With Laura Esmond

Eps 010: Busy Season Burnout: Tips Every Portrait Photographer Needs
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have you ever looked up from your computer after like, I don't know, six straight hours of editing and realized, oh. Oops, I forgot to eat. Yeah, been there. Let's talk about how to not run yourself into the ground during busy season. Something that you're probably potentially experiencing right now, especially if you are a mom, balancing, you know, family and work, and maybe you're even in the middle of still trying to grow your business at the same time.

That's a lot of pressure. So here's the deal. I wasn't always running a busy retail studio Back in the early days. I had this tiny little studio. Then I worked out of my house for a bit and I was really high touch during those years with my clients. This was between 2008 to 2016, I'd created these. I, I would sit with my clients and I would create these really unique sessions for each one.

Like we would find things on Pinterest and we would design artwork and I mean, it was just the whole nine yards. I loved working with each of these individual clients. At that point, I didn't even know what a mini session was.

I still remember actually, I met this woman. This was in 2016 while I was waiting to move into my retail space. So that retail space was sort of in the middle of, of being created, but I hadn't moved in yet. I. And she was telling me about this cute little mini session event that she had planned to do in a park near her house.

She had like 10 families booked and it was like $500 or, or something like that, uh, per family. And I was like, oh, wow. I, I didn't even say this to her 'cause I really felt like so out of touch. I was like, oh, wow. That's a thing. People actually do that. Like how did you even. Book all those people at the same time.

How did you know they would all be available on that date? It literally completely baffled me

At this point in my business, I was just this like steady little referral business and I was only doing, I would say maybe 20 sessions a year. Uh, maybe 30. I don't even really know. And most of them fell in the fall season, and so I would get a little burned out during that season, but it just wasn't that many sessions.

my family didn't rely on my income back then, so I was probably like a 75% stay at home mom and 25%, you know, trying to build this little portrait business just sort of on the side. I had transitioned from a sort of a big, really profitable ish, wedding business to, I'm now a mom and I'm working outta my house.

And I just wanna take a handful of sessions. I was just keeping my toes. That's what I would always say to my husband, just keeping my toes in the business. But then, you know, at this point. In between 20 16 20 17, I opened a retail studio. So I had a storefront and it was really expensive and suddenly, you know, overhead bills the whole dear.

In the headlights moment, I had employees and I panicked. I started booking all these mini session events left and right, and honestly they were actually amazing money makers. They gave me. Cashflow. So it created a little bit less stress for me financially knowing, okay, great, I, I've got this session booked.

We'll make this much from it. It was really predictable. I knew exactly how much money I was going to make, and that kept the lights on. It made sure that I could pay rent, I could pay my employees. And it also gave me a little bit of breathing room to build the client base for the full service sessions like newborns and maternity, and that's really where my heart was and where I wanted it to go.

The problem though is that I overdid it on the, mini sessions. I. I over rotated. I leaned so hard on many session events that we all for, for like years. We all burned out. But me, my family, my employees, everyone, we would get to the busy season and just be like, okay, everybody armor up. We're gonna get through it.

And that's when I realized this just really isn't sustainable. Like this kind of business isn't sustainable. At least I've talked about this. It wasn't for me. Some of you would maybe love to run a business that's that high volume. It's actually really, in some ways it was wonderful. I loved working with those clients.

It was, it was energetic. We would have a lot of fun in the studio. We drank lots of coffee. We would sometimes pop champagne at the end of the day. I mean, not like every day, but often enough that we're like, maybe this is a problem. But that brings me to what I want to share with you today. So after burning myself out with way too many mini session events and realizing something had to change, I started putting some guardrails in place, and they've made.

All the difference for my business, and I run a very different business now. So let me walk you through a few of the things I do now to keep my business running and stay sane during, busy season. So this is step by step. Okay. We're gonna start with step number one, block your calendar like a boss.

a couple of weeks ago I sat down with Kate Marie portraiture, and she does this as well. You know, she's also a busy working mom with kids that she has to drive around all over the place. This is the simplest but most powerful thing I do When I book a session. I immediately, or. Maybe not immediately, but within, you know, a week, I'll go and I'll look at my week and say, okay, I've got this session The next morning I need to block off to make sure I have editing time in my calendar.

Because the thing is, as you know, the session is not just showing up and shooting on that day. You also need time to call and edit the session. And if you're doing ordering meetings, you have to schedule time for that. And then there's also blogging and social media and just.

Staying up with that piece of it so that you don't show up to January going, Hey everyone, I am alive. I'm still here. Editing takes just as much energy and all those other things take just as much energy of time, if not more than the actual session.

Without doing that, if I don't block off that time, then suddenly I'm panic editing, you know, the night before. I actually need to deliver this to the client, and I never wanna show up to my business with that sort of panic in my heart.

And then treat that editing block the same way that you would treat a client meeting or the dentist appointment. It's a non-negotiable. You have to go do that. I even like to color code these things on my calendar so that I can look at it and see the balance between, here's, here are the sessions that I'm shooting and here is the time that I'll be spending editing.

And then that way I can see all the blank spaces that I have for rest.

Step two is sell value, not just volume. If you know me, you know, I really like to lean into, uh, offering products to my clients. When I stopped chasing that number of sessions and how many sessions can I squeeze into this one day or this one week, and started focusing on artwork, sales, everything shifted.

So full service sessions with artwork not only bring in more income per client, but they also create a better experience. Not just for them, but also for me. I can give them more of me and I'm not getting drained, right? So if you're stuck in the cycle of mini sessions and you're wanting to open up your ability to make more money and book fewer, start small, maybe just add one new product or artwork option and slowly build it.

You don't have to over overhaul your business overnight if you're really interested. Did in selling artwork. You can always look into my course at lauraesmond.com/ips. but if you just wanna kinda tiptoe in, just offer a single product to your client and see how many bite on it. I really believe in sitting down with your clients, either in person or over zoom.

But I also believe that sometimes starting small is a better thing to do than doing nothing at all. Step three, respect your capacity. Listen, I will always book myself right up to my capacity because that's my personality, but the trick is knowing what that limit actually is. I've learned that just one more session always comes at a cost to my energy, to my health, to my kids and my family. I show up as a completely different person when I am worn out. I can't be the loving mom that I wanna be, and it's just not worth it. If you are getting more inquiries than you can handle, that's actually a great problem to have.

Maybe it's time to raise your prices or even bring on an associate photographer so they can take the overflow from your business. protecting your capacity should be your number one priority when you're building out your busy season.

At the end of this season, if you're feeling burned out right now in this minute, and you're kinda like, Laura, could you have not told me that like four months ago? Sit down and do a quick audit. How many sessions did you do? How many did you book? How did you feel physically and mentally by the end of the day or the end of a big event, that number.

Is your ceiling and maybe you need to lower the ceiling a little bit. Protect it next year. If you need to make more money, raise your prices as opposed to adding on more. Or consider building a team instead of cramming more sessions onto your plate.

if you are feeling really burned out, I want you to go to your email system and open up, compose an email to yourself. Okay? This, this is going to go to you and I want you to write out.

Everything that you're feeling, are you feeling burned out? Do you feel like, uh, your kids are missing you? Do you feel like maybe there's something you could have done different and you're like, Ooh, maybe next year I'll do it this way and I'll set things up this way. Maybe I need to actually raise my prices, because right now I am feeling worn out and tired, and the extra money I'm making just doesn't feel worth it in this moment.

Write those things in the email, then You can schedule the email to actually send to you, let's say in maybe July next year. When you're beginning to plan your busy season, send yourself that email and write in the subject line important. Read this ASAP.

Set yourself up for success so that later on when you're planning next year, you can read that and go, oh my gosh, that is how I felt. Here are these great tips that I had in that moment. Remind yourself so that next year you can show up smarter. Maybe you're charging a little bit more.

Maybe you're looking for someone, an associate photographer to take the overflow of sessions that are coming your way, which by the way, is a great problem to have and set yourself up to be able to get through this business, uh, or this busy season in a more sustainable way. Okay. Step number four, use tools and habits that save your sanity.

This one is all about working smarter. So one of the things that I do is my phone either goes into another room while I'm editing and trying to focus on work, or I've actually set up a focus mode on my iPhone so that when I turn that on, the only people that can reach me are my husband and the kids.

This way, I don't suddenly, in the middle of editing and I'm exporting some images, I pick up and start scrolling and get to the very bottom of Instagram, and an hour later I'm like. I have not gotten any work done because I dove into that instead. So protect your time and your space that you are editing in where you need to focus by.

Maybe just removing your phone, take it off the table and make sure it's not there to distract you. Another thing I like to do is listen to binaural beats when I really need to lock in, and it's just an app that I have on my phone and I can turn it on, it can have a little bit of white noise with it. You could choose, uh, you know, listening to a stream or ocean waves or just actual white noise. And then it has these beats that go in the background.

And those beets, they're, they're based on like a certain, I think it's called gigahertz, I'm not sure, but they actually help your brain focus. So I feel that I'm far less distracted when I have that going on in the background. And the last thing that I do is I have these supplement drops called. I think, I think it's just called focus or maybe focus time and could be a placebo, but it works for me.

I'll drop those in the show notes so that you guys can see these things that the binaural Beats app and the focus, I'm not making money off of that. It's nothing like that. But I would love to share these with you because they do work really well for me. So think of one distraction that derails you most.

It could be your phone, it could be social media, it could be email where you just get sucked in. for some it could actually even just be shopping. They just start shopping for things and put one boundary around one of those things. Just one that's enough to free up hours. You didn't even know that you had.

Step number five, protect your mental space. My non-negotiable is so simple. I get up before the kids, I sip a coffee and I just sit in the quiet. I don't email, I don't scroll. I just sit quietly. If I wanna journal, I'll do that, but sometimes I am literally just watching the sunrise and I am just sitting in the quiet.

And sipping my coffee and it feels so good. That little pocket of time changes the whole tone of my day. It helps me respond instead of react, and I, I just enjoy it If mornings aren't your thing, find another pocket of time. Maybe it's five minutes in the car before you go into a session.

I have a, a really good friend of mine who is a lawyer and she owns her own law firm. Very, very stressful day that she can go into. And she said she will pull into her parking spot and before she goes in, she literally just stares out the window and she might respond to a couple of personal texts and she, she sips her coffee.

She just has quiet time before she goes in. For you, it could be a short walk after dinner that you commit to, that maybe you do by yourself or with a spouse. Maybe consider not listening to music and no podcasts and it's just a 10 minute walk, which is actually really, really good for your body to get a little bit of movement after you eat.

The point is. Carve out space that's just for you. And remember, it doesn't have to be a whole day. You don't have to carve out an entire day to yourself. You don't need to carve out three hours in the morning before the kids wake up and journal and meditate and do all these things. It could literally be five minutes, 10 minutes, 20 minutes, that is just for you.

And I'll also say there are times that I'm just tired. I do love to get up in the morning and sip my coffee, but sometimes I hit snooze and I just. Lay there for a little bit, and maybe I say a prayer. Maybe I meditate a little bit, but I don't put a practice into it and try to get into a yoga pose in the middle of it or make my coffee.

I just lay there and go, I need this right now. I need a few extra minutes to just lay down and do nothing. Step six, share the workload. I used to feel guilty about saying I am all booked, like I was letting people down, but I realized I can't serve everyone, especially if it's at the expense of my health or, or my family's needs.

Now, when I'm at capacity, I, I simply say, I'm. But I'd love to refer you to my friend. And you know what? People actually respect that. They're like, great. I, I understand that. I think all moms feel that, that that strength when someone says, you know what, I, I really can't do more than I have on my plate right now, but I've got somebody for you.

So find a referral buddy, a photographer you trust who you can send clients to When you are maxed out that way, you're still serving the client, but you're not sacrificing yourself in the process. Now, if you're saying no, I really want to take everybody on, or this one client that I absolutely love, she reached out to me last minute.

Here are a couple other ideas. One, I mentioned it before. You could start looking into an associate photographer, somebody who is going to treat that person just as special as you do. You train them in your style. You do the editing, so you're still taking on that piece of it. You're managing the sales and the booking, but they go out and they treat that client just as you would and create a beautiful session experience for them.

So if you're willing to manage other people, then you could handle your overflow in that way. If you literally are getting to the point that you can no longer serve all the people coming for you, first of all, count your blessings, and then second, go find an associate photographer. You can also, and this is the next one, start to earmark the clients that you.

Absolutely they are non-negotiables to send to somebody. You always want to work with this client. They are yours. You adore them and you want to work specifically with them all the time. Have a special list somewhere. Maybe it's a in a Google Doc, or maybe you use Asana

Then make sure that you reach out to those clients. When you start to book out your calendar, make sure that you fit all of those clients in and you work with them first. Then all the additional people. Maybe it's somebody you only worked with, you know, last year, or a new referral that comes into your business.

Then you send them to your associate photographers or your referral photographer.

I know what it feels like to get this wrong. I've had years where I was so overscheduled, so stretched thin that by December I was completely burned out. My nervous system just couldn't relax. I mean, I, I honestly, I would sit down for Christmas and instead of soaking it in. I just still felt this residual stress that I couldn't get rid of.

I didn't enjoy the holiday season even leading up to it, and honestly, I felt miserable in the middle of it. I felt like Scrooge and I had to make mental shifts and decisions and make hard decisions in my business to protect that energy and to protect my family from having this Scrooge mom showing up for the holidays.

This one thing changed everything for me. I was moving out of my retail studio and I had found a new studio and it was smaller and I was going to, you know, I was starting to build this business to just be a smaller scale. It wasn't so high volume, it was going to be just me.

And this was the story of me shifting from that high volume model to, to what I do now. But there was about a three, two or three week period where I had to put everything in storage from the retail studio, and I couldn't get into my new studio just yet. I couldn't shoot, and this was at the beginning of December.

I had booked a very busy November that year. I knew that I was going to need as much money in the bank, so I, I had this really, really booked out November, and then I went into December and I only had a couple of sessions booked for the very end of December. Really, like literally a few days before Christmas, but I had all these weeks off before.

And I soaked them in so deeply I would pick the kids up from school we would go shopping we would buy Christmas presents we were cooking dinners and we were making cookies and we were just getting excited we had the elf flying around the house and the whole deal.

And I really, again, felt the magic of that season something that I had been missing. For a few years because I was walking into it so stressed out

That was the moment I knew I had to start respecting my capacity and setting limits and building in rest for my business.

So if you are in the middle of a crazy season right now, Ask yourself, what's my real capacity? If you went past it this year, don't beat yourself up. Just make a note. Send that email to yourself. Tell yourself in one year from now how you're feeling right now today so that you don't do it again.

And remember, your health, your mental health, your physical health is worth protecting. Your family will thank you, and honestly, your business will be better for it too.