Now that the new year has begun, it’s time to ensure you have the business side of your modeling career buttoned up from the year past. It is also a great time to get yourself teed up for the year ahead so you can hit the ground running as soon as the fashion industry wakes up from its winter hibernation.
Read below for five things every model should do to set themselves up for a successful start to the new year!
One of the first things you should do at the start of the new year is review your finances from the previous year. Check that you have documented your earnings and expenses, and double-check that your payments have cleared the bank. It’s also good practice to make sure the correct amount of agency commissions was deducted from each check. Reviewing all of this now and having a detailed spreadsheet of all your earnings and expenses (don’t forget mileage!) will ensure that you aren’t missing any of your money and make your life so much easier when tax season rolls around!
While reviewing your finances, it’s also a great time to review your resume and add all the bookings and training you’ve done over the past year. Clients often look at resumes, so if you don’t have any recent updates, it can give the impression that you haven’t been working even if you have.
With a new year beginning, it’s the perfect time to sit down and reflect on all you have achieved in your career and set goals for new things you want to accomplish. These goals can be as simple as getting better at tracking your finances to bigger things like signing with an agency or working with one of your dream clients. Once you set the goal, create a plan that will help you achieve it, making it more likley that you’ll follow through with it.
If you’re agency-represented, now is a great time to schedule a phone call or coffee date to check in with them. They will have insight on what you can do to better appeal to clients (ex- change your look, update your portfolio), and they can help you come up with a plan to achieve your goals. Don’t forget to thank them for all the work they’ve done on your behalf!
The start of the new year is the perfect time to make sure you have added all the photos from bookings you have done to it. Sometimes, images aren’t released until many months after the shoot, so it can be easy to forget to track them down and add them to your portfolio. It’s also an excellent time to review and see if there are any old images that no longer reflect how you look or fit the type of modeling you’re doing and remove them. Taking this time to refresh your digitals and setting up a photo shoot to get any photos you may be missing is also a great idea so your portfolio is fresh and ready for the busy season.
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