Fast Food Friday - For Professional Photographers

I started Fast Food Friday in February as a way to share ideas to help you fine-tune your business, including marketing, your website and blog and even relationship building and communication. All I'm trying to do is plant ideas on ways to make both you and your business stronger. When 2018 comes to a close I want to see you thriving, not just surviving.

Today's "blue plate" special is another one that's a little different from past posts.  At times it might sound more like a rant than an entree on the menu at the SCU diner!  The topic is dealing with trolls or just negative people. I'm not really upset, just bored with the challenge. This past week there seemed to be a flurry of people on Facebook who never learned how to behave!

Most of you, if you're following me and reading my posts, aren't the problem, you know how to talk to people and behave. The challenge for all of us are the people who don't read anything, but what they write themselves. They love to hear themselves talk and criticizing or even shattering somebody else's vision/dream is how they get their daily thrill.  Sadly, many of them are very talented and have some amazing skill sets, but they haven't figured out yet that the greatest skill in building a business is investing in relationships.

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Let's Shut off Negative People

© iQoncept

Let's start shutting down the Internet trolls in our lives. Remember, when you engage them in a public forum you're giving exactly the response they were hoping for. So, see if these tips make sense:

• * Talk to people online as if you were face to face having dinner with them and they were picking up the check!
• * Stay away from inflammatory comments when you don't like something. You can still disagree with somebody and not turn it into a battle.
• * When somebody says something you hate, don't assume it's personal. Remember that the printed word is the hardest to communicate with - it lacks eye contact, emotion, the inflection in your voice and people know nothing about you.
• * Remember that it takes a far greater skill set to be sensitive to other people than it does just to be sarcastic. Anybody can be sarcastic. It's not a skill!
• * Remember that what you like and your clients like isn't universal! My old buddy Dean Collins used to say,  Beauty is in the eyes of the checkbook holder!  It's the client who matters most.

* Last, on the list - everybody had to start somewhere and as Michele Celentano once said to a group of aspiring professionals at Skip's Summer School, "Twenty years ago I was right where you are...wondering how long it was going to be before my pictures didn't suck!"

I know for many of you, I'm preaching to the choir, but feel free to forward this post to anybody on the Internet who's behaved like a jackass lately.  Maybe together we can slow down enough aspiring trolls to make a difference!

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Missed any of the previous Fast Food Friday specials?
​They're all just a click away and there are 22 entrees for you to choose from! 

Sometimes I feel like I'm trapped in an old Hollywood movie and the hands of the clock are spinning. Time is flying by and it's already August. Don't miss the opportunity to take a hard look at your business and tweak those areas that can make you stronger and build more brand awareness.

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