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Archive of ‘photography business’ category

Is Your Life And Photography Like Tug-of-war?

I suppose as I reflect on my forty plus years of being a studio owner, there were lots of things happening in the family as well as in my business.

A business, just like family life is a moving thing, yet we constantly search and try to find the holy grail of a perfect work/life balance.

I love this recent article from Dave Gillen in Flying Solo.

This is what Dave had to say………………

“26 long days ago (who’s counting) my wife gave birth to two milk-swilling intruders twins and our lives changed.

Needless to say it’s been a challenging time for my business – I have less time, less sleep, and more to do.

So what do you do when life happens?

Do you downgrade your business goals?

Delay them?

Forget about them?

Well it might surprise you, but three weeks of sleep deprivation and unrelenting demands on my time are resulting in the biggest steps forward for my business in two years.

 

Here’s how I turned what seemed like obstacles into a breakthrough.

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“Three weeks of sleep deprivation and unrelenting demands on my time are resulting in the biggest steps forward for my business in two years.”

I remembered what I was really chasing

When you’re chasing a goal and something starts eating away your precious time it can be frustrating.

But sometimes we forget what we were chasing in the first place. I remembered that money and business success are just stepping stones to getting what I really want, and started seeing that many of the obstacles popping up were in fact the very things I want in life.

Life events (good and bad) are not just diversions and time outs, they’re often the most important things and need our full attention.

I’m instantly happier when I remember that my kids and the time I spend with them are not obstacles at all – they’re the nuggets of gold I’m seeking.

I realised that my life is the canvas for my business.

We tend to ask questions like “Which business model is the best?” and “Which niche is more profitable?” as if we’re designing the perfect business on a blank canvas.

But no business is ever built on a blank canvas.

Your life is the canvas and your business needs to fit its unique size and shape.

When life changed I caught a glimpse of the shape of my canvas changing. That was a breakthrough for me because for the first time I saw the type of business I needed to fit my life and goals.

I felt my constraints made life easier, not harder.

It’s easy to think of new constraints as frustrations, but in fact they are the instructions that point to the business you need.

I used to have a million unanswered questions about my own business. How many hours do I want to work? How big do I want to grow? Where should I specialise? I’ve found these questions difficult to answer in the past, and this constant uncertainty over the details can be paralysing.

Now, with more options eliminated I can spend less time navigating (being lost) and get on with it.

Exciting times for life and business.

All of a sudden we are a family of five, but just when I feared family growth would spell the end of business growth. The twins have brought with them a clearer set of instructions for business than I’ve ever had before.

This clarity has brought some rapid progress already – I’m now working to a specific design for my business (instead of broader goals like growth), and I no longer feel life is competing with business.

Do your life and business work together or is it more like tug-of-war?

FULL ARTICLE

Your Time To Shine

You have the tools for your photography, now you need the business tools to fill your business with customers.

Is it time for you to take the next step in your business?

Is It Your Time To Shine?

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Welcome to my BRAND NEW ONLINE COURSE called “CREATE A PHOTOGRAPHY BUSINESS.”

little money from your photography passion.

Like to know more?

Email me on on  or call 0418509228 for all the info.

https://www.berniegriffiths.com

I Couldn’t Believe It.

I Couldn’t Believe It

I had a massive response from my last newsletter about selling prints not pixels.

Everyone agreed that selling printed product was he only way to achieve a sustainable and profitable business, and of course maximise your portrait sales.

While I was sitting having my early morning coffee I received this email from a photographer that I knew………………..

” Hi Bernie….

Good to see you are encouraging the printed medium. It seems that those starting off in the industry don’t have the confidence, and I guess if you don’t entirely depend on photography to make your living, then selling only digital files becomes an easy option. The pity of this, is the spin off that encourages the general public out there to ask or demand digital files.

I recently photographed a family for the 3rd time. Nowadays they have grandchildren, so the shoot expanded a bit. However the $33,000 order made it pretty worthwhile!! Canvases, albums and prints made up the order, and he even spontaneously paid me $100 travel money when he discovered I had travelled 2 hours from a weekend break.”IMG_2474Wow!  I nearly spilt my coffee.

I didn’t believe it, so I replied asking whether he had made a mistake and it should have been $3,300, but he replied that the $33,000 figure was correct.

This certainly is the highest portrait sale that I have heard of in the last couple of years, and it smashes the previous $22,000 record sale that one of my clients did last year.

What is the highest portrait sale you have heard of?

Are You Trying To Grow Your Business?

Over the past few months I have met a lot of photographers who are just starting out, but are tired of struggling to make any impact on growing their photography business?

What’s stopping you from taking your business to the next level – to its full potential – whatever you feel that is?

How many hours in the year do you think that you are wasting trying to get your business up to the next level?

When is the last time you invested money in seriously trying to grow your business?

Are you committed to making changes and going forward toward your happiness?

Anyone who has achieved success usually has paid a price or made a commitment of money and time?

You do need customers?

Customers are like the petrol in a car.

If you have no customers just like in a car your business will stall.

And if it stays in the one place for long enough it will rust.

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You need the right products, that your customers find irresistable.

You need a good pricing structure to encourage customers to maximise the sale.

You need help and guidance from someone who has been where you want to go.

You have the tools for your photography, now you need the business tools to fill your business with customers.

Is it time for you to take the next step in your business?

Your Time To Shine?

Welcome to my BRAND NEW ONLINE COURSE called “CREATE A PHOTOGRAPHY BUSINESS.”

For just $97 a month, or about the cost of 5 cups of coffee a week, you can move forward in your business with my BRAND NEW START UP PROGRAM that could have you on your way to achieving the happiness that you are struggling for.

You need a minimum of 5 hours a week to achieve success in the program.

Expect to make a minimum of $35,000 in the 12 months from your photography.

It’s ok to make a little money from your photography passion.

Like to know more?

Email me on on info@berniegriffiths.com or call 0418509228 for all the info.

https://www.berniegriffiths.com

Sell Prints, Not Pixels

Sell Prints Not Pixels

Many of the photographers that I coach are achieving some incredibly high numbers in their portrait sales.

In an era where we hear so much about photographers selling files at incredibly cheap prices, there are many photographers who are regularly making sales well over $2,000 and more.

Whether it is babies, families, or even pets, there is a big market out there for people wanting to buy wall art, albums and other products that will become priceless memories of their family history.

I came across this great article last week in Photography Spark, that really gives a good case for printed products.

“As a photographer, you should be thinking of printing long before you sit down to edit.

During a shoot, printing should be forefront on your mind in order to capture the correct images and ultimately cut your workflow in half.

It is crucial to shoot with intent to create a printed product that tells the full story.

For example, when photographing a wedding, you know to always get the emotional shots (for example: that moment when the mother of the bride puts her mother’s bracelet on her daughter, the bride).

But if you shoot with intent, you know that images that support that story will help in an album design—the follow up shots that complete the story (close-up of the jewelry; the tear on mom’s cheek).

To accomplish this way of thinking, we need to move beyond the concept of “printing” as only prints, because a single print will never tell a full story.

As children who grew up in the age of snapshots, we may have had them all around us, but we may only have had one or two of a specific story.

As professional photographers today, we are hired to tell the whole story, and to create the fullest account from the images, and to put that in print.

Then we have more than just slices of time but a full record of that moment.

The truth is: photographers who shoot with intent have less design changes from clients because they are telling a full story versus just trying to arrange images on a page.

When a printed product is designed well, telling the complete narrative, it truly becomes an item the client cannot live without.

Whether your images are digital or print, at some point, they will all go into storage.

As we are constantly adding to those images, we just can’t keep everything out at all times.

Let’s take the wedding photo example again; at some point, those framed photos or albums are going to end up stored in a box.

If the photographs weren’t printed out, that thumb drive might end up in that box instead.

The difference between digital and print is that twenty years, thirty years, forty years later—when someone other than us finds this artefact, how are they going to access it?

Someday, that box will be found.

Who knows if the same technology will exist?

Sure, there may be some specialist who could recover the images, but maybe not. If you pull a print out of a box, you have access to a final artefact.

You are basically guaranteeing that you will not disappear.

No matter who finds it, no matter who discovers it, they will have the final product.”

FULL STORY….http://www.photographyspark.com

Need help in your photography business? Simply contact Wendy

.… wendy@aswpp.com.au  ph 0417 526 466

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