Hello, world. My name is Becki and here is what I am: I’m a believer and follower of Jesus Christ. I’m a wife and a mom of 4 girls. I’m a photographer and I own my own business. I live out in the country in a state where we experience the extremes of all four seasons (i.e. the incredible ice storm that has laid 1/2″ of ICE on the ground outside as I write this. Only 60 days ’til Spring, people! Yeah. I’m keeping track.).
Here is what I am not: A marketing genius.
I wish I was. As I’ve been working on the 2010 marketing plan for my photography business, I have had an overwhelming urge to stick a pen deep into my eye….I’m pretty sure that would be less painful. Much less painful.
I figured my marketing plan out though….partially. Selling yourself….making others want what you offer….is NO easy task. There are hundreds of photographers within a 300 mile radius of me. Some are fantastic, some are good and, I won’t lie, some stink. But what makes me special? What makes my services unique? Why spend your money with me rather than the next guy just up the road?
This had me thinking. Outside of photography how do I market myself? How do others see me and know what really makes me tick? I sure hope that when I have road rage, no one is watching. Or when my patience is paper thin, I hope no one sees me snap. That’s a hard question, folks. Take a second and ask yourself those same questions.
Go ahead. I’ll wait.
What did you come up with? Was it easy or hard? Do you really know what makes you special or unique from the next person? Besides your hair color or how you look, I mean.
More importantly than the things I mention above, I am a DAUGHTER OF THE KING. I’m HIS child. I was created just as I am for HIS purpose. He knows my every thought….the deepest desires of my heart. He even knows my sins without my ever breathing a word of them. It doesn’t MATTER what anyone else thinks of me. What matters is that the light that fills me from within gets out for the world to see.
Surely “good Christians” do good deeds and give their time and money away to the needy. Surely they never make mistakes or say things that are inappropriate or hurtful to another.
Surely.
You get where I’m going here yet? It’s truly not what we do that makes us marketable to others. It’s who we are….deep down. It’s not that I fall (and sometimes very hard) but how I pick myself back up and keep going that matters. It’s where I get my desire to press on in the dark times and be thankful for the blessings I’ve been given, not dwell on the misfortune I’m struggling with at the moment. That desire to press on comes from but one source….the God of my heart. He fills me up to overflowing and its there that anyone around me can see inside to my truest heart.
Its how I put one foot in front of the other and keep my eyes focused on the Lord that makes me marketable to Him. Take me or leave me, this is who I am. And…at the end of the day…it’s what God sees when He looks at me. I believe, with all my faults and failures and just as I am, God would totally hire ME as His photographer. I’m just sayin’. :0}