Good luck! Most of the jobs I got were because I knew "someone" at the business who could recommend me .When I was self employed it was the quality of my work that drew new customers. Hang in there!

You have the vision, just follow through now! Good luck!!

Sounds like you have got a good head on your shoulders, Middlepath.  Having a business plan is a great start.  There is no better feeling than having your own business where you can focus on doing what you love to do.  Good luck with the new venture!

Sounds like to me that you have your 'coconuts' all in a row amigo---good luck out there and remember--' failure is not an option ' 

With more than 500,000 people losing their jobs each week, competition for remaining jobs is fierce and the employment market is tightening by the hour.

With your business marketing and sales skills it makes perfect sense to start your own business.

With diligence and a lot of hard work you can be successful, or at least make a decent living and pay the bills.

The field of photography is a choice which requires relatively minimal investment.

And it's something you can actually learn to do yourself with a good eye for composition, good techniques for studio posing of subjects and a generally good "feel" for the artistic side of the "business."

As they say, it ain't rocket science.

You might not even need to employ a professional photographer, but you could learn a lot from picking one's brain. 

Helpful instructional resources are readily available on the Internet for free through various university sites and a good photography trade magazine subscription or two can also be valuable.

You will need a good prosumer quality digital SLR type camera of about six or more megapixels with a couple or three decent interchangeable lenses and media, a basic studio lighting kit,  Photoshop software and some effective advertising and you're ready to rock and roll. Consider that higher resolution cameras producing up to 20 megapixels produce JPG, or Raw image files requiring huge capacity media and computer disk storage capability.

Lots of pixels are desire able for magazine quality reproduction or poster size enlargements, but are unnoticeable to the average eye. Six or eight megapixels is plenty sufficient for 8x11 or even somewhat larger prints of more than reasonably high quality.

The basic key of capturing images is developing your ability to creatively frame each shot with proper exposure, lighting and, of course, focus.

Unlike the film era of the recent past, today's digital images can be totally processed on a computer or laptop using top line Photoshop software. You'll need to study and develop basic Photoshop processing techniques

MONEY

A $700-$1,000 investment in an Epson R1800 professional quality printer, paper and ink for proofs and small jobs is highly desirable, but you can have high quality prints printed quickly by many online "laboratory" sites. With the high cost of paper and ink, home photo printing is not economically feasible, especially in quantity. 

Basic equipment cost - as little as $5,000 or so.

Advertising & Marketing -  ???

E-mail me for more specifics.

Best of luck to you.