The Art of Photography and Business: A Conversation with [Name]

As I reflect on my journey as a photographer, I realize that there are many lessons to be learned from business principles that can help me grow as an artist. Recently, I had the opportunity to discuss some of these principles with Michael Gerber, author of "The E-Myth." The e-myth is essentially the idea that to be successful, you must master what it is that you're doing. For example, if you want to open a restaurant, you need to know how to run a business, not just cook.

This concept resonates deeply with me as I navigate my own business as an artist. There are many parallels between running a photography business and running a traditional business. Just like Michael Gerber's book says, it's essential to understand the difference between working in your business and working on your business. As someone who has always been passionate about photography, I've often found myself getting lost in the technical aspects of my craft, rather than focusing on the overall business of taking pictures.

I remember asking Michael about business plans during our conversation, and he told me that many people get hung up on writing them for five-year scales. He suggested that this is too long a timeframe, particularly in today's fast-paced world where change can happen quickly. Instead, I think it's essential to review and revise your business plan every two or three years. This approach allows you to stay agile and adapt to new trends and technologies.

One of the other key takeaways from our conversation was the importance of discipline and self-reflection. As an artist, I often get caught up in the excitement of creating new work, but it's essential to step back and evaluate my own processes and goals. This is where having a business plan can be incredibly helpful – it provides a framework for thinking about your work in a more strategic way.

I'm excited to start applying some of these principles to my own business, and I'd love to invite you all to join me on this journey. You can track my progress on the website, where we'll have a special section dedicated to sharing my thoughts and insights as I navigate the world of photography and entrepreneurship. It's my hope that by being open and honest about my experiences, I can create a community of like-minded artists who are also looking for ways to grow and improve their craft.

In terms of media recommendations, I've been impressed by the work of Seth Godin, who sent me his book "Press Pause Play" after watching our conversation on YouTube. This film is excellent, and it's clear that Seth is a master of his craft. Another recommendation I'd like to make is Michael Gerber's "The E-Myth," which is a must-read for anyone looking to start or grow a business.

As I continue on this journey, I'm reminded that the most important thing is to be willing to learn and adapt. Failure is an inevitable part of the process, but it's also an opportunity for growth and discovery. My life doesn't depend on my photography business, so I'm free to take risks and try new things – and I'd love for you all to join me on this journey.

In conclusion, I believe that there are many parallels between running a successful photography business and running a traditional business. By applying principles from "The E-Myth" and being mindful of my own goals and processes, I'm confident that I can create a more sustainable and fulfilling career as an artist. And by sharing my experiences with you all, I hope to create a community of like-minded artists who are also looking for ways to grow and improve their craft.

The work I do will be featured on our Flickr group, where we'll have a special section dedicated to tracking my progress and sharing my insights. I'd love for you to join us there and share your own work – I'm always impressed by the talent and creativity of our community. And who knows? Maybe one day we can even collaborate on a project or two.

Until next time, thank you for watching The Art of Photography, and I look forward to continuing this conversation with you all in the future.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: eneverybody welcome back to another episode of the art of photography my name is Ted Forbes start these the same way every time don't I'm anyway hey got to kick the video off somehow today I wanted to share something with you that it's an idea I've been working on for a long time probably about the last year and I think it might be a good time to do it you know if you have been following the podcast for a long time we're getting near episode 100 which would be kind of cool and you know if you include the vlog the Masterclass live the little special edition videos I've done everything else I mean we're up over 120 videos now so it's a lot and you know spent the summer kind of trying some different things you probably have noticed I'm trying to change things up a little bit and I think this idea might be a good one and about a year ago I started thinking about this and I thought you know you know is a photographer not not the tutorial guy with the videos here but just in terms of my own work you know I'm trying to think of ways I could push my own work up to the next level and how I can start you know thinking about what I do a little bit differently and take that more seriously and one of the things I thought about is you know I don't do photography for a living but it would be really cool if I were able to approach galleries and and kind of start going at that you know all the guys that I look up to you know have have had successful gallery careers and not that I'm on that level but but you know how could I push my own work in those terms and one thing that's particularly appealing to me about that is it's doing gallery work you tend to work more in editions more in sets more in series type stuff and you know rather than just shooting one offs all the time and that's something that's really appealing to me and so I kind of thought about it and and part of the problem is this I don't have time to do the traveling that it would take and maybe some of that's just excuses I don't know but recently there's a film that I saw on Netflix I'll put a link in the show notes so you guys can check it out it's a documentary I can't name escapes me who made it right now but it's a documentary called press pause play have you seen it or not but essentially this documentary explores some of the notions of what it is to do creative work in today's era and by that I mean you know here we are well into the internet there been you know small number of people who figured out how to have success online but if you look at certain industries is what the movie picks apart in terms of like you know people who make films the music industry the print industry a lot of those things are changing rapidly and you know they've had hard times they started to dissolve in some ways but the irony is that we have this tool of the internet that you know not that everybody knows how to use it but it does level that playing field because it gives you a tool that you can get your name out there get recognition and so on and so forth and and have as much success as the work you're willing to put into it so anyway one of the things I've thought about recently after signally I've been thinking about it and I think maybe it would be interesting and I thought more about it I thought this would be really interesting to share as part of the podcast and so what I want to do is build an online gallery for my own work and I can sell stuff through there but anyway that's gonna be kind of the hub where I'm going to really push the work that I do really come up with an end result which is a printout of it and you know take it from there and see where it goes this is very different than social media or Flickr or even my own portfolio website which hadn't been updated in eons and and I think it would be an interesting project to do and I think would be an interesting project to share because there is a business side to all of this which I will be the first to admit that I am NOT a professional at and while I'm very amateur and have some ideas this is going to be a huge learning experience any source of trying to figure things out for me so you know we won't cover this every time on the show but I would like to kind of visit this off and on and talk about the progress being made and you know the other nice thing about this is you know I've learned this from the podcast and from my own website that it does take awhile to build something not from a marketing perspective and be able to kind of start doing that kind of work and get it to a point where you're having some success with it so it's gonna take some time I understand that it could very well fail this could be a failed project and one thing that I know you know and my years of experience doing this is that you learn more from your failures than you do from your successes sometimes and so I think it would be a great learning opportunity so I've scribbled down some notes in the last couple days and I've been looking through these and trying to figure out you know where I want to go and I'm just kind of giving you an overview of what we're gonna do on here today it might be interesting if anybody's interested in doing this themselves this might be a fun project to kind of work along with and share your own experiences is with I think you know I'm willing to do that and you know we're on this together to give you a cliche phrase there but but it's true and you know this is something that I don't think has been explored to a huge extent yet and I'm not talking about putting just a bunch of junk on line and trying to sell product so to speak I'm trying to take my own work seriously and see if there's something that I can do there that you know at best might provide some extra income you know is a huge learning experience and you know makes us all smarter as photographers - so anyway it's it's very appealing to me just some of the things I thought about that need to start and kind of deal with you know if you're gonna build an online gallery you've got the whole branding aspect of it which is important the product aspect of it which is very important because you know as you guys know I do a lot of videos for this and that is my main focus and I you know there's there's only a limited amount of time left so really trying to find a way to wrangle that and get that nailed down into something specific and I just wrote down some you know some ideas for things another thing that that I think is kind of cool while we're on the product subject here is I have a friend who runs an art gallery in Dallas and they've had quite a good success over the years and it's it's an art gallery so they have it's not just photography it's paintings and sculptures and everything and they handle some some pretty big name artists and I was talking to Bryan and he said that you know one of the things he really believes in and I just I wish I could call this my own cuz it's such a wonderful way of looking at it but one of the things that he's able to do as a gallery that makes him successful but on a level but but one things he really believes in is this democratization of art so you know if you're gonna sell something having something that's even $100 that anybody can have access to is really important and I think that's important for what I do too so you know I've thought of like you know kind of one-off unique things like photographs and stuff obviously framed editions and things that would be taken more seriously and and you know push me not only behind the lens but in the darkroom as well so that's very appealing then there's the big stuff that are the big questions you know you have all that to deal with then there's a customer profile you know who buys and collects photography and who would be interested in what I do and I think that's a huge open-ended question it's gonna require a lot of discovery a lot of research and you know think of your own work like that too you know if you're half serious about even on a part-time level being able to you know make extra money at it or be able to make that marketable you know I think that's the number one question is who is it I certainly don't think it's other photographers really but you know who who is interested in that and how far can this go there's an entire marketing aspect of it you know you can't just throw a website up and expect it to be a success it's gonna require a lot of work this is something I've been interested in really at the top of the summer mainly for the art of photography podcast because one of the the things that's kind of weird for me is that because I've always done video and I've had a website I don't write a lot or didn't before write a lot of text to go along with those videos my descriptions were bad I didn't do a like keyword I didn't take that seriously and as a result your stuff isn't very searchable and so that's one thing you know at the top of the summer that I started which was trying to be more descriptive and not just cut and paste stuff from YouTube on to the website and you know make them each different I don't have to write a 500-word essay but you know at least describe what the videos about provide some links that kind of thing so we'll get into marketing and I've done a lot of research on that this summer and I'm by no stretch of the imagination very good at it yet but it's one thing I'm willing to get into then I kind of just on this sheet here I brainstorm because this will suffice for now but you know just questions that I have write them down see if I can figure out answers to them as they come you know things to do and I have a small to-do list of things to get started and and and see you know this is obviously a huge thing to wrangle right now but see if I can get this a little more focused and centered and and into stuff that's real specific in terms of you know things to do tasks you know etc and a lot of its defining what I want to do with it because I think just to say that I want to open an online gallery is kind of loose I think it's loose for anybody to say that and even photographers who are trying to be professional particularly in the fine art world which is very difficult you know that's a hard thing and to get your work you know to a point where you're able to do that and you know anyway a lot of the guys that I look up to and you know maybe it's maybe this would push me to actually contact some of those people and maybe that would be an interesting thing to talk about on the podcast if I could ever interview anybody we'll see I mean a lot of this is planned this thinking right now but at this stage I'm really not gonna limit it because years ago I oh I had a friend of a friend kind of thing that got me an appointment with the gentleman who is Dean of the College of Business at Southern Methodist University here in Dallas really really nice guy at the time I was doing something different than this but I was freelancing and I was talking about building a business and and he gave me some things to think about we you know had an hour to talk and and a lot of that I still remember now and at the time and I'll put this in the show notes too he recommended a book by a guy named Michael Gerber called the e-myth and essentially the e-myth basically states that what the e-myth is is that to be successful you have to be a master of what it is you're doing and so you know for example you know the e-myth would be I can't open a restaurant because I'm not a five-star chef you know that doesn't make sense it takes somebody who knows how to run a business to do those things and he delineates in this book about you know the the difference between working in your business and working on your business being two different things so we'll apply some of those methods and techniques to I might draw up a loose business plan I remember asking about business plans in this meeting and and he said well I'll be frank with you he said we have MBA students who have to write them for school and people get really hung up in that another kind of big Zen moment out of this as he said you know most people will write a business plan on a five-year scale and they'll revisit this every five years and and you know redraw it or whatever making adjustments and sometimes five years is too long particularly in this day and age and maybe it's important to look at it every two or three so you know some things like that that you know anyway so I'm willing to share all this and we'll kind of see how this goes I know this is a little bit shorter episode even though I think we just hit the 10-minute mark but anyway some things to think about and you know every so often we'll be hitting this in the in the podcast and and I'll talk about it and we'll just kind of see where this goes and see where it leads us and I I would hope that some of you out there and believe me I look at the work that that you know if you don't know that we have a Flickr group we do if you watch the old episodes that we used to advertise that quite a bit and looking at some of the work in there and the conversations I've had with folks who sent me their Flickr pages or their website blog or whatever is there's some people out there doing out Stan work in fact I'm pretty humbled to know that some of these people actually watch these videos it kind of blows my mind sometimes because it's like what do I have to show you know but anyway I think it's great and I would hope that maybe some of you out there would would think in terms of this too so anyway just the reiterate and I'll put links below the three things that was talking about media wise this movie press pause play which is excellent Seth Godin sent it to which I'm a huge Seth Godin fan a very inspirational guy and and has a very interesting look on things anyway press pause plays excellent the e-myth the Michael Gerber deal and anyway we'll talk more about this in future episodes I just wanted to kind of lay that groundwork now and talk about it and think about your own work and you know my reasons for doing this is to not get rich by any stretch of the imagination in fact photography is a very hard thing to make a living at particularly if you're doing art photography and I know that going in the reason I'm doing is because for discipline reasons I want an outlet where I can kind of put my own work together and start thinking about it in a way that it's maybe more Edition based more series based rather than just shots here and there or you know sometimes and I'll be the first to admit you get into these videos and a lot of the photography that you do is you know testing and samples for the videos so anyway so that's what I wanted to change you know with my own work so you know look at your own work and see if there's anything that you could take away from that that's in there for you and feel free to work along I don't know how I'll present this yet probably what we'll do is we'll have a little special section on the website so you can kind of track the progress and see this as it goes so and I'm you know willing to write all that down and share and be open about it so I think that's the best way to learn and start a conversation online and try and share it with other people and and and be okay with failing which is okay you know my life doesn't depend on this and we'll see what happens if I fail I learned something that's the important thing so it's failing on one condition so anyway that's about all I got for today I will see you guys on the next episode once again guys this has been the art of photography and thank you for watchingeverybody welcome back to another episode of the art of photography my name is Ted Forbes start these the same way every time don't I'm anyway hey got to kick the video off somehow today I wanted to share something with you that it's an idea I've been working on for a long time probably about the last year and I think it might be a good time to do it you know if you have been following the podcast for a long time we're getting near episode 100 which would be kind of cool and you know if you include the vlog the Masterclass live the little special edition videos I've done everything else I mean we're up over 120 videos now so it's a lot and you know spent the summer kind of trying some different things you probably have noticed I'm trying to change things up a little bit and I think this idea might be a good one and about a year ago I started thinking about this and I thought you know you know is a photographer not not the tutorial guy with the videos here but just in terms of my own work you know I'm trying to think of ways I could push my own work up to the next level and how I can start you know thinking about what I do a little bit differently and take that more seriously and one of the things I thought about is you know I don't do photography for a living but it would be really cool if I were able to approach galleries and and kind of start going at that you know all the guys that I look up to you know have have had successful gallery careers and not that I'm on that level but but you know how could I push my own work in those terms and one thing that's particularly appealing to me about that is it's doing gallery work you tend to work more in editions more in sets more in series type stuff and you know rather than just shooting one offs all the time and that's something that's really appealing to me and so I kind of thought about it and and part of the problem is this I don't have time to do the traveling that it would take and maybe some of that's just excuses I don't know but recently there's a film that I saw on Netflix I'll put a link in the show notes so you guys can check it out it's a documentary I can't name escapes me who made it right now but it's a documentary called press pause play have you seen it or not but essentially this documentary explores some of the notions of what it is to do creative work in today's era and by that I mean you know here we are well into the internet there been you know small number of people who figured out how to have success online but if you look at certain industries is what the movie picks apart in terms of like you know people who make films the music industry the print industry a lot of those things are changing rapidly and you know they've had hard times they started to dissolve in some ways but the irony is that we have this tool of the internet that you know not that everybody knows how to use it but it does level that playing field because it gives you a tool that you can get your name out there get recognition and so on and so forth and and have as much success as the work you're willing to put into it so anyway one of the things I've thought about recently after signally I've been thinking about it and I think maybe it would be interesting and I thought more about it I thought this would be really interesting to share as part of the podcast and so what I want to do is build an online gallery for my own work and I can sell stuff through there but anyway that's gonna be kind of the hub where I'm going to really push the work that I do really come up with an end result which is a printout of it and you know take it from there and see where it goes this is very different than social media or Flickr or even my own portfolio website which hadn't been updated in eons and and I think it would be an interesting project to do and I think would be an interesting project to share because there is a business side to all of this which I will be the first to admit that I am NOT a professional at and while I'm very amateur and have some ideas this is going to be a huge learning experience any source of trying to figure things out for me so you know we won't cover this every time on the show but I would like to kind of visit this off and on and talk about the progress being made and you know the other nice thing about this is you know I've learned this from the podcast and from my own website that it does take awhile to build something not from a marketing perspective and be able to kind of start doing that kind of work and get it to a point where you're having some success with it so it's gonna take some time I understand that it could very well fail this could be a failed project and one thing that I know you know and my years of experience doing this is that you learn more from your failures than you do from your successes sometimes and so I think it would be a great learning opportunity so I've scribbled down some notes in the last couple days and I've been looking through these and trying to figure out you know where I want to go and I'm just kind of giving you an overview of what we're gonna do on here today it might be interesting if anybody's interested in doing this themselves this might be a fun project to kind of work along with and share your own experiences is with I think you know I'm willing to do that and you know we're on this together to give you a cliche phrase there but but it's true and you know this is something that I don't think has been explored to a huge extent yet and I'm not talking about putting just a bunch of junk on line and trying to sell product so to speak I'm trying to take my own work seriously and see if there's something that I can do there that you know at best might provide some extra income you know is a huge learning experience and you know makes us all smarter as photographers - so anyway it's it's very appealing to me just some of the things I thought about that need to start and kind of deal with you know if you're gonna build an online gallery you've got the whole branding aspect of it which is important the product aspect of it which is very important because you know as you guys know I do a lot of videos for this and that is my main focus and I you know there's there's only a limited amount of time left so really trying to find a way to wrangle that and get that nailed down into something specific and I just wrote down some you know some ideas for things another thing that that I think is kind of cool while we're on the product subject here is I have a friend who runs an art gallery in Dallas and they've had quite a good success over the years and it's it's an art gallery so they have it's not just photography it's paintings and sculptures and everything and they handle some some pretty big name artists and I was talking to Bryan and he said that you know one of the things he really believes in and I just I wish I could call this my own cuz it's such a wonderful way of looking at it but one of the things that he's able to do as a gallery that makes him successful but on a level but but one things he really believes in is this democratization of art so you know if you're gonna sell something having something that's even $100 that anybody can have access to is really important and I think that's important for what I do too so you know I've thought of like you know kind of one-off unique things like photographs and stuff obviously framed editions and things that would be taken more seriously and and you know push me not only behind the lens but in the darkroom as well so that's very appealing then there's the big stuff that are the big questions you know you have all that to deal with then there's a customer profile you know who buys and collects photography and who would be interested in what I do and I think that's a huge open-ended question it's gonna require a lot of discovery a lot of research and you know think of your own work like that too you know if you're half serious about even on a part-time level being able to you know make extra money at it or be able to make that marketable you know I think that's the number one question is who is it I certainly don't think it's other photographers really but you know who who is interested in that and how far can this go there's an entire marketing aspect of it you know you can't just throw a website up and expect it to be a success it's gonna require a lot of work this is something I've been interested in really at the top of the summer mainly for the art of photography podcast because one of the the things that's kind of weird for me is that because I've always done video and I've had a website I don't write a lot or didn't before write a lot of text to go along with those videos my descriptions were bad I didn't do a like keyword I didn't take that seriously and as a result your stuff isn't very searchable and so that's one thing you know at the top of the summer that I started which was trying to be more descriptive and not just cut and paste stuff from YouTube on to the website and you know make them each different I don't have to write a 500-word essay but you know at least describe what the videos about provide some links that kind of thing so we'll get into marketing and I've done a lot of research on that this summer and I'm by no stretch of the imagination very good at it yet but it's one thing I'm willing to get into then I kind of just on this sheet here I brainstorm because this will suffice for now but you know just questions that I have write them down see if I can figure out answers to them as they come you know things to do and I have a small to-do list of things to get started and and and see you know this is obviously a huge thing to wrangle right now but see if I can get this a little more focused and centered and and into stuff that's real specific in terms of you know things to do tasks you know etc and a lot of its defining what I want to do with it because I think just to say that I want to open an online gallery is kind of loose I think it's loose for anybody to say that and even photographers who are trying to be professional particularly in the fine art world which is very difficult you know that's a hard thing and to get your work you know to a point where you're able to do that and you know anyway a lot of the guys that I look up to and you know maybe it's maybe this would push me to actually contact some of those people and maybe that would be an interesting thing to talk about on the podcast if I could ever interview anybody we'll see I mean a lot of this is planned this thinking right now but at this stage I'm really not gonna limit it because years ago I oh I had a friend of a friend kind of thing that got me an appointment with the gentleman who is Dean of the College of Business at Southern Methodist University here in Dallas really really nice guy at the time I was doing something different than this but I was freelancing and I was talking about building a business and and he gave me some things to think about we you know had an hour to talk and and a lot of that I still remember now and at the time and I'll put this in the show notes too he recommended a book by a guy named Michael Gerber called the e-myth and essentially the e-myth basically states that what the e-myth is is that to be successful you have to be a master of what it is you're doing and so you know for example you know the e-myth would be I can't open a restaurant because I'm not a five-star chef you know that doesn't make sense it takes somebody who knows how to run a business to do those things and he delineates in this book about you know the the difference between working in your business and working on your business being two different things so we'll apply some of those methods and techniques to I might draw up a loose business plan I remember asking about business plans in this meeting and and he said well I'll be frank with you he said we have MBA students who have to write them for school and people get really hung up in that another kind of big Zen moment out of this as he said you know most people will write a business plan on a five-year scale and they'll revisit this every five years and and you know redraw it or whatever making adjustments and sometimes five years is too long particularly in this day and age and maybe it's important to look at it every two or three so you know some things like that that you know anyway so I'm willing to share all this and we'll kind of see how this goes I know this is a little bit shorter episode even though I think we just hit the 10-minute mark but anyway some things to think about and you know every so often we'll be hitting this in the in the podcast and and I'll talk about it and we'll just kind of see where this goes and see where it leads us and I I would hope that some of you out there and believe me I look at the work that that you know if you don't know that we have a Flickr group we do if you watch the old episodes that we used to advertise that quite a bit and looking at some of the work in there and the conversations I've had with folks who sent me their Flickr pages or their website blog or whatever is there's some people out there doing out Stan work in fact I'm pretty humbled to know that some of these people actually watch these videos it kind of blows my mind sometimes because it's like what do I have to show you know but anyway I think it's great and I would hope that maybe some of you out there would would think in terms of this too so anyway just the reiterate and I'll put links below the three things that was talking about media wise this movie press pause play which is excellent Seth Godin sent it to which I'm a huge Seth Godin fan a very inspirational guy and and has a very interesting look on things anyway press pause plays excellent the e-myth the Michael Gerber deal and anyway we'll talk more about this in future episodes I just wanted to kind of lay that groundwork now and talk about it and think about your own work and you know my reasons for doing this is to not get rich by any stretch of the imagination in fact photography is a very hard thing to make a living at particularly if you're doing art photography and I know that going in the reason I'm doing is because for discipline reasons I want an outlet where I can kind of put my own work together and start thinking about it in a way that it's maybe more Edition based more series based rather than just shots here and there or you know sometimes and I'll be the first to admit you get into these videos and a lot of the photography that you do is you know testing and samples for the videos so anyway so that's what I wanted to change you know with my own work so you know look at your own work and see if there's anything that you could take away from that that's in there for you and feel free to work along I don't know how I'll present this yet probably what we'll do is we'll have a little special section on the website so you can kind of track the progress and see this as it goes so and I'm you know willing to write all that down and share and be open about it so I think that's the best way to learn and start a conversation online and try and share it with other people and and and be okay with failing which is okay you know my life doesn't depend on this and we'll see what happens if I fail I learned something that's the important thing so it's failing on one condition so anyway that's about all I got for today I will see you guys on the next episode once again guys this has been the art of photography and thank you for watching\n"