This is a guest blog post by Rosie Suerdick, photographer and author of Show & Tell Selling: Making In-Person Selling Kindergarten-Easy.

Every year, I tend to sit down and come up with our loftiest goals, or resolutions, for the year to come.  If you are reading this, chances are, you probably did, too.  Everyone wants to improve on SOMETHING, and the start of a new year is a perfect time to do it.  

But, if you are like 92% of the population (according to the University of Scranton), you probably won’t be keeping those resolutions (and, depending on what side of this fence you fall on, you will either find this statistic comforting or sad).  

As a self-professed “goal getter”, I find this statistic alarming.  I mean, IMAGINE how amazing this world could be if people just held themselves accountable to achieving their goals?
Seriously.  Our lives, and our businesses, could be EPIC if we had the determination to achieve even one resolution to the end.  

Here are 5 ways to help you stick with your resolutions in 2016 so that you can have the best (most profitable, or most growth, or whatever you want to do!) year ever.  

1. Write it down, and put it somewhere very visible.

My whole family did this in 2013 by putting it on a giant white board right of our kitchen.  You would be surprised at how many people walked by it, looked, and then asked about our goals.  By constantly engaging in conversation about our goals, we were much more driven to complete them. It was almost like we added a level of peer pressure that actually worked for us! This year, we did the same thing, but in our new house: we wrote our family goals down, broken down person by person, and hung them up in our dining room.  We had some friends come over on New Years Day for ribs and sauerkraut (a German family tradition); and guess what? Our guests asked us about them!

Putting your goals front and center in your life is amazing, especially for long-range goals. For short-range goals (like getting your bookkeeping ready for your accountant), write or enter those into a calendar so you have a mental deadline. Also, keep your timeframes smart and attainable (for example, you should not start getting your books ready for your accountant on April 1st. Maybe you should start that process now, so that you are totally filed by April 1st).  

2. Have an accountability buddy

(I am not talking about a spouse or a significant other here)

An accountability buddy is someone who is in the same, or similar, industry that you are in. This person understands the busy-ness of your business, and can relate to you when you complain about something that only someone in your industry will understand.  

This accountability buddy is someone who is on the same level, experience- and quality-wise, so that neither one of you ends up feeling drained for resources/brainpower in the end. This person will know your resolutions, and will help to push, pull or prod you to achieve them, because he/she is counting on you to do the same for them.  

The key to an accountability buddy is consistency. I have two buddies this year- each pushing me to do different major goals- and we have already calendared our phone calls/meetings for the year. We need a “no-excuses” existence to our relationship so that we can keep the momentum going.  

3. Offer yourself rewards

Yeah, this is one that my husband would roll his eyes at; but it works for me!  

I am very rewards-driven, so I set incentives for each goal I achieve. When I trained for, and ran, a half-marathon, I rewarded myself with an expensive pedicure. When I woke up early to start this blog post, I rewarded myself with coffee (hey, it works!).  

Rewards help you drive toward the goal, almost like bonus check keeps employees happy during the holiday season. It’s like a little “thank you” along the way.  

4. Understand that a resolution is WORK.

If you want to lose 15 pounds, you can rest assured that it won’t fall off of your body overnight, with no work. You will have to change your diet, exercise, and practice discipline for it to happen. Likewise, with business resolutions, they are work as well. You will need dedication, and you will probably have to do things that make you uncomfortable (such as waking up at crazy early hours of the morning). BUT, just like with losing weight, when you start to see results, it is SO worth it.
 
If you want to blog more and increase your SEO, you will need to….guess what…blog more and learn more about SEO! But, if you do achieve this particular goal, you will see the benefits in your inquiries and, most likely, in your income as well. Worth the work, right? 

5. Break your goal down into smaller goals

Do you want to make $30,000 more this year than you did last year? Well. If you only made $10,000 or $15,000 this year, then you have some work to do. 

If you only made $10,000 or $15,000 last year, then whatever you are doing isn’t really working (sorry, but it’s true) if you want to make $30,000 more this year. You have to change things up, such as your pricing, your marketing and your sales approach. 

In order to make a goal like this less overwhelming, think about what you have to do first, and write it down in an outline form, from smallest to biggest. Remember that old saying that the best way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time?  

Well, this is your elephant.  

For a goal such as this, I would suggest making changing your pricing a priority (and if you want an AMAZING guide on how to do do this in a simple way, check out Alicia Caine’s Profit First Photography. She will be re-releasing her e-book, Easy As Pie Pricing Guide, this year. Buy it.). Ahead of actually changing your prices, I would take an ideal client out (one who can afford the new prices- you probably know someone offhand!) and have him/her look at your new packages. Ask them how you can better market to them, and get solid feedback (really listen here!). This will help you be confident in doing the next step: updating your marketing.  

Once you have your prices and marketing down, you will have to anticipate a “lull” as your prices go up (and that’s OKAY! It happens, even to the best of us!) and build in a game plan for that. This may be a great time to consider in-person selling, if you want to really up your game. If you want to start doing that, but don’t know where to even begin, my e-book, Show and Tell Selling: Making In-Person Selling Kindergarten Easy, walks you through all of those steps as well.

Finally, as you start getting clients booked under your new prices, be sure to have a plan to actually MAKE that $30,000, as opposed to spending it on all new gear. Plan to meet with your accountant to come up with a solid budget.  

Boom.  Goal met!!  

If taken one step at a time, with a solid plan and with a support system in place, a resolution can be an amazing thing to have on your side. Charge at it, friends, and I can’t wait to see what you can achieve!

Headshot photography – for actors, business executives or even people with social media channels – is simply a must these days. If you have a photograph of yourself online or offline where you have used an iPhone to create a selfie or cropped yourself out of a party photograph and think that's good enough, think again.

In a hyper visual world where you have nanoseconds to make an impression, why lean on the easy, almost lazy options that only produce photographs that are good enough, when you can easily get to great?

In a previous blog post, I introduced you to Dylan Patrick and his Cinematic Headshots. Today, however, I want to talk about Peter Hurley, a New York and Los Angeles based headshot portrait photographer who has stormed into the world and created a very unique niche for himself.

Much like Mark Seliger, Irving Penn, Richard Avedon and Helmut Newton have defined a genre of photography, so has Peter Hurley. His name is synonymous with headshot portrait photography.

Spend any time online and whether it is on Twitter or Facebook, you'll hear about him and his videos – It's all about the Jaw, It's all about the Squinch and Hold Your Sub.

Peter is responsible for leading nearly 9000 headshot photographers around the world through his forum, Headshot Crew. At only about $20 a month, it is a gold mine of information and networking possibilities. Indeed, one of the reasons I was able to so quickly get personally introduced to Peter was because I connected with Bruno Kongawoin first. Bruno is a magnificent photographer based in Perth, Australia.

Peter is also an author, speaker and teacher. His book, The Headshot, is a must-have for all headshot photographers.

Peter Hurley is one very busy guy. He has multiple projects going on. One of most interesting projects is called PsyPhotology. If you believe the interaction between a photographer and a subject is a psychological one, you must check this website out. Peter told me that there is much more coming in 2016 from this project and I am very excited by these new tools that are going to be available for photographers to make even better headshot portraits.

Lastly, if you can't make it to Peter Hurley's Headshot Intensive workshops in either New York or Los Angeles, you can study with him through his DVD's, downloaded from FStoppers. You can buy them here though my links as well – The Art Of The Headshot and Illuminating The Face.

For a limited time you can buy Peter's Pro Board for 30% off using the code – PROBOARD30 and you can buy his book at 15% off the retail price by using the code BOOK15. But given today is Christmas, I am going to wish that I could receive three of these H2PRO Water Ballasts for my light stands.

Now, for the ultimate teaching / learning experience, how would you like to be on the Headshot Crew Cruise? April 24th through May 1st, you can sail from New York to Bermuda, have a great time on board the cruise ship but also learn everything Peter has to teach you about headshot portrait photography.

SHABANG!

Thanksgiving is a week out and we have a lot to be thankful for as we gather around with our families for the holidays. Still, there are thousands of children who are waiting to be adopted into loving homes. Ever wonder what their lives are like as they wait to be adopted?

Tamara Lackey did. She is a photographer, speaker, teacher and author based in North Carolina.

As she went through the process of adopting her children, she saw first hand how challenging their lives were; lack of electricity, running water, working bathrooms etc. So she decided to do something about it. She launched Beautiful Together, to give these children better opportunities towards education and health, as they waited to be adopted by families around the world.

But running a non-profit takes money. In addition to raising funds through innovative auctions and local fundraisers, Tamara who just published the Family Posing Playbook, is giving 10% of the proceeds from the sale of the book to Beautiful Together.

We sat down to talk about the book, how it will help photographers like you and how the book's sale will help Beautiful Together:

So, if you are a portrait photographer who struggles to quickly create beautiful, loving portraits of families, you are going to want to buy the Family Posing Playbook. It's chalk-full of great advice and tips for family photographers like me who can sometimes find ourselves in front of clients who either feel awkward at the sight of a camera or simply don't know how to gather together as a family for portraits.

When you buy the Family Posing Playbook, you also receive a quick reference guide that you can presumably print and carry with you in your camera bag. Tamara walks you through 24 different options and the reference guide gives you easy to read bullet points for each pose that you may choose for your clients.

Tamara, I can tell, is natural teacher. As a Nikon ambassador she often speaks at conferences and trade shows, inspiring thousands of photographers along the way. She also hosts reDefine, an inspirational web series where she speaks with a wide variety of creative and interesting people about their passionate pursuits. Her courses on CreativeLive are also wildly popular (I think I own every one of them!). Also, are you looking for animal-friendly and environmentally responsible album company for your family portrait clients? Check out Tamara Lackey's Lush Albums by Finao now.

You can connect with Tamara on Twitter and Facebook.

How many of you don't offer portrait or wedding albums because you either don't know how to design them or you believe they are too cumbersome to lay out?

This is what I believe: You aren't truly serving your clients if you simply photograph their event and hand them their digital files (don't do that, do this instead)

You can easily overcome your fear of designing and printing your album because there are new tools today, like Fundy Album Designer, that make it super simple to do so. Yes, design and send the files to your favorite album manufacturer.

Look, years ago, I stumbled upon a free option. I was new. I like the sound of free like the next guy and so I dove in. I created a 56 page wedding album from scratch. The software was buggy, the support was spotty at best and my client was PISSED.

To top it off, some alignment had shifted and a bunch of images were somehow sent off-kilter on a bunch of pages. Yikes! Green behind my years, I was panicked and frustrated of course. I didn't want to lose the confidence of the client even though the emails back from the groom (the bride had given up on me) sounded angrier and angrier.

So, the album arrived and yes, it was full of errors and mistakes – some caused by me but some also caused by software that simply did not work. As I held the errant album in hand, I learned a lesson that day. Trusting a free app to do your work is extremely dangerous. While the buck stops with you, the photographer, seeking out an album design company that will stand by its product was paramount.

This was about the time that I heard Andrew Funderburg was going to launch a new product that would solve the very problem I was having. That product was of course version 1.0 of Fundy Album Designer. Since then, the app has morphed into something truly fantastic. In addition to designing albums, it is now closely integrated with a bunch of labs and album manufacturing companies. Anytime something is “off” and I am notified right there on the screen.

For a portrait or wedding photographer, this is truly a wonderful time to get into quickly designing and printing your client's family heirloom. Let that sink in a bit. You are responsible for creating a piece of art that will remain with your clients for ages and will likely get passed on from generation to generation. Wow! Doesn't that create the warm and fuzzies inside of you? I think of my clients as grandparents showing off their albums to their grandchildren. An awesome responsibility but the work it takes to put those albums together should not stress you out.

I spoke with Fundy (as he is known to his friends) about this and other topics dear to our hearts:

Now, I didn't speak with Fundy about stress-free album designing because our connections run deep or because I am being compensated (I am not, except for receiving a copy of his program to review).

I spoke with him because I believe Fundy Designer can radically change your business, giving you more free time to spend with your family and making your clients genuinely happy with your service.

Want to learn more about easy-as-apple-pie album designing? Check out this free webinar on November 4th, thanks to ShootDotEdit. Register for it now. Even if you can't make the live call, the recording will be made available to you.

Be sure to bookmark ShootDotEdit‘s free content page where you can find guides, webinars and case-studies that are extremely useful for photographers just like you.

On or close to my birthday, every year for the last four years, I have recognized and tipped my hat to a photographer-teacher in the industry who makes a significant impact on people's life.

The first four awardees of the Annual Tiffinbox Award are: David duChemin, Spencer Lum, Jamie Swanson and Jenika McDavitt.

This year, I am thrilled to announce the 5th Annual Tiffinbox Award goes to Neil van Niekerk, a South African photographer, teacher, author and speaker who now calls New Jersey home.

Neil publishes two blogs, One Perfect Moment and Tangents, a blog I recommend every photographer bookmark. It is through this latter blog that I learned that Neil also offered workshops on off-camera lighting. If memory serves me right, I have attended at least two of his workshops as a student. If you are starting to make the move from natural light photography to flash photography, Neil's workshops are a must. The day is usually long because he patiently goes over all that you will need to know about using your strobes off or on your camera.

Neil knows his stuff so well that he has written four books on the topic of lighting (see above) and is frequently invited to speak about lighting at conferences and industry gatherings across the US and beyond.

(if you were wondering, yes, that's a real tiffinbox you are seeing on the right there)

Here are some of my favorite blog posts by Neil van Niekerk over the years:

Dragging The Shutter
Black Foamie Thing
Flash and Ambient Light
Using Exposure Compensations vs. Manual Exposure

Please visit and bookmark Neil's websites, buy and read his books and enroll in his workshops. I guarantee you will be a better photographer. You can also follow Neil on Twitter and Facebook.