Turning Vaporware into Reality, or Stop Blowing Smoke My Skirt, Ogalthorpe!

A few days ago my friend Chris emailed me the text of a post from the Box of Crayons Great Work Blog entitled Excuses, Vaporwork, and What You Can Do Now.  Basically the post compares great work to vaporware -- that stuff that's greatest thing since sliced bread, promises you the world but doesn't really exist except maybe in somebody's head -- and how some people keep talking about their dreams or goals but let excuses get in the way of any real progress.

It got me thinking about my own progress and where I think I'm going.

Back in mid-February before my grandmother passed away I was on a roll.  I had a posse, I was talking to business people, and I was talking about writing a business plan.  Then I kinda gave up for awhile to basically completely tear apart my loft and put it back together again (although it does fit better now).  After that it was time to figure out where the hell I left off.

I was feeling kinda lost and blown off course.  So instead of trying to figure out where I was,  I decided I had to do something  -- anything -- that moved me in a forward direction.  After all even the smallest step is still a step.

As photographers, we love our art first and learn how to participate in the business world as a necessity -- almost as an afterthought. We pour endless hours into learning technique, practicing, learning software, buying gear, thinking we're going to be the next Dan Winters.  And all that's done just at the enthusiast level.  I mean you might be a very damn serious enthusiast, but you're not in the game to compete with ole Dan just because you can copy his style. I know. I tried (see the picture above, yo.).  There's a difference between and amateur and a professional.

"An amateur plays for fun. The professional plays for keeps." -- The War of Art.

I think I'm starting to feel the desire to play for keeps.

How?

Well, there's so much to do on both sides of the fence: the art and the business.  I still don't have a portfolio.  I have a website that I hate.  Three guys on Flickr know who I am.  None of them want to hire me.  There's the business plan to write.  Ah, the business plan.

Surely writing that will save me, right?

Maybe, maybe not.

Instead of trying to pull my idea of a photography business out of thin air and put it into a business plan,  I chose a few levels of abstraction closer to the asphalt.  You see, I've been spending some quality time with lynda.com getting to know my new best friend, Quickbooks.

Why the hell am I doing that you might ask?

Well, if you think about the reason for a business plan -- to figure out what kind of business you want to do and where you'd like to be in, say, five years -- there's some heavy abstract thinking that goes into it. In my mind some navel gazing that I seemed to be getting me nowhere. I really needed more basic answers to the questions involved in writing the plan (it's the engineer in me -- I have to know some things on a very fundamental level).  And believe it or not, Quickbooks is forcing me to find those answers.  Basically by trying to wrap my head around Quickbooks, it's asking me to figure out the following in very concrete terms:

• Where is the money coming from?
• that is, who are my clients and who do I want as my future clients.

• What kind of services am I going to provide?
• I have to have something to put on the invoice right?

• If someone asks me to do work, am I prepared to do it?
• I have to have something to put on the estimate, right?

• Can I afford to pay my rent?
• that is, am i making any money at this thing?

So basically if I put in a line item for "group portrait" I have to ask myself a few things: do I want to do group portraits?  What other kinds of portraits do I want to do?  Is this ever going to get me into the advertising world?  What kind of material should I be shooting that will?

Sounds crazy -- kinda like framing a house at the same time you're drawing up the plans -- but it seems to be working.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go figure out my accounts payable from a hole in the ground.