Making a Game Plan
The idea of making a business game plan amidst an ever growing mountain of moving boxes and a baby crying left me wanting to bury my head in a pile of cake. That was several years ago and it wasn’t a pretty sight. I had spent countless hours researching where to live and what the community was like but I had no idea what I was going to do with my very fledgling business when I got there. I hadn’t made a game plan for moving my business to a different state and because I hadn’t, I lost a lot of money in the process. There were countless nights I spent trying to figure out what I was doing and in reality, I just spent time chasing my tail. Want to know what my two biggest mistakes where with that first move?
Why?
When I started this business I knew deep down in my subconscious why I was creating images but the thought process behind it was spotty, unclear, and definitely not laser focused. If you had asked me back in 2009 or 2010 why I was doing this thing we call photography, I would have sputtered something out, probably turned an unsightly shade of red and then asked you to smile for the camera. When you are the new kid in town, you better know why you are getting behind the camera every day because inevitably someone is going to ask you. Do you know why, really why you pick up that camera to snap that shutter everyday, because when you are clear on your why then the how of making a game plan falls into place so smoothly that it feels like running satin through your fingertips!
Get Your Game Face On
So when is it time to get your game face on and make that plan? It certainly isn’t time to be making a game plan as the boxes are being stacked one after another by the front door and the last of those numbered moving stickers has been slapped on your grandmother’s antique four poster bed. The minute you know for sure that a move is coming is the moment when you have to start to plan. That is the time to start making lists, networking, and making changes to all the little things that need to be fixed, altered, or renamed. However, let’s say, like 2010 me, you are up to your eyeballs in stickers and cardboard praying that you can get the internet set up in time to send out that gallery that is late. What do you do then? You breathe and make that same list. You give yourself grace and take it one step at a time. You take care of your current clients, love on them, and go above and beyond when you run late on a deadline.
But I Need a List
I love my lists and I am so old school about it that it drives my husband nuts when I write them out on paper. Every move has a checklist for my business that gets set in motion the moment we know we are going to Virginia, Kansas, North Carolina, Alabama, or wherever my husbands job may move us next. Over time that list has changed and morphed as my business has done the same.
