You’ve likely noticed that our business has taken a big shift over the past six months or so. During quarantine with all the extra time we suddenly had on our hands, we were able to really reflect and use that down time to dream and plan and really talk about the kind of life we wanted to live. We asked ourselves some big, tough questions we had never asked before, because well….we just got so used to doing life as we knew it. We had gotten so comfortable with just moving through the motions that we barely had a second to think of it being any other way. We knew we wanted to homeschool our children (for more reasons than one) and we had talked about being full time entrepreneurs some day but it was always… “some day”. We didn’t have the time or the resources to imagine that this current season of life could look any different than Ron working a 9-5 and me taking care of everything else… the cooking, the cleaning, the schooling etc., Don’t get me wrong, Ron helped whenever he could with whatever he could but he also came home most evenings exhausted from a long day of work. He would help me finish making and serving super and maybe had an hour with the kids before they were all in bed for the night. As for myself, well by that time I didn’t even want to SEE the children. I had been with ALL of them all day long and if I heard my name one more name, I felt like I was going to lose it. Can you relate?!
Ron did bed time alone most nights and I started my long night of editing, emails, etc., And you know what? It was fine. We were fine. We totally could have continued to go on through life like this and it all would have been ok. But we also didn’t give ourselves the opportunity or talk much about how things could be different. How Ron could have more quality time to spend with the boys. How I could have time to work during the day instead of staying up until all hours of the night and running on 0 in my "patience" tank.
We were so caught up in the “busy" of raising four kids and trying to balance Ron's full time job, our business, and all the other things, that there was no time to slow down and dream a new dream about how our life could look. But that slower season of quarantine gave us that time. And we ran with it.
I’m not exactly sure what made us feel brave enough to take the risk to make it happen...but we finally did. Did it feel scary initially?! You bet. At that time Ron was bringing in the majority of our household income. I would take photo shoots periodically but that was our "play money". I was currently on “mat leave” and with the pandemic at it’s peak, we did not have many weddings booked for that following summer. So what did we do? Well, we sat down, dared to dream up a new life entirely and figured out what we needed to do and bring in financially to make it happen. Of course it required a lot of hard work and hustle at the start. Instead of binge watching Netflix ( like we would have rather done), we brainstormed, we dreamed, we scribbled down ideas, and we put a strategic business plan into action.
And guess what? We’ve arrived here, in our dream life. And we’re obsessed. You might be wondering what our dream life looks like for us and well…we believe this answer will be so different for everyone. Because it all comes down to what you truly value in life. Our dream will not be your dream. If you want to know how we define this together as a couple, check our our goal guide here.
But for us, our dream life involves:
- Being able to tag team both work and the parenting/homeschooling thing.
- Lot's of quality time with our children, both separately and together.
- Travelling and adventuring together as a family whenever we want to!
- Financial Freedom
- Flexiblibility in our daily schedule.
- Doing work that FULFILLS us.
Our life is NOT perfect. HECK no. In fact we’re in the thick of it, with parenting four young children under 7 and all the crazy that comes along with that. In fact, I'm currently sitting in a house that looks like 4 bombs went off, my floors are sticky as heck and the kids are screaming at each other in the backyard. We live in a tiny bungalow, we drive a mini van, and we’re still completely exhausted at the end of each day. BUT we’re both so entirely fulfilled from living a life that WE design that all that other hard stuff is that much easier to handle. Do we have bigger dreams and goals to go after?! YES WE DO. And we're so excited to keep going.
Ron works out of the home most mornings (part time), but we've we've had the flexibility to chose that in this season. He LOVES his part time job and is super fulfilled in it and it's actually such a good thing for our marriage too. But he also loves that he gets to spend his full afternoons with the boys while I work, and the rest of his time helping me drive our business!
SO how has our photography business changed? Well somewhere along the way of taking the leap and making this happen for ourselves, we’ve become super passionate about helping others to get there too. We both love to teach and inspire and we started to think outside the box about ways that we could do this within the business we’ve already established. We LOVED shooting weddings all those years but it required a lot of time away from our children and we’ve realized that a full booked up wedding season is not for us in this season. So we decided to PIVOT.
What can you expect from us going forward?!
While we’ll still be taking portrait clients and several weddings/year, our main focus will now be BRANDING photography! We will be focusing on helping YOU to achieve a professional look for your business that attracts your ideal clients! We do in-studio OR on site branding sessions, product photography and we will soon be offering yearly MEMBERSHIPS for businesses to keep their photos up to date all throughout the year.
We will continue to blog and share all the tips we can with you when it comes to building a business AND a life that LIGHTS YOU UP! (We're not new to the entrepreneur thing - we've been business owners for over 10 years now. We're just new to doing it full time together!)
We are currently working on our first online biz COURSE to be launched in just a few short months - topic to be announced soon!
We will continue to fill up our shop with helpful resources that will allow you to elevate your own brand while also saving you time so you can work on those things LESS and spend more time doing the things that are important in life. (Because THAT’S what we’re about!)
Thanks for reading this post and for your support in our journey! We plan to share more of our story with you as time goes on. We wouldn’t be here without all our amazing clients who have invested in our services and products and believed in us along the way. We love you guys and we’re STOKED to continue to serve you in this space!
