Patience is Building Brand Equity
We tend to desire instant gratification. This is when it gets tough for everyone as things are not happening quick enough. If you’re anything like me, you probably looked at other photographers, or online successes and feel as if they were instantly popular and successful. In reality, they’ve been working hard for years and hustled while you were sleeping to get to where they are now.
Think of patience as building your brand equity.
Everything you do is building your personal brand from the ground up.
This patience, is about the long term viability of you and your connection to the photography industry. This connection makes your old school resume a thing of the past. The resume is dead. You’re photography business is your blog, your twitter feed, your facebook page, your search engine rankings. Essentially, you’re patience becomes your online presence. You probably won’t start-up with photo shoots or print sales every day.
It’s a long roadtrip, hours working your 9-5, or shift work, and using every bit of free time to build your website, process images, and build the infrastructure to promote your brand. Oh and don’t forget reading! You’ll read more than you ever did in your life. While things are slowly picking up, your downtime is your chance to build the equity.
Talk about your love for starting the business, your love of photography, what you think about the industry! Be patient and ensure you’ve got the next essential attribute! PASSION!
Passion is Endless Energy
I sometimes wonder if there is a perceived simplicity to a photography business because of the fact that digital cameras give us the instant gratification in seeing the photograph right away. It’s a tease and is setting us up for the test of patience. This perceived simplicity, can cause people to think it’s easy money! The “easy money in photography” syndrome results in people trying to start a photography business with not enough true passion. It’s not something they were born to do. You need to love what you’re doing or starting a photography business will end up just like your old day job. You don’t want it to ever feel like a J-O-B. Passion allows you to play. You don’t feel like you’re working.
Passion changes your mindset and you start to look at everything as state of play and relate it to your business.
I want to paint a picture:
Imagine yourself on vacation. In a job you don’t like, this is a time for escape – you tell yourself you’re not going to use a computer, or think about work at all. You are given a week of your year to enjoy your time. Maybe 2 weeks. You drink until you passout, you feel sorry for the people you see on their blackberry or iPhone checking in on things. You see someone on their laptop or using the hotel internet, using their e-mail and think it’s sad.
Imagine yourself on vacation again (I know 2 vacations in one day! Hell YA). Your photography business is going well and you absolutely love it. You’re conditioned to think that it’s about escape, however on vacation you don’t mind taking endless photographs, talking about your photography with people you meet, showing them photos on your iPhone, and checking your e-mail to respond quickly to people that like to talk with you.
Essentially, what I’m saying is that you passion for photography allows you to have the energy at the times when you normally would be trying to escape from work. Passion keeps you pushing through the time it takes to get things up and running.
I would be shooting HDR photography, and photography projects even if I was not trying to make money at the same time. But once you start to want to monetize your passions, it can easily become too much because the monetization doesn’t happen as easily as you pictured it. Be in it for the long haul, and it’s bound to happen at some point. It’s essential for your, and any, business to survive the difficult start. I am going through the very process right now. It’s not easy. But it is possible!
What other essential attributes to you see required for starting a photography business?
I know a guy who’s approach to business is quite frankly the ‘highest return with the least effort”. He talks about future clients he doesn’t even have yet with disdain and contempt, citing lines like “who cares how creative the photos are, in sports photography parents just want a picture of their snotty kid to hang on the fridge for a couple months”.
If you think like this, if you believe it for a moment, it’s going to come through one way or another, it’ll show in the quality of your work, and it’ll get back to clients. I struggle with the fact that very uncreative subjects can sap my creativity, and try as I might, a wedding with a couple that’s very stoic just never turns out as good as a wedding with a couple that’s fun and energetic, so if you go into the shoot with a bad attitude towards your customers, it’s going to show in your work.
So I think one of the important attributes of starting a business is be the person you want to work with – really be that person, don’t just act that way because you’re not fooling anyone. Decide that you want to be positive and pleasant, treat yourself and those around you with respect, be honest with your clients and they’ll appreciate your candor. Give them the extra creative kick you would want to get if you were on the other side of the lens. Become a positive force, and things around you will suddenly seem more positive. If you become the person you want to work with, it’ll show in all of your day to day interactions, and in the quality of your work.
I couldn’t agree more.
Eventually that guy will be nothing more than that guy taking pictures for a fridge. The second someone else, like you, comes in the picture and shows the human side of connection and photography, that guy is no where to be found. They don’t even remember him.
And Yes, you must be yourself! That’s the hard thing about it. I’ve realized that I have to ease myself into portrait photography because if I jump in, I risk not being me. I look at the experience and try to see where I fit into the equation. So many books talk about this too Ted! So you’re totally onto something. They talk about being yourself because sooner or later, you’ll be found out.
As for that guy. Geesh! I bet he doesn’t have a website where he walks about his approach! LOL Maybe he does…but a “no bullshit” approach to child sports photography doesn’t really sit too well.
My mom told me, a couple of years back, that I should find ways to discover the things I like to do … the things that make me truly happy. And then, I should look for ways to earn money from these. It sounded too unrealistic to me then. But when I got burned out after being in the corporate world for almost a decade, her words all came gushing back to me.
And guess what … mothers really know best! She was right! I used to hate weekdays because I had to drag myself to work on those days. But now, I love every single day! I live in the present … unlike before when I spent most of my days wishing it was already past 5pm.
Passion. Yep … having cruising through my veins is good. It may not always be easy … but I’m getting there … I hope! ;)
Good variety of work. A lot of times with landscape photographers, that will be the only thing they do, but this guy does other stuff too. Thanks for sharing.
Interesting article. I think these are essential attributes for any business start up but I can see how it applies so much in photography. It’s not so much about a niche, like being interested in shoes, or basketball, this is something th at is quite broad so you have to really have a genuine love for anything that involves getting a good picture.
I believe that that is what most people are looking for these days — to have a job that does not feel like a job. This ideology has given way to a rise in entrepreneurship. As well, however, it has given rise to a lot of disappointments and disillusionment. I believe there is really no such thing as “easy money” in any line of work. NO matter how passionate you are in what you’re doing, and no matter how much you love it, work is still “work” so it has to be afforded adequate attention and time.