The biggest thing you need when starting a photography business

Happy Monday guys!!!

Can you believe it’s already January 5?!  This weekend flew by and actually I feel like all the weeks are flying by lately!

All this time moving so quickly has really made me want to just hit the pause button and slow things down a bit.

At night lately, I’ve been reflecting a lot on the past year and working on my goals for the next 12 months.  I’m a person that likes to have goals.  I always like to feel like I’m working towards something and constantly growing as a person.  Tuck is the opposite… he likes to appreciate the process.  We actually were joking about this just the other night as I whined about him laying with me on the couch and “let’s have a deep conversation”.

I’ve been taking my time coming up with my goals this year and really thinking about what worked this past year and what didn’t… both personally and professionally!

One thing I noticed and I think isn’t quite ever mentioned enough is the support that is needed from your loved one and partner!

If I could choose one thing that is essential to make a small business continue to grow and succeed:  it’s the support from your loved one and partner!

Amanda Hedgepeth talks a lot about this in her blog here!  If you haven’t read this post yet, it’s kind of amazing!  Her husband Mike even weighs in and his words are really powerful!

I feel like sometimes I take Tuck’s support for granted.  I think sometimes we small business owner’s take our love one’s support when they give it freely like they do, and then forget how much that support means!

I can say with 100% certainty that I would have put my camera down and stopped pursuing this dream without Tucks encouragement.

He picks me up and teaches me about smart business practices almost weekly!

He bends his own work schedule around so that I can go out on sessions without having to worry about who is taking care of Linc.  He never questions me or makes me feel the slightest bit guilty about it.

If he notices that I’m getting restless or feeling “stuck”  he often suggests I go out and scout out new locations or shoot for fun. He just gets it!

There are times when I worry if my balance is OK or if it’s getting off.  We’ve had an extremely busy year in 2014 and I am eternally grateful for that!  There were times though, when I worried that I wasn’t spending enough “down time” with just Tuck.  We had family time but Tuck and I didn’t get a lot of time just the two of us, and that was hard especially because he had just returned from a deployment.  Those nights that I worried, Tuck would sit on the couch in my office and talk with me while I edited images.  He knew that sometimes just being in the same room together would make me feel better.

I know that I am one extremely lucky girl to have a husband that supports me completely and unconditionally like this!

I know that this always ins’t the case.

I know because it wasn’t until I went on a mentoring session with Katelyn James and she pointed it out to me how lucky I am to have someone that supports me like this!  I thought about that on the drive home from her house and realized that I don’t often extend the same to Tuck.

I have loved my time with him and our family so much this past year (and especially the years before that) that I have been extremely selfish.  I don’t often allow him to pursue his passions with as much love and care as he allows me to do with photography.

It’s a very sad thing!

Our passions are a huge part of us, it’s a part of why our loved ones fell in love with us in the first place.  Our passions help define us and shape us!

If we don’t encourage one another to develop those passions and go after them (whatever they might be) then we can’t say we are truly loving one another!

So for this year:  make it one of your goals to support your loved one!  It’s the biggest most loving thing you can do for them!

It will mean more to them than any other one thing you can or could provide!

One of my biggest goals this year is to give the same amount of unconditional support to Tuck as he does to me!  He’s kind of an amazing husband and I’ve been kind of a selfish wife… hopefully I can learn a few things from him this year in that department 😉