The ultimate plate spinner

Running a photography business is like running any other company. But you have fewer people. Probably just one: you and a few plates to spin…

- PAUL WILKINSON

Just for the sheer joy of it, I hunted down some of my old notes from my IT consultant days. I was that guy: blue shirt, dark suit but without a tie (that was the sum total of ‘business casual’), Blackberry in a pocket and a wallet stuffed with fancy airline gold cards.

Working as a consultant was a dream job at the time, but the lifestyle took its toll: long hours, constantly stressed and frequently missing family events. That being said, being part of a team helping businesses improve was incredibly rewarding.

One of my earliest sets of scribbled notes dissected a company’s core functions: administration, finance and accounts, human resources (HR), information technology (IT – or computers to you and me!), operations (Ops), production and manufacturing, press and public relations (PR), research and development (R&D), sales, and – last but never least – marketing (big exhale after all that).

As a professional photographer, the challenge you face is that you yourself are a business. And guess what? All of these business functions are required of you too!