Inspiration

Let’s get started here. 

BRING IT 2021!

What is your top list of clients you’d love to work with?

And we’re back! Sounds like a sporting event, but we’re getting our heads back in the game. Here we go—it’s a new year, and we’re shaking off the cobwebs from last year. This might not be very rational, but let’s make a list of clients we want to work with. Let your ideas flow without editing them as you go. This exercise is about imagining and seeing what comes out. You might learn something about yourself and the direction you want to take.

Give yourself time to identify these clients. Browse through websites of other photographers, explore, and use pen and paper—go old-fashioned. Really take the time to do this. The first step is to get clear and set our sights. New year, bring it on!

If this new year can be anything, it can be our way of getting back on our own track. 

Before we get started back up again in our busy lives, we have to reset our direction in the way that we want it to go. We often get so caught up in the search and the hunt for jobs and we get busier and busier and we’re not thinking where we want to take this. It becomes where are the jobs taking us. We can’t let that business take our focus away.

Successful businesses are open to growth. So much of our business doesn’t change when we can’t see outside of our own routine. 

Happy holidays!

Happy holidays! In this really strange time, we don’t know what to expect or where we’ve been. It’s something we can’t control, so the best we can do is enjoy the holiday. Take a step back, break out of our usual patterns, and use this time to see things from a new perspective. Since so much of our business remains routine, a break from it can lead to new insights. Here’s to fresh thoughts and new possibilities. Happy holidays!

You are in the business of keeping it fresh for your clients, so keep your own company fresh.

People are keeping it fresh, and what I mean is that they’re trying new things. Producers, consultants, reps, and photographers. All of us are doing something new and trying to market ourselves in a new way. We have people we want to hire us to keep them fresh, why wouldn’t we keep it fresh? Brainstorm with people you work with, even if you say no to their ideas, it gets your brain working on new ideas. Try new things, new equipment or a new posting on Instagram. Try something new that you don’t know. Try the unknown and make it something you work on. We talk about testing all the time. Test, test, test. Push yourself to keep yourself fresh. Put it out there, whether it’s something you’re interested in, or sharing who you are, or something you’d be bringing to a job or shooting more motion. There’s so many things you can do to show that you’re a fresh thinker.

“You’ll learn more in one hour of doing something than in a lifetime of thinking about it.”

-Marc Randolph, Netflix founder

It’s a heavy time right now, so keeping our own focus where we invest back into ourselves may be the way to keep that glass half full.

On Monday’s Q&A I asked you to share your “career reset” for Labor Day 2020, so here is mine. 

SternRep has been doing well and I enjoy the crap out of it, but maybe there is more? Asking myself the questions that my pre-Covid routines didn’t leave much time to ask:

• What did I think was impossible to reach out for before (support with other reps)?
• What will challenge me a bit more and even make me nervous out of my comfort zone (hosting a webinar)?
• What have I forgotten about that makes me tick (time for myself at the ocean)?

In appreciation of your labor, I’m going to do something different for this Monday Q&A. Today I ask YOU the question. Be vulnerable on this. 

178 days into quarantine, have you felt a reset in your career? In what ways?

Please share your answers in the comments.

Keep your business moving forward as clients are looking at us to set the trends. Stay hot, fresh, and relevant – here is a helpful tool to get your ideas out of your mind to make sense of the plan you need to put into action ASAP. 

Your topic can be “GROWING FORWARD,” write it on a piece of paper, circle it in the middle of a page, and set it free!

www.mindmapping.com

We are trying to adjust to a time we don’t yet know how to handle, which means we have to make decisions and plans. Yet, we are probably all dealing with many thoughts in our heads without much clarity, making it hard to decipher which ones to follow and how to proceed. One useful method is mind mapping. It’s how I became a rep. I started with a central circle labeled “ideal job” and branched out into various aspects of what that job would entail—what it looks like, what I’m wearing, where I am, whether I’m at home or in an office, the time of day I’m working, how much I’m making, and the skills I’m using, which in my case are sales.

Mind mapping helped me clarify my path. I even brought my mind map to a photographer, and he identified me as a rep, a term I wasn’t familiar with at the time. Recently, I did another mind map titled “What I Want from Photographers.” It’s a way to get all your thoughts out by starting with a central question and creating a plan by stepping back and analyzing what you want and how to achieve it. It’s like a vision board for your mind, helping you figure out your direction and strategy.

“You fly to Blockbuster, try and sell the business, and they laugh at you.”

-Marc Randolph, Netflix founder

This quote really speaks to me about the transition from what the world was to what it has become. Netflix represents the content of today, and our entire industry is shifting towards content creation. To keep up, we can’t be stuck in our old ways of thinking. We need to move forward and not just rely on logical predictions of what will happen. Decisions should be based on our intuition about where the world is headed. We must stay one step ahead of change to ensure the success of our careers.