Wednesday, May 9, 2018

Maximizing Productivity with Time Blocking

*This blog post was originally written on The Photo Life Blog - ShootQ on May 9, 2011.
The company has since stopped updating, so it is being saved here for preservation.
https://shootq.com/2011/05/09/creating-a-schedule-to-maximize-productivity/

When we work for other people, having work hours, weekly meetings, and daily tasks is practically expected.  However, when working for ourselves, it’s very easy to let time slip by if we don’t create a schedule for our productivity.  The great thing about working for ourselves is that we can create a schedule that works with our own peak productivity and distraction times.  If we know that we are most productive with post-production late at night, and we have the freedom to wake up later in the day, than we can create a schedule that allows us to focus in this way.  If we know that we’re most alert to responding to emails first thing in the morning, than we can create a schedule that works with our peak alertness.  By simply planning out when we will deal with our regular tasks for a typical week, we can quickly increase our efficiency.
WHAT TO INCLUDE IN YOUR SCHEDULE

1. Shooting Days and Times – Stay in control of your schedule and your time by letting clients know when you’re available, rather than asking them when they’re available.  Designating shooting times in your schedule allows you to easily provide clients with your next three available times and days.  If you’re a wedding photographer, you may not want to schedule engagement shoots on Saturdays during your peak season in case a wedding opportunity comes along at the last minute.  If you’re a portrait shooter who works outdoors with natural light and you prefer to have your weekends free, than you may only want to schedule portrait shoots during the week during your golden light hours.

2. Post-Production Times – Once you know when your possible shooting times are, then you know that you will also need to designate an appropriate amount of time after each shoot for post-production like backing up images, culling, editing, and enhancement.  Whether you do this, or you give this task to someone else, there needs to be time set aside in your week to deal with these tasks.  Once you make time for this in your schedule, it’s easier to enjoy an evening out because you know that you’ve set aside post-production time the next day to move the project forward.

3. Marketing Times – Whether it’s blogging, Facebook, Twitter, emailing vendors, or working on a newsletter, there needs to be time set aside in your schedule to help market yourself and share your work with future clients and referrals.

4. Communication Times – As tempting as it is to check your email as soon as something new comes in, you will be much more efficient if you designate time in your day when this is appropriate.  Since email can easily take more time than we’d like, it may also be helpful to set a timer in order to make sure that your time spent on email isn’t leaking over into times you need to work on other tasks.

5. Meeting Times – If you do in-person sales after a shoot, or meet your clients in advance of their shoots, you need to make sure you have room in your schedule to make these happen at a time and day that works for you.

6. To Do List Times – Inevitably there are tasks that fall outside of the above categories and will need to have time set aside in your week to be dealt with.  Perhaps it’s running to the store to get supplies, entering your financial numbers, updating software, researching your next piece of equipment, or following up with inquiries that you haven’t heard back from.  Allowing yourself a time during the week to catch up on things you’ve placed on your to do list means that your to do list will never get too long.

SAMPLE SCHEDULES
Below are just a couple examples of how a 9am-6pm work schedule could be broken up differently.  Obviously, you want to create a schedule that works best for you and takes advantage of your peak working, communication, and distraction times.  It’s also good to designate other productive tasks that would be appropriate in each time slot in case you don’t have post-production, shoots, or meetings during the times you’ve set aside for them.  When you know what’s coming next in your schedule, it’s harder to get distracted and lose track of time.
What does your weekly schedule look like?  Share your answers in the comments!

Sample Schedule A –  Portrait Photographer
Monday – Friday
9am – 11am Post-Production
11am – 12:30pm Communication
12:30pm – 1:30pm Lunch Break
1:30pm – 3:30pm Marketing/To Do List
3:30pm – 4:30pm Communication
4:30pm – 6:00pm Shoots/Meetings
Saturday – Sunday – Off (or premium shoots only)

Sample Schedule B – Wedding Photographer
Tuesday – Friday
9am – 11am Marketing
11am-12pm Communication
12pm – 1pm Lunch
1pm – 3pm Post-Production
3pm – 5pm To Do List/Communication
5pm – 6pm Meetings/Shoots
Saturday – Shooting
Sunday – Monday – Off

Written by Anne Ruthmann

Anne Ruthmann is a philanthropist and visionary, who makes a living as an international award-winning wedding & lifestyle photographer.  She geeks out about business strategy and finding ways for artists to make a living doing what they love, which is why she feels strongly about developing community at her Boston PUG and sharing information onPhotoLovecat.  She also recently started offering the Smarter Business Workshop in order to provide hands-on help to photographers in several different cities around the US.  When she isn’t working or helping others, she enjoys traveling the world with her husband and trying foods she can’t pronounce.
Posted on  by ShootQ in Anne Ruthmann, Organization, Right Start
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Thursday, April 5, 2018

Money Management Made Easy

*This blog post was originally created on The Photo Life blog at ShootQ.
Since the company has stopped updating, I'm saving it here for preservation.
https://shootq.com/2011/04/05/money-management-made-easy/

 You’ve just received a check in the mail- YAY!  You run to your bank to deposit it into your business account (or you see that Pictage has automatically deposited it there) and now you feel like you’ve justified your next big equipment purchase, right?  Think again.

 If you’re really taking care of your business and your personal life, you’ll divide that money up before you start spending it.  To make it super simple, take half of that check you’ve deposited into your business account and transfer it immediately into your personal account (assuming you’re a sole-proprieter business structure with no employees).  This quick & easy method helps you make sure that you’re bringing home the bacon while still taking care of business.  By maintaining a 50/50 split on your revenue, you’ll gain a clear understanding of when you’re dipping into your personal income to pay for a business expense and when you’re borrowing from your business to pay for a personal indulgence.  If you’re like 85% of Americans, you’ll spend whatever you have in your account- so separating the money right from the beginning will help save you headaches later on.
To take this a step further, it’s also wise to set aside 30% of your personal income to pay self-employment taxes as well as any funds that you’d like to set aside for your retirement.  You may choose to pay your health insurance out of your personal account or your business account, but liability and replacement insurance are generally business expenses to be paid from your business account.  Any credit you give clients toward products, deposits, and retainer fees paid in advance should be set aside in your business account so that they cannot be spent until the service or product is delivered.  Sales Tax should also live in a separate business account so that it can be written as a simple check to zero out the account when your sales tax is due.

Here’s a sample breakdown for a $2500 job that requires a $500 retainer and provides $500 in product credit in a state with 7% sales tax:
100% Revenue = $2500
7% Sales Tax = $175

1. 50% Personal = $1250
a. 30% Income Tax Account = $375
b. 10% Retirement Account = $125
c. 60% Household Account = $750

2. 50% Business = $1250 + Sales Tax of $175
a. Sales Tax Account = $175
b. Retainer Account = $500
c. Product Credit Account = $500 (in reality you’ll probably only need to save $200 of this if your products have the appropriate profit, but it never hurts to save more and have back-up funds for emergencies.)
d. Overhead Account (Equipment, Insurance, Rent, Education, Marketing) = $250
With only $250 left to spend on that shiny piece of equipment- you might see why it’s important to save up before the next purchase, or you could just skimp on your groceries and cancel the cable connection instead.  It’s all a matter of what’s most important to you!

Written by Anne Ruthmann

Anne Ruthmann is a philanthropist and visionary, who makes a living as an international award-winning wedding & lifestyle photographer.  She geeks out about business strategy and finding ways for artists to make a living doing what they love, which is why she feels strongly about developing community at her Boston PUG and sharing information on PhotoLovecat.  She also recently started offering the Smarter Business Workshop in order to provide hands-on help to photographers in several different cities around the US.  When she isn’t working or helping others, she enjoys traveling the world with her husband and trying foods she can’t pronounce.
Posted on  by ShootQ in Anne Ruthmann, Legal & Finances
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Friday, February 23, 2018

How to Create an Internship Program

*This blog post originally appeared on The Photo Life - ShootQ Blog on February 20, 2013 (which is no longer active, so I'm reposting here to save it in case their blog goes down):

As I’m getting ready for my next internship opening announcement, I thought I’d share some tips about finding an intern and making the most of having them learn while working in your business. This is the first of two posts. (The following image is from an intern.)
Intern Workstation in Home Office
















How to Prepare for Your Intern:
  1. Review the United States Department of Labor Guidelines on Internships to make sure that you are creating an experience that qualifies.
  2. Identify three of your closest photography schools and/or high schools that offer photography classes. Contact the teachers or intern coordinators to learn about their student internship requirements and expectations.
  3. Decide exactly what the intern will be learning during their internship and what tasks will help them learn while they work with you.
  4. Outline the basic qualifications they need in order to work at a level that doesn’t require extensive remediation.
  5. Create an office procedure manual of any tasks that you prefer to have done a specific way, such as how you name & organize digital files, how to print a custom disk, what settings to use for blog images versus portfolio images, etc. This manual is something an intern might contribute to as well in order to create a more complete reference document.
  6. Set up an intern workstation that will be comfortable and allow you to easily and quickly help them if they are sharing a physical space with you.
  7. Create your announcement that itemizes:
    –What will be learned during the internship– What qualifications are needed to apply– What days/hours will be required each week– Start and end dates of the internship– Deadline to receive applications
    – Link to your website and work
    – Contact information
  8. Send your announcement to the coordinators at nearby schools and post to your blog or newsletter.
  9. Based on the applications received, select your top three candidates and schedule in-person interviews.
  10. Once you’ve decided on your intern, let everyone who applied know that their application was appreciated but another candidate was selected.










If you’d like to read some of the thoughts and reflections from my interns, as well as my announcements for internships, head over to my blog.

About the Author
photographer anne ruthmann
Anne Ruthmann is a philanthropist and visionary, who makes a living as an international award-winning wedding & lifestyle photographer. She geeks out about business strategy and finding ways for artists to make a living doing what they love, which is why she feels strongly about developing community and sharing information on PhotoLovecat. She also recently started offering the Smarter Business Workshopin order to provide hands-on help to photographers in several different cities around the US. When she isn’t working or helping others, she enjoys traveling the world with her husband and trying foods she can’t pronounce.

Posted on  by ShootQ in Anne Ruthmann, Authors


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Sunday, November 5, 2017

Managing The Fame Monster

Fame can create a type of PTSD (post-traumatic-stress-disorder) when you don't know how to deal with it and respond to it appropriately, or at least it did for me.  If you've witnessed someone else's journey close enough to the surface of fame, you may have a better chance of dealing with the public response as it arrives, but it took me about 10 years to really recover from a period of fame that I got early on in my career and felt very unprepared for.

I thought I was just entering contests and submitting work to get feedback and a response around what I was doing well, but it also turned into awards, publications, special features, speaking invitations, and things that started putting me in the spotlight before I was really ready to handle all the other negative stuff that came with being in the spotlight.  I didn't realize there'd be an entirely other element of reputation management that I'd need to deal with as well.  So I ended up taking a huge step back once all the attention got to be too much to manage and started taking me away from my clients and the work that was paying the bills.  I realized I just wanted to get back to doing what I loved: creating images for clients who valued my work without all the fame nonsense.  I gave myself a lot of time to consider what I could do differently if it happened again, and I hope sharing this helps you walk a slightly easier road through any moments of fame that come your way...


1. When You Finally Win Some Awards
People will hate you and people will admire you.  People will talk bad about you and they'll say you're the best they've ever seen.  They'll talk about how they can create better work than you, and they'll talk about how they wish they could create work like you.  They'll say they should have won the award you won, and they'll say they'd never be able to win the award you won.  They'll do this behind your back, to other people, online in comments, in forums, etc.

You really just have to let them do this without defending yourself.  You've already won the award and received the recognition that you were aiming for.  Any defense makes you seem insecure about your win.  Any boasting makes you seem cocky about your win. This is just part of what comes with winning. The only response people want to hear is how grateful you are that the judges liked what you sent them. (People know it's all judge preference anyway.) 


2. When You're Finally Published in Magazines
People will say you bought your way in.  People will say they wish they had your skill.  They'll say your work is too trendy or too posed or too staged.  They'll say you're amazingly creative and a genius for thinking of something so unique.  They'll say you copied them and it's all been done before and that you just rip off other people's ideas.  They'll say you're brilliant and inspiring and they want to be just like you.  People will take your work and try repeating the same results.  People will call you a fake.  People will say you have an inside relationship.  People will assume you can get them published too.  People will put you on a pedestal.  People will try to knock you off a pedestal.

Let them think what they want to think.  Being published and recognized means you don't need to prove anything to anyone.  The only response that people want to hear is that you feel really lucky your work was chosen out of all the great work they could have chosen from.  (People don't blame lottery winners, just their own luck of the draw.)
3. When You Finally Get Invited To Speak
People will say you don't have enough experience.  People will think you know everything there is to know.  People will suggest you need to teach because your work isn't good enough.  People will say you're teaching because your work is amazing.  They'll think your ideas are rubbish and uninspiring.  They'll think you've opened up an entirely new way of seeing things.  They'll walk out in the middle of your talk.  They'll stay after and want your signature.  They'll tell you what a fan they've been all along even though you're meeting them for the first time.  They'll become someone you once knew really well and now refuses to acknowledge you.  They'll think you're a hack.  They'll think you're an expert.

These are all a matter of their own varied perspectives and you have to go in knowing your message is only going to be heard and liked by about half of the room, much like running for American Presidency.  Remember that your message is less about you and more about what other people make of it even if it's not at all what you meant.  You're just the messenger who happens to be the one brave enough to stand on the stage.  The only response people want to hear after commenting on your speech is how you tried your best and were honored to have the opportunity.  (People honor the process of being selected and showing up, no matter the message.)
4. When Strangers Start Recognizing You In Public
I think it was Gary Fong who once said, you aren't really famous until the bagger in a grocery store recognizes you in the check-out lane.  It's a great way to put "fame" of any kind back into perspective of the larger world out there.  That being said, in the world of the internet, if you put yourself out there often enough, you may gain some stalkers or fans who do actually recognize you in places you'd least expect it, even when you don't have any makeup on or just walked out of the gym.  At first, you feel totally weird that a complete stranger is coming up to you and acting like they've known you forever and yet you know nothing about them.  However, if you know how to handle it in advance, you can level the playing field by responding really down to earth and friendly, rather than standoffish and rude because you felt attacked.

The response I've found which seems to work best for dealing with this kind of guerrilla attack is to say "Hello!  What's your name?  What are you working on right now that made you familiar with my work online?" It does take an extra minute to hear someone out rather than turning your head and running away as fast as you can, but it also becomes a chance to gain a little market knowledge about the tribe who follows you and how they found your work online.  It's also much more personable than simply standing there saying "Oh, thank you so much" over and over again on autopilot.  Having a real conversation with someone about what THEY know and can share with you makes it slightly less lonely at the top if you're traveling in an unfamiliar area and want some recommendations for a good place to eat or a special park to go for a run in.


Are there any fame monster moments I've missed?  Have you come up with some solutions and responses that work better for you?  I'd love to read your thoughts in the comments.

Anne Ruthmann is a professional photographer in New York City. With over 10 years of success as a full-time photographer in weddings, portraits, editorial, and now architecture and interiors, she spends any extra time she has helping others find smart solutions to business problems.  Stay in touch on Instagram, Twitter or Facebook.
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Friday, September 8, 2017

When You Feel Like Letting It All Go

This feeling has happened multiple times while being a small business owner, yet each time the feeling is a little different and a little more nuanced.  I think it's safe to say that I've experienced the full gamut of reasons for feeling like I should let it all go.  This is a rarely talked about subject in the creative business world, and I want to share what I've learned about these feelings and how they have helped me, transformed me, and moved me to better places.

Issue: "I'm constantly procrastinating on certain parts of the work, maybe I'm not really cut out for this, maybe I should quit.  Quitting feels easier than forcing myself to do this."
This was how I felt when I had too many clients to manage, too many projects that were getting backed up, deadlines were being pushed further than was professionally acceptable, systems that were breaking down left and right and I kept getting bogged down in certain parts of the process that prevented me from making forward momentum as a solo-entrepreneur.

This was when I really needed to look outside of myself for help, rather than thinking I needed to do it all, but I was so entrenched in the problems at hand that hiring outside help just felt like more work and delaying everything further to get that help up and running.  I felt trapped, as if there was no way out, and as if I was failing my business and my clients, which led to feeling like perhaps I wasn't cut out to run a business at all, assuming this was my sign to quit and give up.  I was so wrong about my ability to turn it around, but the problems at hand made it difficult to see any other way.

Solution: Outsourcing, Hiring Help, Raising Prices, Fewer Projects at Once
If you're willing to give up your entire business because you can't seem to keep up with your business, than you NEED to start hiring help, outsourcing, raising your prices, or taking fewer clients.  This is a sign that your business is actually a huge SUCCESS!!!!  Hellloooo!!  You wouldn't be running into these issues if your demand wasn't exceeding your personal capacity to handle them!  Don't give up now- you're just hitting a painful growth spurt that is stretching you to expand and work in ways that you haven't explored yet!

If you're at a point where you would be willing to leave your business anyway, than you're also at a point where you can spare to throw some cash at hiring professional help or trying some outsourcing solutions.  If the alternative is not doing it at all, than you've reached a prime place to start narrowing your client focus and raising your prices so that you're only attracting and working with people who value your work at the same level that you do.

This is not an option anymore, this is clear cut sign that your business is experiencing massive growth and needs to grow appropriately to the kind of business you'd like to have in the future.  Would you like to grow into having associates, a business manager, and a post-production personal all under the same roof?  Would you like to grow toward being a more boutique, high-end artist serving only a select clientele?  This is your time to make that decision and set yourself on a better path that meets your needs in the future.  To walk away now would be to throw away your biggest opportunity for growth right at the moment you're being given the green light to grow in ways that work better for you.


Issue: "I want to let it all go.  I simply don't care anymore.  I don't even want to show up."
This was how I felt when I reached a place of depression in my life.  I didn't care about anything.  I wanted everything to fall away.  I didn't want to care about anyone or anything else except for my basic needs and survival.  Even making a plan to commit suicide felt like far too much work and energy than I was willing to give to the world outside of simply breathing and existing at the most basic level.  I often questioned why I was even alive.  I was stuck in a place of not valuing myself or my work and felt like existing was a burden to everyone around me.  I had to live through it and come out the other side alive in order to know what it really felt like and to have deep compassion for people who experience depression.

Solution: Massive Self-Care & Redefining What Makes You Happy
When I reached a place of wanting everything to fall away from me, it was largely because I lost touch with myself, with my spark, my inner fire, my reason for being and existing in the world.  I don't know how I lost it.  I don't know what brought it on.  I didn't even realize it was depression while it was happening.  I just didn't feel right, like I wasn't really myself or who I thought I was.

Later on, I realized that it may have been bio-chemical with things like lowered dopamine levels or adrenal fatigue, but it also could have been a symptom of not identifying with my work as part of my life purpose and not finding meaning in why I was creating for other people or how that work and creation was feeding my life in beautiful and meaningful ways.

What I really needed during this time was not to quit the only job that gave me creative spark when I remembered what creative spark was, but to invest in a huge boost of self-care and self-love to reconnect with why I existed and why I was continuing to do the work I was doing.  I was moving from a place of defining my existence and purpose by everyone else's standards to a place of being self-defined and self-motivated.

If my worth wasn't placed in what other people thought of me, how would I measure it based on what I think of myself?  What's really important in life?  What have I been ignoring?  What has been making me feel bad?  How do I reckon with that and reverse the apathy back into passion?

I had to tune out all the noise around me about what I should be doing and focus only on the very few small things that made me feel good at a basic physical and mental level.  Until I filled my own cup, it would never be filled by anyone else- not by any other job, any other relationship, or any other identity.

Once I recognized this and narrowed my focus on the things that actually made me feel good, rather than the things that everyone else said should make me feel good- I slowly gained my strength back.  I slowly began to remember who I was and how my work brought value to my own life as well as to the world.  My spark returned slowly and gradually, and I felt really lucky that I didn't completely give up my work, my relationship, my home, or my life.  I never would have been able to get to the other side and discover all the abundance beyond that depression if I'd given up everything that once made me happy and hadn't done some massive self-care to help me get there.

If you're feeling like giving everything up, recognize this as a sign of depression.  Tell your friends and family how you're feeling.  Ask for help.  Accept the help others want to provide.  Force yourself to be around people and places that used to make you happy.  Learn how to ask for support.  Remember how much you are loved by people who want nothing from you but your own health and happiness.  You can and will get through this.  It is possible.  It may take longer than you'd like, but keep on moving through that mud until you find dry ground.  Once you do, you'll learn how to weather any future storms better than ever before.


Issue: "I feel like I really need to create something else right now, and this is holding me back"
I remember this feeling very clearly from when I decided to leave my path on a music education career to become a full time photographer.  I was leaving something super safe because I was feeling so pulled and compelled to try and make photography work full time.  I simply couldn't give any more time to writing lesson plans in classrooms and dealing with parents and administrators, not because I didn't like it as much as I simply felt like I needed to spend all of my time working on wedding photos and learning post-production techniques to get the results I wanted in the final product of my photography.  Teaching was holding me back from spending time on photography, and even though I didn't see any security or know how I would make a living in photography, I just had to go for it and not get caught up in the what ifs.  My soul wouldn't allow me to do anything else.

Solution: Build slowly on the side, or make a clean break and run for it.
When I think about all the insecurity I felt in the beginning, it's ridiculously amazing to now look back at this fabulous creative career and small business that has supported me through multiple moves, through traveling around the world, through understanding the difference between low end and high end clients, learning how to go from 4 figures to 6 figures in just the first couple years, being published in international magazines and winning really cool awards for the artistry of my work, to being invited to present at some amazing conferences, to going on the road with my own workshop tour, to being flown to five star resorts in tropical locations just to take photos!?

Now that I look back at all of that I think- I had no idea what amazing abundance was on the other side of all my insecurity about how I would make it work.  Now I feel like I would be INSANE to let go of this AMAZING creative career that has created a life that has surpassed all of my dreams and all the things I thought were possible in a career as a creative.  Now, the security I once felt about a life as a music educator is the same security I feel about the life I've had as a photographer for the last 13 years.  I'm so glad I made a clean break and ran for the hills with my photography business- it was by far the best decision I could have possibly made at that point in my life.  I knew it was the right decision because no matter how much I feared what was ahead or how I would make it work, I knew that my passion for making it work simply could not be ignored or set aside, and that any moment I wasn't trying to make it work, was a moment that I was holding myself back from doing something greater than I'd ever done before.

When the universe calls you in different directions with a relentless passion to focus on something, to opportunities you haven't fully explored, and you have a very hard time ignoring it, that's when you know it's actually the right time to start your transition out and get to building and working on that next thing.  Whether you do it slowly in your spare time (which you need to create for yourself in order to have any spare time to begin with) or you just rip off the old career like a bandaid and wrestle with the sting of creating something new, your passion will not be silenced until you answer it and it calls you to begin NOW.

The future is always far more uncertain than the past.  You don't know if you'll have a full time job tomorrow even when you work for a corporation, despite how predictable it feels.  Would you rather someone pull the rug out from under you first, or would you rather build your next big thing while you still have security to work through the mistakes of trying new things?  You may not understand what the revenue stream or business plan will really look like, but you'll figure it out as you go and as people tell you what they value and want to pay for.  Trust in your passion to help you create the life and work you really want to be doing.  It's a call from the universe to expand, to grow, to be something you've never been before, and if you don't follow it, you'll be wasting the chance to live a life you've never imagined before.


Anne Ruthmann is a professional photographer in New York City. With over 10 years of success as a full-time photographer, she spends any extra time she has helping others find smart solutions to business problems.  Stay in touch on Instagram, Twitter or Facebook.


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