Your competition can only kill you if you let them

by Outlaw Photographer James Taylor on April 28, 2013

in This is Art,This is Business,This is Life

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“You have a choice. You can grasp that stone of ‘best, better, good, not good enough’ and let it sink you. Or you can put it down beside you and keep [shooting]. Only you can allow yourself to feel small next to someone you believe is bigger. And only you can choose to see in someone ‘higher up’ than you the beacon of possibility for your own [photography] life.” – Sage Cohen, paraphrased from The Productive Writer

There is one way and one way alone that your competition can kill your business – and it’s entirely your fault.

It’s time to make a choice: you’re either going to obsess or observe from this day forward.

Are you going to obsess over your competition – what they’re charging, how nice their art is, which of your potential clients they’re shooting – and place your mental focus and energy outside of what you can control?

Or are you going observe your competition as another of many resources to learn from, and focus your energies on your betterment and what you can control?

Some of the most discouraged part time professional photographers I visit with are facing the challenge of two major struggles:

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How experiments can help multiply the growth of your art and business

by Outlaw Photographer James Taylor on March 29, 2013

in This is Art,This is Business

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“We are operating amid all this uncertainty–and that the purpose of building a product or doing any other activity is to create an experiment to reduce that uncertainty.” – Eric Ries, LeanStartup.com, interviewed by Fast Company Magazine.

Uncertainty.

Man, does that one word summarize your artistic and professional fears, or what?

You’re holding back. You know you are. I know you are.

Fear, most often born from uncertainty, is almost always what holds us back from really taking off with our art and business in the photography industry.

And we human beings are often illogical creatures. We fear failure. We fear success! We fear rejection more than we fear the possibility of never making our dreams come true.

Experiments, both artistic and in business, can help you chip away at the mental wall that is uncertainty. The more new things you try, the more you learn what works and what doesn’t – what resonates with you as a photographer and business owner.

There are three arenas in which you can and should experiment:

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How to choose the right photography products to sell

by Outlaw Photographer James Taylor on February 23, 2013

in This is Business

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With all the Internet’s photography product vendors at your fingertips, which prints and wraps and wall clings are the right ones for you to sell?

All of them!

And none of them!

Okay, okay, I swear I’m not trying to cheat here.

PTP reader Chase G. told me he was having trouble deciding what of the plethora of photography products he should offer to his clients. Between just the big boys – Miller’s, White House Custom Color, and the dozen other labs that advertise in photography magazines – there has to be hundreds of product options for photographers to sell to their clients.

When we talk about products like this – print sizes, coatings, frames – my mind immediately goes to the laminated price sheet so many photographers hand their clients during a sales session and then say, “What do you want?”

“What do you want?” is a great question to ask.

But you should have asked it two weeks ago.

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How to turn epic failure into business success

January 16, 2013
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Getting started is the hardest step in becoming a paid, professional photographer.

The second hardest?

Rebounding.

Let me start your day with a stomach ache:

- You wrap a photo shoot, plug your card into your reader, and see…nothing. No files, no nothing.

- You’re photographing a baby and it rolls off your posing puck onto the floor.

- You’re sitting at home in your PJs and your phone rings at 6:15… “Hey – yeah, we’re here at the City Park; we were supposed to meet at six o’clock, right?”

- You go to delete an image in-camera and instead format the whole card.

- You are just starting out a shoot and your battery dies…with your backup sitting at home on your kitchen counter.

- You’re in the middle of processing a dozen youth soccer teams worth of individual and group photos, and your hard drive grinds to a halt.

- You hear the sickening thunk of your shutter breaking, mid-shoot, and your camera just says… “Error 99″

- You show proofs to a client and they sneer. “This isn’t what I wanted at all.”

Shudder.

Did your stomach flip too?

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Make 2013 your year of Inspiration

January 7, 2013
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This is a call to action.

Action that makes a difference.

Your procrastination is killing your business, and it’s killing your ability to benefit and serve your market.

The time you’re spending doing anything but something important is time you’ll never get back. You’re not just standing still – you’re putting distance between where you are and where you dream of being.

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How to multiply the value of your donated dollars

December 30, 2012
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If you’re only donating money to your chosen cause, neither you nor they are getting your money’s worth.

I’m a proponent of tendering 10-percent of your business income to local non-profits, assuming you’ve reached the point of profitability in your part time photography business. Even just a few dollars here and there make a difference in your community, and non-profits are purpose-built for multiplying the value of donated dollars.

But as a small business in need of more clients, just writing a check every month to your favored cause is a limited investment and will show limited return. Minor donors rarely get enough recognition for their contributions to make the giving worthwhile for their business.

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What Marketing Ain’t

November 11, 2012
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Now don’t let me come off as cynical.

But one of the biggest mistakes I see my fellow part time photographers make early on is to desperately focus on what won’t grow their business, to the exclusion of what will.

It’s easy to fall into the trap where you obsess over minutiae, and oversimplify marketing to just advertising.

Advertising is certainly a piece of the puzzle that forms the marketing for your business, but it is only one piece.

What is “Marketing” for a part time photographer?

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