Follow the links for "the story so far" in our series on the recession... Yes, times will be tough for a while but you shouldn't assume the sky is falling. It makes no sense to sacrifice your business and market reputation to survive the short term challenge. Instead you may need to pull your horns in and find ways to prosper while others decline. A good place to start is by analysing your budget and business model, and we have a spreadsheet to help with that. Most people react to the threat of declining sales by saying, "I've gotta cut my costs". Everyone needs to work out their own figures, To View More >>

These articles are about strategies to combat the recession. I ended my last post by posing the question on everyone's lips: what happens if my bookings drop? You'll need to have read my previous post to make sense of what follows, but to recap, based on the numbers in the graphic below, if I get 30 wedding bookings and average $5000 per job my income is $71k. If I could get 40 bookings I'd make $114k, even if my average dropped to $4600. All good, but what happens if I can only get 20 bookings? The answer is my income drops to $28k! I could still achieve my $100k income goal with just 20 weddings To View More >>

Well in excess of 2000 aftershocks later, the region I live in still has no idea when the shaking will stop. [caption id="attachment_9611" align="alignnone" width="333" caption="I arrived at the bride's mum's house, and they had a big crack in their drive that went ..."][/caption] On September 4, 2010, Christchurch (New Zealand) was rudely awoken (4:35am) by a rather large Earthquake (magnitude 7.1 on the Richter scale).The energy released in that one shake is still way in excess of the sum of the energy released by all of  the aftershocks, even though many have been over 4 and several To View More >>

Meet Chris MacKenzie. He's new to the industry. He's working hard to build his business. He's doing it in the tough UK market. And, he's just set up a promotion with an exclusive venue in his area. A real 'corker' to use his words. "The first day I was there, I met the Executive Vice President at Pebble Beach Golf Resort. The next day I met a billionaire. On my third visit, I met an Australian couple who'd just returned from a luxury six week tour of Europe. They were so taken by my sample albums that the chap started asking about using Queensberry to display his holiday snaps." Now some might To View More >>

.. that you are selling to? I read Ian's post yesterday and thought he had some really good points, but I wanted to add to the discussion by drilling down another layer to ask, "Who is the man you are selling to?" Here are a few possibilities and I am sure you are easily able to add more (so feel free to contribute your thoughts): 1 The besot - hopelessly in love and a cinch for a big album. 2 The control freak - Needs to believe that they have choices. The choices empower them and allow them to "own the outcome". 3 The accountant - The value of the album is a number: that value equates to a certain To View More >>