It’s confession time. I’m a little behind on updates from our 101 in 1001 list :-(  Yes, I know. I’m a very bad little blogger.  So buckle up and get ready for a whole slew of mini updates!  Some have photos and some don’t so I’ll do my best to make this at least a little bit interesting. LOL!

#2: Attend WPPI (Business Goal)

Back in February, we attended our first WPPI Conference (Wedding & Portrait Professionals International) at the fabulous MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas!  This event is a pretty big deal for all the photo peeps in our industry. Thousands of photographers take over the MGM to attend seminars, workshops and a huge trade show featuring every photography product under the sun.  We were also super blessed to be able to split our time with another, much more intimate conference of about 100 photographers in an adjacent hotel.  ShowIt United was hosted by the awesome crew from ShowIt, the makers of the amazing software we use to create and manage our website.  It was an awesome week of sharing, learning, growing our business and networking with other awesome photographers from all over the world.  We didn’t take a ton of photos, but here’s a little sample of the good times we had.

Vegas Baby!

Trade show goodness.

Lots of knowledge from loads of awesome speakers.

One of the craziest and most memorable moments of the trip for us was participating in a Flash Mob with some members of the Showiteers group!  We practiced a couple times during the trip and then did the dance in the busy lobby of the WPPI conference one morning in front of a huge crowd!  Talk about getting outside our comfort zone!  Here’s some video footage of our performance.  We’re hiding in the back (cause I’m a horrible dancer) so you don’t see much of us, but I swear we were in there!

#3: Be the Studio Spotlight at a PUG Meeting (Business Goal)

In April we stepped out of our comfort zone again and gave a presentation at one of the local photography networking groups that we’re a part of.  It’s called a “PUG” (Pictage Users Group). It meets once a month on the third Thursday.  Lots of great speakers and presenters come through there so if you’re a photographer and you’re looking to connect with others like you, we’d highly recommend it.  We were honored to have the opportunity to share our photography story with the group.  We talked for about 15 minutes about how we got started, how we’ve grown our business and what our plans are for the future.  It was a lot of fun and really felt great to be able to give back and share our story with other photographers at various stages in their own journey.  We goofed and forgot to have an entire room full of photographers take a single photo of us.  EPIC FAIL.  Oh well :-(

#4: Babysit Makena (Personal Goal: Ryan & Denise)

When we created our 101 in 1001 list, Makena was less than a year old.  Since then we’ve been blessed to have Kaleb join our family and very, very recently, our brand new nephew Daniel (newborn photos coming soon!)  Babysitting Makena & Kaleb isn’t really a big deal anymore because it happens fairly often.  So we’ve actually checked this one off quite a few times.  Here’s a few photo pics from our various adventures with them. (all iPhone pictures)

#44: Read 3 books that benefit our Business over the course of 6 months (Personal Goal: Ryan & Denise)

Being a photographer is only 10% about taking pictures.  The other 90% of our time is spent working on things related to managing our business.  Between Ryan & I, we’ve read quite a few really great books aimed at improving our business and business skills.  Here are a few of the titles we’ve really loved so far:

• The Purple Cow by Seth Godin
• Lovemarks by Kevin Roberts
• Love Is The Killer App by Tim Sanders
• How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
• Today I Am Rich by Tim Sanders
• The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber