Need more "TIME" ?!?!?!

Okay, a bit of an exaggeration, but in my world- everything changes next week. I'm ending one of my "jobs" as a full time stay at home daddy, plus getting another full time "employee", which equals to having LOTS more time on my hands!

Ten months ago, our first child arrived. We fell into a work schedule where I was juggling baby and business full time while mom worked out of the house. That eventally changed to her working from home a few days of the week which at least gave me some un-interrupted work time and a chance to run errands out of the house, but then she didn't get much work done herself those days either.

Amazingly, it worked. Sort of. As he's grown and started getting into eeeeeeeeeverything that wasn't bolted shut or nailed to the floor, it's gotten harder and harder to keep up with the clients - maintain our current level. Lettalone growing business and rising to the top.


We didn't want to do daycare. Huge expense, not ideal by any means, and only really solves part of the time crunch. We finally made the determination a few months ago for mom to leave her job to be a full time stay at home mom, and also to off-load all my 'business' and 'process' work to her which really doesn't take that much time and for some crazy reason, she actually loves doing that stuff.

We made a lot of determinations vs. loss of income / costs / time freed and time taken, etc, and I discovered something I hadn't even considered before. I really CAN grow much faster and much further, while making MUCH more money with the new found time than the cost of loosing full time middle class income from my wife.

"Time is money" was never more real to me than right there.


And it may also apply to you...
I share this with all of you to take a second and consider your daily workflow and workload, and make the same considerations we have in changing our world around.

Once my wife is at home to focus on baby, I can now work all day every day on business, shooting, learning, growing, whatever. I can come and go as needed without worry for what baby is doing. This will free huge amounts of my time each week. She'll also take over all the extra stuff on my plate that's holding up growth. This makes for a major increase in usable hours, while at the same time removing the most creativity inhibiting aspects of my job.

At first there's a concern of "loosing an income" when doing this. But, I off-set that in considering how much more money I can make having a more open schedule. Right now I pass tons of referral business in other areas outside weddings (families, kids, misc commercial gigs here and there, etc) simply because I don't have the time to field it. I also consider how much more of every kind of work I'll be able to generate simply by getting involved in the world and networking. Having time to keep up with past clients and such.

It also means I'll spend my days shooting and editing - which I LOVE, rather than constantly messing with "business" while holding a baby (determined to steal my mouse marble) in one hand . It means I'm free to go and get involved, network, market, TRAVEL to OSP events (yay!), as well as take on new clients in new areas.

It's like, I can breath again. I can grow again!


When just starting out...
It's easy to use that "spare" time to get started. At first there's not much workload. You spend all that time dealing with a small number of clients, just getting it all figured out. Then the clients grow, and you start to get busy. Eventually time gets short, and you start to get behind on important stuff, and the "fun and learning" is completely swept away. You figure ways to optimize your workflow, "efficiency" is the name of the game.

Eventually we hit this equilibrium between "what we have time to do" and "what we would like to do". We get to where we can dream it up faster than we can actually make it happen. Time becomes the limiting factor. Time limits who you can get to know, it limits how quickly you can learn new skills, it limits how much 'wow' you can give to each customer, it limits how you can generate new customers from your existing ones.

You stop growing. Every new thing requires that something else be cut down, removed, or made more efficient. You start cutting corners, which lowers quality and it my case, begins to take the wind out of your sails. Eventually this profession you LOVE is starting to become a "job". Just like Peter Gibbans on Office Space - I didn't much like having a "job", and that's just what my life was becoming.


Multiplied Returns
Maybe it's cutting that full time job you have to clear up 40 extra hours a week to boom your wedding business. Maybe it's your spouse leaving a steady job, or maybe - (and the most over-looked key out there!) - it's as simple as hiring an assistant. Wow. Okay, let's think about it for a minute. It may cost you $10,000 to $20,000 a year to hire an office assistant (I have no idea what it costs really, I've never done it) - but imagine what a collage student could do for you 3 days a week. Or maybe a collage kid 2 days a week and a highschool kid 4 days a week, or.....

What if you could take all the "junk" of running a business and get it off your plate. I'm not real hip on outsourcing anything. I'm too much of a control freak for that, but do whatever works for you.

But getting all that 'junk' out of the way allows me to wake up and sleep every day thinking of making cool pictures. I can think it up, go create it, and show it off - and all without having to stop to file my monthly sales taxes, deal with my album company, or pick up office supplies.

You trade some $$$ for the second person, but you gain....

1. Better product with more time to create it, fewer cut corners.
2. Better product with more time to learn it - time to experement, read books, attend seminars
3. Better viral / word of mouth advertising - you can constantly fan the flames, maintain the buzz.
4. Know more people - you can meet a few new people every week. You have TIME to do things for them "favors on deposit".
5. Get into new fields and tap markets with little competition
6. Do what you do best and love - this adds passion, a burning desire to create something incredible, just for the fun of it. This in my opinion is the single most important quality of growing a business, putting out a product people rave over.

And all that translates into more business at a much higher price point.

The returns are actually multiplied. Just about every way I've figured the numbers, I can turn my new found time into much more money than my wife currently makes at her "real" job. And the same goes for an assistant. That yearly pay check with all it's zeros is scary. I would never guess having an "assistant" could actually MAKE me more than $20,000, or that loosing a full time middle class income and gaining a new full time "partner" could actually MAKE me far more than that. But you do the numbers, add some ambition and passion into the mix, and the returns truly do multiply.


It's hard to do!
Most of us, once arriving at the "time equilibrium" phase of business - can remember just a few months or the year prior being in the "buying business cards on credit" phase, followed closely by the "don't have cash to make my car payment" phase. Now we're finally at the "I'm making all my bills with money to spare each month" phase which is a huge sigh of relief and in our new found security, we don't want to rock the boat by changing things up. So we stay there. Crunched for time. Passing up business, slowing our learning curve, shooting less and less and "working" more and more. "Burn out" starts creeping in, and as soon as that happens - forget being an "artist". The "creative" flame goes out, then you're just going through the motions. You become just another business and begin to die as an artist. Maybe that's a bit extreme, but that's how I started to feel a few months back.


But it's all different now - I'm excited. Counting down the days. So many new plans in the works. I've taken stock and done a lot of thinking and soul searching for the past few months looking forward to this. I've tried to consider exactly who I want to be and exactly what kind of photographer I want to be. I've put plans in place to become just that and starting next week, we'll be putting the plans into action.

And I feel great. Like waking up from a long nap.


Just food for thought, for what it's worth.