Speaker 1: As a photography business owner, it can be so hard to balance the creative side of your work with the business side of your work. You have to juggle finances and bookkeeping, marketing, and so much more all while trying to stay creative and motivated. How do you manage it all? It's no surprise that successful photographers often have great tips for staying organized and productive. So in this video, I'm going to take a look at some of those secrets. Now let's grab a hot cup of tea and get started. Hey, I'm Sarah Petty and this channel is for photography business owners to learn how to build a thriving photography business and still be there for your family. You shouldn't have to pick. Here's the thing. As a photography business owner, it's crucial to maintain an organized system so that you can keep track of everything you're juggling. Deadlines, invoices, sessions, consultations, which is the meeting before the session, ordering appointments, and then all the things that happen after clients order. And then of course there are just other important tasks that happen throughout running a business. But rather than just discussing the tools and the software that we use in my company to achieve organization, I want to shift your focus to an easier way to help you stay organized and in control of your business. One key aspect of organization, and you may have heard this before, but I really want you to put it through the filter of your business. It's by grouping similar tasks together. For example, in my photography business, I schedule my sessions on certain days. I schedule my sales presentations on certain days, and I schedule my marketing and my book work on certain days. I don't jump from task to task to task because it's using different sides of the brain. So rather than trying to do all of those things each day, I'm very intentional about how I set up my week. And if you do this, it will make your life so much easier. If you think about it, when we're being creative, I think that's the right side. Isn't that the right side of your brain? The right brain where you're creative and you're like, Oh, I want props and I want cool backgrounds. And I'm thinking about all things photographically, but then we've got the other side of our brain. And when you're an entrepreneur, small business owner, a person who's making money with their art, which we can do, there are tasks we have to do from paying bills to organizing things to all of the different things, especially talking to clients. I think that's a left side of your brain versus creative. Go where you want, because you have to go through certain things that need to happen to book your client. So your energy is different. Your state is different. And I know it's hard to get in state for a creative session for me anyway, at four o'clock on Friday, when I do it, I have to do extra work to be prepared. I still want to show up as my best self. It's just not as easy for me. So I have to work on my state. I like to be creative in the morning and I like to go to the more logical side of my brain in the afternoon. If I have to break up a day, it's hard for me. Once I go into thinking mode to then be creative, you may be different, but it's one of those things. Once you figure it out for yourself, you can schedule your day so that you get in state, say for marketing and you're making phone calls and you're setting up partnerships. It's hard to do that when you're focused on getting a client's order ready and retouching and all of those different tasks that activate the creative side of your brain. That's why I really am so conscientious about what my days and what my week looks like. It's hard for us to shift gears. That's okay. A lot of people in the world don't have that creative in them. They're just logical. So they have no problem sitting at a desk all day, concentrating with no problem. But when you have that creative in you, we have to be super conscientious about what skills it takes and what it takes to get ourselves in that right state. So for me, this also helps me focus on one task at a time rather than trying to juggle multiple different tasks and potentially becoming overwhelmed because it's very easy to do. It's also helpful for me when I assign specific tasks for specific days. I am pretty much closed in my studio for clients on Mondays because that's my day to get into the week to figure out what goes where. I like to do sessions Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. Once in a while I do them on Friday or Monday based on people's schedules or if it's a reshoot from a session that didn't go well or something happened. Of course I always have Monday open, but I like to have Monday to get into the week. You might want to also consider setting one day aside to work on your business versus in your business. For me, that's Monday and Friday. That's when I communicate with clients. That's when I schedule sessions. That's when I do outreach for marketing purposes. And so that day on Monday, I have everything set for the week. So then Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, I can just show up and I can be in a happy place and I can be creative and I know that I don't have to worry about, oh, did I forget a deadline or did I forget a bill to pay? I've already taken care of that. And so that allows me to be in that creative state and be more productive. We all have the same amount of hours in the day and you can waste it doing different things or you can be very proactive about setting a schedule with like tasks together and you will be so much more productive and you will have so much free time in your life. Again, by dividing your tasks into specific categories and allocating specific days for those tasks, you can stay organized and make the most of your time. Hey, I hope you're finding this video helpful. Before we go on to the next tip, seriously, take a second, write a comment below on how you balance both being creative and the business brain. Share with me something else as a creative that I find challenging. And I've been doing this 25 years is you have to be able to turn the creativity off and on. I might be doing a breakeven analysis on my marketing budget one minute. And then I have a session again, refer to my earlier point where I said, I try not to do that, but sometimes that happens. I'm grinding on a deadline. I have something happening. And then I come up and it's like, okay, I have sessions. I feel like I am not super full of gas or whatever it needs. I have the responsibility as a professional to make sure that I am ready for every session. So how do I keep my passion and my creativity alive? Because let's face it. I don't want to be a boring, dull, uninspiring person, not calling anybody that, but if I had to live in a cubicle and sit for eight hours a day typing at a desk, some people love that. But I think as creatives we don't. So we get to choose what our office space looks like. We get to choose an inspiration board with great images and happy colors and positive sayings. And it's not uncommon when Andrea, who works with me, when we are going into a session that 30 minutes before we turn on music and we look through other people's websites sometimes, or we look through magazines, we keep a swipe file of cool things we've seen over the last six months to get ourself in that place to really be creative. Because I always remind myself, especially with like senior photos or new babies, like this is their one chance. You can't go back and redo those new baby photos. You can't redo senior photos. I mean, you can technically, but if someone doesn't and they move on in life and they look back and they don't like them, or you just didn't bring it that day, that doesn't have to happen. The next thing I'm going to talk about, don't freak out because it has to do with math, but keeping your numbers visible. So many creatives I see every day. It might be you where you're like, this is so fun. It's awesome what I'm doing. And you have no idea where profit comes in. And look, even if you're telling yourself, Oh, but this is just a hobby for me. This is just fun. That's cool. But if you're doing the work, why not know if you're profitable or not? So many of my students, when I start looking at their numbers, they realize they're working for less than minimum wage. I don't want that to be you too. So don't avoid analyzing that financial side of your business, because I'm telling you the answers to everything you want to know about your business is in your numbers. Can you justify getting a studio? Is it time for a new camera? What about hiring someone or expanding? The answers are in your numbers. So you've got to understand your finances and make informed decisions that will help your business grow and thrive. Again, even if it's a side hustle, why not make full-time money with a side hustle? You can do that if you understand your numbers. So for you to make sure your numbers are clear and visible, you can literally have a Google spreadsheet. And when you turn your computer on and your browser pops up, bam, that's the spreadsheet that you look at every morning. You go look at your bank account. Are you where you're meant to be for your goals? What can you do better? What money can you go collect? If you're not keeping score every month of this was my goal and I'm not near it, how can I go scramble to make that money? Then you're just drifting along in life and you're not going to get ahead and make the profit that you need to make. So you've got to have a system for that. And literally it can be a legal pad of paper that you keep your numbers on. In fact, I think you should do that or consider doing that with everything in your life from your debt, consolidate it, look at your interest rates. Don't be afraid of money because it's going to give you confidence to make decisions when you understand your money situation. And if you have to take a loan to invest in a class to make more money, you understand where all your money is. That's good debt by the way, versus bad debt behind a bunch of stuff at Costco. Don't need to do it. I believe investing in your business and in yourself is the best use of your money ever. Don't be afraid to embrace both the creative side and the business side. Because the thing is, if you can find a balance between the two, you can achieve so much success even as a part-time photographer. Look, if you're ready to be part of a community of boutique photographers, that's portrait photographers who aren't just giving their work away for cheap. Those of us who value family first, growing a business, encouraging each other, come join our free Facebook group. I'll stick the link in the description below. And Hey, if you found this content helpful, make sure to snap the subscribe button and click the bell notifications to stay on top of the best photography content on YouTube. Okay. Maybe I'm a little biased, but I think it is. And if you loved today's video, get more actionable steps here. Thanks for watching. And I'll see you in the next video. Keep going.