So don’t underestimate people, anyone could carry the solution on your problem so treat everyone you meet with respect.

Vision

Today I had a vision. I’ve been thinking about a setting up a studio for a long time, but really I haven’t spent time looking for a place to have my studio in.
To rent a space in Örebro is expensive, no doubt about it… but today something happened… something I was NOT expecting.

The last one I was expecting

This guy from the entrepreneur workshop came up to me and told me that he might know where I can find space for a studio In, I have barley talked to him before and he just came up to me and told me this. He was the LAST guy I though could offer me a solution on this “problem”. So we went to look at this place, to bad the owner wasn’t there but I called him later this afternoon, so we met up and he showed me around in the permesis and I just felt, this is my place, this is already my studio, this was ment as my place. The permesis  wasn’t huge, but it will do as my first studio. So don’t underestimate people, anyone could carry the solution on your problem so treat everyone you meet with respect. Finally, don’t dig yourself into your problems, just have in mind where you’re going and problems will solve themselves.

The owner was a real gentleman and he told me that he have a lot of faith in my kind of business, as he works in the design industry.
So guys and girls, I might have a studio coming up. Wish me luck

Stay tuned!

Self-respect and Self-beliefe

‘Today we’ve been talking about selling, the first thin I came thinking about when I read Sell on the scheme was old classic selling techniques… how wrong I was.
Our course leader was Julia Rosqvist, she’s an entrepreneur and educationist. I must say that her level of teaching was just about perfect in every aspect, everyone did understands that its impossible to learn selling in 2 days, but I believe that she raised some of the most fundamental aspects in selling= Self-respect and self-belief. How HUGE and important it is to build a good personal foundation that will help you in every aspect in life, business or private.

Communication

We’ve also been talking about communication counter selling and what communication can do to other people also that nothing is relative when it comes to communication. When I say nothing is relative I mean that if I think something is funny, or because I think that something is sad, or because I think my product is great does not mean that my customer think it is. We must let our customers decide for themselves if the product is good value for money, of course we can argument and that’s one part of selling, but in the end its the customer who decides. With this information we can make that we need to focus on the customers NEEDS, not what WE can deliver, that’s not interesting for the cutomer.

We communicate by talking, listening, writing but also with our body language. 83% of the information we receive, we receive trough our seeing and 11% trough our hearing. Even if the ability to talk is huge for selling, what the customer sees (you) is also very important (body language), if you don’t have self-respect and self-belief your customers will notice it. Julia also spoke about how fast we reveal ourselves to other people with body language, it takes 0-9 seconds for one human being to build an opinion of an other human just by body language, those first seconds are vital for selling.

Selling exercise, customer needs

We made an exercise on the entrepreneur course a couple of weeks ago where every student got 20 minutes to come up with something to sell. All we could use was the room and the things that was in our pockets. The rule was that the product cannot cost more than 20SEK and we would have to make a profit on it. Everyone started their business, some made art, some reached for their lunchbox and used that as a product but I reached in my pocket and found these great pocket lights. So I decided to use this pocket light as my business idea. I took a picture of the lights and made quick advertising for it and I named the invention “Portable Lighthouse”. With this idea I came up with some arguments what to use this invention for… honestly I was SURE that they where going to buy my invention cause it was really a great idea… it turned out that non of the 3 teachers were in buying my product, even if they thought it was an out of the box name on the invention. They bought all sorts of crap but not my invention… why? Now its obvious, they did not have the NEED for my invention. One of them was sore throat and bought a half package of Fisherman’s Friend and one of them bought a massage cause he had pain in his neck.

Our surrounding builds our fear

It’s interesting how we are born with 2 fears in life, the first one is falling and the second one is loud noises. The rest of them we learn on the way. These are the ONLY fears we are born with that’s natural, what does this tell you?
Probably that you have collected a lot of tension and fear in your life, we are all born as entrepreneurs but successive, school, parents, our surrounding takes us further away from being entrepreneurs.
These fears are great to have sometimes… but most of the times it holds us back from achievement and success. We build up something that’s called the Comfort Zone and its surrounded by a ‘Terror Barrier’, a barrier that keeps us In something that we experience as a safe environment. It is important to try to get outside this barrier from times to times, this evolves us as spiritual beings.

Julia have a great way to convey important information. For me her lesson was a confirmation that I’m on the right track building up my personal foundation.

Visit Julias homepage  www.juliaco.se

Don’t forget to vote the poll.

dcincome tells you more about ‘comfort zone contra terror barrier’

Stay tuned!

I’ve been a bad blogger this week
Sorry guys and girls, I’ve been slow with blog writing this week. There’s so much to do at the entrepreneur course and we barley have time to finish our exercises so have to finish some of them at home, therefor I haven’t had the time to blog.

Pregnancy photography
Lars & Sara contacted me a week ago and their having a baby in April, they want me to photograph them together.
Their request was to have a little more ‘edgy’ pregnancy pictures,I’m really glad that they requested this because I don’t like to follow trends, specially not classic pregnancy photography trends. Don’t misunderstand me, there is nothing wrong with doing classic pregnancy pictures, but there is a ton of them out there and a lot of them look the same.

So I have spent a couple of hours sketching compositions and planning lightning for the shoot and I’m really exited about it :):)

I don’t know exactly what I should call my ideas, a mix of Fashion with Fine Art… maybe .
The shoot is next week Sunday.

More photography this weekend
This weekend I’m going to do a smaller photo shoot with my girlfriend and her friends. They haven’t met in a while and now they are all gathered in Örebro to hang out. So I thought it would be nice to do a group shoot with them.

Stay tuned !

As for the entrepreneur course, this week we’ve learned about economy, budget, taxes but also about the responsibility we have as entrepreneurs (and humans) to the environment. More precisely CSR=Corporate Social Responsibility.

It’s about what we can do as entrepreneurs to help our environment to ease the global warming and help our fellow human beings. I believe that it’s every mans responsibility to do some of these small things, so generations after us can enjoy this planet as we do and so we can live in a harmonic world.

What can you do for the environment?

These are some of the stuff corporations and civilians can do to help our planet and generations after us:

environment:
*Climate compensate.
*Alternative energy.
*Iso certificate your business.
*Electronic invoices and papers (e-mail).
*Clean vehicle.
*Separate at source (garbage, paper, metal and toxic waste)
*Choose train or bus instead of car. If possible take the bike to your work.
*If you have to go by car, make sure that you car-pool with employees or colleagues.
*Take a course in echo driving which cuts emission.
*Make sure tire pressure is correct, this cuts fuel costs and emission.
*Use energy lamps.
*Use energy effective machines.
*Lower the temperature 1 Celsius and this will cut 5% of the energy costs, it also helps the environment.
*Use an electric cattle when you boil water, this can cut the energy cost for heating water by 50%. If you boil water on your cooker, make sure the kettle has a lid.
*Don’t use stand by mode on TV, radio and computers. Plug them out or install a switch so you can cut the power. These devices uses the electricity even if they are in stand by mode.
*Turn of all lights when you leave home, you don’t need the light when you’re gone.
*Buy locally produced food and inventory if possible.

Ethical:
*Ethic right from purchaser and reseller. Products produced by staff that have both human rights and good working conditions.

Social:
*Gender equality.
*Voltaire work, nonprofit helps our social environment. Donate part of profit to nonprofit organizations.

You can find lots of useful information about CSR and how to help your environment. Just google it

This video explains what CSR are and how you can make a change in your business. Video by HereComesTheBoss

Please vote the poll:

But I will definitely do  more visits to Örebro Promotion.

Last week I promised I would post some pictures of my apartment I spent so much time on, here they are:

Thank’s for reading, stay tuned!

Don’t you agree, isn’t she cute? And what do you think of the portraits? Please Comment below!

Tomorrow is a big day for us at the entrepreneur course, we’re invited to one of Örebro biggest network meeting called ‘Örebro Promotion’ and it feels great.
I feel that I’m more than ready to take Örebro with storm, my concept is not 100% complete but I still want to see peoples reaction to it. I know you
guys/girls want to know more about this business idea that I have, you just have to have some patience before I go official with it, thank you!

I got a brilliant idea for Örebro Promotion during lunch today, I will bring my camera to take some pictures at the event for you to see.
If you’re a member of Örebro Promotion and reading this during Friday, you can find the pictures from the event on this link in a couple of days

Stay tuned!

Big achievement

Finally… after lots of crying, laughing (mostly because I was close to turn mental), bleeding, sweating and after spending a fortune, I’m 100% complete renovating the apartment. Folks, this is a huge achievement cause this means that I can sell the apartment at any time which means financials for my business. It feels great that everything is going according to my time plan, even thou I first got rejected financials from the job center I found a solution to my problem.

Photo shoot

Tomorrow I will photograph the apartment for the ad. I will post them here for you too look at. I also have a photo shoot with a hot girl, she’s only a couple of months old , her name is Alice, I’m looking forward to that!. I’ll post some samples later on.

Now I’m going to continue watch Clarksson, Hammond and Captain Slow wrecks trucks… It’s hilarious haha

Stay tuned!

Book-keeping, important for the business

This week we’re learning book-keeping on the entrepreneur workshop, it’s a heavy subject but I feel that my former experience (little experience, but still something) helps me a lot, actually I find the subject fun believe it or not. I’ve always been bad at economy, numbers and math, but this information some how sticks in my head. I think that the reason for that is this book-keeping lessons will give me a big insight in my business (obviously), even if an accountant will do my book-keeping I will understand notions and I can respond to my accountant when she asks for something.

Economic insight is important

I feel that this might be the most fundamental class for me so far during the entrepreneur workshop because economy have always been my ‘bad side’, I feel that I already have the driving force and clear goals for my business. The only exception that is way more important for me then the book-keeping part is the connections I get trough this workshop and the network I have started to build.

How do you feel about economy and book-keeping? Do you do the job yourself or do you lend it to a professional?

Ideas for a new company name

On the business side, I’m still working on a new name for my business and I will probably get a new logo type to, I found this company in Sweden and their portfolio looks professional, thinking of hiring them. If you know a professional company that do logo type designs please post a link in the comment field.

If you have an idea for my new business name, please contribute with a suggestion on this link.

Thank you for reading, please stay tuned!

But lets say that I would wake up in the morning and the first thing I would do is to put a sock on my head, jump out trough the window and fall into the snow, would that change things?

As a photographer I find that the biggest challenge is to get new ideas for photo shoots. And I know this is a big problem in every business, how to get new products, services for example.

How do we get new ideas?

Do we just sit down and wait for the ideas to come? That’s one way to do it, but it’s not effective.
Humans are logical and we tend to think in routines, it’s the easiest way to get along in life. I get up 6 o clock in the morning and I get out of bed, turn the alarm clock of and get into my slippers and walk to the bathroom where I do my thing. After this I walk to the kitchen, take my food tray, I put a bowl on the tray it and I pour cereals and milk into it. After this I take the bread, butter and ham out and make myself a sandwich. After this I sit down in front of the TV and watch ‘Everybody Loves Raymond’. Well I think you get the point, life in some aspects can sometimes be very routine and logical so we don’t get mental.

How do we break our routines?

But lets say that I would wake up in the morning and the first thing I would do is to put a sock on my head, jump out trough the window fall into the snow, would that change things? Probably! I would look like an idiot and I would freeze to death, but on the other hand that would be one (even if it’s a fools idea) idea to break the routines. When we break our routines we start to think outside the box and I believe that’s a natural reaction that we start to think different, we still don’t have a pattern for this situation cause it’s situation that we have never been in before. When I’m lying in the snow with a sock on my head and freezing, what do my instincts tell me? You probably get my point even if it’s not the best example.

I don’t want to freeze in the snow, with a sock on my head. What can i do instead?

This exercise is kind of reversed brainstorming technique and it lets your mind think ‘Outside the Box’.
Say that I need some new ideas for an upcoming photo shoot with a model, this exercise would be a great one to get new ideas.

I would choose Any word for this exercise but it should not have anything to do with my business or Topic, I choose the word CAR.
When you have chosen Your word, start to write every word that you relate to the word CAR(your chosen word).

- Sports car
- Tire
- Engine
- Oil
- Horsepower
- Competition
- Family
- Travel
- Distance
-  Searing wheel
- Gearbox
- Exhaust
- Drifting
- Drag racing
- Parking
- Stop light
- Hood
- Car factory
- Exclusive car
- Gasoline
- Head lights

I got 22 words that I related to the word CAR, the more words you have the better.
Now, erase the word CAR, and replace it with your topic, in my case its Photography.
This mean that I now have 22 potential new relations to my topic photography.

These are the spontaneous ideas I could come up with within 30 seconds.

Idea 1=Sports car
I could rent an exclusive car and park it somewhere in the City and i could do a photo shoot with a model.

Idea 2=Tire
I could take my gear to a tire shop where they have all these used tiers lying in the back of the garage, I could use these tires for an Abstract cool pattern together with a model and do a killer photo shoot. (Yeh, sounds weird doesn’t it??)

Idea 3=Oil
I could for example arrange that a model gets poured over with oil (preferably not engine oil, but oil) in a studio and somehow do a weird model photo shoot with a super glassy model and in some way do this artistically. (Sounds even weirder, I know!)

I think You are weird!

I know I am a little weird, but the weird stuff will make you think outside the box. These ideas might be over the edge but I believe that you get my point. Not every word will get you a killer idea, but eventually you get a really good word that you can get a nice photo shoot from, or maybe a product you can earn money on. Use this exercise once in a while to get new ideas for your business and I guarantee that you will get some great ideas, if it dont help you directly it might give you an approach angle for your problem.

Stay tuned!
Please vote the poll and comment this technique, your opinion is important to me!

Just wanted to remind you guys and girls that the ‘new name competition’ for my business is still up and running, so please contribute with a suggestion. You can write the suggestion in a comment under this post, the suggestion i choose for my business will have 50 euro in cash.

You can read more about the criteria in this blogpost.

I really want your suggestion!

Stay tuned, tomorrow I will post some juicy stuff for you about Entrepreneurship