You are not an Artist, you are a business...

I’ve recently been hearing a LOT from photographers about the challenges of running a photography business. Complaints about difficult clients, pricing, costs overrunning revenues, lack of bookings, lack of conversions etc etc. Here’s the thing, what I also see is that many photographers don’t seem to know the basics of running a good business.

Perhaps it’s because we start as “artists”, then we kind of fall into the charging side and ultimately try turn it into a living wage. Perhaps we also think that if our work gets good enough then the money will just follow, so we invest all our time in learning how to be better photographers, and skip the fundamentals of what makes a good business tick. Unfortunately for you, this only applies to the 1%. We ain’t all going to be David Alan Harvey, no matter how much youtube we watch.

Successful business people and particularly entrepreneurs typically don’t fall into a profession. They go with purpose, and the goal of making money. They prepare for doing business, never mind what that business is, then go execute with precision and pace. This is what needs to happen if you really want to make a go of it.

So hold on a second, Phil you ain’t a pro photographer….so why does it matter what you say? Entirely correct, I come from a different field. I’ve been working in the worlds largest tech companies for just short of 20 years, and for the last 10 pretty much exclusively dealing on the commercial, deal making and closing, client relationship, emerging tech, and business development side. I’ve started successful new business units (and a failed one too), and built business and relationships up into the tens of millions of dollars from scratch. I’ve also managed personal change too, I’ve pivoted in my career and skills a total of 3 major times (and many minor), changing who I am and what I do to stay relevant. I’ve done this across Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Africa and across 4 different industries. And here’s what I learned…..

Business, is business, is business.

It doesn’t matter if you sell muffins, deliver major tech projects, design websites, fix cars or if, you guessed it, take and sell pictures. THE FUNDAMENTALS REMAIN THE SAME.

So, heres the challenge. Apply these 12 questions to your photography business. If you can’t answer them fully or haven’t done these steps, then you have work to do. You need to drop the latest Jake Hicks tutorial and spend your time working this stuff out. And if you choose not to and want to carry on complaining about your business because it’s easier - then up to you ;-)

We start with the client. Why the client? It’s long been proven that running a truly client centric business is the root of success. So doesn’t it make sense that you should build your business model around THEM not around YOU? It’s not about what you want to sell, it’s about what THEY WANT TO BUY. So how do you get there?

• Who is your client?

This is a big one. It affects a lot of your other decisions down the line, so you better spend time here. There’s a business technique known as building customer “persona’s”. These personas represent who you want to procure your product or service and you better spend time getting to know what their real needs are. There is actually only one genuine way to do that….talk to them. Throw away what you think about them, go find people and talk to them. Work out what matters to them, who they are and how they think. There is a trick to this. Don’t ask “what they think” about your pricing, product or style. Don’t show them any of your work. They will be polite. You don’t want polite, you want real needs. Have a conversation with them about what photographs mean to them, and what role images play in their life. Make it about them not about you, and DOCUMENT everything you hear. Create 5-6 personas, then think about how you will target 2-3….

The results of this may surprise you. Their needs may not fit with what you are offering. In fact, the people you have picked to be “representative” as your clients, may turn out to be the wrong group entirely. Then at least you know, and can start the exercise again with a different group to build more personas, or change your offering to fit.

And don’t pick your friends or people you know well…they all tell you what they think you want to hear!

• Now you know who your client is, what experience do you want to deliver to them?

There is a term called a “customer journey” which is the “in thing” in design right now. It works, and it works for a reason. Let’s take a banking example. Banking for years chased a faster turnaround of services. Loans in an hour, bonds in 2 weeks etc etc. Studies however showed that ultimately the customer didn’t care about the time so much as long as they were informed as to each step on the journey and that when the bank made promises they kept them. Even as simple as calling back. This had a massive impact on customer satisfaction, way above shaving 24 hours off the time. How was this learned and then how was the new process designed? Through documenting and assessing customer journeys.

So, what is the end to end experience you want to deliver your client. From the moment of the first enquiry until the final delivery, and then even after. Map it out step by step, including different scenarios. Do a few for each “persona” you have created. Different persona’s can require different “journeys”. Then look at it and see where there are additional opportunities to monetize steps in it without polluting the experience with too much hard sell. Then go test this with real clients. Understand their frustrations with past shoots and tweak your experience to maximize impact.

Sue Bryce is the MASTER at this - she has designed such an uplifting positive experience for her clients that she can charge megabucks….go research her approach.

Now let’s talk money.

• What are your costs?

The most basic question, and it’s amazing how many photographers can’t answer this.

Have you considered all costs of doing business? (insurance, accounting, premises, gear depreciation and replacement, upgrades, marketing etc etc etc)

What is your required CAPEX per year? What is your base OPEX per month? (If you don’t know any terms here…google)

• What do you want to earn?

What does your profit need to be to be a sustainable business? What wage do you need to take to live and save for the future? How much will you re-invest back in the business? How much cash do you need in your business to survive lean periods?

• What is your pricing?

How many people did this before doing the prior two steps? Many of you I guess… Now you know the answers to the above two questions, setting a price is easy! Work out the number of shoots you need to book, at what average rate, to reach your profit. If this is more shoots than reasonable then you don’t have a business. Remember to account for editing time in terms of how many shoots you can do and still have time to sleep and eat…. Also remember to account for lean times. Assuming 65% of your available time for work is billed to client, and the rest is on marketing or admin activity is a pretty good assumption.

• What is your commercial model?

Are you fixed price for output?

Are you time and materials?

What are your ancillary products and how will you make money on them? (prints…etc etc)

Do you have a flexible supplier for your ancillary products and do you have the best price you can get? Do you need to renegotiate?

Now the last few steps…

• Where are you going to fail?

Over ambitious assumptions and a lack of risk management are two areas where I have seen countless businesses and contracts fail. Spend a good week going over and over your plan to see the week points. Get external reviews with experienced people. Listen to them and mitigate your risks. Learn where to focus to be pro-active at addressing failure points. It’s a lot cheaper to prevent than fix.

• What is your marketing plan?

You know your target clients. You know the experience you have for them. You know how much that experience will cost and what they are willing to pay.

Go to where those clients are, digitally and physically. Use every channel available.

Market the EXPERIENCE more than the PRODUCT. Your product is probably similar to most others. Differentiation in a competitive market lies in client experience, not the end product. Experience generates value that the competition is not thinking about.

If someone asks you “Why should I use XY Photography and not YX Photography” and you cannot answer in 3 sentences with a compelling value proposition…go back to the start and try again.

• How are you going to grow?

Here’s the thing, one person businesses have an extremely high failure rate. Grinding it out on your own for ever is probably not sustainable.

By the way, businesses that don’t grow, also have an unusually high failure rate. Getting “static” means people lost interest, and eventually…give up.

You need to work out at least a 3 year high level plan to scale your business.

So how do you grow the business, scale it, and turn it into a revenue machine, rather than you being the sole employee forever.

• Do you know your numbers? Really? All the time?

I review so many propositions, deals, business plans, businesses where after I ask 2-3 basic questions the “umms” and “errr’s” start.

If you don’t know your numbers you are in trouble. Seriously in trouble.

Here’s some simple questions to ask yourself:

a) What’s your turnover month by month?

b) Are you up or down on this time last year, and by how much?

c) What is your cost to income ratio?

d) How much debt is in the business?

e) What is your monthly gross profit

f) What is your monthly net profit?

g) What is your monthly marketing spend?

h) What is your customer acquisition cost?

i) How much does each customer spend on average?

j) What is your average product upsell per customer?

k) Which upsell items earn you the most margin?

• Not working? Then what are you going to do?

Have a Plan B. Have options to pivot to. Good entrprenuers often end up with completely different business models than they started with. This is not a failure. It’s good business sense.

• Are you executing your plan with intensity and drive?

An old silicon valley saying is “Ideas are cheap, execution is everything”. Now you have all the above you need to be an execution machine. You will have ups and downs, setbacks and failure. But if you don’t drive hard at it, you are not going to succeed. This is going to be hard than your corporate job. You may end up working more hours, and more time, but if you are not up for this should you really be doing this?

OK, for now I’m done. Hope this has helped at least a few!