A Lesson from Vegas
I just got back from 4 days in Las Vegas with my wife attending a wedding photographer’s conference. I met my wife, a wedding photographer, 8 years ago. When you meet a gorgeous woman who happens to like a camera it wasn’t long before I bought one for myself and discovered I loved photography too!
This conference saw 16,000 photographers from around the world gather to learn, share, laugh, cry, scream and party. After 4 days of intense workshops and meeting people from 8 am until 11 pm each day, Donna and I came away with the same strong take away for our businesses:
Just fall in love with who we are and communicate that very well to others and life/business/success will take care of itself.
We had a choice at the conference as we do in our local marketplace every day:
Do we look at other photographers and consider them competitors and hold back from sharing, learning, teaching and getting to know each other?
or
Do we just embrace these facts:
1) We all use similar cameras or can buy them.
2) We all use similar lighting or can buy it.
3) The only major differentiation aside from varying experience levels was our personalities and perspectives that we bring to our clients each opportunity we have to shoot a wedding.
Lets face it:
Our “competitors” can mirror our equipment.
Our “competitors” can mirror the features of our “offer”
But they can never mirror US.
There is only one David & Donna Benjatschek in this world.
The conference was also a great reminder for us to stop stressing about trying to be our competitors. There are a ton of them out there and many that do fantastic work that we can learn from. Celebrating other’s great works however should never diminish your own self esteem. This perspective allowed us to just dive in and get to know other photographers, build relationships and support each other instead of trying to tear each other down. We left Vegas having built key relationships that will help us for years to come as we will help them.
Coming out of Vegas, we’ve both made the choice to challenge ourselves to better define and communicate who we are to our marketplace. Because when you are free to be yourself, life is just better, less stressful & fun.
The parallel extends to all of us. For example, there are 2,000,000 speakers out there all with great books, ideas which I’ll call the “Equipment” of our trade. With desire and motivation anyone can buy it, learn it, obtain it. As I constantly look for the best “equipment’ for my workshops I can just concentrate on celebrating the uniqueness I bring which is ME. Customers usually buy a Speaker not a Speech.
Who is David Benjatschek? You’ll see the words Passionate. Practical! on most of my materials because it is how my audiences continually describe their experience with me after a workshop. Energy, Sincere, Fun, Colloborative, Real are others. If the ads about who I am are effective then they will attract the right client. A client that will love me and that I’ll love working with because we share the same values.
The question I have now is: “Who are YOU?”
My challenge to you is to spend time reflecting and seeking feedback from others on that question. Perception is reality.
You all work in competitive marketplaces.
You all work in competitive corporations.
The only thing your “competitors” can’t duplicate is YOU.
Figure YOU out. Communicate YOU. Celebrate YOU..
Last thought: This YOU thing is not selfish. Ironically a great benefit of knowing who you are and feeling good about it is that others become less threatening to you and it allows you to become a much better team player. A team player who embraces others for their strengths instead of being wary of them.
Do you want more tips on Successful Teams? Join me this Thursday at 11 am MST for a free 45 teleconference entitled: “3 Secrets to Getting Employees to Play on the same Team.” See RSVP info/links below.
RSVP for 3 Secrets to Geting Employees to Play on the Same Team Here
David Benjatschek is a professional speaker and “Your Man with the Plan for Better Teams and Better Results”