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I’m always mentally tracking my business goals, how many weddings I shoot per year, how quickly I can edit photos, how much time it takes me to complete this or that, changing how I do something so I can do it better.
The very first goal I made my first summer in business was, “I want to photograph 5 weddings this year so I have a varied portfolio.” It didn’t matter to me how I accomplished photographing those weddings. I did some for free, some for ridiculously cheap, and some ended up being fairly pricey. I pounced on anyone I heard was getting married and occasionally overdid the sales pitch in effort to meet this goal. I probably didn’t run a very tidy business, but I accomplished and exceeded my goals. I photographed 15 weddings that year. It took the next year to really refine what I was doing as well as the process and I feel that now I’m only just settling into a good routine.
Setting that goal for myself changed my business and without creating something to work toward I don’t think I would have succeeded at all. I never wrote down that goal it was just always there somewhere in my left brain trying to keep me on track. As business grew I started setting more and more goals. Different goals. Yearly goals. Monthly goals. Small goals for individual sessions. Editing goals. Blogging goals. 100% of the time I’ve put my mind to it, I’ve exceeded those goals every single time.
As a full time business owner I now have a yearly business plan, mostly for myself, just to track these goals, plans, marketing, stats, and all that number-crunching business. Still though I make these small goals so I can accomplish little things in a big picture. These have been the foundation of my business and I would encourage anyone starting a business, or whose business seems stalled, or anyone feeling unmotivated to create some personal goals with regards to the business end of their photography – or the photography end of the photography.
Write them down. Keep ‘em in your brain. Blog your goals. Write a business plan. Research whatever you need to do in order to accomplish these goals.
I believe that if you create these goals for yourself, you’ve already done half the work to accomplish them.
Next week we have two classes!! Monday, July 23rd is our free Catchlights and Sparkly eyes class. Class will start with a bit of information to help you with getting good catchlights and then the rest of the class is all Q &A for you guys, so bring your questions! Wednesday, July 25th is our Pricing Class. You guys asked for this class. We’ll talk about different pricing techniques, how to raise your prices, how to figure out where your prices should be, how to price products….and so much more. If you can’t make it to either of these classes live, you can still register and you’ll be able to watch the recording afterward!
