Create Your Own Photographer Invoice Example for Planning with Ease

Photographer invoice example for Planning

hey guys this is Kyle at projection up and today I'm going to be showing you how to write a business plan that is lender ready for a photography business videography business you know and that can look a lot of different ways maybe you're hiring additional shooters or maybe you're just focusing on one of those disciplines or maybe you're doing weddings or maybe you're doing studio photography doesn't really matter this this guide will will be helpful for you and as I mentioned the purpose of this is going to be coming more from the perspective of if you're going to be trying to secure some financing maybe to either start or or grow and already you know started photography business that maybe you're operating on the side and so I'm going to be using this template this free business plan template you can get in the description of the video down below I'm going to be walking through an example business plan and I'm going to be pointing out different components that I think are vital to increase your likelihood of getting approved for financing if that's your end goal if it's not your end goal this is still going to be a helpful guide the business plan is still geared for anyone that's looking to write a business plan and the main way we're going to do that is I'm going to focus on five key points that I believe are the five most important parts to be approved for financing so you know what makes me credible enough to be able to do this so before my time with projection hub I spent seven years as an SBA lender so working with business owners on their loan applications for SBA Loans that included photography businesses and so have read several real photography business plans and and help put together loan packages for for their applications and projection hub we've actually helped you know more than 50,000 small businesses create the projections for their business including hundreds of photographers and videographers so that's kind of where the experience is coming from in this video if at any point you find the content you know helpful please give it a or even given a comment on the video that's really helpful for us as a fellow small business and if you like additional content just about running a business growing a business doing Financial projections subscribe to the channel and I think you'll find more content to be helpful there so uh with without further Ado let's go ahead and jump in so jumping in here initially you know why are business plans important and I don't say this to to sound cliche but you know the purpose of your business plan isn't to explain the industry to you know whoever it is that's reading your business plan especially if that's like a lender the purpose of your business plan is to demonstrate your specific plan your specific path to achieving the goals that you set out to and ultimately being able to rep repay the if you're if you're borrowing a loan or or maybe returning an investor a return um on the money that they put in so your your business plan shouldn't just be filled with educational fluff it should be filled with important details specific to what goals you plan to hit how you plan to hit them what numbers those are going to look like and so we'll get into those details now a quick overview of the structure here you can kind of see even just in this table of contents the general flow that we're going to go through now your business plan doesn't have to contain these exact Parts this is kind of a general you know structure there might be sections that make more sense for you sections that make less sense for you but I will point out you know what I think are kind of the key sections you want to include so one of the first things I want to point out is you will notice you know this business plan isn't super long now I think it's a myth that a lot of people think their business plans have to be really long or the longer they are the better they are and I actually would argue the opposite of that during my time as a lender if someone handed me a 50-page business plan there was no way I was going to read all of that just because of time you know there's a lot of different applications and business plans to review and so that risk that creates a risk for you as the business owner that key details are going to be missed and so the shorter you can make that you know you don't want it to be four pages long but if you can keep it in that 10 15 20 Page length then you can really focus on the key details and you know those are less likely to be missed and so you can kind of see here and out of the box this is around around 20 Pages another thing I'll point out is the financial projections make up a pretty significant component of that now the narrative is important but for a business like photography or videography it's not a novel concept that's not to downplay the important importance of the business it just means there is less education necessary so you can focus on the key details the financial details rather than having to spend valuable real estate doing that coaching or that education component and obviously we're a little biased but you know the financial projections we think are by far the most important part of the business plan we'll get into that a little bit more as we go so let's go ahead and start kind of scrolling through here and this initial section your executive summary think about this as kind of like a cover letter to a resume you know if you're applying for a job so you don't have to put everything in here but you know probably one page maximum some key important details you know one thing that's not in here that some business owners like to do is maybe put like a little Financial snapshot that might be you know your total startup costs you know what kind of funding you're seeking like if this is going to A A lender maybe you want to come out right out of the gate and say this is the financing we're going to require and this is how much we've already secured here's how we'll use the funds you know you could include that in here but yeah just kind of a quick introduction to the business the high level points company description is a little bit of an extension of the executive summary but here we going to get into a little bit more of just like the personality of the business the characteristics of just describing you know you have the company history so this might be like the founder story keep that short legal structure you know what makes your business unique you know what's your secret sauce and who are you ultimately targeting that's kind of a good makeup of the description of your company so coming along here to the market analysis and this will bring us to key Point number one but here you can see kind of just a general you know now this isn't the shark tank an Market where you're like there's 27 billion you know dollars to be made in the photography business this is like your you know attainable touchable local market is kind of what you're describing here so if you understand any of those Trends who are your direct competitors you know you can list them by name you don't have to list all of them but maybe which businesses represent the type of Photography Studio or videography you know Studio that you are going to also be trying to serve those same customers and key Point number one is not only do we want to describe in general what your Market opportunity is but we want to try to give some specific examples to demonstrate that there is actually room in the market for an additional photography business and so you might be wondering you know how can I do that well here's a few examples one you know you could conduct a more formal survey of communities and people and trying to gauge that you know that could be expensive that could be really timec consuming so again just it's just an option here you have analyze existing photography businesses so maybe a better way to understand this could be maybe you know some photographers and you could you could talk with them to find out like how busy are they you know do they are they booking out a whole year that might give you an indication if every photographer you know and you talk to is really busy there's probably demand there's probably room in the market and then maybe a more tangible example that I'll even just show you right here perform some keyword research so I'm going to go to Google's Keyword Planner tool this is a free tool um you have to create a Google AdWords account which you again is totally free but then you can come to this their tool section Keyword Planner and what this allows you to do is kind of simulate when people go to Google and search for things this is going to help show you like how often are things being searched for and so I've set my location to Indianapolis Indiana that's where my photography business is going to be taking place and so I want to know know how often are people searching these things and this is going to do a few really helpful things one it's going to give me additional keyword you know ideas that I didn't search but it kind of knows what I'm looking for it's going to show me you know an estimated average monthly search volume now I wouldn't take this as there's not only 390 people per month searching for wedding photographers in Indiana so I'm less concerned about the the actual number and what I'm most concerned about and most interested in is the trend data and so this is healthy search volume you can see a lot of these examples now let's look at these three-month change and the year-over-year change so the 3mon change is going to look a little bit more negative for all of these wedding related keywords because right now at the time of filming this we're going into winter so there's going to be less you know wedding planning happening less weddings happening so that's not surprising trend-wise you can see these Trend bumps here year-over ayear change all these wedding related ones are up 23% General photographers in Indianapolis up 129% Indie photographers 129% budoir photography up 89% so you can see like pretty across the board here there's a lot of growth in people that are searching for this now this competition alone this this competition is related to AdWords so if you're going to pay for Google ads that just means there's not a lot of people paying for advertising so if you wanted to come in hot and you wanted to pay for some Google advertising you could probably get some pretty cheap advertising and capture some of these search so I like to use this just as a tool especially this year-over-year change this is an indication like if those numbers were all negative then that would mean there's a declining demand and so maybe there's less room in the market for one more photographer but here this is an indication to me that there's a growing need and desire for for photography now there might still be an oversaturation of photographers this isn't going to tell me that but this is a good indication that there's people that are are seeking for for that and and ready to be new customers so that is an example if you could do that kind of research you can include that in your business plan um moving along to marketing and sales strategy so here you're going to outline what actual product and services are you going to offer detail this you know more specifically are you doing weddings or are you not are you primarily Studio are you you know outline your kind of specific type of offerings what you're charging for those you know how many slots per season are you going to offer and then ultimately like how are you going to get customers and that's going to bring is to key Point number two so by default this section is probably going to include or we're going to have a website and we're going to post on social media and that's great and you should do those things but that's kind of the minimum bar that's the minimum expectation here what's really going to make your business plan shine is what's called a demonstration of traction it's kind of a tech terminology but anything you can do to show like real proof real momentum especially especially if you're apping for financing that's going to go a really long way so rather than just saying I haven't done anything here's my business plan I'm going to open up and people are going to come to my business that's not going to instill a ton of confidence but let's look at some of these examples prior to launch could host free workshops and start getting your name out there collaborate with local businesses and influencers I really like these three here at the bottom collect a pre-launch waiting list of customers and families offering discounted Shoots for the first year right so that's kind of like a you're setting up yourself for once you officially launch you have a list of clients already example number four as I mentioned at the beginning of the video it's very common for photographers to start shooting as a side gig or as a hobby and so maybe know how much business have you already done do you already have some families maybe that are regulars that book you know every year or every season to do some photography even if it's not a ton you know maybe it's 10 grand a year right that's still tracktion you know include that in your business plan that shows demonstration of experience that you have some contacts you have some relationships and then I I poked fun a little bit about building you know posting on social media but I guess I do mean if you could build a little bit of social following like if you're if you're doing photography kind of as a side gig you're putting all that on social media and you're building a little bit of a following and that's generating additional shoots include information about that in your business plan might sound silly but you know that data even if it's small actually shows experience and effort and hustle your your loan officer is really going to appreciate that so include that in here all right moving along to operations management so you know there's important things in here like you're saying like your equipment and are you going to have a studio maybe you're not maybe you're just going to go and shoot on site at different locations you know talk about your team here if you're planning to have additional shooters or you know maybe admin help or maybe it's just you or however you're planning on doing that maybe you're only just hiring the day of you know big shoots or a wedding to have some some hourly employees to help you execute that outline your plan here but the main thing I you want to take away from this section is demonstrating relevant industry experience so if that's you if that's you or so maybe you have the example here brings Val invaluable experience to sin escape with extensive knowledge of Photography videography business management so basically want to outline prove to your let's say lender in this case that you know what you're getting yourself into you know what you're doing and also you might have someone on your team that knows what they're doing so if you lack a certain skill that's really vital to this type of business maybe you are supplementing that with with a partner or a key employee that's really good at a certain area right so if maybe you've done photography but you've never done videography and you'd really like to offer video Services you should probably include like oh I'm going to have my friend join the business that's an expert in videography and that kind of opens up a whole section of the business for us so really just make sure you outline that you know what you're getting yourself into you know what you're doing you have that experience all right moving along and this is kind of the big one and this is the financial projections and so you can see here we've got a breakdown of our startup costs how those funds will be used so again when I'm saying startup this doesn't necessarily mean maybe I've never taken a picture before but maybe this means we're shifting from I did this on the side and now I'm like officially launching the business trying to get some financing get more equipment hire an extra person however you want to explain that so this is a breakdown of the use of the funds like you're going to get a loan how is that loan going to be used and then I'm outlining Revenue projection so here you can see kind of like summary of for five years out you know some of the key high level Financial datas uh how many weddings are we estimating other services that we're planning to do some some expense costs in there some key financial ratios that we're planning across that an outline of our monthly recurring expenses and then here we have five years of an income statement or profit and loss projections cash flow projections and a balance sheet and then like a break even point and some sales growth now maybe when you look at this this is a lot of time cuz like most business owners they know how to do their business really well they don't know how to do any of this kind of stuff and so don't freak out yet all of these charts that I'm showing you right now were generated using this template now this is a little bit of the pitch I mean this is what we do at projection of this is our specialty we help businesses create Financial projections so we've created using our experience these super easy to use templates now maybe this looks overwhelming but it's not not you're not filling in any of this data these blue tabs you're going to put in some numbers right you're just going to answer the things you know about your business these are what my packages will cost you know these are how many weddings we plan to shoot each month it's very simple inputs it looks overwhelming but we're only touching the blue sections here same thing for expenses same thing for salaries of photographers and then it's going to generate all of these charts financial statements so these are annual and then you see by month here right it's going to generate all those automatically if you change any numbers it will automatically update those there's also um a video guide that shows you how to fill up the whole thing and we Al also offer free customer support and so go ahead and grab that I promise you it's going to be the easiest way and the cheapest way to get accurate Financial projections versus hang an accountant to do the whole thing you certainly can do that if you'd like to but this is a more affordable route to do that so that's not key having projections is not key point number four you have to have Financial projections for a startup loan or even if you have an established business um you know two to three years is probably the typical requirement five years is more conservative so that's why the template generates five years the key Point number four is to make sure that your projections are you know realistic and within industry expectations and so the best way to know that you know cuz you may not know I don't know if my numbers line up specifically so what I would do is I would go to Google or you may depending upon your comfort level you can use a tool like chat GPT an AI tool and just ask it what are key financial percentages for a photography business and we're going to get some good data here so I can see okay gross profit margin right that's going to be 40 to 60% let's go back to our projections and I've got this trusty Dusty breakdown up here and I can see our gross profit is right around around 64% 60% so we're on the high end of the average range but we are within kind of an industry range let's look at net profit okay 10 to 20% you know our net income we're at 8% 6% 1% 3% 11% so we're on the low end right so that is probably conservative we're saying we're going to make less than maybe the industry average which isn't scary because we're you know it' be different if we said you know we're going to make way more than the industry average so that probably means our operating cost cost s we are estimating them higher right so the average there was uh 20 to 40% and we're saying okay 50% 53% 59% maybe back down to 40 so we're kind of being on the conservative side we're saying it's going to cost more we're going to make a little less that's not a bad thing as far as it goes for lenders a lot of times you're typically seeing the opposite where people are overestimating their income and underestimating their expenses so that's just a quick way to do a double check check on your projections um we also offer complimentary reviews so if you use our template and fill out the projections and then you want some experts to look at it we'll review your whole projections record a video like this give you some feedback super super easy and I will give you a promo code on that Temple at the end of the video if you stick around so that's key Point number four and that'll pretty much bring us to the end of the projections but we have one more key point and again this is more specific to if you're going to get financing or the business and that is being prepared to demonstrate skin in the game now if you're not familiar what that would what that means is let me give you an example so if you're going to buy a house and let's say it's a $300,000 house or for easy sick let's say it's a $100,000 house and you go to the bank and you say I'd like to buy a $100,000 house they're going to say okay great we'll give you 880,000 but you're going to have to put in you know 20,000 you know maybe it's not those exact numbers but they are going to expect you to contribute to the cost of that so business loans is going to be the same thing they're not going to lend you 100% of the dollars they're going to expect you to have some sort of personal cash investment or maybe you borrow the money from a friend and you use that as your investment so that's one thing to be prepared for the second's going to be collateral right so photography business doesn't have a ton of collateral in it there's not a lot of equipment you know there's there's cameras and different things but when you add up the total cost of that it's not going to be significant and those things aren't going to hold a lot of value you know typically the bank is looking for things that have titles or deeds so like free and clear cars homes and so your loan is going to be under collateralized which might make your rate a little bit higher but you might be prepared to say like hey hey I really believe in this I'm willing to put a second mortgage on my house and that collates loan get a good rate for that right so I'm not telling you you need to go in and tell your lender Say Hey I want to give you my house for the business to get a business loan I'm just telling you to be prepared that a lot of times when I was a lender people would say that they received the advice to keep personal and business separate that's really great advice when it comes to financial management so bookkeeping bank accounts keep all of that separate but it's very unrealistic advice when it comes to financing you're going to be probably be required to have a personal guarantee um you know you're going to have to put in assets towards that so that's just kind of the name of the game and I want you to be prepared for that so again if you can create your business plan take this free business plan template it's down the link of the description below fill it out for your business use case create meet these five key points by putting in your own custom information I promise you you're going to have the best shot at getting improved for your financing as possible if you'd like any help trying to find a lender please contact us we offer that service for free we will try to help find a lender in your area that specializes in in in lend lending to your specific type of business and as promised I'm trying to find it here if you use ph20 BP that'll get you 20% off that template template's already less than $100 so it's not expensive free support free reviews grab that template and we would love to help you so if this video is helpful for you please give it a thumbs up subscribe to the channel if you'd like reach out at support projection hub.com if you have any questions about the template or or need help with the template and we would happy to help it though wish you the best of luck and we'll see you in the next [Music] [Applause] one