How many times have you looked around and wondered if you are running your business right? How many times have you looked at a competitor in your industry and questioned if their method works better – or even tried to copy it? Recently I got into a little mini tiff, debate, I don’t know what to call it – let’s just say a polite disagreement with another photographer online. This person was trying to argue that the way I do business is unrealistic and basically that I was wrong.
There is some controversy in our industry surrounding different business models. There are people that offer cheap sessions where they show up, take pictures, put the pictures directly onto a flash drive, disk, etc. and give them to the client – this is called “shoot and burn”. There are photographers who do IPS or In Person Sales which is typically a higher ticket session where they pay a session fee and then have an in person (or these days over skype) meeting and choose prints, products and occasionally digital files that they want from their session. And then there is something of a hybrid in the middle which is where I fall. I offer predetermined packages that include the session as well as a set number of digital files (which are fully edited) and then they have the option to purchase more. There is typically no sales meeting, definitely no pressure on the client to purchase anything additional and it is a mid-range price. There are a million different ways that photographers organize their businesses but it usually falls into one of those 3 categories.
Anyway, this person was trying to tell me that my business model wasn’t sustainable, that clients wouldn’t be happy because I was skipping out on the full service aspect of designing the art collections for their walls for them, and that I would be completely burned out because I’m doing too many sessions per year. That may all be true for them and their clients but it is clearly not true for me because I have been doing it happily and successfully with a huge number of repeat clients for YEARS, so I wanted to jump on today and remind you that you should ALWAYS being doing what works for YOU. Don’t worry about what anyone else is doing – do what works for YOU!
Here’s the thing… when you are starting out or when you are struggling, it is really tempting to look around and start following exactly what the first successful person you see is doing. It might even work. Maybe. If you are similar people, with a similar ideal client, with similar strengths and similar weaknesses. You get the picture. It also might fail horribly because they are REALLY good at sales and you are still struggling in that area. Or they are fantastic on the phone, but you really prefer writing it in an email.
Now if you were to take the time to really look around, instead of panicking and jumping on the first bandwagon that you see, you would see that there are lots of really successful people that are running their businesses in completely different ways. They will all have some things in common, like excellent customer service and a quality product, but there will be tons of things that are done completely different. The one thing that they will all have in common though is that they are doing what works for them and their business.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with taking inspiration from the way other people are doing things, in fact is it a great way to learn. I teach my students how I do things all the time. My advertising methods, my workflows, my customer service processes – all of it, I try to lay it out in a blue print that they can copy so that they can have the same success that I have – but I ALWAYS tell them that they need to take what works for them and throw out the rest. If something feels unnatural and isn’t working, then see if you can find an equally effective way to accomplish the same thing.
Take a minute and think about your business and the areas that you have success vs the areas t
