The no-affiliate-link, no horsesh*t guide to Black Friday for photographers
I was showering this morning (you're welcome!), and as I am wont to do, I was brainstorming ideas to help you guys make more art and more money with more comfort and confidence.
Confession time:
I'm about as anti-marketing-BS as anyone, but even I couldn't resist loading SlickDeals last night to see what was hot for Black Friday.
Like any red-blooded professional photographer, I lusted over a few deals that would be so sexy for my business. Laptops, tablets, big TVs (for proofing sessions, of course!), and always, cameras and lenses and kit.
Sugarplum primes danced in my head.
Then I remembered a couple e-mails I got from respected photogurus yesterday, both Black Friday buying guides, and both having almost all the same affiliate programs featured.
Affiliate programs let people with an audience (authors, bloggers, celebrities, thought leaders) sell someone else's stuff and get a commission. Sometimes a percent or two, sometimes 50 percent or more.
Many of the products and services on offer in these e-mails, I'd never heard of before. Some, such as online proofing and sales sites, fly in the face of what's become the best practice of in-person sales (IPS). This struck a bad chord with me.
Listen, I know you've got your wallets out and those credit cards aren't going to swipe themselves...
But hear me out:
Stop.
Just for a moment.
Break the FOMO pattern (fear of missing out) that makes Black Friday so gratifying, exciting, and "fun."
Recognize: You have everything you need.
It's not everything you want - we'd all enjoy more megapixels, more ISO room, more wireless flash action, more processing horsepower to push Photoshop along, more actions, more presets, more of the things we think we need to make our dreams come true.
But in our hearts, we know we haven't maxed out what we have. We haven't learned all we can. We haven't mastered the gear in our hands (or more likely, sitting on the shelf...ouch).
Take the time you were going to spend today salivating over big deals (which aren't that big anyway), pick up your camera, and go make some art. Be seen with your camera. Shake hands. Hand out business cards. Be compassionate. Serve.
Will Rogers has got your back:
"The quickest way to double your money is to fold it in half and put it back in your pocket."
If you've got a little budget set aside for today, here are the places you'll get the most growth for your dollar:
(And though I normally do use affiliate links for products or services I've used and recommend to you guys, I'm avoiding them today, just to err on the side of authenticity.)
- David duChemin's Craft & Vision - Beautiful, powerful, and educational photography eBooks by photogs for photogs. If you haven't visited, you don't realize how inexpensive these eBooks are, with titles that make my heart glad: The Next Level - 25 Insights for Building a Successful Photography Business, Making The Image - The Creative Path to Stronger Photographs, The Natural Portrait - Making Beautiful Portraits in Natural Light, and many more. Fill your cart during this 50% off sale, and then commit the time daily to study and practice what you've invested in. This is where I will be spending my Black Friday money today.
- CreativeLive - 25% off all classes today. I've learned more story-changing skills from CreativeLive videos than I have any other educational video site (including YouTube, Lynda, and Craftsy). The quality is there, and founder Chase Jarvis is just an amazingly cool dude.
- DiscountMags - Where I get all of my magazine subscriptions. I know magazines aren't as cool as they used to be, and "you can find everything on the Internet," but the value magazines bring is in the serendipity and presentation of both the content and the advertising. Every month I thumb through the latest edition of Bicycle and come away with five to 10 new ideas for marketing campaigns for my photography business. Train up your business vision, and you'll find magazines to be a treasure chest of ways to market your business in your community. If you want to get started with magazines, invest around $12 total for a subscription to one photography magazine, one business magazine, and one hobby or topical interest magazine.
- Slickdeals - If you're looking for the real deals (please, don't believe the discounts the retailers are claiming), the deals at Slickdeals are voted on and vetted by the community. It's rare that I buy anything over a few dollars at retail anymore, because I can find a way better deal by watching Slickdeals. Just be careful: there's a lot of camera gear on sale today. If you haven't mastered what you already have, back away from the Buy button.
- Amazon - If you're going to die without buying some kit today, here's my boring, practical, but honest recommendation: grab a used Canon 40D for around $150, and a used Canon 50/1.8 for around $65. Tack-sharp photos that print beautifully to 30x40 and beyond. By the time you master this combo, you should be doing enough business to afford any camera gear you want. Seriously: my pair of 40Ds are still my primary cameras today for all of my portraiture. It's not sexy, but it'll earn you a hundred times what you pay for it.
That's it.
Just imagine how far you could take your art and business with one new book, one Creative Live class, one magazine subscription, and one basic dSLR with one basic lens. Or any combination of these. If you think it's not enough to make a difference, see what your fellow photographers are creating with that "cheap" 50/1.8 over on Flickr.
A little bit goes a long, long way when you're willing to #hustle.
- James Michael
Next Steps
- Put It Back: As Will said, fold your money over and stick it back in your pocket. My family has a Rule of 10's: if something costs up to $10, you wait 10 minutes before buying it, just to let the instant gratification wear off a bit; up to $100, wait 10 hours. Up to $1,000, wait 10 days. Above that, 10 months (because odds are it'll have dropped by half in price).
- Buy Your Life Back: What's your time worth? Whatever you're about to spend on Black Friday purchases, what if you bought that much time back from your day job? Would it buy you a day? A week off without pay? What if you put that time into your photography and business to make your dreams come true? Always be aware of the time you're trading for the money you're spending. Be sure it's worth it.
- Shoot: Get out your camera. Go take some pictures. Do some street photography. Set up an impromptu photo shoot. Get some creative time in. When you come back to your computer or tablet or smartphone, see if the marketing hype hasn't worn off. Back to basics. Back to fundamentals. What really makes a difference?
- Brainstorm Session: Get out your pen and paper. Make a list of everything you want to spend money on, or wish you had the money to buy. Don't be humble, this is supposed to be a big list. Now rewrite the list from least expensive to most expensive. Now rewrite the list from highest priority (what will make the biggest difference in your experience of life) to lowest priority - and be honest. See what the lowest-priced investments are that will make the biggest different in your life. Rewrite your list from best bang for the buck to least, and start saving your money toward #1 on that list. You may have it in your pocket right now, but in the Black Friday frenzy, you'd have spent way more to get far less return on your investment.
- Subscribe Today: It's my calling to help you earn your first $5,000 to $50,000 as a part time professional photographer. Don't miss out on my best stories and ideas: subscribe to my e-mail newsletter today at the top-right of any page of this site.
- Do This Now: What's the biggest struggle holding you back right now? E-mail me your answer (yes, right now!), and let's make a breakthrough today.
Climbing the mountain of success - Part IV: Next
CCBY-SA2.0 (desaturated, contrast)
(Climbing the mountain of success - Part I)
(Climbing the mountain of success - Part II: The Dip)
(Climbing the mountain of success - Part III: Quitter)
"The greater the artist, the greater the doubt. Perfect confidence is granted to the less talented as a consolation prize." - Robert Hughes
Welcome to the top.
You've survived The Dip - the long slog of steady, incremental, sometimes imperceptible gains found in the messy middle of any journey.
You've made it through the forest, and again you can see the light. You've made a breakthrough, and you can see that if you just keep doing the work, you'll reach the top of this mountain - you'll achieve the success you dreamed of.
Conquering the forest is all about persistence in the face of not knowing what lies ahead; about making best guesses and remaining tenaciously driven to pursue your goal.
The final stretch is less about fighting the unknown than the known. You can see the cliffs and plateaus here. They're big, sheer, craggy, and unwelcoming.
But the path is clear again (even if it's straight up). You've been through enough to know that success is inevitable; you just have to persevere. The obstacle is, as always, the way.
You see that now. You have to have gone through it to see it.
It's your time.
Rise.
Rise.
"Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can." - Arthur Ashe
Successes big and small
The mountain of success is the experience; the journey. It is all that stands between you and your dreams. It's every moment of confusion, disappointment, fear, embarrassment, doubt, weakness. It's every little win, every inch of progress and ounce of faith.
Every startup photographer's personal mountain is different, but in many ways the same.
- Whether that's $5 or $5,000 or $50,000 in annual revenue as a part time professional photographer.
- Whether that's your first free shoot or first paid booking or a booked-solid 52 ideal clients in a year.
- Whether that's a city, state, national, or international award for your art.
- Whether that's your first $20 client or your first $2,000 client.
- Whether that's pushing "Publish" on your web site and officially launching your business or looking back at your calendar and seeing yourself booked solid with clients you love for pay you're worth.
Whatever your definition of success is today, here at the top of the mountain, you've achieved it.
You have both my congratulations...and my sympathies.
Because you're a human being.
And human beings have frustrating (if vital) programming: an algorithm that redefines success with each success.
With each goal achieved, our brain moves the goalpost. If we bet our happiness on success - instead of the journey that takes us there - we are scientifically ensuring that happiness will always be two steps ahead of us.
No doubt, reaching the top of the mountain is an incredible, proud, necessary achievement.
But having conquered the mountain...
What's next?
Look around. What can you see from this incredible height?
More mountains.
More forests.
More peaks...
...more successes, waiting for you to claim them.
Success begets success.
You are now a conqueror.
You know you can do this. And having done it, there's no going back to normal.
What will do you do next?
- Will you next climb the mountain of getting booked solid, 52 shoots a year, with a mix of free and paid shoots? All paid? All ideal clients?
- Will you next climb the mountain of earning your first paying client? Second? A record sale? Growing your per-client average sale?
- Will you next climb the mountain of doubling the variety of salable proofs you present to clients? Doubling your scenes to choose from at your favorite location? Doubling the emotional expression of your portraits?
- Will you next climb the mountain of emulating and innovating on the best marketing practices of photographers on Instagram? Pinterest? YouTube? Your local newspaper? Your co-op marketing campaigns?
- Will you next climb the mountain of taking your art and experience to a new level, creating ever-greater value for your clients? And commanding a greater fee for your time as a result?
Like the geography of Earth, there are limitless mountains to summit; countless opportunities to create, communicate, and command value within your market.
Having claimed victory over your first mountain, it's time to parlay that momentum into the next journey.
As promised, it does get easier.
But success is always a choice.
If you don't choose the next mountain, the next goal, the next milestone to strive for, life will choose for you.
The most empowering and intimidating truth in life is that you are in control.
You've got 360 degrees to choose from...
Where are you taking your part time photography business next?
"With ideas it is like with dizzy heights you climb: At first they cause you discomfort and you are anxious to get down, distrustful of your own powers; but soon the remoteness of the turmoil of life and the inspiring influence of the altitude calm your blood; your step gets firm and sure and you begin to look - for dizzier heights." - Nikola Tesla
(Climbing the mountain of success - Part I)
(Climbing the mountain of success - Part II: The Dip)
(Climbing the mountain of success - Part III: Quitter)
Next Steps
- Here Now: Having seen the journey of the artist from the edge, to the forested climb, to the summit of the mountain - where are you in your journey? Are you still in the exciting, passion-fueled stage of seeing the mountain whole and ripe for claiming? Are you at the decisive moment of stamping down fear of the unknown to launch your business and step into the dark forest ahead? Are you deep in the forest, not knowing which way is up or what to do next or whether you're even getting closer to your dream? Have you battled through the forest and now you're overcoming the monstrous big challenges that remain between you and success? Are you at the top, overwhelmed with the many opportunities in sight? Put yourself in this story - which is really your story - and acknowledge the unique challenges and opportunities that exist just ahead of you. Wherever you are, you are blessed with an incredible opportunity: will you turn back, the same as so many others before you have? Or will you carry on, strive beyond, and overcome where those others have quit? The higher you climb, the bluer the skies, and rarified the air you breath. You get better with every choice you make to persevere, obstacles be damned.
- Brainstorm Session: If you choose bravery - if you choose to persevere tenaciously in your journey as a part time photography - where do you see yourself in three months? One year? Three years? If you were to Choose Yourself and enable your best self, what would your business look like? Your art? Your life? File this away in your Brainstorms folder.
- Subscribe Today: It's my calling to help you earn your first $5,000 to $50,000 as a part time professional photographer. I am truly grateful for your readership, and encourage you to subscribe to my e-mail newsletter at the top of any page of this site.
- Do This Now: What's the biggest struggle holding you back right now? E-mail me your answer (yes, right now!), and let's make a breakthrough today.
- Start The Conversation: If anything in this post has spoken to and inspired you, please comment below or drop me an e-mail. I'd love to hear how you're hustling to better your art, life, and business!
Climbing the mountain of success - Part III: Quitter
CCBY-SA2.0 (desaturated, contrast, crop)
(Climbing the mountain of success - Part I)
(Climbing the mountain of success - Part II: The Dip)
“If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them.” — Bruce Lee
All doubt is gone: this was a bad idea.
You haven't seen a break in the forest in ages. You just keep doing...things. You don't know if you're getting any closer to the top of the mountain or not. You keep trying. But there's no payoff, no tangible wins.
You feel like you've been going in circles forever, getting nowhere, with a great deal of energy and heart expended to get there.
You've disappointed yourself. You've done your best, and come up short. You're not where you want to be, you've no idea how to get there, and quitting feels so, so much like the only option left.
Why can't I figure out which way is the right way? Why is this so hard? Why did I do this in the first place?
By now you're having this dialog out loud with yourself, with the forest, with God and every creature near enough to hear.
You beg the universe for a sign - permission to quit the journey and throw this dream in the trash (where it probably belongs). You desperately just want to give up and go home. You've peaked. You've lost. Game over. You've gone farther than you thought you could, but you've hit a wall you can't get around. You're not as good as you thought you could be.
The obstacle is bigger than your belief.
You stop.
You sit against a tree.
And you break down.
Right where The Resistance wants you.
This is where the lashings become truly brutal. A cruel voice growls directly into your soul.
"Stupid..."
"Embarrassment...
"Talentless..."
"Imposter..."
"Weak..."
"Idiot..."
"Loser..."
"Failure."
God it hurts.
Your body is numb, leaving only the ache in your soul; a radiating, convulsing brokenness. Raw. Vicious. Sadistic.
Every insecurity pressed, every past shortcoming relived, every limiting belief believed anew.
You scream. Then whimper.
"I don't know what to do. I don't know what I'm doing wrong. I don't know why I'm doing this anymore. I don't know why this is so hard. I don't know...I don't know..."
Your whimpers go silent. You take shuddering breaths. And you drift.
Somewhere between conscious and dozing, between defeat and quitting, you dream.
You dream of your life, changed.
Because in your heart, you know that whether you go on or go home, your life will never be the same.
Your subconscious asks you hazily: "Which You can you live with? The one who dreamed, or the one who did?"
Flashes. Scenes. Words. Conversations. Visions. You see at once both versions of your life, both stories, both endings, both obituaries, both legacies.
Considered side by side like this, on a level of clarity beyond what the conscious mind allows, you know beyond doubt that if you quit now you will hate yourself forever for it. But you also know you can't go on. You know you don't know what to do, where to go next, or how much longer you can survive this journey. You've lost your Why.
A switch flips inside you.
You quit.
It's as visceral an experience as shutting off the breaker to a warehouse. Metallic. Cold.
Cold...
A cold wind hits you.
Colder now...
Your body shakes as the chill sets in.
This must be what death feels like. The death of a dream, of life-giving ambition and spirit and hope.
Colder...
Colder...?
Colder?
Your eyes snap open.
You're freezing.
You're awake.
Every hair stands on your body.
The cold.
The wind is cold!
You jump to your feet, turn your face to the wind, and begin racing toward it.
Your legs burn. Your chest aches. You're cold, but warming up quick. You suck wind as you trod heavy but fast toward the wind.
A sharp rise. You scramble up the swell. You can feel the cold wash over its edge.
Clawing, fighting, calling on every ounce of energy and faith you have left, you throw yourself over the crest.
You look up.
And see light.
More light than you've seen since you took those first brave, anxious steps into the forest.
Sunlight meets snow at the edge of the forest, and reflects painful but welcome into your eyes. It's a sight beautiful, overwhelming, and invigorating.
It's not the top of the mountain. But it's progress. It's tangible. You can touch, see, smell, taste, even hear it. The wind coming off the snow at once bites, swirls, whooshes, chills, and cleanses.
It's a new challenge. A new obstacle. A new plateau.
But you've made it. The end is close enough to feel.
Tenaciously, you have persisted where so many others have quit. You've strode through a cemetery of dreams left behind to die in that forest. So many who lost faith. So many who didn't power through. So many who didn't believe in themselves. So many who saw failure as a reason to quit instead of an opportunity to overcome.
You have survived The Dip.
And from here, there's nowhere to go but up.
"Defeat is a state of mind; no one is ever defeated until defeat has been accepted as a reality." - Bruce Lee
In Part 4 of this series, you'll have to fight for every inch of progress in the final stretch before you reach the top. And you'll have to answer a life-changing question: "Where do I go from here?"
(Climbing the mountain of success - Part I)
(Climbing the mountain of success - Part II: The Dip)
(Climbing the mountain of success – Part IV: Next)
Next Steps
- The Way: If you haven't read it yet, Ryan Holiday's The Obstacle Is The Way is the perfect book to put on your phone's Kindle reader. Every time you're tempted to check Twitter, scroll Facebook, play a quick round of Candy Crush, learn to load your Kindle reader instead. Take in a short chapter, a page, a few paragraphs of the empowerment within this book of wisdom. Stop distracting yourself from success and start holding yourself to a higher standard.
- Take Five: Set your alarm five minutes early for tomorrow. As soon as you're out of bed, wash your face, and sit down with five minutes of inspiration: Holiday's book, any book or audiobook on motivation, any motivational YouTube video, your affirmations, your vision board - anything that reinforces your dream and your capacity to reach it. Start every single day with fire.
- Brainstorm Session: Get out your pen and paper. Get real with yourself: what are all the horsesh*t excuses, reasons, justifications, weaknesses, and choices you're allowing to stand between you and your dream of becoming a successful part time professional photographer? Give me all of them. Give me 52 excuses. Give me more. Make your brain sweat, as James Altucher would say. Now take this list of what's truly holding you back, put a massive black X across every page, and then rip it to shreds. This one doesn't go in your Brainstorms folder. It's over: you are a new, better, stronger, unbreakable, unstoppable person, as of now - right now. Your success is inevitable because you choose it to be. Get to work.
- Subscribe Today: It's my calling to help you earn your first $5,000 to $50,000 as a part time professional photographer. I am truly grateful for your readership, and encourage you to subscribe to my e-mail newsletter at the top of any page of this site.
- Do This Now: What's the biggest struggle holding you back right now? E-mail me your answer (yes, right now!), and let's make a breakthrough today.
- Start The Conversation: If anything in this post has spoken to and inspired you, please comment below or drop me an e-mail. I'd love to hear how you're hustling to better your art, life, and business!
Climbing the mountain of success - Part II: The Dip
(Climbing the mountain of success - Part I)
"Man does not simply exist but always decides what his existence will be, what he will become the next moment. By the same token, every human being has the freedom to change at any instant." — Viktor Frankl
What's truly harder: quitting and turning back, or committing and driving forward?
Striding boldly into the forest that separates you from your dream at the top of the mountain, you are emboldened by your own bravery, and a not insignificant dose of adrenaline.
Step after step, you've launched into your journey. You're in it, now: you're carving your own path up the mountain.
Your progress is steady. It feels good. You're proud. You feel strong. You've got a backpack full of tools, and you know how to use them...at least you hope so.
Progress feels good.
Then you start to get sore. Then tired. Then sweaty, itchy, almost hyper-sensitive. Hunger and exhaustion set in.
Night is coming.
It's going to be long and low.
This isn't so fun anymore. It isn't so easy. The biggest challenge is no longer just making the decision to climb the mountain - now, it's work. Honest work, but the kind of effort you're not used to in your 'normal' life. You don't feel able. In fact, you feel pretty clumsy, well outside your comfort zone.
"Nothing worth doing is easy," you repeat to yourself. You're right, but it doesn't help much.
Every time the path gets muddy and the way forward is too dark and hazy to see, quitting seems so easy.
Still, you feel your progress, and there's enough newness and scariness and excitement that quitting doesn't seem so... Necessary.
Give it time... Very soon, quitting will feel very, very necessary.
The first time you trip and twist your ankle...
The first time you stumble over some venomous or teeth-laden forest creature...
The first time you do something truly foolish, slap your forehead and say, "How the hell could I be so stupid!"
The Resistance is hunting you, haunting you, here in the forest. This is his playground, not yours. You are not home here. You are not welcome here.
As night falls and the sounds of nocturnal creatures rise, you settle in for camp. You wrap up, warm up, eat, enjoy a cup of campfire coffee. You tend your wounds; minor, this early in the journey. Your body's ready to sleep, but sleep doesn't come quickly as your mind processes all of your wins and challenges so far in the journey.
You smile.
"Man, I've already got some great stories to tell."
With this, you relax, and sleep.
Dream...
Then wake.
Oooh...shouldn't have done that. Waking up was a bad idea.
Sore. Sweaty. Itchy. Who knows how many things took a bite during the night.
There's so much inertia to overcome after stopping.
But this mountain isn't going to climb itself.
You stretch, scratch, pack up, and peer up the mountain.
At least, you think you're looking the right way.
Wait a minute...
As you look this way and that, you realize you're not sure which direction you came from...how far you've made it...worst, how much further to the top of the mountain, and which direction is the right one to get there.
Damnit!
Which path is the right one? Which is the fastest way to the top? Is the fastest way the easiest way, or the hardest? A fearsome thought: which way is the wrong way?
You're in The Dip. You don't even know what The Dip is, or how in it you are, or what it takes to get out of it.
But you're there. You can feel it.
As with so many times to this point, you're presented with the ultimate conflict:
Turn back?
Or go deeper?
Enter The Resistance...
Hey, you gave it your best, and just like everyone else knew, you're not good enough to do this. I tried to tell you. You're so deep in the forest now, and so stupid for getting yourself into this situation. How much easier would it have been to turn back at the mountain's edge? I tried to tell you. How much smarter to have stayed home and kept your dream what it should have been - just a dream. A fantasy. You're an adult; you should know better. I tried to tell you... I tried to tell you this was stupid; that you're stupid. Now the best thing you can do is cut your losses and quit this stupid game before you really screw up and embarrass yourself. Go home, sit down, shut up, and be normal.
Whoops. The Resistance went too far again.
Normal...
The word - all it means, to you, about you - manifests in your psyche, a sick whisper from deep inside.
Normal...
The friction between your dream and your fear lights a spark. It catches in the tinder of your dormant spirit, and emotions blaze: anger, fear, disgust chief among them.
Normal...
You can't abide normal anymore.
That's why you're here. That's why you're sweaty, smelly, confused, a little scared, and a lot of sore, here in the thickest of the forest. The summit is out there, up there, somewhere. And you know the only thought more painful than striving on against all obstacles is that of turning tail, turning back, and living a normal, defeated life.
You know success is in your hands. You know failure is, too.
True failure. Not the kind where you pivot, change direction, and quit one path to pursue a greater good.
True failure is where dreams go to die. Where dreams lay in a grave and wither, all of their power and energy and inspiration left to rot. But never vanish. If dreams just vanished when ignored, we'd not feel the soul-sucking emptiness of their unrealized potential. You may take your eyes off your dream, but even through hollowed eye sockets and sunken scowl, your dreams never take their eyes off of you.
No. You can't abide normal anymore. The mountain is where you make your stand.
This dream deserves to live, breathe, and thrive.
Sun's up. It's time to go.
"The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way." - Marcus Aurelius
The obstacle is the way
Staying the course after the shiny newness wears off and the easy gains are made is what separates the dreamer from the doer - the regretful from the truly great. When you feel stuck, confused, lost, and incapable - that's when you need to lean in, press on, and double down in your fight against The Resistance...
In the third part of this series, The Resistance will stop at nothing to keep you from summiting the mountain. You're hurt. You're lost. You're questioning every decision. There's no end in sight. You've lost hope...which is exactly where The Resistance wants you.
(Climbing the mountain of success - Part I)
(Climbing the mountain of success – Part III: Quitter)
Next Steps
- Reinforcements: If you're in The Dip, steel yourself: this is the long haul. Read The Dip by Seth Godin, to understand the landscape and nature of The Dip. Read The Obstacle Is The Way by Ryan Holiday, to flip the script and see the opportunities within challenges. Listen to The Practicing Mind by Thomas Sterner, to learn the tools for making The Dip easiest to navigate. And if you haven't yet, read the indispensable The War of Art by Stephen Pressfield, to know the face of your greatest enemy.
- Brainstorm Session: Get out your pen and paper. Describe your perfect day, five years in the future, after having summited the mountain of success. What are you working for in life by becoming a part time professional photographer? In what ways does success better your life? File this away in your Brainstorms folder.
- Subscribe Today: It's my calling to help you earn your first $5,000 to $50,000 as a part time professional photographer. I am truly grateful for your readership, and encourage you to subscribe to my e-mail newsletter at the top of any page of this site.
- Do This Now: What's the biggest struggle holding you back right now? E-mail me your answer (yes, right now!), and let's make a breakthrough today.
- Start The Conversation: If anything in this post has spoken to and inspired you, please comment below or drop me an e-mail. I'd love to hear how you're hustling to better your art, life, and business!
Climbing the mountain of success - Part I
"The man on top of the mountain didn't fall there." - Vince Lombardi
That mountain is going to kick your ass, and you're gonna hate it...and you're gonna love it.
Looking at the mountain from a distance, it's beautiful, majestic, grand.
You can see the peak, the snow, the forest, maybe some notable cliffs and plateaus - but not a lot of detail.
And certainly no clear path to the top. There's no ski lift on this mother.
In admiring this wondrous sight, you ponder: "Do believe I'd like to climb that one."
So you prepare.
(Which in this age means reading blog posts, asking friends on social, e-mailing some apparent experts, ordering books you'll read three chapters of, buying on credit lots of gear you think you need, suffering buyer's remorse, sending most of the gear back, figuring for sure beyond a shadow of a doubt you'll never be good enough, saying this to everyone who will listen so that everyone can tell you you're wrong, accepting the possibility you won't completely embarrass yourself, taking a deep breath, gathering every ounce of bravery and adventurous spirit you have, and taking the first step.)
The closer you get to the mountain, the less you can see of its totality, but the more you can see of its finer details.
You reach the first swell, the tree line. As you're close enough to the mountain to be standing at its edge, the forest casting its shadow upon you, you're overwhelmed.
You can't see the mountain anymore.
You can't see the peak you're striving for.
You can't even see the sun - just speckles and streaks of light through the canopy.
All of a sudden, your dream of climbing this mountain is a lot more real. As reality sinks in, every fear and warning your lizard brain can muster comes rushing in.
"What if I fail?"
"Oh this is going to hurt...a lot."
"If I don't succeed at this, I'll be so embarrassed. Everyone will laugh at me."
"I'm so unprepared for this. I should have read another tutorial."
You stop. The easy wins are behind you - all the dreaming, talking, buying, reading, list making.
Now there's just you and the mountain.
You look back. You can always go back, right? Going home and kicking back on the couch with your iPhone seems mighty appealing right now. If you don't start, nobody will know. You've got other things to do anyway - laundry, house cleaning, video games, the whole last season of Walking Dead on Netflix. Who are you to take this kind of risk anyway? Mom always said you should be more practical. Maybe she's right. Maybe those pros on the net who said you shouldn't even try this until you've had years of practice were right. Maybe you were never going to be good enough anyway.
Yeah. Going home looks safe. Comfortable. Easy. Normal.
Oh. Oh man, that one hurts.
You're standing at the edge of one of the biggest adventures of your life, and the thought of normal is like a punch to your gut.
You're sick of normal.
You've been playing small doing normal things in your normal life with normal people for so long that you have a physical, sickening reaction to anything normal.
You feel like throwing up. Because you're scared of stepping forward... But more so because you're scared of stepping back. Back into the normalcy that depresses and bores your soul. What soul? You haven't felt it in years.
What soul...what soul...
You turn back toward the forest.
What soul...
Now you're exhilarated. Now you're pissed off. Now your heart's pounding in your chest. You're light-headed, but clear-eyed. Your senses turn up to 10. You can hear every cricket, smell every plant, see every leaf, feel every wisp of wind, taste pollen on the air.
What soul...
You're awake now. You're alive now. That feeling of breath in your lungs and blood pumping in your veins and the tension of every muscle in your body ready to break free of normal.
Your soul is stirred.
And it feels incredible.
And you can't go back. You know you'd die inside if you quit now, before you even start this journey.
You have to try. You have to be free. You have to choose you. You have to leave it all on the mountain.
You hold your breath.
Your heart pounds.
Slow motion now.
You lift your foot...
All the perfectionism and procrastination and paralysis in the world can't stop you now.
You move your foot forward...
This is stupid. You're stupid. You're going to fail like the idiot everyone knows you are and everyone will laugh at you and never forget stupid little you pretending you could ever climb any mountain. You never did it before, you can't do it now, and you'll never be able to do it.
The Resistance makes one more, desperate attempt to stop you.
But you can't be stopped.
Your foot falls.
Then the next.
And the next.
And you're moving forward toward destiny. Your legs are at the same time weak and strong, pressing forward on pure adrenaline.
One step after the other. Over and over again.
The obstacle is the way. The mountain is your journey. The forest is your path. The only way is up.
And, step by step by step, summiting the mountain is inevitable.
Only you can stop you. And you won't. Because deep down inside, you need this. You've needed this for too long.
And you're hungry. Hungry for more - from life, and from yourself.
Reaching success - however you uniquely define it - is like climbing a mountain.
It's exciting from a distance, scary up close, incredibly hard work to conquer, and life-changing to summit.
But it's in your reach.
You're alive, talented, capable, and blessed.
Launch, and share these blessings with your community and the world.
In Part 2 of this four-part series, you're deep in The Dip. You can't see the forest for the trees, you can't tell if you're making any progress, you don't know which path leads to the top, and every decision feels equally pointless and crucial. The only way to the top? Perseverance and tenacity.
Next Steps
- Freedom: You are free of the bondage of indecision. You are in control. And you are capable. What are you going to do now? Tell me what your Next Step is: james@banderaoutlaw.com.
- Brainstorm Session: Get out your pen and paper. What are you so scared of? You know you're holding yourself back. It's five years in the future: write yourself a letter titled, "What I wish I knew five years ago." Put yourself in the role of your older, wiser self. What would you say? What advice would you give? What greater wisdom would you share? What would you tell yourself about your art, about fear, and about launching your business? What are the life decisions you'd wish you had made? What brave choices will you wish you had made? What regrets would you have if you didn't make those choices? File this away in your Brainstorms folder.
- Subscribe Today: It's my calling to help you earn your first $5,000 to $50,000 as a part time professional photographer. I am truly grateful for your readership, and encourage you to subscribe to my e-mail newsletter at the top of any page of this site.
- Do This Now: What's the biggest struggle holding you back right now? E-mail me your answer (yes, right now!), and let's make a breakthrough today.
- Start The Conversation: If anything in this post has spoken to and inspired you, please comment below or drop me an e-mail. I'd love to hear how you're hustling to better your art, life, and business!
What is the Minimum Viable Product for a startup photographer?
"Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."
- Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Is "My art isn't good enough!" holding you back from launching?
Then you're trying too hard to produce 'visionary' art where 'salable' art will do.
Perfection is always the greatest enemy of done.
And your market isn't waiting for you to be perfect - they're waiting for you to be done.
Done worrying.
Done being scared.
Done thinking and reading and dreaming instead of launching, serving, and delighting.
The Number 1 reason PTPs get stuck pre-launch is the inability to recognize the value of their work.
But "good enough" art is impossible to articulate. You can't measure "good enough" when it comes to the subjective.
Releasing your Minimum Viable Product to the world is the best cure to getting unstuck as a perfectionist - it is the simplest, most affordable, most focused version of your offering. The first draft. Version 1.0.
And launching enables iteration: you're then able to listen, and evolve the value you create based on market feedback.
Where we artists get this all wrong is in the chronology: we desperately want to perfect everything about our art, marketing and business before we open our doors. We want to control every aspect, every pixel, every impression. We fear rejection, being laughed at, being found out as 'impostors.'
Which is why you're reading this post - so long as you're stuck pre-launch, you're just staring at the mountain of success out your window; you're not actually making any progress.
Perfectionism pre-launch leads to:
- Bloated up-front investment: More equipment you don't need, more classes you don't need yet, more books you aren't going to read (and if you do, you aren't going to act on), more Photoshop actions and tutorials you sure as heck don't need, and endless other ways to waste your time and money.
- Longer lead time before launch: General George S. Patton said that a good plan, violently executed today, is far and away better than the perfect plan tomorrow. You can't gain traction, build a reputation, grow your circle, gain clients or earn dollars until you get your art and message out into the world.
- Feature creep: "But I need this idea! And that idea! And what about this product? Or that pricing strategy! And I've got to get these studio samples first, Soandso Photoguru said so! Oh just let me watch a few more classes on CreativeLive first, then I'll figure out what to do..."
- Delaying 'first to market' release: While you're procrastinating, your competition is hustling. The longer you wait, the more saturated the market becomes, making it all the harder to define and communicate your unique value proposition.
- Investing in unwanted features: The longer you drag out the pre-launch stage, the more likely you'll overthink what the market wants or needs. Don't invest time and money into features the market never cared about in the first place, like the $8,000 I poured into a retail studio space only to find out my clients much prefer the location shoots I was already doing.
What's the Minimum Viable Product for a PTP?
Let's term it Salable Art.
Odds are, if you're reading this, your art is well beyond the minimum threshold of 'salable.' You may not think so, but consider two of the most basic, formulaic, uncreative, yet successful models in the photography industry: chain studios and school photography.
Most chain studios found in shopping centers and malls give you a pose book - a kind of menu for your photo session. You might have a few dozen poses to choose from, or just a handful. Depending on your investment, you'll walk away with a stack of prints all of the same pose, or if you pay the big bucks, you'll get some variety - even if that variety looks like everyone else who walks into that studio.
Whatever pose(s) you choose, your photographer will roll the camera cart or pull the camera-on-a-boom into place, copycat the posing from the menu, and snap one or two shots. You may get a choice of three or so backgrounds. Muslin FTW!
You then sit at the sales station together, blow your budget, and walk away with the exact same portraits as thousands of people before you.
Average sale per client for a chain studio? I can't find any real data, but anecdotally I am told between $200 and $500, with big sales reaching well past $1,000.
An old high school friend told me she gladly paid $1,400 at a chain studio for portraits of her and her three kids.
I gave her my prices. She gaped. "Oh my gosh. I wish I had known that before!"
And these kinds of sales are coming out of chain studios offering packages starting at $19.95.
Their business model is rock solid for what they do and how they do it. Guaranteed, they wouldn't be occupying high-value, high-traffic rentals like in the La Cantera luxury mall in San Antonio if they weren't consistently profitable.
Don't get me wrong: I'm not picking on chain studios, nor am I demeaning their work. They are creating and communicating value, which is what every professional photographer, craftsman and small business owner should strive for.
But you've got to see the potential success beyond your hang-ups about your own art.
Can you create art, either today or with a measure of purposeful practice, that compares favorably to the chain studio's offering of eight or so mix-and-match poses and scenes? Absolutely.
Can you craft an awesome customer experience that far exceeds that offered by the formula-driven chain studios? Doubtless.
$1,000 An Hour
Let's study another model of formula-driven photography: school portraiture.
School photographers are beasts: 15-second photo shoots? Check. Guaranteed profit on every photo they take? Check. Some averaging over $1,000 an hour in sales? Double check.
As my father and Mark Ronson would say: "Hot damn!"
Alongside chain studio portraits, creativity and innovation have almost no place in school portraiture. The goal is to herd as many kids past the camera as fast as possible while collecting parents' two- and three-digit checks for hours on end, days at a time, week after week throughout the school year.
Even more so than chain studios, it's volume work - you make your numbers on speed, efficiency, low Cost of Goods Sold, and low overhead.
In case you didn't hear me: Over $1,000 an hour for formulaic 15-second photo shoots with art that has barely evolved in 40 years.
Can you make better art? Yes.
Can you create a better customer experience? Hell yes.
Humble art for humble pay.
Salable art.
That's where you're aiming to launch as a startup photographer.
If you let it, perfectionism will kill your dream.
Minimum Viable Product In Action
So in the wild, is the MVP for a part time photographer...
- A 20-image portfolio?
- Business cards and a Facebook page?
- An old Canon 40D and a Nifty Fifty 50/1.8 lens?
- A nifty logo?
- A half dozen print product options to offer?
- An ad in the high school football program?
- A magnet billboard on the side of your car?
- A uniform?
- A custom-embroidered camera strap with your business name on it?
Yes.
And no.
I can't say.
There are thousands of stories of photographers launching their business with less than you have right now.
I started with a Fuji Finepix 1.3 megapixel camera and a byline in the local newspaper's sports section.
The only thing you truly need is consistency.
You must be able to reproduce for a potential client some approximation of the art you show them via your marketing.
Consistency.
That's it.
That's all you need to launch with your Minimum Viable Product.
If you're not where you need to be in your art to consistently reproduce the images in your portfolio, then build yourself a curriculum and timeline to learn that consistency.
Build it from good books, good blogs, and good courses.
You're not going to just wake up one day a talented, consistent, valuable artist.
You have to Do The Work.
And what gets scheduled gets done.
Set a goal to consistently produce a salable series of images from every photo shoot. Block the time on your calendar to study and practice and get yourself where you want to be.
Your images don't have to be the most visionary, creative, unique works of art your market has ever seen - they just need to be as good as or a shade better than the formulaic chain studios or hyperspeed school photogs. Not in technical quality (those studios do make nice, sharp images), but in creativity, location and scene, personality, and the experience you craft for your clients.
Create value, and communicate that value
The more make excuses pre-launch waiting for the mythical "right time", the more likely you'll psych yourself out of launching at all.
Your art and the people waiting to be blessed by it deserve better.
"Because one does not want to be disturbed, to be made uncertain, he establishes a pattern of conduct, of thought, a pattern of relationship to man. Then he becomes a slave to the pattern and takes the pattern to be the real thing." - Bruce Lee
Next Steps
- Time's Up: If I held a gun to your head and said "Launch today or die!", what would you do in the next four hours? Make a list. Break the list into baby steps. Now pull up your calendar, and within the next seven days, block off four hours. Do The Work. You don't have to actually launch - that decision is always yours to make - but I bet this exercise will jar you into a much better idea of what your own Minimum Viable Product looks like.
- Brainstorm Session: Get out your pen and paper. Less is more. As Saint-Exupery writes, perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away. If you stripped your art and business down to the absolute core value - the 80/20 rule applied to your art, the experience you craft for clients, and the ideal clients you seek to serve - what would that look like? Does that simplicity make it easier to envision who your ideal clients are, and how you would market yourself to them?
- Subscribe Today: It's my calling to help you earn your first $5,000 to $50,000 as a part time professional photographer. I am truly grateful for your readership, and encourage you to subscribe to my e-mail newsletter at the top of any page of this site.
- Do This Now: What's the biggest struggle holding you back right now? E-mail me your answer (yes, right now!), and let's make a breakthrough today.
- Start The Conversation: If anything in this post has spoken to and inspired you, please comment below or drop me an e-mail. I'd love to hear how you're hustling to better your art, life, and business!
It's your business and you can cry if you want to
One evening an old Cherokee told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside people.
He said, "My son, the battle is between two wolves inside us all.
One is Evil.
It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.The other is Good.
It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith."The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather:
"Which wolf wins?"
The old Cherokee simply replied,
"The one you feed."- Native American Folk Story
We have a lot more control over our lives than we like to admit.
You're here because you want to be.
You're reading this because you choose to.
You're a part time professional photographer because you chose this path.
You can stop anytime.
You can start anytime.
You have Caesarian power with which to choose left or right, to charge X or Y, to shoot with kids or couples or cucumbers.
As kids, we tested boundaries constantly, much to the dismay of our parents. Over time, worried parents and rule-mad schools and faithless employers clipped the wings of our fearless (even fearful) exploration, shoved them in a locked box and threw them in the ocean.
It was not in their best interests to see us fly.
After 18-plus years of living with our incredible power in bondage, we almost always go one of two routes, equally dangerous and tragic:
We explode, our power and control and freedom an incendiary cocktail. We drink, drug, sex and stupid our way through early adulthood. We don't have enough experience with our power to know how to control and focus it positively; we become undomesticated animals feeding our most immediate and base desires. We spend our college years and well beyond doing things our mature selves will regret - and this regret robs us of our power again. We eventually "grow up," get a "real job," and reduce our lives to debt and slavery until retirement.
or
We live scared of consequence. We've been warned, shushed, threatened, punished and brow-beaten into spiritual submission. We live outside our power, in a constant state of "I shouldn't do this," "What will my Dad say?," "I'd die if they were disappointed in me," "They would shun me if they knew," "I don't deserve it," "I should be happy with what I have," "What are they thinking about me?," "I don't know how to be good enough."
So we hide our power. We deny it. "No Risk, No Reward" becomes a reasonable mantra instead of the warning it's intended to be.
Do you see some of this in your own life? Do you see the people and experiences that have robbed you of your power?
We're left so damn scared, indecisive, weak, and insecure.
Listen: your business, like your life, is wrought by your hands. You've built this. You're in control. You're placing every brick and every beam. Storms will come and go, but only you can build and rebuild and shore up.
You are dreamer, architect, engineer and craftsman of your life, and of your part time photography business.
“If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
You don't have to listen to any piece of advice that doesn't inspire you or resonate with you.
You don't have to adopt "The Top 17 Best Practices As a Professional Photographer."
You don't have to cold call. You don't have to upsell. You don't have to sell out. You don't have to answer the phone on the first ring. You don't have to be "on your game" every day of your life. You don't have to market yourself in ways you despise to make art you hate for clients you resent so you can sell in ways you loathe to get money to buy things you don't want to impress people you don't like. You don't have to launch today. You don't have to wait. You don't have to listen to me. You don't have to ignore me. You don't have to embrace your true, powerful self. You don't have to live scared, either.
You don't have to do anything.
But if you're like me - and like the thousands of PTPs I've visited with over the years - you want to.
You really want to.
You want to make beautiful art.
You want to serve wonderful clients.
You want to earn Cheshire-grin money.
It will take strength, persistence, and tenacity.
And it will take power.
Try though it might, don't allow the world to convince you that your power is extrinsic - gifted, granted, bought. Your power comes from within: thought, choice, action.
Embrace your wonderful, purposeful, powerful self. Choose yourself. Dream big and work hard. Earn it. Your people are waiting for you to step up and put your art out into the world; they're waiting to be blessed by your work.
The mountain of success is waiting for you.
Step. Step again. Rise. And summit.
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?' Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”
― Marianne Williamson, A Return to Love
Next Steps
- Don't Be An Ass: "To assume makes an ass out of u and me." What assumptions have you made about your business that you can now take a wrecking ball to? Did you assume you had to market yourself in a way you hated? Did you assume you had to make perfect art before launching your business? Make a list of all the "I have to..." assumptions you've been holding onto. Then make a big, bold strike through each. Then tear the piece of paper to shreds and throw it in the trash. You're free. You're empowered. You're in control. Make your business what you want it to be.
- Brainstorm Session: Get out your pen and paper. Make a list of 10 ways you can choose to make your part time photography business more fun. Don't take yourself so seriously; really let your imagination run and dream up fun ways to make art and do business. Trust: that fun will translate into your brand, and the experience people enjoy with you. File this away in your Brainstorms folder.
- Subscribe Today: It's my calling to help you earn your first $5,000 to $50,000 as a part time professional photographer. I am truly grateful for your readership, and encourage you to subscribe to my e-mail newsletter at the top of any page of this site.
- Do This Now: What's the biggest struggle holding you back right now? E-mail me your answer (yes, right now!), and let's make a breakthrough today.
- Start The Conversation: If anything in this post has spoken to and inspired you, please comment below or drop me an e-mail. I'd love to hear how you're hustling to better your art, life, and business!