Success is like a ladder and no one has ever climbed a ladder with their hands in their pockets. ~Zig Ziglar

If you are planning on climbing up to the roof of your home, the steps are easy to understand. Find a ladder, place it against your home, and start climbing. One step at a time you move your feet until you reach the last one and step off to your destination. It doesn’t take much time – and probably not much thought. You just do it because you have a goal in mind.

But what if the ladder you are trying to climb has hidden steps? What if you don’t know what its leaning against, nor how many steps it will take to reach the top? Things can get a bit more challenging.

Everything in life has a final destination and the ever-important steps to get there. If you want to learn to play chess, you have to find a chessboard and playing pieces, learn the basic rules, and practice. If you want to play golf, you have to find some clubs and a ball, find a course to play on, learn the basic rules, and practice.

Running a photography business is no different. You have to have camera equipment on hand, learn the basic rules of running a business, and practice. Again and again. Things will go wrong sometimes and right others. But overall, building a solid foundation will set you up correctly and help you accomplish what you’ve set out to do – run a successful business.

If you ask an expert in the photography field what the crucial steps are to his or her success, you’ll likely hear a laundry list of items. And if you ask more than one, you’ll likely hear a few different items. Don’t get lost in the details. The real difference between a pro and an amateur is simply that the expert has built a solid foundation and is much more effective at determining what steps to take to continue building up from that successful foundation. He or she is constantly adding to the fundamental skills he or she already has in place.

You can do it too. There are three simple ideas on finding the basic skills needed to create a solid foundation.

Expect Mastery

Think back to everything you’ve achieved in life so far. Before you accomplished it, did you believe you could?

That’s kind of a trick question because the first step to any action is belief. If you think you can, you will. If your goal is to have a college degree, you take as many classes as necessary to graduate. You see the goal and word to get it.

The same applies to your business. Do you see it? Can you see yourself working full time as a photographer? Or can you only see it as a side business – your real money comes from your day job?

If you want to be a world famous photographer, you have to lay the foundation. You have to have the proper skills with the camera. You have to understand lighting, posing and production. You have to understand marketing, planning and sales. And you have to want to do it every single day, without stop, until you find success.

Think About The Long Term

Many people try to rush into success, only to give up because they simply can’t do it as well as they can see themselves doing it in their mind.

For example, lets say you’ve never had ice skates on before. But you watch the Olympics and think ice dancing looks like fun. So you head to the rink and put on your first pair of ice skates. Your first step on the ice is probably going to be filled with disaster. Your legs will wobble, your ankles will weaken, and you’ll probably find yourself sitting on the ice more than standing. But if you don’t learn to stand, you’ll never glide across the ice. If you’re not comfortable moving forward, you’ll never be able to move backward. And so on.

When you see how easy other professional photographers have it, its easy to get caught up in the excitement and expect it yourself. If they shoot 30 weddings a year making $250,000, you should be able to do it too. And you can – but keep in mind its going to take time. One foot in front of the other, learning as you go, adding on to what you’ve learned in the past, until you find the success you are looking for.

Avoid Getting Fancy

Putting the basics into action are the only important steps you need to take along the way. When you find yourself running into a complication or a problem, question yourself as to why it really seems difficult. Is it due to a shortcoming in one or more basic skills? Rarely will you find a fancy or complicated technique to be the answer.

If you can’t ice skate, the most expensive ice skates in the world won’t help you do it any better.

Thoroughly mastering the basics takes time. But its well worth the time spent. Remember, there are no “secrets” or shortcuts to success. Build your foundation. And add the basics as you go along. You’ll soon find yourself at the top of the ladder, stepping off into the lifestyle you’ve dreamed of.

Are you still struggling with understanding the basics of your DSLR? Then you have to check out the new guide DSLR: The Basics. It’s a camera and exposure book in friendly ebook format. I’ve just finished going through it myself, and love the detail and knowledge that Ed goes over. In addition to simple language for every situation, you’ll also find a wealth of information in his graphs, charts and photographs. Many of them help you understand difficult techniques in a user-friendly way. If you’ve ever struggled with the basics, or are still questioning different components of your camera, you can’t afford not to add this book to your collection.

If you’ve always worked for the “boss” and haven’t had the experience of working for yourself, you’re in for quite a shock when you first quit and venture out on your own. Its hard to lose the “job” mentality and start doing everything from an entrepreneur’s mindset.

Yet if you’ve ever jumped over to your own business, you know there are some things you inevitably do that when you look back on, you simply laugh at your actions. “Did I really do that?” Yep, I’ve had a lot of those moments over the years.

And some of those moments stand out more than others. Here is some advice for those of you that have recently crossed over to your own business.

1. Making mistakes with your contracts.

We’ve made this mistake more times then I’d like to admit. Never:

Assume someone will sign a contract because they say they will. Have your policies set up and stick with them – “I’ll fax over a contract and hold the day for you for 3 business days. If we don’t receive it back with payment, the day will open up to others.”

Assume a handshake is good enough. You may have a great relationship in the beginning, but things change when demands start in. A contract is there to cover you and the client. Always use it to maintain the relationship.

Assume they won’t change your contract. We sent over a contract in Word early on in our career, never thinking a client would change our copy. They did. They signed it and returned it. We signed it without reading it again. We only discovered it when the client began making unusual requests after the wedding – things we couldn’t uphold because we simply didn’t have the capability. When they began questioning why we weren’t living up to the contract, we went back and read it. We spent six months living in fear doing whatever the client requested to avoid a lawsuit – and we learned a very valuable lesson.

2. Spending too much money.

You’ve finally made the break from the job, and your time is your own. Since the clients aren’t flowing in, you have a chance to sit back and dream. That’s when you can start getting into trouble.

You dream about the perfect studio. And with a little research, you find a backdrop system you can’t live with out, a room full of props, a computer program that will help you with all of your photography management chores, and a new camera that will make everyone say “WOW”.

Maybe you put a little cash away to help build your new business. Or maybe you’re dipping into the credit cards. But if you fall into the “buy it today” philosophy, you’ll quickly be regretting everything that made you want to start your own business in the first place.

Ask yourself a question every time you are about to spend money – “Do I really need this right now to move me forward?” If the answer is no, put it off for awhile until you can truly afford it.

3. Spending too little money.

People love to spend money on the “things” within the photography business. Yet the “necessities” often fall by the wayside.

A necessity would be anything that will help you grow and profit from your business. Anything else is simply a “shiny object” that gets in your way of building a successful business.

A fourth lens that photographers have been raving about on Facebook would be a shiny object. A new website to help you attract new clients would be a necessity.

The difference is one is required to build your business and help bring in clients, and therefore profits. The other is simply something you justify to have because you want it. Learn to spot the difference from the beginning.

4. Not following your intuition.

When you are new and inexperienced at running your own business, its easy to want to take someone else’s advice. Yet sometimes you have this little voice in your head telling you to go another direction. Don’t ignore that voice. Listen to it. It may help you avoid situations that won’t benefit you or help you grow.

5. Allowing your personality to shine through.

What makes you special? What makes you “you”? Its okay to let these things shine through.

Many business owners put up a face front, hoping to bring in all of the potential business within their area. Yet there will naturally be some people you mesh with and some you don’t. Some you love working with and want in your studio all day long. And others you can’t get out of your studio fast enough.

If people understand you right from the beginning, they will either feel comfortable with you and want to use you, or will turn to another photographer. Let them go. They are the ones that will make your life miserable. You only want the clients that are just like you, and will love and appreciate you from beginning to end.

6. Living with formalities.

Yes, you are in business for yourself now. But you don’t have to turn it into a formal business. A photography business is meant to be fun. Your human side will shine through and help you build relationships along the say. You don’t need formal letters that start out with Dear Ms. Smith. Why not just say Hi Lori! Then ask your questions and make your “pitch”. Other small businesses are playing the game the same way you are. Focus in on being who you are and building relationships around it.

7. Trying to be someone your not.

In most cases, people can tell when you are being yourself. And when you’re not. If you’re new at business, tell them. If you’ve only been photographing for a short while, admit it.

Trying to fool your clients into thinking you are something you’re not will only backfire. Everyone has to start at the beginning and people understand that. Price your products according to your skills and talents. Ask for opinions to help you grow.

There has never been an artist anywhere in time that has gone from zero to one million overnight. I always say we were a “seven year overnight success”. It took seven years of playing with a camera, practicing, and working for others to learn everything we needed to build our first six figure business.

And that’s okay.

8. Selling to the wrong people.

When you first jump out of a job and into your own business, you start worrying a bit more about paying the bills. You know a regular paycheck won’t be coming in each Friday, so you look at every opportunity as a way of putting cash into your account.

When the wrong person comes your way, it ends up being increasingly difficult to say no. If you haven’t booked a client, can you really afford to turn one who is ready to pay away? Yet if they are the wrong customer, you’ll end up with more headache then success.

Just because someone is interested in doing business with you doesn’t mean you should accept. The wrong person:

• Will cause you to stretch into trying to photograph things you have no desire to photograph

• Will cause you to research and spend time perfecting your technique for one client without the desire to move into that area

• Will take away the time you could spend perfecting what you love to do

• Will take away the time you need to look for the right clients

In an offer doesn’t excite you right away, decline it or ignore it. Its your business; you don’t have to take everything that comes your way.

9. Focusing in on the value you provide.

What is the purpose of your business? If you said “to make money”, think again.

The real purpose of your business is to create value. The more value you create, the more valuable your business becomes.

Your value should be centered around what makes your business special. It may be sharing content and ideas. It may be a new approach to photography. It may be the way you present your products. It may be the experience you create from beginning to end. It all adds up in the clients’ minds.

10. Looking and reaching towards the future.

When you first start out, you have a million ideas in your head. But are any of them concrete in regards to the future? What will you be doing a year from now? How will you know if you are on target? What will you do if you don’t reach your goals? How will you change? Having dreams is great. Yet you still need to monitor how you will reach them and what you will do if you don’t.

We’re coming into the final stretch of 2011, and no matter where you sit today, one thing is for sure. 2011 has been filled with change.

This is the year we hit 7 billion people on earth. And while the number of people on earth is growing phenomenally every day, there is one thing that most are not doing: fulfilling their potential. People have the potential of changing the world, releasing their own uniqueness, and catapulting themselves into any direction they choose. Yet most aren’t. Why?

This past weekend was a “movie weekend” where many top notch films were released. Did you see any of them?

One of our favorites was the movie Hugo. If you haven’t seen it (or read the book), its about a boy who loses his family and ends up living in a train station. He ends up meeting a toy shop owner, his daughter, and their lives are entwined through a series of events set around the production of movies.

While I won’t give away the plot of the movie, one scene tied everything together, and stuck with me all weekend.

In it Hugo has a revelation. He sees the world as a machine. Every person on earth, everything we see and have around us, is here as a part of the machine. If one piece is missing, or broken, the machine can’t function the way its supposed to. So it’s up to every person to fulfill his or her passion, to fulfill their destiny in order to keep the machine working at 100 percent.

For just a moment, it makes you look at the world a little differently.

Not everyone here on earth is meant to be a Tony Robbins, the president of a large corporation, or even the President of a major country. Most people are here in supporting roles, and are meant to do one thing that will inspire the people around them, even if its only a handful of people.

So what if your destiny is photography? What are you doing to make it come true?

Accept who you are

Start out by looking deep inside and finding out who you really are. Then share that person with the world. Realize that not everyone around you will like what you stand for, or even who you really are. I’ve found the more you understand who you are deep inside, the more you’ll have criticism from those around you. Standing true takes work; its hard to hear the negativity of people that don’t agree with you. But when you find that person, its easy to become passionate about what really drives you. If you’re meant to be an entrepreneur – a photographer – do it.

Think you are great today

If you are in the best place possible, everything you do today will be the best thing you can do. Thinking you are great means you’ll take action, and do something that brings you closer to your goals. If you feel you need to improve before you can take action, that day will never come.

Focus every day

Never rely on the “someday’s”. People get caught up on things that will happen in the future, instead of focusing on what you can do today. If you want to improve your portrait photography, take portraits every day. If you are building the business, do one thing every day that helps you set up the business and bring in new clients.

Give it your all

Have you ever said to yourself, “I had this idea a year ago – I wish I would have acted on it them.” We’ve all had things we thought about at one time or another. But the only regret you will ever have is if you don’t act on it, and instead always wonder what could have been. Empty yourself. Put it all out there. Give it everything you have, and you’ll never have to wonder “what if”.

In the early years, as we were building our business from the ground up, we couldn’t wait for the day until we could both quit corporate, and work for ourselves full time. It took several years for us both to jump over full time, but the minute we accomplished it we knew it was definitely the right choice.

Now as we look back, we can see we made a ton of great choices – and a few things we definitely would have handled a bit differently. So I share these with you in case you are on your own journey to full time entrepreneurship in hopes you’ll have a few more things to consider before you make your big move.

Not having clearly defined roles

When you get a job, they present you with a job description. They interview you to determine if you can handle the functions of the job. They hire you. They train you. And then you have set goals and expectations to help you get through day after day, week after week, month after month.

When you run your own photography business, every day brings on a new challenge. Today it might be determining the perfect name for your business. Tomorrow it will be setting up your corporation. And the next will be setting up a pricing guide for your potential customers. You move from business challenges to customer challenges every single day.

While some of those things can’t be expected, and can only be dealt with as they occur, other things can be predicted quite easily. Who will handle the accounting? Who will buy office supplies? Who will do sales presentations?

If you are a single photographer, the answer quite obviously may be “me” and “me”. For us as a couple, we definitely would have avoided stressful situations if we had defined who worked when, and who accomplished what. Its also of benefit to sit back and consider what jobs you don’t want to take on, and are willing to hire out from the beginning. For instance if you hate numbers and bookkeeping, don’t start out your business by deciding on what accounting system to buy; hire an accountant and bookkeeper instead. They can set you up the right way from the beginning, which allows you to forgo countless hours of staring at the screen trying to decide on what accounts you need and where each transaction should go.

Not having a budget

When you have a job, you have a paycheck coming in on a regular basis. You know the mortgage (rent), car payment and other expenses must come out of that paycheck before you have fun with the rest.

With a photography business, it can be feast or famine. In some months we would book a dozen weddings and have five figures flow into our bank account. The next month may have no clients and no orders, meaning no income coming in.

Budgeting helps you deal with the peaks and valleys that come with a photography business. Set up separate savings accounts for each major payment in your life – a mortgage (rent) account in which you can feed a few months payments into. Then in the dry months, you know you are safe and have your large items paid for, and won’t be sweating the due dates every month.

Not having strong insurance in place

When you work for someone else, they handle all the details when it comes to insurance. You select from one of their health insurance policies, and in many cases have access to other policies as well, including workman’s comp.

When you’re in business for yourself, you have to handle everything on your own. I suggest you sit down with an insurance broker, and find out what options are available to you. How about life insurance – what happens to your family if something happens to you? Are you covered with workman’s comp in the event you have an employee? Are you covered if you end up with long term disability issues? And do you have proper business insurance to cover you in the event of a lawsuit?

Instead of waiting until sometime down the road, get prepared up front and avoid the potential crises that may hit you at any time.

Not understanding a small business is 24/7

When you have a job, you work your “9 to 5” and head home. Then your personal life begins, and you can do anything you choose.

When you run your own business, there is no going home at the end of the day and “turning off” the business. You end up thinking about it 24 hours of the day. Even if you have a studio outside of your home, you still wind up working on your laptop late into the evening. Or waking up in the middle of the night with a great idea.

Your excitement level shoots up sky high because you know you’re no longer working for the good of someone else; you’re working to advance your own lifestyle.

Not realizing how you care so much more about what you do when you’re doing it for you

Before we ran our business full time, we had the desire to grow our own business. But deep down we had no idea how much it would change who we are.

When you work for someone else, you do your job every day to the best of your ability. You realize that you must complete your expectations in order to continue having the lifestyle you desire. And in many cases you love what you do, so it makes it all worth while.

But when you change and become the business owner, something “clicks” inside and changes the way you feel about everything you do. Yes, you care about what you do and what your clients think about you. But you also realize that your future depends on how you act today, and the decisions you make along the way. You do it all for so many more reasons than just the paycheck.

If we knew how much fun we would have as business owners, we would have done it much sooner than we did.

So, have you made the jump to business owner? What were some of your mistakes? Or if you haven’t made the jump, what’s holding you back?

I had a question sent to me that made me really think.

“I really want to start a photography business, but I have no idea of where to start or what to do next.”

I know she has had the opportunity to read a ton of articles here on this blog, and with over 1,000+ articles, that is a lot of information.

And I know she’s has access to some of my best training. Just one of my Kindle books – my 30 Ways in 30 Days Kindle book is probably one of the best (and affordable) ways to have a blueprint in place, ready to take you by the hand over 30 days and walk you through the process.

And yet the question remains.

So it got me thinking about what is holding her back when she has access to so much.

And while it could be many things (I’m simply guessing from a quick question) I really feel that overall, the one thing that holds people back is the fear of the unknown.

Easy Questions versus Hard Questions

When we ask easy questions, our minds can quickly come up with an answer.

What shall I have for dinner tonight? It’s a quick easy question that we ask day after day. So we search for a quick easy answer, and it usually jumps out at us in seconds.

But when we stretch beyond the norm and ask something we’ve never asked before, it becomes a little harder. And the bigger, more detailed that question is, the more we freeze up and we simply shut down rather than search for the answer.

But what if you asked a question that literally held your future in its hands? What if the question you asked would completely change your life not only for the good, but also because there were no other options?

That today is what many people are asking. They’ve been unemployed or underemployed for so long, they simply don’t have any idea what the future holds for them. And even if you have a great job today, will it really be there tomorrow?

Yep, there is no denying it. The world is changing. And the more you look back yearning for what we once had, the more you’re missing out on the greatest opportunity of our time.

Would you start a photography business if you knew jobs were never coming back?

Have you ever read Seth Godin? I have most of his books sitting on my bookshelf, and follow his blog regularly. I love the way he thinks and presents his ideas in clear, understandable format.

He recently posted a great idea – The Forever Recession (and the Coming Revolution).

In it he says:

The industrial age, the one that started with the industrial revolution, is fading away. It is no longer the growth engine of the economy and it seems absurd to imagine that great pay for replaceable work is on the horizon.

This represents a significant discontinuity, a life-changing disappointment for hard-working people who are hoping for stability but are unlikely to get it. It’s a recession, the recession of a hundred years of the growth of the industrial complex.

Yep, we’re really at the cusp of an incredible opportunity. Yet most of us are stuck back hoping for what once was.

And a lot of it comes from the fear of the unknown.

Make The Hard Questions Easy

If your desire is to start up a photography business, change the questions you ask to make it seem more doable. Instead of asking:

I want to start a photo business but don’t know where to start.

Change it around and ask something you know to be true. For instance, if you want to start a photo business, you can probably guess at a few things that are mandatory.

• I’m going to need business cards to let people know my name and how to reach me.

• I’m going to need a price list to tell people how much my photography is.

• I’m going to need a business name.

When you take a large, unimaginable question and break it down into smaller more reasonable questions, they are easier to “see” and easier to accomplish. You now have clearly defined steps that you can research and put into action.

And when you answer one question, the next one will automatically pop up. As you’re finding out the answers to one, you’ll be introduced to the next step in some manner. Which will lead to the next question.

Why Is All Of This Important?

The more you do today, the more you’ll be ready for the future. I’m not suggesting that you start a photography studio of yesteryear. Instead, how can you take the ideas from yesterday and turn them into a new business opportunity for the future? How can you see what change is coming tomorrow, and turn it into an opportunity today?

As Seth Godin says:

No one is demanding that we like the change, but the sooner we see it and set out to become an irreplaceable linchpin, the faster the pain will fade, as we get down to the work that needs to be (and now can be) done.

The revolution is at least as big as the last one, and the last one changed everything.

So, if we’re about to change everything, what is your idea?

Ahhhh, living the life of a small business owner working from home. Nothing could be better, right?

There is an underlying expectation that comes with being a home based business owner.

• You can work when you want, play when you want, sleep when you want.

• You can work as much (or as little) as you choose.

• You can do many things at once, including loads of laundry, taking care of home repairs, and watching over the kids.

And of course many more.

The problem with these assumptions is they simply aren’t fact; they are the “dream” people associate with running their own businesses out of their home. There are many misconceptions about what it takes to run a business out of your home; see if you’ve fallen for any of these myths, and learn what you can do change the outcome.

Anyone can start up a successful home based business

While anyone can start up a home based business at any time, not everyone will succeed. Success isn’t something your build over night; which means the majority of people that start small businesses out of their homes are in for months, even years of hard work in order to begin seeing success. Are you up for the challenge?

Dig Deeper: 8 Ways To Know If Your Are Meant To Be a Business Owner

When you start up a new business, there is a ton to take in. Some of it will be great advice, others not so much. The key is learning to filter out what works – and what doesn’t. Over time you’ll begin learning from everything you do, and applying it in a way that helps you grow just a little bit all the time. Once you start making money on a regular basis, and can see the effects what you do has on your bottom line – that’s when success finally happens.

It doesn’t cost anything to start a home based business

It may seem easy enough; you have a camera and a laptop, what else would you need? And unfortunately many people go into a new business with this attitude. One client can start bringing in the money, and you can use that to grow from there.

While this may be the case, and your first client can start the process, there are still many things that you’ll have to invest in to make your business become successful. Marketing, Advertising. Products (albums, frames, etc) Insurance. The list goes on and on.

Dig Deeper: How To Lose A Million Dollars In 3 Seconds

Over time, you will need to invest in your business in order for it to grow. And while you can do it wisely, it still costs money to do many of the things needed to grow a business. Yes, you can spend time on Facebook, but you’ll have better luck if you send them to a professional website that talks about you. And when they walk out of your studio, they will remember you much more if they walk out with customized marketing materials – brochures, portfolios and even bags and wrapping for your final orders. The more time you spend on it, the more successful you will be.

I can put a few things online, and have instant success

Yes, I always like reading the “case studies” who have spent 30 hours building a successful web presence, then instantly had more clients than they knew what to do with. They went from zero to one million “over night”.

And yes, those stories CAN happen. But rarely do – that’s what makes them the “case studies” people talk about.

More than likely you’ll spend a large amount of time online building, changing, editing, adding and deleting over and over again. You’ll find what works, what doesn’t, and try it all again. You’ll post on Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and more, then turn back to your own site to draw people in.

The key is and will always be the work you put into it. If you spend your time thinking about your online presence as a marketing tool, and finding ways to get the most people to it, you’ll find it to be a successful. You will get out of it exactly what you put into it.

This can instantly replace my salary I earn from my JOB

Times are tough. And many people are looking for ways of replacing the salary they earn at a not-so-stable job. Yet a job is stability. It gives you a regular paycheck, benefits, all coming in on a regular basis. Even if that job might not be there a few months from today.

With your own business, you may have a great client coming in today that gives you hundreds, even thousands of dollars in revenue. And then you might not find another client for weeks.

Can you live with that instability while you grow? Stability comes over time when you regularly make connections, and those connections convert into clients on a regular basis. Until you reach that point (which can take weeks, months, or even years), your job may be your income source during that time frame.

If you are serious about building up a revenue stream from a home based photography studio, let nothing deter you. Your dream is possible, and thousands are proving it every day. However, you do need to plan for minor bumps in the road. It can be tough; the more you plan for the unexpected, the easier things will be along the way.

“I can’t put my best work on my website – I don’t want my competition finding out what I’m doing and copy me.”

“I don’t want to go into that niche of photography – there’s too much competition and I could never make any money at it.”

While it is fair to say that your competition can make things a bit more difficult for you, competition itself isn’t the real challenge. The challenge comes from trying to distinguish yourself from your competition, and offering something that no one else can. Competition in itself is a good thing. And if you learn how to view your competition in a slightly different way, you’ll see how you can use your competition to grow your business.

1. Lots of competition means there is more opportunity.

When you decide to open up your photography business, if you can look around your community and find other photographers to model, that’s a good thing. Don’t look for the photographers struggling to survive; instead look for good role models that are making a healthy living at it. If there are 25 wedding photographers in your community all making a full time living at it, that means there is enough business to go around.

2. More competition means more recognition.

Imagine if you came up with an entirely new concept – something no one had ever heard of before. It may seem like a great idea to move forward with it. But in reality, your potential customers will have to be educated on it before they know they need your products/services. If a customer already knows the idea exists, they simply have to go out and find the business that meets their desires and demands. If you have a slight twist to an old niche, you’ll stand out from the crowd.

3. More competition means more role models.

Thanks to the Internet, you can learn from others like never before. You can visit other sites, read information and watch videos, and learn via phone or live seminars everything you need to know about becoming a better photographer. Don’t copy others. Instead, find inspiration in what they do and use it to better yourself along the way.

4. More opportunities to build your reputation.

If you are in a small community of 10,000 people, you have limited resources to showing your community how good you are at photography. You might have a newspaper or two, a few community magazines, a radio and television station, and a few charity possibilities each year. But thanks to the online world, you can grow your reputation around the world. Even if you want to stay local, you’ll be looked at as a solid business owner if you start gaining national and international recognition.

5. More competition forces you to be the best you can be.

If you are constantly being compared with others, it forces you to do the same. Competition helps you become more creative, and forces you to make decisions that will set you apart on a regular basis. There is no growing complacent with competition around, or you’ll quickly find yourself at the bottom of the heap. Instead, follow and network with your competition regularly to sharpen your skills and be the best you can be.

What if you grew up loving something and being very passionate about it, and always wondered if you could turn it into a business and a career. Can you really turn “anything” into a lucrative business model?

I think that’s one of the exciting things about small business, and what the Internet has done for us as a society.

Small businesses can be started from scratch, immediately, and you’ll know within weeks if it has potential. Add in the Internet where you can reach millions of people with just a few clicks of the mouse, and you’ll be able to define your target market, and whether or not you’re truly onto a unique idea.

This week I found a great video from a photographer who makes her living photographing “secret” places. She’s invited into some amazing sites, and has created photographs that will haunt you and inspire you. In her presentation, she makes one key point that to me relates directly back to turning your passion into a business. She says she spends more time contacting and connecting with people to allow her to photograph in the places she loves then she does actually photographing. That’s the key.

You have to be willing to do whatever it takes to make your business ideas a reality. If you want to sell something big, it may take weeks or even months getting the idea into place. You can’t get discouraged. And you have to knock on as many doors as it takes to make it a reality.

Its probably one of the hottest topics online when it comes to the photography profession:

The differences between amateurs and professionals

Is there truly a difference? Do you need something special to move from one to the other? And is it truly possible to make a living as a professional photographer with amateurs filling up the marketplace for part time work?

Right here on this blog we’ve discussed this concept again and again.

Dig Deeper: The Difference Between Amateurs and Professionals

Dig Deeper: What A Pro Captures Versus What an Amateur Shoots

Dig Deeper: How To Lose A Million Dollars in 3 Seconds

I just found a video that touches on this very topic. Michael Freeman says it in the simplest way possible:

Professional photography means making a living from it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksaqNpATvlg

Can’t argue with that.

And if you are currently making a living from it, or have been dreaming of the day you can drop everything else, and spend all your time at photography, it may mean that you look at things a bit different.

Because the one thing we can always depend on is change.

Things will never stay the same. We’re always in a state of change, moving from one thing to the next. And now more than ever, change is hurling at us at light speed.

It’s Progress

I attended a presentation last night, and we spoke quite a bit about change and what it means to us. And the presenter said one thing that stuck in my mind:

Progress is harder than regress. It’s always easy to fall back into old patterns and comfort zones. Change is hard.

Yep, and that clearly defines the photography industry at the moment. (Okay, maybe it actually describes most industries at the moment.)

It’s easy to fall back on the old ways of photography. We already have patterns and plans for that. Its easy to use film cameras, print up proofs, and hand over a stack of images to the client. It’s easy to shoot portraits, weddings and commercial work, and charge what we did in the past. It’s easy to expect a contract for stock work, and make a comfortable living with editorial images.

But that is no longer reality.

Instead, the entire photographic marketplace is being redefined. At no other time are images more in demand than they are right now. We’re a visual society, and that is only going to increase with the tools, technology and capabilities that we have in place.

So instead of looking at photography in the old ways, its time to think of something new.

How can you create a professional photography studio that caters to today’s clientele?

How can you offer things they want, and get paid a great living for it?

I’d love to hear what your thoughts are.

“I’ve been working on my website for months now. It took me months to choose the right system to design it on, and I’ve had to go back through all of my images, finding the perfect ones to include in my gallery. We’re almost finished with it now, but it’s still not quite the way I wanted it to look. I’m not sure how many people I’ll tell about it, because it truly isn’t up to my standards.”

Do you see yourself in the above statements? Or how about:

“I’ve been shooting for years now, and love the idea of building a business. I’ve created my business cards, and have been planning for quite awhile. But I’m just not sure what to do next. I want to make sure everything is in order before I find my first client. I don’t want to give the appearance my photography isn’t up to par, so I’d rather wait and make sure everything is right before I start bringing in clients.”

Yep, both of the above examples are a form of perfectionism – something I hear quite a bit in start up businesses.

Perfectionism is the refusal to accept any standard short of perfection. It’s the tendency for being displeased with anything that is not perfect or does not meet extremely high standards.

Unfortunately, those standards are always self-evaluated, and determined through your own mindset and opinions.

Being a perfectionist may sound good in theory – who wouldn’t want a business set with high standards? But in reality, perfectionism does more harm then good because it puts us into a state of paralysis that reduces “action”.

In a report on perfectionism, psychologist J Clayton Lafferty PhD said it best:

Perfectionism has nothing to do with actually trying to perfect anything. It is about illusion, the desire to look good.

And while he was talking about perfectionism in corporate America, the same holds true throughout small business as well.

Small businesses work because they are willing to take action, and move forward with a new idea to test and see how well the market likes the idea. Then they tweak, and tweak, and tweak, until they get it right.

The 80/20 Rule

When it comes to perfectionism, in order to conquer your fears and move forward with your business ideas, take the 80/20 rule to heart. Get your business ideas into place so you have 80 percent of the idea ready, and then run with it. The other 20 percent will fall into place as you tweak. Let me show you how this might work.

Sara works full time, and has started up a portrait business on the side because she is worried about her job and whether she’ll be laid off in the coming months. Having a photography business ready to go would give her something to fall back on when that happens, or if she can build it up to a full time status first, it would be a great reason to quit the corporate race, and run with her photography. She has business cards in place, a website built, and many samples to help get her started. But she’s not sure how to price her photography, what packages to offer, and how to have a system said up to make her look “professional”. So she’s sitting on the sidelines, waiting for the answers to come along.

Instead of waiting for things to happen, Sara needs to make it happen.

She doesn’t have to have a perfect portrait package in place; she just needs her first customer.

For a portrait session to take place, she needs 5 things:

1. A price for a sitting fee
2. Prices for prints
3. Equipment in place to photograph the client
4. A location to shoot
5. A client

That’s it.

1. The price for the sitting fee can be changed for every client if need be until you get the fee that works for you.

2. Prices for prints can be changed for every client until you have the pricing structure that brings in profits for your business.

3. Camera equipment can be added as you grow and learn what works for you.

4. Locations can change daily, with every client, for every mood.

5. Clients will always be changing and growing with your business.

Your first client will not break your business if it isn’t perfect. Nor will your second. Or third. Or fourth.

Every client is a learning process. They will help you decide what you like, and what you don’t like. They will help you decide what works, and what doesn’t.

Instead of pondering what will happen, just do it and find out what does happen.

Then use that experience to grow into your next.