A book review for wedding photographers and filmmakers : Atomic Habits by James Clear
Running a successful wedding photography or videography business is tough. It requires much more than making content at weddings, processing it and shipping it off to the client. Those who’ve been running businesses for a long time will obviously know this.
The number of hats we have to wear is quite astonishing.
We have to be;
- Administrators
- Photographers
- Filmmakers
- Content Creators
- Accountants
- Personnel Managers
- Software Managers
- Researchers
- Social Media Managers
- Editors
- Consultants
- Relationship Builders
- Bloggers
- Students
To balance all of these and execute them at the highest level possible requires great systems and habits to ensure you can run the most efficient, cost-effective, profitable and successful business possible. That’s why I found this book: Atomic Habits by James Clear so useful when it came to running my own wedding photography business.
So I wanted to share with you exactly how I found this book useful and how I’ve implemented it into my wedding photography business.
Tip One: Join a culture where your desired behaviour is the normal behaviour. Surround yourself with people who have the habits you want to have.
Being in the wedding photography industry can be a lonely job. Not only just in the way that we have to shoot weddings alone, travel to weddings alone, edit alone and wear all of the hats mentioned above alone too. Those are all true. However, we are often alone in our minds, with our ideas, our systems, and with knowing what the best practices are.
This habit has been a huge one for me and helped me speed up my growth as a photographer and business owner and even in my own personal growth as a person too.
“You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” – Jim Rhon
The more time you spend with successful people the more successful you’ll become. The more time you spend with great business owners, the greater your business will become. The more time you spend with creatives, the more creative you’ll become. You get the picture here.
My business, photography skills, personal development and more grew exponentially when I joined photography communities and began working from co-working spaces. Full of people who were actively working hard on their business, trying to develop new skills and always trying to expand their network.
“If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself.” – Henry Ford
I learnt so much and made so many great friends. Not always in my industry but that was great too. Especially making new friends and connections through co-working and meeting people who see business and growth from a different perspective.
This all helped me develop in a faster and more organic way. I had more support, more people to turn to, more ideas, more ambition more motivation and more like-minded friends.
“Surround yourself with people who believe in your dreams, encourage your ideas, support your ambitions, and bring out the best in you.” – Roy Bennett (Politician)
I have a good friend and successful businessman Stuart who founded and created a great leadership and training company. Although we now have our own personal friendship. We often have catch-up phone calls whilst we are both driving or walking our dogs. We put our headphones in and chat about our business and give each other inspiration, ideas and have great conversations. At the end of each year (our Christmas Do) we meet just the two of us and reflect on the year behind us. Discuss what we could do better, discuss our successes, failures and project into the future. Talk about our goals and help each other grow.
This is just one of many of my “communities” and people I know that I like to spend time with as it helps me develop in such a great way.
Find your own communities through friends and within the industry. Join clubs, co-working spaces, and make friends with people in the industry and meet for coffee.
“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” African Proverb
Tip Two: To resist temptation just ignore it. It creates space for the craving to pass.
Self-control requires you to release a desire rather than satisfy it.
Procrastination. I want to believe every business owner has to deal with this. Though maybe that’s just so I don’t feel so alone. However, I wouldn’t be surprised if it is more common than not. It’s something that I battle with a lot though and although I’m only skimming the surface of this tip. The book goes into this in more detail and its helped me with both my health and business.
I spend a lot of time in my office. Creating content, editing, sending emails and again managing all of the hats mentioned at the beginning of this article.
I guess I lot of this comes down to discipline. There have been many times whilst editing that I’ve wanted to just take a break and I’ve started feeling bored. I’ll find excuses to go and walk the dog, check social media, decide to work on something else in my business or do things that are going to distract or take me away from my current task and goal. Procrastination is so common because it’s so easy to give in or put something off. Its so so so much easier to not go to the gym than to go. It’s so much easier to just post on Instagram than to write a blog. It is so much easier to just send a couple of emails than it is to sit and process a wedding.
“You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.” – Abraham Lincoln
I love this quote from Abraham Lincoln because I resonate with it so well. When I’m processing a wedding I can often subconsciously tell myself; “I can just edit this later” or “I’ll edit this tonight when the kids are in bed” or “I have a free day later this week I can edit then.” I have to pause for a second or two when I hear my mind telling me to stop. When in fact these thoughts are coming into my head because I just can’t be bothered at that moment in time. It’s so easy to listen to the voice and stop.
When I pause for a moment and ask myself; “Do I want to stop and do it later in the week because I can’t be bothered right now?” or do I need to stop because I have more important things to do? Either way, these images need processing, either way, I’m going to have to sit here for hours and do them. There is no escaping this.
“One of the best escapes from the prison of procrastination is to take even the smallest step toward your goal.” — Denis Waitley from his book Empires of the Mind
I pause for a moment and allow the temptation of procrastination to pass. Release the desire to walk away, focus on my self-control and tell myself how great I’m going to feel if I stick to the task. Then even if I only process 100 more images I’ll feel great. I’ll feel like I’ve got ahead of myself. This positivity then inspires me to keep going to get the job done. Yeah sometimes I’ll get those 100 extra images done and take a break but I feel a sense of achievement and I’ve practised my self-control aiding me to run a successful business.
I also found that tip one helps with procrastination. I love working in co-working spaces surrounded by other entrepreneurs working hard on their businesses. It inspires me to work hard and get on with my tasks. Making friends in the industry has helped so much too as we keep each other accountable for getting things done.
Tip Three: If I miss one day, a simple rule: never miss two.
Missing once is an accident. Missing twice is the start of a new habit.
I’m going to share some of my SEO strategies here to illustrate this.
When focusing on my SEO it boils down to creating landing pages, writing blogs and link-building. I’ve had great success with my SEO and it’s one of my main sources of getting work as a wedding photographer. Creating content though can be overwhelming and time-consuming. So I like to plan ahead and integrate my SEO planning as a habit. Creating regular content for my website has been a strong factor in my rankings. So to create regular content I need a plan.
My plan is to publish a page or blog on my website periodically. I’ve found this much easier to execute and manage this way. As opposed to blogging or making a page whenever I feel like it. Because in fact I never “feel” like it.
I made my SEO plan resulting in a huge list of articles, blogs and landing pages I wanted to create. Then I made a habit of creating this content on a weekly basis. Now weekly for me was quite an ambitious target. But I knew if I made it a habit and stuck to the plan it would result in success. So I did and I was.
At least until I started seeing such great results. Then I would tell myself that I’m doing ok so I can miss this week. Then I’d miss the following week and so on. So the new habit became not doing the work. I still created the pages and blogs but far far less than I’d have wanted. Maybe I had set my targets too high and it became too much more and then I wanted to put it off. Not a great practice.
So I changed my target to do them monthly. I felt like this was an excuse at the time. But I found it so much more manageable and rarely missed a month of not creating something. If I did I made sure I never missed next time. I didn’t try to catch up and give myself more work or pressure. I just made sure I got it done next time.
“A year from now, you may wish you started today.” – Karen Lamb
Tip three also can be supported by tip one. Being part of something and being surrounded by other hard-working, like-minded and successful people. People who can help and inspire you. People who can hold you accountable and help you become a better version of yourself.
Atomic Habits for Wedding Photographers and Filmmakers – Highly Recommended Book
Habits are such personal things and everything you’ve read in this article is my way of explaining how the book has helped me personally implement habits into my business and my life that help me. Thats why I recommend this book and also that you read it from your perspective and implement habits that suit you. I’ve had great success with this book and would love to know if this article or the book has helped you in any way too.
“Two years, not two months.
The visible progress you’re hoping for usually comes slower than you’d like. Even with consistent effort, it can take a long time before progress feels significant. It might be a year of writing and editing before the book really starts to come together. You may need two years of recovery from a major injury before you notice just how far you’ve come. It may take two years of yoga before you realize how flexible you have become.
Take a deep breath, stop worrying about immediate results, and settle into a nice routine.”
– James Clear
