The Photographers Guide To Handling Business Growth

This post is Day 26 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.

You’ve done everything right. You’ve created your goals, and are on target to put everything into place. You’ve produced a marketing campaign that’s bringing in a steady stream of clients. You’re bringing in enough income that photography is your full time career. Everything seems to be going as planned. Now what?

How do you handle the growth you are experiencing? How do you keep up with it all, and keep your head above water? Its fun at the moment, but the last thing you want to have happen is to feel like you are in over your head. Overwhelm is not something you choose to experience again.

Before you get to that point, lets look at the most common ways a business owner can become overwhelmed, and what you can do about it today.

Lack of cash

One of the most significant reasons a business fails is they simply run out of cash. Demand is high, yet your outlay is not keeping up with the demand. This can happen easily in the photography field, especially when your booking rate is high one season, and your production rate is high in a different season.

As wedding photographers, we saw that all the time. Our heavy booking season came during the first few months of the year; and our production season cam in the last half of the year.

Instead of looking at your bank account during the heavy intake times, and spending accordingly, you need to take into account final production as well. In general, you will quickly learn how much it takes to fulfill an order. Open up a savings account, and deposit that much into savings for every client that comes through your door. Only move the funds when final production is in place, and you are completing orders.

This can also work for other areas, like marketing campaigns and advertising budgets. Use a simple spreadsheet to track each of your expenses, and budget your incoming funds accordingly. Many finance programs also have capabilities of tracking funds in different ways. Only move funds back into your checking account when you are ready to spend on a specific item. [Read more…]