“From ‘Producer’ to Producer” Becoming a Producer Part 4

Cutting your losses is important. Giving someone or something an opportunity if you saw potential in it is one thing, but doing things just to do them are a waste of your time.

Cutting your losses isn’t quitting. Your time (and therefore resources) are limited. Making smart decisions on where to spend that time/money is good business.

Keeping your word (integrity) is important if you want people to do business with you. You will never know everything about another person, but their actions speak more than their words.

There is nothing wrong with not letting the right hand know what the left hand is doing. As long as they are not working in direct relation to it, none of their business.

The more rules you have, the easier it is for someone to break one. Don’t make every transaction in your life be about business. You learn more from the mutually beneficial relationships than the compensation ones.

Once you ask someone to pay you for something it creates a capitalistic relationship. “Pay” refers to receiving anything of value in exchange for something else.

Oral agreements are dangerous when one individual has no intention on sticking to his/her word, or fulfilling the obligation once it’s been created.

Always protect your work. Your children, your work production and your reputation are a result of the hard work you put in.

Protecting your work is not just intellectual property protection, but who you associate with who can devalue your work as well.

Avoid desperate people no matter how compassionate you are. Try to help them, but don’t allow them to manipulate you into doing things that you know you shouldn’t do.

Be friends to someone through the good and the bad. If they were good enough to be your friend when things were great, be there for them when they aren’t. Maybe you are the difference.

Don’t over extend/over commit yourself just to please people. Understand what you can and cannot do, and let your growing network take care of the rest.

Be careful who you associate yourself with. Once you publicly associate yourself with them, you are associated with them for life because people will remember you know each other.

Even if people don’t tell others of you, the ones you are directly associated with will always come around when things improve in your life.

This is because people naturally are attracted to things that are moving in a positive direction, especially if their individual stories aren’t going how they would like.

Don’t let the people that have hurt you, cheated you see that they have hurt you, cheated you. The ones that care will carry that burden for the rest of their life, the ones that don’t will see that they have won.

There is nothing wrong with asking for help, it’s the first sign of maturity. Make sure before you ask for help that you’ve already done some of the work yourself.

No one likes to work on someone else’s dream while the person with the dream does nothing.