Talk with anyone who plays tennis and they’ll tell you that in order to improve their game, they have to play against players who are better than they are. Tennis players are ranked on a numeric scale, I’m a 3.0 so I like to play against 3.5 or 4.0 players. In doing so, I like to think my game will improve.

The same is true for photographers. Attend any gathering of photographers and there will always be the bunch of “grumpy old guys” in the corner talking about how things “used to be” and hoping those good old days will come back. Fact is, they won’t. Get as far away from that gang as possible, they’ll only bring you down.

Instead, seek out photographers who are succeeding in spite of the economy, in spite of tightened budgets, in spite of all the negativity out there. Hang with them, hang with winners. Some will share what’s working for them and what’s not. A few will give advice. Winning attitudes are infectious. Want to be successful? Hang with winners, observe, listen, and have a positive attitude. Your business will likely benefit!

Photo by Horia Varlan, used under Creative Commons License.

As I was growing up, I heard that again and again from my dad. What he was really saying was that I should stop over-thinking whatever it was I was planning on and just start the project. In other words, I was suffering “analysis paralysis.”

From Wikipedia: Analysis paralysis describes a situation where the opportunity cost of decision analysis exceeds the benefits that could be gained by enacting some decision, or an informal or non-deterministic situation where the sheer quantity of analysis overwhelms the decision-making process itself, thus preventing a decision.

Photographers suffer analysis paralysis when putting together a portfolio or redesigning their websites. They continue to wait until they get more samples, do more testing, get an consultant to help them edit their images, have a logo designed, write copy tweaked for SEO, and the list of excuses goes on and on.

Instead, just start the project, start the redesign, start the momentum going, suspend your need to be a perfectionist. Suspend your fear of failure. You know it’s important to get your website or your portfolio refreshed; when was the last time your samples were updated? It’s time to get busy… set a goal for yourself and “get it done!”

They say that if a frog is placed in boiling water, it will jump out, but if it is placed in cold water that is slowly heated, it will not perceive the danger and will be cooked to death. It’s a metaphor that speaks to the inability of people to react to significant changes that occur gradually.

Of course change in photography has been going on since it was invented, but I can remember when the “water first started to warm” for me. It was when I was handed a Kodak NC2000 in the early 1990′s to photograph a Presidential debate in Lansing, Michigan for the Associated Press. It was the start of digital photography for me. (Rob Galbraith has an excellent essay on the NC2000 here.)

And change continued. And the water got warmer. Digital cameras over the next 20 years evolved to where they are today: incredible machines that take astonishingly good photographs for as little as about $200. And now, the water is indeed boiling and many photographers are being “cooked to death.”

Now clients are taking their own photographs for their basic needs and call one of us only when the situation, setting, or circumstances require a better-than-basic knowledge of photography. But I didn’t set out to reminisce or complain in this post. Rather, to suggest that because of this change, you need to do a couple of things to remain successful.

First, get better clients. The more sophisticated the client, the more they appreciate excellent photography. The more they understand licensing. The more they appreciate YOU.

Second, listen closely to what prospective clients are telling you they need and find a way to deliver it profitably. (Don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting you simply buckle and charge less for the same or additional licensing.)

Third, differentiate. How are you different (read: better) than your competitors? If you cannot show your unique value to a prospective client, why on earth would they hire you? Your value is what make’s you a better choice for your client. And, in many cases, your value will permit you to charge more. Don’t become a commodity.

And last, don’t be an evangelist on behalf of the industry or all photographers. The minute you start explaining to a client why he or she doesn’t really need unlimited usage, why you don’t do buyouts, why, why, why, why… they will click the back button in their browser and move to the next photographer in the list that Google returned when they entered their search query. You lose.

California-based photographer Mark Loundy wrote in his excellent blog “Common Cents”: “Telling them [clients] about my costs of doing business or how many hours it takes for a project’s post-production is like explaining Purina’s manufacturing process to a dog — they just won’t care.” I couldn’t have made my point any better.

The water is boiling, many of my friends have left the business. Ask yourself, how can you adapt to the new photography business? Are you willing to change your business model? Willing to reinvent yourself yet again? How has your approach to our business and your clients changed? If you’re willing, share your story in the comments below.

(Photo by James Lee, used under Creative Commons license CC-BY-2.0)

Almost everyone knows LinkedIn is the social marketing tool most used by business. Some photographers even scoff at Facebook, saying it’s only good for personal interactions and so on.

On one of the forums I read daily, a photographer mentioned that he’d just spoke with a new marketing manager from an old client firm. The firm’s lawyers, are working on a firm-wide universal master contract to use with photographers. The client mentioned that they must be able to use the photos on Facebook, and other “social media”. The photographer asked, “Can any of you help with a few 30-sec sound bites that will alert her to potential dangers?”

From my perspective, if his images were watermarked, and as often as possible he was given a link to his site adjacent to the image, I saw no “dangers” in jumping into social media.

ASMP President James Cavanaugh wrote an eloquent reply to share his own Facebook success story. He wrote:

I’m on Facebook. A number of my clients are. I have posted two or three images a day on Facebook for the last 70 weeks. Including over 350
architectural photographs. My clients post my images. I also do this on
LinkedIn and Google+. Just haven’t had the time to start twitter.

A photographer recently contacted me to say he saw one of my images on the Lexus Facebook page. (An architectural photo of a new dealership.) I checked. There were six of my images from the project!

I was stunned. six of my images all “shared” from my original posts. Over 1,000, 000 “likes” on the site and 66,000 active discussions and each post linked right back to my Facebook business page. Stunned. You bet, and happy as hell. I could never reach 1,000,000 high end people that could afford a Lexus and show them my work.

This is exactly how social media is supposed to work.

Keep thinking it’s evil and miss the boat. In my last ASMP Presidents Message I talked about how my business grew 85% last year. This quarter, up 300% from last year! Still think social media is “dangerous”?

So what about you? Are you utilizing Facebook in your marketing to business clients? And if you’re in the retail side of our business (weddings, portraits, etc), how important is Facebook for your marketing of your studio? Please share your thoughts in the comments.

I am strangely saddened tonight after learning that Steve Jobs has passed away. Perhaps it is because he and I are close in age and it’s a reminder of just how important each day is. Or perhaps it is because I am humbled by his achievements. Someone more eloquent than I tweeted just a short time ago: “Countless people are learning Steve Jobs died on devices that would not exist without his vision. That’s a legacy.”

Below is the text of the Commencement address he delivered on June 12, 2005 at Stanford University. (If you’d rather watch the full-length video, click here.) I’ve seen it before, several times in fact, but watching it now, it affects me in an entirely different way. In any case, he will always inspire me. These three sentences are the ones that have stayed with me from the first time I heard the speech: “And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

Rest in peace Steve Jobs.

—

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I’ve ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That’s it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: “We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?” They said: “Of course.” My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents’ savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn’t see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn’t interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn’t all romantic. I didn’t have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends’ rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn’t have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn’t know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down – that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple’s current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I’m pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn’t been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn’t even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor’s code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you’d have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I’m fine now.

This was the closest I’ve been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960’s, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.” It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much.

—

On one of the professional forums I read daily, there is a conversation about the lousy state of the industry, how clients are hiring based only on price, how protecting one’s intellectual property rights has cost clients, how competitors are charging less and giving more, and blah, blah, blah. It’s the usual bitching and moaning that happens in any economic downturn when photographers: 1) are selling a product that a buyer can obtain elsewhere for less; or 2) are inadequately conveying their value-add to their clients; or 3) have clients that don’t care about the additional “value” the photographer adds to a project.

Michael Albany, a Philadelphia photographer specializing in architecture and portrait photography offered up some valuable insight that I think can help to inspire other photographers. He wrote:

I totally understand the fact that the old grey mare ain’t what she used to be and that our industry is A) in a total state of flux, and B) that the market is becoming saturated with too many Uncle Bobs but I have to say that I am so tired of hearing people whine about it. So you want to charge less or leave ASMP because they don’t [fit] your agenda, bye. Have a nice day.

Your other option, “Poor me, Poor me! Pour me another drink.” Wah.

To which, another photographer took Albany to task by asking: “Could you please offer us some insight into your success? Something helpful to the people who are feeling threatened and discouraged? Something beyond “it sucks to be you” or “just suck it up.”

But Albany was up to it, in a follow up post he wrote:

My success is no secret. I implement the ideas that I learned at SB3, I blog, I do a sh*t load of cold calls, I use Agency Access, I network constantly, I carry a tablet with me with my portfolio on it and show it to anyone that will look, I build relationships with clients and I nurture those relationships. Basically I work my ass off about 90-100 hours a week and I shoot maybe every other week. But I am shooting and I am making money, I am not yet making a great living but these days no one is.

And for God’s sake don’t be negative at all. If you can’t be positive, fake it.

Whew, Michael is working his market like a wild man! One of the most important tools he is making use of is networking. He’s contacting old clients he hasn’t heard from and he’s utilizing a great networking tool that many forget. If he knows of an unrelated, third party who has something to offer up to his client (or vice-versa) he acts as the middle-man and makes an introduction. This “people transaction” in one sense gains him nothing. But in another sense, it benefits him in a huge way… people remember people who helped them out. Think of it as paying it forward. His good deed (the introduction) will, in some way, at some point, come back to benefit him.

Great work Michael, thanks for inspiring all of us!

Photo credits: Church ©2011 Michael Albany, portrait ©2011 Shawn G. Henry

This essay originally appeared in the handbook given to attendees of the American Society of Media Photographers‘ (ASMP) very successful Strictly Business three-day conference series earlier this year. The essay is reprinted here in its entirety. (ASMP’s updated-daily “Strictly Business” blog is another great resource for photographers.)

Selling and Negotiating.  The words strike fear into almost every creative person I’ve met.  As creatives in the photography business, we love to take pictures and have a strong desire to satisfy our clients.  The selling process, by its very nature, involves give and take, and at some point along the way, we’re likely to not give the client (or potential client) everything he or she wants. And, keep in mind that sometimes we won’t get everything that we want. That’s negotiating.

In my mind, the way to grow any business, is to differentiate your product from your competition’s.  What is it that you do differently, better, or smarter than everyone else?  This differentiation provides you with “value” that your competitors don’t have.  Value to your clients of course, but in a sense, “value” to you, because your clients will be less likely to find what you offer from your competitors.

You might ask, what does that have to do with selling and negotiating?  Plenty.  Remember the definition of commodity from back in that Economics class you took in college?  From Wikipedia: “A commodity is some good for which there is demand, but which is supplied without qualitative differentiation across a market.” It is a product that is the same no matter who produces it.  The definition continues: “One of the characteristics of a commodity good is that its price is determined as a function of its market as a whole.”

If you are unable to differentiate your product from that of your competitors, then you are at a distinct disadvantage in any negotiation.  In fact, there likely won’t be much of any negotiating going on… callers will simply tell you what they will pay, take it or leave it.  They’re able to take this stance because if you don’t take the job, they’ll very easily find another capable creative to take the job for the money they’re offering.

So let’s assume you do indeed have a product that clients want and one that is not readily available elsewhere.  Let the negotiation begin.

The phone rings.  I like to get that initial conversation off to a somewhat casual start if I can.  We rarely get face time with prospects, so it’s important to work to create some sort of relationship with the person if at all possible.  Because I work primarily in the corporate-direct end of our business, creating images for corporate brochures and annual reports, many prospective clients call after having viewed my website.

My “Personal Work” portfolio of images is often a good stating point in the conversation.  It’s a chance to talk about things I like to photography when I’m not being paid to do so.  While that conversation is taking place, I’m also working to gather information about the client.  

Things like, how did they hear of me?  (If it’s a referral from another client, I know that client has “pre-sold” me to the person.)  What’s their website address?  (I can check it to see what sort of images they presently use; what are they used to getting and perhaps a sense of budget they give to visual content.)   

Next, I invite the person to tell me about the job.  At this point, I’m relying on my listening skills to glean as much data as I can.  Don’t interrupt!  If you think “talking” is active and listening is passive, you have it backward.  (Read my related post on this topic.) Don’t let emotional filters prevent you from hearing what you don’t want to hear.  And above all, take notes, concentrating the entire time on what the other person is saying, not what your reply will be.  

Keep the “count to two” rule in your mind.  After the other person finishes talking, count to two before you reply.  Knowing you have these two seconds to craft your reply affords you the ability to really listen to what the other person is saying.  If you must ask questions, ask open ended ones.  Keep the other person talking.

A key piece of information to get is whether or not the person you are talking to is indeed the decision maker.  I’ll ask at some point, “Is there anyone else that I should email a few samples of my work to?”  If they provide a name, you’ve just discovered the decision maker.  

Think of yourself as a salesperson first, a creative second.  The entire purpose of this negotiation is to show your value to the client.  But you need to be touting your value to the correct person, so if you aren’t talking to the decision maker, do all you can to get that other person involved in the process.  If that’s impossible, then empower the person with who you;re speaking to “sell you” to the person deciding who will get the job.  This is critical.  Give them “talking points” so that they’ll be better able to “sell” you to that hidden decision maker.

Focus the conversation on your value.  Why are you better than everyone else, why is your work superior?  Is it your style?  Do you have a lot of experience with the type of work they want? 

Most important of all, remember that if you focus the conversation on price, the price will likely fall. If instead, you focus the conversation on value, the price will likely rise. Good luck!

Last month I had an opportunity to do an interview in the form of a webinar with Photoshelter co-founder Grover Sanschagrin on the topic of negotiating. He asked great questions and at the end of about 45 minutes the listening audience of more than 1,000 photographers was invited to submit questions. It was my first webinar and judging from the feedback, I think it went well. If you have questions, please ask them in the comments and we’ll get a dialogue going. Thanks for watching!

.
(Written by Detroit People Photographer Blake J. Discher)

If you are going to take the time to develop a networking strategy, one of the first items you’ll need is a drop-dead gorgeous business card. I mean a card that when you hand it to someone, they say, “Wow, that’s a really nice business card.” If you’re not getting this response, you need a new business card.

First, photographers are not designers. Hire a designer to do your card. If money is tight, maybe you could trade services with a designer. They know what’s current as far as design styles go, understand and are aware of papers, and will help you to create a better looking card that you probably could.

Second, don’t print your cards on the Epson printer in your studio. Have them professionally printed.

And third, select a paper, material, or printing method that stands out from the rest of the crowd. Mine is translucent plastic (that’s it to the right) and the one I discuss below is printed using letterpress.

Destry Jaimes is a photographer in Austin, Texas. When I was presenting my program on sales and networking for ASMP’s Strictly Business series this spring, I saw Destry’s business card and was very impressed. They were black embossed with silver metallic detail. Destry and I talked a bit and he shared with me that his cards have helped to directly increase his business. I asked if he wouldn’t mind emailing me the details. He wrote:

.
When I first picked up the cards from Sarah at Studio SloMo, I was so excited about how they turned out, that I figured they deserved proper photography to really showcase them.

I regularly look at noplasticsleeves.com as well as their book No Plastic Sleeves: The Complete Portfolio Guide for Photographers and Designers (affiliate link), so my intention was to make sure these product shots were up to par with the type of photography they use, so that I could pitch the cards to them in hopes that they would be featured, and give me a little exposure (this is how I believe in getting exposure, rather than the “we’ll give you photo cred” line that we so often hear.)

(Keep in mind, that I’m a location portrait shooter, so shooting product is not my norm.)

I had a mini-photo session with the cards, and nailed my goal, so I immediately sent an email to Danielle Currier of noplasticsleeves.com showing her my new marketing material (and brand), and asking if they were worth featuring on the blog.

In her reply, she said she really liked the cards, and was curious as to why I had chosen a skull to represent myself, but after seeing my work online, she “got it.” She asked if she could use the images I had shot for the feature post, and asked if I could mail her a few cards, which I gladly did.

Sarah (who designed and hand printed the cards), liked the photos I had taken of the cards, which led to her hiring me to shoot a collection of wedding suites (invites, thank you cards, etc.) that will be shown on her website, and featured in an upcoming issue of Martha Stewart Weddings.

These images were not my usual lighting style, as they had to be a bit more bright and airy, but they were a lot of fun to shoot, and everyone is really happy with the results. The angles and lighting was so fun to explore, that I’m considering a venture into more product shot (marketed and branded differently of course).

We just finished detail shots of the suites yesterday, so I’m editing through them today, and rumor has it that I’ll be hired to shoot more of Studio SloMo’s wedding suites in a few months.

Here are the photographs Destry took of his cards for noplasticsleeves.com.

.

.

I presented my program “Stop Grumbling – Get Out There” to a group photographers in New Orleans. (The New Orleans chapter of the American Society of Media Photographers.) It’s a roughly two hour seminar on networking and negotiating techniques.

Usually the doors open about an hour before I speak and I use that time to introduce myself to people as they arrive, exchange business cards, and to get a rough gauge of where the audience is in terms of networking experience. I always ask the question, “So tell me about what you do,” and from a person’s response I can tell a lot about what stage of their career they’re in and how much experience they have in handling a first-time face-to-face meeting with a stranger.

In my presentation I talk about the need for each of us to have an “elevator speech”. Your elevator speech consists of what you tell people you meet face-to-face about yourself in under a minute. In general, it’s your name, what you do, and how you can help the other person. People really don’t care about what you do unless you can help them.

As I’m greeting the arrivals one by one, one says to me, “you’re making personal connections with everyone here because we’re all referral sources in case one of our clients ever needs a photographer in Detroit right?” And I thought to myself, THIS person should be giving tonight’s presentation! He gets it; he knows the value in making personal connections within your own peer group. Bravo!

It’s important to always be networking, always talking about what you do, always be meeting new people. At your son’s Little League baseball game? Network. On a flight from DTW to MSY? Network. At the symphony? Network during intermission!

Remember two things: get the other person talking about what THEY do. Then, if indeed you can, share with them how you might help them to be successful and follow up within 24 hours with a phone call or email asking for a meeting. Also remember that you get better at networking the more you do it. The person with whom you’re having a conversation might not need your services, but they may know someone who does.

It’s not who you know, networking is really about who knows you. The more people that know you, the more successful you’ll be.

Good luck!