Photo Marketing Mentor

I had the extraordinary opportunity recently to attend a business, marketing and mindset retreat where I was in a room with over 150 entrepreneurs.

These highly motivated individuals (myself in included) were all in various stages of entrepreneurship from start up to many years in business.

Regardless of the length of time the common denominator we all shared is that at some point in our business career we fell prey to slipping into an “employee mentality.” This is especially true during times of financial crises as many of us are experiencing at the moment.

What do I mean by employee mentality? What I’m talking about is making a decision either consciously or unconsciously to take a passive back seat role in your business.

Think about it, when you were a paycheck employee generally your income (unless you’re in commission sales) is not dependent upon things like sales conversion and lead generation. Essentially when you’re employee you’re hired to perform an assigned task and as long as do as expected you’re okay to continue to work for that employer.

But when it’s your own show, the rules of the game are quite different. Not only are you responsible for lead generation and sales conversion, but you also have to perform the task you sold to the client. In addition, you’re responsible for all of the postproduction responsibilities, client follow-up and service delivery. It’s a lot to handle, right?

So when your business is stifled it’s easy to slip into apathy around sales and marketing tasks which is essentially nothing more than your own unique system of sales and lead generation.

The key to combating this of course is always having a steady pipeline of new prospects that can be converted into new sales. Seems fairly simple correct? Well in actually it is, not so much so for creative types like photographers, illustrators and graphics designers for example.

Generally for creative entrepreneurs our focus in not centered on marketing, lead generation and sales conversion. Why? Because these tasks typically do not speak to our creative spirit. So, as a result these tasks tend to fall by the way side.

Let’s face it, you didn’t start a business to focus on these mundane tasks, or so you thought, right?

You have a passion for your craft, skill or trade and made the decision not to do it under the controlled watchful gaze of an employer so you decided to go out on your own and going out on your own meant starting a business.

Perhaps in the honeymoon phase of your new enterprise you picked up paying gigs fairly quickly from referrals sources close to you, usually family members and close friends. But at some point the honeymoon ended and those referrals sources dried up. So what do you do?

Well, you began looking for new lead sources (you may not call them that, but that’s what they are) and so the thing that you loved to do has now become all too real and sometimes not so much fun.

At this point generally this is where apathy towards marketing kicks in and we start viewing our business from an employee mentality. You’ll know if you’re in this mindset because you begin having money struggles. Often you’ll find yourself day dreaming about that elusive magic bullet that is going to handle all of the things (that your previous employer took care of) so your focus can be on being creative, right?

That day dreaming about “someone else” charging in to save the day is what I call having an employee mentality.

You see when you made the decision to start a business centered on your creativity you did everything that was necessary to support that decision.

For example, you invested in purchasing new equipment; training and you’re probably still doing so to this very day. But think about it, when was the time you invested into your mindset and in learning how to set up business and marketing systems that are going to allow you to live your passion full out?

If you never have, can’t remember or you don’t know it’s now time to make a new decision, one that supports you operating a successful enterprise around your creative passion.

The bottom line is simple, you’re no longer a hired hand but an entrepreneur! To me the true definition of an entrepreneur is that of an innovator, a creator, a risk taker, and an employer, not an employee.

I invite you to begin to view your passion from this position. Now is the time to invest in yourself, and that means your mindset as well as your sales and marketing systems.

I’ll close with this, now probably more than any other time in the last three decades our financial future it’s totally up to us.  Meaning jobs that were once plentiful are not so much any more.  On the flip side because of the internet we have access to more resources than ever before in history to not only embrace but navigate the choppy waters of entrepreneurship.

What does this mean for you?  Truly for the first time in modern history we as individuals have more control over our creative and financial destinies than ever before. Think about this for a moment if there is no job at McDonald’s to fall back what are you going to do?

If you’re ready to drop your employee mentality and step into your own inner entrepreneur I invite you contact me to schedule a complimentary get acquainted strategy session.

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