Angela Pointon loves photographers and artists. She studied photography, but had a love affair with business and marketing. She decided to combine all three together when she started Steel Toe Images. She coaches and inspires photographers and other artists to kick major butt through her one-on-one sessions, blog, emails, workshops and her first book (coming soon), called “ A Swift Kick In The Pants: Business Smarts For Us Creative Types”. Follow Angela on Twitter, Facebook or her blog.

I’m here to prove one thing and one thing only: that every photographer and artist can be a good businessperson, too.

You probably haven’t led dozens of successful businesses.

You probably don’t have an MBA.

Heck, you barely consider yourself a businessperson at all. An artist? Yes. A business person, sales person and marketer? Humph.

But guess what? I’ve got good news.

There is an undeniable truth that you might not know. There is a secret the world has been hiding from you until now. There is something so unbelievably amazing; you’re going to smile when I tell you. Many really awesome artists who earn loads of money aren’t trained or academically educated in the fundamentals of business, either.

So how do they do it?

There are four things that an artist must have in order to be a good—no make that great—businessperson. And the very first thing is the most critical element you must have: Gut Instinct.

I’ve got more good news for you. We all have gut instinct.

We all have something innate in us that tells us what decisions are good, and what decisions are bad. You can choose to listen, or you can choose to ignore it to the point where you don’t recognize or even hear it anymore.

So what makes some photographers successful and others not so much?

Understanding how to listen to your gut instinct, how to decipher between instinct and fear and how to make wiser decisions in your business using gut instinct is the most critical measure of whether your business will succeed or not.

Join me on Wednesday, September 19th from 8:30 – 9:30PM east coast time for a FREE live webinar to learn all about how to listen to, understand, and utilize your gut instinct. Can’t make it on that date? Register anyway and we’ll send you a recording of the event whether you attend or not. Space is limited. Reserve your space and register now.

Want to really kick some butt? Join me for the entire series of four webinars where you’ll learn about each of the four critical elements you must have in order to succeed. Learn more and find out how to register here.

Angela & Tiffinbox are combining forces on a four part webinar series starting in September 2012. Learn more here. All money raised goes to support Tiffinbox.

Ferina Santos is part of the team behind Open Colleges, Australia's provider of photography courses. A feisty nerd at heart with an obsession for media and vanity, she captures all her random musings with daily photographs in her blog, A Pink Banana.

“Sorry, but you just don’t have enough experience.”

As a photographer just starting out, you’ll probably hear that kind of thing a lot – I know I did! The problem is that art galleries and publishers are afraid of wasting their time with someone who’s not ready, and regular people who would hire a photographer are doing so for things like weddings and other special one-time events, so they really need to believe you can get it right the first time.

What you need is to start building a reputation and finding people who will recommend your work. But how can you even get to that point? How do you start to make a name for yourself if no one will give you a chance?

There’s no one way to make it in photography, because no two photographers are the same. Do you want to go the more artistic route and try to make it into galleries and publish books of your work? Or are you more interested in just providing quality professional shots and making a few bucks?

Either way, what I learned the hard way is that there are several common things that every budding photographer needs. And by the way, if you’re having a problem with people dismissing you because you’re too young, there’s a way around that, too.

Figure out who you are as a photographer. This is one of those things that sounds super simple and incredibly hard at the same time, but it’s important to decide (to a certain degree, at least) if you’re going to have a focus or just shoot whatever interests you. Having a focus (say, you shoot events like weddings) can help when you’re trying to get hired by people because you should have the specific kind of photos they are looking for and that will help them to see that you can do what they need. Speaking of which …

Build a portfolio. If there’s one way to “prove” to people that you can do it, it’s by actually doing it. Don’t be afraid to take chances, and never give up on a particular kind of shot or subject just because one shoot doesn’t go well. Unless you just know that you’re going to be a wedding photographer and that’s it, the best thing to do is take a wide variety of shots (of anything that interests you) so that you can show your range.

The nice thing about this, too, is that you can pick and choose what you show different people. Up for that wedding job? Here are your photos of people and events.

Be an apprentice. Want to learn a lot and make a great relationship that can potentially help you a lot? See if there are any working photographers who would be willing to show you the ropes in exchange for you essentially being their intern. If you find the right person and they like your work, this can be a fantastic way to start getting jobs and building your reputation if they throw a few jobs your way.

Work for free. No one wants to do work and not get paid for it, but when you’re starting out, unfortunately that’s often the reality. Instead of thinking about it like you’re not getting money you deserve, looking at it as training and getting your name out there. Doing a few free jobs is one of the best ways to get portfolio-ready photographs – and meet people who may actually want to hire you for pay in the future!

Take a class. Just like becoming someone’s apprentice, deciding to take a class can help you to improve your skills, learn new techniques, and forge helpful relationships. Not only will you be meeting other people who share your interests and might know about jobs or other opportunities, instructors can often be great resources. Much of the time, they are photographers themselves, and may be able to take you under their wing or introduce you to other professionals who can help.

Let your work speak for you. So now we come to that whole age thing. If you’re fresh out of college – or even younger! – you’ve probably been told that you’re too young or too inexperienced, but think back on those situations where this happened. Did you approach someone in person or lead with your personal history?

If someone has the option of hiring a baby photographer (meaning you’re young, not that you photograph babies) or getting someone with a decade of experience, chances are they will go with the person who’s been working longer. That’s why you can’t start by talking about yourself. If possible, mail in your portfolio or start a website and post it online so that people can see your work first.

This way, they’ll see you first as a photographer and judge you by your work before they even think about age and how long you’ve been working. Most people, if they see evidence from your portfolio that you can do the work, won’t even ask how old you are!

What would you add to Ferina's list of suggestions? Chime in below!

This is Angela Pointon‘s third guest post on Tiffinbox. Read her first post and second post too. Follow her on Twitter and don't forget to scroll all the way down to sign up for a special event with Angela.

Arguably, visual artists are able to see the work of their competitors easier than any other industry in the world. You waltz onto their website and boom. There’s their latest stroke of brilliance.

Do you poke around the competition’s websites from time to time?

If your competitors are making a big impact using their creativity and their own marketing skills, and it’s killing your morale and confidence, I’m here to help.

There are two critical things you’re learning by looking at your competition. You just don’t realize it.

1. Blending In More.

The only thing looking at competitor sites will do is cause you to be MORE LIKE THEM. The world doesn’t want more of them. They want to be able to find unique differences between businesses. The world actually wants you to be more like yourself. Because if you’re more like them, then why should a buyer choose you over them when you’re practically identical? You have untapped talents to offer the world, and we need to start exploring and strengthening those talents.

2. Morale Deprivation.

You are your own biggest critic. Rather than cultivating a defeatist attitude by seeing things they’re doing that you’re not, challenge yourself daily to do something new… something more creative than you did yesterday. It will cause you to be introspective and to grow your own creativity. Most importantly, it will boost your self-confidence because you did it!

Limiting yourself by judging your own success against the competition is stunting your creativity’s future potential. The more you can be yourself, the more you can look at yourself, the more you can challenge yourself… THAT is what will make your business shine.

Register for a rare webinar with Angela Pointon.

Tiffinbox is presenting a rare chance to register for a three-part webinar series. Angela of Steel Toe Images will present A Swift Kick: Three Things Every Photographer Should Know About Business. Space is limited and will sell out. Learn more and register.

Angela Pointon loves creative people. She studied photography, but had a love affair with business and marketing in graduate school. She decided to combine all of it together when she started Steel Toe Images. She inspires photographers and other creative people to kick major butt through her consulting sessions, blog, emails, workshops and her first book (coming soon), called “A Swift Kick In The Pants: Business Smarts For Us Creative Types.” Angela resides just outside Philadelphia. She lives with her amazing architect husband and their two small boys. All of them are vegetarian (yay!), and they rock out to fantastically awesome music from time-to-time (especially on Friday nights).

If your photography business is like most, there is seasonality to it. Meaning, when it rains it pours and when it’s dry it’s a desert.

I know many of you are in your busy season now. Clients are calling, you’re spazzing, you need sleep, you’ve got too much to do.

The great news is: you can bring sanity to every season – busy or slow. How?

You need to create three lists.

I don’t care if your lists are on a blackboard, a scratch pad or in a fancy color-coded excel file… but they have to be written down. This is important. Lists DON’T WORK if they’re in your head. As brilliantly creative as you are, you cannot keep an organized, separated set of three lists in that pretty little head of yours.

So once you figure out where you’re gonna store these lists, you need to create them. The good news is it’s super quick to do.

Listen up.

List #1: What I have to accomplish this week.

Every Monday morning you’re going to spend 15 minutes creating a list of what you HAVE to do that week. You’re going to write approximate time lengths next to each task so that you know how many hours of work you have ahead of you for that week. Add the hours up and make sure it isn’t going to kill you. If it is, see what makes sense to push to next week (or get some help… or a cloning machine).

List #2: What I have to accomplish today.

Each and every morning of the week you’re going to spend 5 minutes creating your list of what you HAVE to accomplish that day. In creating this daily list, you’re taking tasks off of your weekly list and you’re putting them on your to-do list for the day. Your weekly list is becoming shorter day-by-day. How delightful!

List #3: What I have to accomplish when I’m slow.

As you’re driving, in the shower, walking the aisles of the grocery store or talking to friends, you’re always coming up with “wouldn’t it be cool if” ideas of pure fabulousness. Don’t let these sparks of brilliance become dim and never see the light of day. Instead, put them on your “slow time” list so that you can refer to them as business is becoming slower. You can proactively plan to tackle these awesome ideas (using List #1 and List #2 in the same ways) when you have some spare time. Never again will you be waiting for the phone to ring, getting worried and depressed. Instead, you’ll be rocking out by creating something awesome that you thought of to improve your business, your brand, your photos, your service or whatever!

Now look at you! What an awesomely organized and well-managed person you’ve become. All with three simple little lists.

Without a sale, you don't have a business. You have a hobby. Which, by itself may be where you want to be, but most readers of Tiffinbox are either professionals or aspiring professionals, so I figured I give you a head's up on this short video by Kristen Kalp introducing her new product offering called Sales Without Shame.

Some of you may recall that I reviewed Kristen's e-book, Circus Circus. If you follow Kristen's popular blog – BrandCamp Blog – you'll immediately grasp what she is trying to convey thanks to her lucid writing and her humor.

Sales Without Shame promises to be another remarkable and useful guide for those of us who are shy about in-person selling. If your online sales are off the charts, then you may not even need this guide. If, however, you are not seeing great results with that strategy and want to try selling your services and products to your clients face-to-face and don't know how, Kristen's guide is your ticket.

Personally, I do very little online sales. All of my portrait clients now expect to come in to meet with me after their session so that they can see all of the images I created for them and it gives them an opportunity to fully describe what it is they are looking to buy. Selling, to me, isn't about pushing products on unsuspecting clients. It's about having a good understanding of what my clients may need now and in the future and then suggesting a few valuable options to them.

While I have not had a chance to see the final version of Kristen's new guide, I mention it here because I find her writing and advice for photographers so very valuable. I trust that Sales Without Shame will teach me a few more ways to help my clients better appreciate the art that I create for them. And lucky for you, if you order Sales Without Shame, you get to learn from her as well.

So, here's what you should do next: Go to Sales Without Shame and enter your email address. Once you do that, you'll be sent a “sampler,” which in itself is chalk-full of great info that you can put to use in your business today. Then, at the tail end of this month (May 29th or so), you'll get an email inviting you to purchase the full version. Bingo!

UPDATE: Sales Without Shame launches on May 30th for $247, until June 8th when it goes up to $447. So jump to it!