Fed up of breaking your clunchy potato crisps with chopsticks? You need potechi no te and its No Broken Clunch System. Oh yes you do…

I am absolutely fascinated. Two books I have read recently are:

The first is written by Christopher Jamison, Abbot of a Benedictine monastery. It covers the eight deadly thoughts (those that lead to the seven deadly sins), and teaches how to remain happy in a world that can be seen as difficult. The second is written by Robert Kiyosaki, a self-made American Millionaire about how to play the financial game and make your money work for you instead of working for money.

What’s the fascinating part?

Well, it’s the fact that both books have almost the same message in a lot of ways. In fact, several times, exactly the same advice was dished out by both books. They talk about greed, anger (at others and yourself), sadness at loss, all sorts. They both see mastery of ones emotions to be absolutely critical to success.

This backs up my theory further that God and money are the same thing – a fictional construct designed to make achievement, debt and credit easier to measure (albeit one has more influence in the external world, and the other in the internal). Indeed Robert Kiyosaki is at pains several times to explain that money doesn’t exist, it’s merely an idea shored up by people who think it does.

Both excellent reads, by the way. Though if you’re going to read either, I might recommend their prequels before you start…

Ok, so it’s difficult to write wedding photographer leicestershire in a newspaper with a link, but I don’t think I did badly. They even added the ‘professional’ bit.

But more to the point… Woohoo… we made the paper! Well done, us!

Loughborough Echo Article

I don’t want to count chickens yet, but if I manage to avoid writing off any of my invoices in for this month, then my net profit will hit my personal survival budget for the first time since I started the business.

What does that mean?

I was encouraged early on in the business to write up a personal survival budget. This is the amount of money required to keep the mortgage company, utility companies and HMRC at bay. It also includes enough money to feed yourself. You can optionally (and it’s encouraged) add a night out or three and an annual holiday fund. You end up with the amount of money you must earn pre-tax to survive. It doesn’t buy you a new car, or a lavish champagne dinner, but it does ensure you survive.

The magic number must be hit by subtracting your outgoings from your incomings. So your income may reach over your budget, but if the outgoings are high, you lose out. This happened for the first time in July 2009, when my income was £450 over my personal survival budget. However, in that month, the outgoings were a massive £1100, so I was well short on the net profit.

But, as I said… income minus outgoings this month have exceeded the budget, all being well. Time to celebrate with an extra large bowl of gruel!

日本

I of learnted enough Japanese to get an A* grade at GCSE.

Now, if you’ve been following these blogs, you’ll know I have a slightly dim view of GCSEs. And I’m still willing to uphold those views. Five of us went to pick up grades this morning, and four were A*s. Two of them were seriously not expecting that kind of grade, having made known cock-ups in the exam, feeling like they didn’t know enough to answer the questions. So that begs the question – are the exams quite hard but don’t require many points for a good grade? What’s occurring? I would have thought someone should be pretty confident in an exam to gain an A* in the results. I don’t think it was false modesty from them either – they were genuinely surprised this morning.

And the other person who picked up her grade got a D. But she only sat half of the exam. She was whisked away with work before the writing paper and didn’t sit it at all. Obviously she is also over the moon with her result, but surely there’s something wrong where you can sit half an exam and still get a pretty good grade? I’m not knocking it – she’s pretty good at Japanese and deserves a good result, but I’m sure there’s something wrong with the system.

Anyway… congratulations to all who have picked up GCSE grades today, I hope you all did well!

And, as they say in Japan… YATTA!

A Phone, Yesterday

A few weeks ago I decided that it would be a mighty fine idea if I would be able to improve my sales and marketing technique. According to Rich Dad (fascinating book… buy it!) you should never work solely for money, you should work to gain skills. So I thought wouldn’t it be fun to get a job doing telesales? They’ll train me up and I’ll become the best phone salesperson in the world and then I’ll be able to flog my photography services with gay abandon.

So, two weeks ago I found a job on the jobcentre website (no experience necessary, full training given), applied for it, interviewed, trialled, and now I’m a part-time telesales executive at the end of my first week. Small company, don’t have to put hand up for wee etc.

What I have learnt:

1. How to pick up a phone and put it down again without putting a twist in the wire. When you make 80-odd calls per session it gets tangled very quickly if you do the left-right-pickup-switch thing or whatever it is that does put a twist in.
2. How to get past secretaries to the decision-maker.
3. How to chat to some lovely people and actually help them out.
4. How you can tell that many cold callers are desperately lacking in training. The ones who push you even though you’re not interested are not doing their job properly.
5. While most people aren’t interested in marketing calls, for some it is solving a huge problem for them and they’re very grateful you called.
6. Never to be put off picking the phone up because of your own assumptions (they won’t want me to call, they won’t be in, it’ll be a bad time).
7. I am entirely capable of saying things that make me cringe when I listen back on a tape.

That’s probably about it. It’s very educational indeed, and I have to say it’s the first training course I’ve ever been on with such good hands-on simulations and they even pay me to do it!

I love it when an invoice becomes due. On commercial jobs, I have 30-day invoice payment terms. That means that clients take, usually, exactly 30 days or more to pay up. But I have a technique, it’s a bit of a game, really; and a fun one at that. My experience is that if you give them the 30 days before phoning, you don’t get paid until you do phone. However, by phoning a few days before due date, you have the following conversation…

Me: Hello. I notice from my records that you have an invoice from me that is due for payment soon. [here comes the important bit... no pressure, no agression] I’m just phoning to check that you have received it.
Them: Um… er… oh yes… um here it is. [and here comes the important bit... we were not trying to weedle out of it] Oh yes! I can see from the records that it’s actually in today’s cheque run, wouldyoubelieveit? It will be with you tomorrow or the day after.
Me: Well, that is fantastic news! Thank-you very much.

I like business. It’s fun! I wonder how early I can get away with phoning them… I may go for 7 days in advance next time.

Now that the Bride and Groom have had an opportunity to see their pictures, I can put a few up here. As reported previously I had a fantastic day. Thanks again, Julia and Chris!

You can see more details at my Leicestershire Photographer blog.

I fell out with eBay some time ago, but lately I’ve re-registered to sell a few things.

They still seem to be rubbish.

I’ve had someone fail to pay for an item – I can’t leave negative feedback.

I’ve had someone buy a ‘local collection only’ item, then phone on the morning they’re supposed to collect and say they can’t come, so can I post them? That led to my having to box up and work out the postage price which I messed up and therefore had to send by an inferior service (or pay double to send special delivery)… all of which is why I didn’t offer postage in the first place. I can’t leave neutral/negative feedback.

They insist on paypal, thereby making a listing fee, final value fee, paypal commission, AND then holding onto my money for 21 days after it’s been paid.

Not particularly happy, but it’s pretty much the only way to reach a good audience for a sale these days. Is it not?

Still… life pushes you around – it’s how you deal with it that counts.

The Happy Couple

On Friday evening, after our now-traditional chips-for-tea, I headed down to Kent (this end, not the 60-odd-mile-further that end) in preparation for a wedding shoot. The couple in question were my first booking of people who I didn’t already know – though they were only once-removed on the friends’ network (they weren’t the first shoot of people I didn’t already know, but they were the first to book).

Waking up on Saturday morning, my heart sank. Overcast, light drizzle. I swung by the venue on the way to the groom’s preparations to take an early shot in case the weather became worse, then off to the groom’s preparations, then the groom went to the pub, and it was bridal preparations for me. A lovely cup of tea and lots of shooting later, it was over to the venue where everything else would be occurring.

I asked the event manager whether we were going indoors or out and she said we were going to risk out. It was worth the risk. As the beautiful bride arrived, the sun came out for a really lovely ceremony in the grounds (legal parts having to be completed under the roof of the gazebo, because that’s a licenced premises). The registrar was wonderful, allowing me full reign, tipping me off to the order of events so I could be in the right place at the right time. Moreover, she arranged the table flowers so that I could capture the real signing of the register instead of mocking it up. As long as I couldn’t read the writing on the register, it’s legal. That was a new one for me!

I covered both sets of prep, ceremony, group shots, a car ride for the bride and groom, meal (they fed me too… so I had a gorgeous meal while doing the first set of backups/edits), speeches, bouquet toss, cake, first dance… the works. And what an absolutely fantastic day it was. Lovely couple, great families and friends, I couldn’t have asked for a nicer job.

And I don’t think it’s so often that a wedding photographer gets to take a shot like the one below. And yes, every single guest had a representative lego figure of them created for the occasion. Great work!

Group Photo