Mom and Entrepreneur
My new series, “Mom First,” touches on life, business, photography and the struggles we face wearing so many hats. You don’t have to be a mom to gain something from these articles. We all have roles that sometimes take priority over our photography career. Whether you are a dad, have another full-time job or just have a something/ someone pulling your attention away from photography, you can relate. Being a good photographer isn’t enough—you have to be a photographer with sound business skills who can balance all the other roles you play in others’ lives.
We all need super capes, a double of ourselves and a clock that we can stop so we can get everything done in one day—right? If you have relationships that are suffering, if you are editing at all hours of the night, if you just can’t get the laundry done or you are just struggling to make the business thrive, surprise—you’re not alone. Through a lot of tears, frustration and doubt, I feel like I have found a method to the madness. My hope with the series is that you will walk away with one piece of advice from every article that you can apply to your business or life.
Every “Mom First” article hits on one topic that I relate back to being a mom, first. It’s an honor and a privilege to be able to preserve clients’ memories. I have never met a photographer who says they hate what they do. You are a photographer because you love the art, but you are not always a business owner because you love owning
a business. Some photographers can work until midnight, or can pick up and travel whenever they want or need to, or put in 70 hours of work with no bad consequences. I do believe that you get out of your business what you put into it, but I don’t want to work a million hours a week. I want to be at home with my kids as much as possible, I want to see my kid’s first giggle and be there at the bus stop when he gets home. Being a photographer enables me to do all of this.
