TIPS60 - Staff2Freelance - having 3 - 6 months of savings

Here is another of our videos offering tips and inisights into the business of photography. a transcript of the video is included after the jump.

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TRANSCRIPT:Here are a few thoughts on the potential transition for you from staff to freelance and how much money you might want to have saved. I'm John Harrington. If you're a staff photographer you have a pretty good idea of what your monthly costs are for rent, your mortgage, gas, utilities, and so on and so forth. So you really need to understand that if you go from staff to freelance unexpectedly, you need to have a bare minimum of three months of savings and more likely six months of savings to really make it easy for you to make that transition. You can't always rely on the company providing you with some form of a separation package or some kind of package to let you go out and and leave the company comfortably and happily. You've need to have three to six months worth of savings based upon your current costs. You also need to understand that you can COBRA your insurance up to eighteen months according to the latest regulations. But you need to be prepared. Three to six months savings is really what you need to have so that you can be prepared for the staff to freelance transition.

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TIPS60 - The importance of paying yourself

Here is another of our videos offering tips and inisights into the business of photography. a transcript of the video is included after the jump.

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TRANSCRIPT:It's really important to pay yourself what you're worth and not only do so every month, but incur the costs of you the employee, even if you're a sole proprietor, if you're an S-Corp or an LLC that's different, but still very similar. You want to make sure that you pay yourself first. Look at what you should be earning, how many hours you are putting in in any given month and pay yourself. Don't sit around and not pay yourself and then just decide that you're going to use to pay your personal expenses all of the money that you have left over at the end of the month. You should be the first bill that you pay every month. Whether it's a token amount of $500 or maybe is a large amount of money maybe $2, $3, $4,000 dollars a month, $10,000 a month if you're doing really well. Ultimately though, you want to make sure you're paying yourself first and including that as a bill as a part of the business that you're running.

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TIPS60 - Determining A Client's Budget for the Project You're Going To Provide An Estimate for

Here is another of our videos offering tips and inisights into the business of photography. a transcript of the video is included after the jump.

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TRANSCRIPT:Here are a few thoughts on determining the client's budget when you're talking to them about the job. I'm John Harrington. When you're dealing with a client, you're trying to figure out what their budget is you need to ask a lot of questions. One of the reasons that you ask about the client's budget is you're trying to determine what production level is exactly they're hoping to have you bring to bear. Flash on camera, no assistants, an assistant, one light, a large production, big trailers, everything, you just never know. It really helps to understand what the client's expectations are. If the client says to you, ""Gosh, we don't have a budget, we don't know what our budget is"" you need to start asking some probing questions. ""Well, were you trying to get this done for $1,000, $5000, $10,000, $20,000?"" Once you start asking questions like that you really do start to get an understanding about what the clients per hour budget is or at least the parameters within which they're trying to work. If the client says $200 and your out the door is $750 then maybe this client just isn't for you. So always ask the question about what kind of budget you're trying to work within.

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TIPS60 - Staff2Freelance - buying your gear when you lose your job?

Here is another of our videos offering tips and inisights into the business of photography. a transcript of the video is included after the jump.

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TRANSCRIPT:Here are a few thoughts on the unexpected transition from staff to freelance. I'm John Harrington. One of the things that you might be finding as you're going from staff to freelance unexpectedly is, ""Gosh, I need a camera to continue doing my job. I need a laptop to continue doing my job."" You may have an old computer at home or may not even have a computer all. One of the things you want to do is, if your company has laid you off, if they've told you they no longer need your services, for whatever reason offer to the company to purchase the cameras, lenses, and the laptop that you had. The reason for doing this is the company probably doesn't need them anymore. They're looking to get rid of them. They've probably amortized them off to zero on their tax and accounting books. So the idea of having to sell them or get rid of it is not valuable to them. Make them on offer, look up what the gear is worth. You know how well it's been taken care o,f or hasn't. Make them an offs say, ""I will purchase them from you for fair market value. Fair market value is ""X"" dollars. Are you willing to part with equipment?"" It's a great opportunity for you to start with the gear that you're already familiar with.

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TIPS60 - Partnering with other vendors to grow your business

Here is another of our videos offering tips and inisights into the business of photography. a transcript of the video is included after the jump.

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TRANSCRIPT:Here's a way that you can grow your business by partnering with other vendors. I'm John Harrington. When you're dealing with variety of different vendors for a client, say a wedding client, partnering with vendors like the hotel that they might be having their event at, the person doing the flowers or the person producing the wedding dress, making the wedding dress, those types of vendors are vendors that you want to have relationships with. If they are talking to a prospective bride, for example, and that bride's talking to them you might want to be the person that that particular company refers to. ""Hey you should use this photographer"", in turn, if you're talking to a bride first and you say that bride ""Have you picked out your wedding dress yet?"" and they say ""No, I haven't, I'm still looking."" You can encourage the bride to consider that wedding dress vendor as well. There are a variety of different ways you can partner. This was just one example for weddings. You can do it for family portraits and newborns and all different types of photography.

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TIPS60 - When discussing an assignment, get off the phone and THINK!

Here is another of our videos offering tips and inisights into the business of photography. a transcript of the video is included after the jump.

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TRANSCRIPT:Here are a few thoughts on managing client interactions. I'm John Harrington. When you're talking to a client, after you've got some of the pertinent details from that client, it's really important that even if they ask you, ""How much is this going to cost or can you give me a ballpark?"" is to say, ""Let me give it some thought"" and get off the phone. You need to get off the phone and think about what's going into this shoot. Do you need an assistant? Do you need a crew? Do you need a larger production? You really need to just, after you've talked to the client, get off the phone. That gives you time without the pressure of a minute or two phone call to really think through the details of the shoot. Think through the creative, and come up with a really thoughtful and thorough estimate because if you don't have everything thought through when you send the estimate it's going to reflect on what you're doing for that client. They're going to look at you and go, ""Well, maybe they just don't know what they're doing."" It also lets you really come up with a fair and reasonable number that accounts for the production level of the shoot.

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TIPS60 - The value of having staff in your business

Here is another of our videos offering tips and inisights into the business of photography. a transcript of the video is included after the jump.

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TRANSCRIPT:Here are a few thoughts on the value of having a staff. I'm John Harrington. We have a staff at John Harrington Photography. It makes my life a lot easier. It lets me get out and make the pictures that I love to make. It does minimize my need to sit behind a computer doing post-production, sending out invoices, sending out estimates, I get to go out and be creative and make the pictures that I love. I can't stress enough the value of doing that can be underwritten by having an additional few dollars applied to an invoice. We use our administrative fee in our business to justify the value of an office manager, to pay those bills and get the invoices out and follow up on unpaid invoices. A post production manager is really invaluable and and is something you should be billing for as a part of your everyday expense of dealing with clients. A post-production charge should be part of every invoice. Because it does take time whether you're doing it yourself or using the staff that you rightly should have to make your life easier and let you focus on making pictures.

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TIPS60 - On Quickbooks - Explaining "Splitting" a Transaction

Here is another of our videos offering tips and inisights into the business of photography. a transcript of the video is included after the jump.

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TRANSCRIPT:Here are a few thoughts on splitting transactions in Quickbooks. I'm John Harrington. Quickbooks is a great solution and a great tool, but you need to make certain that all of your all of your expenses are properly categorized. In one instance, you're actually going to be writing a check to, say, a credit card company for $1,500, but the credit card company expense is actually comprised of three separate expenses. In this instance, you have a $1,000 expense to a camera store for a lens, you may have a $400 expense for office supplies to Staples, and then you may have a $100 expense say, for a client meal that you took a client out to. Each of those has to be categorized as a separate expense in Quickbooks and you do that using the splits category that is an option within Quickbooks. So use splits to make certain that you have all of your expenses properly categorized.

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TIPS60 - Should You Have a "Brick and Mortar" location for your business?

Here is another of our videos offering tips and inisights into the business of photography. a transcript of the video is included after the jump.

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TRANSCRIPT:Here are a few thoughts on the benefits and drawbacks of having a brick and mortar location. I'm John Harrington. One of the questions that so many photographers ask themselves is, ""Do I need a studio, do I need a physical location in a building. Either in a warehouse district or in a downtown commercial district to make my pictures to review and receive clients?"" In many instances the answer is no, you don't. For over twenty years we've been making pictures, portraits on location, portraits in commercial and corporate offices or we go to the client And portraits of our subjects in all manner of locale, but none of which required a studio. We've never rented studio that's not to say that we haven't shot in a studio environment. So think very carefully about whether or not you need to incur the five, ten, twenty thousand dollar a month rents that are associated with having a brick and mortar location and see if you can cover that in your overhead.

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TIPS60 - Product Commentary - prime lenses vs. zoom lenses

Here is another of our videos offering tips and inisights into the business of photography. a transcript of the video is included after the jump.

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TRANSCRIPT:Here are a few thoughts on primes versus zooms. I'm John Harrington. There is a great deal of debate amongst photographers about whether you should shoot with a prime, whether you should shoot with a zoom. Zooms are great lenses because of course you can be at 24mm, wide open and then all of a sudden you need zoom in to 70mm, no problem, a 24-70mm is a really common zoom lens. If you have the opportunity though, I would strongly encourage you to consider primes. Camera manufacturers still make primes for good reason. They're great lenses, they're sharp a 24mm prime is going to be sharper at 24mm then a 24mm zoom will be at 24mm. It's a crisper lens, it really also is a lens that makes you give a little more thought to what you're doing picture wise, your framing, and so on and so forth. You can't just fix it in zoom. Everyone likes to say, ""Well, fix it in post"" or ""Don't fix it in post"". Fixing it by zooming is a little different than fixing it by changing lenses and changing position. So strongly encourage you to consider prime lenses. Prime lenses are a great tool when you're really trying to just be thoughtful about the image you're making.

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