Powerful ways to reinforce profitability - if you have time for them
We all know our own time-wasters well, don’t we? Social media, Netflix, just general bouncing from one thing to another, procrastinating. Not feeling up to the task of sitting ourselves down and getting something done. Sometimes we look up at the clock and marvel how the day just trickled away and you didn’t feel like you moved ahead one bit.
But there is another monster under our photographic bed. It’s time inefficiency, which is a little different from time-wasting. When you actually sit down at your desk to do your work, is your time being spent to optimize your profitability? Here are some ways we can truly reinforce our profitability and it has to do with conquering our time-ineffiencies:
Focus on Profit-work and not Busy-work
Yes, we may all need to dedicate some time to organizing, labelling, inventory, cleaning our lenses etc, but the bigger question is - what aren’t you doing when you’re absorbed in colour-coding events in your agenda to look prettier? The answer is, making money! And I can hear some of you telling me that when your working environment supports your body, soul and mind you will work better. And I agree. However, ask yourself if you really need to make a one-off trip to the Office Supply store because you’re missing a few sharpie colours for all the categories you’re trying to label in your calendar, or if you should sit down and finally launch the ad that will bring you bookings. Same goes for prop shopping. It’s fun! It’s creative! But if you have sufficient items for your sets and it’s just a hankering to shop, recognize it. Tell yourself that if you book 2 more clients, you will reward yourself with a trip to Hobby Lobby or Target. This tendency plagues us most when we have to tackle something undesirable that stands between us and that client - like sending out an invoice with a big number on it, or doing something you’re intimidated by, like figuring out Facebook Ads Manager to get that ad out.
Focus on your marketing plan and don’t let the marketing vampire suck you dry.
I talk about how asking for the “best” marketing strategies on FB can vampire-suck your productive time, because pieces of the marketing plans of others isn’t the optimal way to approach marketing for your own business. I also talk about it here, where we feel like we’re doing a lot in marketing but not getting traction. While getting inspo from others can help us find marketing strategies we weren’t aware of that we can study further (at a quiet, dedicated time like planning at the start of our year), just doing something that someone else suggested, without evaluating if it’s truly something that can work for you, just throws time and money into the wind and can actually create more difficulty in finding those bookings that you so desperately want and need. Your time is precious. Spend it doing things where the outcome will serve you best and bring in bookings. Testing in marketing is one thing; it helps you fine-tune a strategy. Experimentation on the fly that’s disguised as testing can push you further and further back instead of forwards. Find more details here on finding strategies that suit you.
Avoid complaints, rants, vents, and long, situational posts in Facebook groups
The Groups feature on Facebook is great because it offers spaces for discussions on all sorts of topics. Photographers have been able to leverage opinions, guidance and support on all aspects of business. Bouncing ideas, getting critiques, and advice for overcoming challenges from those who will understand. It can truly be a wonderful thing, especially if you feel that there aren’t any photographers in your area that you can approach, or you’re dealing with an issue that you are having trouble handling. You feel like you’re part of a community and take comfort in that.
But if you find yourself posting something that’s akin to a novel in length, and starts with “thanks for reading”, ends with “thanks if you’ve read this far”, or the worst offender “This will be long”, then it’s time to truly examine the issues you’re encountering that lead you to the point of having to write such a long post about it. For the amount of time it takes to write out that post, iterating every detail of what went wrong (and re-living it and turning it in your head), ruminating on how you did all you could but clients were late, poorly-dressed, uncooperative, misunderstood something you wrote, didn’t read invoices or documents, they asked too many questions, they demanded more etc, you could have made changes to a policy (or created a policy!) to prevent that situation from happening ever again or learning a new marketing strategy to tap into an ideal client rather than having accepted a non-ideal client so that you don’t go down the same road again in future. You are spending copious amounts of that precious profit-work time ruminating over, responding to and trying to resolve the situation with the client, and then doubling that time reading everyone’s responses on your group thread, responding, or even getting frustrated if the thread doesn’t go your way, which sometimes ends up in a defensive argument! These less than desirable client situations usually started because we didn’t take the proper time to identify our profit-work (which includes understanding and attracting our ideal client) and creating our unique marketing plan. Our hurry to try and find clients leads us to find wrong clients (using ill-fit marketing strategies - eats our time) and then if and when things derail with that client you deal with the aftermath (re-editing, discussions, refunds, removing galleries - eats our time) and then you’re so frustrated you need your peeps to bolster you (ranting, venting or seeking validation for how you managed - eats our time).
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Nothing in this life is clear-cut and linear. Covid-19 has shown us that all sorts of life curveballs exist, if there weren’t enough already. But there is a natural way, approach or steps that help us gain traction rather than losing it. We know that if we go shopping, we should write a list and possibly even a budget before going, so that we don’t waste time running through all of the aisles thinking we’re forgetting something - spending 1/3 more of our time than we would have if we’d just taken the time to make the list. This is true with marketing. Take the time to make your “list” of marketing strategies, to know your client and to get your message to them and you will be on your way to reinforcing profitability! We all have time for success, don’t we?
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