Running your own business is hard. It's exhausting and it's lonely and everything you do, within the walls of your business, plays on your mind -- 'Have I done the right thing?'.. 'Could I be doing it better?'.
People often assume that we're available to catch up all the time because we 'don't have a job'. Or that we'll discount what we do or do it for free because we make the rules.
We get questions like, 'so, what's your real job?' or people make the assumption that we have 'other halves' who receive a great wage -- that's just so wrong, on so many levels.. but it's so common! And no one knows that feeling like other business owners.
The truth of it, is that we're working every single day.. and we're working hard. Harder than we've ever worked for any employer because this is OUR dream.
We're working late nights and weekends because, in addition to the work we do which others do see, we're doing a whole lot of work which others don't see.
When people hire John and I, they're not just paying for photos, they're paying for years of photography education, not just in 'taking' photos, but in editing those images and knowing how to use the different file formats available to us.
They're paying for the albums and prints which we spent years sourcing from different print labs across Australia, until we found the perfect products.
They're paying for the late nights and early mornings of creating all the many educational guides we email them over the course of their engagement period, until their big day, to help them understand how we work and how they can maximise their experience with us.
They're paying for us to know the importance of RTV silicone coatings and UDMA speeds, and the implementation of those products in our work.
Outside of all those things, there's bookkeeping, client management, location scouting; just to name a few!
This world of entrepreneurship can be difficult to handle; no one else knows that like another entrepreneur.
That's why surrounding yourself with a community of other entrepreneurs is such an important part of how you do things within your business. It's not just about networking to 'get your name out there', it's about creating friendships with other people who know the feeling of staring blankly at a computer screen and wishing all the numbers would just add up, or with people who know how difficult it really is to just 'catch up for coffee'. More importantly, it's about supporting each other.
We don't look at other photographers as competition. I've leant our gear out to other photographers when they've needed something for a session and I've shared my 'two for one deals' for online photography courses with those same photographers.
I never see their posts on Instagram about a session they had and think 'why did that couple hire them and not us?' because, in thinking like that, it also asks, 'what makes them worthy of being paid, over us?', and I could never think that of anyone, let alone, a friend.
Surrounding yourself with a community of like-minded people changes the way you think of 'competition'.
Just because we're friends with photographers, doesn't mean we aren't 'competitive'. We are forever going back to the drawing board to brainstorm ways of bettering our customer experience and workflow because, when a client chooses to work with us, we want it to be because they love our style, our personality, and the way we service our clients, not because we talked about how much better we were, compared to other photographers -- because who the heck wants to work with people like that anyway?!
When someone contacts us for information about booking, we don't just send them our pricing and availabilities, we send them a guide on the importance of selecting the right photographer and what they should be looking for -- they don't even see our pricing and booking information until the end of the guide!
We recently included a few of the different editing styles a client may come across, and talked about the different processes, which can vary with each photographer.
You're probably wondering why we wouldn't be promoting OUR editing style and processes. Well, for the simple and honest reason that we don't want to work with a client who realises they don't like our style and the way we do things when they're in the middle of getting ready for their wedding, or when they're receiving their wedding album!
We want to avoid working with couples who like a different editing style because, when they receive our images, they're not going to fall in love with them the way a client who loves our editing style would.
We want to avoid working with couples who don't understand the importance of the way in which we do things because, when it gets to their wedding day, they're not going to enjoy working with us the way a couple who planned their ceremony around the most ideal lighting situations, so they could have beautiful 'light and airy' images, would.
As a photographer, when you start to refine your editing and your workflow, you decide on what YOU love and then you invite others (your clients) to enjoy a piece of that by hiring you.
As time goes on, you start to understand how 'trying' it can be ('trying' being the understatement of a lifetime) to have a difficult client, so you begin to educate your clients on the way you work and your editing style so that you can avoid the headache of trying to fix something that could have been avoided in the first place.
Having this amazing community of fellow photographers, I'm able to direct people to a photographer who's style they'd appreciate much more than they would ours.
It's not just about surrounding yourself with others in your industry, it's also incredibly beneficial to surround yourself with entrepreneurs in other industries. Just because Tenelle from 'Au Revoir Vintage Van' knows her way around a coffee machine and a grazing platter better than she does a camera, or Caitlyn from 'Food At Yours' is probably better at creating jaw dropping wedding cakes than she is at creating jaw dropping portraits, doesn't mean we can't benefit from being around them.
My heart is so full when I get to talk 'business strategies' with friends who truly love what they do, yet, appreciate what you do. It's a huge bonus when those friends make killer coffee and hot chocolates and the most mouth-watering sweet treats! Having those opportunities are so good for new business ideas but they benefit our personal lives even more. Friends like Tenelle and Caitlyn help us to recharge without derailing us.
In networking with entrepreneurs in other industries, you also widen your net, as well as widening theirs.
You're able to recommend each other's services and you can completely vouch for them because you know how truly wonderful they are.
Remember, 'Community Over Competition', it's not a 'Community Without Competition'. We're competitive in the way that we grow our business, but we look at the term 'competition' with different eyes and we choose to raise each other up, supporting each other and making each other more resilient against the constant back and forth of entrepreneurial-ship. It's choosing our community over competition. It's choosing to see that no one is less worthy of receiving a pay cheque; the only person who can make that decision is the person who pays it.. and that has nothing to do with you. Find your people. Create your community. Love what you do and who you do it with.
A very rare picture of myself, without my camera, with Tenelle of Au Revoir Vintage Van and Caitlyn of Food at Yours - both wonderfully talented wedding vendors in Dubbo and the Central West.
Erin Michele Thomson ∙ Dubbo Photographer ∙ Melbourne Photographer
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