Zenologue

Except for those in the Southern hemisphere, most of us are in the grip of a cold snap that’s setting records in some areas and causing major disruption everywhere.

While the snow can be photogenic from a landscape perspective, this isn’t just a minor inconvenience for us photographers, especially those who create portraits on location – for many it’s brought business to an apparent standstill.

But, within every disadvantage is the seed of an equal or greater benefit.

Rather than become frustrated and despondent about the problems caused by the weather, we can take this quieter time to plan ahead for the rest of the year.

Now is the perfect time to dream up those creative marketing plans, special events, promotions etc.

Grab a calendar and start marking out the dates you want to book for weddings. Black out those special dates when you know you won’t want to work, such as family birthdays, vacations etc. Take a look at your procedures and workflow to look for improvements in efficiency.

Do you want to run a family portrait month special or dedicate time especially for senior portraits? If so, decide when and start planning the marketing efforts now.

As silly as it might sound, you can even spend some time designing next year’s holiday cards.

Work on your financial projections for the year, design some new products, embark on a personal project, take a class, or even take a break.

Business might be slow right now, but 2010 promises to be a growth year. Take advantage of any time you have now – because you could well be too busy later on.

Time Mgt. business, planning, professional photographer, time management

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