I Hired a Photography Business Consultant to Set a Fire Under My Tooshie!

“You got to move it move it!”  That’s the song in my head right now because it’s time for me to move it move it.  I’m tired of surviving.  My word of the year is “thrive!”  And that is my goal for all areas of my life!

The beginning of a new year is always a time for planning, reorganizing, and goal setting in my business.  I assess.  I analyze.  I dream.  This year, I decided to hire some help with my business.  He’s an advisor…a business coach…a cheerleader…a planner…an accountability partner.  Why?  Because I need focus.  I need direction.  I need purpose.  I need oodles of motivation.  I need help with areas I’m weak in.  I need someone to start a fire under my tooshie to get me going!  And you know when that happens, it makes you wanna dance!

Setting my business goals

First thing I did is set a mission statement, a vision statement, values and goals for my business.  Now the mission and vision statements weren’t too hard for me to write because I’ve thought about it before, but the value statements were new to me and pushed me.

After writing the 3 types of statements, I moved onto setting my business goals.  I can set goals, but let me tell you, execution and follow through doesn’t always happen.  It is tough stuff.  I get lazy.  I get distracted.  I lose momentum.

This is why I’ve hired someone to help me!  I have to figure out how to keep things moving.  Sink or swim!

Finding the time to accomplish my goals

Choosing my top 8 goals wasn’t hard either but calculating how to meet them with percentages of time was new to me and a little challenging!  These tasks seem tedious and they are, don’t get me wrong!  But they are worth it and are already pushing me forward.  They will be the driving force for my business in 2015.

Here’s my moment of truth…I’ve not been working on my business enough.  I haven’t been structured and organized enough, and I’m not a business major so I kinda sorta stink at that side of things.  Bleh. There I said it!  I’m really excited to change that for 2015!!  The fire, while hot and uncomfortable, is making me dance, kick and scream (Yes, I throw mini tantrums!!), but ultimately jump into a renewed purpose and vision for 2015.  I’m pushing towards greater things!

So, I laid out all of my goals and plans for 2015.  I laid them out into the 4 quarters of the year based on priority.  Then came the hard part!  I had to estimate how many hours each goal would take me and calculate how many hours I work each week.  Then I figured out how many hours it would take each week for me to accomplish a goal.  I wrote out my guesstimates of how long it would take.

My business coach laughed at me and said, “Jill, you’ll need double the time for each task you’ve listed.”  I laughed back and said, “I know.  You’re so right.  I always do that.  I am way overly optimistic about how long everything takes because I always want it to go faster!”  So, I doubled all my numbers thinking, “I know me.  It’s probably going to take even longer than that!”  And the truth is, it might even take longer than that to accomplish, but I’m ok with that.  I’ve got to start somewhere.

Organizing myself for productivity

By my calculations, it looks like a minimum of 33% of my time needs to be set aside for these goals to be met!  So off I went to buy a pretty planner.  I bought one that has hourly time slots to help me start thinking ahead more.  I know this is the 21st century but I’m starting this venture old school.  Ha!  I am writing my goals for the week in chunks of time and calculating when I spend time on my business goals in a not-so-fancy Excel spreadsheet.  So far, my productivity has improved already and I’m beginning to see how knowing my numbers and making calculations can motivate me to stay on track!

Let’s do this!

Going into 2015 I have my mission statement, vision statement, value statements, and goals per quarter in place AND listed on a document for me to see every day in my office.  A new year calls for new things…new plans…new goals…new strategies.

Hopefully I’ve lit a little fire under your tooshie, too!  Let’s do this!  Jump on it!  Start planning!  Let’s dance!

Keep up with me here because I’m going to write more updates on how the “Business Consultant” thing is working out!

Thank you to Jill Howell of Raindancer Studios for contributing this article.