If you're a photographer, then you know what focus in photography is all about. However, do you know what it means in relation to your business?

As a photography business owner, you will find that you're forced to wear many hats. You are the photographer, client relations expert, marketer, designer, social media manager, bookkeeper, and whatever else you need to be to keep the business running.

It's easy to get overwhelmed and lose sight of the primary goal of establishing your business. By learning how to focus all your resources on one task before moving to the next will help a great deal in getting everything done efficiently and effectively.

This is how to go about it.

1. Define your genre

When you start a photography business, it is tempting to want to do anything and everything to prove yourself and earn some money. This means doing all sorts of shoots from weddings, to birthday parties, baby shoots, cars, travel, food and whatever else comes up. When your business is new, it gives you a great opportunity to experiment and play around with different styles and types of photography. If you, however, want to grow and be taken seriously in the industry, you need to move towards narrowing your focus to a genre in photography that you're passionate about and good at. Something that will give you an edge over the competition.

2. Apply the Pareto principle

The Pareto principle basically holds that 80% of your outcome is derived from 20% of the inputs. As a business owner, you will soon realize that about 20% of your clients will bring in about 80% of your income. So instead of trying to create a huge clientele list, it's best to focus on attracting fewer clients and then converting them into long-term clients. When it comes to prioritizing your daily activities, apply the same principle. Allocate the most important tasks during the hours when you're most productive. The less important duties, on the other hand, should be scheduled during the times when you're least productive.

This does not mean that you should not aspire or work towards your client lists. The more clients you have, the more money your business will be making, but if you cannot keep the clients coming back, then you're not really doing your business justice. In fact, in this case, you should begin evaluating why you don't have return customers who are crucial to your business.

3. Tasks

To do lists are a big part of most people's lives today. When running a business a to do list can help you organize your day and keep track of the things that need to be done. Nonetheless, a to do list is no good if you're not able to take action on it. Instead of being so stuck on doing everything in the list, why not pick the three most important tasks on the list and focus on those from early morning, and keep moving to the other tasks in order of priority?