mostly shooting restaurants. He's company called Platterz, which I think is a global company. They have offices in Canada and the US, but basically what it is, is a website that does corporate catering.
Steve Zavitz: My job was to go to restaurants and shoot basically their entire menu. Sometimes it would be as many as like 50 or 60 items, where I would just shoot like machine gun style. Where I just go and go and go for like two or three hours, and just shoot every single item on their menu. I got very good at shooting efficiently and quickly pairing down my kit, not having to carry around 60, 70 pounds of gear with me every time I went to a shoot, and getting a rapid turnaround.
Steve Zavitz: Most of these things I had to get done in two days. Imagine you're shooting five times a week and you have 40 to 60 shots in each shoot, and you have to get those done in 48 hours. You get pretty fast.
Steve Folland: Yeah, and so there's a temptation when you've got a lot of work from one client just to let that be your new job in a way, even if you're freelance. Did you do that or did you start putting the word out there that you were available?
Steve Zavitz: I've always maintained having a pretty healthy, diverse client list. Not all of them pay me the rate that I would normally commend, but it's important for me to have some variety and diversity in what I'm shooting, just because I don't want to get too bored. I do shoot mostly food now, but I do try to sprinkle in the parkour stuff and I shoot some dance stuff. Before the lockdown, I was actually shooting a lot for Broadway based in New York as well.
Steve Zavitz: Yeah, so now I think I have a pretty healthy client list and that offers me a lot of variety. In the early days I really was leaning a lot on Platterz and a lot on the food. I was still trying to get out and do as much shooting as I could, and do parkour stuff and try to get my name out there, but it's tough. It's tough to be the new kid on the block and to not have any serious campaigns under your belt.
Steve Zavitz: I guess I was relying on them for the most part, but the nice thing is that, I wasn't shooting with them for the entire day. It wasn't like I was going into an office and having to meet with people, and these were all my friends too. I'd worked with them before, so they're all people that I had a pretty good relationship with already.
Steve Zavitz: The flexibility in my schedule really gave me a lot of time to focus on that stuff, and I was also doing a little bit of consulting at the time too. I was working for this company, but it's a parkour coaching company. I was helping them out with some of their marketing and website design, and also shooting some photos and video for them as well.
Steve Folland: Right, so how did you start to be on that first one? How did you continue to grow your business?
Steve Zavitz: Really it's been word of mouth and it's been me just being in the right place at the right time. I'm trying to think of the last, my most recent client is a company called Ferrara, which is a cannoli and Italian owned bakery that's been in New York City for the past 125 years.
Steve Zavitz: The reason why I got that one is because I had worked with another Italian restaurant called the LAVO, which they're like 100 plus year old institution in Little Italy. The two owners had been talking and the owner of Ferrara was looking at the website and saying, "Oh, these are great photos. Who took those for you?" My name came up and then the guy called me the next day basically, and wanted to book me immediately pretty much.
Steve Zavitz: It's been a lot of that. I guess my mantra around this is just, I try to be as easy as I can to work with. I've been told that there's these three different, I guess areas that you can look at professionally. You can be really good. You can be on time professional, and you can be consistent, and really you just need two of those things to get the call back or to get consistent work.
Steve Zavitz: I'd be the best when it comes to food photography, there's some guys that do some crazy stuff that I really, I'm trying to learn that. I try to be as professional as I can and be consistent with my work. Those things in general, especially dealing with creatives in New York, people are really unreliable. There's so many people here that are shooting and some of them are at different levels of their career, at different times. A lot of the guys that I know are brilliant, they're robots. They can just crank stuff out and do some like very consistent and very high quality work.
Steve Zavitz: The majority of creatives that come across here are in the early stages of their career, and some of them are young. If you don't show up on time for your first shoot, it doesn't really leave a good impression for a lot of people. If your work is inconsistent, maybe the first time you go you nail it, and then the next time if you're hangover or you're just not on your A game, people notice. That really can contribute a lot to not getting that call back.
Steve Zavitz: I really try to be locked in whenever I go in, and I probably work a little bit too much, but I'm on my phone a lot. Having that corporate background, like working in the 9:00 to 5:00, helped me a lot with my phone calls and email interactions. I'm always very, very cognizant and very aware of my tone and making sure that I respond in a timely manner to a lot of people.
Steve Folland: Yeah, that is great. Not just coming from it from a creative standpoint, but almost being on the flip sides as somebody who may have hired, like being an account manager, you've seen both sides of it. Has it helped your business in other ways?
Steve Zavitz: Yeah. As I mentioned, I'm doing consulting here and there. Having that background in marketing and advertising definitely helps a little bit with that. It helps you center your perspective on things and understand the questions you should be asking your clients. When they start throwing like ROI at you, and they're like, "Our target audience here," and you're asking about what's the launch date for these things, and they're giving you Q1 and Q3, and they're talking about budgets.
Steve Zavitz: I know. I've been on the other side of the phone call for that, so I know I'm not going to get blindsided by their jargon. In a sense, I kind of speak their language a little bit, which is good and sometimes not so good. Sometimes they end up relying on you a little bit too much for things, and it becomes like a dick measuring contest for some people. It's like, "Where'd you work? Who'd you work for? What accounts did you have?" Stuff like that, and that's not always the best. It can create like a boys club sometimes.
Steve Folland: Yeah, so you wanted to do parkour type stuff. You found obviously work doing the food side of things and started to go deeper on that. Did that cause conflicts in the way that you would be presenting yourself? For example, if you were putting forward a website, did you think, "Oh, should I just do one or the other?" Or?
Steve Zavitz: Yeah, actually that's a current problem. I think that's always going to be a problem for me is, which card do I give people? I have two websites now, last year I created a food website. I've been putting it off for a long time and I had a separate, hidden page on my main portfolio site with the parkour stuff in it that was food. It got to a point now where the majority of my clients and a large portion of my cashflow is coming in from the food, so it didn't really make sense.
Steve Zavitz: From a pride perspective, I really wanted it to be just the parkour stuff, because early on in my career, one of my photographer friends was telling me like, "You should only have stuff on your website that you want to shoot more of." I was like, "All right, cool." The parkour stuff is going to go front and center, because that's what I want to shoot. People are going to know that I'm the parkour guy, but then people just keep calling me about food.
Steve Zavitz: I'm like, "What's your portfolio?" I was like, "Well, it's like my website, but it's like a hidden thing so I have to give you a password, and it just doesn't look good." I decided to bite the bullet and create a food centric website, and a food centric Instagram. Again, I'm not the best at Instagram, so the following accounts not quite as good. I just haven't been as diligent about posting and being active on that.
Steve Zavitz: It's been helpful to have the two websites, but then again, it becomes a situation where, if I'm talking to somebody about like headshots, like a corporate job or something, which card do I give them? Which one is going to be more impressive or is going to resonate more with them? That's been tough, but I think it's just, if I'm able to have a conversation with them about it, I can figure out and tell them like, "Hey, I do these two things, but I do everything."
Steve Zavitz: I think the nature of being a freelancer is, you end up being like a Jack of all trades, and you can master a few things. If people ask you like, "Can you do X, Y, or Z?" The answer usually is like, "Yeah, of course I can do your graphic design. I can do your website design. I can do some of your marketing. I can help you with your Instagram, and I can also shoot your corporate events and I can do your headshots. I can shoot your kid doing a back flip if he wants. I can do all these things," but it's a matter of you want to be known as the guy that does the thing that they want.
Steve Zavitz: Having the two websites I think has been helpful. It was stressful trying to navigate that space and trying to do both at the same time. Just having those two different domains of my professional career and cordoning off people based on what I think their interests are, has been helpful.
Steve Folland: Are both under the umbrella of Steve Zavitz, but one says parkour photographer, one says food photographer or?
Steve Zavitz: The one that's linked to my name, so stevezavitz.com is just the parkour stuff. I mean, it's like parkour and some urban exploration and some like urban scapes, a little bit more of just the stuff that I really enjoy shooting, my passion projects. Then my other one is the Notorious B.I.T.E or B-I-T-E because I'm based in Bushwick. It's like a play on Notorious B.I.G. but that's all just my food stuff. That website's a lot more simplistic. There's no videos really on there, it's just my food portfolio things.
Steve Zavitz: That's been helpful just because a lot of restaurant tours that I deal with or even people that work in marketing firms around restaurants are very pressed for time. Don't really want to have to navigate through a bunch of bullshit on my website to see the photos. They want to just open the site and see good stuff, whereas the parkour stuff I think people are more interested in the creative elements of it and they want to see a little bit more of my personality.
Steve Folland: Yeah. I like that. In all of this, do you sometimes collaborate with other people?
Steve Zavitz: I have a network of people that I use for, I have other designers, video people that I call if I need second shooters, things like that. I've designed my business around the idea that it's just going to be me dealing with... I also work for a company called the Movement Creative, which I've mentioned before. It's a parkour coaching team, but the guy that runs the company is one of my best friends.
Steve Zavitz: I'm his confident when it comes to talking about some of the staffing issues and the stresses of running a business, which I can relate to, to a certain extent, but he has a staff of about a dozen people. It's just seeing the growing pains of him dealing with staffing, transitioning from a sole proprietorship to an LLC. Then now we're working towards becoming an NPO, which means that everyone needs to be, we're all contractors right now, but everyone needs to be an employee.
Steve Zavitz: Seeing the paperwork and the expenses around that is just crazy. My taxes are complicated enough as it is, so imagining having a regular person that I'm dealing with and having to do paperwork for and crunching numbers. Potentially if they're going to be an employee of mine, like dealing with unemployment and dealing with health benefits and weighing in on those options there, like what's ethically right and what can I afford to do, just does not seem like... I'm having a hard enough time doing that for myself as the sole proprietor of my own business. Imagining doing that for another person or even more than one person is just like, it's too much for me to think about right now.
Steve Zavitz: Right now what I've been doing is, typically if somebody asks for extra help on a shoot, if I need a second shooter, or if I need somebody more of a specialist, maybe a graphic designer, because I can use Illustrator, I can use InDesign, but I'm definitely not an expert. There are people that are significantly better than me at that. If I'm coming up against a wall and I'm like, "Man, I can't really do this by myself, I need some help," usually what I'll try to do is position them as somebody that the client can reach out to directly. Or if it's something that I need, I can just hire them. As opposed to them being like a collaborator on a project, I'm just hiring them as like a subcontractor almost I guess, if that makes sense.
Steve Folland: Yeah. How have you coped with the pricing side of being freelance over the years?
Steve Zavitz: Oh, I talk to a lot of people. Rates are pretty variable. They can range to a huge extent in New York. For myself, the thing that's been most helpful is just the one, talking to clients and gauging how they react, if they get sticker shock. Also, just asking around people that have worked a little bit longer than me.
Steve Zavitz: I'm in a position now where I know quite a few other photographers and other just freelancers that have worked in different fields. I think my rates are pretty much in the middle. I've been told by some people I charge too much. I've been told by some people I don't charge enough, so maybe that's a good sign. I'm not hearing too much of one or too much of the other, but yeah. That's been helpful.
Steve Zavitz: There's a couple online groups, there's an Image Makers group for New York City. It's like an insider invite only type of group, where photographers get around and you can ask questions around your rate or ask questions about advice for licensing fees. Or just maybe vent about client problems or ask for solutions. I also have purchased a couple different guides from commercial photographers talking about how they set their rates and what they do around like rental agreements and licensing fees. That's been helpful, but really just talking to people has been the best.
Steve Zavitz: If you can talk to somebody who has personal experience and has known like, "Yeah, I quoted this guy this and I never heard back from. Then I got basically ghosted by him for the next year and a half," that's helpful. That's really useful information. Also, if you know somebody who's worked for the company that's asking you for a rate, that's even more useful.
Steve Folland: What would you say has been the biggest challenge for you being freelance?
Steve Zavitz: Usually it's getting clients. Right now I'm in a weird position, and with the pandemic it's been so strange because I never intended to be a food photographer. But, because food has become such an important part of people's lives now, they're stuck inside, whether that's delivery or groceries or whatever, I've worked for a bunch of different restaurants that are trying to revamp their websites.
Steve Zavitz: I worked with Caviar for a little while, which is a delivery service in the States. I worked with a custom Japanese grocery store, to do some photoshoots for them for a website and delivery service they're offering. I'm actually not really wanting for work right now, which feels a little, it's a little bad to say that because I know some people are really struggling right now to get work. A lot of people, I mean people I know directly, their industries are completely just torched right now. Yeah, so right now I'm not really having a hard time finding clients.
Steve Zavitz: The hardest thing for me right now is just making sure I'm staying safe and being responsible about when I'm going to shoots, and keeping distance and wearing masks. Following all the protocols just to make sure I'm not going to get sick, and also if I'm asymptomatic or if I am sick, just being responsible around that.
Steve Zavitz: In the past, getting clients and dealing with ebb and flow of things, typically summertime is really busy for me. The winter is when things really start to slow down, which is interesting because seasonal work here can be really dependent on your industry. For me doing like the parkour stuff where I'm shooting for athletic wear brands, outside is really king.
Steve Zavitz: The summer months when it's warm and you can go out and there's the sun, those are super important for me. I don't know. With the pandemic, I think the industry's going to change a lot especially in New York. I also think a lot of people from what I've heard have left or maybe have considered changing their careers. I don't know, six, seven, eight months down the line what that's going to look like.
Steve Folland: When you talk about the seasonality, when it comes to those slower periods, how would you deal with those?
Steve Zavitz: Well, I guess I can speak generally, but it's hard for me to think about the future right now just because of COVID. I'm imagining that things are going to be changing. I worked for this company called the Movement Creative that does coaching throughout the year. I'm the COO of the company, so I'm in charge of the marketing and the website and shooting content for that. I do have that steady amount of work.
Steve Zavitz: Previously what I was doing is, I would rely more on consulting gigs. If clients are looking to launch a new website or they want to do an online series of classes or something like that, I can hop in for two or three months at a time. Help them really just kickstart their online presence, make sure everything looks really nice and sharp.
Steve Zavitz: A lot of that has been what I've been doing for the past couple of years. I worked with a guy that does Systema, which is like a Russian martial art. I worked for another parkour company based in Seattle, it's a friend of mine that used to live in the city. She just asked me to come in and help her with some redesign, doing some copy editing, writing copy. I'm just typing up their website a little bit and dealing with some of their media.
Steve Zavitz: I rely more on my marketing backgrounds a little bit during the slower times for photography, if I'm not needed as a shooter, which has been helpful. Then besides that, working on personal projects also is helpful. During that time I have a huge backlog of videos that I was supposed to edit a long time ago or stuff that shot. It's like, "Oh, maybe I'll hold onto that for when it's slow." Getting the motivation to do that sometimes it's a little tough even when I'm not that busy.
Steve Zavitz: Yeah, typically when I'm looking at my schedule and I'm not seeing a whole lot of gigs or shoots, I'll try to open the backlog and take a look at stuff that I want to do, and maybe spend a couple hours working on that stuff.
Steve Folland: Right, so instead of worrying about it, you just get on with it, you've got used to the fact that it happens?
Steve Zavitz: Yeah. I plan around my busier seasons and save up the money to try to be responsible around that. I am constantly looking for work and talking to people, but I try not to be too stressed about it. If I take the time to really work on and continue honing my skills, really that's another thing is, if I'm working on personal projects, usually I'm pushing my boundaries and I'm doing something I wouldn't normally do. Maybe I'm learning a little bit more about VFX work or more about like vector graphics. Or maybe I'm designing a booklet in InDesign and learning new things there, that's important to me. It's just to constantly be learning new things, especially when I'm not actively working, and I'm not like exhausted from doing shoots all week, is to continue adding to my skillset. Steve Folland: When you say, you're always in effect looking for work and having conversations, do you actively, I guess reach out to people? Does it, I guess come across as professional? Or is it more just a case of checking in, in a friendly basis with people who you've connected with over the years? How do you go about that?
Steve Zavitz: I have done cold emails and that was a big part of my early presence. When it came to reaching out to companies and businesses, I would just email or DM on Instagram and say, "Hey, I like your work. I'd love to just collaborate with you, would love to talk to somebody in your brand team just about maybe doing a quick photo shoot or a video shoot for your hat brand or your shoe brand or whatever." I got a few gigs that way.
Steve Zavitz: I ended up working with a watch company doing just a parkour shoot of guys wearing the watch, which was cool. A couple of restaurants. I have just walked into a restaurant and said, "Hey, can I shoot your favorite dish here?" I've had some good success with that. If nothing else, I end up getting a free meal, which is nice.
Steve Zavitz: Yeah, right now I think I have such a variety of people in my Rolodex that I end up just, if I'm wanting for work, I'll just do a soft touch check in with somebody and say, "Hey, how's the going?" Especially right now, you can just check in and say like, "How are you holding up? Are you feeling healthy?" Just reminding people that you had a good experience with them last time, or they were really happy with the photos.
Steve Zavitz: Again, I'm not really wanting for work right now, but if I were trying to find more work actively, I think I would be doing a lot more of that. Where I just look through and think about projects I've worked on, or maybe look at my portfolio and see like, "Oh yeah, I worked with that restaurant a while ago, I should reach out again," because the guy had mentioned he wanted to re-up and do a new shoot when his seasonal menu came out.
Steve Folland: Yeah. If I've understood it correctly there, I love the fact that you would walk into a restaurant and say, "Can I shoot your favorite dish?" Then what, would you do that for free and then show them the work in the hope that they will go, "Oh man, we need the rest. We need the rest of our food,"?
Steve Zavitz: For sure.
Steve Folland: So good!
Steve Zavitz: It's a bold move for sure, but I've done that a couple of times and there has been like a cocktail or something. "What's your favorite cocktail here? What's the prettiest one, I'd love to shoot that?" People are pretty open to that for the most part. As long as they're not super busy, like you don't want to go on like a Friday evening at 8:00 PM when they're really getting busy.
Steve Zavitz: If I was in between a shoot, maybe I got back from a shoot and then wrapped up at 3:00 PM or something. Walk into a bar and say, "Hey, do you have a cool martini I could shoot or something like that?" Usually they're going to be pretty open to it, and once you show them the photo and it's a good photo, they're usually pretty impressed.
Steve Zavitz: Food people, it's good because people on food really understands the value of a good photo and how much that can sell for their business. I have a lot of qualms with Instagram, but I think the foodie culture of Instagram has really helped people understand the value and why it's important to pay people. Or why it's important to have somebody dedicated to doing good photos is really, the pictures sell the food.
Steve Zavitz: If you're ever looking at takeout menus and something, and they have shitty like phone quality stuff and the white balance is all messed up, and just things like janky and the food looks bad, you're not really going to feel super excited to order that food. If you go to a restaurant and you see really nice photos, and it really shows the size of the meal and there's texture and this thing where the color pops. I don't know about you, but that makes me hungry when I see those types of photos.
Steve Folland: Yeah. Frankly, I'm sitting here looking at your Notorious B.I.T.E. site at the moment and it is making me hungry, and I only ate about an hour ago.
Steve Zavitz: That's the idea.
Steve Folland: I am intrigued by the fact that you downplayed the importance of YouTube and Instagram to you now. As in like, it feels like a hassle or you don't have time for all of it, you just don't need to or, yeah. In terms of marketing, instinctively I would say, "Oh, videographer, photographer, surely he does these things." Actually you're going against that grain, you're not feeling that you have to for everything into that.
Steve Zavitz: Yeah. When I had more time, I was focused a lot more on that and the numbers really meant a lot more to me. Yeah, you nailed it there a little bit. I just don't really have the time and the patience to deal with it. Instagram really can be a full time job. I've seen people, especially in parkour, I'm sure you see this in your world as well with design and art. People really focus on that stuff, and you can lose yourself in it.
Steve Zavitz: Seeing people that are just like, I go out to eat with them and they're just on their phones because they need to make sure they respond in a certain amount of time. Otherwise, the algorithm's going to kick their photo back and they have to delete it and repost it. It just becomes like a whole, like I resent that kind of mentality where it's just like, I'm owned by this thing, I'm a slave to this thing.
Steve Zavitz: I really thought about it and was like, "Is my time best spent doing this? Or is my time best spent honing my work, learning something new and getting out there and meeting people, and doing the networking and doing that work?" I thought about it too, and I really haven't gotten that many gigs from Instagram. I mean, as much as it's helpful to have a big following and to have the big numbers of likes on your stuff in the comments, I don't really get very many referrals from that.
Steve Zavitz: A lot of people like it, but even restaurants are not super tuned into that. A lot of times they want to see what your work looks like on somebody's website. If you can send them a shot from this person's website, then they can look at it and see how it looks like in a living, breathing thing. It's easier for them to see that and see the value of that for themselves.
Steve Folland: There's more about those one-on-one relationships, and then sending them the link that you want them to see?
Steve Zavitz: Yeah, definitely.
Steve Folland: How is your work-life balance across all of this, do you think?
Steve Zavitz: I probably work more than I ever did, and I worked pretty hard in the 9:00 to 5:00. I lose track of time because for me, editing photos sometimes doesn't really feel like work. Or doing some research, doing some market research for myself or for the Movement Creative as a company, doesn't really feel so much like work. I don't really have hours, or I have to set aside time now to be with my girlfriend. Or if I want to just take a break and maybe just go do something for myself, I need to consciously set that time aside. Otherwise, it just ends up getting eaten away by, it's like, "Oh, I found a cool website. Look, I'm learning this cool tutorial on YouTube, or I'm working on a side project or whatever." You get lost in that hole.
Steve Zavitz: It's been important for me really and for the health of my relationships with both my friends and say my partner, just setting time aside and being like, "Okay, on this day, I'm devoting, I'm not going to work. I'm going to be leaving my phone and telling people like, "Hey, if you need something you can call me, but otherwise I'm not really going to be available or online." That's been really helpful for me, for my mental health and just for maintaining my friendships and my relationships.
Steve Zavitz: If I don't limit myself that way, I will probably just work all the time. I'm a batch worker too, so sometimes I'll work for a bit, take a bit of a break and then I'll work again. I'm also working at weird hours, so sometimes I'll be up at 2:00 in the morning still working. I'll look at the clock and be like, "Oh man, I should probably go to sleep now."
Steve Folland: Now, if you could tell your younger self one thing about being freelance, what would that be?
Steve Zavitz: I'm going to go with something boring, but really the thing that's probably tripped me up the most, is dealing with my taxes. The tax system here is a nightmare. I probably would tell me, tell myself to really do some research into that. The more fun answer would be learn everything, like really learn everything and don't be afraid to be a beginner at stuff.
Steve Zavitz: I still feel this way and it's probably advice I could give myself as an adult. I hate sucking at things, that is the worst feeling. When I try something like, "Man, I'm bad at this, I'm not naturally good," that is a huge bummer for me. I've walked away from a lot of things because I haven't been good at them or haven't had a knack for it.
Steve Zavitz: There's a huge benefit to that, both in like a professional development level and also in like a personal resiliency level. If you suck at something and then you end up getting better at it, and you've earned your way into being good at a skill, that really teaches you or teaches me a lot about just perseverance.
Steve Zavitz: Being freelance is a lot of that, where you're going to feel like you suck and you're going to feel like you didn't do something right. Or you lost a client because of something that you did, and having that mental resiliency is super important.
Steve Folland: Nice. Steve, really good to talk to you. All the best being freelance.
Steve Zavitz: Yeah. Thank you too, Steve, take care.