Ever since I was a child I have loved photography. I used to say to myself that it was the dream profession…I just knew you couldn’t make money at it, or that’s what I thought at the time. As a result I did photography part-time and construction technology full time.
In the late 80’s however I attended a 1 day program given by Gary SIlber in Partnership with Alfa Color. I’m not sure Gary even knows who I am, or the influence he had on me, but his one day program absolutely changed the direction of my life forever. No other program I have taken ever had a greater influence on me than that one day program. I left inspired, and changed my whole style and approach to photography.
In past blogs, I talk about the habit that successful photographers have in spending more money on education than on photography equipment.
The right seminar or workshop can change your life and have a greater influence on you than an entire college education. With many workshops being offered for early 2016, I thought I would list 11 questions every photographer should ask themselves to help assess which is the best program for them as well as two questions that shouldn’t matter. As I teach the business side of photography, these questions are specifically geared to workshops which teach how to make money in photography.
Questions to Ask Before Signing Up For a Photography Business Workshop.
Questions that Matter:1. How many attendees will there be? Having a good number of photographers can be a huge source of networking and many times learning from fellow attendees can be as valuable as the program itself. Too many attendees however can limit opportunities for specific questions and individual attention.
2. Does the teacher have the lifestyle I want? Early on in my career, there was someone who made a lot of money as a portrait photographer, and also offered very high priced workshops. I really wanted to attend until I realized how many hours a week this photographer worked to achieve their income. It was not the kind of lifestyle I wanted. Thankfully I passed. In the last five years, I have made well over 10 million dollars in my studio, yet I only go to my studio 7 days a month. As I grow older, I have learned to value time more than money. Picking a program where one can learn success strategies that take them to the next level by working smarter not harder should be an important element.
3. How much money will the teacher make from the workshop? If the teacher is making less money a day from the workshop than he/she teaches that you can make from photography in a day, that is a red flag.
4. What will the teacher teach? This seems so obvious. Yet in 2004 I advertised my seminar as teaching how to massively make more money in portraits so you can stop doing weddings. At the end of the seminar, I received a note from one of the attendees saying they loved weddings, and was offended that I kept talking about how to be able to stop doing weddings so you could make more money in portraits…It was clear that this person signed up because others she knew were attending. But it was also clear she had not read anything about what the seminar was going to teach. I promptly refunded her money and was sorry for her disappointment.
5. How successful is the teacher at what he/she is teaching?
6. Question to the Teacher: If I sign up for the class and apply the principles you teach, what would you say a reasonable R.O.I. (return on investment) would be?
7. Is the teacher being sponsored by anyone? I am a capitalist, so I am fine with teachers being sponsored. Just make sure that the teacher has their first loyalty to you and not to the company that could be paying the photographer to push their agenda.
8. Question to the Teacher: Are the teachings scalable for my area?
9. What percentage of the teacher’s income comes from doing vs. teaching?
10. How much money does the teacher make from the principles they teach? If the workshop is expensive, and the teacher is is touting a certain level of personal success as credentials, don’t be afraid to ask for some sort of proof of that success including proof of income. You are investing a lot of money, and you have the right to verify.
11. What is the track record of success from people who have attended past seminars from the teacher? To me, this is more important than any other question on the list. The fruit of what the teacher teaches should be seen in past attendees. Prior to a seminar I gave in July, I had only given 2 seminars in 27 years; the last being in 2004 at the Ritz-Carlton Chicago with 20 attendees. I feel very grateful that among the small handful (3-4) of attendees I still keep in contact with, no less than 50 million dollars has been made by them as a direct result of the teachings they learned with me during those two days.
Questions that Don’t Matter:
12. How long has the teacher been in Business? I remember the first program I did for Burrell. I got a written note from someone saying that I was too inexperienced and hadn’t been in business long enough to be teaching. This person closed their mind because they didn’t think they could learn something from someone young and new. It reminds me when Tony Robbins first started out. People didn’t like someone new and young bursting on to the personal achievement scene…People asked, “What degree do you have that gives you the right to teach? Tony’s reply: I have a Ph.D. in Results!
Just because someone is new in our field doesn’t mean they can’t offer something of value. Pay much more attention to items 1-11.
13. What if the teacher has failed in the past? Many successful people have had failures in their life. How successful would you say Walt Disney, Abraham Lincoln or Henry Ford was in their life? Yet all three of these people failed miserably at some point and went through an embarrassing bankruptcy.
I too have failed, and even went through an embarrassing bankruptcy at the beginning of my career. More recently (in the last 10 years) I was involved in a personal (nothing to do with the photography business) real estate deal that I was unable to get out of and left me paying close to $30,000. a month over a significant period of time which severely damaged me.
Some people don’t like my message of hope in the industry. They don’t believe it is possible to make good money today, so they go after the messenger. I have had people use past failures in my life to try discredit what I teach. But sometimes, the harder we fall, the more we succeed. While many people say the glory days of our industry are over, I have gone on to make the majority of the, money I have made over the last 27 years (from photography not teaching) during just the last five years. Failure has been a great schoolmaster to me, and I bring the lessons of failure into what I teach as well as the lessons of success.
One Final Thought...
Don’t become a workshop junkie! Too many times learning can feel like doing. There comes a time when we know what we need to do. That’s when we need to get out of the classroom and into the world of action. Don’t get me wrong, investing in business education is perhaps the single most important things you can do as a photographer. But learning from too many sources can be confusing and counter productive. Instead, tone down the noise in your brain to learning from just one or two great mentors you know to be really successful. Implement what you learn and dare to to be successful!
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About the Author :
Bradford is perhaps
the most expensive portrait photographer in the United States with an
impressive list of prominent clientele. He operates studios in New
York, California and on world famous Worth Avenue in Palm Beach. He has
made over 20 million dollars from selling portraits, with more than
half of that being made in the last five years. He has taught
photographers from more than 80 countries. He currently resides in
Connecticut with his angel wife.source : http://www.milliondollarphotographer.com/the-11-most-important-quest.html
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