Building a Thriving Photography Business
If you’re reading this, you probably fall into one of two groups. You’re either thinking of starting your own photography business and you want to get off to a good start … or you’re well down the track already—but you’re looking to grow as a businessperson.
Fantastic! You’re just who I have in mind in preparing this series on Building a Thriving Photography Business. You see, I’ve been a professional photographer for over a decade now, and I wish I had someone to advise me in those early years. I made some silly mistakes and I’ve learnt a great deal over the years. And even though I’ve mentored over a hundred photographers over the past four years through workshops and one-to-one coaching, my yearning to help others is deeper than ever. In fact, I foresee a growing educational arm to my business and this series is the first baby-step in that direction.
My husband shares my passion for education, and I’m going to lean on his expertise throughout this series. Not only does he have a Degree in Commerce, but he also has a teaching diploma, and has been in education circles for nearly two decades. I’ll be quoting from his material extensively throughout the series on photography business.
I hope you derive much enjoyment and benefit from the articles to come.
As always, I welcome your comments and feedback.
The Self-Employment Conundrum
It goes without saying that there are many practical skills one needs to learn in being a photographer and running your own photography business. However, before one addresses what camera to get, how to pose newborns, how best to use Photoshop, and the like, there are some bigger-picture issues to grapple with. So, let’s first tackle the self-employment conundrum in this article.
In The iBoss Dilemma, Craig puts it like this:
Be your own boss. Manage your own hours. Work from home. Take charge of your own earning potential.
You’ve heard the pitch, right?
Sounds good. Sounds great.
For many, it sounds like an absolute dream. Like the sweetest thing.
Are you…
- benumbed by the 9 to 5 humdrum of corporate life?
- trapped by a dead-end job that gives you no joy now and offers no future going forward?
- vexed by the idea of giving your soul to an impersonal entity that always demands more?
- looking to make a return to working life after being a stay-at-home mum?
If so, no wonder the pitch holds such appeal.
What is often not said (or not said enough), is that this utopian vision hardly ever pans out as advertised.
Yes, false advertising. Let’s tear it apart, shall we?
The Promise?
Be your own boss. Manage your own hours. Work from home. Take charge of your own earning potential.
The Reality?
Be your own boss? Right.
Your new boss becomes chasing the next sale. And this is the most horrible boss of all. It doesn’t let you sleep or rest. And it eats away all your leisure time.
Manage your own hours? Pfft!
If you don’t work, you don’t earn. After-hours becomes more work hours. Weekends become a chance to do catch-up work and squeeze in an extra client. Every holiday must now factor in the cost of not earning.
Work from home. Hmm…
The line between home and office gets quickly blurred until you find yourself wishing you had a way to separate work from home.
Take charge of your own earning potential? Pull the other one.
Being your own boss means the buck stops with you … for everything! Your every weakness gets exposed, and your strengths are blunted as you try to compensate for your shortcomings. Take charge? You often feel overrun by the charging barrage of everyday must-do tasks. You can’t even fire the tea-girl … because you’re it!
For some of you reading this, you’ve probably been there, done that, and bought the T-shirt. In fact, the T-shirt is now ripped and in tatters. And not in a cool, funky way either.
I call it the iBoss dilemma.
Consider the facts.
One in two start-ups don’t make their fifth birthday. Only one in three ever celebrate their tenth anniversary1. That equates to a lot of broken dreams. It not only represents a huge waste of energy, money and resources, but it also speaks of a waste of the one commodity we can never get back. Yes, the most precious commodity of all. Time.
In many ways, my time equals my life.
If I waste my time, I waste my life. If I spend years in a failed venture, I forgo time I could have invested in my loves ones.
If I spend time in a failed venture, I waste the best me in my best years when I could have invested in something more productive … something that might have secured my future income, or even better, something that could have been passed onto my kids, or sold as a profitable going-concern later.
Now don’t get me wrong. Failure in itself doesn’t equate to waste. Through failure we grow. We improve. We get smarter. Failure is not fatal. It is, in fact, a necessary part of life. Even a valuable part of life.
However, unnecessary failure is a terrible waste. To have nothing but broken dreams and a pile of debt at the end of say, four years of hard slog is a waste.
“Okay, enough of this doom and gloom,” I hear you say. “What is your point?”
Yes, yes. Let me spit it out.
Being self-employed has many benefits. But … it is not an easy path to walk. And very little in our upbringing or education system prepares us for the rigours involved.
This is why I have written this book. I hope to save you from unnecessary failure and to spare you avoidable waste.
From the lessons I’ve learnt over the past two decades, I hope to help you prepare for your journey. From the litany of my own failures, I hope to equip you to dodge the more obvious pitfalls in the path ahead. (Yes, we all make mistakes, but we can choose to make new mistakes … unique mistakes that improve us, not obvious mistakes that derail us.)
My story?
I am self-employed, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
I am my own boss. Time is my own. I do work from home (or the coffee shop of my choosing). I have taken charge of my own earning potential.
Yes, I’ve figured out the iBoss dilemma.
It wasn’t easy. And it’s always a thing to manage.
But it’s possible. And it’s doable.
It’s about keeping home sweet and it’s about working smart.
Whether you’re just starting out or you’re in the messy trench struggling to make it work, I hope this book makes the journey smoother for you.
You could do with a break or three, right?
Note:
1 Small Business Survival Rates
Several sources, including The Huffington Post, state that according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), six in ten small businesses don’t make their third birthday. That’s a survival rate of 40%!
However, hunting down the original source has proven a little difficult. The most up-to-date data I can find at the ABS indicates a survival rate that ranges from 74.2% in the Health Care and Social Assistance sector to 53.3% in the Accommodation and Food industries.
The figures in the USA are more readily obtainable. According to the SBA Office of Advocacy, 50% of new businesses survive past five years, and one in three makes ten years (Frequently Asked Question No. 6). The findings of the 2013 Small Business Nation Report by the McCrindle group, “Australia’s Social Researchers”, support these figures.
So, rather than go with the more attention-grabbing headline (60% casualty rate in three years), I’ve gone with the more conservative data. Still, it makes for bleak reading. And it behoves us to find solutions to improve these odds.
Photography Business & The iBoss Dilemma
Makes you think, doesn’t it?
Because most of us start out as artists first, and business people second, the business world is often daunting and even ruthless. Certainly those stats don’t make for easy reading.
And this is why I feel this series is so important. There’s heaps of advice on the practical side of photography things, but there’s not enough said on building the person in businessperson. It’s a thriving person who builds a thriving photography business.
Businesses fail not because we’re not good enough at our art. Businesses fail because we don’t invest in ourselves as people and because we don’t learn the skills essential in building a thriving business.
Okay, hope you enjoyed the kickstart to this series. Next up, we’ll tackle what it means to be successful in business.
Check out my photography mentoring page or our 4-month Business Mentoring Program. If you have any questions,
get in touch. You can return home to see all on offer.
Get Craig’s new book!
The iBoss Dilemma (Survival Kit for the Self-Employed)
Now in PAPERBACK and eBOOK formats.
