The 1-word swap that can create a seismic shift in your photography business
Don’t you love it when you stumble across something that causes a perspective or mind-shift for you? And then you wonder how the heck you didn’t think of this before, or think like this before? Well, I hope I will blow your mind with this one simple word swap that can deeply impact your photography career journey.
The first thing is to do a little discovery and identification. You are a photographer. You get paid to photograph people. So you are also a business owner/ entrepreneur. Often, and especially when starting, we may not feel like either of these, but we are certainly both.
Photographer versus Business
Usually photography businesses start out very organically. We may have become a mom and that was the trigger to pick up a camera. We may have had another photographer in our life that influenced us, or we were the child with a camera in our hands by the age of 5. We may have started taking images for ourselves, graduated to friends and family, then started to pocket a few bucks until we got our act together and did a few more business things to get more serious. It’s you all the way - the one behind the camera, editing, delivering, buying software, creating your website, booking clients. The lone wolf. And at times, or even most times, it feels like ‘little old you’ in a great, big world. We are so connected with what we do that we develop fears around how others are better than us, further ahead of us, how ‘they’ have it all together and you have no idea what you’re doing. Fears around taking money, saying no, saying yes, saying anything!
Imagine for a moment that there was a small business in your area that you love: a bakery. One day you find out that the owner is selling. You’ve just come into some money and you decide to buy the business.
You’ve bought into the business as the owner. The bakery has a location, a staff, a specialty product that they are selling. The staff now looks to you to steer this ship. You have to do all the things that need to get done so that you can keep lights on, maintain the top-quality ingredients and equipment that underpin the brand, pay salaries. If someone inquired about discounts or freebies (such as an influencer), you’d likely have no issue stating that bakery items are full-price. Any on-the-fly discount that you didn’t account for financially can affect your ability to keep the lights on, maintain the top-quality ingredients that underpin the brand and pay salaries. Right?
What is the difference between the organic trajectory and the “step-in” one? The first one is just you cycling up a hobby or a dream. It kind of creeps up on you that you are moving into business. The other option - you went in with eyes open that you are stepping into an established business and people rely on it for their livelihood. You have a mindset of business and you need to get a return on your investment!
Photographer is the business is the photographer
Besides the obvious differences between a bakery and a photography business, the core foundation of business is the same. Bring in revenue. Pay out expenses. Grow and expand. Serve and make clients happy. So why is it that when it’s just us, it’s so hard to field the business things that would seem natural to do if you stepped into an established company? It’s mindset and words. Let’s change it.
When a customer steps into a bakery it would seem ridiculous for them to expect to receive a cupcake for free. It would be even more ridiculous to even ask. The boundaries are set by the physical construct - the bricks and mortar location, a cash register, paid staff behind the counter and your mindset of being an owner rather than a worker of the business. Business envelops and surrounds the delicious bakery products. In a photography business, there may not be a physical location. If there is, it may not be set up like a retail business - a place for money exchange - but a creative studio with lights, and any number of features to make clients comfortable. It’s not as wrapped in ‘business’. Often, we don’t make major efforts to wrap the photography into business because we don’t treat it like one either - allowing clients to dictate things, overdelivering, not having contracts, having bottom-dollar prices and so on. We also want to remain friendly and personable and business feels too formal and official.
But then, when we’re faced with clients asking for things - discounts, RAW files, whatever, it feels like all comes down on our personal shoulders. You’re left not knowing how to respond, feeling bad, feeling awkward, struggling with the solution. So what if you could make 1 word-swap that could help ‘wrap’ your photography with business and instantly create a new way of how people can perceive working with you and how you perceive in working with your own self? To help create that distinction between a person and a for-profit organization? Are you ready?
The secret: Replace the word ‘you’ with ‘the business’.
It really is that simple, and can have magical superpowers for you. Feel like an imposter? It can help. Fearful of selling, of saying no, of presenting a higher price sheet? It can help. Fearful of even creating a price sheet? It can help!
You want to start charging and everyone tells you to do your CODB (your cost of doing business, or as I prefer to call it, your DREAM ALLOCATION). Yikes, you don’t know how much you want to make, maybe just a little? Not sure because you don’t feel worthy. Do I really need things like insurance? It feels very business-y and I don’t think I’m there yet.
Instead of saying “How much will it cost me to be a photographer”, you re-frame with that 1 word swap:
“How much will it cost the business for me to be a photographer.”
All of a sudden, you have a business! Or, about to have one! I don’t know about you, but that instantly changes the flavour of that sentence. It elevates. It creates something larger than you, that is ITS OWN ENTITY. One apart from you and your fears, your self-esteem, your imposter and your feelings of unworthiness. Even apart from the photographer.
You are a business owner and you own a business. It may not be formalized yet, but this mindset will help you get there. Your business already has an employee - you as the photographer. Just as the employees in the bakery don’t sign the lease, don’t negotiate with suppliers and don’t set the prices, the photographer in your business doesn’t either. They are sent on the jobs that the business books and focus on the skill and talent they’ve been hired for. It’s the business owner that does the other stuff. If you then apply this thinking to the CODB questions above, then it can help you separate what your business needs from your own thoughts and feelings. As the photographer of this business, I will have an established salary of 50k (if I hired an actual employee, I’d have to give them a salary for the job role). Does ‘the business’ need insurance? Absolutely, because a business must protect itself and its interests against liabilities in working with the public. See how these statements feel very different now and it’s easier do consider the correct things to implement.
You are a 2-in-1
Ok so in our case, the employee-photographer and the business owner are the same person. But when you’re shooting, should you be thinking about next year’s price increase or the marketing for the upcoming Easter shoot? No, you are serving the client by taking photographs. So if you apply that logic in reverse, when you are the business owner, you ARE NOT the photographer. You are purely a business person, leading a business, making the best decisions for a business. You are not thinking about lighting, or making a creative pose, you are serving the business.
This is the truth of what you’re living. You are 2 roles in one body. As solopreneurs, the mistake we make is mixing the 2, or worse, blending the 2 so all lines are blurred and neither are recognizable; interfering constantly with one another. Let’s take a session as an example:
You have driven to a location for a shoot. The client is late. What instantly starts churning in your head? You charged for 60 minutes and now that time is ticking away - do you give a full 60 minutes after they show? Do you subtract the late time from the 60 and give them the remainder? How do you tell them without making things awkward? Should you leave after a certain time? How will you break the news that the session fee was non-refundable - another awkward situation that will make you want to agree to a re-shoot even if it wasn’t your faul? Then, that business mind smushes up against the photographer: golden hour is fading and the images will be grainy. You don’t have any other lighting with you, or you’re not experienced in flash so now you feel like a failure. Can you still be creative and a happy photographer when you’re angry and frustrated? Now you’re a wreck on all fronts!
Here are some real situations where the word-swap can change your life!
What are your prices? — What prices has the business set?
What should I charge? — What should the business charge?
What should you do if the client is late? — What is the business policy on lateness?
What if someone asks for RAW files? — How does the business handle RAW file requests?
What the word swap is doing is creating a psychological separation between you as a photographer and you as a business owner. Separation is key, because each of these roles require something crucially and fundamentally different:
Photographers:
Proper equipment
Skill with equipment and lighting
Posing skills
Creativity
Post-processing skills
People skills
Owner of a Photography business:
A business plan
Financial tracking
Software and equipment (website, photo-processing, photo-delivery etc)
Marketing systems
Client management and Payment systems
Policies
Legal and liability (business registration, taxes, insurance etc)
Customer service skills
Conflict resolution skills
Selling skills
Growth
Can you see how blending these 2 so that they are competing with each other at all times in your head could cause major headaches? There should be prescribed time when each is taking the lead, so that the other doesn’t interfere. When you’re shooting, the business owner should have already answered all of the business questions about lateness. So the photographer doesn’t have to real-time troubleshoot any of it! Let’s take the same example as above:
You have driven to a location for a shoot. The client is late. The business owner has empowered you with all of the information beforehand, to deal with this. The business policy that was communicated prior to the session is that the client has a 20 minute grace period. If they do not contact the photographer within that 20 minutes or are unreachable, photographer leaves at the 20 minute mark. If they do connect and client is near, then it’s at photographer discretion to remain a few more minutes so that the session can happen. Business policy is also that the late time is subtracted because of imminent sunset. When client arrives, photographer does a time check and confirms the end time with client, and they begin. The photographer doesn’t need to churn thoughts around handling the situation, because the boss set the rules already. So now the photographer can focus on simply using the remaining time to do what they do best - take amazing photographs.
This can work for all of the situations I outlined. When people question prices, they are not questioning you as a person, they are questioning the business. Answer as a business. When people ask for RAW files, they are asking this of the business. What has the business set as a policy around releasing RAWs? Answer as that business. You can still be friendly and personable, by the way, the 2 aren’t mutually exclusive!
A note about boundaries
Will separation create an impersonal barrier with you and clients? When business stands in the way, isn’t it hiding behind a wall of policies and you feel inaccessible to a client in a business that’s so personal?
We’ve all heard of setting boundaries - and many of us complain that we haven’t set them well enough. How is that working for you? When you don’t have enough separation, then often we fall into personal issues with clients that make it impossible for us to navigate because our emotions and self are wrapped up in them. We can feel personally attacked and we start defending and making our own judgements, creating barriers to a positive business experience. Feeling bad can cause us to make all sorts of decisions that sacrifice what we want or need for someone else, and usually to our detriment. Let’s be honest. You created a business to make money. You can make money and still be a wonderful person who wants to serve others. But by creating a business construct, the boundaries that define the transactions, you are creating a safe and effective space for those transactions to happen in the most positive way. Lack of boundaries, lack of a construct, lack of rules can easily create chaos, bad feelings, emotional anguish that in turn can make you feel like you’re not cut out for this, or that you’ll never make it.
How ‘the business’ handles complaints
This rule also applies to complaints. The big aha is that if a client complains, they are complaining about THE BUSINESS and not about you! Does that change things? It should. If a client bought a cake at the bakery and it deflated in the box during transport home, they will return to the bakery with the product and complain to the employee. The employee fields the complaint, using the rules set up by the business. It’s not them who has to find the solution, they are not personally accountable, they are only accountable insofar as they are a paid staff member required to execute on the company’s complaint process and brand promises. In other words, they don’t take it personally. Now the cake baker in the back, once they’re told their cake fell, may come out and apologize to the client, and may feel personally responsible because something went wrong. But again, it’s in the context of being a baker, and not as a person. It’s the role that is at question. The baker may have to make a correction in process or in ingredients, but the baker shouldn’t be going home and flogging themselves that they aren’t good enough to work in their profession. It’s a process failure or an error that caused the cake to fall and then the responsibility lies in the business realm for correction. Doesn’t that carry a sense of relief from any personal burden?
The decision of becoming a business owner
There is a point in time where your photography becomes a business. When money happens, the transition happens, whether you feel it or don’t. The process may decide for you (because someone offered you money for a shoot) and it’s not helpful to continue having the attitude that it’s a side hustle or a paid hobby or any other story you may want to tell yourself. When you’ve graduated to taking money in exchange for a service, you are now in business. It’s a good idea to overcome any internal objections of how small or big your offer is, and decide to fully be the business owner you already are. This psychological step, along with the language of ‘the business’ will then help carry you into future phases.
I encourage you to try this word-swap out and see if it has a positive effect. What prices has your business set? How many clients does the business need to book at those prices to achieve the financial goals set out by the business? The objective tones comes with it the hope and promise that while you may not feel capable, a business entity might! If you do this, comment below on your results!