When Mel and I very first got started in the wedding photography business, help from others who had come before us was absolutely key in our ability to grow so quickly and establish ourselves. From software & equipment recommendations to suggestions to read certain books–every little bit was an important piece to us.  We’ve always tried to give back in the same way by helping others as well, and this is one of the foundational reasons that it has been so important to us to try and create and foster a great photographic community in Nashville.

In my opinion, the most effective thing you can do to help your business that doesn’t involve direct help/mentoring from someone else is reading good business books. In fact, there is a principle called the “Hawthorne effect.”  Basically, the principle states that paying attention to a particular behavior causes you to improve your performance in that area.  SO… think about this: On average, Americans read less than one book per year.  If you only read 30 to 60 minutes a day, you can finish roughly one book a week—around 50 books per year.  Imagine the HUGE competitive advantage you would have simply by changing that one habit?

That brings me to this:  Many of you reading this right now are photographers or other wedding vendors from around the world.  Mel and I just bought a stack of some of our favorite business books (by Seth Godin, Malcom Gladwell, Robert Kiyosaki, John Maxwell, etc. etc.) and  we would like to help you build your business this year by mailing one to you — we also would like to indirectly help other people in your area at the same time.  So here’s the idea:

If you have a blog, chances are that in addition to your clients you probably have other photographers/vendors/business owners in your area who read it.  Think of something, anything, that has helped you in your business.  It doesn’t matter how small or how large it is—if it has helped you, then there is someone else out there that it can help as well.  Write up a short post sharing that helpful piece of info, and somewhere in your post, copy and paste the following HTML code:

<a href=”http://www.mclellanstyle.com”>Nashville wedding photographers</a>, Sean & Mel McLellan of McLellan Style are giving away business books to help you improve your business. Want one of them?—and want to help other people build their businesses at the same time? Visit their <a href=”https://mclellanblog.com/?p=3309″>business books</a> blog post!

After that, just email the link to your post (along with your mailing address) to sean@mclellanstyle.com).  We’ll keep shipping them until we run out!  We hope to help you out by sending some great business books your way—but you’ll also help your sphere of influence, that we couldn’t have reached ourselves, by sharing helpful tips on your own blog!

Ready?  Go!

It seems that the Nashville photography industry is getting quite the reputation! Everywhere we go lately, we keep hearing from photographers in other areas about how envious they are of the community we have here among photographers. It is absolutely true that we have a great community of which we are very proud. We are extremely fortunate to be able to call so many of our fellow Nashville photographers our best friends and being a part of this community has enriched our lives in so many ways. The reason I bring it up though, is not to brag on our group (even though we really do have a great group!). I bring it up to encourage all of the rest of you that you can have a great sense of community in your town too and we would like to help you figure out how.

We hear so many objections. The consensus seems to be that Nashville contains only the kindest photographers who naturally came together and this has always been the case. There isn’t that kind of comradery in other areas and so it’s assumed that there simply can’t be. The truth of the matter is that when Sean and I got started in this industry 5 or 6 years ago, we heard all the same things about Nashville that you hear about your town. We heard that it’s a cut-throat industry, that no one talks to each other, and that everyone sees other photographers as competition only. Below are the steps we took as a group to change that thinking and build community here in Nashville:

  1. Seek out like-minded individuals. We knew we didn’t feel the way as outlined above, so we knew there had to be others who felt the same. I’m sure there is at least one other photographer where you live who shares your desire to have photographer friends.
  2. Even if it’s just a few of you, start getting together. Arrange to do a shoot together just for fun or go see a movie. The content of your time together doesn’t really matter – it’s all just about building genuine relationships. We started with just a small group of us. We found those like-minded individuals and set a date for dinner. We all enjoyed ourselves so much that we kept setting monthly dates which brings me to my next point,
  3. Be consistent. Be the one who takes charge and sends the evite every month. Waiting for someone to plan something sometime in the future doesn’t make it happen. Take the initiative and put it on the calendar!
  4. Spread the word! We left it as an open invitation to whomever would like to join us and used the “tell your friends” strategy. So it happened that our group grew and grew until restaurants really weren’t practical anymore because the group was just so big! We moved to people’s homes and Sean and I love having our photographer friends frequent our house regularly.
  5. Look for and/or start meetup groups through organizations as a way to easily bring everyone together. We still have fairly regular get togethers outside of organizations, but somewhere along the way, the Pictage User Group sprung up, and now the Smug Meetup Group which make it convenient for us all to gather.
  6. Genuinely look to invest in personal relationships, not networking affiliations. This is so key guys. The photographers in Nashville are our friends first – not our business associates. We started getting together to hang out and then later to share with each other more and more, both about our businesses and our lives, because we truly care about each other and have come to trust each other on a personal level. We attend each other’s birthday parties, these are the people who came to see us as soon as our son was born. We attend monthly meetings like PUG and SMUG more so to spend time with our friends than even to learn. There is no “networking” here! As you seek out others, set the precedent that your group is formed around caring about others, not seeing what you can get from each other.
  7. Lastly, don’t be discouraged! You might start small, people might be hesitant at first, and along the way there will definitely be those who try to come in and take advantage, but know that you’re building something worth working for! Nashville’s reputation for it’s amazing community of photographers didn’t just happen one day. It happened over time because we all made the effort to get to know each other and become friends. You can have that where you live too.

We hope this has been helpful and that you’ll find the kind of friendships among other photographers that we have found. And to our Nashville photographer community – we love you guys! Thank you for opening up to us and allowing us to call you friends. :0)

As I went through everyone’s facebook pages last night (thanks in advance for letting me snag images from your pages guys!), I realized that we really only take photos at Christmas parties and conventions.  Sooo, here’s a few fun photos of just some of the wonderful people we’ve come to know here in Nashville!

Because I pulled these off Facebook, I’m not sure who took what so here’s a list of credits for who I think took some of these images.  Sorry if I missed you!  Shoot me an email and I’ll add your credit! :0)

Gregory Byerline

Peter Carlson

Joan Evans

For Business:
Milebug ($1.99)
We use Milebug every time we get in our car.  Your mileage is only tax deductible if you keep a detailed log; I don’t know if you’re anything like me, but if you are, paper and pencil isn’t going to work for this.
Milebug saves your commonly used locations, can track both personal and business mileage, and can track mileage for multiple cars.  It will also generate PDF forms that you can email to yourself and print off for written proof of mileage for THE MAN.  It also calculates and shows you how much of a tax deduction you get for each trip you enter.  This is motivating to continue making sure you update the log every time you get in the car.  We just drove to East Tennessee for our first wedding of 2010.  $251.35 tax deduction.
Awesome.
Mint (Free)
Before we switched to Mac last year, I used to spend every morning downloading/typing in/updating all of our financial records in Quicken.  In addition to being Lameosaurus Rex, I would always miss one or two things here or there, and then I’d have to dig through all the transactions and figured out HOW my totals were off by $0.57 or some other ridiculously small amount.
At the time, Quicken wasn’t available for Mac, so I looked for new solutions.  Enter: Mint.com.  Wow.  Why didn’t someone think of this before?  You can access almost all of your financial records online; why do you need to type them in manually, then download them manually, and then match the downloaded transactions to your manually entered transactions?  Mint.com just automatically connects to your accounts, and automatically updates them all.  You can categorize them to the proper tax categories, you can create budgets, and best of all everything syncs to the iPhone automatically.  Not only has this saved me over an hour every week, but putting together my 2008 taxes was the easiest and fastest year, yet.
Shazam (Free)
If you’re not using Shazam, you should be.  Ever since I first downloaded this program, I was amazed by the fact that it actually works.  You just open it up, hit the ‘tag’ button, and it will listen to 30 seconds of any song that is playing… Then it searches a music database, and returns the details of the song.  Artist, song title, album, and a link to purchase via iTunes.  How do we use this?  At wedding receptions, of course.  I’ll tag music that the crowd is really into, and then make note of it so I can play those songs and similar songs when our clients come in to see their wedding images.  It turns out that for whatever weird reason that everybody doesn’t like exactly the same music that I do.  So, hooray for Shazam, and hooray for the fact that it is FREE.
Things ($9.99)
Are you using the GTD (Getting Things Done) method for task management/to-do/goals?  We don’t utilize the full GTD system, but we do try and use the task management portion in addition to setting and achieving our goals.  I’ve tried many to-do iPhone apps, and Things has been the best, so far.  It is simple, intuitive, and it syncs with the desktop version.
Having said that, no matter which program you use, even if it’s a pencil and paper, you should be using something.  Justin & Mary Marantz reminded me last week that 80% of Americans have no goals at all.  That’s right.  It’s not that 80% don’t keep track of their goals—80% don’t have any goals AT ALL.  16% of Americans do have goals, but they don’t write them down, leaving only 4% that do write them down!  And only 1% review their goals regularly.  I don’t have a fancy chart in front of me, but I’m sure if you made a chart showing various income distributions in this country, that you could overlay a chart of goal tracking, and there would be a HUGE correlation.  If $9.99 helps put you in the write down/keep track category, then you should get this app yesterday!
For Fun:
I Am T-Pain ($2.99)
Wow.  Wow. Wow.
For a mere $2.99, you can sing into your iPhone mic, flip the on switch, and you too can be T-Pain.  Seriously.  Five minutes ago, I was T-Pain.  Five minutes from now, I could be T-Pain again.  The best part is that after I’m finished being T-Pain, I can go back to being Sean.  No big deal.  Just like that.
I really enjoy writing impromptu songs about whatever I happen to be doing at any given time.  Here, let me share. If I was writing/singing out loud right now, my song might go something like this:
“I’m writing a bloooog post… about iPhone apppppps…  I’m not sure yet…. How many apps Imma recommend…  But when I figure it oooooout….. I’ll update the blog post tiiiiitle….  With the number of appppps….  That I recommmmmmended!”
Yes.  Now imagine THAT…   but in T-PAIN voice!
THAT. JUST. HAPPENED.
And so I repeat: Wow. Wow. Wow.
Honorable Mention: Trapster (Free)
Nobody who is reading this ever speeds, right?  You know, because that would be wrong and against the law and stuff.  Well now that we’ve determined that this app wouldn’t have any use for me, or anyone else who is reading right now…  Let’s just veer off into Hypotheticaland and say that someone was interested in knowing where speed traps are set up.  Why would someone want that information?  I have NO idea—that would be crazy to be interested in that information!  But if someone did, enter: Trapster.
Trapster has push notifications, so you don’t have to have the program open and running; however, it is dependent upon other Trapster users flagging speed traps and submitting them to Trapster in order to notify other users…  So, it doesn’t always have everything listed.  In addition to this,  with push notifications, you might not hear/see the notification by the time you are being pulled over.  Also, if you pass a speed trap, I’m not really seeing how realistic it would be to submit a report to Trapster as you’re passing by…  Because as you’re clicking the flag button, you’ll probably get pulled over for texting even if you weren’t speeding.
So…  I’m not going to count this one as a recommendation.  “A” for effort; but maybe this one will improve with time.
Five. Five iPhone apps.  T-Pain: “Fiiiiiiiive iPhone aaaaaaaapps… that are aweeeeesome!”
What is your favorite/most useful iPhone app?

You may have seen the leaked information on the new iPhone that should be coming out in a couple of months–exciting stuff!  That got me to thinking: we have had iPhones since the first generation, and we use them ALL THE TIME.  They are fantastic on their own, but there are some apps out there that really make the iPhone shine.  What might some of those apps be, you ask?  Well, let’s take a look:

For Business:

Milebug ($1.99)

We use Milebug every time we get in our car.  Your mileage is only tax deductible if you keep a detailed log; I don’t know if you’re anything like me, but if you are, paper and pencil isn’t going to work for this.

Milebug saves your commonly used locations, can track both personal and business mileage, and can track mileage for multiple cars.  It will also generate PDF forms that you can email to yourself and print off for written proof of mileage for THE MAN.  It also calculates and shows you how much of a tax deduction you get for each trip you enter.  This is motivating to continue making sure you update the log every time you get in the car.  In January, we drove to East Tennessee for our first wedding of 2010.  $251.35 tax deduction.

Awesome.

Mint (Free)

Before we switched to Mac last year, I used to spend every morning downloading/typing in/updating all of our financial records in Quicken.  In addition to being Lameosaurus Rex, I would always miss one or two things here or there, and then I’d have to dig through all the transactions and figured out HOW my totals were off by $0.57 or some other ridiculously small amount.

At the time, Quicken wasn’t available for Mac, so I looked for new solutions.  Enter: Mint.com.  Wow.  Why didn’t someone think of this before?  You can access almost all of your financial records online; why do you need to type them in manually, then download them manually, and then match the downloaded transactions to your manually entered transactions?  Mint.com just automatically connects to your accounts, and automatically updates them all.  You can categorize them to the proper tax categories, you can create budgets, and best of all everything syncs to the iPhone automatically.  Not only has this saved me over an hour every week, but putting together my 2008 taxes was the easiest and fastest year, yet.

Shazam (Free)

If you’re not using Shazam, you should be.  Ever since I first downloaded this program, I was amazed by the fact that it actually works.  You just open it up, hit the ‘tag’ button, and it will listen to 30 seconds of any song that is playing… Then it searches a music database, and returns the details of the song.  Artist, song title, album, and a link to purchase via iTunes.  How do we use this?  At wedding receptions, of course.  I’ll tag music that the crowd is really into, and then make note of it so I can play those songs and similar songs when our clients come in to see their wedding images.  It turns out that for whatever weird reason that everybody doesn’t like exactly the same music that I do.  So, hooray for Shazam, and hooray for the fact that it is FREE.

Things ($9.99)

Are you using the GTD (Getting Things Done) method for task management/to-do/goals?  We don’t utilize the full GTD system, but we do try and use the task management portion in addition to setting and achieving our goals.  I’ve tried many to-do iPhone apps, and Things has been the best, so far.  It is simple, intuitive, and it syncs with the desktop version.

Having said that, no matter which program you use, even if it’s a pencil and paper, you should be using something.  Justin & Mary Marantz reminded me a few months ago that 80% of Americans have no goals at all.  That’s right.  It’s not that 80% don’t keep track of their goals—80% don’t have any goals AT ALL.  16% of Americans do have goals, but they don’t write them down, leaving only 4% that do write them down!  And only 1% review their goals regularly.  I don’t have a fancy chart in front of me, but I’m sure if you made a chart showing various income distributions in this country, that you could overlay a chart of goal tracking, and there would be a HUGE correlation.  If $9.99 helps put you in the write down/keep track category, then you should get this app yesterday!

For Fun:

I Am T-Pain ($2.99)

Wow.  Wow. Wow.

For a mere $2.99, you can sing into your iPhone mic, flip the on switch, and you too can be T-Pain.  Seriously.  Five minutes ago, I was T-Pain.  Five minutes from now, I could be T-Pain again.  The best part is that after I’m finished being T-Pain, I can go back to being Sean.  No big deal.  Just like that.

I really enjoy writing impromptu songs about whatever I happen to be doing at any given time.  Here, let me share. If I was writing/singing out loud right now, my song might go something like this:

“I’m writing a bloooog post… about iPhone apppppps…  I’m not sure yet…. How many apps Imma recommend…  But when I figure it oooooout….. I’ll update the blog post tiiiiitle….  With the number of appppps….  That I recommmmmmended!”

Yes.  Now imagine THAT…   but in T-PAIN voice!

THAT. JUST. HAPPENED.

And so I repeat: Wow. Wow. Wow.

Honorable Mention: Trapster (Free)

Nobody who is reading this ever speeds, right?  You know, because that would be wrong and against the law and stuff.  Well now that we’ve determined that this app wouldn’t have any use for me, or anyone else who is reading right now…  Let’s just veer off into Hypotheticaland and say that someone was interested in knowing where speed traps are set up.  Why would someone want that information?  I have NO idea—that would be crazy to be interested in that information!  But if someone did, enter: Trapster.

Trapster has push notifications, so you don’t have to have the program open and running; however, it is dependent upon other Trapster users flagging speed traps and submitting them to Trapster in order to notify other users…  So, it doesn’t always have everything listed.  In addition to this,  with push notifications, you might not hear/see the notification by the time you are being pulled over.  Also, if you pass a speed trap, I’m not really seeing how realistic it would be to submit a report to Trapster as you’re passing by…  Because as you’re clicking the flag button, you’ll probably get pulled over for texting even if you weren’t speeding.

So…  I’m not going to count this one as a recommendation.  “A” for effort; but maybe this one will improve with time.

Five. Five iPhone apps.  T-Pain: “Fiiiiiiiive iPhone aaaaaaaapps… that are aweeeeesome!”

Bonus Feature: It’s a Phone!

Yeah.  You read that correctly. Did you know that on top of all this other stuff that you can make calls with these things?  I know.  Incredible!  It does so many awesome things that sometimes you forget its a phone.  Well, forget no more–now you know.

What is your favorite/most useful iPhone app?  Leave your comments, below!