There's so much we photographers can learn from watching what others in our industry do, whether we watch a tutorial or start an online photography course. But have you thought about improving your business by looking beyond photography industry?
Olivia Bossert, a lifestyle and fashion photographer who previously gave us advice on how to make it big in the fashion and commercial world when you're based in a small town, also shares her experience in improving her photography business by looking outside the photography world. This realization, that we can add to our business so much more by looking at other industries and spheres of life, Bossert admits, didn't come at the very beginning of her business.
She started out like most of us, by looking at what other photographers do and offer to people wanting to start their own photography business. This is where she found her "industry specific advice, first hand experiences, and a sense of "'his person gets me.'" However, when Bossert started to expand her self learning curve by looking at other creative industries, that's when she started coming up with new ideas and learned how to adapt this information and make it work to enhance her own business.
While still working a nine-to-five job to provide for herself, Bossert immersed herself in the world of podcasts. The topics revolved around the business world in general, which made her even more motivated to put in time and effort in creating the business she had always wanted. Using time as and when, she would listen to informative podcasts while driving her car, at the desk doing a job that didn't require mental focus, or even when cooking and cleaning.
Later on, Bossert added books in the mix and has since spent the last three years improving her ability to extract the information and put it into practice by applying the knowledge she has acquired. Some of her recommendations include "Essentialism" by Greg Kckeown, "How to Style Your Brand" and "Brand Brilliance" by Fiona Humberstone, "You Are Badass" by Jen Sincero, and many more inspiring reads that focus on different parts of your life that have nothing to do with photography as such.
Bossert reminds us that photography is not just about the technique we use to edit, but it's actually so much more than that. We deal with people on daily basis, and we are building a business, too. Putting time aside to work on your personal and professional growth, such as watching documentaries, listening to podcasts or TED talks that cover a wide range of applicable topics, or joining in on networking groups will only add an edge to you and your business. Sometimes it helps if we step away from our image-filled Lightroom catalogs and look at other areas of life that we touch on every day as we build our photography business.
Having said that, Bossert advises not to sign up for every course you see online because it may appear that purchasing this latest course will solve all your problems, but instead you might end up not even finishing it. Be picky before you buy and do your research by looking at the reviews. Find things that pique your interest even outside the photography world because at the end of the day, we are so much more than that. We are photographers, artists, designers, businessmen and businesswomen, we are people managers, sometimes writers, and website design specialists.
In order for us to advance in our photography, we also have to work on our personal and business growth. Would you agree?
Images used with the permission of Olivia Bossert.
You can also do things the old school way by getting a live business mentor through SCORE (www.score.org).
My best small business mentor early on was actually my barber, who had a carefully cultivated clientele of some of the major business executives in the area. Every haircut was a personal Q&A session in how to run a small business in town.