10/05/2018
I’m making good on a promise I made to myself in a big way today.
If you’ve been following along with my journey for a bit now, you know it’s been a year of major growth and transition for me - personally and business wise.
Every year for the past 5 or so years, I’ve made some sort of post on social media announcing that I’ve “officially learned my lesson about being too busy!”, and then claim that I’ll never let it happen again.
But somehow, I find myself drowning in work again each year, wishing I had a better work-life balance. It took me a long time, a lot of therapy, and blooming passions (hellooo education + Airbnb!!) to realize I had been putting work above every other thing in my life, and the only way that would change would be making a drastic change in how I approach my work life balance.
I made a promise to myself. I want to spend more time photographing families and portraits, educating other photographers, growing our Airbnb business, and leaving space for new passions to bloom.... all without working more than 35 hours a week or 12 weekends per year in 2019. YUP. Terrifying but exhilarating.
But making space for that to happen means significantly cutting back on the thing I’ve focused on for years - weddings. Rather than taking on 25-30 as a business each year, I’ll only be taking on 8 awesome couples in 2019.
And that brings me to the most bittersweet part of this - realistically, I won’t have time to continue my Associate Photographer program.
It was a really hard decision to end the program - Hillary is AMAZING (I mean HELLO, look at this gorgeous photo she took during her last ETP wedding!), her couples love her, and it’s been a great way for me to be able to serve couples who love my style when I’m unavailable or out of budget while growing my business. But when I looked at my less business-focused goals for 2019, I realized I had to choose - would I prioritize business growth, or my own well-being, my life, my relationships? Unlike the past 5 years, I chose the latter.
Fortunately, I’m SO excited to say that she’ll be continuing to take on her own weddings under her new business, !! Make sure you go show her some love and support as she begins this new journey!! ❤️❤️
Photo by Hillary for ETP!