The 8 Best Business Decisions I’ve Made in 2020
What a year!
It is crazy that this month we’re celebrating four years of Suzy Collins Photography! I get so sentimental every October because I’m just so thankful for how far we’ve come. If you would have told little Suzy who was just starting out with a camera and a big dream what amazing clients she’d get to work with and the incredible experiences she’d be having over the next few years, I’m sure she wouldn’t even believe you. To my clients and my friends, I’m so thankful to get to work with you every day and so grateful for your support of my family and my business!
This year has been such a growing experience for me in my business as I’ve narrowed my focus and challenged myself to explore new areas of interest at the same time (hello Digital Photography course!). As I reflect back on this last year, which 110% did not go as I planned (hello COVID-19), there are some business decisions that I made that I’m so proud of and want to share with you. These eight business decisions have helped me feel confident and excited about my work in a year full of instability, and I hope whether or not your run your own business that you find something here that helps you. Without further ado, let’s get to it!
1. Hiring a Team
Wowowow. One of the best decisions I made this year was hiring team members. For the first three years of my business, I worked by myself. Like most entrepreneurs, I was wearing alllllll the hats, but what I realized was that I could only grow so much by myself.
As this year started, I knew if I wanted to grow and do things well, I needed to have help and delegate certain tasks to others so I could focus on what only I can do. Hiring Mary Cate, Staci, Baylee, and Katie has been such an incredible experience, not only because of the way they’ve helped take things off my plate, but because of how I’ve learned the benefits of having more brains thinking about ideas. Each member of my team has had such valuable input and has been able to use their creativity and own ideas to inspire me to try things I would have never thought to do by myself! Mary Cate and Staci are both clients of mine, so they’ve been able to add invaluable feedback on both sides of my business.
Hiring a team has not only helped streamline my process, but has also helped me so much in my personal life. Before having a team, my husband Harrison was really the sounding board for all my business ideas. He still is my number one champion and helps me work through major decisions, but it feels so good to be able to spend the time we have together talking about something other than my work. I also hired my girls literally two weeks before COVID hit, and I can’t tell you how helpful it was to just have people to process with and encourage me when it felt like my business took a major hit.
The last thing I’ve learned is that there are so many things that are teachable. You can hire someone who knows nothing about your business and teach them to work the back end of a website, compose emails, and run analytics reports, but you can’t teach hard work, integrity, creativity, innovation, and kindness. I’m so thankful for the women I get to work with who embody these characteristics and how this year has been so much better because of them.
2. Creating an Online Course
I’ve always loved to teach (in the past I’ve done group fitness, coaching, and so many other things) and help people have “a-ha” moments in their work and lives. In the last few years as I became more confident in my photography skills, I realized I wanted to help other people feel confident with their cameras as well. While I always wanted to be people’s professional photographer for the big moments in their lives, I realized that we live in a world where we can take thousands of photos every day, and I knew I wanted to help people take better photos in between the times they come to me for professional sessions.
From a business standpoint, I realized my time is finite, and one of the only ways to make more money was to squeeze in more shoots. I didn’t want to trade time for money and miss opportunities with my kids, so I decided to get creative with how I could create something that brings in a profit and serve my audience for years to come. Enter my DP101 Course!
Creating and filming this course was totally outside of my comfort zone. I had plans to do an in person workshop (much more my style), but COVID hit and it looked like those plans would be postponed indefinitely. I still had so many people reach out who had planned to do the workshop asking if there was a way to do it online, that it pushed me to dive into the e-course so people could learn at home.
Through this process, I learned a ton about myself & what I have to offer. I can so easily worry about getting it perfect that I miss the opportunity to actually get things done, and making this course, I realized that it really doesn’t have to be as complicated as I think it needs to be.
I love Jasmine Star, and when listening to her podcast recently, I heard her say something that fit perfectly with my thoughts on creating my course: “You don’t get confident to show up, you show up to get confident.”
Yes and amen! This process was definitely about showing up for me, and I’m thankful for the growing experience. If you have a big dream that feels too scary right now, believe in what you have to offer and start somewhere! What you have to offer now is good enough, my friend!
3. Asking for Feedback
Another behavior that has been transformative to my business this year is regularly asking for feedback. This includes my clients and those who are following me and my business on social media. I tend to get really excited about ideas that I have, and sharing my ideas online while asking for feedback helped shape several of the major projects I’ve worked on this year. Like with the response I got to move my Digital Photography 101 Course online, I realized that those who are engaging with me are the ones most likely to buy the product, and I should listen to them as I make my plans!
Whether it’s asking questions for major issues clients struggle with (like figuring out what to wear for photos), getting feedback on my Lightroom course and presets on instagram, or asking questions in my newsletter, giving people the chance to reply has helped so much to make something valuable for our customers.
4. Using Email Marketing
I’m just diving into how to effectively use email marketing, but focusing more on this area of my business has already been great. With the ever-changing social media algorithms, you can’t necessarily control who sees your work, but your email list allows you to connect more directly with people who want to engage with you.
My email list has given me a way to communicate directly with my followers when I have something valuable to offer. It’s helped me build relationships, receive feedback, and have a more direct line of access to what they need. This is an area I’m excited to grow in and be even more intentional with in the future.
5. Improving My Client Experience
In the first few years of my business, I was only focused on more. More clients, more sessions, more (money!) But what I’ve come to realize is that it’s much easier to keep a happy client that I already have versus hustling for new clients. In an ideal world, I’d get to work with the same clients over and over again through all their major milestones (engagement, marriage, birth, kiddos, etc.) and so I started asking myself How can I make my clients feel loved and valued throughout their experience with me? How can I better their experience and make sure they love the way they were treated so they come back again and again? Choosing to invest in my client’s experience by focusing more resources, time, conversation, and organization to the process has been an area where I already see a ton of positive results!
How am I improving their experience exactly? By making sure they feel valued and prioritized. I’ve set up my email structure in Dubsado so clients feel connected and excited about their shoot all the way from their inquiry to their follow up email after receiving their gallery. I also make sure my past clients get first dibs on things like my fall and spring mini sessions and other special photography deals.
I still have so much room for growth, but I had loved focusing more attention on my clients and seeing the investment prove well worthwhile.
6. Streamlining My Processes
Working for yourself, it’s super easy to have systems that work in your head for how you get things done, but that aren’t actually time efficient or reproducible when offloading to others. Hiring a team made me really evaluate and streamline my processes so things can run smoothly without me doing it all myself! There are so many areas we have worked to focus our processes, but I’ll share three here and save more for another blog! Here are three areas of my business where having a system has radically changed the game for me:
Focusing as a team. I talk with my team almost daily, but at the start of each month and each quarter, we meet for an extended (now virtual--hopefully one day face-to-face) planning meeting where we discuss our big picture goals and the smaller tangible steps we need to take each month to make them happen. These meetings have been so helpful because they help us stay focused on the things we really care about and also serve as an accountability piece to make sure we are following through!
Creating a content checklist. Blogs are our long form content of choice, and one thing I’ve learned this year is how to share these posts in other places (like Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest) so they’re seen. It might sound silly, but if we’re going to invest the time and energy into creating content, we want to make sure as many people get to read and benefit from it as possible. Enter the content checklist. This list helps us work from start to finish for each blog, and makes the process easy for any one of us writing a post.
Investing in client communication. It is so important to me when it comes to communicating with my clients that nothing and no one falls through the cracks. Again, using Dubsado has been so great. And it’s also been super helpful when it comes to onboarding new team members so we don’t have to reinvent the wheel when a new person steps in.
7. Narrowing My Audience
Everything I’ve learned about branding and marketing says that you should have an ideal client, and when you focus all your energy into serving that specific client, you will do the best job. It has been difficult for me as a photographer who loves shooting many different kinds of photography and many different kinds of people to really narrow my message to a few specific ideal clients. What was helpful for me this year was to sit down and think about the commonalities of our various types of clients. While an engaged couple, soon-to-be mom, and a seasoned mom are all in different seasons of life, thinking about the values and personalities they share has helped me focus my message.
This process took a long time but has been incredibly helpful to bring focus and clarity to my business. And I’ve realized at the same time who I love working with and who I don’t want to work with as well. In the case of business/branding photography, I’ve realized I love working with the owner and highlighting their process rather than just shooting their product. When it comes to newborn photography, I love getting to capture a family settling in at home rather than taking posed studio portraits of the little newborn. All these types of photography are great, but it’s been great to specify what works for my style of photography.
8. Setting Boundaries in Work and Life
This section could be its own blog post entirely, but here are a few thoughts about boundaries. Every year of my business, I’ve realized I need to set better boundaries between work and my personal life. As a photographer, I really like to build relationships with my clients, for things to feel really personal as I capture their special moments. At the same time, I like to share really openly about myself and my family, but I’ve learned there are specific boundaries that I need to protect myself, my family, and my client.
One of the biggest things I’ve learned is getting more clear on getting when I’m working and when I’m not. When I first had Wylden, I was really just working all the time where I could fit it in. Part of that was the hustle of paying the bills and making this business work, but over the years, I’ve realized it’s just not the way I want to live. One of the biggest blessings of having my business grow has been the ability to stop and say You know what, I’m not going to work around the clock. I’m not staying up late anymore to cram just one more thing in. This year, I’ve really worked to set boundaries and make my work schedule fit what is beneficial for my family. My girls are in preschool this year, and while they’re at school, those are my work hours. On the days they’re at home, I don’t work and get to focus on them! It’s a set schedule I can count on to know when I’m working and I’m not. Another plus side is that it’s also dramatically helped my sleep so I don’t have to stay up working. A rested mama is a happy mama, amiright?
I’ve also set way more boundaries with my phone. There are so many good things about living in the times we're in, and the amount of access we have at our fingertips is incredible. But just because I can check my email on my phone, or see how my post is doing on Instagram every few minutes, doesn’t mean those are good choices for me. When I choose to open my email, check Slack, or do something else, essentially, I’ve left the room and entered “work mode”. Setting more boundaries with my phone has really improved both the quality of work I’m doing and my relationships with my kids. I obviously don’t do this perfectly, but I’m working on it constantly! I’ve turned off my notifications (literally all of them!) on my phone and chosen when to bring my phone out and when to not. It’s been incredible.
Final Thoughts
Whew! That’s a lot of things, but I seriously am so thankful for the ways I’ve chosen to invest in my business this year. Seeing the hard work pay off is so rewarding and encouraging, and I hope you’ve found one area that’s inspired you to make changes in your business or life as well.
If you have any questions about business decisions or thoughts on bettering your business, contact me here.
And as always, thank you for investing in my business and my family. I’m so glad to be here with you!
XO, SUZY