Zenologue

It’s a new year, a new decade in fact, so perhaps we should start out with a new attitude – a mindset designed to win. Let’s forget all the negativity and depression that came to a head in 2009, and start afresh with a new outlook.

Think of your favorite successful brand for a moment.

They probably have a CEO, numerous vice-presidents, departmental managers and front-line workers.

Photographers, on the other hand, are usually one-man bands – we have to do everything from opening up shop, managing the accounts and cleaning the bathrooms.

Often, that’s the root of most of our problems…

We get lost in the everyday tasks of running the front line of the business that we forget or don’t have the time to consider the vision, mission and strategies that define where we want our business to go.

Instead, if we consider that we have various roles in the business, from the CEO to the divisional vice-presidents, on down to the front-line operatives, we might have a better chance of making the correct decisions to operate the business more successfully and efficiently.

This is where time management and planning really come into play.

For example, we could spend the first hour of our day planning and working on the vision of the business as the CEO of our company, not really considering the strategies or operational procedures needed to carry out those plans. We can then move the company forward towards achieving our goals. In this sense, the CEO is not concerned with the how, only the why.

Next, we switch hats as divisional vice-presidents of the departments affected by our musings as CEO in order to develop the strategies needed to accomplish the goals we’ve set for ourselves. Our job as strategists is concerned with the how of achieving the goals, the route we’re going to take so to speak.

The managerial tasks are up next – taking care of the tactics and the tools required to fulfill the strategies we’ve developed. This level of thinking deals with the methods, tools and systems we’ll use to accomplish tasks.

The final level – front-line operations – is probably the easiest to deal with. We simply need to come up with fixed procedures to carry out the tasks needed to do the job at hand.

It’s going to take some time and practice to get used to this segmented way of thinking but I believe it’s critical to the success of any business, no matter how small.

business business, professional photographer, professional photography, success, time management

This weekend, in the USA at least (I know the UK have already done so), it’s time to “Fall Back” an hour as daylight savings for 2009 comes to an end. This is where we get to withdraw the hour we deposited in the time bank at the start of the summer – if only they paid interest on that deposit, oh well…

The question is, “What are you going to do with your extra 3,600 seconds this year?”

Many will take the chance to get some extra sleep, others might choose an extra hour of play on the town. Some might see it as a gift, one they’ve been saving up all summer. The way I think about it, if someone were to deposit $3,600 in your bank account and told you that you had just one hour to spend it, $1 for every second, you might think carefully about how you would use it. I doubt you would buy extra sleep with it (although you might if it’s really that valuable to you). How would you look at 3,600 seconds on the last day of your life if someone offered it to you as a bonus?

The main problem is it comes in the middle of the night when we’re not looking – perhaps they’re hoping we won’t notice and simply snore it away…

But, if we’re creative, maybe we can find ways to use the extra time more wisely. We could stay up that extra hour on Saturday and work on a business plan, a marketing strategy, new product development, educational research – it’s not even as though any of those things are physically demanding. We could create some interesting photographs, explore a new style or subject, paint, read, learn, write… the list is limited only by our imagination…

If this sounds like too much work, think of all the occasions we’ve used the excuse “I didn’t have the time” or that we’ve told someone “if only I had the time I would…”

Imagine the amazing things Richard Branson, Donald Trump, Bill Gates, Zig Ziglar, Steve Jobs and all the other successful folks in the world could achieve with an extra 3,600 seconds…

Time Mgt. business, success, time management

How many times over the last weeks and months have you heard the word “recession”? Even if we discount those references that might pertain to hair loss, we hear it a lot more than we’d like to. There does not appear to be an economic analogy for Rogaine though… Turn on the TV or the radio, open a current-affairs magazine or newspaper, and the word leaps into our consciousness and sticks there like a limpet.

I actually heard the phrase “we seem to coming out of the recession” recently – but only once. I strongly suspect that the person who said it was taken away somewhere and is spending their days counting salt grains in the depths of an anonymous mine.

Because They Say It’s So!

How do we really know that we are in the middle of a recession? Apparently, it’s because “they” say we are. By “they” I mean whoever is responsible for reporting such things to the media. One can only assume that “they” must be eminent experts on such matters and actually know what they are talking about, since whom else would the media rely on for their material except those in the know?

For example, sometime over the course of the weekend I read a piece on the CNN web site claiming that the 2009 holiday shopping season is going to be a poor one for retailers. Therefore, they’re planning to cut back on hiring the usual seasonal help. I’m no economist, and I assume that the people who are use something more useful than a crystal ball in the course of their forecasting. Still, I have to ask, “How do these people really know?” It seems to me that someone somewhere simply decided that it’s going to be a bad season for retailers. The mere fact they told us means that it will probably come true. If people expect the worse, then it will probably happen.

Optimism Is Not Normal

This raises the interesting question of what might happen if some brave soul were to say the opposite instead? Other than be dragged off to the salt mines, of course. What if they predicted an upswing in the economy and an improved shopping season? Retailers might then hire more people, their stores might be busier, and more money could circulate around the economy, based solely on nothing more than a positive outlook. The economy might improve purely because people believe it will. A simplistic and probably naïve view, I know, but is it any more simplistic than the current situation, which happens to be driven by a negative outlook?

The world, it seems, thrives on the promise that “tomorrow may be even worse.”¹

Okay, I can hear you asking, how does this actually relate to our photography business? I’m getting there…

Recession-Proofing Starts In The Mind

Regardless of the state of the economy, there will always be photographers who succeed and others who do not. It’s simply easier, when the world is supposed to be in the grip of a recession, to blame the economy for our business woes. But, it’s a fact that, right now, there are many photographers out there who are running productive and successful studios despite the state of the economy.

Some photographers might say, “No one is investing in photographic services at the moment.” Whereas a more true statement might be, “some people are not investing photographic services at the moment.” We just need to work a little smarter and harder at attracting the appropriate types of client for our niche market, whether it be weddings, babies, children, seniors or families.

The secret to the success of many studios right now is that I honestly think the owners simply refuse to believe in recessions in quite the same way that many other people do. To them, a recession is about as real as a leprechaun at the end of the rainbow, with the exception that they still get the pot of gold. Instead, they view the economy as something akin to the weather – as a dynamic system that changes for better or worse, but never actually stops altogether. Whereas the economists would have us panic and believe that the economy has really stopped, like a watch that needs rewinding.

The Economy Is Like The Weather – If You Don’t Like It, Wait Five Minutes

While everyone else battens down the hatches against the end of the world, halting their marketing efforts, reducing advertising and “weathering out the storm”, the successful photographers are singing in the rain and looking forward to the next sunny day. They market more, advertise more and the bookings keep coming in – okay maybe not in the same numbers as when the economy is really sunny, but they are still doing better than many do when the economy is supposedly great.

So what should we be doing right now?

First and foremost, cast off the fear, doubt and confusion that come with being a victim of a poor economy. No one wants to hire a depressed and desperate photographer.

Make the best use of every marketing channel you can find – online and offline. Many of these channels are FREE and there are more marketing opportunities available to us now than at any other time in history. Be creative in this area and try something new.

Turn off the news. This one is HUGE. The great Earl Nightingale said that we become what we think about. Napoleon Hill and others have noted that we get more of what we focus on. It stands to reason that if we pour nothing but the negative poisons we see and hear on the news into our minds, that is all we will get back out. There’s more on this topic here: http://www.zenologue.com/blog/2009/04/keeping-a-positive-mind-in-a-negative-world/

Network. I know it’s scary and hard to do but get out from behind that computer screen and go outside into the real world. Network with other professionals, potential clients, charities, anyone… But remember the golden rule of networking – give first before thinking of getting anything back.

Manage your time effectively, and don’t confuse simple activity with achievement (see http://www.zenologue.com/blog/2009/01/activity-vs-achievement/).

Challenge yourself to grow and become better every day – learn new techniques, choose subjects outside your comfort zone, push yourself in unfamiliar directions. The best photographers in history have forced themselves to do these things.

Focus on the business of photography, especially on the core basics of marketing and sales. The best photographs in the world never sell themselves – someone has to know they exist first, and then someone has to sell them effectively.

Conclusion

I don’t know about you, but I’ve really had enough of listening to the gloom and doom of global recession, financial meltdowns and one crisis after another. I’m a photographer because I live to capture the meaningful moments in people’s lives – moments that have nothing whatsoever to do with the current state of the economy as determined by some faceless person in an ivory tower somewhere.

People who value photography, who treasure the emotional moments of their lives and want them preserved for the future, will always be inspired by and invest in what we do, because they know they are investing more than simple money.

The currency of our clients is not the dollar and cent – it is the heart and soul, which can never go into recession.

¹              This was actually the title of a poem by the British sci-fi author John Brunner (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Brunner_(novelist)), whom I was fortunate enough to meet in 1994 at a writer’s conference in Southampton, England. He very graciously read some of his works and “Tomorrow may be even worse” stuck in my mind.

Motivation business, Marketing, photographer, professional photography, recession, success