Photo Studio Nightmares: What Would Gordon Ramsay Say?
#7: They zoom in and out, and in and out, and in and out…
Summary: "Photo Studio Nightmares: What Would Gordon Ramsay Say?"
Are you working with a "Photo Studio Nightmare"? What if you could have an imaginary Gordon Ramsay tell you what you needed to do to fix it and move on to business success?
Okay, I’ll admit it – one of my favorite TV shows is “Kitchen Nightmares” by my compatriot, Chef Gordon Ramsay. Watching this passionate businessman, as he tries to help struggling restaurateurs turn their kitchens from a nightmare into a dream business, is certainly addictive TV from the perspective of anyone in business.
Love him or hate him, his incisive insight into what makes a successful restaurant can’t be denied…
Which got me thinking… What would happen if someone like Gordon, but a successful photographer instead of a chef, were to wander into some of our photography studios? What in the world would he have to say? I’ve no doubt it would be blunt and to the point!
Photo Studio Nightmares
Think about it for a moment. Is your studio or photography business a nightmare? Even if it’s not quite as bad as that, if it’s not the dream business you thought it might be when your started out, then the chances are that it’s a “disturbed night’s sleep” at the very least!
Judging by the constant search traffic to this site related to “failing business”, I suspect that there are more than a few of you out there who are struggling very badly right now. Some of you might even be wondering why you ever got into the photography business in the first place!
However, I urge you to stay the course, if at all possible! If you are struggling then that does at least mean you have a passion for photography, otherwise you would have quit a long time ago, right? So keep searching for what you need to do to survive!
Seeing The Wood For The Trees
One of the challenges we face in trying to fix our own businesses is that we’re too deeply stuck in the middle of it all; we are unable to see the wood for all the trees. What’s worse is that we’re too emotionally attached to “our baby” to be able to make the necessary (and hard) decisions that need to be made to ensure our future survival.
This is when it’s invaluable to have a mentor or someone we can trust to help us see where the real problems lie and then help us solve them creatively. This is what Chef Ramsay does for the people in his show – because he can see the big picture from a bird’s eye view, as it were, he is able to quickly identify those areas that need to be addressed, and in what order. Is he successful all of the time? No, of course he’s not, that would be an unreasonable expectation, but he does have a remarkable success rate.
What If You Don’t Have a Gordon?
Not everyone is fortunate enough to have Gordon Ramsay, or his photographic equivalent, walk into their studio to point out all the problems, yell at them, and light a fire underneath them to get it fixed.
But, what if we could imagine that there was such a person? What if we could take a tour of our business through the eyes of our imaginary Gordon? What might we see? Would we like it?
Such an exercise requires that we be absolutely 100% honest with ourselves and accept objectively what we see going on around us. We need to pretend that Gordon has walked in, he takes the tour, sees how we work, and then proceeds to let us know what he thinks of it all.
Some of it may not be pretty, or easy for us to listen to – but listen we must!
I would like to point out something here, an idea that you might not have picked up on if you watch the show, but which I believe is terribly important:
Never once, in all the episodes I’ve seen (and I’ve seen a lot of them), have I ever heard Gordon suggest that the cause of a restaurant’s problems lie outside the business. You will never hear him blame the state of the economy or stiff local competition as an excuse for poor attendance, or complain that people have kitchens at home and choose to cook their own food etc…
This is a critical point – we must ultimately accept responsibility for our own success or failure.
Unfortunately, there are too many photographers who are content to blame external factors, over which they have no control, for the demise of their business. The sad truth is that they killed the business themselves, because they gave up in their mind long before the fight really began.
What Would Gordon Say?
Having given Gordon the grand tour, watched him sample the photography, had him observe sessions and watch us at work, what might he have to say? Here’s a quick checklist of some of things I believe he might focus on:
- The passion and commitment of the owners
- How the clients are treated
- Effectiveness of communication (both internal and external)
- Do we show our love to our clients?
- How organized are we?
- Do we love the products we’re selling?
- Are we using only the very best ingredients?
- How innovative and creative are we?
- Do we have pride in our work?
- Are we willing to take ownership of any mistakes?
- Who do we blame when things go wrong?
Notice that all of these concepts can be applied to any customer-based business. This is one of the reasons I love “Kitchen Nightmares” so much; the business ideas presented in the show are applicable to a photography studio just as much as they are to a restaurant.
Reinvent Yourself Constantly
I believe that if we allow ourselves to imagine our very own photographic Gordon Ramsay, and we remain as objective as possible, that we can learn a great deal about where some of the problems might lie within our business. We can then take this information and use it in a process of constant reinvention, always striving to improve upon our current state.
Just try it for a week. Aim to think critically about everything you say or do in your business for a whole week. This can raise such interesting (and uncomfortable) questions as:
- Did I really treat the prospect on the phone properly?
- Was I as friendly or as approachable as I could have been?
- Did my preoccupation with another problem interfere?
- What opportunity did I miss to go the extra mile today?
- How could I improve an important portrait even more?
- What would happen if I over-delivered on an order?
- How can I creatively show my appreciation to a client?
- Did I reply to all the emails I received today?
- How can I give my client an extraordinary experience?
- Is the studio as clean and inviting as it could be?
- Are my clients having FUN?
- Am I having fun?
- Can my clients sense my passion?
These are all things that we know should be concerned about, and I think it’s obvious that improvement in any one of them can significantly improve our business, or at least the way we are perceived and known outside of our studio doors.
The main point is that we are the ones responsible for everything that happens to us and our photography studio. Our attitude, state of mind and philosophy are translated through our actions into perceptions in the minds of our clients, which in turn affect our future business. If we start out with a negative or poor attitude, then we can only expect to get negative or poor results…
I would be most interested to hear of your thoughts on this. Do you agree or disagree with these ideas? Have you tried the exercise outlined here, and what were your results? Please share your thoughts, and do pass on the article to your friends. Thanks for reading, I really do appreciate it!
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Excellent post and you are a spot on with your analogy here. I’ll need to try this process….