hey guys, welcome back to my channel! in today's video, I'm gonna be sharing with
you the game changers in my business. this was actually a suggestion from one
of my subscribers and they asked what were some game changers like gear I
purchased maybe experiences I had software's and mindsets things like that
that I think are the biggest game changers in my own business now
reflecting back on the past 5 years and I really love this question I think it's
a good one so I'm going to answer it in today's video. before we dive in, if you
are new here, hit that subscribe button I make videos just like this one every
single week for photographers just like you ok so starting off with experiences
I have 3 different experiences that I think really shaped Who I am as a
photographer now and took me the farthest of anything that I tried in my
business early on and the first is second shooting I second shot for a
couple of different wedding photographers pretty consistently
meaning I second shot you know 10 or 15 weddings with that same photographer in
my first year so while I was booking my own weddings I was also working for
other photographers and this was hugely valuable not only to grow as a
photographer just get the camera in my hands working manual that kind of thing
but really good to see how other photographers run a wedding day and get
to see how the timeline works on a wedding day so if you can get second
shooting experience I think that would be hugely valuable especially if you're
moving into the world of weddings the second experience that really helped me
out was shooting couples for free I even shot individuals families friends and
engaged couples and it just got me really comfortable with posing other
people in front of the camera and it got my feet wet into the industry a little
bit before I had pain clients so if you don't have any portfolio you've never
photographed a couple before don't just jump in and start charging people do it
for free so you can gain the experience without the pressure of having that
paying client and all those expectations the third experience that really grew me
was attending a business focused workshop for photographers so I attended
a workshop called the business essentials and doing this really early
on in my career and starting to think about profit
and my cost of doing business and sales and marketing and just the different
side of photography early on instead of being only thinking about my gear and my
flash and my settings really set me up for success when it came time to grow my
business because at the end of the day my goal as a photographer wasn't just to
produce beautiful work but to bring home a paycheck and support my life and my
family's life with my photography and so being in that mindset from the very
beginning really helped me and took me really far so I'm gonna link some of my
favorite resources below for you guys if you're interested in the business side
of photography or you'd like to just grow in general and business knowledge
marketing knowledge branding knowledge and that kind of thing so be sure to
check that out so in terms of gear I have two pieces of equipment that I
think just made a really big impact in the final results of my images now I
personally wanted to shoot weddings and I wanted to shoot a lot of portraiture
and be able to photograph couples in low light and not have too much noise so I
was struggling for a long time to be able to accomplish what I was
envisioning in my head until I received well until I bought a full-frame camera
body so until I had a camera body that could handle a little bit of a higher
ISO I struggled to get that look and then the second pieces of equipment that
really helped pair with the full-frame camera body is the 85 millimeter 1.4
lens so for me personally in my own business
it was absolutely crucial that I have a full-frame camera and an 85 millimeter
lens combined to really get that look that I was going for and that kind of
became my signature look which really built my brand in my business and took
it forward now when it comes to editing early on I was really overwhelmed by
Lightroom I knew I needed to use Lightroom and not Photoshop because I'd
be dealing with so many images but I didn't know how to use Lightroom and one
class that really helped me organize the catalogs understand presets and just all
the editing modules was a class by Jarrod Platt over on creativeLIVE
I'll link down below but I think it was like less
than $100 and it is so in depth and really breaks down every single area of
Lightroom so that you can understand your import settings your export
settings and how to achieve the edits that you're really looking for in your
photography so that leads me to software's I have three softwares that I
want to mention for you guys today the first is photo mechanic before I got
photo mechanic I was using Lightroom to actually go through and pick the images
that I wanted to edit and it just took ages and ages and ages and Lightroom's
actually not meant for calling and it just slows everything down if you have a
huge amount of images in your catalogue that you don't need to be there so I use
photo mechanic and I have a video all about that so I won't get into it but
you can check that out here and I'll link it down below
the second software that I use is honey book and honey book is how I manage all
the nitty-gritty of like contracts invoicing getting paid getting things
signed questionnaires a lot of the back and forth of my clients is just a client
management software really and I waited a little too long to get a client
management software because I thought I needed to wait until I was really busy
and really profitable and while that kind of makes sense at first blush it
becomes really overwhelming to transfer everything over so I had a really
inefficient system of getting my contract signed and invoicing my clients
and remembering when to invoice them after you know a certain amount of time
had passed and they needed to make their next payment or whatever is in your
client process and so transferring over was kind of a pain so I really encourage
you if you want to have a wedding photography business sort of photography
business in general get a client management software sooner than you
think you need it because it will actually allow you to be able to grow to
the levels that you need to because your business will be set up in a really
healthy and sustainable way instead of having all these weird backwards ways of
getting paid and getting contracts signed and sending invoices and I mean
even sending a proposal like if you're filling out all that information
customizing that sending it to your client every single time like I know
people that are wasting time on proposals when it should be like three
clicks and it can be really quick your time is really valuable so get a client
management software the third software I want to mention is
my like you it is an app that I use on my phone that tracks all my mileage and
all I have to do is swipe left or right and tell it whether it was a business
expense or business mileage or personal and at the end of the year it I to mises
everything out and it gives me a form that I can send with my taxes so that I
can get the most amount of write-offs possible for my business so once I
discovered this app I knew this is what I want to pay for it every single year
and it just makes my life so much easier I don't have to keep a log or keep
receipts or any of that like it's all digital and I love that it you know
preps all my tax forms at the end of the year so it's really really great I have
three books that completely change the game for me I guess mindset wise but
also just gave me a lot of incredible business knowledge when I was first
starting my business the first is the pumpkin plan the second is the book
start and the third I have to look at my list it's fine art weddings I'm gonna
link all of these below I'm not going to get into every single one of them but
these are the three books that when I really sat down and I really thought
about it I can attribute the most amount of business growth and change and they
just were the biggest game changers for me starting out in my photography
business the final thing that I want to share with you guys is a couple of
mindset shifts I guess you could say and that I had early on in my business and
those were looking at other photographers looking at people that I
admired and looked up to and wanted to be like and realizing that they were
just people they put on their pants one leg at a time they're human beings and
that they started at zero as well so when I start when I first started out I
kind of you know had all these amazing people up on pedestals and I it was
really hard for me to imagine that I could ever be there or ever booked
clients like they do or produce work like they do but I really started
shifting that mindset and asking you know why not me why
couldn't I do this why can't I book that client and why can't I make that money
why can't I produce that work and I think that mindset was really hugely
crucial for my success and just saying like why not me
so that was really huge I know that's like kind of you know woowoo or like a
little bit vague but I think your mindset going into business and your
belief in yourself is hugely impactful on how it's all gonna go down and
whether or not you're gonna push through and have the grit to continue when you
come up against resistance and struggles and problems which you inevitably will
the last thing that I think had like a profound impact on my business was the
compound effect and the compound effect is simply that there's nothing that you
can do once or twice or three times that's gonna change everything for your
business but rather it's something that you do every single day for a long
amount of time that suddenly adds up to something so it starts to compound in
effect and all that blogging you're doing and networking and posing going on
workshops reading books listening to podcasts all these things you know one
of them or two of them may not feel impactful but in the long run they add
up to huge results and that's the compound effect and that's something
that took a little while to grow and have momentum in my business but I just
kept at it and I knew that the compound effect would take effect and that I
would see huge growth of my business and then it would take some time so I
remembered the compound effect when I was submitting my work to magazines and
blogs and I knew that it could take a really long time for that search engine
optimization to truly take effect and for me to start seeing those results so
keep in mind the compound effect when you're growing your business and don't
be discouraged if you blog for a couple months and you don't see any results
because it can take more than you think to start seeing the results but it truly
will add up because of the compound effect so I would love to hear from you
what were the biggest game changers in your business is it a piece of gear an
app software's something completely front leave it in the comment section
below I'm super curious to hear what you think were the biggest game changers in
your business or that you think could be your biggest game changers as you're
implementing right now if you enjoyed this video give it a thumbs up and I
will see you next week bye guys