This post is Day 25 of 30 Ways In 30 Days To Redesign Your Life With Photography. This series seeks to provide you with practical steps to get you from wherever you are today, to exactly where you want to be – this year! If your goal has always been to take your photography to a whole new level, hang on and start enjoying a new lifestyle you’ve always dreamed of.

One of the most magical points of running a business is when you realize you can’t do it all yourself; the only way to move forward is to take on an employee.

“My challenge is how to grow from a one-woman show to the next step. Do I just hire an office/production manager? I have found that networking and shooting and selling are my favorite things and could let the rest go. Am just having trouble with making it happen.”
Laura

Document Your Month

As a solo business owner, the first step is realizing you need help and are willing to let some things go. The second step is determining what is practical to let go.

Instead of guessing at things, the best way to make this determination is to track what you do in a typical month.

Grab a binder, and enough paper to last you for 30 days. Keep the binder open and on your desk or work station, and record everything you do for a month. Include everything. If you spend 10 minutes talking to a client on the phone, record it. If you spend 30 minutes with customer support over phone charges, record it. If you spend 45 minutes doing data entry for your accounting, record it.

After a one month period, you can gain a pretty good idea of where your time is going every month. With your 30 day binder in hand, list out different tasks, and then add up the number of minutes or hours you put in. Don’t lump things together – be detailed at this point.

Create Systems

If you’ve never done this exercise, you’ll be amazed at what you can find. It will show you where you are spending a ton of time each month, and give you insight as to where you let go.

For instance, if you find your surfing the Internet 20 hours per month, set a timer each time you sit down and eliminate some of that time. It can be a huge production waster, and it’s easy to eliminate once you know what you are doing.

If you find you are creating customer files, writing letters, and working on production 20 hours per month, how can you create a system that eliminates some of that time? Can you create a checklist with things to do for each client? Open the file and the checklist is on the inside, giving you immediate information on status.  Can you create standard letters that you can customize with names and details – yet use the same form letter for everyone?

Little things can make a huge difference. And it’s easier to see when you look at your workload as a whole.

Make A List And Let It Go

Other things also start popping out at you.

For example, maybe you frame all of your portraits before you deliver them to your clients. You have framing equipment, and have been doing much of the work yourself. But after your month of tracking, you realize its taking 15 hours per month. You don’t enjoy doing it; you only enjoy the results, and how much it improves the presentation of your photography.

This would be an ideal candidate for letting go. Why not find a framer that offers the same quality, and can get the job done for you on your time schedule?

It may cost a bit more, but what could you do with that extra 15 hours per month? Bring in 5 additional clients? Take a day off to spend with your family? Attend 2 networking functions?

Start Hiring

The great thing about today’s world is you have many options when it comes to gaining help. Instead of thinking “employee”, look at all the options.

• You can hire other business owners that provide specific services. For example, if you do a lot of retouching, hire a company to handle all of your retouching. Or hire an accountant to do all of your data entry and tax work.  They offer specific services, and you hire them one at a time to do specific jobs.

• You can hire a virtual assistant. I love this method, and go this route all the time. You can hire them for a few hours a month, or by the week. As much or as little as you need. And if you look around for one to match your needs, they can end up doing a lot of the backend work for you. A virtual assistant can have many skills, and can offer you many of the things an office assistant would do. They can help you maintain your customer files, and mail out letters. They can book your travel arrangements, and spend the 30 minutes correcting your phone bill. And so much more – they are there to act as your assistant. The difference is they run their own company, and because they are also business owners, you get 110 percent service all the time.

• You can hire an employee, but that means payroll, taxes, benefits, etc. I would suggest leaving this option for last, until you are stable enough to guarantee salary on a year round basis.

With your binder in hand, you will discover the exact amount of help you need.

By hiring an office manager without performing this exercise, you may have no idea what you need them to do. You just start giving them task after task, with very little rhyme or reason to the objectives.

Yet with your task list, you suddenly can add up where you spend the most amount of time, and where you would benefit most. Then hire accordingly.

While I’m not against hiring employees, I do find it easier to take on other services first. You can hire very specific tasks to be outsourced, and take on only the help you need. And its easier to cut back hours or let a company go if you don’t meet your sales goals then it is to move an employee from full to part time, or worse let them go. So much more is at stake with an employee.

In any case, it’s important to use the resources around you, and to give yourself the gift of time. With only 24 hours in a day, what you do with them will ultimately determine how successful you will be.

One of my favorite books of all times is Dr Suess’ Oh, The Places You’ll Go. It’s a great read for everyone from 1 to 100, and can take an entirely different meaning depending on what is happening in your life.

As I was reading through it this weekend, I realized that for the majority of photographers right now, they’ve come to The Waiting Place.

And when you’re in a Slump,
you’re not in for much fun.
Un-slumping yourself
is not easily done.

You will come to a place where the streets are not marked.
Some windows are lighted. But mostly they’re darked.
A place you could sprain both you elbow and chin!
Do you dare to stay out? Do you dare to go in?
How much can you lose? How much can you win?

And IF you go in, should you turn left or right…
or right-and-three-quarters? Or, maybe, not quite?
Or go around back and sneak in from behind?
Simple it’s not, I’m afraid you will find,
for a mind-maker-upper to make up his mind.

You can get so confused
that you’ll start in to race
down long wiggled roads at a break-necking pace
and grind on for miles across weirdish wild space,
headed, I fear, toward a most useless place.
The Waiting Place…

The Waiting Place is a place photographers go when they are scared to move forward away from the norm. They sell packages a certain way because everyone else does. They charge a certain price because everyone else does.

Nobody would ever pay $10,000 for a photographer just to show up at a wedding, right?

Nobody would every pay $5,000 for a wall portrait, right?

Nobody could ever make a million as a photographer, right?

And yet it’s being done every day, as I write these words.

These are the people that don’t look at what the media is saying about business being down; they’re out there connecting with people who know business is up.

These are people that don’t say, “nobody will pay this price”. Instead they charge what they want and find people willing to pay it.

So my question to you is:

What type of photographer are you?

And in the words of Dr Seuss:

Today is your day!
Your mountain is waiting.
So…get on your way!

Have you ever started out the week with a fresh outlook on your photography business:

• You have a goal list you’re excited about.
• You have several clients and prospects you are meeting with.
• You are ready to finish several things in production.

Then Friday comes along. As you look back at your goals and to-do list, you’re suddenly disappointed. The list is still half filled with things you never got to. And you now have things with higher priority, which means some of the things you were excited about just a week before now may never be completed.

Chances are you’ve had a deadly creature enter your business.

1. The Beacon
2. The Sucker
3. The Whiner

The Beacon starts out as a friend. Someone sends you an email, you read a book, or you visit a website that speaks directly to you. It’s filled with great information, and you can see yourself following in the footsteps of what the author is talking about. You jump in with both feet, ready to follow.

The problem with the Beacon is it may seem like a guiding light, but the guiding light transforms and changes places all the time. It may show you one direction today, and a completely new direction tomorrow. It can be a significant time waster if you don’t learn how to stop looking for the next beacon, and use one thoroughly to find your way to success first.

The Sucker is the one item you really like to do, yet ends up eating away all of your time. I recently spoke with a photographer who loved doing weddings, but can’t take on more than one wedding a weekend. After the wedding, she spends up to 20 hours or more Photoshopping all of her images before she presents them to her clients. And before she’s even sure what the client will choose to buy.

The problem with the Sucker is it eats away at your time without bringing in any type of profit. You may enjoy doing it, but its not contributing enough to your business model in order to keep justifying it. It’s literally sucking the life out of your business, and not allowing you to grow significantly towards your future plans.

The Whiner is the one client who takes up all of your time. Have you ever heard of the 80/20 Rule? The 80/20 Rule applies to all parts of your business:

20 percent of your clients will bring in 80 percent of your business
20 percent of your marketing attracts 80 percent of your clients

And so on.

If you take a look at your business, you can probably find the 20 percent of your clients that bring in 80 percent of your problems. In fact you can usually spot them the first time you meet. They are the ones who ask repeatedly how you handle clients when they don’t like the photos. They are the ones who constantly ask for modifications to your packages and contracts. They are the ones who whine about everything, looking for a way to squeeze just a little more out of you. And unfortunately once you book with them, they’ll whine from beginning to end.

Do you see any of these in your business? Now that you know they exist, it’s easier to move them out of your business.

Find the one beacon you connect with, and use it exclusively until you find success.

Find the sucker and look for ways to eliminate it unless you are being paid for it. Or consider hiring someone else to do it for you, giving you more time to do the important things.

Find the whiner before they become clients, and turn them down.  Remember this one client will bring you 80 percent of your challenges. Do you really need that type of client?

image source

The headlines everywhere read doom and gloom. It’s the toughest time of all to make profits with a business, not to mention the possibility of starting one up. Should you take all of this to heart? If you’ve always dreamt of starting and growing a photography business, and turning it into your career, is now the time?

Yes!

I’ve started up 3 separate businesses over the past 20 years, and I’ve seen good times and bad. While good times are great and people definitely spend a ton of money, in many ways the tough times are even better. IF you’re a smart business owner.

During good times, it’s easy to start a business and bring in customers. People spend easily, so it’s easily to gain a little attention and build your business quickly. But think for a moment what’s happening now. People are holding on to their money. It’s harder to bring in business. People look for wise investments instead of splurging. It’s not that they aren’t willing to spend; they just think twice now before stepping into the buyer mode. Which means your job now more than ever is to prove your worthy of the spending.

Instead of cutting back on your marketing, invest even more. It may take three postcards instead of one or two to get a family in for a portrait. It may take four office visits to set up a new commercial account with a marketing director. It’s all about the relationship, and people want to know they are making a wise choice before they spend their money. So if you’ve been saying these 5 things lately, and are debating on shutting down your doors, you may want to think again.

1. Business is slow. Business is slow because many people don’t know you exist. If you’re not out networking and marketing at the same level or even more, people are unsure of whether you’re still in business.

2. I’ve never advertised before. If you’ve been in business for a while, maybe you have a great referral source. Take a look at your source – is it having trouble? Think about if you’re targeting a particular neighborhood that is filled with technology workers. And the main employer in the area just laid off 30,000 people. Your source may be having trouble at the moment. But if you found a new neighborhood that is filled with doctors, and it’s next to a new hospital, you would have much higher success. Don’t rely on just one source.

3. I don’t know how to advertise because it all costs so much. What type of advertising have you looked at before? Yellow pages, magazines and newspapers may be well out of reach. But what about dedicating more to your web presence? Don’t become narrow minded when it comes to advertising. There are dozens of possibilities; you just have to find the right mix.

4. I’ve sent one postcard and nobody responded. The average person needs to see a marketing message 7 to 12 times before they respond. And then they respond only if they are truly interested. The key is to see the message again and again, to where you are instantly thought of when the need does occur. Build your pond and fish from it regularly. That’s the only way to build a healthy business.

5. I’ve tried things in the past and they just don’t work. Be honest with yourself, and really look at what you’ve tried and the success you’ve had. Mailing out 50 postcards once in 6 months is not a great attempt. Instead, think long term. What can you do over 6 months to reach out to your prospects 7 to 10 times? How can you build that relationship?