It’s crazy that we’ve been running our photography business for two years now. This last year has been so full – full of fun, learning curves, changes, and excitement. I thought I’d hop on here and tell you guys four things that we learned this year.
four things we learned in year two!
1.It get easier but it also gets harder
There were a lot of things that got easier in year two, I started to feel more confident in what I was doing and we saw a lot of growth in our business. But, growing also made things harder in a lot of ways - I found myself struggling to keep up, and felt myself getting lazy and not wanting to push for creativity or growth because I had established habits or just plain got tired. We found ourselves in places where we had no idea what to do because it was brand new!
2.It’s ok to ask for help
Seriously, something I am not good at. But I’ve realized how important it is to ask for help. As much as I sometimes believe that I can (or that others are), absolutely no one can do it all! As a small business owner you wear a whole lot of hats – not only in your job, but just in life. This year I felt stretched thin between everything we had going on in our business but also our personal life. I also realized some things that I’m just not good at, but didn’t know what to do about it. Once I finally spoke up and asked for help, we worked together to create some solutions.
3.Don’t be afraid to try something new
This year, as we went deeper into the photography world, Zach and I both became fascinated with film photography. We realized that we loved the look and feel of film, but were afraid to try it because it seemed intimidating or out of our reach. Finally, Zach just went for it and bought an inexpensive film camera for us to try out personally at home and on trips. He was obsessed, and so of course, I got interested as well. We loved it so much that we took our film camera on both of our vacations this year and even got bold enough to try it out at weddings! Something else new we tried this year, was branching outside of just weddings into motherhood and maternity. It was a natural transition just because of the season of life we’re in and the community around us, but it was still scary for me and it grew me as a photographer. Both of these “new” things we tried are things that we want to grow and continue to do in our business and we wouldn’t have known that if we hadn’t tried!
4.Change can be good
Just because you’ve done something that way before doesn’t always mean that it’s the right way or the best way to do that particular thing. Again, something that’s hard for me – at war within me constantly is the person that desperately wants to do it right and better all the time and the part of me that’s just simply a creature of habit who won’t change even if things aren’t working well at all…. Am I alone here haha? Not only that, but change feels so scary sometimes. I’m so lucky to have an amazing husband and business partner who reminds me that sometimes change can be good and even necessary at times. I hope that as I keep growing, I’ll remember to embrace that mindset more and more.
All in all, this year has brought a lot of growth and change, not only in our business but in our family. We got to travel to both Ireland and California and see new parts of this world, found out that we were expecting in July of this year and it has been the most amazing ride. We are gearing up for maternity leave when our baby comes this next month, and I’m sure that this will bring even more changes to our life and the way we run our business this next year. We’re so excited! Bring it on 2020!
xo, sarah