As a small business owner I have a lot to me mindful of: finances, supplies, flow of business, customer satisfaction. But in my opinion, there is an entity that requires more attention than any other area. Relationships. In the short time I’ve been in business, I have discovered the relationships I am building will sustain this little company alone.
One of the first missions I set out on was to network with other professionals. People I felt would be good examples, occasional mentors and eventual friends. Fortunately that wasn’t much of a challenge. The photography world welcomed me with open arms and I’m still surprised and honored when someone remembers my name or answers and email right away. Which brings me to my first piece of advice: know the names of the people you are working with. That goes for colleagues, vendors and most importantly clients. This may sound remedial, but one slip up can potentially ruin a good thing. Personally I am terrible with names, so I make sure to do whatever it takes to prevent me from murmuring the wrong name. I stress this because I’ve been on the other side of the name calling. I can’t begin to tell you how many times I’ve been called Tiffany. Not too long ago I was working with another business owner who I had been communicating with primarily through emails. When we finally met in person she couldn’t remember my name for the life of her. She repeatedly called me the wrong names and just danced around the obvious truth that she didn’t know my name. After being corrected for the 45th time I think she just gave up, resulting in my new nick name Miss Thang. Really? Is Stephanie THAT hard to remember? In my head I just thought to myself so basically you don’t care enough about this relationship to even know my name. To make matters worse you start calling me names. Cool. And that was it. Relationship fail.
Do you need to know your associates sign and favorite color? No. Their name. Yes. And YES! What do you do if you can’t remember? Don’t fake it. In one of my very first jobs ever I learned an important lesson: its ok to say I don’t know. If you don’t know the answer to something ask… and then tattoo the answer to your brain so you NEVER forget.
Relationships are very powerful and worth putting a lot of effort into. In my relationships, my goal is to make sure both parties walk away remembering something about each other beyond our first names. More than likely we’ll even find something in common, keeping us connected.
On another note…
Today is the first day of December Daily! December Daily was started by scrap bookers as a challenge to document each day leading up to Christmas. Well Tira J informed me (and the rest of twitter) that bloggers are getting in on the challenge too, so for the next 25 days we are challenging ourselves to digitally document the season. There’s no better way for me to kick off my Daily December contribution than with a milestone in my household: After celebrating our first wedding anniversary, my husband and I got our very first real Christmas tree! From here on out we plan to spend the day after our anniversary eating chinese food and decorating the tree by the fire with Christmas music playing in the background. And maybe next year the photographer wife cut off the star in the photo… go figure. Happy tree trimming! 
Katie Keller and Jen Johnson are also taking on the challenge along with us. Check out their December Daily posts! If you have a blog and want to take on the challenge add your blog URL in the comments and I’ll follow your journey too!
