Being an Educated Photographer: (Part 2) The Full-Time CEO

The most important thing that any photographer must understand is that photography is a business! If you wish to survive from your art, you must run and treat your business as any large corporation would and you are your company’s CEO.

The Full-Time CEO
In his article, “What do CEOs do? A CEO Job Description“, Business Coach Stever Robbins says the job of a CEO is four part:

• Setting strategy and vision. – Who are you? Where are you going? How are you going to get there? Who are you competitors? Who is your target market?




• Building culture. – In a large company, or even a company of one, the way the CEO acts is the way everyone will act. Building your company’s culture starting when you’re a company of one will filter down to your employees as your business grows. In simplistic terms, if you act melancholy and wear torn jeans to work every day, your team will as well. Set the precedent from day one as to what you expect, by doing it yourself.




• Team-building. – In our business, even a company of one, has a huge team of people behind him. The makeup artists, hair stylists, fashion stylists, retouchers and assistants that work with you daily are your team. Eventually, some of these people may become your employees, but even before you get to that point, they are part of your team. You select that team based on your values, needs and future goals; At the same time, you decide whether those people on your team have the same values, and their needs fit yours, and if their goals fit within your future plans.




• Capital allocation. – Stever Robbins explains “The CEO sets budgets within the firm. She funds projects which support the strategy, and ramps down projects which lose money or don’t support the strategy. She considers carefully the company’s major expenditures, and manages the firm’s capital.” Of course, you have to have a good picture of your company’s financial position before you can decide where to allocate your resources.

Ok, I’m not saying you need to be able to run a Fortune 500 company to run a photography studio, but you should be thinking about the same things that Steve Jobs (Apple), Bill Gates (Microsoft), Jonathan Schwartz (Sun Microsystems), and Craig Newmark (Craigslist) are thinking about when they run their business. Remember those four important areas above: Your Stragegy and Vision, The culture around you, Your Team, and How you spend or don’t spend your money.

DO YOU HAVE A BUSINESS PLAN? Creating a business plan is the best way to work through most of these questions. Just the simple act of writing your ideas about who you are, where you’re going and how you’re going to get there will help you get to where you want to be.

I’m definitely not trying to “toot my own horn”, but I’m one of those people who had a 5-year and 10-year plan when I was in middle school; This “life plan” was updated every year as I “grew up”. I’m sure my old revisions of this on-going “life plan” are somewhere in a box stored at my parents house and many of the goals in my old plans never came to fruition or morphed into something new, but they gave me something to strive for and something to check off when I reached a goal – a better way to say this is it gave me a direction. I still keep a current personal 5-year and 10-year plan, now it’s in the form of a journal entry in a notebook that I carry around with me every where I go.

In the same manner that I created my personal “life plan”, I created a business plan for the photo studio from day one, actually for months before I opened the New York studio I began writing my business’ “life plan” of sorts. The business plan answered a few questions for me:

I had a certain amount of capital for startup and operation while I built a profitable business, I needed to fully understand HOW the business and I could survive during that startup phase;

I needed to know HOW I was going to earn money and from WHO.

I needed to know WHO was going to work with me and HOW I was going to pay them and HOW would I keep them.

I needed to fully know HOW and WHERE I was going to prospect for and secure business and in WHAT segment of the market.

I needed to know WHERE I was going to be located and WHAT that would cost.

I need to know WHAT I needed (photo equipment, office equipment, etc) to do business and HOW much it was going to cost.

And I needed to know HOW much money the business and I would make after 1 year, 2 years, 3 years, 5 years.

A thoroughly thought out plan will answer the four areas that a CEO must focus on: Your Strategy and Vision, The culture around you, Your Team, and Allocating your company’s capital, as well as, what your product is, who your competitors are, and what sets you apart from your competition.

Here are a few helpful links to get you started writing your business plan:
Small Business Administration - Small Business Planner
Entrepreneur.com - How To Create a Business Plan
Business Owners Toolkit - Planning Your Business

The unfortunate thing is many people write their business plan at startup and put it away to never be seen again. Maybe if they’re looking to get a loan or some type of credit, they will revise the plan for the occasion, only to put it on the top shelf of their book case and still never read it again.

A business plan should be a living, breathing, ever changing document that helps you, as your company’s CEO, guide your business into the future and change as the market changes, as your skills change, and as your clientele change. I can’t stress how important it is to your success and to your business to write a plan, run your business by it and continually update this document – that’s what a full-time CEO would do and you owe it to your business and your art to do it as well.

Current Articles In This Series:
Being An Educated Photographer: (Part 1) The Introduction
Being An Educated Photographer: (Part 2) The Full-Time CEO
Being An Educated Photographer: (Part 3) The Full-Time People Manager

Coming Soon:
The Full-Time Counselor
The Full-Time Accountant
The Full-Time Sales Executive
The Full-Time Marketer
The Full-Time Student

Tags: Clients, education, fashion photography, photographer's education, production, the business of photography

Category: Opinion