In my previous post, I mentioned a book I read recently that has really altered not only the way I see the world, but also how I operate within it. “Start With Why” by Simon Sinek is a must-read for everyone and I cannot recommend it highly enough.

The tenet of the book is simple – so simple, in fact, that it seems almost obvious. But, like many “obvious” things in life, it’s not obvious until someone smarter than us takes the time to point it out. Put in its most fundamental form, the idea is that successful individuals, leaders, brands and companies are successful because they have a common way of thinking, which is the opposite to most everyone else. Instead of communicating “what” they do, they articulate “why” they do it first.

Here, I believe, is a great example from the world of photography, someone we photographers are very familiar with. 

“Ansel Adams”

I chose him because most people know the name and can recognize his images. He became so famous that many folks who aren’t photographers are familiar with him. Posters of his prints appear everywhere – I’ve encountered a McDonalds restaurant decorated with nothing but Ansel Adams posters. In essence he became a household name.

But why did that happen? He wasn’t the only person with a camera or the opportunity during his working life. He was a fairly humble fellow with no real thirst for fame, and spent long hours in the darkroom in preference to the spotlight. Although held in the highest regard, to say he was the “best” photographer of his time is not a very meaningful statement – what does “best” mean anyway? Don’t get me wrong, I love his photography, but I’ve witnessed [with shock] modern-day images that were technically as brilliant as Ansel’s get tossed out of a distinction panel at the Royal Photographic Society.

Reproduce The “Why”:

Many photographers struggle to emulate Ansel’s work without success. I understand that Yosemite and other locations are often abuzz with hundreds of photographers all attempting to recreate one or other of Ansel’s iconic images, often racing to be in just the right spot – all without success. The problem isn’t that they’re poor photographers or have inferior equipment. The problem is that they are copying Ansel’s “what” without authentically reproducing his “why”.

Although he wasn’t a marketer, Ansel Adams knew the value of starting with “why” (even if he didn’t consciously realize that himself). Here is what a modern-day clone of Ansel Adams might say by way of self-promotion:

“I’ve spent many years studying the techniques of photography, understanding light, film, filters, optics, developing & printing to the point where I’m considered an expert. I endure long and difficult treks through the wilderness to visit beautiful locations that I then capture with my state-of-the-art camera. I’ve become a great photographer and am proud of the work I do. Would you like to buy a print?”

If it were possible to have Ansel Adams stand up and say those words, all of them true, it’s doubtful that his message would be very effective.

What Ansel could have actually said, given the chance, might be more like this:

“I was fortunate to grow up in an age of exploration and progress, punctuated with the strife of a depression and the conflict of world war. I say fortunate, because I’ve learned the value of preserving those things that are of immeasurable importance to the world, such as the treasures of our natural wilderness. I believe that conserving the beauty of our national parks, such as Yosemite, and other natural wonders is vital. I can help achieve this by using my technical skills as a photographer to bring these places to the attention of the masses, so that everyone can understand the benefits of preserving them for future generations. By studying photography and perfecting my techniques I can try to capture as much of the natural beauty as possible in my photographs. Through my efforts, I’ve become good at what I do and am very proud of my work. Would you like to buy a print?”

Although Ansel Adams probably never said these actual words (if he had, I’m sure he would have been much more eloquent than I), he broadcast the same important message in everything he did throughout his life.

Technical vs Emotional:

Yes, the photographs are technically brilliant; they are perfectly exposed, beautifully composed, well seen and exquisitely printed. But their success has nothing to do with film, cameras, f-stops, shutter speeds or filters. It has much more to do with what the photographs stand for, what they represent and how they make people feel when they look at them with the icon of Ansel Adams in the same mind-space as the image.

People love his photography because they believe in the same things Ansel did; they understand his “why”, his passion not just for photography, but also for the beauty and conservation of the world around us.

Inspiration Beats Manipulation:

As photographers, it is our responsibility to inspire, while the purpose of our marketing should not be to manipulate but to communicate the elements that inspire us to do the things we are so passionate about. When our prospective clients understand “why” we do what we do, and they believe in the same things we do, then we have the perfect match. At that point they are not customers, or simply clients – they become our collaborators.

I just finished reading one of the most inspirational and truly useful books I’ve read in a long time – “Start With Why” by Simon Sinek.

If, like many, you’re finding business difficult or you have that nagging feeling that you might have lost focus on what you’re doing… If you’re struggling with how your business life can find a new purpose… If you can’t understand why some people and businesses are successful and others aren’t… then you are going to love this book.

Simon clearly takes us through the idea that it is not WHAT or HOW we do things that make people want to follow us or buy from us, it is WHY we do it that counts – the underlying philosophy and principles that drive us, if you like.

This book is easy to read, entertaining, enlightening and, above all, inspiring. The principles in themselves are simple, yet profound, and affected me on a very deep level that has changed the way I think and feel about my own photography business.

I buy all my books at Amazon and it helps me a little if you do too. But, wherever you choose to get this book from, I urge you to get it NOW – it will change your life.

I came across something the other day that truly changed what I believed about how the business world works.

It also answered a lot of questions that had been buzzing about in my head about why some companies are successful and others are not so successful. Why is it that some businesses enjoy far more success with the same resources and time as their competitors? Why do some brands enjoy loyalty to the point of fanaticism?

Check out this video of Simon Sinek, the author of “Star With Why” to find out the [simple] answer:

The week ending March 13th 2010 was an apparent and important milestone in the world of social media networking, when Facebook surpassed Google in the count of most site visits in a week in the United States (full story can be read here. This was not the first time that Facebook overtook Google, but it was the first week-long victory, and it has the potential to become permanent.

As the number of subscribers to Facebook continues to grow, with the “population” of Facebook being compared to that of actual countries, it may be no surprise to see it become the most-visited site on the web. After all, the “Google” population is able to grow only as more people gain access to the internet, whereas Facebook still has a large pool of currently unregistered internet users to draw from. Eventually, the two populations might stabilize, but then the war really starts about who will attract the most visitors.

However, at the present time, it is possible that we could be near a tipping point where social media and the power of peer-to-peer marketing really do begin to take over from organic searches. Instead of asking Google for a list of local photographers, we can now poll our Facebook friends for testimonials and recommendations of photographers they’ve worked with in the past in order to find a good fit. Such peer-based endorsements are surely much more effective than a PPC ad or a search engine listing, no matter how relevant Google thinks they might be.

I’m sure many businesses are actively trying to figure out how to leverage this trend and tap into this new source of business referrals. Facebook fan pages, tweets and Foursquare check-ins, shout-outs etc. will all no doubt all play their parts.

But this doesn’t come without its own peculiar set of problems. For example, the annoying fact that we have to use a multitude of apps and web sites in our social networking activities. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Foursquare, MySpace, Plaxo and a host of others all attempt to make the web a social place, but at the expense of  having to maintain profiles all over the place and spend [waste?] time trying to keep them all current and up to the minute.

But, the biggest issue I see right now, though, is that of signal-to-noise. Typically used in science and engineering to measure the quality of an electrical signal, signal-to-noise is the ratio between the useful part of the transmission (the signal) to any artifacts such as random background noise. In email, for example, the signal can be thought of as those emails we want to receive, whereas spam would be considered as unwanted noise.

If the level of noise is allowed to rise too high, compared to the signal, then the quality of the item being measured can be corrupted or degraded. This is why spam is such a nuisance; left unchecked, it would reach levels that make reading our actual emails very difficult, or even render email itself useless as a mode of communication.

Unfortunately, I believe this degradation is also happening with social media. The level of noise (spam, nonsense, pointless posts, meaningless tweets etc.) appears to be growing on a daily basis. I’ve already lost count of the number of dumb applications I’ve had to block from my Facebook profile that would otherwise fill up my news stream with pointless garbage about mob wars, idiotic quizzes and other nonsense distractions.

No doubt the problem has been present from day one, but if the noise is allowed to surpass the signal, the system could be rendered unusable for anything useful, such as promoting a business.

As business owners in a marketplace, it’s unclear what options we have to combat the problem of increasing noise. Unlike spam email, the noise found on Facebook, for example, is cleverly disguised as “fun” in the form of games, quizzes, pointless comparisons to celebrities etc. The population of Facebook as a whole doesn’t seem bothered by this noise, and many even embrace it willingly. Is Facebook doomed to become nothing more than a mob war with 400 million players? In the middle of all that might remain a few “survivors” who plaintively try to sell their wares to what is essentially a world of zombies, but they would be in the clear minority and ineffective.

How are we supposed to cope with the ever-increasing number of social media networking sites that we positively “have” to join simply because everyone else is there? I view myself as fairly restrained and conservative in the world of social media – a newbie if you like. Yet, I still have to juggle Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn & Foursquare in order to be considered even a minor citizen of the social media world.

In the sense that Google effectively took over the internet search niche, I wonder if there will ever be a single social media giant that will completely dominate the role. The “where are you?“, “what are you thinking?“, “what’s happening?“, “what are you feeling?“, “what do you want?” do-it-all place where we have one profile that covers everything.

Whatever happens, it will be interesting to watch this great social experiment unfold, and I’m sure the eventual outcome will be a lot different to anything we can imagine right now

Anyway, thanks for reading. I do have to go now, since my Facebook farm animals are starving and need me…

Sometimes I’m not the most organized person in the world (well, okay, more than sometimes), and I actually ran out of business cards a few weeks ago. Since we recently moved the studio from our home to a retail space late last year, I needed to redesign the business card anyway, and have been trying to get around to it.

So, this week, I sat down at the computer and produced a new design that I was fairly happy with (it looks pretty, has all the right information on it, no spelling mistakes etc.), fully intending to send it off to the lab to be printed.

Then, this morning, I opened up the files for one last check, but a single thought stopped me in my tracks:

“Is the business card, as we’ve all come to know and love it, dead or dying?”

What could prompt such a thought? After all, everyone is supposed to have a business card, right? Where would society be without those credit-card sized pieces of paper that we love to swap like trading cards?

The vision I had that stayed my hand was simply nothing more than handing someone a card and watching it vanish into a pocket or bag, never to be seen again.

What possible use is a business card that can be forgotten about so easily?

Then I thought more about the purpose of the card itself. Why give it to someone in the first place? Is it to encourage them to call us to create a family portrait, photograph a wedding or their high-school senior? Or, is it to lie in wait until they decide they need a photographer and it can magically influence their thoughts to call us?

Thinking back, I think I can honestly say that I believe the number of jobs I’ve received directly from the act of handing out a business card has been about zero.

Why is this? Are my business cards that bad? Did I put the wrong phone number on them?

No (at least I hope not)…

Is it because photography is an emotional purchase? There’s nothing emotional about hiring a plumber, for example, (except for the feeling of panic one gets at watching gallons of water pouring through a ceiling), so we can easily grab the nearest business card or scan the Yellow Pages to find someone (let’s face it – anyone!) that can serve our immediate plumbing needs.

But (with a few possible exceptions), photography is not an emergency need. Emotions and other intangible forces come into play when someone decides they would like to hire a photographer. A business card that fulfills only the function of giving name, rank and serial number doesn’t do anything to encourage someone to call unless they are already familiar with our work.

So, I’m trying an experiment…

Instead of a standard business card, I’m going to try something a little different. The new “business card” is now really a bookmark, about 2×8 inches in size. Now, with all that extra real estate, I can include an emotional personal message about my approach to photography and what it means to me, as well as some sample images.

It should be interesting to see what happens when I give this thing to people – it’s too large to slip into a wallet and is not so easily forgotten. Maybe it will make it to that most hallowed of places where useful information is stored – the door of the family refrigerator!

I’d be interested to hear of other innovative approaches to the standard “business card”. I’m sure there are many indeed, most of them far more inventive than the one I’ve described here. Please feel free to share them via comments.

One of the biggest, but less often considered, challenges we face as photographers selling our work is the choice between selling images straight from the lab or as finished framed pieces ready to hang on the wall.

It doesn’t seem like a big challenge on the face of it, just another of the many business decisions we have to make.

But, there are consequences that stem from either choice – consequences that truly affect how we’re perceived in the market place.

So, we’ll start with a quick question…

Do you sell framed photography, loose prints or a mixture of the two?

Like many photographers, I started out by selling loose prints only – framing to my mind seemed like a whole different kettle of fish entirely and wasn’t something I was ready to jump into.

Heck, at that time it was hard enough to convince the client to purchase an 8×10, let alone have to go through the extended process of having them purchase a frame with it! So, before I knew it, clients were taking away 8x10s, 16x20s and even larger prints just as they were when they came back from the lab – mounted, but no frames; “naked”, as it were.

Whether or not “unframed” or “framed” is the “right” decision for your own business is a question only you can answer, but I began to feel that somehow I was letting my clients down. I would find myself worrying about what became of those precious photographs – were they given appropriate frames and hung proudly on the wall, or left in their bags in a lonely corner until the owner could get around to framing them? I imagined 8x10s lying at the bottom of a drawer somewhere, never to see the light of day again.

More importantly for me, here I was trying to sell photography at a premium but then allowing it to walk out the door in an essentially unfinished state. There was an apparent disconnect between my business philosophy and my own actions that I felt needed to be rectified.

So, I made the decision that no photograph larger than a 5×7 should leave the studio as a loose print. Everything 8×10 and larger should be in a frame and ready to display. I was even uncomfortable with sending out loose 5×7 prints – I would rather them go out in a small album than in a simple packet. This is really moving into the area of merchandising, a whole topic of conversation all by itself.

The main problem with this “everything must be framed” approach, of course, is that the cost to the client of the finished work goes up accordingly, making it a little more challenging to sell – but by no means impossible. Then we do hear some of the usual objections:

• “I don’t want it in a frame…”
• “Framing is a hobby of mine…”
• “A friend has their own framing business…”
• “I want a larger choice of frames…”
• and so on…

All of these objections can easily be dealt with at the initial consultation stage and even at the time we qualify our clients, if not at the actual sales session. If the clients are aware up front that we only sell finished artwork, but they don’t want to abide by our policy, then we can politely send them away.

Another, more subtle yet equally effective way, is take to advantage of the fact that we sell what we show. If the client sees only framed wall art in the studio, with no loose prints of any kind anywhere, that sends a very clear message to them that this is what we expect them to invest in.

Just as importantly, projecting the images into a framed canvas sends another powerful signal to the client.

To keep things very simple, I offer only a basic selection of frames – three different color tones (light, medium & dark) in each of three styles (slim, medium & deep). The frames are chosen to complement the style of work I do and there is usually one that suits both the finished piece and the location where it will be displayed. The choice of frame is only made after the client has made their portrait selections, so as not to put too many decisions onto them at any one time.

I’m not saying that everyone should adopt the exact same approach to this, far from it because every photographer and photography studio is unique. But, if you feel something nagging inside you every time you hand a client a “naked” 11×14 print, you might want to consider testing out the inclusion of frames in your sales.

“Location, location, location!” – the often-touted necessity for a successful business. But how true is that statement really? I’m not really talking about the fine detail of location here; after all, common sense would dictate that an office located between the city dump, county jail and the water treatment facility might not be a great choice. I’m referring more to the perceived differences between one city and another, or between different parts of the country.

Any photographer that studies or learns from other successful photographers eventually hears or even speaks the objection, “that won’t work in my town!” It’s very tempting to think that most marketing tactics that work in one part of the country simply won’t work in our own locale, for a variety of (false) reasons:

• Our town or city has no people with money
• People are different here
• I live in a bad market
• There’s too much competition in my area

The truth is that this is just the lazy and negative part of our own minds trying to rationalize our lack of effort or belief in what we’re doing. The lizard part of our mind, that primitive part that doesn’t like change, is simply attempting to convince us that it’s no use even trying.

The reality is that the successful photographers are not magically living in some enchanted place of abundance. They’re simply applying tried and tested marketing methods to attract their target market.

If you think you don’t truly believe this, try a simple thought experiment…

Imagine for a moment a photographer whom you admire as someone successful. You can see them in your mind’s eye running their studio, being busy and enjoying the successes of operating a great photography business.

Now, imagine that they’ve just opened up a new studio across the street from you. How do you imagine they will do? Can you see them being successful? Can you imagine them making the same excuses for lack of clients? If you met them in the local coffee shop and talked to them I doubt they would be saying, “man, this town stinks, no one has any money, there are no clients, it’s a crummy market, and there’s too much competition here. I think I’m going back to Magic City where the grass is always green…”

Don’t allow your own mind to limit you and keep you constrained by what you “think” you can or can’t do. People are basically the same everywhere, all over the country, because they are governed by the simple rules of human psychology, which is how marketing and sales work after all.

Photography is an emotional business – that is what we sell. It’s not about pieces of paper or which neighborhood someone lives in. It’s not even about how much money they have, although they should have enough to buy from you, but even then it could be on a payment plan or layaway. It’s all about how you and your photography make them feel. It’s about the value that a captured smile, a fleeting expression or a simple look can have for someone.

Emotions are a very human thing, and there are humans everywhere, no matter which “market” your studio happens to be in.

Like many photographers, I enjoy looking around the web at other photographers’ work to take in all the different approaches, styles, web site designs etc.

Today I came across the web site of Angie Arthur, in Northeastern Ohio. The site has a lovely fresh look, and her work is wonderful.

You can check out the site here: Angie Arthur Photography

So many photographers (myself not excluded) have made the mistake at one time or another of ignoring their current clients. Some even make the worse error of referring to them as “past” clients.

The truth is that when someone becomes a client by allowing us to create photographs for them, we ought to treat them as though they are clients for life. They are now an integral part of our business family.

The only way to make sure that these people feel valued and a part of our family is to keep in constant contact with them – but without committing the sins of spamming or making them feel as though we’re constantly trying to sell them something.

So how can we keep in touch with our clients in order to remind them we’re there for them the next time they might be in need of photography services?

There are actually many ways, some of which might be obvious, others more subtle, but nonetheless extremely valuable:

• Newsletters
• Emails
• Phone calls
• Facebook and other social network interactions
• Birthday cards
• Holiday cards
• Anniversary cards
• Thank you cards
• Referral and reward programs
• Special studio events

With all of these methods, don’t consider them as marketing in a traditional sense, but think of them more like “touch points”. If all your newsletters are simply sales letters in disguise then your efforts may result in the client unsubscribing because they feel they are being sold to far too much. Keep newsletters to a more general or personal level with only the briefest mentions of special offers etc.

Cards in the mail, especially handwritten ones, are an amazing way to give your clients a feeling of personal attention. Send a thank you card after a consultation, when a client books, after a sale etc. If you photograph weddings, then a card on their anniversary says that you remember them – you can even include a complimentary portrait session as a special gift to encourage them to come back to the studio.

Occasional phone calls are also valued and very persona in nature. Everyone is busy these days and nothing says that you value your client more than giving up some of your valuable time to talk to them on the phone, perhaps to follow up after a sale or to simply check on them and pass the time of day.

Make it a point to cultivate your current clients and you will reap the rewards. After all, we know that it can be many times more expensive to find new clients than it is to keep the ones we already have. Don’t be misled into thinking that people will only buy from you once!

To sum up the intent of all this communication – in my opinion, I feel that people are best sold on you when they feel they are not being sold to.

Wedding photography is not an easy service to sell – we have to work hard at attracting prospective clients before we even have a chance to try to book them. Bridal shows, advertising, marketing campaigns – and many more avenues – all require huge amounts of effort just to get brides to notice that we’re there.

Then, the really hard work starts.

If we’re lucky enough to get a living, breathing, talking bride on the telephone we have the chance to find out as much as we can about their wedding plans, the kind of client they might be and whether or not they would be a good match for our business.

After all that hard work, we arrive at the end of the conversation and suggest that they meet with us for a consultation only to hear the response, “I need to talk to my fiancé or parents about this and then I’ll call you back to set up a time…”

Many of us at this point say, “Oh, okay, no problem. Talk it over and then call me back. I look forward to talking to you again soon. Bye.”

Of course, it’s more than likely that we’ll never hear from her again.

For a long time, I thought there was no solution to this problem. I assumed that I was being nice by not pressuring the bride and that they really would talk it over and call back.

Little did I realize that what they’re really saying is something like this: “I like what you’ve said so far, but you haven’t established a real connection with me or convinced me that I should hire you. There’s also another reason why I’m not sure about this, but I don’t know you or trust you enough to tell you what it is, so I’m going to make up an excuse to get off the phone…”

Knowing this, we can now see that the fault is entirely of our own making. Maybe we didn’t take the time to build enough rapport with her, or perhaps we forgot to find out what the most important thing about her wedding is. Did we educate her about the factors that separate us from the other photographers in the area?

Did we ask enough emotional questions? Did we show true interest in her and her wedding? How excited and passionate did we sound? Did we take the time to find out what the most important buying decision is for her?

More importantly, who was in control of the conversation? Usually, that’s the person asking the questions, which should be us. Even more importantly still, ask questions and then listen to the answers. It’s a fact that successful sales people spend more time listening than talking.

Now, when asked to arrange a face-to-face consultation, if they respond with, “I need to talk to my fiancé or parents about this and then I’ll call you back to set up a time…”, there are ways to find out what they really mean.

For example, you might reply with something like, “I understand what you mean. But, if I may ask, what do you feel they will say when you talk to them about what we’ve discussed today?”

This gives them the opportunity to voice whatever real concerns they might have. For example:

• The price is too far outside our budget
• You don’t offer something that we really want
• We’re looking for something very specific
• I’m not really ready to book yet

Now you have a chance to either address the problem or let them go based on the fact that they might not be qualified clients. I’ve come to the conclusion that every phone consultation I have should either result in a definite face-to-face meeting or a mutual agreement that I’m probably not the photographer for them. This eliminates all the frustration of waiting for people to call back, or having to chase them up with fruitless phone calls that waste both my time and theirs.

This can all be achieved without resorting to aggressive sales techniques or being pushy. Simply talking to the client, asking appropriate and emotionally based questions, and listening to the answers are all it takes 

Remember, though, that we can’t work with every single person that calls us – we have to send some people away for one reason or another. Just knowing that puts us more in control of things and takes away some of the pressure we put on ourselves to be successful.

If you’re a wedding photographer, you don’t need to be in business very long before a prospective client comes back to you with something like this: “I have an old friend who wants to get into wedding photography and has agreed to photograph my wedding for a great price… 

What can we say to this? Is there anything we can do to win this client back? Or is the sale lost forever? Worse still, can we rescue this client from the possible dangers of working with a non-professional?

I believe the best solution to this issue is to be proactive and deal with it before it happens. This can be achieved through the process of educating our prospects about the reasons why it’s a good idea to hire a professional rather than a friend, family member etc.

But, if they do come back with the news that a friend or family member has offered to photograph their wedding, is there anything we can say to counter it?

To start with, the one thing we don’t want to compete on is price. Don’t make the mistake of turning this into an issue about price by offering them a big discount to try to win the sale back. Just as importantly, don’t make the equally bad mistake of criticizing the other photographer’s work – this does your image no good at all.

If you feel that this client is a good fit for your business and that they’re simply making a genuine mistake (probably because they don’t want to hurt their friend’s feelings), then there are ways to attempt to persuade back into your camp.

The key is to emphasize those points that set you apart from the casual or “friend of the family” photographer, which make the choice of working with you more beneficial to the client.

For example:

• Your guarantee
• Your status as a full-time professional photographer
• Your legal status (proper business licenses, sales tax registration etc.)
• Your liability insurance coverage
• Experience in the business
• Membership of professional bodies (PPA, WPPI, RPS etc.)
• Your policies on delivery times
• Easier for them to be honest with you than with a friend in the event they’re unhappy with the photographs
• Backup equipment
• Assistants
• Access to professional print labs
• Professional backup of the finished images

Will this work every time? Of course not. But it might occasionally save a sale that would otherwise have been lost. Better still, you will have helped your clients make the choice that is right for them.

In order for us to remain in business as professional photographers, we need paying clients. Convincing prospects to turn themselves into paying clients is where most of us experience difficulties, and we feel forced to become salespeople.

I’ll be honest; I used to hate the idea of being a salesman of any kind. Unfortunately, my thinking had been colored by incorrect stereotypes of the “typical” salesperson, and I saw it as a black art involving trickery, manipulation and dubious integrity.

Now that I’ve undergone an appropriate attitude adjustment over the last couple of years, I can safely say that I enjoy being a salesman, and I aim to become a better one all the time, following Zig Ziglar’s advice that a good salesman simply helps his clients to get what they want.

There is no trickery, manipulation or deception involved in good sales, and the sense of satisfaction gained when a client makes the educated choice to buy from you is truly wonderful. This is how we build great and lasting relationships with our clients that keep them coming back time and again.

Since selling is an area that many photographers are constantly struggling with, I thought it might be a good idea to share some of my own limited experience and thoughts here, and I would encourage anyone reading this blog to add anything that’s appropriate.

Over time, I plan to add specific articles on dealing with the myriad situations that come up again and again, with ideas on how to handle them effectively.

As mentioned in a previous post, fear (in its many forms) is probably the number one thing holding many of us photographers back from success in their business. Few people are completely immune to its effects, but there are ways to combat it and keep our fears in perspective 

Think about your favorite successful entrepreneur for a moment. Mine happens to be Sir Richard Branson, but you can pick whomever you like. Imagine them facing the challenges they’ve had to overcome in order to be successful…

Now, do you think that person has ever experienced feelings of fear in their business ventures?

Of course they have.

The difference between the successful business people and the failures lies in how they respond to what happens to them and how they deal with those things that cause them fear.

For most of us, fear connected with our business comes from insecurity or lack of confidence in our ability to succeed.  It manifests itself as indecisiveness and procrastination, or the tackling of tasks half-heartedly. We may even put off trying something completely, finding one excuse after another not to face the possibility of failure through simple fear alone.

I believe the secret to fighting this insidious enemy of our success is to firstly acknowledge that we are experiencing fear and then to examine it for rationality. How much risk is there really? What are the chances of us appearing foolish? What are the rewards for success? Where can we draw more confidence to try?

Assuming that we want to press forward with whatever it is we’re going to try to do, we can break it down into manageable chunks; slice it and dice it into pieces so small that each one is nothing more than a simple step. Yet each of those steps brings us closer to achieving our goals. Furthermore, with each step we take, our success looks brighter and fear shrinks further back until in the end it’s gone completely.

I am sure that Sir Richard Branson, and others like him, have all faced significant fears in the pursuit of their endeavors. However, they have all faced those fears head on and taken on the challenges to become the successes we know today.

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.

The biggest enemy you face in achieving the success you deserve in your photography businesses is “Fear”.

It comes in many guises and can strike even the most experienced, and it can be so powerful that it can mean the difference between life and death for our business:

• Fear of losing clients because our prices are too high…
• Fear of creating inferior work…
• Fear of facing client objections or complaints…
• Fear of an idea that seems good but may not work…
• Fear of appearing foolish …
• Fear of closing the sale…
• Fear of dealing with people…
• Fear of dealing with children…
• Fear of messing up someone’s wedding…
• Fear of setting goals that we might not achieve…
• Fear of a failed marketing campaign…

The list is endless…

For example, experts might tell us that our prices are too low and that we should raise them. It sounds like good advice (which it more than likely is) but the voice of fear pops into our minds with doubts like “What if I can’t get any new clients? What if my existing clients complain? What if no one buys anything? What if I can’t compete in the market?”

Such reactions and thoughts are a natural response to change, but we must overcome them if we are to succeed. As we start off this new year, there’s much talk of setting goals and objectives for the future – but we need to be mindful and not allow fear to creep in the back door and undermine what we set out to achieve.

Don’t allow your goals to be slowly eroded away to nothing, like most people’s New Year’s resolutions seem to, by falling prey to the little voice of fear.

It is entirely possible to be bold and adventurous without being reckless, and fear cannot easily take hold of a mind that knows that it’s in control.

How do we measure success? As far as I know there’s no ruler or gauge that we can use to measure it. Do we wake up one day and suddenly find ourselves successful?

Are there varying degrees of success? If so, where’s the point at which a higher degree of failure becomes a lesser degree of success?

Perhaps this is a “half-full” versus “half-empty” type of question.

Some people might measure their success by the amount of money in the bank, others by the achievement of awards or the attainment of goals. Others count themselves successful if they’re living life on their own terms. Is being successful the same as being happy or content?

In 1969, NASA launched Apollo 11 on a successful mission to the moon. There was no possibility of partial success in that case, only absolute success or failure. Making it halfway to the moon did not constitute a quarter-successful mission. Neither did landing on the moon itself, although that was certainly a major milestone. Success only came when Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins made that wonderful splash in the ocean upon their safe return.

President Kennedy defined the terms of the mission’s success in his own seemingly prophetic words in 1961: “…I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth.”

The Apollo mission could only be said to be a success when the goals had been met.

Perhaps we can learn something from this as professional photographers in our own business if we consider the following question:

How can we hope to be successful if we do not define the goals and objectives we need to meet?

What goals are you going to set for yourself and your business? Now, at the beginning of a new decade, a new year, what will define your success? The answers to these questions could reveal the uniqueness of you and your specific business; that same uniqueness that separates you from the other photographers in your area.

Are you ready to launch your own Apollo program with its own goals and commitments?

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.

One of the intriguing things about Twitter is its complexity disguised as apparent simplicity. On the face of things Twitter appears to be little more than a very simple communication system involving the exchange of short (often meaningless) messages, very similar in concept to a text message on a mobile phone. In fact, text messaging was the fundamental inspiration for Twitter in the first place. Under the surface, though, things are more complicated, with properties emerging from Twitter that may not have been foreseen in the beginning.

The Power Of A Few Words

Most tweets can be divided into one of several categories: 

• Mundane items of little interest to anyone with a life
• Attempts to sell get-rich-quick schemes
• Promises of thousands of new followers (none of whom are interested in you)
• Other types of spam
• Political and religious messages

But there are some that are completely different and are of a more advanced or intellectually satisfying nature. It’s this group of tweets that could potentially form the basis for a whole new world…

This small group of tweets has been used to compose poetry, write plays, spread news, warn other users of Internet threats, exchange product reviews, sway public opinion, influence political campaigns, reduce the spread of computer viruses and help people get released from foreign jails. The entire world seemed to grieve as a collective on the day Michael Jackson passed away, straining Twitter to its limits in the process; the list goes on.

All of this from answering the simple question of “What are you doing?”

I’m not sure that Jack Dorsey, the creator of Twitter, envisioned these emergent properties when he unleashed his creation on the world.

Ants Tweet Too

Complex emergent phenomena are usually the result of swarms, or crowds of individuals. Mobs and riots are one example, where the size of the “swarm” reaches a critical mass, resulting in the group suddenly acting in unison, usually in a violent or destructive manner.

Insect colonies are a prime example of swarming behavior, and watching Twitter is sometimes reminiscent of observing the social complexities of an ant colony. Individual ants by themselves are very simple creatures that operate by simple rules. There’s really no room in an ant head for a brain capable of understanding the principles of architecture or the strategies of waging war with enemy invaders. No single ant knows how to construct an entire nest, complete with tunnels, chambers, gardens, kitchens, nurseries etc. Yet, the swarm as a whole accomplishes this task with amazing ease and efficiency. The ant nest and its incredible structure is an emergent property of a swarm of individuals. Furthermore, the structure of an ant colony is not predictable in any way by examining individual ants.

People are quite different to ants, and most of them are somewhat more intelligent than an insect, but Twitter strikes me as a good analogy to an ant colony: Twitter is essentially a simple system with a few easy to understand rules. Yet the behavior of the Twitter system as a whole shows signs (albeit small ones at the moment) of emerging properties that are generated by its millions of users and the different ways those users are putting Twitter to work for them. 

What Are You Doing?

What causes Twitter to exhibit complex behavior from an apparently innocuous question where the answer must be in 140 characters or less?

The answer lies in Twitter’s basic concept – the communication of a text message. Text messaging and Twitter are basically the same. However, there is one major difference, and it’s that difference that makes all the difference in the world; it’s the electric spark that breathes life into the creature that Twitter has become. Text messaging doesn’t exhibit any complex emergent properties as far as I know; it’s a one-to-one messaging system. Twitter, on the other hand, expands and multiplies the influence of the text message into a powerful one-to-many system. This amplifies the message so that millions of people can potentially receive it almost simultaneously.

Let’s return for a moment to our comparison of Twitter users with ants. We can consider the ant’s chemical messaging as analogous to a tweet – “food this way”, “follow this trail”, “defend nest” etc. From this, we can imagine how no ant colony could function properly if ant-tweets were received by only a single ant at a time. Communication in ants, the foundation of their complex behavior, is by necessity a one-to-many system that both distributes and amplifies the message and causes complex behavior to occur. 

One Day Twitter Might Be As Smart As An Ant

Thinking about this further, I’m tempted to go out on a limb and suggest that an ant colony, with the benefit of millions of years of evolution, is way more advanced than Twitter is right now. Twitter, in its current state, is like an ant colony gone mad, where most of the messages are disorganized and obscured by meaningless noise. It’s as though all the ants in the colony are all spouting random messages at the same time in a raucous rabble. If that were to actually happen, the ant colony would probably collapse.

Being optimistic, though, I suspect that the overall signal-to-noise ratio of twitter will grow stronger as time goes by. Already, there are pockets of meaningful information out there. It’s a shame that much of that data is masked and drowned out by announcements of the eating status of millions of household pets or the endless repetition of inspirational quotes. Do ants make “noise” too? I’m sure that not all “ant tweets” are perfectly meaningful in the context of the collective need. If that’s true, how are the less useful or incorrect messages filtered out from the real signal to enable the colony to function as it does? If we can find the answer to that question, maybe we can learn how to apply that principle in “tuning” Twitter, to amplify the signal and quench the noise.

You Will Be Assimilated

As any fan of Star Trek: The Next Generation knows, one of the worst fates is to be assimilated by the Borg, a race of evil cybernetic humanoids organized into a swarm (“the collective”) and operating as a single organism. Assimilation meant being absorbed into the collective and becoming a part of the hive mind, sacrificing one’s individuality in the process. Not a pleasant thought for anyone.

While I doubt our own individuality is in too much danger of being assimilated by the Twitter universe, there are some striking similarities between the Borg and the fetal creature currently we know as Twitter.

For example, take the ability of many unrelated individuals in the network to unite as one, in a concerted effort to solve a problem. This happened recently when Demi Moore alerted her Twitter followers to a woman threatening suicide in San Jose. Within moments, the news spread, the local authorities were alerted, and tragedy was avoided.

Or, consider the Twitter Opera; a collaborative work constructed almost entirely of tweets. I’m not sure how “good” the opera turned out to be, but the main point is that it is a work of art made by otherwise unconnected individuals. The question remains of whether or not it is true art, unless it is somehow an expression of the collective consciousness that created it.

Then there’s the Twitter Psychic Experiment conducted by Professor Richard Wiseman. In the experiment, he asked volunteer Twitter users to try to “remote view” the location he was in and select it from a set of five photographs. In each run of the experiment, the collective decision was incorrect suggesting the remote viewing is not a real phenomenon.

Finally, I think one of the really interesting, and possibly useful, possibilities of something like Twitter is as a problem-solving machine…

Welcome To The Machine

We’ve already seen examples of using the Internet as a means for distributed computing. For example, SETI Online, the computational modeling of protein folding and the human genome project, all of which harness the power of many thousands of computers to process small portions of complex tasks that would take a very long time, even on a single supercomputer.

This caused me to wonder if Twitter could eventually be used as a problem-solving computer using principles similar to that found in the wisdom of crowds. Such problems could be the sort that traditional computing might be unable to solve; problems involving concepts that are difficult to express numerically or in a logical form.

Here is a very simple example (simple in the extreme, but it serves the point). “Do I take an umbrella with me to work today?” The answer depends mainly on how likely it is to rain where I’m going, but also on such factors as how much time I intend to spend outside, how windy it will be, how convenient it is to carry, where am I going, what alternatives there are to an umbrella, and so on. Can the wisdom of a crowd decide the answer to this kind of question intelligently? I think maybe it can, as long as the crowd doesn’t fall prey to anti-productive concepts that might lead to a herd mentality or collective irrational fears or prejudices.

This possibility raises some interesting questions, which others might want to try to answer (maybe through Twitter itself as a sort of meta-question).

How many followers might it take for us to effectively solve a qualitative problem that involves rationalization and reasoning rather than mathematical or logical processes? I’m sure the answer probably depends on the complexity of the problem and many other factors, such as when the question is asked.

Is the time taken to solve a problem directly proportional to the number of followers working on it, or might we see a synergistic, exponential or logarithmic effect? That is, would 10 followers be 10 times more effective than 1 at solving the problem, or 100 times more effective?

Conclusion

Twitter is still very much in its infancy at the moment, barely able to feed itself, let alone talk coherently. But it’s learning at a fast rate, and I don’t think it’s going to be too long before we start to see even more startling and amazing things come out of it that will catch us all by surprise.

As a very basic test, I posted a tweet that asked, “what is the square root of 12,345,678 to four decimal places?” Anyone with a calculator can work that out in a few seconds. Twitter took 28 minutes. Maybe the question wasn’t interesting enough to get an answer immediately, but the point is that it did answer the problem. At least it didn’t give me the answer of ‘42’, in which case I would have been a little concerned…

Is it possible that Twitter, or something like it, could be the future answer to artificial intelligence? Such an AI system would be made up of millions of independently smart nodes, each one autonomous in its own right, yet able to function as a small component of a much larger decision-making system. It would be like an ant colony where the ants are each as smart as people…

Maybe the question Twitter should be asking isn’t, “What Are You Doing?” It ought to be “What Do You Want Me To Do?”

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…

No one can be in business for very long without encountering the phrase, “to write a business plan.” Usually, the sentence is formed in their own mind, preceded by the words, “I need…”

Business planning is important, and an actual documented business plan is a necessity. A lot of photographers and other small business owners know they need one, but are hesitant to start on it, often with the excuse that they are too busy running their business to stop and do it.

That’s like saying you’re too busy driving to think about where you’re actually going. Most people usually have an idea of their destination and how they plan to get there before starting the car. They might even have a map, courtesy of mapquest, or even a GPS unit to help guide them on the way, but it makes no sense to drive away in a car with no destination in mind.

Are We Too Scared To Plan?

I think the reason most people don’t have a business plan is that it sounds too abstract or complex to handle, or that they imagine it has to be full only with financial projections. But this needn’t be the case, and I would argue that a simple actual business plan is much better than no business plan at all.

I learned two things this week that really come together here…

One is that writing a business plan is not the correct way to approach it; one should think of it more as designing a plan for your business. It’s a subtle, but very effective difference in approach and it requires a different mindset and attitude that will produce a better result.

Secondly, as photographers, we need to wear a lot of hats in the course of running the business. We are often the CEO, the managers and the staff all rolled into one person. The problems start when we fail to tell the difference between the roles we need to play, or we mix up jobs completely by wearing the wrong hat for the role. Usually, this manifests itself as the photographer making CEO-style decisions while not wearing the CEO hat and therefore considering the implications of those decisions from the appropriate level. For example, buying all the latest photography gear because it’s nice to have without thinking of how it might actually serve the business.

Elephants Can Be Eaten One Piece At A Time:

So how can we make a suitable plan for our photography business? The answer is quite simple – we can break it down into sections starting from the top; the different hats we were you might say: 

• CEO – create the vision, philosophy and goals of the business
• Head of Sales & Marketing – Overall strategic planning of sales and marketing
• Head of Product Development – Overall strategic planning of products
• Head of Finances – Overall strategic oversight of financial planning
• Sales Manager – Oversees the tactics of sales
• Marketing Manager – Oversees the tactics of marketing
• Product Manager – Oversees the design and production of products
• Finance Manager – Oversees the functions of accounting
• Marketer – Broadcasts the company message and brand
• Sales person – conducts sales meetings with clients
• Photographer – Take photographs, edit, enhance images and produce final products

If we look at the above tasks in more detail we can safely conclude that there are four basic stages involved in the organization of the business: 

• Philosophy and Vision
• Strategy (i.e. the logic of how we will achieve our goals)
• Tactics (i.e. the tools and methods we use to implement our strategy)
• Implementation

When designing our business plan we can address these areas independently, making the whole process so much simpler to handle. As long as each level pays consideration to the levels above it, we ought to be able to conceive of a sound plan.

For example, the implementation level might include an option to offer CDs of copyright-released images to our clients. This would only be acceptable if the tactics to do so are available (i.e. the tools and the ability), there is a valid strategy for doing so (a solid reason in other words), and it fits in with the overall philosophy and vision of the business.

There also needs to be some kind of financial analysis and projection, but this can be kept to a necessary minimum in my opinion, especially if this part of a business plan is what’s keeping you from designing one in the first place.

Conclusion:

I know this has been a very simple article on a very complex field, but I do believe that, in order to be successful as a photographer, we need to tackle this issue head on. It’s not going to do us any good in the long run to avoid creating a business plan through confusion or fear. The intention of this post is to get you thinking about this in ways that are appropriate to you and your specific business. There is obviously a lot more to it than I’ve written here, but it would take many posts to cover everything in such detail.

There are plenty of great resources on the web, as well as books on the subject and I think that it makes it a lot easier to start off simply and take it one step at a time. So, I encourage you to take a few steps back for a while and try on those different hats while really thinking about the roles they represent. Start with the CEO and work your way down to the bottom, all the while ensuring that your company vision and philosophy are protected and well served.