Promises that veil the hard work
I am sure you once have fallen for that illusions in business stories, promising huge success, like this ones:
- “How to garantee photography businesssuccess”
- “With impact-driven digital design, we guide you forward.”
- “10 Steps to a Successful Website Design
- “Quickly improve your business at a fraction of the normal cost today”
Or this ones about 6 figures profit:
- “Build a thriving business while you work a full-time job (and don’t have a lot of time)”
- “Learn how to build six figures into your business in three simple steps.”
- “From Zero to Hero: How I Built a Six-Figure Online Business in a Year”
When you type in: “how to build a 6 figures photo business” you’ll go wild by all the promises!
Are you ever triggered by one of these headlines? Did you ever jump to Google Search to find out answers?
Seduced to the illusion
Let me be honest: I let me seduce into this skimmy moneydriven worlds a few times in my life. Easy money, yes! Only one day work, yes! No skills required, yes! But did it work? Never, never, never.
Finally I found out that those promises works like a kind of Ponzi scheme. You let yourself seduce to learn the trick and to invest. But who is the one that makes the profit? Not You!
A few years ago I investigated a Dutch women that offered businesscoaching. You had to invest thousends of euro’s for her programs. She seduced with stories about nice holidays with here family on beautifull beaches, accompagnied with photo’s and video’s. Every year more luxurious, more exclusive, more, more, more.
She offered the illusion of success. But what she didn’t tell about was the team behind that runned the business. What she didn’t tell also was the hard work that went ahead before she was on the point of some success.
Obviously none of her clients ever reached the same level of success. And after a while more and more clients did setup a similar program. So she created her own competitors! Nowadays it is over with her business.
What then is that hard work?
No, it isn’t a long list, not something undoable, no a prescription. It simply consists of two essential qualities, or characteristics:
- consistency.
- focus
If you cannot muster those two, you better look for a job. I mean, as photographer you need your own style, your own signature. To develop those take years. It is not just there as a natural phenemenon. You have to make your hours en taking your shoots, consciously.
Without that particular signature you are one of the millions. That’s not a position clients will discover you or will be attracted. Your signature is who you are, your authentic self, where you feel confident with and fearless. It makes that clients and models give you there trust.
The value of my mentor
During my training as graphic designer in the 60’s I feld blessed with photography lessens by Ata Kandó, the well-known Hungarian photographer. She made me aware that my photos almost always showed structures and composition. I still love those but over the years my vision surely has become broader.
What I will say is you mostly are unaware of your signature. You just walk around or make your installation as you have made up in your mind. It is your love of the work. Signature comes up when you reflect on that work and the results of that work over a long time. Signature is a time-line of consistent development, mostly personal development.
Disrupting the age of distraction
The other property is focus, aka not suffer distraction. That certainly is very hard work in this age of distraction. Yes, you have to be flexibel. Yes, you have to use different pespectives. Yes, you must keep pace with new technologies. How can you ever not fall into distraction?
I use meditation as my most fundamental tool and method to train myself in focus. Doing so makes focus a habit. It disrupts distraction. When I become aware that I lost focus I return to a moment of stillness and reset my mind and feelings. Then focus rises up again. To become aware of losing focus asks mindfulness, that is, a relentless and permanent conscious observing my state of being. Hard work? Yes!
Focus and envisioning
But why I need to focus myself? Focus is the twin of consistency. Writing this article I need no distraction at all. I put off my Iphone, I close the door, I reserve time in advance, don’t allow notifications and have my waterbottle next to me. Between the paragraphs I take a moment to feel my breath and to exhaile deeply for relaxing and resetting an open mind.
Focussing on the subject of my writing gives me, as a kind of contradiction, the open mind that gives entrance to the open field of the subject. The narrow road leads to extension and envisioning. It makes you an explorer and enrich the quality and value of your work, in small projects as well in huge projects.
What is the conclusion sofar? Consistency and focus are the twins of behaviour you need to become and to stay a valued photographer and eventually being succesfull in your own way. If that is with 6 numbers or not. But please, don’t let you seduce anymore to step into one of those illusions in business stories. Click them to hell!
If you love this article, give it a hug! Thanks for that.
