How your mindset can help grow your photography business
Believe it or not, your mindset is a crucial part of your business growth and success. Your mindset is about how and what you think, how and what you perceive, and how you respond to things. This means therefore, that your mindset can make or break your business.
Having a mindset for growth can help your photography business enormously, move towards the successful business you’ve been dreaming of.
So how can your mindset help you grow your business?
Firstly, here are 3 mindset blocks you could consider letting go of
#1 Freebies and Cheapies are Better
Getting past this block that freebies are better and that giving away for cheap is better will help your business grow. It’s a common mindset at the start of many small businesses to give away work for free, from fear of talking about money and pricing. There is a common money block that clients won’t want to pay you because you’re just starting out, and that undercutting is the best way to start.
I can tell you now that giving away your work for free or pricing too cheaply will quickly become a burden to you, and before you know it, you’ll be challenged to get away from it.
#2 I’m Just a Beginner and I Don’t Know Enough
Remembering that at any given time, you’re always going to be behind someone who’s more experienced, and you’re always going to be ahead of someone who’s less experienced.
Having a mindset for growth means accepting that you’re a beginner at some point, because there’s always room and opportunity for growth.
That doesn’t mean you’re a beginner to the person making an enquiry for you to shoot for them. To them, you are the expert, otherwise they’d do it themselves. Yes? So honour and embrace where you are and work with it. The fact that you’re reading this blog (and if you’re part of my community), you have more knowledge and experience than you think.
Therefore, present yourself and price for your work like the professional you are.
Remember if you want to BE anything in your future, you have to work on BEING it now!
#3 Perfection Before Action
By thinking your business set up has to be perfect before you take any action to get it moving couldn’t be further from the truth. After all, what exactly is perfection? We all know there’s no such thing, so why strive for it. What you’re striving for is your business and its growth.
Putting off the start of your business until everything is in place like your website, your social media, your business cards or your brochures, etc. are delays. Unnecessary delays to your business.
If you can relate to this, the need for perfection before action, perhaps look a little deeper at what that might really be. Are you delaying because of fear of change or the unknown? Are you worried about what people might think? Are you simply lacking confidence?
Figuring out this delay and being ok with imperfection, is actually perfect!
Let’s look at changes you could consider to your Mindset
#1 Business Head & Hobby Heart
If you’re a geek like me, you’ll have photography and all the creativity that goes with it firmly in your heart. However, when you transition from hobby to business, it’s difficult to leave your heart behind. Your hobby heart. This can cause us great confusion when trying to start up and run a business. Our hearts and minds need to be aligned for this journey, so it’s important not to turn this into an expensive hobby.
Running your business as a business and not a hobby will much easier than blindly to run it as a hobby. So at the start of this journey, it’s essential that you get your business dream rooted into your heart as well as your head. This helps you to be the professional photographer you are.
#2 Playing Small and Hoping for Greatness
In the beginning, when you make the decision to turn your hobby into a business, there’s every chance you have an idea of what that looks like in your head. Maybe you’ve been admiring another photographer and modelling the look of your business on theirs. This is absolutely ok, but equally, you’ll need a mindset to match the dream.
It’s very common for many people starting up a new business to want great things which are above average, but continue to do average things, in other words playing small. So this might be a mindset for you that needs to change - no more playing small!
#3 Seeing Challenges as Opportunities (for growth)
We tend to run a mile from situations that will challenge us beyond what we believe we can cope with. But the truth is, challenges are what we often need to help us grow.
Many start ups freak out at the thought of all the tech, website build, social media, etc. Consider making your first response a positive one. Rather than “I don’t know how to do this” or “I’m never going to be able to do this”, consider “Ok, this is great, something new I’m going to learn” or “I can do this, it’s going to help me in my business”. A shift in mindset like this will open you up to so many possibilities and you’ll feel better about the learning process on the journey. And when you look back, you’ll be surprised at how far you’ve come.
I hope this, and other, blog posts are helping you. Don’t forget to pick up my podcast if you want to hear more. Available here on the website, or Spotify/Apple.
Why not join my ClickStart 4 Membership. Training modules giving you all the tools I used to grow my own wedding and family portrait photography business. Learn more >>>
Or if you really want to level up your business actions and talk about 1-2-1 coaching why not book a discovery call with me - we can have a chat about where you’re at and where you want to go. Learn more here >>>