How to Succeed in Commercial Photography : Insights From a Leading Consultant

Begin by assessing your current attitude toward your life.

In order to determine how your outlook is effecting you, take a

current inventory of your actions.

Start by examining your work ethic. How you approach this

area of your life speaks volumes to clients and can shed a lot of

light on your way of thinking.

Successful creatives have learned to meet deadlines and

keep commitments. They put more than 100 percent into all of

their assignments, self as well as client generated. In short, they

have a strong work ethic. Shocking but true, none of us is per-

fect. In order to see where youneed to improve, start by answer-

ing the following questions:

1 How many assignments in the last six months did you give

100 percent of your effort to? What about 120 percent?

2 How do you approach assignments? Do you listen to your

client’s needs carefully and then offer your creative

thoughts? Or do you take the information supplied by your

clients and only provide what they ask for?

3 How many times in the last six months did you commit to

shooting for your portfolio? How many times did you meet

that commitment?

4 How often have you said, “I have to put time aside to create

a new set of goals for my business”? Have you taken the

time?

5 How frequently do you utter the words, “Next time I’m

going to do things differently”? Do things ever change?

Now look at how you feel about keeping your commitments to

others and to yourself. Do you feel excited when you put every-

thing you have into an assignment? Do you feel the same way when

you simply “go through the motions”? Are you excited about new

projects or do you feel overloaded and overwhelmed by them?

If you have answered these questions honestly and find

your attitudes or work habits do not serve you well, you can be

sure that they are not serving your clients.

Ask yourself what actions you could take to change your old

beliefs. Commit to those actions and begin to create a new you,

one who embraces the newness of life and is excited about all

that is ahead.

PART2 / VISION

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