If you can answer the questions, “what do you want to be doing in 5 years?” or “where do you want your business to be in 10 years?” then you and I have little in common, at least as it relates to planning my business and my life.

Prior to my life as a Photoshop Trainer and Actions Designer, and long before I did Product Photography and Photo Editing, I was an HR Manager.  Yep – me.  I hired people, unfortunately fired people, and had the job of running a Human Resources Department. When conducting interviews I always avoided asking “where do you see yourself in 5 years?” It may be one of the most popular interview questions of all times, but to me it was cruel.  I could not bring myself to ask.  And when I applied for jobs, I hated answering it more than any other question.

I did not have a clue where I wanted to be in the future, and I still do not.  I am not a lost soul, not even a little bit. I also do not believe that my entire life is mapped out and that I am just moving along fulfilling it.  I have a different philosophy as far as the future.  I believe that every decision, every choice I make and experience I have leads me to the next step.  My business has evolved in exactly this way. After having kids I started buying and selling kids’ clothing on eBay.  I wanted my pictures to look better so that I could sell items for more money.  I ran my venture as a business.  And the skills I learned both about photography, photoshop, and marketing, still help me today.  Did I know then, 8 years ago, that I would own a popular web site selling Photoshop products and services?  Did I have dreams of training others in Photoshop?  It never crossed my mind.  Not once.

But then time went on and I started taking pictures for some web sites and then for print publications.  And I was asked to do professional photo editing for a few children’s clothing companies.  All of the sudden I was doing Product Photography and Editing professionally. I started doing training for online web companies on using Photoshop.

All of these experiences built to lead me to my current business focus of training and providing Photoshop resources for photographers.  It was not planned.  I doubt I could have planned it out this way if I had tried.  It just happened as I worked hard and let one step grow into the next.

If you are a planner and if you like to dream or map a plan of where you will be in X number of years, by all means do not let me stop you.  But if you are not, do not feel bad. 

Without knowing your destination, you may never reach it. But without having a destination you may go places that you never dreamed possible…

This entry was posted on Monday, November 23rd, 2009 at 9:00 am and is filed under Business Tips, MCP Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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