In this episode, we delve into a crucial aspect of business—the business plan.
Do you have a comprehensive, written business plan that outlines your growth, strategies, and long-term goals?
We explore why having a solid plan is essential, not just for multi-million dollar businesses but for photographers too. Your business deserves the same strategic approach. We guide you through creating an effective business plan, covering key elements like the executive summary, company description, market analysis, organization and management, product lines, marketing, sales strategy, and financial projections.
This master business document becomes your business Bible, providing detailed insights into every aspect of your photography business. Whether you're a solo photographer or planning to expand, having a clear, well-documented plan is the foundation for sustained success.
Start planning today for a strategically clear and growth-minded future!
Join Your Magic Year here.
Use the code PODCAST to receive special pricing when you enroll.
Connect with Karinda!
Thanks for listening!
In this episode, we delve into a crucial aspect of business—the business plan.
Do you have a comprehensive, written business plan that outlines your growth, strategies, and long-term goals?
We explore why having a solid plan is essential, not just for multi-million dollar businesses but for photographers too. Your business deserves the same strategic approach. We guide you through creating an effective business plan, covering key elements like the executive summary, company description, market analysis, organization and management, product lines, marketing, sales strategy, and financial projections.
This master business document becomes your business Bible, providing detailed insights into every aspect of your photography business. Whether you're a solo photographer or planning to expand, having a clear, well-documented plan is the foundation for sustained success.
Start planning today for a strategically clear and growth-minded future!
Join Your Magic Year here.
Use the code PODCAST to receive special pricing when you enroll.
Connect with Karinda!
Thanks for listening!
Welcome to Mindset and Money Mastery for Photographers the podcast. We help overwhelmed photographers make more money while simplifying their business by mastering their you guessed it mindset and money. Tune in each week for practical and actionable tips to take your photography business up a notch. Let's dive right in.
Speaker 2:We're going to be talking about something that is near and dear to my heart and that is one of the biggest fundamentals of building a business, which is having a business plan. So I'm going to ask you today do you have a real business plan? Do you know what a real business plan is? You might be sitting there thinking like, yeah, I have a plan, but really, do you have a solid, written out business plan and strategy that covers your business step by step, that talks about growth and expansion and where you're going, what things look like the type of business plan that a multi-million dollar business would have? I'm going to ask you this If you were running a real multi-million dollar business and you needed investors to come in and support you, you would need a rock solid plan. Now you're probably sitting there thinking like, well, corinda, I'm not running a multi-million dollar business, I don't need that, I don't need investors, I don't need any of that stuff. But my question for you is why are you treating your business any differently than that? You should be able to show projections, your strategies, the specifics of every part of your business, and show that you know what you're doing going into your business For some reason, because photographers can just pick up a camera and start a business.
Speaker 2:Oftentimes, photographers are going into this business and this industry with zero plan and zero strategy Because, after all, what do you have to lose? You just have a camera. It's not like you're spending all this money to start a real business. But I think that's a major fallacy in the way photographers think and the way photographers are taught to think. There is a lot to lose. This is our livelihood, this is our career, this is our heart and soul. That's a lot to lose.
Speaker 2:Chances are you're not doing the things to treat your business like a real, solid business. Chances are you haven't taken the time to write out a real business plan. Do you know how much money you're going to make this year? Do you know how to project that? Do you know what your profits will be? How much money is going in your pocket? Do you know how much you're actually going to be paying in taxes? Do you have a plan written out of how to get your clients that you need through the door? Another way to think about this is is there a plan that is so well written out in my business that another person could step in at any given point in time and run the business. For me, that's important, not only because that shows that you have a real solid plan, a real solid handbook, so to say, of how your business should be run, but it's also important because, if something were to happen to you tomorrow, you need to know that your business is going to be okay and that your clients are going to be taken care of. That is a key step in making sure that everything is okay if something were to ever happen to you and your business didn't have you anymore. I know that's a really morbid thing to say, but it is a genuine thing that you need to consider as a photographer. If you photograph weddings, can you imagine if something happened to you in this family's wedding portraits were on your computer and nobody knew how to get to them or deliver them to those clients or knew what clients you even had in your system. That would be a big problem. If you do have these things written out, that's amazing. If you do have a solid plan, a solid strategy, that's amazing. Good for you. Pad yourself on the back because I can promise you you're doing better than 95% of photographers out there.
Speaker 2:Let's talk about what a business plan really is and what should go into creating a business plan. A business plan starts with an executive summary. It talks about your business and why it will be successful. This should include your mission statement, your products or your services that you offer, your leadership, who's running the organization? Who is in charge, any employees or any staff that you might have helping you? This should also include your financial information, like high-level growth plans for your business. Where do you see your business 10 or 15 years down the road? How do you feel about those things? Do you have a mission statement? Do you know your products? Do you have them all written down and your services all written down? Do you have a leadership organization chart of what you do, maybe what you have outsourced or what you have employees doing in your business, and do you have that high level financial growth plan written out of what your business is going to look like 10 or 15 years down the road? The next piece you need to have in your business plan is a basic description, right, giving detailed information about your company, the problems that you solve, the types of customers you service, organizations, etc. And what makes your business different, what makes you unique, what are your competitive advantages as a photographer, as a photography brand, what are your advantages? What are your expertise? What are you good at? Think about all of those things when you're writing out your description. This really is the place where you're going to boast about your strengths and share how amazing you are.
Speaker 2:The next thing you're going to need is a market analysis. Guys, have you ever run a market analysis? This is important to do at least once. I'm going to give you permission to do it once and then never do it again. The reason why I only want you to do this once and then never really touch it again is because I don't want you to get so lost in what other people are doing aka being cheap photographers that you don't do what you need to be doing to be profitable. So when you look at a market analysis, I want you to look at what people are out there, what they're doing, what their strengths are, what their weaknesses are and how what you're doing is different than what they're doing.
Speaker 2:When you do your market analysis, some things to look at. I honestly wouldn't pay too much attention to pricing, because you're going to see such a large gamut and I don't want you comparing your pricing to other people, necessarily, but look at their style, the way they're styling their clients, the way they're editing, the way they're posing. Look at the type of offerings they have in their packages. Are they including wall art? Are they including digital files? Are they offering albums? What are they offering? What are they not offering? What are they not offering that you can offer and you can say hey guys, this person doesn't do this, but I do, I'm going to take care of you. So for those of you, when you do your market analysis, you look around and you see just a bunch of photographers doing shoot and burn and giving away all the digital files. Well, your competitive advantage that you discover in your market analysis is that you are the only one that offers wall art, you are the only one that styles your clients, you are the only one that designs these beautiful, handmade custom albums that are stunning and out of this world. Those are all things that, by looking at who's around you and what they're doing, you're able to identify.
Speaker 2:Something else that's really important when you're doing market analysis is to see what clientele are they serving and what clientele are underserved. So for me and I'll use this example I think you might have heard me talk about this before, but when I started my equine photography brand and I'm like who's out there, who's doing this? I saw Kirsty Marie. She's amazing, she's fabulous, she's killing it out there. I saw that she had a lot of clients in one specific genre, an area, and I thought, well, I'm not going to go after that, I'm going to go after a different group of clients. I saw, oh, here's how she's dressing her clients. I'm not going to dress my clients like that. I'm going to do things differently. And the way I did things differently, obviously it spoke to my why and my heart and soul and it did happen to align very differently than what she does.
Speaker 2:But that's what market analysis is about. It's about seeing what other people are doing, seeing how other people are running their businesses, seeing the type of people that other people are speaking to, and then saying there's a hole in the market that I can tap into. And so I'm going to encourage you to really look at it from that standpoint, as opposed to looking at it from a perspective of pricing solely, which is a lot of times what people do when they look into market analysis. The other thing I want you to think about is Maybe are they dropping the ball somewhere. When someone inquires with them, how do they reply? Do they pick up the phone and call? Do they just send an email with a bunch of information? That's overwhelming. Those are other things that are also important to taking consideration in your market analysis.
Speaker 2:The next thing I want to talk about is having a section in your business plan for your organization and management, and you might be saying like, hey, you know, my business is me, karanda, there's no one else here. Why do I need anything about organization and management? And I want to tell you that this section of your business plan is more about long-term growth and about down-the-road goals than it is right now, because if you're just running your business by yourself, I totally understand that you're not going to have anyone else to put under your organization. But what I do want you to think about is, down the road, when I am able to outsource, when I'm able to hire an employee and get help in my business because I've grown, what does that look like? What type of person would I want to hire, what type of tasks will they take over and what is the strategy for that? It could be that a year down the road. You're going to hire somebody to take over your editing. It could be that your goal is in five years you want to have a full-time employee. Whatever that might need.
Speaker 2:Take some time to think about the tasks that you love, that you don't love, things that take way too much of your time. Another thing to think about is this $100 an hour task or is this a $15 an hour task? You should be focusing on the $100 an hour tasks in your business and you should have employees handling the $15 an hour tasks that anyone can handle. I'm also going to encourage you to take your pride out of this. It's very easy to think like nobody can do that like I can. It's very easy to think like there's no way somebody else could edit my photos or there's no way somebody else could handle my inbox. But take your pride out of it and know that there are other people out there that you can train, with the right system, to take over those tasks. So think about the long-term plan of growth in your team and what that looks like.
Speaker 2:The next thing you need to be really clear on in your business plan is your product lines what type of products you're going to be offering? Why are you offering those products? Do you even know why you're offering the products you're offering? Or are you just offering them because somebody told you they're great? Think about your products, think about what services you're offering, why you're offering those services, why you're offering those products, the benefits of those services and those products. And also I want you to think about is there a cycle here within your business and these products and services? Are you photographing families and then those families are going to come back and they're going to book a newborn session with you later on? Are you photographing people with their dogs and when they get a new puppy down the road, they're going to come back for a puppy session with you? Is there a cyclicalness that happens in your product and your service offerings that you need to be working on and making sure that you're getting those clients back through your door?
Speaker 2:The other thing you also might want to consider here is if there's anything that you want to patent or trademark, if there's anything that you feel like is your intellectual properties and then you do really uniquely that you feel like you need to make your own and you need to protect. This is a good time to consider that as you're looking at your services, your products, your offerings and what you're doing, this kind of leads into marketing and sales, because some of this might also come into marketing terminology. I know there's photographers out there that have words or phrases trademarked that relate to their marketing or their tagline or something like that. By no means right now am I saying to go out and look into trademark all that stuff. I don't think it's a huge deal unless you have something that's super catchy or something super unique to you that you want to protect. It can be a long, lengthy, pricey process, so keep that in mind if you ever do decide to go that route.
Speaker 2:But when it comes to our business plan, we also want to make sure we have our marketing and our sales strategy. So how are we marketing? Where are our clients coming from? Where are we getting those clients in our door? How are we getting those clients through our door? I want you to have this all written out in your marketing strategy. So where are your clients coming from? How are you getting them through your door? What other marketing avenues are you using? You know what types of social media, what types of in-person events, what types of silent auctions or charity events are you contributing to? All of those things should be written out in your marketing plan. We also need to consider the sales part of our business. So when a client inquires, how do we get them to book? What does that look like After their session? How are we actually selling them wall art? What does that process look like? I want you to really hone in on this process. I want to make sure you have a solid marketing strategy and you know where your clients are coming from. I want to make sure that you have a solid sales process in the sales system to book those clients, to sell them art, to make yourself money.
Speaker 2:If somebody came to this document and they looked at it and they were like, oh man, we need to figure out how to do her ordering appointment. We need to figure out how to do her info call, would this information be there for them? All of this information we're going through needs to be in one place. Really, it's your business plan. I actually referred to it as your master business document, so I like to say it's like the Bible of your business. Everything you could ever want to know or need to know is in the master business document and the cool thing I do is every year as I'm making this, I actually am coming in and I'm duplicating the document and I'm starting a new one for the next year, so I can go back and look at like 2013's master business document and see what that looks like versus what it looks like now, which is a super cool experience as well.
Speaker 2:The next thing that you would want to include in your business plan is your financial projections. So what are your projections for how much money you're going to make in the next year and the next five years and the next 10 years? What are your clients going to be spending and investing with you? How many clients are you going to have? What are your expenses? What are your actual hard expenses that you have? All of the little things. This should all be written out in your financial projections so you have an idea of what your business is going to look like as it grows and down the road. Sometimes these financial projections can be hard to do if you're not exactly sure all the minute specifics of all the things you're going to need as your business grows, but do your best to predict what you think you might need and you're going to get a long way in your business with just doing your best and thinking of what you might need in your business.
Speaker 2:Now, in a traditional business, all of these things we just talked about are written out and they're submitted to a bank or a finance or an investor before a business has even started. Let's be honest, how many of y'all actually have this? And I went to all the DME to help me if you actually have this, I want to celebrate you. How many of you had all these things written out before you started your business? How many of you have been in business for years and you still don't have these things written out, my self included. When I started my business, I did not have these things, but I was incredibly lucky enough that I hired a mentor a few months into my business. That helped me get a grasp on all of these things. I'll be honest, I was doing what I thought was a business plan in those early years, but it was about five years in before I truly really understood this and had a solid grasp on it.
Speaker 2:Now this document of mine, my business plan, or my master business document, as I like to call it, is pages long, like it is so long. It used to be one page in the early days. I think it's like 40 or 50 pages long now. It is everything to my business and it is incredibly valuable. A big part of why I'm sitting here telling you this is because I don't want you to wait till you're five years in your business to really have a good, solid business plan. I want you to sit down and start working on this now and, even if you don't have a clue what to do with these things or what to say or what to write, just start with something. Start with something. Start a document on your computer called my business plan 2023, 2024, whatever year you're listening to this in and start writing down all of these things that we talked about in this episode.
Speaker 2:Rewind, go back, pause, listen to the different sections and start making some sections. Make yourself a good old table of contents with all the different sections and then put all the things in there. I want you to have this. Having this is going to save you so many tears, so much frustration and so much time spent running in circles on the hamster wheel of business. Also, it's going to help you avoid that feeling at the end of the year when you look at your bank account and wonder, like, where did all of my money go? I was working so hard, but I have nothing to show of it.
Speaker 2:My challenge for you is to take the time today, today after you, listen to this and put it on paper. Consider your mission, your financial goals, your projections in the long term, your products, your services, your company organization goals, your market analysis, your marketing strategy, your sales process and all of these little details, and start writing them out. Whatever it is that you have right now, even if you don't have a great system, even if you don't have all the details, or even if you don't know exactly what it should look like, just put a section there and say I don't know what this is right now, but I'm going to figure it out. Use this document to guide your life in your business. It is the guide for what you're going to be doing going forward. Make sure that it's thorough with numbers, strategy, projections and, honestly, as you're writing it, ask yourself if I handed this over to somebody else, could they step in and run my business? Is this enough information that somebody else could do my job? And that is the ultimate goal for this document.
Speaker 2:The ultimate goal is that you have this business plan and this master business document written out in so much detail that it tells somebody everything they need to know about your business when you start to hire. This comes into play because you have your systems, your process, all the things written out in this document that now you can hand over that one section of the document to an employee and say, hey, I want you to step in and handle my social media strategy. Here's the plan, here's what it is, it's all written out, it's already there. You could even make videos showing how you do the things to put in this document like Loom Videos. You might make a Loom Video showing here's my calling and editing process, here's my retouching process, here's my marketing strategy, of what I create and post on social media. You can make videos as well as written out directions for all of these things.
Speaker 2:And I'm going to tell you, if you're sitting there and you're like I have all these things, they're in my brain, or if you're sitting there thinking I have all these things, a million different documents everywhere, all over the place, get them out of your brain. If these things are in a million different documents or notebooks all over the place, really take the time to sit down and solidify and put these in one cohesive place where it makes sense. Having a million notes and a million different things doesn't do anybody any good. You need to write these things down on paper in a very well organized manner. You are 42% more likely to accomplish your goals if you write them down. So what if you write down your goals? What if you started treating your business like a multimillion dollar business that you were the CEO of? What if you took it seriously and made real plans and real strategy from a business perspective and treat your business like it has the potential to grow beyond just a little bit of extra money or a hobby that happens to pay you some here and there? What if you looked at your business as a real thing that could pay you six figures a year and give you this amazing life and allow you to do all these amazing things for your family and your community? How would that change things? The minute you decide to take your business seriously like you are the CEO and you make decisions like a CEO, everything will start to change and everything will fall into place.
Speaker 2:I want to hear your thoughts. I want to hear how you feel about having a business plan. Do you have one? And I really want to challenge you to go forth and make your business plan or your master business document in a way that you have everything you need in one solid, organized place all the strategy, all the processes, all the steps right there. And each and every quarter you really need to be revisiting this and checking in on it. And then, at the end of every year, you need to do a hard look at your business plan and you need to update and reevaluate, but at least every quarter you need to be glancing through it and at least once a year you really should be once a quarter that you're doing a hard look through it. Make sure that you're visiting it and going through it.
Speaker 2:If you are listening to this and you have not already heard about your Magic Year program that we launched, make sure you check out your Magic Year.
Speaker 2:I'll include the link in the show notes and if you use the coupon code podcast, you will get a special rate if you decide to join us in your Magic Year. Inside your Magic Year, we're going to be talking about finding business in your business and making magic in your business, whatever that looks like for you, whether it's making more money, feeling more fulfilled or just tackling any of those mindset hurdles that are standing in your way. We're going to be doing monthly quests. We're going to have monthly trainings that are going to be magical and amazing about all kinds of different topics, from mindset to business and everything in between, and I am so incredibly excited for that. So make sure you hop on over and join us inside your Magic Year, if you haven't already, and also send me a message. Let me know how you're feeling about your business plan, what you have or if you have any questions about making a business plan.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed this episode and you'd like to support the podcast, please make sure you share it on social media or leave a rating and review. As always, you can check out the links and resources in the show notes over at masteryourmindmoneycom. To catch all the latest from me, you can follow me on Instagram at masteryourmindmoney and don't forget to join our free Facebook group photography business. Tune up with Corinne Decay.
Speaker 2:Thanks again and.
Speaker 1:I'll see you next time.