You have a small photography business from a photographer. The photography industry is competitive. However, thanks to his hard work, creativity, and tenacity, his business has continued to grow. You love your business. However, he loves his family more and would like to increase his income while reducing his workload. Business growth is what will increase your income; But how do you chart a path to sustainable growth? One key to consider when answering this question is determining your core competency. The following are some examples of how your core competencies can influence your growth.

1. Basic competence: Processing. Are you able to fly through the processing of your images? Are other photographers amazed by both the quality of their images and the delivery time? If this describes you, then image processing is probably one of the core competencies of your business. You likely already have numerous automated batch processes and shortcuts in place. You are also likely to have strong IT and networking (computer) skills.

One possible growth path for someone in this situation is to do processing for other photographers. Scripts, Actions and Networks can be extended to other computers. A simplified process can be documented. Relatively inexperienced help can perform the simple part of the process. That unskilled help can access the computer with all its scripts from anywhere in the world via remote access computing (thus a photographer can hire from any area of ​​the world with low wages). The scale will bring efficiencies that will allow competitive prices. Daily process improvements will increase margins. The model is almost unlimitedly scalable.

2. Basic competence: Marketing. Do you consistently have more customers than your competitors? Would impartial observers comparing your product to some of your less busy competitors say your work is comparable? If this is the case, you likely have a core competency in photo marketing.

A person with this core competency can easily branch out by providing a marketing service for other photographers. This service would be scalable (there are a lot of talented photographers who don’t get enough business. For example, if you get most of your business from your website because you’ve done search engine optimization work on your website and it ranks high on relevant keywords in Google, you can provide this service to photographers across the country.

There are a number of avenues in which a photography business can grow. One factor to consider when creating a growth plan is the photographer’s core competencies.