Note: Photographers’ Friday is a weekly blog series directed toward professional photographers, and in some instances, serious amateur photographers. All Photographers’ Friday blog posts will assume that readers have a basic working knowledge of digital SLR cameras, but if you’re left with questions or don’t understand any of the information, don’t hesitate to ask. We love e-mails!

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Photographers, you’ll probably be able to relate. I am not Jose Villa. I am not Jasmine Star. I am not Ben Crisman. I’ll admit to having moments where I have wanted to be each of them. But I’m not and I never will be. I have my own artistic perspective and my own personality and my own business plan and my own brand. So while I’ve loved learning things from and about each of these incredibly different, incredibly talented photographers, I’ve learned something just as important about myself: What I want isn’t the same thing that any of those photographers want — and so I shouldn’t want my business to look like a carbon copy of theirs. And you shouldn’t want your business to be an exact replica of theirs either. Or of mine.

My point is, whenever you listen to advice from another photographer, run it through the filter of “Will this work for my business?” That’s the only way you’ll ever end up with the business you really want.We’re in an industry that perpetuates that old keeping up with the Joneses mentality. There are several problems with this, of course, but here’s one that’s pretty hard to argue with: Keeping up with the Joneses, when it comes to photography, is truly impossible. Because not only are no two photography businesses exactly alike, but many of the top photographers out there have achieved their success in entirely different ways — which is a subject I’ve touched on before.

In short, there is no one “right” way to run a photography business.

So the question becomes, how do you find the right way to run your business?

Here’s what we did. We sat down and we considered our strengths and our weaknesses. We thought about the aspects of business that we loved and the aspects we really would rather do without. We discussed the work-life balance we wanted to achieve. And we are constantly, constantly honing our business.

To start, write down your goals for your life first. Then for your business. You will want to create a business model that fosters your goals for your life and your business.

Next, as we did, create a list of your strengths. Create a list of your weaknesses. If you list “sales” as a weakness, you probably won’t want to rely on after-session sales for the majority of your income. Work to craft a business model that plays up your strengths and makes you lean on your weaknesses as little as possible.

Then learn, learn, learn how successful photographers are running their businesses. What do their collections look like? How have they planned their workflow? What do they do to build relationships with clients? Find the ideas that will integrate into your own business seamlessly or push you to make your business better, but don’t feel obligated to implement the ideas that would be counterproductive for you.

Thankfully, we haven’t had many experiences with our business model where we look back and say, “Oh man, we learned the hard way!” We learned early on to only do what works for us. But it’s a lesson we all need to hear repeatedly — because we’re constantly being offered opportunities to keep up with the Joneses, aren’t we?

~ Laura