Business Day Thursday: It’s Time For You To Say Thank You

Good Afternoon Everybody,

Wow! What a stay we had in San Jose del Cabo. But, you know what, there’s still no place like home – even though it took us 17 hours to make the “round robin” trip.  The weather was brisk and refreshing 22 degrees with fluffy white clouds and rich blue skies. Heck, a lot like Cabo with only a 60+ degree temperature difference ;~)

We lifted off from the Cabo airport yesterday about 5:15 p.m.  The weather, as usual, was perfect.  I opted for a window seat on the right side of the plane hoping that some of the sunset would wash over the mountains to my right.

It seemed like a good plan at the time, but the cloud cover changed the sights I was to behold at 32,000 feet.  What happened instead was that as the sun was setting, there was a beautiful wash of warm colors on the clouds at the bottom part of the scene.  Higher in the frame, the rich blue colors were preserved and that combination of colors and textures presented an image of ethereal beauty.

About a half an hour later, the evening light made it’s final plunge below the horizon bearing it’s final remnants of rich saturated colors.  LaDawn grabbed that last image of the beautiful evening rainbow of colors.

One day I’ll publish a book of images taken at 30,000 feet.  The abstract design and colors are always impressive.

Anyway, on with today’s post.

It’s Time For You To Say “Thank You”

'Tis the season and most of us are wrapped up in the holiday rush of getting orders delivered, handling last minute client requests, and just trying to get through our own personal holiday rush.

Unfortunately the holiday rush gives us very little time to do much else than just barely meeting all the holiday deliveries.

But isn’t it just those deliveries that are hopefully building our business success?  Maybe a “Thank You” should be made to each and every person we made a deliver to this year.

Maybe we should expand those “Thank You’s” to include great past clients and upcoming future 2010 clients, too!  Wait, there’s even more “Thank You’s” waiting in the wings that should be delivered – offered to our vendor friends who also support and recommend business.  Yes, there are lots of “Thank You’s” we should be making and this is the best time of the year to do it.

You’re thinking about now the I’m crazy – but, I’m not.  You just need the method to do it.  And, that’s the easy part.

When LaDawn and I packed for Cabo, we packed with us 300 Holiday and Christmas cards that we planned to address and send to all the business friends, personal friends and family I mentioned above.  Each card to each client – past, present, or future; each vendor buddy, everyone that was supportive of my business success, had a special hand written holiday wish to each of our special “friends.”

Sure this takes a lot of time to do – about three full morning’s worth. But you know, every bit of that time was worth it because of the customer/vendor good will it creates for the studio. And for businesses our size, the hand written holiday wish is not a very big time burden given the positive result it creates.

Hey, you obviously don’t have to make a trip to Mexico to get the job done either.  We start refining our holiday card list in early October reviewing all our client list, updating our vendor contacts, and checking our studio calendar for anyone that may have “fallen through the cracks.”

My staff reviews the list and once they sign off on it, it get’s kicked up to me for final corrections and additions.  Now we are good to go.

The labels generated and the cards are sorted to be sure everyone receives the appropriate holiday wish.  This year LaDawn volunteered to add the personal message and sign each card since we had some time off. We will  mail all the cards on Friday, plenty of time for holiday delivery.

And that’s about it.  Total time invested – about 20 hours. Good will benefit to the studio – priceless!!!

Hey everybody, that’s it for me today.  The “red-eye” back last night has us pretty much “draggin’” for the day.  We’ll check in with staff, get the status report and be fired up and ready to go tomorrow.

Tomorrow I’m starting a new series, ”My Favorite Things” …..in photography that is.  I’m planning on covering favorite lenses, cameras, even camera settings.  It should be a fun and informative series.  I hope you’ll join me.  So until tomorrow, have a great one and I’ll see you then.

One more Adios,  David