December to February tends to be the slow season for weddings. Not many people want to get married when it’s cold. I do miss having weddings in this time period, but it does give me some time to do other things. Now I can really start working on and implementing all those photography goals for 2017. One thing that I’m working on right now is my own personal organization. I’m working on how to run an organized business.
How to Run an Organized Business
Now I’m mainly going to be talking about my photography business, so some of these things might not apply to every business, but I bet there are some general ideas that any type of business can use. There are also some things I’m probably not going to go into that might be a major thing for other businesses, like employees, but that doesn’t apply to me. Anyway, hopefully this will be helpful to some.
Organizing My Time
The biggest struggle I’ve run into these past months is managing my time. When I was a teacher, my time was very organized. I mean, I had a bell telling me when things started and ended. With photography, I’ve found that I can get distracted and not accomplish as much. I’ve also found that I have way too many things going on to remember it all in my head. I’ve come up with a few ways to deal with all of this. First, I use my phone and calendar on the Mac to put down any shoots or meetings that I have. I check these daily to see if there’s anything I have to do. After shoots and just when I think of things, I use the Reminder app on my Mac to make a list of all the major things I need to accomplish. This could be like editing a session or ordering something. I then have two different paper calendars I use. I have a monthly calendar where I plan out all the things I need to do for a week, and then I have a daily planner where I write out when I want to do things for each day. This method is not perfect by any means. I’ve got way too many things involved and I need to find a way to simplify it all. I have 17hats, which is a small business software, but I haven’t found the perfect method. Hopefully I can use that to eliminate at least two of the other methods.
Organizing My Stuff
I’m really bad at organizing my stuff. Right now I’m looking at my desk and I have about 5 random sticky notes and then three piles of unused sticky notes. I’ve always been this way. For some reason I’m not great at organizing stuff. I usually start out ok, but then I get rushed and just throw things somewhere. When you have expensive equipment, this is not a great thing. So far, I’ve put a step in my workflow where I clean up my equipment after a shoot. This keeps me from just leaving it out. I’ve also started using folders to organize paperwork. Mainly it’s for receipts. I use to just make a giant pile of them. Now at least they’re in something. The good thing is that my wife hates it when I make a mess, so she will make sure I stick to it and keep things relatively cleaned up.
There are a few other things I’m working on and some others that I still need to fix. At least I’m trying. I really do believe that when you learn How to Run an Organized Business you will be more successful. You won’t waste time, you’ll get more done, you won’t lose things, and your clients will be happier overall. That’s what I want, so that’s why I’m trying to change.
