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Starting Your Own Photography Business

If you’ve reached the point where you’re tired of dreaming of starting your own business, and are ready to take action and actually start your own business, congratulations!

My husband and I started our photography business a little over 17 years ago. We were young and thought starting a business was just as easy as buying a few business cards. Our families came from the “job” mentality, so we had no true role models. But we new we could succeed.

After 7 years of trying everything, then choosing a mentor and starting on a true plan to success, we began to see what entrepreneurship is all about. After all those years of struggling, we discovered a successful business owner has three characteristics that distinguish success.

1. Mentorship. A successful businessperson never goes it alone. She realizes the key to success is to join others that have achieved success, and follow in their footsteps. When trying to create a successful business, reinventing the wheel takes way too long. And with so many people out in the business world willing to share how they got where they are today, why reinvent the wheel!
   
   How do you find a mentor? Look for industry leaders that have made it to the top of your chosen path. Want to photograph weddings? Who do you admire? Love commercial work? Find the best, and follow their patterns. Also find successful business people that can make the most of your time. Find marketing consultants, lawyers, accountants and business coaches that can cut your learning curve and the time you spend on menial tasks down to nothing.
   
   
2. Education. A successful businessperson always looks for educational opportunities. Have you ever heard the phrase:
   
   When you’re green, you’re growing. When you’re ripe you rot.
   
   This phrase speaks to all entrepreneurs very seriously. Over 60,000 books are published every year. Millions of articles are written every year in the thousands of magazines, newspapers and publications published. Information is constantly being updated, changed and reported. Hundreds of training classes are going on all around you every week. There is always an opportunity to take what you know today, and expand on it to create a stronger understanding for tomorrow.
   
   
3. Time. There is no such thing as an overnight success. Your road to becoming an overnight success may take you a year. Or three. Or ten. No matter how fast it comes, it comes when you are ready for it. You learn as things happen, and grow by taking action. Every day is a new opportunity.

Learn.

Read.

Find a mentor.

And wait for success to find you!