This post is a guest post by Tanya Hirschy.
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When I first timidly started my photography business a few years ago I would frequently hear, “I didn’t know you took pictures.”
“Me neither” my response would be, followed by nervous laughter. This showed my lack of confidence and slightly revealed how overwhelmed I was. Maybe you can relate.
Then all at once my young business unexpectedly exploded with clients. Here’s how I handled the overwhelm and uncertainty I felt about my success so early.
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I’m guessing the answer is “yes”.
You are not alone. It’s incredibly difficult to find balance while running a business.
Most new photography businesses are started by people also working another job or who are stay-at-home parents who have a full-time job (plus some!) raising children. Once you do get to the point of going full-time, you still don’t have enough time to do everything you want to do to sustain and grow your photography business in the way you want it to grow.
Personally, I’ve justified all the extra work by believing that “one day” it’ll get to the point I want it to be at and I won’t have to work as much.
It’s a lie. The more you grow, the more time it takes to sustain, and you can’t ever really just ignore it without negative consequences.
Yet at the same time, you need to find balance. Your kids are only young once, and life is too short to work all the time. Not to mention the fact that you are utterly exhausted from late-night editing sessions so aren’t the person you want to be during the day.
So what do you do? Do you fold? Do you cut back? Do you get an extra job so that you don’t have to do photography for the income and just do it for fun?
Let’s dive in and talk about how to find balance long-term in your photography business.
Photography is very seasonal. There are busy seasons and slow seasons.
For those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, it’s busy season again. It’s that time of year where we work more hours than most people could believe and spend far too many hours behind the computer when everyone else is enjoying the nice weather outside.
While having lots of business is a good thing, over the past few years I’ve found a few places that have made a HUGE difference in becoming more efficient and doing things faster. This means more time for me to do the things I really love, like spend with my family, and it means way less stress overall.
So here are my top 3 time-saving tips to help you reclaim your life during busy season. [Click to read more]
Are you as exhausted as I am?
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On top of that, we’ve had a lot of personal things on the calendar lately, our dryer decided to stop working correctly, and it feels like there’s just too many things to do that all need to be done now. Plus I’d like to spend more time with my family.
With everything I’m juggling right now, I’m feeling serious burn out.
It seems like every year when I get to this point, I tend to shut down or lose effectiveness for awhile. I think I just get stressed about everything I have to do, and overwhelm myself a bit trying to keep on task and really get things done.
I jump from one thing to the next, not always finishing the first one, and I stress that I’m choosing wrong and should be doing something else more important instead.
But this week I had a breakthrough.
This week has been one of the most productive weeks I’ve had in awhile, so I thought I’d share what made all the difference. [Click to read more]
