“Vision without execution is just hallucination.”

—  Henry Ford

When the phone rings and I are asked to do a project, it is rewarding and prosperous. What do you do when the phone doesn’t ring?

In business, there is so much work that must be done that while it doesn’t look like it is productive if neglected can make things worse.

There is always paperwork to do, especially if you are an entrepreneur who is a one-person operation like me.

Working on my books is one of the first things I do on most slow days. This is to be sure all the ledgers are up to date. Often this means sending out reminders to slow payers.

Take the time to learn something new. Over the years, I have invested in numerous books, magazines, and many online videos to stay up to date on my industry.

“A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.”

—  George Bernard Shaw

Be proactive. Plan your life rather than just reacting to things.

One of the best ways to plan is to network. This means you must gather the names of people and organizations you want to work with in the future.

Work on creating a database of new prospects. Also, make a plan on how you will connect with these people.

These are ways that I connect with my audience:

• Monthly Newsletter
• Blog – tips for my audience
• Postcards – small taste of my portfolio
• Phone calls
• E-mail

For the self-employed, taking some of this time for personal time is much easier. Many business owners are so busy running their businesses that home chores and projects don’t get done.

So many of my friends have discovered they can work from anywhere this past year. Many college students also realized that they could be anywhere if their classes were all online. I know some friends of mine went to Colorado and snowed skiing during their breaks.

Another friend of mine is planning to work from Hawaii for a month.

“The only man who makes no mistakes is the man who never does anything.”

–  Theodore Roosevelt

For those who work the gig economy, having a phone and computer with you means you can work your downtime from anywhere. Visit your family and if a call comes that you need to respond to, then adjust.

Volunteer in your community. Find something that you can do to give back. It helps others and lets others know your heart for the community.

One of the best things to do during a slow time is marketing. You may be someone who needs to promote your products or services to drum up new business. Having authentic images of your product, company, or staff can put you ahead of your competitors, and I can help you with it.

Work on telling your story of your business and how it intersects with your customer’s story. Please hire me to help get on video client testimonials on how you made their lives better.

Do you need employees? How about letting me help you record the testimonials of your employees and why they like working for you?

There is much to do today in this downtime. What action will you take today?

There are many reasons your organization will fail in the next generation. Most of the reasons are the present leadership not planning for the change.

In this post, I want to talk about realistic planning for budgeting. Most of the time, organizations plan to maintain the same roles as they have now, which is one of the biggest mistakes. As you grow and mature your organization is developing just like you did go through school.

Many of us have gone through preschool, elementary, middle school, high school, college, and advanced degrees. Your organization also develops similarly.

You start with one teacher, and then when you progress upward, you need more teachers in specialties to help you maximize your talents.

If you retire and the organization is still in the elementary years, it may fail because they were not planning for the need for more staff, more supplies, and space to operate in the future.

Let me tell you the story of how one man [Zack] hurt a nonprofit because they were focused so much on the present that he was not helping the organization plan for tomorrow.

The most significant need of a nonprofit is to tell its story to its donors. Zack was one of the best marketing guys in the business. He was working for a fortune 50-size company. He knew how to tell stories to build a brand.

He had a huge heart for this nonprofit’s mission. They were an educational nonprofit that was changing communities all over Asia. Zack knew that the organization couldn’t afford him, so he donated all of his time.

The problem came when Zack could no longer help the organization. He had retired, and his health kept him from being able to contribute anymore.

He never helped the organization understand how they needed to budget for someone like him in the future. He didn’t groom the next marketing/communications person. He loved to travel, and the organization was thriving. He also loved to do a lot of the work himself. He took photos and videos and wrote as well. He found his friends to help as well.

Don’t be just like Zack for your organization. Teach and mentor those who will replace you. Most of all, help set up the organization to afford later to pay someone with your skills. Help them understand how to budget for the organization with the next generation of leaders.

Great leaders prepare the next generation and work themselves out of their job.

You see, Zack had succumbed to pride and his ego. He loved doing the work and getting recognition for it as well. Zack was on an ego trip.

If you were no longer around and the rest of the staff as well all left, what would the organization need not just to survive but thrive? Take the time away from the present work to plan for future work. Create teams to help budget for the needs of the future.

You will discover that the time for the new leadership to start taking ownership is long before you are ready to give it up.

[DJI Air 2s, Mode = Normal, ISO 100, 1/4000, ƒ/2.8, (35mm = 22)]

The pandemic cut the number of jobs most photographers and videographers were doing. It did give us time to practice, but it was hard some days to do anything.

I have been trying to remind myself to push and take out the cameras and shoot for myself.

Flying my drone has helped a great deal this past couple of years. It is still new to me, and the perspectives are not something I see daily walking around.

Sometimes I am on the ground looking up, as I did the other day in the Georgia International Convention Center parking lot in College Park, Georgia. I enjoy seeing things from a different perspective.

While visiting my daughter in Columbus, Georgia, the past couple of times, I took my drone out and flew it. Since she works at the Springer Opera House, a historic theater at 103 Tenth Street in Downtown Columbus, Georgia, I flew it over the facility.

Luck was on my side that day. The people at Springer saw the photos and realized a couple of days later that when they leaked into the ceiling, they could use my photos to find the leak.

I took out the drone earlier last month to show the work they were putting in 4 piers to help stabilize our shifting foundation. Now all this work is underground, and unless you saw them put it in, you would never know.

Of course, I took some close-up shots as well.

In July, we had our roof replaced due to hail damage. I took out the drone to get some photos to see what they were doing.

Look for those opportunities to Practice!

All these examples are just me showing that you can practice all the time. The things happening in the exact skills I am using for my projects will later be what I am called on to do for my clients.

While in Hawaii, I took my drone. Every year since 2006, I have been going to Kona but have never seen the campus where I taught from the air. I could see how close we were to downtown Kona.

By just deciding to practice and have fun, I could see the difference between daytime shooting and nighttime. I now have some examples of the exact location day and night to help customers understand the advantages of each time for their projects.

My daughter likes to experiment as much as I do, so we played around with colored gels for her college graduation shots. I hadn’t used these in more than 15 years, and pulling them out and trying something new was fun for us.

Practice is about experimenting and stretching yourself.

Artistically speaking, practice allows you to work out problems in a technique that mean the difference between a basic doodle and a resolved piece of art. Drawing the same or similar subjects repeatedly helps you learn the subject’s shape, form, and texture.

The more you practice, the better you will get. Being an artist is about experiencing new things and about individual creation. If you keep trying new mediums and new techniques, you’ll learn to incorporate more of them into finished projects and round out your skill set.

[NIKON D5, 70.0-200.0 mm f/2.8, Mode = Aperture Priority, ISO 4500, 1/250, ƒ/3.2, (35mm = 200)]

This month I have been covering Chick-fil-A’s first in-person events since the beginning of the pandemic. They are not treating this like we are all out of the woods.

One of the events I cover is where different departments have their first in-person meetings under an open tent. Before you are let on the property, you must go through the guard gate that asks about your health and if you have been around anyone with COVID for the past 14 days.

At another event, they are meeting indoors, and the only time the face masks are off is when someone is presenting or eating.

Earlier in the year, I took this photo inside the restaurant to help train Chick-fil-A operators and team members about protocols when they open their dining rooms again.

Chick-fil-A is being proactive as much as possible. Daily they are adjusting to all the demands of running a restaurant in this pandemic which has created supply chain issues and safety issues for them to provide service to their customers.

What are you doing right now with your business in terms of communications?

Are you getting together and trying to reconnect your team safely?

Jonathan Evans is the team chaplain for the Dallas Cowboys and the Mavericks, and an accomplished speaker, teacher, and author. He currently serves on the pastoral staff at Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship with his father, Dr. Tony Evans. His sister, Priscilla Shirer, is a speaker, author, and actor; his brother, Anthony, is a singer and worship leader.

He was a keynote speaker who talked about how he was admitted to the hospital for heart issues. He had filled his “To Do List” with everyone but him. Even during a crisis, you still must take care of yourself.

“Nature has not intended mankind to work from eight in the morning until midnight without that refreshment of blessed oblivion which, even if it only lasts twenty minutes, is sufficient to renew all the vital forces.”

~ Winston Churchill

Churchill’s afternoon nap was a non-negotiable part of his relaxed approach to his daily routine. Churchill would start his day at 8 am by eating breakfast, answering letters, and dictating to his secretaries, all of which was conducted while still in bed. This work bout was followed by a bath, a long lunch, and plenty of sipping on watered-down whisky. After lunch, it was time to paint or play cards with his wife, Clementine. Then it was nap time. Churchill would take off his clothes and climb into bed for up to two hours of solid napping. At 6:30, he would rise, take another bath, and enjoy a long dinner. He finally got down to business at 11 pm and would work for several hours before going to bed and repeating the cycle over again.

Tim Tassopoulos was fascinated that Churchill took time every day for a nap during World War II. Tassopoulos encouraged everyone to take care of themselves because if they were not healthy, they could not take care of their teams.

Dan Cathy is also a licensed FAA pilot who is drawing on that experience, was also talking to the operators of the restaurants about taking care of themselves. He spoke of his training as a pilot that when you lose cabin pressure, the pilot is to first put on their mask before deploying the shows for everyone else. Low pressure would cause little more discomfort in the ears and eyes, but the associated drop in oxygen levels makes people pass out if they do not put their oxygen masks on within about 15 seconds.

Relationships are Important

Strong relationships are essential to your happiness and healthy life. People with good friendships handle stress much better; a good friend can help you in difficult times. People with a supportive partner recover better from heart attacks and other illnesses.

People can energize us, elevate our mood, encourage activity, boost the immune system, and increase longevity. Our physical and mental health are intertwined–when one goes down, it affects the other. The more stressed we are, the more our immune system is depressed, and the more likely we will get illnesses and diseases.

“I believe strongly that, particularly in the vaccinated people, if you’re vaccinated, and your family members are vaccinated, those who are eligible — that is, very young children are not yet eligible — that you can enjoy the holidays,” said Fauci. However, unvaccinated or partially-vaccinated people should be more cautious and take measures like wearing a mask, gathering outside, and getting tested before any celebrations.

Doug Parkin, volunteer pediatrician from Arizona is seeing patients during his two month service at the Baptist Medical Center in Nalerigu, Ghana. [NIKON D2X, Sigma 18-50mm F2.8 EX DC, Mode = Aperture Priority, ISO 800, 1/40, ƒ/2.8, (35mm = 42)]

Have you ever had to wait on diagnosis and they took forever at the hospital or doctors office?

Don’t do that to your team or customers.

Had the World Health Organization or the Centers for Disease Control waited until they could put out a message that wouldn’t change, millions more could have died from COVID-19.

Your organization needs to be communicating during these times often and in all the messaging streams where your audience is for your organization.

Be Timely

The speed of your communication in today’s ever-connected digital society means if you are not telling your story, everyone else will. Getting your message out right away shows your organization is aware of the situation. You are ready to take this on.

Most important is that the audience is most likely interested in your message.

Acknowledge Uncertainty

I think while this might not be what you lead with in your messaging, it must be the fire for why you don’t procrastinate during a crisis.

Tell only what you know. Doing so in an empathetic voice is a great way to acknowledge the frustration everyone is feeling.

When you go for surgery, they have you sign many papers acknowledging they may find something else.

Don’t Over-Reassure

It is better to overestimate the problem and then say that the situation is better than first thought.

What are you communicating?

This COVID-19 has put many people in a waiting room to hear from YOU.

This is one of the most critical times in organizations’ history for the past 100 years for the need for communication.

People need to know what your organization is doing and plans to do in the coming months. Be like the CDC and get your message out there. Let people know this is what you know right now; if changes happen, you will also communicate that to them.

So, what do people need to know? Assume they need to know what you will not be doing as well as what you will be doing.

Acknowledge fear, pain, suffering, and uncertainty if they are genuine emotions for the situation. Always be as human as possible. You are building a relationship with your audience. Make sure that the relationship is built on honesty and integrity.

Union University Photography Students during a photo weekend at Morris Abernathy’s home outside of Nashville, Tennessee July 19, 2003.

Aside from learning new things and finding a way to meet up, you can also build new professional relationships, gain friendships with like-minded people and even get to know people on a more personal level. 

Early in my career, I would go to conferences and workshops as a way to get feedback on my work. I wanted to improve and early on there was a lot of room for improvement.

In 1987, Jim Veneman and I both were trying to get better. We had begun a friendship because we both worked for similar organizations. We wanted to get the staff from MissionsUSA & The Commission Magazines together and others.

That first group included as well as some of our spouses:

• Don Rutledge
• Joanna Pinneo
• Mark Sandlin
• Paul Obregon
• Warren Johnson
• Jim Veneman
• Stanley Leary

This group would get together, share what everyone was doing, and then invite others to join the group, like Thomas Kennedy & William Allard.

Attending a workshop is like gifting yourself a new possibility to learn something new from peers with better experience and knowledge to share a new bee into the world of professionals. 

Building new relationships and meeting new connections are essential to personal growth. A workshop gives you as a professional the best opportunity to meet other people who share your interests. It is always a pleasure to meet someone with the same enthusiasm you do. Attending a workshop is a great way to meet other people in your area with shared interests. Of course, a friendship will not be guaranteed to flourish, but it never hurts to try. You will at least be able to find a friend and somebody who knows your “talk shop,” as it were, i.e., to discuss matters concerning your work, etc.

This Year

I organized this year a ZOOM meeting on Fridays to replicate the best I could this concept of getting together and getting to know other colleagues.

For those who love Photojournalism, I recommend attending this year’s event online. The 2021 Atlanta Photojournalism Seminar will take place virtually November 9-13, 2021, marking 49 consecutive years of the most extended continuously operating photojournalism conference in America.

In Person Events

I am planning to host some fun get-togethers shortly. I am looking to host a lighting workshop for a few hours one day. If you are interested, let me know so I can put you on the notification list. These will be in the Metro Atlanta Area.

Are you in crisis mode when it comes to finding employees?  

I have a tip, communicate to your potential employees like you have been doing with your customers.

 “Don’t start a business. Find a problem, solve a problem; the business comes second.” 

– Robert Herjavec, Shark Tank

No matter the business, you are solving a problem for someone. It would help if you were sure the client understands everything that needs to take place for your solution to be a success.    

Today you are competing not just with customers but for employees.  

You will use the same process for marketing your business to customers, but now for finding those employees.  

No longer are the days that you can say I have a job opening, and people are lining up for you to pick someone. 

Just like you created a product that solves a problem, you need to address the issues now that workers have with the workplace. 

Now you might just be solving every one of those problems. You have significant benefits, your employees like you as a boss, and your business makes a difference in the community, but no one is applying.

Most places have the same problem with marketing their business and finding employees. 

Show & Tell 

People have a short attention span. We know that infomercials work. The purpose of infomercials is to prompt the viewer to call a toll-free number or visit a website to purchase. An advantage of infomercials for companies is increased time to showcase a product, demonstrate how it works, and present a clear call to action. 

Applying the “Problem – Agitate – Solve” principle is a valuable tool for a significant effect on your business. Digging into the consumers’ common problems allows you to empathize, connect with them, provide solutions to their problems, and make them feel better. Of course, they won’t care about buying your product if it is not helpful to them. 

Having infomercials for your products/services is an excellent way of showing how it works. Describing how it is effective is always helpful, but people are visual. Viewers love seeing things in action. It would give bonus points to compare how you’re better than the other competitors in a respectful manner.

I think the great photo of employees and short text telling their story works excellent on social media. 

Also, short videos work as well. Tips for recruiting

• Target your audience; where do they congregate?
• Use testimonies of current employees.
• Communicate how people can grow with your company.
• Talk about how your company impacts the community ~ people are looking for a sense of purpose

 Call me, and let’s put together a campaign to recruit employees.

[Photo by Dennis Fahringer]

Today, a friend wrote to me, “Just read your blog about conflict coverage. Great article, BUT will your audience listen to you and heed your advice?”

Here is my response.

Please write to me and let me know what you think.

Good to hear from you. Two things give us wisdom. 

1. Experiential Learning ~ This is what Steve Jobs called “Wisdom From Accumulated Scar Tissue” Even from personal first-hand experience, not everyone will learn, as you know.
2. Traditional Learning ~ This is what the education system is all about. This is where you are learning from others’ experiences.

I believe one other way is a mixture of the two. Most freelancers, I think, fall into this category. It is where things are not working that you are doing, and you join ASMP, NPPA, or go to workshops. You realize others have the experience you need. You are what I call a motivated learner. 

Since 2006 I have been leading a workshop for a Christian organization on Storytelling. It would work for anyone or any organization.

We take people overseas [the lure] and give them a person to help tell their story. That person was selected because the organization is trying to raise funds for a program. The person for the story is an example of what the program is all about.

We have already established a workflow involving crafting the story and working in Adobe Premiere. James Dockery, editor for ESPN, and I coach them. At the end of this workshop, those generally have an “A-Ha” moment. They signup to retake the workshop. They realize that the first time they did OK, but they knew they needed to practice. They also understood they still wanted a coach/mentor to help them.

A few of these people now work for the organization overseas. They went to work in Columbia, South America, and Togo, West Africa. 

Due to my blog, I have gotten numerous jobs. I just did one yesterday helping a guy who does the woodturning. He wanted to know how to take better photos of his bowls. While I would have loved that he hired me to shoot the bowls, he paid me to teach him how to do it.

I got the gig I have for the past 12 years with Chick-fil-A because of the blog. The guy who hired me realized I was an expert and that many photographers go to me for advice. So why not get that guy.

We have all heard about the 80/20 Rule. Mathematically, the 80/20 rule is roughly described by a power law distribution (also known as a Pareto distribution) for a particular set of parameters. Many natural phenomena have been shown to exhibit such a distribution. It is an adage of business management that “80% of sales come from 20% of clients”.

I don’t have any research to support my belief, but I think that less than 5% of any field is doing 90% of the work. They are the experts. They either know much more than the rest or have surrounded themselves with a team of experts. 

I then believe that only about 1 or 2% of the group can teach and do excellent work. They are not necessarily the top 2% grossing, but they have enough of the understanding and ability to teach what they know so that others can understand.

1. If you could identify the top 10%, you could market to that group. Top 10%: Marketing to people and companies who need your services right now, typically described as “inbound marketing.”
2. Lower 90%: Marketing to people who don’t need your services but will someday.

Jeremy Miller, a brand strategist, is the one who created the “Sticky Branding”. 

The first mode is where companies feel the most confident, and it receives the lion’s share of the marketing budget. The challenge is much marketing investment is ineffective because it falls on deaf ears.

Paul Emond, CEO of Versature, sums up the situation nicely, “When people aren’t in the buying mode, they don’t want to be sold.”

The second mode of marketing is opportunity. Rather than trying to engage people when they have a need, engage them earlier in the Lower 90%. Establish the relationship and develop rapport before they’re ready to buy.

Create an opportunity where your customers know, like, and trust your company long before they need it. That way, they’ll skip right over the inbound marketing messages and call your company first when they have a need.

Sticky Brands are built in the Lower 90 Percent because they understand the importance of relationships. Their brand is not based on aggressive marketing and pitching. It’s based on a personal connection where customers know, like, and trust them.

Summary

I just put my brand out there to help; when people are ready, they will reach out to me and engage with me. Maybe you are one of those people who read to the end of this article. Please send me an email and tell me what you think [email protected]

Ya Ya Sebre is from Ouamani. [NIKON D2X, AF Zoom 70-200mm f/2.8D, ISO 200, ƒ/2.8, 1/250, Focal Length = 225]

I have been to Burkina Faso and Ghana, located in West Africa. In Burkina Faso alone, there are over 82 different groups, each with a foreign language.

While French is the official language of the country—not everyone speaks it.

So, how do you take photos with a language barrier?

The best way to approach these golden opportunities in an exotic location is to keep it simple. You want to spend all your time developing relationships with the people—not fidgeting with your equipment. Preplanning helped me to concentrate on communication and not my equipment once in West Africa.

What are the elements for a good photo? Well, the Washington Post’s photo editors use this hierarchy for picture selection:

• Informational
• Graphically Appealing
• Emotional
• Intimate

The photos which just have documented the scene and look pleasing like a postcard often lack the last two elements of the hierarchy. These are wrapped up in understanding the universal language of body language. Body language was all they had during the silent movie days, but it still worked and kept people laughing and crying.

Photographers who shoot those award-winning journalistic photos concentrate on capturing people’s body language.

Smiles mean pretty much the same the world over. However, there is much more than just the obvious in body language. A tilt in the head or someone leaning in versus hands crossed all communicate something different. Learning to recognize these subtleties will only help you with half the equation.

You also need to know what your body language is communicating.

You may want to watch your facial expressions in the mirror before you try them on strangers. Knowing how you are perceived will give you the best advantage to put people at ease and get the most cooperation possible.

Before snapping photos of people, take the time and communicate with them as much as possible. If you do this first, your photos will be much better because you have established a relationship from which you can get their cooperation. Photographs that meet the highest standards of intimacy require the subject to let you into their world.

If you want to read more on this subject, there are many books available like “How to Read and Use Body Language” by Anna Jaskolka.

Just remember to travel light and emphasize the critical stuff—body language—the subjects, and yours.