If there’s one thing that will make or break your photography business over time, it’s your confidence in your craft. Your ability to present yourself as a successful business relies on your confidence in your photography skills! If you don’t believe in your product, your clients won’t either. In my journey building my successful photography business, I’ve developed two key techniques for building confidence at every stage of your career.
Here are my best tips for building the confidence that will grow your photography business!
Perhaps the best confidence builder is…
practice!
Before you’re like, ‘Meghan, I’m just starting out! I haven’t had time to practice!’ Hear me out-
You’re right. The longer you’re working on your business success as a photographer, the more confident you’ll be. But that doesn’t mean you need 20 years under your belt before you’ll start to exude confidence. One of my favorite ways to build confidence is to practice – as in, practice the skill before you take money for it.
Whenever I decide to change my style or try a new type of shooting, I invite clients in for a test-shoot. The shoot is free to them and I offer a certain number of free images at the end so they feel good about donating their time to my learning process. During these test-shoots I’ll experiment with new angles, poses and direction. This allows me to run the shoot my way. If it’s a style I’ve never tried before, it gives me time to figure out what ‘my way’ even is! You’ll learn SO much from test-shooting. Allow yourself the time to practice and your confidence will grow, grow, grow.
While I’m doing a test shoot, I’m also thinking about my systems and workflow.
If you’re new here, I’m ALL about systems in my photography business. In fact, the systems I’ve developed in my photography career have been key to my success.
Systems and workflows create consistency in your work.
This consistency takes the guesswork out of the shoot so there’s less stress in the moment. This method helps your clients feel at-ease because you’re comfortable with your creative flow. When you have a system, you can better communicate with your clients throughout the process, manage your editing and smooth out all the kinks in the path from consulting with a new client all the way to delivering the end-product.
Some of my favorite systems in my successful photography business include processes for retouching, backing up files, pre-shoot prep, posing during the shoot itself, and post-shoot editing + file/print delivery.
It does take time to build confidence and figure out your systems while you’re growing your photography business. If you’re in this for the long-game (like all the successful photographers I know!) it’s SO worth the time and effort to practice and perfect your processes and systems.
If this is the first time you’re hearing about workflows, don’t worry! They’ll become more clear to you as you discover what works and what doesn’t. It’s taken me a long time to develop the workflows I use in my photography business, which is why I’ve decided to share them!
If you’re interested in learning more about workflows, make sure you hop on my email list! Click HERE to get on the list and be the first to hear all my tips, tricks, and advice for starting (and growing!) your own amazing business.
