A few years ago I wrote a blog post “ The realities of running your own photography business” which really seemed to reasonate with a lot of small business owners. At the time I promised I’d write a little follow up with what has been most useful to me since starting my business… it’s been years since that post, and now that I’m coming up to my 6th year in business, I thought I would focus on the 6 lessons I’ve learnt over the last 6 years - which have ended up being some of the best decisions i’ve made in my business!

1. INVEST SENSIBLY IN EDUCATION (key word here is SENSIBLY)

Most of us are DESPERATE to be better at our craft and think that becoming a better photographer = more successful photography business. So spending thousands of dollars on photography retreats, workshops, mentoring & courses might seem like the best thing to do, but is it?! Also…be honest… did you even finish the LAST course that you purchased before you lost interest and signed up for the next one!?

Instead of investing endlessly in photography education, try shooting every day, challenge yourself to shoot in situations you don't usually shoot in, take crappy photos & work out WHY you think they're crappy and what you need to do to improve. Start a 365 photo a day project and shoot even when the light is average and there’s nothing particularly inspiring to photograph.

I'm not saying don't invest in any sort of photography mentoring/workshops, but just be selective.. you don't need to do every single thing that you see 🙈

2. FOCUS ON AREAS OTHER THAN PHOTOGRAPHY

Do you need to be able to take good photos to be able to make it as a professional photographer? Yes, yes you do. But you know what else you need to be able to do well ? You also need to be good at marketing, social media, customer service, accounting, planning, copywriting, administration. Consider investing in the areas of your business that don't come naturally (whether this be upskilling if it's something that actually interests you, or outsourcing if it pains you to even think about!). I would highly recommend courses via -

Speak Out Studio (Brand planning / strategy - really worthwhile doing BEFORE you look at your marketing strategy!)

Young Folks Digital (Marketing & SEO)

Emily Osmond (Modern Marketing Collective)

The Digital Picnic & Shall We Social (Social media gurus)

Also, the mere act of logging onto my Xero account and trying to wrap my head around BAS reports honestly makes me want to bang my head on a brick wall. Luckily, there are people out there who are actually passionate about supporting small business owners with this sort of stuff & can do it all 1000 x quicker and easier than you! Shout out to the wonderful Shelley & Asher at By the bay tax & accounting who are worth their weight in GOLD!!

3. DON'T BE SILLY WITH YOUR MONEY

Set up a business bank account. Don’t make excuses why you can’t / shouldn’t / don’t want to – if you are running a business, you need a business bank account and that money should not be all mixed in with your families money!!

Pay yourself a salary. I pay myself a salary of 50% of the income I generate, and put aside money for tax & business expenses. I would highly recommend reading Profit First for a great way of managing your business finances. If my business is not earning enough and I don’t have enough money in my business expenses account I do NOT spend money on my business! This forces me to be accountable and it is really empowering – on the one hand, I don’t need to ask anyone for permission to make any biz related purchases, but on the other hand, sometimes I need to miss out on things I WANT (or even feel like I NEED) because it’s not in the budget.

Value your time. If you’re struggling with the idea of paying yourself a salary or putting aside money for tax / business expenses because you have worked out that if you only pay yourself 50% of your income you won’t earn enough, you need to price yourself PROPERLY and work out what your time is worth and what your costs of doing business are.

4. PUT SYSTEMS IN PLACE (YOUR TIME IS ACTUALLY VALUABLE)

Can you put together an invoice template in Microsoft Word and manually create a new invoice for each client every time someone makes a booking ? Yep, you sure can (I know because that's what I did for the first 6 months I was in business).

Look how much happier I am when I don’t have to spend hours a day doing things manually that a computer program can do automatically for me!!

Can you make an Excel spreadsheet to keep track of the invoices you have sent out and which ones have been paid and which ones are owed? Yep, you can! Can you type out a new response to every email that comes through, even though you’re basically typing out the exact same thing every time!? Sure, I bet you’re an excellent typer!

Can you do pretty much everything yourself in your business if you put your mind to it ? Yes, of course you can!!

Buuuuut, SHOULD YOU!?

I mean… I hope you know the answer to this already !! Seriously, you HAVE to invest in programs and systems that streamline the processes you are doing on a regular basis – otherwise you will never ever grow the side of your business that you are actually passionate about – OR you may grow, but you sure as hell won’t have even a SHRED of work/life balance and you will burn out quicker than you can say “I can do that myself” !!

You can’t grow and take on more client bookings if you are wasting hours every week doing jobs that can so simply be done by a computer program! I know when you’re just starting out the thought of purchasing anything other than camera gear is not an appealing one, but my experience was that the time I saved from utilising these sorts of programs quickly freed up my time to be able to take on more bookings which quickly paid for the cost of what I purchased.
Here’s what have been game changers for streamlining how my business runs -

Studio ninja - managing client leads, bookings, invoices, contracts, questionnaires.. hands down makes your photography business life 1000x easier !! Around $30 per month (discount code JE90608Y to get $5 off your monthly subscription)

If you need help with setting up your studio ninja so that it works seemlessly for you, I highly recommend getting in touch with Stacey from The Tidy Tog

Pic-time – Online client galleries - around $34 per month (discount code EYV9FE for one month free) - the $34 plan gives you UNLIMITED storage, so I also use it as a back up method for my edited images!

Planoly – plan & schedule social media content (see below for why I use it!) 84 USD per year ($10 off if you sign up via this referral link Planoly )

Xero - let’s be honest, it’s boring but trust me it makes life easier than trying to do everything on that excel spreadsheet - $54 per month (that reminds me, I really should log on & reconcile some things 😅)

Also, highly recommend getting in touch with Stacey from Healthy Business Finances to make sure you set your Xero up properly the first time!!

Photo Mechanic - for culling photos - yes you can cull photos in lightroom, but photo mechanic is SO MUCH FASTER & when you’re culling thousands of photos every week, that time adds up! One off payment of $139 USD

5. DON’T LET SOCIAL MEDIA RUIN YOUR LIFE !!!

When you're running a business, social media is a true blessing and a curse. If you don't put some boundaries in place straight up, it will rule.your.life. I'm not going to pretend I don't fall down the rabbit hole & let socials consume more of my brain space than it should, but here's what really works well for me -

- Limit the number of accounts you follow - do you REALLY need to follow 500 amazing photographers on instagram? Maybe you're genuinely creatively inspired by following heaps of photographers and have awesome relationships with them all, but if you're finding yourself comparing yourself to others, lacking confidence or getting more and more imposter syndrome, it might be time to look at your followers list. The people pleaser part of your brain might try to stop you from ever unfollowing or muting anyone.. but give it a glass or two of wine & be brave! On that note, stop spending all your time trying to get featured on photography hubs or joining comment pods! That might gain you more photographer followers and boost the ego, but you’re not going to get clients that way!

- Stop complaining about the bloody algorithm (#ToughLove)!! Seriously.. you have a free platform for reaching your dream clients. Is it as easy as it used to be? No. Can you just post a bunch of pretty pictures and wait for the bookings to roll in? Also no. Do you need to invest time and energy into making it work for you? YES! Seriously yes, you do need to learn how to use social media to your advantage and I know a lot of people seem to think that's really unfair... and you can focus on how unfair it feels, or accept it as reality and move on. The good news is, there are SO many people who can help you with this (also, you don't HAVE to be dancing or lip syncing on reels to make social media work for you, I don’t care what anyone says).

- Don't put all your eggs in the social media basket if you don't want it to rule your life - give yourself a break from it for a month and work on your website, SEO, brand strategy, create a killer newsletter, reconnect with your past clients, engage with local businesses and see if you can collaborate together. But please, don't convince yourself that social media is in complete control of your business success

- Schedule & post from a 3rd party app ( I use planoly, as above). Personally I just find that if I schedule posts, I don't go down a rabbit hole , wasting 30 minutes scrolling through my feed and forgetting what I actually came on to do!

6. Stop comparing yourself to other photographers

I know right, easier said than done!! I still do it myself, so trust me I know it’s not easy. But you HAVE to be able to quiet that noise or can turn this whole dream of running your own photography business into a nightmare.

You should only ever compare yourself to where you were 12 months ago - not to other people. Everyone is at a different stage of their creative / business / personal journey. And just because something seems like it comes easy to someone else, does not mean it does! We have literally no idea what is going on for other people behind what they share on social media - so we HAVE to stop comparing our lives to their highlight reel. I know, I know, it’s easier said than done. But I hope the more we can remind ourselves of this and put our insecurities into perspective, we might at least start to reduce how much we torture ourselves with the constant comparisons!

Look, I could probably go on and on about this stuff all day - but I won’t ! Let me know in the comments if there’s anything you would add? Has this been helpful? Is there anything else you’d like me to share on this topic?

6 lessons i’ve learnt after 6 years in business - and the best decisions I’ve made since!