Planning

The most important aspect of a photographic business is not photography!!It is planning. Actually this is true of every business. By failing to plan you are, in reality, planning to fail.So each business needs to forecast how many portraits, and how many weddings, they are going to do in a year. It is necessary to know what your average sale is going to be, and a realistic list of all your outgoings. This needs to be done for every month of the year and then carefully monitored within a few days of the end of each month. Monitoring is crucial to any plan you make. For example, keeping a food diary, or weighing yourself each day, will help you lose weight. Keeping track of your purchases will help you spend less.

The more carefully you track the better. Weighing yourself every week is good, every day is better, and writing down a record better still. Besides offering immediate encouragement, monitoring let's you improve your long term planning. If you keep records you can frequently check how far you have come, so that you can set realistic goals for the future. When your business has done well you will feel excited and motivated. When not so well you will be able to take action quickly to change things round.The computer games companies have made millions out of designing games with incentives to go to the next level so that they become a compulsive activity.

Planning and keeping financial records can have the same effect with a business. On a computer game the player does not think that they have failed, they just think it is a matter of time until they succeed. So we teach that in order to have a successful business you must plan and monitor .....
No matter how good you are at photography or sales!