How You Know When You’re Ready to Quit Your Full-Time Job
Hello friends, and welcome back to another episode of the Beyond Natural Light Podcast. I'm your host, Sandra Coan as always, and I'm so excited you're here. Today I want to talk to you about transitioning from a full-time job or even a part-time job into becoming a full-time photographer. This is something that the people that I coach and mentor have asked me over and over again through the years. I just had a mentoring call a few weeks ago with one of the photographers inside Sandra Coan Certification, and this question came up for him and he asked if I could talk about it on my podcast. Let's have a conversation about it!
A lot of people start their photography careers exactly how I started mine, which is by accident.
A lot of photographers fall into photography. It's something we start doing for fun, and then people are like, you're really good at this. We start doing it for friends and families, and then it becomes a side hustle and it can live in that side hustle limbo for a long time. Knowing when to take the step, when you are ready to quit your day job and go at it full time is something a lot of people struggle with. It's something that I struggled with when I started my photography career, which I didn't know was gonna be a photography career at the time. When I started, I was a full-time public school teacher.
Photography was something that I'd always loved
One of my friends, Ginger, was pregnant with her first baby, and we did some maternity photos of her and she was the one that suggested I could do this on the side. It was a way to supplement my teacher income because I wasn't making a lot of money as a teacher. I started offering it on the side and it took off. That's how it started for me. It took me about three years until I decided to quit my teaching job and become a full-time photographer. I'm happy to share my story with you and how I came to that decision.
There's no right or wrong way to do this.
There's no definitive answer to how you know you're ready to quit your job and become a full-time photographer. It really is a very personal decision and there's a lot of factors that you have to take into play. At the time, I was a teacher, full-time teacher and we didn't make a lot of money and that was one of the reasons why I'd started doing photography on the side. My first year teaching, I actually qualified for food stamps, which is absurd. I wasn't making a tremendous amount of money, but I did have healthcare and I did have security.
When I realized that my side hustle from photography could actually become a full-time job, I sat down and did the math.
If I'm gonna pay for my own health insurance, replace my teaching income, and replace the supplemental income that I've been making from photography, what do I need to make for all those three things per month so that I can support myself? I started with that number as my financial goal. This is what I need to be making.
What do I need to be making that I bring home every month in order to meet that criteria? I figured that out first, and then I did the math. Based on that number and based on my sitting fee at the time, what I was making per session at the time, how many sessions do I need per month to make sure I'm hitting that revenue goal consistently? I figured that out and then reverse-engineered it from there. I asked myself "What do I need to be doing to make sure that I am consistently and predictably getting that number of clients per month so I can hit this revenue goal each and every month?"
Figuring out how to turn my side-hustle into a business launched my interest in marketing, which now I'm obsessed with.
I love business and marketing, but at the time I had no background in that. It became apparent to me that if I was going to replace my job that means I need this amount of clients. How am I gonna get those clients? And I think that that's the question that it always comes back to: how are you gonna get the clients? How are you gonna get butts in the seats to be able to make that money? That's what I figured out for myself and that's what I did. Now, I think this is a relevant conversation to have for anybody who has a side hustle as a photographer who wants to take their photography full-time. It really brings to light the importance of all the aspects of running a photography business.
This includes the craft, being good at what you do, knowing how to market yourself, knowing how to get clients and book out your calendar consistently and predictably, month to month so that you have guaranteed income coming in that you can rely on. That is the art of running your own business and being a business owner. Those are all the things that I am teaching the photographers I work with in Sandra Coan Certification. I'm so excited about this program because it is the first program I have ever put together that combines all the aspects of running a photography business. I have The Missing Link that teaches lighting. I have Simply Posed which teaches posing.I had the Six Figure Studio, which we just recently closed, that taught the business of marketing. What I'm really loving about certification is it just feels holistic.
Let's look at the craft.
Let's make sure you know light like the back of your hand. You can work with natural light, you can work with artificial light, you can create a real signature light style. In order to have a signature style, you need to have a signature brand. To be able to stand out in a saturated market, your work needs to be super consistent. It needs to be airtight. That starts with lighting.
As photographers, light is the cornerstone of everything we do.
You need to know light, you need to be obsessed with it. You need to know how to create it consistently in any circumstance, whether you're outside, inside, whether you're working with natural light or artificial light. Then we get into the posing and the posing part is something I think a lot of photographers don't necessarily think about or treat as important as it needs to be.
Having a posing system and knowing what your go-to poses are is important for your session flow, and for making your clients feel comfortable.
It's also a way for you to create a signature style. What people don't think about is that when you have go-to poses, when you have a way that you work with your people that you show over and over again in your portfolio, that's another aspect of how you create a signature style. When you marry that with a consistent light style and a consistent posing style, you start to develop a signature style. And then of course, the last piece to that is processing. Making sure that your work is consistent, and cohesive, not only in your light and in your poses, but also how it is processed and presented. So we go on into all of that nerdy wonderfully detailed lessons in certification. The other piece to it is then the marketing piece.
Marketing is just a fancy word for communication.
As photographers, we communicate in two primary ways. We communicate with our work and with our words. That is why you need to make sure your work is on point. You have a signature style that is creative and consistent, and that shows you know, what it is that you do, but you also have to know how to use your words, how to craft compelling marketing, how to make sure that that is represented on your website and on your social media. And we get into that in the program too. My hope is that as people are going through the program earning certification, and then actually having that social proof to show that they've mastered their craft. They're now a part of my online directory and my international referral network. When the income piece becomes consistent and predictable, they can quit their day job and support themselves and their families a hundred percent with their photography income, which is what I've gone on to do.
It is a hundred percent possible.
If you are in this place where you want to be a full-time photographer, you wanna quit your day job, you want to support yourself and your family with your photography income, first of all, I wanna say to you it is a hundred percent possible. I I support my family and have supported my family with my photography for years. This career has given me so much opportunity, but also flexibility. I got to grow my business, grow my career, be an entrepreneur, and do something creatively that fills me up while also being a stay-at-home mom to my kids, and being able to volunteer at school if I wanted to. Being able to go for walks with my friends in the middle of the day is the flexibility that photography has given me. I had no idea that was even possible when I went into this. So if that's something you want, I just want you to know you can have it. If I was able to do it, anybody can do it. I had literally no training, no background in any of this.
Sit down and do the math.
Figure out what you need to be making each and every month to hit your revenue goals. Based on that number and based on your sitting fee numbers, how many clients do you need to have per month? What are you doing in your communication with your work and your words and your website? All the things to ensure that you have a marketing machine set up that is running for you constantly in the background so that you are pulling in that amount of clients that you need consistently and predictably month to month.
If you need help , I would love to help you.
Sandra Coan Certification is currently closed, but we are opening enrollment up probably in the fall. Get your name on the waitlist, so you're the first to know when we opened enrollment. When we opened enrollment in May, the program sold out within the first week. Get on that waitlist so you're the first to know. I'll be back next week with another episode.
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