Are you proud of your work? What's it worth? Where do you sit in the marketplace? Cheap and cheerful? In the pack? At the top? If you're not happy with where you are, what are you doing each day to change that? I believe it's very hard to achieve our goals if we don't have our heads and hearts straight, and at Queensberry we have fierce internal debates about two questions that directly affect what we do each day. The first is about our relationship with you, the photographer. You're our customer, right? Our job is to package your images, enhance their perceived value and create new sales opportunities in the process. Well, not quite. Photographers' customers are our market, the brand strategy experts tell us, which makes photographers technically our "channel to market". To truly understand and enhance the value that our products create we need to focus on both you and the "people in the view finder". Just as Coca Cola focus on both retailers and thirsty people. To be honest that scares me, and I've fought against it, but over time I've realised why it's such an important distinction. Our second debate is whether we're a "luxury brand". I struggled with that too. We Kiwis believe everyone's equal, but luxury means "elitist", right? I was more comfortable with "aspirational". But again I've had to get my head straight. Luxury no longer means elitist or unattainable to me, but simply the highest quality for those who care enough to want the best. I believe that to be successful as a social photographer, you need to be clear that you're a luxury brand too. And because we both serve the same market (the people in your viewfinder), our experience with tens of thousands of photographers over 40-odd years can directly benefit you. Because another thing we say every day around here is, we only succeed when you succeed. Over the next weeks I'll be telling a few stories to illustrate our core beliefs. Whether or not you agree with them, I hope they'll be interesting and entertaining, and help you focus on doing whatever it takes to succeed in this business. Let me put that stronger. My family treats our business as a muse, a source of inspiration. We have a vision for Queensberry, and use it to compare what we should be doing against what we are doing. In a world where just enough is good enough, and businesses use technology to make things easy rather than great, we aspire to be different. Sounds lofty I know, but we've never been encouraged by ordinary. Sound like you? We can have fun building our aspirational, luxury brands together ;) Cheers, Stephen