Every month we have a special meeting for photographers. If you’re in the neighborhood, join us!

People have come from Idaho, Oregon and of course, Washington. But if your visiting from out of town and want to jump in on the fun, we’d love to have you!

What do we do?

We start with wine and appetizers, everyone brings a little something. Then we have a focused topic for the night. Sometimes the topic has to do with growing your business, marketing, or shooting techniques, or the nuts and bolts to your business.

Right now I have a series of people coming who help photographers with the “business” side of their business. Last month our wonderful banker, Dani Collins from Columbia Bank, came and talked to us about becoming bankable, when to consider commercial financing, tax benefits and so forth.

This month our meeting is on Wednesday, April 23rd (two days before our Sonoma Workshop starts! Yeah!). It starts at 6:30pm.

For this month, I’ve asked our lawyer, Jennifer Huddleston Wing, to come and talk about the differences between having an LLC, Corporations and being a Sole Proprietor. Airika also had a great idea of asking Jennifer to discuss the Top Ten Pitfalls of a Small Business. If you are in need of lawyer type input, I got Jennifer to join Facebook. 🙂 You can find her as Jennifer Huddleston Wing or just go to my page Me Ra Koh and you’ll see her as a friend there too. But seriously, I’ve known her for years–she’s amazing. For those of you who have bought and loved our 101 Kits, particularly the Wedding, Portrait and Associate Kits, Jennifer has been the legal mastermind behind all those contracts. She’s a contract queen!

If you are a veteran in the industry or considering starting a business, you are totally welcome. The appetizer/wine part is 30 minutes or so, the formal part of the meeting lasts about 1 hr. This officially ends our group around 9pm. Then we eventually have to kick people out at 1am.

We love this night and everyone who comes! Sometimes there are 12 of us, sometimes there are 40 of us! Each year we also do a Martini Garden Party every summer and a Christmas Party.

But I’m also super excited to have new leaders for the group. Brian and I starting leading it a couple of years ago, but our schedule has become to crazy to do the job justice. We are still going to be hosting, but Gerald and Airika Pope have volunteered to take over the leadership side of things, and they are so cool! I can’t wait to see how their leadership will take this group to another level!

This is Airika (the one sticking her tongue out). As you can see, she’s very unapproachable. 🙂

If your interested on info and details to the meetings, shoot Airika an email and she’ll hook you up! (airika@geraldpope.com)

And most of all, be encouraged to find a community of photographers that are safe and encouraging. If you are feeling looked down upon by other photographers, get out of that situation and find a new group where people love you, cheer you on, and believe in you. Sometimes it doesn’t feel like it, but there are more of these types of wonderful photographers than the Negative Nellie’s. 🙂 Just got to hang in there and find them.