The Complete Studio

Keys to Success in Your Photography Business

By Robert Provencher

What is the complete studio? In a nutshell it means you have achieved success in your photography business, in several different niches, and use lean, mean, fat- free, direct marketing strategies that are honed to each of those markets. It also means you, as a person, have, and continue to grow, becoming a better, stronger, more confident, creative, wealthy, healthier and loving person- to name a few qualities.

As part of this state is the fact that you use goals. You have a vision. You have a clear mental picture of what it is you want to achieve.

You could decide to go after several markets, say babies, families and weddings. You hone each of your marketing strategies to match each targeted group. The goal here is to tie in all these efforts and end up with everything coming together, to finally paint that picture of success. Your success.

I believe the idea is very sound and it’s very important and what it ultimately means is – is that you’re complete.

It has to do with creating something that wasn’t there before but it’s yours. It’s not something that you can go out and have brought to you or purchase or go take a course and all of a sudden you graduate and there it is, like a job.

We’re talking about something that you’ve created, you’ve taken the steps, you’ve put the energy into it, you’ve taken the risks and you’ve created something that is totally 100% yours. More specifically, your photography studio.

Again like I mentioned, and I get comments, calls and I get a lot of emails from photographers and they’re often asking questions, I hate to say it but all too often it’s really not much more than rationalizations or excuses.

To achieve the complete studio, one has to take complete and total responsibility. We have to be able to identify what it is that’s not working and usually when I get an email or a phone call, it’s because something’s not working. I can look at the situation and if I dig a little deeper I can usually find it.

You're looking inwards into yourself because you are a part of this Complete Studio concept, nothing is left to chance and the entire idea......it’s very much like a recipe. You wouldn’t create – or put together a recipe for bread with one of the key missing ingredients, would you? You couldn’t make it without flour– or water or some other key ingredient. It just would not create the same results.

One of the major experiences that happens when you are building the complete studio is the use of strategies that often create many photography sessions, some pay off, some do not so much, but overall amount to a grand total.

To summarize: Self (the initial and main starting point), marketing (the energy/strategies that breath life into the business) that and results (fruits of your labour– power). The one BIG point that I wanted to truly emphasize, is the fact that there are many little efforts, many smaller steps that lead towards the success and end goal of your life and studio.

For example. My Kreative Kids Klub: marketing strategy, very attractive and very targeted. It would produce many phone calls and sessions. Same with the Babies First Year wall panel, which if you want to truly crank up in your area, start with a lower barrier to entry by offering it at a lower price.

The goal is not to get the $2,000.00 sale with each and every session. The goal here is not to let our egos get in the way, thinking we are so good, godly and divine in our art or business skills that clients will and should “get it” without explanation, because, well, look at how dam good we are, therefore it should require little or no effort because of this situation of heightened talent. Sorry, that’s how many photogs think. And many, by default, who have a great product, do get some business. Some don’t get much, they only teach, not do.

But wouldn't you want to look at the BIG PICTURE? The final total, including the things that are hard to measure, like the relationships, experiences and job satisfaction.

My idea of the complete studio is to look at the total and complete picture, which although hard to define, if I had to would look like this: many sessions in the market we want to achieve success in, and annual goals, financial and personal that are achieved through this picture.

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