What's the best thing you can do for your photography business RIGHT NOW?
Read this newsletter in its' entirety.

 

Happy Labor Day weekend. This weekend is always somewhat bittersweet,
since it is a 'milestone', when summer draws it's last breath, and fall
is soon upon us.

This is a great time for photography studios be gear-up and get ready
to break out their marketing for the most productive and busiest
time of the year.

Is your marketing ready to go? Or are you going to wait to the last
minute, merely giving it some thought, risking, like most folks, nothing
actually getting done.

When is the best time to plan your marketing? Actually, it's a good idea
to have the whole year mapped out, but also to have your stuff ready as soon
as one season is started.

This means start working on the fall stuff in the summer. At least get the
major ideas and strategies mapped out. It's a shame and waste to let the
most profitable time of year slip by because of procrastination or excuses.
And you don't want to send out offer that are boring and sterile. The worst
marketing sin of all, besides doing nothing.

You could send out a fall and xmas newsletter to your database. You could
also send them a postcard loaded with time sensitive offers. You could mail
a postcard to a geographic area in your city, with demographic considerations,
meaning, people with families and cash.

Listen, don't come whining to me in January, complaining that the economy
sucks, people in your area aren't 'like that', or whatever other sorry-lame-ass
of an excuse you're resting on because the truth is you're too blind and or lazy
to do much of what really matters.

Maybe I'm a freak. I love marketing my studio, and I have new leading
edge ideas for my studio this fall. Perhaps I will share them, failures or
success's, later on. The fact is if I did nothing I would likely do OK, but
that's the wrong approach. Never rest on your laurels. Never take anything
for granted. Never get fat and lazy. Stay sharp, stay focused....

When we send out newsletters, I would go to my folder marked, you guessed
it, 'newsletters'. In there would be ideas and thoughts for content for upcoming
newsletters. I would have fun, start writing whatever cam to mind.

Postcards: I would watch movies with Tina and hand paste stickers on
each card or envelope.

Marketing is fun. It's exciting. It's what drives your studio to succeed.
It's the engine, the drivetrain, transmission and fuel. Everything else
is eye-stuff.

I love getting stuff out there, without shame or fear. It's exciting
knowing that I am communicating directly with my clients and prospects.

Maybe I'm a freak. Are you? Robin Spencer is. He's one of the best marketers
of his small, in home studio. Here's a sample that he let me use years
ago in my marketing manual. Check it out:
http://www.profitablestudio.com/news/septnews.jpg

Robin gets it. Do you?

Next week: Tips on putting together a kick-butt newsletter for your
studio....

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Do you have any heroes? Models? Mentors?

If you want to grow and become bigger, better, larger than life and more successful
in your photography business, one of the best ways is by following people you admire.
People who have achieved things you admire. People who have qualities that you would like
to emulate.

These people can be historical, or alive today. Famous people, celebs, or people
you know.

What's important to remember is to keep an open mind. Put the 'ego' aside,
and look around. I have posters in my office of some of my role models. I see them,
and am inspired by them, every time I walk into my office. I also note many
characteristics of many of my friends, and often will try to instill
the positive qualities I see and like into my own life.

I have hundreds of books by many of my role models, many of which are autobiographies.
What's great about reading these is that you get to not only read about
the lives, struggles and success's of these people, but you get to see
the world from their perspective. Remember, it takes an open mind.

Besides inspiration, ideas, character, personality and ideals, you can
also model them in your own brainstorming sessions. Here's an example
from my life: Years ago, when I was starting to get involved in my
photography association, one of my first jobs was "Speaker Chair". That meant
I had to line up educational speakers to come into our area
and 'speak'. My first contact quoted a price much higher than anticipated.
I was lost. "What to do....? What to do?"

Not willing to throw in the towel, and give up that easy, I asked myself
this simple question: "What would Mike Dupont do?" And perused possible
answers. Mike, you see, is a good friend, and someone I admire as a
real "can-do" kind of guy. He gets things done!

After I asked this question several answers came and within 20 minutes
I had the speaker secured and his fee negotiated and paid for through
a few creative sponsorship proposals I came up with. I was so proud, and even though
this was almost 20 years ago, it's an event I remember like it was yesterday.

Last week when I dropped my daughter off at school, I said to her: "Be the leader Danielle!
Be someone your friends will look up to." Using role models also means being
one. It helps us to grow.

Here's a quick, 'short' list of people I truly admire for their values, business
acumen, balls, brains, confidence, flair, pizazz, humour, and on the list goes...:

Muhamad Ali
Walt Disney
Gene Simmons
Churchill
Lee Iaccoca
President Harry Truman
President Ronald Reagan
Donald Trump
Oprah
Monte Zucker

and many of my friends.....

The next time you find you need answers in whatever endeavour you're in, ask
yourself what would your role model do?

yours in photography,
Robert Provencher
Author of 'Exposed: The naked uncencored truth to running a
successful photography business'
available at: www.digitalphotographybook.com

www.ProfitableStudio.com

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit."
-- Aristotle --

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Here's an email I received from a student named Melissa, who was at
NSI in August. (Niagara School of Imaging). Melissa brought her 5 year old daughter MacKenzie in to pose for the whole class. It was warm and humid, and MacKenzie had just posed for another class just prior to ours. Tough kid!:

"Hi Rob,I think that every single relative and friend I have has watched
that slide show you did of Mackenzie and everyone loves it,
especially me!!! I think that everyone that I have talked to cried
when they watched it.

Thank you so much for putting that together and for letting me have
copies of all of the files. Now I need to decide which ones to
print... I love them all!! Even though I take photos of my
children all of the time, the photos that you took and the
slideshow that you created will be something that I will treasure
forever.

Could you please tell me the artist and the title of the song that
you included in Mackenzie's slide show? I would really appreciate
it!! Thanks again, Melissa W"

Anyhoo, everyone was shooting away. As you know I photograph many, many kids and babies. I love shooting them. They are so much fun. The tough part here
is when you have 18 other photogs, and each would shoot the same kid
totally different ways. It's a tad intimidating. And, I'm the teacher.

Melissa is a good photographer in her own right, so when I was photographing her daughter I was that much more intimidated. I didn't show it however. I forged ahead, confident that I would 'create', in my own way. And hopefully the students I was trying to teach and inspire would pick up something.

Teaching can be a little challenging at times. Especially when you're doing a live shoot, and the model is getting hot and tired, and her mom is one of the students.

Learning to create your own style is a challenge when you try to learn from others. All you can do is watch, learn, be inspired, try to emulate, borrow, but mostly look
for little gems and nuggets of gold. The true path to success is to have faith in your grand vision, AND, practise, practise, practise! Like you are on fire.

Here's a great video that reveals the truth behind growing your own style and
eventual success. From the No Bs Photo Success forum, as posted by Jay:
Ira Glass on storytelling.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hidvElQ0xE&mode=related&search=

Heres the slide show that I showed the class the next day and gave to Melissa:
MacKenzie slide show

http://www.westmountphotography.com/clients/mackenzie/index.html

Keep growing and being inspired.......

"Art washes from the soul the dust of everyday life." -- Picasso --

yours in photography,

*************************************
"The test of a first rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function."
~F.Scott Fitzgerald~

How do you fee about money? Money isn't everything, but it is an essential that all too often is viewed upon with scorn, negativity and skewed perceptions. I personally struggle with this all my life, but am working on it everyday. It's an uphill battle.

We run business's, and therefore we must have goals and plans, right? Of course. NO plans, no directions. No 'map'. When you know what you want, you get what you want. This is the first step in marketing your photography business.

You also need to know how much you want to make. I heard someone say: "I want enough to pay the bills an cover expenses." Uh? Can you be a little more vague please?

Listen, money is a very important aspect to our lives and our business. We must treat it as such, and purge the old thoughts and attitudes that hold us back. Most of these are imposed upon us by what we heard growing up. Things our parents and society believed in and told us.

Things like:
*money doesn't grow on trees
*hard earned money (in other words, you must work very HARD to get what you get)
*win/lose (when you earn a dollar, someone looses one)
*money is evil
*'excessive profits' is wrong
*rich people are bad, selfish, greedy

And on and on......

When I announce the completion of my marketing system, which is steamrolling ahead and will bigger and better than ever, it will include a section on wealth attraction for photographers, which includes tips on recognizing negative wealth talk, and strategies for helping your purge them. This is serious business. We need to create balance and a healthy, responsible outlook when it comes to wealth and money. For most of us, our views and feelings on money are black and white.

We also need to recognize the real purpose of our business: to earn a profit. If you have a problem with that idea you may never get over it enough to succeed.

If you think it's sacrilege to mix business and the 'art', then you are still misguided. Oddly enough, when I got it straight that it was about making a profit, and a decent one, that's when the 'art', my output, my photographic skills, all skyrocketed. Cool, very cool....and mammas' happy!

There are many, way too many techniques for getting our minds straight on the whole wealth thing, and getting over any guilt, imposed by outside. Let me finish with one BIG piece of advice, and a quote from Wallace Wattles, who wrote "The Science of Getting Rich" about a 100 years ago, and if you visit the link just after his quote, you can get yourself a free copy. I highly recommend you do just that.

But first, my advice, that I heard from Con and Gloria Miron, years ago:

When someone asks: "How's business?", no matter how bad it may be, always, always reply: "Business is great!!"

"The universe desires you have everything you want to have. Nature is friendly to your plans. Everything is naturally for you.
Make up your mind that this is true. It is essential, however, that your purpose should harmonize with the purpose that is in all.
You must want real life, not mere pleasure or sensual Gratification. Life is the performance of function- physical,mental and spiritual- of which we are capable, without excess in any."

WALLACE D WATTLES
www.scienceofgettingrich.net


yours in photography,
Robert Provencher
Author of 'Exposed: The naked uncencored truth to running a
successful photography business'
available at: www.digitalphotographybook.com

www.ProfitableStudio.com

 

 

***********************

Thanks! Robert Provencher

www.ProfitableStudio.com

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