Business Administration Basics
Lesson 17 from: FAST CLASS: How to Start a Photography BusinessPye Jirsa
Business Administration Basics
Lesson 17 from: FAST CLASS: How to Start a Photography BusinessPye Jirsa
Lessons
Class Introduction
04:35 2Common Myths & Unknown Truths
08:08 3The Road Ahead
05:22 4Find Your Passion
03:18 5Part-time, Full-time, Employed, Partners?
03:41 6Stop Wasting Time & Money
04:02 7Your 12 Week Roadmap
04:23 8Mind Mapping
02:25Select a Focus
02:51 10S.W.O.T. Analysis
04:14 11Strategy & Long Term Goals
03:42 12Values, Vision & Mission
05:40 13Quick Break for Econ 101
08:14 14Your Target Market & Brand Message
07:12 15Your Client 'Why'
02:26 16Document the Client Experience
04:47 17Business Administration Basics
08:56 18Book Keeping Management
05:23 19Create the Logo & Branding
03:21 20Three Pricing Methods
10:18 21Package Pricing Psychology & Design
02:03 22The Listing & Classified Hustle
04:51 23Make Instagram Simple
05:57 24Your Automated Pinterest Plan
03:16 25Content Marketing & SEO
06:03 26Your Content Road Map
06:41 27How to Craft Your Content
05:37 28Internal Linking Basics
03:21 29What is Sales? Show Me!
05:02 30The Sales Process
03:23 31Always Positive, Always Affirming
02:03 32The Second Money & Dual Process
05:51Lesson Info
Business Administration Basics
All I want you to know is that we are in this bottom section right here called administration. And you're gonna see throughout the 12 weeks that there are little things that you need to do throughout the 12 weeks to get your business set up, okay? That's really it. What are those things? Well, one, we need gear, right? Some of you are gonna be at a place in your business where you have what you need already. Some of you need a little bit more. Some, you just need to buy everything. Either way we put together a tab on the worksheet with basically everything. It has links to everything. Whether you shoot Canon, Sony, Nikon, well we put the three of there, the three major ones. We put basically alternatives for everything, lenses, cameras, all that. But on the other side we also have IT basics and the fundamentals. Like what you need to get started in terms of data management, okay? And then legal. What do you need to purchase for that side? How 'bout software for administration? For runn...
ing your business, a CRM. All of it is inside of this purchase guide on tab one, 01 purchase. How many of you all have your names figured out now? I hope so. 'Cause what the hell are you gonna register if you don't have your name figured out? But that's where we need to be, where we're ready to actually register our name. And a few things before we make it official. We need to look at if there are any existing entities or trademarks and we briefly discussed this in the previous segments where once you have a name do a quick search and see if there are any other businesses that have that exact same name. Now likely, there are. But if you look up trademark infringement, what it's gonna show you is a list. Just look up how do I know if it's okay to trademark. You'll get a list of criteria. And basically what it's saying is that if your business name is identical to another registered trademark that does the same thing, you're in trouble, okay? But they have to be in the same line of business, essentially. Availability of your desired social media names, do you need a DBA, a fictitious business name? So a DBA is a doing business as, okay? This is simply like when you go to the bank and when you start getting checks in the name of Lin and Jirsa. My name is not Lin and Jirsa, my name is Pye. So when I go to the bank I need to have a doing business as statement that states that Pye Jirsa is doing business as Lin and Jirsa Photography. Make sense? And possibly consider trademarking, we discussed that. I always get questions on entities and protection. I wanna keep this part really simple, okay? This is from a CPA background, but I am not a lawyer. None of us here will claim to give you any sort of legal advice but I can give you the basics. If you do not register your business as anything, if you just start operating your business, you are considered by your state a sole proprietor. Which means you can do business. You could start selling something right now, okay? Now, do you have the licenses necessary to do so? No, but from a legal standpoint you have created a business entity. The problem is that you are your own business entity. Which means that as soon as you get in trouble, all of you is liable. Your personal assets, your home, your car, everything. Registering a entity is gonna give you protection against that if you follow the rules. This is the big one. LLC is generally for most every photographer where you wanna be. We scheduled ourselves as an S corporation. That goes back to our vision and core values and what we are because we wanted an S corporation to actually have the holdings of all the different LLCs that we own. That make sense? But for most everybody out there, an LLC is where you wanna go. You get certain benefits. You get the S, you get basically S Corp. Protection, what is, oh, sole proprietor versus S Corp. Protection, okay. So you get corporate protection, you get flow through taxes. That means that you're taxed on a personal level. So if the LLC profits, you carry those profits through to your personal income taxes where your there taxed. Which is great, because you're generally gonna be taxed at a lower level. That's a good thing. All profits are taxable even if they're not distributed inside of an LLC. That means that if the company profits and you keep $100,000 in the company, the law doesn't distinguish between you holding it and your company holding it, they will tax you on it. Whereas a corporation could maintain their profits in the company and not distribute them to be taxed, but they'll face other types of taxation, corporate taxation. Owners pay self-employment taxes. In a corporate environment you pay half. Again, it doesn't really matter 'cause you're gonna go LLC. That's for the vast majority of you, it's gonna be the right way to go. So how do you keep the two separate? It's simple. You keep proper records on the business side. You make distributions to yourself in the form of a salary and payments and partner distributions. And those two things are completely separated. What you purchase and what you do on your own is your own business. That's not to say that you can't make business purchases. You go on a trip and you're gonna take some pictures, that is part of the business. You go buy a computer that you're gonna use for business and personal use, that can be part of the business. All those things can be business expenses. Just keep the two separated, and a good CPA is gonna help you along with that. Does that all makes sense? The application of all this stuff to photography which is what we're doing is more difficult. Which is why we wanna kind of focus a short time on admin and get through. So the next thing what we're doing is we have our name, we have everything, now working to register that domain and get a website. Here's what I would do. I included a link in the purchases to registering your domain under Go Daddy. The reason is, it's a little bit less expensive. It also separates the domain as an asset from your website as an asset, okay? So, if you register with Squarespace, and let's just say Squarespace goes out of business or something happens or you wanna switch to a different platform, you now have one domain with Squarespace which could cost a different amount. And you gotta keep that just so you can keep your domain name, or transfer, it's just a headache. So use Go Daddy. That's where you're gonna register all your domains. Then you can freely bounce between different website platforms as you see fit. If you like something on Squarespace better one year, but then Wix comes out with a template the next year and you're like I wanna go with that one, you can switch over easily without ever having, domains and website is separate. Make sense? Squarespace and Wix again did not exist when we started our business. Oh my goodness, we did it the old-fashioned way. You get Wordpress, you design your own templates, you do all this kind of stuff, it's a headache. Save yourself. You have so much to focus on in starting your business. Save yourself some sanity. They make good stuff, they're inexpensive, just go with one of them. Cool? Register your social media accounts. We're gonna take care of that admin work. You're gonna get everything set up. The ones that we wanna focus on is Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook is last. Facebook, I have a slide in here, it's Facebook because we have to. Yeah. Because honestly, it's not a client acquisition channel. You're not gonna find your customers there. You'll find plenty of photographers that are ready to talk about your work and critique you, but you're not gonna find customers. But you have to have it. We'll talk about why. Protect yourself with contracts. We have in the purchases link the Law Tog, okay? Simple, ready to go contracts. I can't knock DIYing it. Because we did it. We did it as well, I mean we're CPAs, we're like, okay, we understand terms and contracts pretty well, so at the very beginning of our business we DIY'd it. Mutual claim protection. This is basically protection for your client side and for your side, okay? So this is protecting them signing as a customer and protecting you signing as the business. And we want maxes on claim amounts which is basically saying that they can't come after you for more than what they paid. And they agree to that up front. Make sense? So that way your loss and your liability is always limited to the scope of the project that you take on.
Class Materials
Bonus Materials with Purchase