5 WAYS I USE EVERNOTE TO RUN A CREATIVE BUSINESS

As an artist, or creative-type, I'm really good at creating things.  I'm really good at coming up with ideas, and I'm great at dreaming!  If you're like me though, you might find yourself often wishing that you had a better way to make those ideas, and dreams - turn into reality. I find that without a good system to keep myself organized, things quickly get out of balance.  And when that happens, ideas becoming overwhelming - and creativity becomes a burden. 

That's one of the reasons I love Evernote. Evernote is, at it's simplist, a way to "remember everything," (at least according to their website).  For me, Evernote is a way to organize and share - in a way that helps me make my ideas happen.  It works so well because it does three things really well: Syncs everywhere (on my computer, iPad and iPhone), it's highly searchable (even text within images), and it has great sharing features.  Here are 5 ways I use it almost every day:

1. I use Evernote in every meeting.  I have a Notebook called: "Meetings," and I create a new entry for every meeting I attend. This is where I make notes on what is discussed, I can create action items, and put down ideas for review later.  Even though I still love to take notes by writing them down - I can then take those notes, and scan them right into Evernote so that everything is in one place.

2. I use Evernote to manage and archive Receipts.  I'll admit, I got this idea from my friend Kevin Swan , and I love it.  Every time I have a receipt, I simply use Evernote to take a photo of the receipt, and then throw it away.  Evernote let's me tag receipts, so I know exactly what it was for.  Evernote also scans the text in the receipt using OCR, making it completely searchable.  This means that even if I later forget what the $11.42 charge was for, I can simply search that amount, and it will pull up the receipt.  This lets me stop worrying about receipts and collecting piles of them that I then have to enter in.  Instead, I Evernote them, and move on.

3. I use Evernote to manage my blog posts.  Every blog post I've written in the last 18 months has been done in Evernote.  I often write 3 or 4 posts at a time, and organize them in Evernote for publishing later.  This lets me keep my thoughts organized by topic - in a Notebook called "Blog Posts."  Because I also manage multiple online blogs, I can use Evernote to keep everything categorized.  It really helps me because I can easily go back and find material I've written - especially when I get a request to have a post published somewhere else.

4. I use Evernote to "Collect Ideas." This just means that when I come across something I like - whether it's an article online, or a photo, or anything really - it goes into a Notebook called "Ideas."  I clip web articles (using the Chrome Evernote Plugin), to save and reference for later.  I photograph interesting things I come across, using the camera function right in Evernote.  I can save audio recordings - and dictate ideas or to-do's, and it saves them all for me.  This really creates a big "bucket" that I can fill with ideas - and draw from them later.  

5. I use Evernote to share with others.  Because Evernote is where I keep everything - it makes it easy to share.  I can share a "Note," either by email, facebook or twitter, or I can set up more robust sharing of Notebooks with people I collaberate with often.  This might be an editor on a blog I write for, or a teammate I work closely with.  Evernote lets me share relevant Notebooks with the people that I need to get information to - and it's really quite seamless.  My shared notebook just syncs with their Evernote Account and any changes I make are automatically updated to them.  This makes sharing really easy - and makes collaborating really efficient.

Are you using Evernote?  If so, how do you use it in your business?

SOCIAL MEDIA ISN'T

Do you have a social media "strategy?"  Or, are you like most people, simply trying to figure it all out?  Are you trying to build "conversations," and connect people to your brand? 

As a photographer (or other creative-type), social media can be a huge tool if understood for what it really is.  The problem is, a lot of the research about social media lately contradicts many of the "truths" we have accepted.  Much of the research comes from Dan Zarrella, the Social Media Scientist, and it's not pretty.  

Basically, Dan's research rejects most of the premises that we hold dear in social media.  Things like - more comments on blog posts is better.  More "likes" and comments on Facebook posts is better because more people will see it.  More "engagement" in the social media space leads to higher brand equity.

Now, I'm not the expert on social media.  I don't claim to have a bunch of answers, but I do know that social media has real value when used appropriately.  The problem is - most of us use it in ways that can't be measured.  There's no way to measure whether more blog posts converts to more clients.  There's no way to know whether more Facebook "likes" leads to more people having a positive perception of our brand.  

With that in mind, how are you using Twitter, Facebook, Google +, Instagram, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, Ping (does anyone use that?) for your business?  How are you measuring what works?

PRICING FOR A PROFIT: PART 2

 

In PART ONE of this series, we talked about pricing the products we provide.  In this post, we'll talk about one of the hardest things for creatives to wrap their brain around: how do we compensate for our time? 

Most photographers have no idea where to begin when it comes to pricing their time.  It’s hard to have an understanding of the value of a photographer’s time when the market is so varied.  It’s also hard because most photographers don’t have a complete sense of the time actually involved in various tasks, and we discount the cost associated with our time.  

So, how do we value our time?  How do we begin to price for the value we bring to the equation.  And how do we balance that with a market force that is moving towards the commoditization and depreciation of value in photography? 

First, let’s look at what a reasonable amount of compensation is for the various tasks we perform and the amount of time we spend.  Let’s say we decide that number is $30/hr.  That’s actually pretty fair, and a good place to start.  

Then, we need to begin to understand the amount of time you really put into a shoot.  Track the time it takes you to prepare for a shoot.  The time it takes you to perform a shoot or event, the time spent in post-processing, and the time it takes interacting with clients. For our studio, a 10 hour wedding, ends up being about 25 hours of time (not including sales, etc).  

For some studios this needs to be more, or less depending on your workflow, systems, etc.  Whatever it is, you have to begin to consider the amount of time - and the value associated with that time - that goes into a shoot.  And we also have to realize that we still have to mark that up to cover our expenses.  So, in our situation, every hour we spend shooting is 2.5 hours total time.  So the hourly rate we charge for shooting needs to cover that.   

What this means is that our “cost” for an hour of shooting is $30 * 2.5 = $75.00.  That’s the cost of labor behind every hour that we shoot.  Now, we still have to mark that price up by 3 in order to cover our other costs.  So for our situation, we should charge no less than $225 per hour for photography coverage.  Your math may be different depending on how much time you spend on the back end. 

We counted up everything we put into a wedding, from meeting with clients, post-production, and selling, and totaled that time.  You’ll need to make sure that you’re tracking your time to be sure you’re fairly compensating for your labor. 

Now, there are really two ways we can look at this.

1. We can decide that we need to make the equivalent of $30/hr for full time work.  This is a little more than $62,000 a year.  If you shoot 20 weddings a year, you’d need to take at least $3,100 per wedding as compensation.  This means that you’d probably be charging $7K - $9K per wedding.  This is a perfectly reasonable way to look at it, provided you are able to meet your targets for booking.  

2. A second way of looking at it is to decide that your time spent in your business is worth $30/hr, and you’re going to factor in exactly what time it takes for a wedding.  In my case, I might take that $225/hr (to cover my other expenses), and multiply it by 10 hrs/wedding and I get $2250.   

This is the minimum amount I need to charge for my time in order to take out my $30 per hour.  Now, 25 hours per wedding isn’t full time work. And it’s especially not full time work if I’m only shooting 20 weddings/year. This means I’m essentially being paid for part time work.  This is okay too - especially if you’re willing to fill your other time with other work.   In our situation, we actually charge our clients more than $225.  In the examples that follow, we used a figure of $300.  There are several reasons we used this number - one of which is that it’s a higher profit - and it’s easier to add in examples!

Either way, you have to have a place to start to value your time.  You need to place a value on your time, figure out how much time it takes, and be sure you’re charging to cover your time and expenses.  This is the value you bring to your business.  You are essentially an expense of your business.

 How do you price your time?