The Truth About Work/Life Balance for Photographers

Hello and Happy April!

I’m not sure how it happened so quickly, but not only are we in a new month, we are in a new quarter!!

Crazy!

The first quarter was all about business

Way back in January, I made a promise to share all of the behind the scenes stuff that I work on in my own business throughout the year.  

For me, the first quarter is all about getting my business ducks in a row so that when things pick up in the Spring and Summer, I’m ready to hit the ground running.  That is why I’ve been so focused on business topics here on the blog over the past three months.

New Quarter, New Focus

But the new quarter means that it is time to switch gears!  Instead of business, I’ll be focussing on the nitty-gritty of portrait and family photography.  We’ll cover workflow, routines, posing, the structure of a session and so much more!  

I can not WAIT to dive in.

But before we do, I want to talk for a moment about something that is extremely important to running a business but is often over looked; work/life balance.

Work/Life Balance

A few years ago, I had a mentoring session with Brian Greenberg, the owner of Richard Photo Lab.  In our meeting he asked me a question I’ll never forget.  “What are you doing to take care of the talent?”  

I had no answer.  

He went on to say that as a photography business owner we sometimes forget that the foundation of our business is us, the artist, and if we’re not taking care of ourselves, “the talent”, we will burn out.  Our business will fail.  “You must take care of the talent” he said, and I’ve never forgotten that.

Here is the truth.  We are more that what we do.  

Many of us are parents.  

We have husbands, wives and partners.  

We have pets.  

We have friends.  

We have hobbies and passions outside of our photography businesses.  

All of those things matter.  They are important.

The truth is you can’t hustle all the time.  You just can’t.  You will burn out and your business will fail.

Allowing yourself some down time will fuel your creativity and honestly, just make you a happier person.

So in this week’s post there is no downloadable PDF worksheet.  There is no call to action.  I’m not asking you to do anything except to do something nice for yourself.

Go for a walk.

Call your best friend.

Be fully present with your kids.

You’ve worked hard.  You deserve a break.  So go have fun.  I’ll see you here next week and we’ll get back to work then.

xoxo,
Sandra