Metro News has teamed up with a great new website called GigPark. This is a place where anyone can recommend a business whose services they really like. What great concept – especially for small businesses that rely heavily on word of mouth! I really hope it takes off and Metro is doing a great job of making that happen by allowing readers to vote for their favourite business in a specific trade each week. This week it was for Graphic Designers and I was so pleased to see my name on the list! A special thanks goes out to everyone who recommended me! Next week: caterers! Know a great Ottawa caterer? Help them out by recommending them today!
Happy New Year! Ok, so it’s now January 21 and I’ve already fallen behind on one (ok, maybe more than one) of my New Year’s Resolutions – blog more often! Well last night I attended the launch of Entrepreurial Moms Ottawa chapter – EM-Ottawa – and it was also my first time attending a business networking event. Lots of great women – including 4 other photographers so we were the most represented industry! Part of me felt a little nervous seeing so much competition but I hope that being part of this group will allow us to help grow our industry and each other’s businesses rather than feel like competitors. As Alicia Caine (my pricing guru) says it best: Let’s not all compete to have a piece of the pie – how about we work together to make the pie bigger? When I joined the Professional Photographers of Canada and started going to local meetings it was so refreshing to see the camaraderie and willingness to help other photographers – which in turn can only help our industry.
Anyway, last night’s speaker was a young entrepreneur named Erin Blaskie. Her business is the internet (she claims to be online 20 hours a day – even when walking her dogs!) and helping others make the most out of this powerful tool. Her insight on the world of blogging and Twitter was great as those are 2 areas I haven’t quite mastered. My biggest concern was how do I separate the personal side from the business side. Well, she says don’t. Be yourself and people will connect and trust you more. And I guess in both photography and graphic design, you really are selling yourself and your look and style – which may not be for everyone and that’s ok. So the more authentic you are, the more people will like you and want to work with YOU over anyone else you might have the same skill set. That’s something that another mentor of mine, Dane Sanders, founder of FastTrack Photographer talks about a lot.
I love that the internet has allowed me to get inspiration from so many people – especially as a mother of a young child who works from home. It can be isolating at times so it’s important to feel connected to a community and get encouragement. As I am learning, making a business successful takes more than just talent, it takes a lot of determination and willingness to work hard on areas that might not come naturally to us creative types.
I am hoping that being part Entrepreneurial Moms will give me the same kind of motivation with the added bonus of building relationships on a local level and in person. Ok, so now I need to figure out how to tweet this and go on to my next New Year’s Resolution – join LinkdIn!
Let me know if this blog has been useful and if you have any other great tips or resources I should know about!
Thanks for reading!
Vanessa
Your Ottawa Photographer and Graphic Designer
It’s official! After taking the odd graphic design course at Algonquin College since 1998, I finally decided a few years ago that I would complete all the courses needed for the certificate program. Well, the dedication has paid off and I am now an official graduate of Algonquin College with a certificate in Graphic Design – Print. I know it’s just a piece of paper and I did learn a lot on my own since designing was a huge part of my various jobs but I also learned so much more and so much faster by taking a class. I’m still debating whether to attend the convocation ceremony later this month but I sure am proud to hang my certificate on my wall.
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