I see so many photographers giving so much time to their photography businesses and it starts to slowly steal more from their family than they ever wanted. It starts with working after the kiddos go to bed and then trickles into weekends, staying up late, being exhausted when they need to show up for their family. If you've ever experienced this, you don't want to miss today.
Hey there, my name is Sarah Petty and I went from a stressed out overworked mama with three babies to be named one of America's most profitable photographers without working my kids lives away. Now I'm the founder of the Photography Business Institute where we provide guided support from start to finish, whether you're a beginner photographer dipping your toes in or a more advanced photographer with big income goals.
Each week on this podcast, I'll show you how to find and serve photography clients in a world where we can keep you free thanks to everyone having a digital camera in their pocket. Take the first step to adding more joy and profit to your life by downloading your free photography business tools at photographybusinessinstitute.com.
I've recently noticed photographers falling into what I call a catch 22 business. So let me know if this is you or if this resonates. If you're selling high res digital files or very low priced print packages,
it probably is you, okay? So let me know if this sounds familiar. You put yourself out there at a low price as you sort of grow your business, hoping to get people to book you because you're, quote, affordable. But you find it's harder than you thought to even get clients at the low price. So you're working for any little bit of money you can get because you just don't have enough low paying clients and you just are desperate to take anything that you can get. Anyone who wants to give you money, you're taking it, right?
And you know if you sat down and did the math, you would make more at a job. But you don't want the job. So you're justifying why you're doing this. And I did it too. I just figured it out pretty quickly because I did the math and I went, whoa. But here's where the catch 22 comes in.
because we know a catch 22 is really a no win situation, right? So in a catch 22 business, if you do succeed, right? So the first one is you're not getting enough clients or the ones you're getting, you're not making much money on and you're working all the time. But also if you do succeed and get a bunch of clients because you're charging so little and you're making so little money, you're sacrificing your time with your family.
I was there, you're likely overshooting, spending hours editing and retouching, heaven forbid those of you who might be offering mini sessions, and actually getting overbooked, right? Then you have an angry mob of mamas hunting you down for their way too many images, right? Way too many that they could even do anything with. And now you're making excuses for why a more profitable business that takes way less time can't happen for you now.
Okay? Because you're caught in the catch 22. You might be saying, but Sarah, I just, I need to wait till the kids are in school because I'm really overwhelmed right now. Or I want to wait till they're in high school or out of high school or until they all get married, right?
Or maybe you want to wait till you retire from your day job. I've heard that one or until you know all of the answers so that you're sure you're going to succeed, right? You could spend years learning and still not have all the answers until you're a top photographer and you have the best portfolio in the world until you get divorced or until you get remarried or until you win the lottery.
All right, between us, if you hear yourself saying some of those things, I just want you to know that I've been there. And I also want you to know that the best way to get out of the catch 22 is to take action, write it down, take action.
While you're most definitely stealing from your family when you're in a catch 22 business, it's happening in other ways you aren't even seeing, okay? And what I'm talking about here is something called the cost of inaction. And I hope that when you're listening to this podcast that you keep a journal or a notebook where you can write these things down because this literally could change everything in your life once you hear it. It's one of those things that once you hear it, you can't unhear it.
The cost of inaction refers to what you're losing by not taking the action to do the thing that you want to do. The cost of inaction can hurt you in every area of your life because there are always hidden costs.
There are hidden costs with every decision you make or don't make. For example, if you don't know how to food prep and prepare healthy meals for your family and therefore you eat out every single night, the cost of inaction is your health.
Right? You're going to have hospital bills. You're going to have in your later age, probably, you know, more illnesses and more doctor's appointments and your food will be medicine instead of the medicine being the food. Right? You're going to be eating medicine for a diet and that is not only expensive, it's unhealthy.
If you're watching TV until 2 AM and you can't go to sleep and then you can't get up in the morning, the cost of not having something productive to do that's better with your time, like running a business, it's costing you your valuable time that you can't get back.
Instead of spending your time building your business, you might be spending a ton of time on social media, but then you start feeling bad about yourself because you're comparing yourself to everyone else. So it costs you, I don't know, confidence, maybe even some mental health and maybe even your actual dreams because it keeps you in Stuxville.
So listen, here's what I want you to get from this, okay? And what does this mean for you listening to a business podcast? When it comes to your business, when you don't know how to make your goal, whatever, let's just say three to $5,000 a month because you're filling your time with other things, that is the amount that it's costing you every month not to know how to make that money.
So if you're not making $3,000 to $5,000 a month in your business, that is what the cost of inaction is costing you. Because every month that you're not making that money in your business, bills are piling up, opportunities are passing you by, and you are paying a cost. With a profitable business,
You can catch up on debt. You can pay things off. You can do fun things that create joy and happiness, like getting a second hotel room when you travel with your kids. And you can even start saving and creating generational wealth. I know you're probably thinking, that's not even something that should or could be in my vocabulary. But listen, what if your grandparents had taught your parents how to create generational wealth, right? And then they taught it to you.
You are likely paying the price of generations of inaction, right? But the thing is, once you learn to do this, you can pass this to your kids and they can always have a way to make extra money on the side. I've taught this to all three of my kiddos. We'll see how they turn out. They're all in their early 20s, but the ability to make that extra money will serve them forever.
Think about it this way. What if because you don't know how to easily make $3,000 to $5,000 a month or $10,000 or $15,000? Whatever that number is with just a few photography clients. So I'm not talking making this $200 at a time. I'm talking making it $2,000 at a time. It's actually costing you that lost revenue that you could be making for all the time you're putting in.
And you're likely thinking, Sarah, I just don't have the time to make that much money, right? It sounds like a lot of work. I'm overwhelmed. I'm confused. This is the counter-intuitive part. You're staying busy with things that aren't making you the return on your time. Therefore, it's costing you the COI cost of inaction fee.
It's a cost of inaction fee. You've heard people talk about the dumb tax. Oh, I paid a dumb tax on that because they didn't know to do the thing and then they got a tax on it, right? That's kind of the same thing with cost of inaction. If you don't stop to look at what is it costing me to not have a photography business that makes really good money very part-time?
I mean, imagine if for a short amount of time, like two months, you could sit with my team and I and learn how to go get a client and go do it. We hold your hand, you go do it, you get the client, you build the presentation, you give it, you do all the things and they give you money, a thousand, two thousand, five thousand dollars. Like, what would that change in your mind?
Right? The system I teach actually saves my students time because they guide their clients with a portrait strategy. They're shooting less and they're only retouching what the client purchases. So the editing and retouching for some people is cut down by 90% and you're serving better clients who buy more but refer you.
And they keep coming back to you. One of my students at the Photography Business Institute named Amy Marlin, she kept telling herself, I'll just do it on the slow track on the side because she had a really good full time job in marketing. And she was smart, right? So she's like, I can just figure this out. But she just couldn't get any traction for five years until the pandemic hit her, took her full time income away. And she realized she had to learn how to make money in her photography business.
in less than a year learning my system. She made six figures under grand. So listen, based on that, she actually made it in more like six months. But let's just say it takes her a year for the last five years of not going all in in her business. That cost of inaction is half a million dollars because she didn't know how to make the money.
That is the cost of inaction. And listen, you might be saying, oh, but Sarah, I'm just making, you know, pocket change a little, you know, spending money with my photography business. You're likely also spending so much of your time.
Right? You may be justifying it saying, well, but you know, I don't have to have any parameters on myself and I'm just sort of making a little extra money. But the thing is, you can't go back in time and make money once that time is gone. Think about your time is kind of like a hotel room. Once the day has passed, the owners of that hotel can't go back and rent that room. Your time is gone.
Okay, and I really want today's episode to shine a light on the resource in your life that is much more valuable than your money. It's your time. It's not knowing how to make three to five to $10,000 easily in a month working very part time. That is costing you not only lost revenue, but it's costing you the best years of your life and your kids lives.
Seriously, that's why I'm here pouring into each week because I know where you are. I've been there and I've also been on this side of that work all the time. I had the best parents and I've talked about this before who were amazing and they were all of my things. And back then, we didn't have as many things as kids have today, granted.
But my brother, I just have one brother, and his first child, only grandchild at that point, had her first little preschool performance. And my brother and his wife, I was there, my parents, his wife's parents, and I think his sister. Like we were all there like dorks with our video cameras, you know. Oh look how cute she is, whatever. And it broke my heart that looking around the room, most of the parents couldn't get out of their grueling nine to five job to come to this performance.
Right? I mean, that just kills me. And you might be telling yourself, well, that's why I don't have a JOB because I want to have J.O.Y. and I want to be able to go to all of these things, which is great. But you're cheating your family by working all of the precious night and weekend hours for no money to show.
Right? If you literally took the time to analyze where your time is going in your life and in your business and look at how much time you're spending on each client for the little bit you're charging, you would realize that heck, why have I invested so much in gear and equipment and photography classes if I'm making so little?
And you can do sort of a time study if you just get a blank piece of paper or even a Google spreadsheet. And you just track every 15 minutes of your time and write down what you're doing, right? And at the end of the day, look on your phone and see how much time you're spending on your phone. It tracks that. And you can say, oh, he's watching videos for work. Don't do that, right? Don't do anything on your phone that you can do on your computer for your work and track it. And I think you'll be pretty shocked at what you find.
Look in business, speed is your friend. You might want to write that one down too. Speed is your friend.
What is the cost of inaction of spinning your wheels in your weeks away doing things like, oh, I'm going to spend this next year or two or three or four building a portfolio when with the right guidance, you could literally build it in a few weekends, right? You're just not going to be able to get the 10 time return of being 10 times better, right? You're not going to be able to charge 10 times more by getting 10 times better as a photographer. Okay. You just need to be better than most people and have a commitment to creating artwork that your clients love.
Slow is a feeder into cost of inaction. So if you're telling yourself, it's okay to go slow, slow and steady. Now I get that, but you can also go fast and steady, right? Because as soon as you learn it, you immediately get your time back. You're walking through quick stand when you could just grab the ladder.
And for those of you who say, gosh, Sarah, I just don't have the money to invest in my business to learn from someone who's gone before me, right? And they figured it out. I would argue that it is costing you more to not invest in yourself to learn the skills you need to succeed, right? Because the cost of investing in yourself to learn that will always be less than the cost of inaction.
Think about that. The cost of investing in yourself to learn the skills you need to succeed will always be less than what it costs you by doing nothing. Does that make sense? Because you take a loan, you invest in yourself, you learn the thing, you make the money back, you pay the loan back, write that investment off so you don't have to pay taxes, and then you keep going. You're making more money easier every single client, every single month.
And once you make that money back, now you're getting a return on your investment. We call that ROI. There is no return on the cost of inaction. COI, okay? Your time is gone forever.
And look, we're getting to the end of another year, right? We're about to round the corner. And I want you to ask yourself, what did you not make this year that you wanted to make? Imagine instead taking action, working very part-time in your photography business, but not the same way you are, working for too little.
Right? I want you thinking about how can I invest in myself to do the thing I love and then be super present for my family? Right? Because that will fuel your inner self to do something that lights you up every day. Imagine how you would feel.
Right? Listen, I'm going to do something special for you, loyal podcast listener. I want to invite you to come and grab a complimentary one on one assessment with a pro on my team to see if you are a fit for anything that we have going on over here.
Okay, we have a few spots saved for this between now and the end of the year, and I have a super small team, but I'm going to make sure she has a gift for you just for taking action and showing up for yourself to consider what your life could look like if you stop with inaction. Here's where you're going to go. Go to photographybusinessinstitute.com forward slash gen.
See if she has any openings because she's not going to have a lot. She's just one person. And if not, message me on Instagram at sarah.petty and let's get rid of that hidden cost of inaction that has silently been stealing your time with your family and the joy in your life.
Either way, we have a gift for you and lots of encouragement to keep taking action. Let's make the end of 2024 amazing and let's go into 2025 with a plan to make things better by taking action.
Hey photographer, it's Sarah. Hey, thanks for listening to this episode of The Worth Every Penny Joy cast from start to finish. What if today you chose to squash your excuses and commit to doing something different for your business and for you? How would your life be different? Friend, you can absolutely do this and you don't have to do it alone.
One of my biggest passions is helping others reach their potential. Newsflash, your photography business can make money without you having to work crazy hard. Listen, join me for a brand new five-day Marian book, five-day masterclass starting on November 18th this year, 2024. Together, we'll work on new marketing so you can book more dream clients, the ones who will happily pay you $1,000 and more.
Hop on over to photographybusinessinstitute.com forward slash Mary, N-E-R-R-Y, and sign up soon. This is the last event that I'm offering in 2024, so be sure not to miss it!
