In the past 6 months...
I shaved my head. I gave away half of my wardrobe. I bought my first Blackberry. I bought my first Apple computer. I ran. I boxed. I lifted weights. I gained 12 pounds of muscle. I became an athlete. I hired a boxing coach, a personal trainer and a nutritionist.
I paid off 100% of my student loans, and 100% of my credit cards. I freed myself of debt. I started accumulating savings.
I spent more time with family and friends. I wanted these people to have a good life. I took my mother out for lunches during her work week. I called my Dad up to say hi. I used my Macbook Pro to video conference with my sister while she was in Tokyo. I hang out with my neighbor Carl, and jammed to Rock Band on his xbox. I went out again. I sat down with roughly 20 of my friends, and mapped out detailed diet and exercise programs for them. (Most of them are artists and now they are into doing sports!)
Most things in my life are in harmonious order. I feel healthy. My body is in great shape. My head is clear. I've developed habits that I feel will help me lead a long and fulfilling life. I am very proud of myself.
Now that I am officially debt free, the next thing on the agenda is to secure my financial future. For the past few weeks, I crunched through a number of books on personal finance and productivity. This gave me a basic foundation to begin with. But I am the type of person that performs at his best when I have a coach.
My boxing coach helps shape me into a boxer. My personal trainer gets me pumped to lift weights. My older sister (a gifted photographer / artist), mentors my photography and my career. I even found a coach for video games, who trained me after I defeated a world champion of Tekken on January 5th of 2007. From his instruction, I was able to qualify for the 2007 World Championships in the Summer of 2007. Since mentors have done so amazingly well for me, I've decided to hire a business management consultant.
I found someone who specializes in consulting small businesses, and has several professional photographers as clients. Its been fascinating so far. Here are the steps we're taking:
Step 1 is to list out my goals, long term and short term. I have a few basic standard life goals. I want to own a house. I want to raise a beautiful family. I want to be wealthy. I want to be a successful photographer who makes great contributions to the art form. My short term goals consist of landing ad campaigns more regularly, increasing my day rate, purchasing more photography equipment, incorporating my business, accumulating a large amount of savings, developing my stock portfolio.
Step 2 is to create a macro plan to determine the milestones that will allow me to achieve these goals. The first concrete thing to do is to list out and organize my personal finances. What are my fixed expenses? What are my sources of income? etc. Once we have all the numbers down, we crunch through them to determine what the minimum annual salary I must meet, to both cover my expenses and also allow me to save money towards accomplishing my goals.
Step 3 is to determine exactly how many jobs I need to take on per month, and what is the minimum each job can pay me. The photography market is so competitive and volatile, it gets to be very difficult to determine the price of my services. If I bid too high for a job, I might lose it to a equal or less qualified photographer who bid lower than me. If I bid too low for a job, I might lose it because the client might who has too much pride to work with a "cheap" photographer. At times, its sort of like gambling or playing a game.
Photography jobs generally have 3 characteristics:
. Creatively fulfilling.
. Develops my professional network.
. Pays handsomely.
The ideal photography job meets all 3 criteria. But most of the time a job only meets 1 of them. So its my responsibility, to make thoughtful choices regarding which jobs to take, which jobs to turn down, and which jobs to go after.
If I have a carefully planned pricing system for my jobs, I can justify both to my client and myself how much each shoot should cost. I can then determine whether or not I should take a job. I can also know beyond a shadow of a doubt, if I have enough breathing room to offer to do free photo shoots for art directors that I really want to establish a relationship with, or if I can take on "passion projects" just for my pure love of photography.
Step 4 begins in January 2008, when my business will be officially incorporated. In doing so I can have clients pay directly to my business's account. I can then issue checks from this account to my assistants, and treat them as independent contractors. I can charge all my photography expenses on a corporate credit card, and have a neat detailed record of all my business expenses in one place. Legal liability for my shoots will fall onto my business, instead of me. I can take advantage of all the tax breaks offered to small businesses. The benefits are substantial.
Step 5 is to meticulously create a detailed database of all my transactions, travel expenses, equipment purchases, equipment maintenance, direct materials, direct labor, etc. This will not only function as a highly organized book of finances, it will also allow me to project profits into my future. For example, I could look at my 2007 database and see that I had spent:
"X" on Photography Materials
"Y" on Health Insurance
"Z" on Advertising
"D" on Travel
"G" on Taxes
etc.
and had earned
"I" Gross Income per month
with my Net Annual Profit being "P".
The database will allow me to clearly understand how each figure closely relates to one another. I could then use this knowledge to project future outcomes. Say I want my net annual profit for 2009 to be $300,000 (for example), then what would "X", "Y", "D" etc. have to be for me to get there?
Yes. Step 5 is pretty badass.
...
Ok. So thats my update. 2007 is just about over. I'm going take it easy until New Years. Spend some time with my family, and rock out to RockBand till 2008 hits. :)
I paid off 100% of my student loans, and 100% of my credit cards. I freed myself of debt. I started accumulating savings.
I spent more time with family and friends. I wanted these people to have a good life. I took my mother out for lunches during her work week. I called my Dad up to say hi. I used my Macbook Pro to video conference with my sister while she was in Tokyo. I hang out with my neighbor Carl, and jammed to Rock Band on his xbox. I went out again. I sat down with roughly 20 of my friends, and mapped out detailed diet and exercise programs for them. (Most of them are artists and now they are into doing sports!)
Most things in my life are in harmonious order. I feel healthy. My body is in great shape. My head is clear. I've developed habits that I feel will help me lead a long and fulfilling life. I am very proud of myself.
Now that I am officially debt free, the next thing on the agenda is to secure my financial future. For the past few weeks, I crunched through a number of books on personal finance and productivity. This gave me a basic foundation to begin with. But I am the type of person that performs at his best when I have a coach.
My boxing coach helps shape me into a boxer. My personal trainer gets me pumped to lift weights. My older sister (a gifted photographer / artist), mentors my photography and my career. I even found a coach for video games, who trained me after I defeated a world champion of Tekken on January 5th of 2007. From his instruction, I was able to qualify for the 2007 World Championships in the Summer of 2007. Since mentors have done so amazingly well for me, I've decided to hire a business management consultant.
I found someone who specializes in consulting small businesses, and has several professional photographers as clients. Its been fascinating so far. Here are the steps we're taking:
Step 1 is to list out my goals, long term and short term. I have a few basic standard life goals. I want to own a house. I want to raise a beautiful family. I want to be wealthy. I want to be a successful photographer who makes great contributions to the art form. My short term goals consist of landing ad campaigns more regularly, increasing my day rate, purchasing more photography equipment, incorporating my business, accumulating a large amount of savings, developing my stock portfolio.
Step 2 is to create a macro plan to determine the milestones that will allow me to achieve these goals. The first concrete thing to do is to list out and organize my personal finances. What are my fixed expenses? What are my sources of income? etc. Once we have all the numbers down, we crunch through them to determine what the minimum annual salary I must meet, to both cover my expenses and also allow me to save money towards accomplishing my goals.
Step 3 is to determine exactly how many jobs I need to take on per month, and what is the minimum each job can pay me. The photography market is so competitive and volatile, it gets to be very difficult to determine the price of my services. If I bid too high for a job, I might lose it to a equal or less qualified photographer who bid lower than me. If I bid too low for a job, I might lose it because the client might who has too much pride to work with a "cheap" photographer. At times, its sort of like gambling or playing a game.
Photography jobs generally have 3 characteristics:
. Creatively fulfilling.
. Develops my professional network.
. Pays handsomely.
The ideal photography job meets all 3 criteria. But most of the time a job only meets 1 of them. So its my responsibility, to make thoughtful choices regarding which jobs to take, which jobs to turn down, and which jobs to go after.
If I have a carefully planned pricing system for my jobs, I can justify both to my client and myself how much each shoot should cost. I can then determine whether or not I should take a job. I can also know beyond a shadow of a doubt, if I have enough breathing room to offer to do free photo shoots for art directors that I really want to establish a relationship with, or if I can take on "passion projects" just for my pure love of photography.
Step 4 begins in January 2008, when my business will be officially incorporated. In doing so I can have clients pay directly to my business's account. I can then issue checks from this account to my assistants, and treat them as independent contractors. I can charge all my photography expenses on a corporate credit card, and have a neat detailed record of all my business expenses in one place. Legal liability for my shoots will fall onto my business, instead of me. I can take advantage of all the tax breaks offered to small businesses. The benefits are substantial.
Step 5 is to meticulously create a detailed database of all my transactions, travel expenses, equipment purchases, equipment maintenance, direct materials, direct labor, etc. This will not only function as a highly organized book of finances, it will also allow me to project profits into my future. For example, I could look at my 2007 database and see that I had spent:
"X" on Photography Materials
"Y" on Health Insurance
"Z" on Advertising
"D" on Travel
"G" on Taxes
etc.
and had earned
"I" Gross Income per month
with my Net Annual Profit being "P".
The database will allow me to clearly understand how each figure closely relates to one another. I could then use this knowledge to project future outcomes. Say I want my net annual profit for 2009 to be $300,000 (for example), then what would "X", "Y", "D" etc. have to be for me to get there?
Yes. Step 5 is pretty badass.
...
Ok. So thats my update. 2007 is just about over. I'm going take it easy until New Years. Spend some time with my family, and rock out to RockBand till 2008 hits. :)
posted by Derrick Gomez at 1:42 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home