Do you notice it can sometimes be hard to ask or accept help with your wedding photography business? Perhaps you feel like you are betraying your clients when you are not hands on with every part of your post production workflow.
Your time is valuable, and you may not always have a ton of it. Because of this, it is impossible to be a part of every process necessary to run and sustain your business. If you attempt to do everything yourself, you risk burning out and becoming overwhelmed with tasks and responsibilities. Also, you jeopardize your relationship with your clients, especially when you have set realistic turnaround times for them which you cannot meet based on doing everything yourself.
What do you do? Partner with specialists who can take care of pieces of your workflow which do not require your ongoing attention. Whether you are a new business owner, or have been in business for a while, trusting a specialist will help you focus on your goals and continue to grow. A specialist will help you deliver the best results to your clients, while also enabling you to stay creative.
Some of the areas you can trust a specialist with include post production, image fulfillment, bookkeeping, studio management – and those are only a few (check out this post to learn more). Now, the first step to take is to give yourself permission to trust partners with your business. You may be accustomed to trying to do everything yourself, so it is a paradigm shift to place your trust in others.
Keep in mind, you are not the only one who will see the benefits of working with specialists. Below are three people who will not only give you their permission, but will also thank you, for partnering with a specialist to further streamline your business.
Related: 10 Reasons to Outsource Photo Editing to a Specialist NOW!
1. Your Wedding Clients
As a photographer who shoots weddings, your clients are one of the first who will give you permission to partner with a specialist. This will happen for a few reasons. The first has to do with your post production workflow, specifically the editing process. When you send your images to a wedding photo editing company to be color corrected, your turnaround time is faster and your images consistent. Your clients stay happy because they can receive the images sooner after the wedding, meaning the excitement from the special day will still be present. The happier they are, the more inclined they will be to share the images through social media, and refer you to their friends and family. It’s a win for everyone.
Time is only one of the benefits your clients see first-hand when you partner with a specialist. There are tasks you do not enjoy, and may be reflected in your business. Some of these items can be accounting, blogging, album design, or scheduling social media. When you bring partners into your business to help you with these tasks, your clients enjoy the benefits.
Think about it this way – your clients trust you to be their photography specialist. Shouldn’t you be able to trust others to help you with tasks necessary to run your business? Depending on the task, they may do it better than you and make your clients even happier!
Related: How many images do your clients actually want?
2. Your Bank Account Manager (You!)
We realize your bank account is not a person, but it will be greatly affected by your decision to partner with a specialist – in a good way. Now, you might be thinking about how much it costs to work with a partner, and think it is too much for you to afford. But, it is actually quite the opposite. When you outsource non profit generating tasks, you have time to focus on tasks which will generate profit for your business.
If you spend all of your time working on tasks that do not get you in front of ideal clients, or do not help you book more weddings, you will have a difficult time growing your business. By trusting a partner with those non profit-generating, you can spend your time marketing to and attracting ideal clients, building vendor relationships, and focusing on other activities which directly increase your profit.
With time saved by outsourcing to partners, you will have more capacity to bring on new clients. You won’t have to hire in-house staff, which will increase your profit and the balance in your bank account. This the key reason why your bank account gives you permission to trust a specialist.
Related: How can having a streamlined blogging workflow help you book more clients this year?
3. Your Family and Loved Ones
Every hour you spend on your business is time spent away from the personal things you love to do, with the ones you love. No matter how much you love what you do, your health and well-being requires you to take time away from your business and its responsibilities. If you are stuck at your computer for countless hours working on images from every wedding, you risk missing out on events in your life – soccer games, concerts, vacations with your family, and dinners with your significant other.
It is up to you to get a long-term plan for managing the demands of running your business, while still living a life you love outside of work. Trust us, your personal life and loved ones will thank you and absolutely give you permission to trust a specialist.
Now that you have permission to partner with a specialist for your business, what will you outsource first? Find out how a partnership with ShootDotEdit can save you time, make you more money per wedding, and allow you to focus on the most important parts of your business. Download our updated Guide, How to Integrate ShootDotEdit into Your Wedding Workflow to discover the additional benefits for you and your business!
Leave a comment