This weekend, I was teaching my 7 year old daughter how to make friendship bracelets with embroidery floss. It is basically tying knots but it takes coordination to keep track of several strands of embroidery floss at once. If you get confused or lose your place, your bracelet doesn’t come out the way you want. After watching me do it, my daughter was sure that she could do it too. She started but quickly got tied up in the many strands. As I could see her becoming frustrated, I took a moment to slow down and go one step at a time. I held all of the strings for her as she folded one over and pulled it through. We did that for about 20 minutes. Then, after she mastered that task, I taught her how to wrap the first string around her thumb so she could be successful when we added the second string. After she mastered that within 20 more minutes, I showed her how to do it by using all of her fingers to hold all of the strings and complete the task. She was elated. Of course a few of the strings got twisted wrong so her first bracelet wasn’t perfect but she understood how to do it and was doing it. When I woke up this morning, she was already dressed, had eaten breakfast and was sitting on the floor, making a second bracelet.
Do you ever feel like you are juggling too many strings in your photography business? You see others doing it so you basically know what to do or how to do it but just as you think things are going smoothly, something gets twisted and you lose your confidence. You are trying to hold all of these strands, keep weaving with them and get the results you desire on a consistent basis. When it comes to marketing a small business, this is hard and something that you need to give attention to every week.
Here are a few tips to get you excited to hold all of those strings this week.
1. Decide which strings you haven’t mastered and make that your focus until you at least understand what you are doing. Doing it and doing it with consistent results will come but you need to understand it first.
2. Find someone who can help you with the most important task. Maybe you don’t understand how to read a profit and loss statement. This could be as simple as scheduling time with your accountant to help you understand this better. If you don’t understand how your business makes money, you will not be able to make the best decisions with regard to expansion in the future. Look at local resources as well as people within your industry who excel on the task you need help with.
3. Schedule time each week to work ON your business instead of IN your business. If you haven’t read The E-Myth, by Michael Gerber, you might want to order it now. I believe you should be spending MORE time working on figuring out how to create a successful business and practicing those skills instead of only working on your craft.