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Archive 2016 · Joining Forces with Another Photographer

  
 
mitch91175
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p.1 #1 · p.1 #1 · Joining Forces with Another Photographer


Hey everyone. Wanted to get some insight from you guys on what you think about partnering with another photographer. My wife has a thriving business and her potential partner also does as well. They each specialize in certain areas of photography. My wife does newborn and wedding photography while her potential partner does lifestyle and portrait photography. My thought is that each would benefit each other. In areas where my wife isn't as strong her potential partner has those strengths and vice verse. What the thought is to have a business that offers the different types of photography as well as including makeup artist, wedding planning, etc. Pretty much your single source for anything needed for photography. I know that agreements would have to be ironed out, etc but the question I have is has anyone done this before and if so what were the challenges and outcome of the effort.


Dec 10, 2016 at 04:17 PM
Ziffl3
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p.1 #2 · p.1 #2 · Joining Forces with Another Photographer


It is all about the business agreement.

anything can work.... Is the potential partner a possible 2nd shooter for your wife?


What are the reasons the ladies think teaming up the path forward? Sharing studio space?


-Mark



Dec 10, 2016 at 04:33 PM
elevationphoto
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p.1 #3 · p.1 #3 · Joining Forces with Another Photographer


Why not just have 2 separate businesses, can operate together under one roof, but ultimately each is responsible for themselves. That being said, you use a referral basis to assist each other.

Friendships and relationships can be strained with a bad business partner or bad business decisions.



Dec 10, 2016 at 04:39 PM
mitch91175
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p.1 #4 · p.1 #4 · Joining Forces with Another Photographer


I think it all started out as a discussion with my wife and her not liking doing IPS and the other photographer having success doing so. They have discussed having the other photographer helping with IPS as well as maybe being her second shooter. I have been her second shooter in the past. We have young kids and my wife wants to have a work-life balance so maybe having a partner could help out long term. My thought is that they would be able to be more profitable having multiple photographers.

Ziffl3 wrote:
It is all about the business agreement.

anything can work.... Is the potential partner a possible 2nd shooter for your wife?

What are the reasons the ladies think teaming up the path forward? Sharing studio space?

-Mark




Dec 10, 2016 at 04:55 PM
mitch91175
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p.1 #5 · p.1 #5 · Joining Forces with Another Photographer


That is what I am most afraid of. I think that they will start out keeping the businesses separate and help each other out with additional work. My wife referring her work and vice versa. She may also help out my wife with her IPS

elevationphoto wrote:
Why not just have 2 separate businesses, can operate together under one roof, but ultimately each is responsible for themselves. That being said, you use a referral basis to assist each other.

Friendships and relationships can be strained with a bad business partner or bad business decisions.




Dec 10, 2016 at 04:57 PM
Ziffl3
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p.1 #6 · p.1 #6 · Joining Forces with Another Photographer


FYI ... your wife needs to get on the facebook crew for dallas wedding shooters, dallas leads/2nd shooter closed groups.

just sayin'.

The weird part will be the money split if one is doing the sales... then 2nd shooting with your wife.
The wife should be the main contact after the client is on board.

2nd shooter generall get paid 20-$50hr depending on experience.
The same person 2nd shootgin is doing hte IPS ... so what is the cut?


-Mark



Dec 10, 2016 at 07:42 PM
glort
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p.1 #7 · p.1 #7 · Joining Forces with Another Photographer



These things have a tendency to start out with good intentions and go south after that. Been there with first hand experience and seen what happened to others too.

To make it work, the first thing that needs to be done is forget about friendships and put EVERYTHING on paper. Starting with how the business will end.

What happens if someone wants out? What it the division of assets or payout of time?
How does it work as far as payment of time for non tangibles such as marketing and promo even if it is putting stuff on FB?

Each persons responsibilities and commitment needs to be WRITTEN DOWN and signed off before anything is done. It's not possible to share the workload. that's a fallacy. Even if the hours put in are the same, one person is bound to come to feel their efforts are more important, more difficult, valuable that the others. This needs to be nutted out at the start. What if one person can't fulfill their obligation? Sickess, family commitments etc. What is the policy there?
What about decision making? If one wants one thing and the other wants something else, who has the final say?

A mate and I had a business partnership which went well and we are still great mates. He was smart enough to bring all this up at the beginning and we thrashed it out with the help of an accountant/ business mentor. He was appointed " Referee" if you like. If opposing POV was arrived at, he would be the one to make the call. Surprisingly, that never happened. Came up a few times but when the other person explained their POV, it made more sense than our own so we went with it. Either that or 95% of the time we were in agreeance and there was a very clear direction.

As far as effort invested, we just sorted it monetarily. One of the resons for going into it was because our skills were different which gave us a wider field of experience and out efforts would never be the same. We just put down our hours and paid ourselves. The hours cancelled each other out and the imbalance was paid for in addition to out base pay. We figured our efforts were worth the same, all we had to do was get paid for the hours invested.

I think one thing that did work well for us is that we had a lot of respect and never having had an argument before, during or since despite a 24 year friendship.
One would put in a bit more and it was not a problem because we knew that sooner or later that would be compensated. If one did have to do a lot more than the other, then that was simply paid out. Probably didn't hurt that we were making good money pretty quick into the arrangement so hardly any point in nit picking when we both thought we were getting the better end of the arrangement and grateful to the other.

I think you should also clarify exactly what benefits each party will bring to the table and what they are worth. Again if one feel they are worth more than the other or putting in more, that needs to be sorted before a thing is done.
You also need a direction and a goal. Know what each otehr wants and rough out a plan of how you are going to get it.

The worst mistake you can think is all this planning and writing things down is over the top or not needed. If anyone even passes that thought through their minds, it's proof positive you DO need to do it. That and the fact every partnership does and its essential. You wouldn't build a house without having a plan or knowing how many bedrooms, levels etc so don't try and start a business / relationship without one.

The more you sort out now, the less problems and the more smoothly things will run later.




Dec 10, 2016 at 08:58 PM
Chris Fawkes
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p.1 #8 · p.1 #8 · Joining Forces with Another Photographer


Have an exit plan. Even if that is to review where you want to be every year with the idea you may stop being business partners. Included in that is some way of working out what happens to clients if the partnership dissolves.

It has happened where clients pay for wedding albums then a partnership dissolves and each partner feels that they are off the hook for delivering the final product.

Have a written business plan or things can go off track very quick with both partners moving in different directions. List specific responsibilities of each partner and any paid help. Any change must be agreed upon by both parties and the plan updated.

But first identify your weaknesses and ask yourself if you can outsource all those areas to another business. Could be less headache and more money in your pocket at the end of the year. What is a full wage for your partner? would outsourcing be less and by much?




Dec 11, 2016 at 02:25 AM
elevationphoto
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p.1 #9 · p.1 #9 · Joining Forces with Another Photographer


Hope all this advice doesn't come as negative, cynical or gloomy doomy. If you guys are convinced this is the appropriate step, I definitely say there is no reward without some risk. I think the general advice though is just to think it through and cover your bases. I know many persons who have joined forces and been very successful. One that comes to mind is Tony Hoffer- so perhaps he can chime in on how to address the nitty gritty so that a friendship inst destroyed over the details. People are always more important than money - Only you guys can ultimately decide if this is a worthwhile move for yourselves and your business.


Dec 11, 2016 at 03:58 PM
ckhagen
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p.1 #10 · p.1 #10 · Joining Forces with Another Photographer


I would never bring on an equal partner, personally. I'd hire an associate to shoot the things I don't shoot or do the other things I prefer not to deal with. There's too many opportunities for someone to feel like they're pulling more weight and not being fairly compensated for it. If the partner did the sales for example, the sales will go way up, undoubtedly because IPS just plain works. But how would she be compensated for that? If she's an employee, she would get commission, but a partner... not sure how I would handle that. What would your wife have to offer as far as help with her part of the business right now? Would she be solely responsible for client communication/scheduling/etc...? Handling retouching and orders? Would the partner get a cut of the wife's wedding profits? The division of duties and fair compensation for both is the sticky part.


Dec 11, 2016 at 04:58 PM
nolaguy
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p.1 #11 · p.1 #11 · Joining Forces with Another Photographer


Mitch there are tons of examples of this sort of arrangement working, especially in professional fields such as medical and law practices but the cautionary notes above should be taken seriously. Most successful examples are high billing businesses wherein the partners are more concerned about the mutual support and leveraging their collective resources rather than fretting over pennies here or there.

That said, I won't try to address your question comprehensively but I will suggest you and your wife do two things:

1) have her really think about all the business decisions she makes every single week or month that may now have to become joint decisions with a partner. That loss of efficiency alone can be a pain. Bureaucracy doesn't just exist in large corporations;

2) as Mark asks above, what's the benefit other than a more full service studio? It seems unlikely a fuller range of services will increase what the market will bear price-wise so what's the upside?... sharing resources; balancing out the revenue stream across the year; backing each other up; the creative juices of having a partner to bounce ideas off; the simple goodness of companionship in the trenches?... and so on.

Any of those can be valid reasons but everyone involved should be crystal clear on the motivation and rationale. This stuff is hard to measure but to use round numbers you can expect a two person partnership arrangement to cost the "company" at least 10 or 20%* in overall efficiency just on the joint decision making and structuring/maintaining the agreement alone so the upside or benefit should be considerably more than that.

Again, hard to measure but the concept is very real.


Best of luck,

Chuck


* I know that sounds like a big number but if I understand correctly this would essentially be a two "man" operation. If they employed twenty people the number would be much smaller.



Dec 11, 2016 at 06:03 PM
Chris Fawkes
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p.1 #12 · p.1 #12 · Joining Forces with Another Photographer


Be careful not to fall into the trap of thinking a job title is the same as a job description. Be very specific. That can really come back to bite if you don't.



Dec 12, 2016 at 04:21 AM
ronrandle
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p.1 #13 · p.1 #13 · Joining Forces with Another Photographer


Chris Fawkes wrote:
Have an exit plan. Even if that is to review where you want to be every year with the idea you may stop being business partners. Included in that is some way of working out what happens to clients if the partnership dissolves.


The best thing you can do is to enter the relationship with the exit in mind. Every business relationship ends, in one way or another, the way it ends is up to the partners. Carefully detail and outline every possible exit scenario from how the business assets are distributed to how a fair and impartial value of the business is to be determined. Even considering how the payout will be adjusted if one partner or the other begins contributing more to the business than the other.

You want to carefully craft the exit agreement with the help of an expert; lawyer, business consultant, etc, so that you avoid spending 10's of thousands of dollars when one of you wants out.

Having just exited from a small marketing firm where I was a 50/50 partner, the biggest challenge was determining a fair value for the business in order that I could be paid appropriately. Our agreement was less than optimal and the lawyers had to arm wrestle the details and neither my partner nor myself were 100% satisfied with the end result.The lawyers on the other hand were happy to cash our checks for essentially acting as go-betweens.

My ¢.02

Ron



Dec 14, 2016 at 01:34 PM
nagoc50
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p.1 #14 · p.1 #14 · Joining Forces with Another Photographer


^^^^ This

The lawyer in me would love that scenario -- the wedding photographer certainly wouldn't...

That said - if they are "joining" don't just consider the internal business or partnership agreement. Make sure to cover what corporate form you want to be under. For example, you don't want to have an "internal" agreement to simply share some studio space but to the outside world you appear to be one studio -- for all purposes (including liabilities).



Dec 14, 2016 at 02:28 PM
nolaguy
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p.1 #15 · p.1 #15 · Joining Forces with Another Photographer


In things of this earth there is no such thing as 50/50... ever.

It is an impossibility - a theoretical concept never to be correct or proven. Something or someone always prevails.


*shrug*





Dec 15, 2016 at 11:38 PM
friscoron
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p.1 #16 · p.1 #16 · Joining Forces with Another Photographer


nolaguy wrote:
In things of this earth there is no such thing as 50/50... ever.

It is an impossibility - a theoretical concept never to be correct or proven. Something or someone always prevails.

*shrug*




What about when cells divide? Those are things of this earth.



Dec 16, 2016 at 03:09 PM
nolaguy
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p.1 #17 · p.1 #17 · Joining Forces with Another Photographer


Measure them.



Dec 16, 2016 at 05:11 PM
Mark_L
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p.1 #18 · p.1 #18 · Joining Forces with Another Photographer


They can refer to each other already - I'm not sure what the benefit is. Businesses that offer everything give the amateur "jack of all trades, master one none" vibe and branding/marketing will be weakened.

From a business risk standpoint this sounds horrible too. If one business does badly you can sink it without affecting the other. I'm sure 2 businesses rather than one looks better on a mortgage application. From a tax pov I'm not sure but can't imagine an accountant would think it was a good idea.



Dec 18, 2016 at 08:08 AM
elkhornsun
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p.1 #19 · p.1 #19 · Joining Forces with Another Photographer


Partnerships seldom succeed, even with a husband and wife duo. Difficult to move ahead if one person disagrees with the other person on how to run the business and how to promote it and where to spend the money.

Actually I can see more benefit in having two portrait photographers sharing one studio space so they can share the overhead costs involved and get better utilization of the studio which is still costing them when no sessions are taking place.



Dec 27, 2016 at 08:16 PM
LeeSimms
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p.1 #20 · p.1 #20 · Joining Forces with Another Photographer


Every couple of years, we watch someone in our social circle 'divorce' from a business partnership — it's always a soap opera. Watched two in 2016 (one was a restaurant, and the other was a photo booth company) and both were messy. I'd never do it with anyone who wasn't blood.

That said, strategic partnerships can last for decades. They can include shared space, equipment, etc.



Dec 28, 2016 at 10:41 AM





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