When this podcast episode airs, it's going to be exactly five years to the day since I married my wife, Charlene. So I wanted to take some time out to share with my listeners just how much she means to me and has impacted my life, both personally and as a small business owner.

As wedding photographers, our families' lives often revolve around our businesses, so it's important to reflect on the role our significant others play in helping us do what we do and show them some appreciation.

I'll chat about some of the incredible experiences we've had together over the last five years, from traveling around the world to backpacking in the great outdoors and starting a family together.

But I'll also talk about the role she's played in helping to build my wedding photography business, including second shooting more than 100 weddings with me, both locally and out of town.

Whenever I've had creative inspiration or business propositions, my wife has been there to bounce ideas off and has always provided an ear to listen. She's offered me unwavering support in pursuing my career as a full-time wedding photographer and (more recently) in my educational efforts.

I know that I'm lucky to have someone who's so flexible and understanding of my professional goals, as well as letting me be myself and have my own identity.

While the focus of my wedding photography educational material has largely been on helping you go full-time, in this podcast episode I'm going to talk about how to successfully balance a conventional job while trying to do wedding photography part-time.

A large percentage of my listeners are working full-time jobs while trying to get their part-time wedding photography business up and running.

Perhaps you want the security of a conventional job to pay the bills and save for the future but like the idea of being able to shoot 5, 10 or 15 weddings throughout the year with the bonus of that added income.

I'll share with you some of my tips for balancing a conventional job and a wedding photography business, including being efficient in the way you work to ensure you're as productive as possible.

With so much on your plate, you might have to adjust your expectations and be extra conscientious of how you are spending your time outside of work or make sacrifices in other areas of your life.

Some marketing strategies just aren't going to work if you're limited on time, so we'll talk about how you can get your name out there without having to invest all your waking hours in marketing your wedding photography business.

Outsourcing work that is time-intensive or paying for advertising is both useful ways to maintain a work-life balance when juggling two careers.

While working a full-time conventional job and trying to build a part-time wedding photography business isn't easy, it can be done. It just requires dedication, efficiency, and realistic expectations about what you can handle.

Times are changing and what used to work being competitive as a wedding photographer ten years ago won't necessarily cut it today. Not only has the market become completely saturated in many places, with a lot more wedding photographers to compete with, but developments in technology and the way we market our businesses have also changed.

In this podcast episode, I'll chat about some of the things that I've been doing in the last decade that are still relevant now, including collecting reviews from your clients, building relationships with other vendors and ensuring your website is SEO optimized. But we'll also talk about some of the marketing strategies and mindsets that just won't work in 2018 versus 10 years ago.

If you're thinking you just want to take your time and go with the flow when it comes to building your business, then get ready to be left behind. There are so many ambitious and committed photographers out there who are willing to really take their business by the horns and will easily pass you by.

When it comes to advertising and finding prospective couples, relying on word-of-mouth or referrals from family and friends is also not going to cut it. Being active on social media, having your website fully optimized for SEO and actively networking with other wedding professionals is what's going to get your name out there and get you bookings.

With so much competition, it's also getting much more difficult to raise your prices as there's probably another photographer that's just as good whose willing to shoot for less. So I'll share with you some of my tips on being competitive as a wedding photographer and how to market your business while staying relevant in today's world.

If you've ever wondered what goes on in a typical working week for me, then this is the episode for you. I'm going to share with you the day-to-day events that take place as I juggle trying to be efficient and productive as a wedding photographer, online educator, and father to a new-born baby girl.

I'll break down what I do in the mornings, afternoons, and evenings throughout the week to ensure I get as much done as possible on the business side of being a wedding photographer, as well as shooting weddings on weekends and engagement sessions.

Add to that finding time to work out a few times a week, running errands and spending time with my family. We'll talk about how that changes between the peak wedding season (from April to October) and the off-season (November to March) and why it's important to establish a consistent schedule if you want to be efficient and productive

I'll also share with you some of my productivity tips and the apps I use to help me keep track of what I need to get done and when. From using iCal to manage my calendar to Evernote synched between my desktop and iPhone, as well as the Productive app for iOS, which helps me to be as efficient as possible.

By sharing with you a typical week in my life and the tools I use to work efficiently, I hope it will help you to be just as productive as a wedding photographer, if not more.

After being a full-time wedding photographer for around a decade now, I've made my fair share of bad decisions. Not only have I wasted time doing things that are not profitable for my career but I've also wasted money in my wedding photography business without seeing any rewards.

In this podcast episode, I want to share with you where I've wasted the most money in my business and hopefully, through my lessons learned, you won't make the same mistakes.

I'll chat about some of the photography equipment and gear I bought that wasn't necessary and ended up never getting used (or just thrown away), as well as some of the places I tried advertising that didn't lead to a return on my investment.

I'll share with you the financial mistakes I made during a period where I was still trying to establish my individual brand, from leasing an expensive BMW to buying superficial brand-name clothes and advertising in high-end magazines to attract a certain kind of clientele.

In addition, I'll also chat about spending money to attend workshops, which can be really expensive and not always a wise investment in your business at that specific point in time.

I hope that through sharing my experiences of where I wasted money in my wedding photography business, you'll be inspired to spend your money wisely on things that will benefit your business for the long-term future.

Part of being a successful wedding photographer is being able to make a full-time living and for me, that means meeting three financial criteria: being able to pay your bills and monthly expenses.

Having enough to save and invest in your future, and having something left over to do the other things you enjoy in life.

Keeping those financial criteria in mind, in this episode I want to talk about why I have to gross at least $150,000 each year in my wedding photography business.

I'm going to break down my expenses on a month-to-month basis (not just business expenses but also personal ones) so you can see how the numbers add up.

Living in Southern California is not cheap, so when it comes to paying off our mortgage, taking into account property tax and utilities, there's a certain amount we need to make every given month to cover ourselves.

Add to that car repayments and student loans and our monthly expenses and savings come in at around $15,000 per month.

When it comes to business expenses, I'm paying around $3,000 a month and that includes things like advertising, camera maintenance, and paying my second shooters.

So you can see that once you combine everything together, it's important that I set this benchmark of $150,000 to ensure I can support my family and that together with my wife's income, we still have something left to enjoy doing other things we love.

By being transparent in my earnings and expenses, I hope it will help you to determine what you need to make to meet each of these financial criteria of being a successful wedding photographer.

After that, you can figure out how much you would need to be charging and whether that's realistically possible in your market and with your experience.

One thing I've noticed over my decade-long career as a wedding photographer is that there are some things we just don't talk about. Whether it's in online forums, Facebook groups or at networking events, the conversation usually centers around gear and presets.

There's a misconception that becoming a successful wedding photographer is just about investing in a great camera, setting up a website and the bookings will roll in.

In this wedding photography podcast episode, I want to expose the truth of being a wedding photographer that nobody really talks about and some of the harsh realities that we face.

We'll chat about the amount of work you really have to do to get established as a wedding photographer in today's competitive markets and the need to be able to sustain that throughout your career.

It's not just a matter of believing in yourself or following in the footsteps of other wedding photographers who've already "made it". Each one of us has a unique situation, whether it be our lifestyle, brand or style and success is not going to come by just replicating someone else's.

We'll also chat about the harsh realization that perhaps we just don't have what it takes to make it as a full-time wedding photographer, maybe due to our lack of photography skills, creative eye or our personalities.

Rather than looking at wedding photography through rose-colored glasses, I want to reveal the truth of what it takes to make it in the industry and equip you with the right skills and foundation to become a successful wedding photographer.

Becoming a full-time wedding photographer is not as easy as it seems and even once you achieve financial success, there's no guarantee that it's going to continue year after year.

In this podcast episode, I'll share with you my criteria of what it means to become a full-time wedding photographer and why I strove to achieve that.

We'll chat about some of the perks of being your own boss and making a living as a wedding photographer, as well as some of the challenges and realities of doing this full-time.

Yes, it offers a flexible schedule and time to enjoy other things in life but it can also be high pressure due to the income uncertainty we often face.

Do you have a roadmap set out of how you are going to go full-time and have you set attainable goals to help you achieve that? Are you willing to make sacrifices for the time spent with family and friends to build your business and how do you envision your life once you go full-time?

I'll be asking you a number of important questions to help you reflect on this and determine whether you REALLY want to become a full-time wedding photographer.

What’s it really like to not only be married to a wedding photographer but also work with them on a regular basis? For this episode, I invite my wife into the studio to talk about life over the last five years being married to me and the challenges of adapting to my unconventional lifestyle.

We’ll talk about how she first started shooting weddings with me and her own interest in weddings and photography, as well as how our relationship has changed over the years both inside and outside of the business. She’ll share some of the frustrations of living with a wedding photographer and their unconventional schedule and how she has adapted to it.

She’ll also offer some tips for other partners of wedding photographers out there who might be considering assisting or second shooting and how you can be as supportive as possible during the busy peak season.

While we often talk about how to build our wedding photography business, take better photos, and where to invest our time and money when it comes to advertising, nobody ever talks about how to balance a career in wedding photography with our personal lives.

We don’t live inside a wedding photography bubble and we can’t just brush off our loved ones, conventional jobs or health to pursue a dream of establishing a successful wedding photography business.

In this podcast episode, I’ll chat about my experience early on in struggling to find a balance between working on my wedding photography business, a career in engineering, and other things going on in my life...and how that has evolved today with a newborn in the family. We’ll also talk about the negative effects of living in a wedding photography bubble when it comes to your relationships and health.

The struggle is different for each individual and no two lifestyles are the same but there are ways we can address the issue by first acknowledging it and then looking for solutions. I’ll explain how I try and use both the business and personal sides of my life to motivate the other, creating a more balanced lifestyle that works for me and my family.