I guess you can call this part two of the purpose series. A few weeks back, I wrote about my personal purpose. Basically the why behind why I want to own my own business. It has nothing to do with photography or being an artist. It’s about creating a life that puts food on the table and makes memories with my family. It’s the heart behind everything I do and every decision I make. Every single thought is run through the filter of does this fit our personal, family purpose.

There are two more parts to running a photography business. The first of which I’m going to talk about today is the business purpose. The second, which is probably the most fun, is the artistic, creative purpose behind why I’m a photographer. That’ll come in a later post.

This post is short and sweet, because there’s no generic formula of how to run a photography business. All I can tell you directly is you need to create that personal why before you ever decide on the how to run your business. Or else, your business is going to run you. Trust me, I had no life the first few years in business.

Business purpose is an all encompassing category of: what am I trying to accomplish with my business and what experience do I want to give my clients. When I first launched this business my goal was to replace my income so I could go full time. Thankfully I didn’t have a lot of income to replace so it didn’t take long to make that happen (nannies don’t make very much!). Last year, my goal was to work a little more than usual to help save up for a better down payment on our new house. This year, we’re more about sustaining a life that gives us freedom to do a little traveling as a family, decorate the new house, but not overwork ourselves at the same time. The how is a fluid part of our business that changes every year or so. Yes we have a business model, but we do update it and evolve it as our life and family grows. Currently, we’re even debating about associate photographers! See things change!

Experience wise for our clients, we have always strived to give them the best! We’ve run almost an entirely word of mouth business, which only works if you give people something to talk about. As we’ve raised our pricing over the years, we’ve also elevated the experience. But you know what, even when we were starting out at $1000 a wedding (yes, we started there too…the key is don’t stay there for long!!!), we still gave them high end service. If we hadn’t we wouldn’t have a business today! I could talk about experience all day, because I believe it’s such a valuable part of what we as photographers do, but I won’t. The only thing I’m going to add is I truly believe our quick response time when it comes to communication with our clients is the core of our experience!

If you’re stuck on how to take get your business to a level where you can live your personal why, then reach out to someone who can mentor you through the process. When schedule allows I love to do them, but there are also tons of qualified people out there who can help you think through your challenges! Or come to Darling Wedding Workshop! You don’t have do to this alone!!!!