I’m living in my camper on a golf course south of Quincy, WA. The golf course is in the middle of farmland. In fact, the golf course used to be a farm field. The irrigation circle (or semi-circle) is still used to water the fairways. Because of this, all of the trees in the middle of the course are very short.
It’s a weird setup.
Last year when I was here, I took walks with my camera quite often. (You can find some of my better photos in my Photo Gallery; click here for a slide show of my Washington shots.) I’m trying to get into the habit of doing that again. I walk along the edge of the golf course property. There’s a canal on the south side with rushing water. On the other side of the canal, there was a wheat field.
This year, it’s alfalfa.
I was surprised to see the change. The alfalfa was freshly cut — no more than a day or two ago. They cut in the shape of the irrigation circle (or semi-circle). It was difficult to get a good shot at the curves.
The alfalfa will be left to dry in the field for a week or so. Then they’ll drive through with a baler and gather it up into bales that are dropped on the field. Later, another piece of equipment will come by and gather up the bales. They’ll be transported somewhere and covered with tarps until sold or used.
Last year, I didn’t start walking around the golf course until late June or July. I suspect that they’ll plant wheat in the field when the alfalfa has been taken away. I’m not sure if it’s too late to plant that — other fields already have wheat crops that are quite tall.
But I’ll observe and learn and maybe report back here.
I’m in Quincy, WA, right now, living in my camper while I work four cherry drying contracts. I live in my camper because it’s cheaper than living in a motel. A lot cheaper. And since I can cook my own meals, I save a ton of money over the cost of a motel.
One of my contracts is for an orchard down by the Columbia River. There’s a campground literally across the street from it. The campground is also right on the river. I thought it might be nice to stay there for the duration.
I called. They wanted $42 per night for a hookup that included water and power, but no sewer. They weren’t interested in giving a discount for long-term stays. In fact, they didn’t seem to want long-term guests. I figured it was because they were so busy they didn’t need the business.
I knew I could camp at the Colockum Golf Course (formerly the Quincy Golf Course) for $300/month. The site included electricity, water, and sewer. High-speed, reliable WiFi was also available for an additional $35/month. There’s even a restaurant on the premises.
I couldn’t justify the additional $30+ per night for a campsite with fewer amenities. I parked at Quincy, where I’ll likely spend the next seven weeks.
Yesterday evening, I drove down to the orchard to refresh my memory about the setup. I needed to know where the powerlines were and whether there was a fan in the block. While I was down there, I drove through the $42/night campground.
Every single spot was empty.
So explain this to me: wouldn’t it be more beneficial to get someone in there for $20/night ($600/month) rather than no one in there for $42/night?
There’s a video that’s been making it around Twitter and the blogs of professional photographers lately. It’s called “The Vendor Client Relationship — In Real World Situations.” I’ve embedded it here, just in case you haven’t seen it yet. It’s worth a look if you’re either a service professional or someone who uses service professionals. In other words, it’s worth a look for anyone.
The problem is, too many people try to save money by trying to cut special deals with service professionals. Sean Cayton, for example, is a professional photographer who blogged about this topic. In his article on Black Star Rising called “Five Tips for Dealing with Unreasonable Client Requests,” he reported:
I met recently with a prospective wedding client who was on a very tight budget. The groom, an art director, asked if I would allow him to help with the photo editing in order to save some money. I had to tell him no. I operate a full-service studio, and letting the wedding couple do their own editing just isn’t an option for me.
As a helicopter pilot, I’m often asked to provide flying services at locations an hour or more away from my base. Not only do the potential clients try to get a lower hourly rate from me, but they balk when I explain to them that they have to pay the cost of getting the helicopter to the operating area and back. In their mind, I’m not providing a service to them when I’m not flying with one of their people on board. But the simple reality is that I’m working for them from the moment I begin my flight planning and pull the helicopter out of its hangar to the moment I put the helicopter back.
They’re fortunate they’re only paying for the time on the Hobbs meter. I put at least an hour more of unbillable time into every single flight I do.
Why We’re In this Mess
I believe that one of the reasons service professionals have to deal with clients like this is because too many other service professionals have said yes to their unreasonable demands.
I’ll admit that I used to be one of them. When I first started my flying business, I was so hungry for work that I’d do almost anything to make a client happy. That sometimes included trading services (usually advertising space) for all or part of my fee, waiving ferry fees, or dropping my rates just to better meet my client’s budgetary needs. Then one day I started looking at the numbers. While the revenue I was bringing in usually covered the variable expenses of flying — the actual flight cost per hour — they didn’t come anywhere near covering my fixed expenses, including hangar rent, advertising, and insurance. I realized I was working at a loss.
And I realized that I’d rather not work than to lose money doing it.
Just Say No
So I started saying no.
I said no to local flying jobs less than 30 minutes long and other flying jobs less than an hour long. It simply wasn’t worth the trouble of taking the helicopter out of the hangar for the profit I’d make on these short flights. (I did, however, encourage longer flights by introducing rate reductions for flights over 5 hours and 10 hours.)
I said no to free ferry flights for repositioning the helicopter. I was not going to fly for free anymore. Not only was there a helicopter cost involved, but a trained helicopter pilot was at the controls. Didn’t she deserve compensation for her time?
I said no to any barter offers — I can’t fuel the helicopter with a free ad in a publication no one will read or pay my insurance bill with a photo taken during a flight.
I said no to flights that required me to spend more than 15 minutes in flight planning before I had a signed contract and deposit in hand. I was tired of doing someone else’s homework in the hope of getting a flight they were probably too cheap to pay for.
This really happened:
One person I did a charity golf ball drop for made fun of me the following week at a local Rotary Club meeting because we missed the drop zone on our first try. I guess she didn’t appreciate how much it cost me to make one drop, let alone the second drop we did to make up for our failure. You know what I said when she had the nerve to ask me to do it again the following year: no.
I also started saying no to all charity flights, including raffle prizes. They’d promise a mention in the charity publication, etc., but these free pieces of paper were usually discarded, unread. Zero advertising value — instead, all it’s good for is more requests from more charities. And for a while, i was getting more charity requests than calls from paying clients.
The Importance of Screening
I also started screening my clients during their initial contacts with me. Did they sound like they were going to try to wrangle a deal with me? Were they making unreasonable requests? Did they have a clue about what they wanted? Were they trying to use me as a tool for getting information without utilizing my services? Did they have the ability to pay at the conclusion of the flight? Did they understand what they were getting for my hourly rate?
If I got any indication during the phone call that they could be trouble, I actively began discouraging them from flying with me. I’d state minimum fees and make it clear that I wouldn’t budge on my rate. I’d tell them that what they wanted was beyond the capabilities of my aircraft. And sometimes, if I got a gut feeling that flying for them would be more trouble than it was worth, I’d tell them I wasn’t available on the day or time they wanted me, even if I was.
Snobby? Elitist? I don’t think so. Just protecting my interests.
We Need to Stand Firm Behind Our Experience, Expertise, and Skills
I’ve been in the business for eight years now and have a wide range of experience completing many different missions. I’ve decided to stand behind my experience, expertise, and skills. That’s what my clients are paying for and despite what they might think, they’re getting a lot for their money.
I probably have more knowledge and experience for photo flights over Lake Powell than any other helicopter pilot flying today. You want an experienced pilot to take you on a photo flight over the lake? Then you’ll pay the 4 hours of ferry time to get me up there and back. Hint: there’s no other helicopter pilot who will fly up there for free.
I happen to have a good amount of skill chasing race cars and boats, low-level and high speed. I can put a still or video photographer right where he needs to be in these action photo shoots. Is your race an hour away? Then you’ll pay the 2 hours of ferry time to get me there and back. And you won’t load up the helicopter with unnecessary “observers.” You’re not just paying for a helicopter and a skilled pilot — you’re paying for a safe flight.
An off-airport landing zone.
I’ve probably flown over and landed at more remote, off-airport locations than any other commercial helicopter pilot in Arizona — other than medevac pilots. You want to see some “air park” property in northern Arizona, east of Wikieup? Or a bunch of land north of I-40, east of the Colorado River? Or a vacant steel plant outside of Kingman? Or the side of a 40-mile long cliff north of Seligman? Or a powerline stretching from Forepaugh to Bagdad? Or a pipeline stretching from Tucson to the New Mexico border? Or a stretch of the U.S.-Mexico border from Yuma to Nogales? Or some other equally weird or remote place? Then you’ll pay for a pilot who knows where to find fuel, who to contact for permission to fly through restricted areas, where to find a landing zone where you can get out and take pictures or soil samples or a leak. And don’t expect to trade that flight time for a mention in the credits of your video or annual report or promises of more business in the future.
I’m not going to sell myself short — even if it means losing out on business.
Frankly, if a client doesn’t pay me what I’m worth, I’m losing out anyway. And I may as well lose out in the comfort of my office or home than flying a mission for someone who doesn’t appreciate the value of what he’s getting.
What do you think?
I’d love to read your stories of how clients have tried to deal you out of what you think you deserve. Not just from pilots or photographers, but from any service professional. Use the comments link or form for this post to share your stories or links to them on your own blog.
And if you think I’m wrong about this — that we should allow potential clients to cut whatever deal they like with us — I’d like to know why. Maybe there’s something I’m missing here.
But after years in a very expensive and highly specialized business, I don’t think so.
About two weeks ago, I realized that I couldn’t find my everyday watch.
I had four watches:
A Swatch that I bought years ago when I didn’t mind plastic watchbands. I don’t wear it anymore.
A Minnie Mouse watch that I bought in Disney World a few years back. I like it a lot, but with my failing vision, I can’t read it.
A Bulova dress watch with a tiny rectangle face, four lines instead of 12 numbers, a tiny diamond at the 12 position, and a gold-tone band. This is my dress watch and I only wear it if I dress up and need to know the time. Which is so seldom, I pretty much never wear it.
An Eddie Bauer watch. (No snide comments, please!) I got it on sale for $40 at an Eddie Bauer store. It was waterproof to 10 meters and came with three denim watch bands. Which was a good thing because it became my everyday watch and I wore out all the bands.
It was the Eddie Bauer watch that I’d lost. I wasn’t terribly upset. Although it was my everyday watch, I didn’t have much of an attachment to it. It’s not like it was a collector’s item or a keepsake. It was a cheap, functional watch.
How I Figured I’d Lost It
I figured I’d taken it off one day and left it on the kitchen table or on my desk. If you saw my kitchen table or desk, you’d recognize the black hole-like tendencies. I’m the queen of clutter and there’s a lot of junk just sitting around, waiting to be dealt with.
But when I cleared off the kitchen table and my desk, the watch wasn’t there.
So then I figured I’d left it on my night table and that it had fallen into the little waste paperbasket beside it and had been taken out with the trash. That’s how I probably lost my Pulsar dress watch years ago (although I do suspect my cleaning lady back then; she may have cashed in on my carelessness).
In any case, the watch was apparently gone for good. Minnie Mouse wasn’t going to cut it unless I added a magnifying lens over the watch crystal.
It was time for a new watch.
Zulu Time
I’m a pilot and thought it might be nice to have a watch that also told Zulu Time. Zulu Time is the same as Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) and it doesn’t adjust for daylight savings time. In Arizona, it’s always 7 hours after current time (because we don’t have daylight savings time either). So if it’s 9 AM in Arizona, it’s 4 PM GMT or 1600 hours Zulu.
And yes, I can do the math in my head. But I figured, why not get a watch that just tells me Zulu time.
I did some research. Women’s watches, in general, are pretty useless. Faces too small, often too ornate. So I concentrated on men’s watches. But I have a pretty small wrist and they’d likely look ridiculous on me.
Long story short, I found the Torgeon T15 ladies watch. It has a big face, but not as big as the men’s version. It has numbers and hands that are big enough to see and read. It also has the date and a nice precision second hand. But what makes it a pilot’s watch is the red Zulu Time hand. It travels at half-speed around the dial, pointing to an inner scale of numbers from 1 to 24. When set properly, it points to the hour of zulu time.
Notice I said “when set properly”? That’s because I couldn’t set it. I tried five times. For a while the damn hand decided it was going to hide behind the hour hand and ride it around the dial.
But Mike, my husband, collects watches and knows a lot about them. The other day, he set it for me. So now I’m good until July 1, when I need to change the date. I’ll probably just keep it a day off until I see him again.
Postscript on that Eddie Bauer Watch
About two days after I got the new watch, I dipped into the big dog cookie box in the cabinet to pull out a bedtime treat for Jack the Dog. Mike buys certain things at Costco, so they come in really big boxes. The dog cookies are in a big box.
I stuck my hand in and felt something that definitely wasn’t a dog cookie. Could it be? I pulled my hand out, grasping my old Eddie Bauer watch. The band had broken.
Now you might think that this is odd. After all, there’s really only one way that watch could have gotten into the box: I’d reached in for a cookie weeks before and had pulled out a cookie while leaving the watch, which had been on my wrist, behind. How, you might ask, could I possibly not notice my watch falling off?
I wish I had an answer for you.
Maybe my subconscious mind had just decided it was time for a new watch.
One of the messages reported that one of the plane’s navigational control units had failed and that, almost simultaneously, the autopilot system had disengaged.
The sequence of events forced the crew of Flight 447 to fly the jet manually, a difficult task on an Airbus traveling at high altitude near its maximum speed, aviation experts said. Any significant change in airspeed could have caused the plane to lose lift or stability, both potentially deadly conditions.
There’s a lot in these two paragraphs, but the two points I take away is:
Airliners have automated systems that pilots rely on during flight — even “straight and level” flight.
Pilots could lack the skills necessary to fly the aircraft if those automated systems fail.
Isn’t anyone else bothered by this?
Thanks to @MattHammer on Twitter for sharing the link.
An off-airport landing zone.