Your dreams are like muscles and your photography marketing is your fitness plan
Image by: @barcelocarl
The marketing plan for photography: a regimen for building dream muscles
For those of you following my daily lives in the Facebook Group, today I talked about how I heard an educator refer to dreams as muscles. His point was that we must exercise our dream muscles to build them, just as we must exercise our physical muscles to gain strength and form.
The Body Pillar
The body pillar is the first pillar in the 5-pillar ShineSparkL Marketing philosophy. Why? Because we live inside our bodies, and that is the vessel we are using in this world. We cannot do anything outside of our bodies. As I heard Sadhguru say once (paraphrased): “Go ahead and leave your body right now, I’ll wait.” It cannot be done physically. We must take care of the vessel so that we may successfully experience and navigate our earthly experience, which includes our livelihood of photography.
We know that exercise and weightlifting will result in muscle development. We can visually see the results of a workout regimen where small muscles become larger and more defined ones (yours or someone else’s). We can also see the opposite - muscle mass being lost when the workout is no longer done. If it is proven that a program or plan to lift weights will lead to muscle gains and a lack of one leads to muscle loss, then we know that a program or plan to build other things would also result in gains while a lack of one can lead to loss.
If dreams are muscles
We believe that fitness and workout regimens create results because we see physical changes over time. But dreams are like clouds - intangible, hard to define, hard to visualize. It’s therefore hard to believe in them and do the right things to manifest them. So what if we treated our dreams like muscles?
I could say that I have a dream muscle and it lives next to or inside my heart and every time I get to be of service to others with my talent in photography, I am strengthening that muscle. Or maybe my dream muscles are next to my bicep muscles that help me lift a camera to my face hundreds of times in one wedding. With every rep of bicep curls in my weekly workout, I know I am building my biceps. And with every rep of putting camera to face and making photographs, I am building my dreams. And if it’s guaranteed that the bicep curls will result in bigger biceps, why would I ever think that the camera curl wouldn’t work the same?
Muscle health and dream health
Our body, mind and soul are not separate - they are entities that seamlessly blend within our body to create us as living and breathing humans. So while some of us might dedicate ourselves into regimen of planned workouts to get and stay fit, and eat right to fuel those activities, we often don’t think of our photography goals and dreams in that same way. Instead, we cobble together some inconsistent activities (aka marketing tips) that we hope will work to find us clients. Could you imagine if we randomly tried “work tips” to succeed in our traditional jobs, or “fitness tips” to become ultimately fit, or “sport tips” to become elite athletes? While you may see a few wins using that approach, mastery typically comes from a program or plan: academic, apprenticeship, or something created by someone with knowledge and expertise. Kind of like fad diets that may have some short-term results, but we end up rebounding and backtracking because they weren’t sustainable. Tips and tricks could give us some fresh ideas and perspectives, and maybe provide some shortcuts once we already know what we’re doing, but arguably are not the consistent program that needs to be implemented to see certain and sustainable results. What is the fitness map for to build our dream muscles? Our marketing plan for photography.
Food and money are both fuel
We fuel our bodies with food and water. We literally die if we don’t. We understand that in order to make muscle gains, we must fuel our bodies in a certain way and consistently to support our effort and growth. If you and your muscles are starving and you are dehydrated, you won’t get too far! What is our dream muscle fuel? Money. Our dreams will die without proper fuel because business relies on money coming in and going out. We all understand that because as soon as we’re old enough and/ or of out of school, we seek work to pay the bills and to live. But when it comes to our photography business, we may starve it through low prices and discounts. We know that muscles without proper fuel will not grow and thrive. In fitness, low prices and discounts are akin to not enough calories! Money allows us not only to pay our bills, but it allows us to invest in our businesses, so that we may give a beautiful experience to our clients, and invest in things like equipment and education to improve our photography game. The money and your marketing program fuels these gains the same way that a fitness regimen and food will fuel your body gains.
The dream muscle-building plan
Just as you may research and/ or pay to create a fitness regimen that will work for your personal fitness goals and then execute on the plan per the set schedule and progression, your marketing plan is the regimen that will get your dream muscles in shape. A marketing plan considers where you are at (starting point), your professional goals (where you want to be) and maps out the activities, frequency and progressive effort needed to get from point A to point B. An example of such a program in the fitness world is Couch to 5k. It assumes you are at a super beginner starting point, and progresses someone over 9 weeks from sitting on the couch, to walking, to running 5k. It starts slow, and builds as the person becomes more capable.
In this same way, your marketing plan may start very basic and then progresses as you become more educated, confident and capable.
Don’t know where to start? Marketing education is important as a first step, and you are in the right place. Start by reading other articles in this blog or purchase a product to get you on the way. Let’s get your fitness plan going to build up those dream muscles!
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