Often being successful in any creative field is equal parts talent and knowing how to run your business. Yet for a lot of us, we spend the least amount of time educating ourselves on good business practices. The beginning of the new year is a great time to remedy this. Around this time of the year, I often like to reinvest my downtime into planning and preparing for the coming year. This includes improving on the business side of my studio, in both educating myself and in making my job easier. There are a lot of great sources of education for small businesses out there but recently Jacob Owens over at TheBuffNerds has been putting out consistently good content on how he runs his production house.
In this video, Owens breaks down creating a budget, contracts, and other tactics he uses when negotiating with a new client. It can be overwhelming when first trying to break into the commercial side of photography and video. Sometimes it feels like it's full of insider rules and terms that you need to know before even dealing with clients. When I first started out I found talking to and learning from a variety of sources already working in the industry gave me a better insight into just how differently the same process can be dealt with. There are lots of ways to be successful and run your business and this knowledge eventually made me more comfortable with developing my own strategy and procedures for negotiating with clients.
If you're interested in taking your business practices to the next level, be sure to check out "Making Real Money: The Business of Commercial Photography With Monte Isom!" Between the educational videos and private Facebook group, the wealth of knowledge and experience will improve even the most seasoned business.
Succinct and efficient. I've been self-employed as a commercial photographer for 41 years and the past ten years as a film maker. I've done a lot of deals, thanks for the refresher. Very good reminders.