Being a professional photographer requires you to focus on more than just photography. Though making photos is fun, you must also ensure the business side is solid. This exercise will help you achieve that.
There are a lot of photographers out there. Not all of them are professionals, of course, but it’s still best to keep working on your business and keep an eye on them too.
I’m not trying to scare you. There’s plenty of work to do too, and it’s just that you don’t want to get behind on the world.
Once every six months, I do this exercise, and it has helped me improve a lot already.
It’s a pretty straightforward exercise too. It can feel uncomfortable to get into the suitable mind space the first time, but you’ll get used to it quickly.
Let’s get into it.
The first step is to imagine you’re your competition. This annoying creepy dude from down the street is focussing on trying to one-up you—the guy you don’t want to be. For the next 15 minutes, you want to be him.
Set a timer and write down how you could one-up yourself. It can be small things; it can be huge things.
On a recent run of this exercise, I brainstormed things like finding better photo gallery solutions and posting more on LinkedIn.
The next step is to order these ideas. The photo gallery option may align with other ideas we can put under a branding category. The Linkedin idea is branding too, or it could be marketing.
You may have a lot of ideas around pricing you can put together. Put the ideas that belong together, together.
Pick ideas for your business in the coming six months. Be critical. Lowering your prices is a good idea but might hurt you in the long run.
Make a schedule and determine how to implement those ideas within your business. It could be all small and done within the next hour. Good for you!
Some require some more research. Schedule time to do so.
Make sure you finish all the implementations you planned before the next time you do this exercise. Once every six months should do the trick.
I’m very curious about some of the ideas you come up with. If you feel good sharing them, feel free to do so in the comments below!