Self-Employment: Month 10 ~ Chicago Wedding Photographer

I clearly missed the ball on this one. I was supposed to post this on the 19th and here we are – already July 24th! I remember being amazed when it was the 4th of July (which felt like yesterday) and now here we are – already rolling right into August next week!

Anyway – on to what this post is really about – my 10th month of full-time self employment! I think this month for me, more than anything, was about learning my boundaries. Learning that sometimes it is okay to say no… Learning it is okay to turn away work when I’m totally swamped, and okay to turn away work I’m not 100% passionate about… Learning to step away from the computer and stop working when I haven’t interacted with James in days… And most of all – it was about realizing that sometimes – no matter how hard I work – I just can’t keep all the balls in the air on my own. I realized that if I want to continue to run a successful business where I’m able to give my clients 110%, and if I want my business to continue to GROW – that I may need some help.

So I put a call out into the world for help (on facebook & twitter), and what do you know… people came out of the woodwork asking to be a part of what I’m doing over here! It actually kind of blew me away that people would want to work with me (I guess for me, technically, but that feels super weird to say).

So I’m beyond stoked to announce that I’m bringing on a fabulous young lady to help me out part-time around here! My former boss told me on my last day at the old office that every time he hired a new person at the firm, the business grew more than he could have ever imagined. It was honestly some of the best business advice I’ve gotten, because it really is true. If you limit your business to only what you yourself are capable of handling – it will never grow beyond that! So having someone to help with office tasks and day-to-day business maintenance will give me more time to focus on serving my clients better, and dreaming big dreams (which I’ve been doing a lot more of lately too)!

Thankfully I seem to have stepped out of the being completely scared out of my mind 100% of the time – and into embracing this new self-employed life for all it is, and am even setting new goals and dreams for us! Before my goal seemed to be to just. make. it... to just be able to pay the bills. Then I realized that by only reaching for the very bottom rung of the ladder, I was limiting myself and not doing all I could have done. By having my goal be to just scrape by – that is exactly what I was doing. Then this summer when business started to pick up again, I reevaluated my goals and started reaching much higher. Having new goals and big dreams turned out to make me even more passionate about my business and life in general! And I figure – that even if I don’t reach all my goals, I will at least still end up higher on the ladder than I was before. (What’s that they say… “Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.” So true!!)

So that’s where we are at in this 10th month! Dreaming big dreams, taking steps forward, and learning my boundaries in business and in life! I hope things continue to go as they are and that I have more good news to share next month! (Can I also say how crazy I am that I think by posting this positive post I’m jinxing myself, and setting myself up to fail?! I’m totally nuts. haha)

And because I can’t let a post go by without a picture (or 4) – here is a little sneak peek at our family time in Madison last week! Cutie-pa-tooties! (More to come soon!) 🙂

 

 

 

 

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Christy & James are Chicago based but happily travel anywhere in the world that beautiful love stories take them!

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