A "retired" creative's thoughts on running a profitable business (even when it's also your passion project)

In 2010, I started photographing family portrait sessions. In 2011, my now husband and I photographed our first wedding. In 2019 we opened a brick-and-mortar studio that we used for our own work and also rented to other photographers. In 2020, navigating COVID-19 while operating both a photo business and a studio space wore. me. out. And in 2020, we closed the doors to our entire photo business.

Why did we close? Because the time-money trade off wasn’t worth it. We weren’t earning enough to compensate us for the energy that we put into the photo business.

COVID-19 surely didn’t help, but the not-enough-money problem started before the pandemic. 

At the time we closed our doors, we shot a lot of $250 mini sessions, fewer $500 full portrait sessions, and our wedding bookings ranged from $2000-$4000. Which is probably pretty dang average for the Colorado photo industry, but I would guess on the very low end of profitable photographers.

HOW MUCH WERE WE MAKING?

In our best years (2017-2018), our three-part-time business partners split a profit of about $30,000 a year. And we loved the work. We loved our clients, loved creating, and didn’t resent the time we spent working for a single minute, even if we weren’t earning much for our time. 

Then, our lives got a little busier. My legal career got more demanding. I had a baby. The time spent in the photo business wasn’t for fun anymore. It was business and it needed to earn money.

Putting aside the bad luck of losing a lot of money on commercial rent in March, April, and May 2020, we wouldn’t have earned enough money in our photo business to make continued operations worth it.

Why am I sharing all of this? Because I think my ten years of experience operating a business that didn’t pay enough for our labor offers some insight to other people operating a business that they love. Creative work is fun. At first, it doesn’t seem like work, it seems like a hobby. And it’s easy to undercharge and give too much away. But at some point, you want to quit your day job, or the novelty wears off and you’re in it for the money more than the fun.

LESSON LEARNED.

It’s OK to be in it for the money. This is work. And if you’re in it because you want to pay off debt or pay for groceries or pay your bills, then you need to profit. So here’s what I learned too late in my photo business (but just in time for launching my law firm!)

1. YOUR PRICES SHOULD REFLECT WHAT YOU NEED TO EARN IN YOUR BUSINESS, NOT WHAT YOUR PAST CLIENTS WERE WILLING TO PAY.

It’s really hard to increase your prices and also keep returning clients. This was probably the biggest struggle of our portrait photography business. I wish I would have raised my prices to sustainable rates more quickly and been OK with letting more of my past clients go if we weren’t in their budgets anymore. Getting comfortable with this is key. (This is Allie the photographer, secretly using this blog post to give the same pep talk to Allie the lawyer, btw.)

2. MARKETING IS PROBABLY MORE IMPORTANT THAN BEING THE MOST SKILLED CRAFTSMAN.

Being skilled and delivering quality product to your clients matters, and is critical to success but it’s not enough. 

I have no doubt that I know $400-a-session photographers who are as talented as $1,000 a session photographers. The difference between the photographers is in their marketing efforts.

There are people out there who are willing and able to pay the price you deserve. You have to find them.

Especially in a really saturated market like photography, you have to learn how to sell. If you are creative and you aren’t sure where to start with marketing, check out podcasts from really approachable marketing and business pros like Rachel Rodgers, Jasmine Star, Donald Miller, or Amy Porterfield. Especially as you increase your prices and gain more experience, you will need to attract new clients comfortable with your higher prices (see #1 above). 

My highest-return marketing efforts? Networking with other people in my industry, consistently showing up on a few online platforms, and following up with leads instead of just waiting to hear from them if they’ve ghosted you.

3. KNOW HOW MUCH OF WHAT YOUR CLIENT PAYS ACTUALLY ENDS UP IN YOUR BANK ACCOUNT. AND IF YOU HAVEN’T COLLECTED THAT DATA YET, THEN JUST TAKE WHAT YOU WANT TO EARN FROM CLIENT WORK AND THEN MULTIPLY IT BY 2 BEFORE YOU SET PRICES.

But really, track your income and expenses. Understand how much of your income goes to taxes. Watch how much of your money is profit. And use that data to keep your operating expenses manageable and your prices right for profitable operations.

4. IF YOU WANT TO SURVIVE LONG-TERM, EITHER LEARN TO SELL A LUXURY PRODUCT OR LEARN TO BE EXTREMELY EFFICIENT.

Guys, selling something that people generally perceive affordable as a small business owner and also being profitable is a REALLY hard combination to achieve. So hard. I’m not saying impossible. But I am saying I’ve seen a lot of people fail trying. 

If you’re going to try to be affordable on a budget, then you have to do high volume. And if you’re doing high volume you better be really fast with really low costs and offer an upsell to your discount clients.  

We used to offer discounted 20-minute photo sessions to people who would come somewhere within a 7 minute drive of our house. This was a good start, but we should have been more firm with making those 20 minute sessions limited offerings and then offered an upgrade for additional images.

5. SET GOALS REGULARLY. IDENTIFY THE INPUTS YOU CAN CONTROL TO MAKE ACHIEVING YOUR GOALS MORE LIKELY.

If you want to earn a living wage while running a creative small business, you need to identify what a living wage is for you, and then figure out how many clients you are going to serve to earn that amount of profit. Then, set annual and monthly income and profit goals.

After you have your financial goals set, figure out what work you have to put in to earn the money. For example, I knew that we could always sell out our October offerings because that’s when demand for family portraits is the highest, so sending a few emails to our existing email list would probably get us the number of bookings we needed. But, we’d need to get creative to meet our goals in the early months of the year and think about offering some new things and marketing them in creative ways to reach new clients. So, I set goals for the number of sessions sold and number of emails/social media posts/paid ads needed to get those sales.

SO, THERE YOU GO.

I know that none of these tips could have protected you from the hot mess that is 2020. But I hope they help you as you think about sustainability and profitably moving forward.

These aren’t groundbreaking insights. You’ve probably heard veterans in your industry say them 1,000 times, I know I have. But maybe hearing them from my perspective helps shed a little light on your business. It’s an amazing privilege to work in the creative industry; if this is your industry make sure you treat yourself in a way that allows it to last.