United Conference: Serving Around the Clock – The MOMS PANEL!

Matt is definitely the speaker in the family, but at the United Conference in Santa Barbara this year I had the opportunity to sit on a panel with two great moms- Sarah Perkins & Justine Russo in the business! Special thanks to Melissa Kilner for keeping us in line! I see a lot of moms that get in the business because being a photographer or photographer administrator seems like a great fit with being a stay-at-home mom. It is not always the case – growing a successful business can take a lot of long hours and late nights. There are so many things that go into a photography business –  scheduling, editing, marketing, albums, blogs, publication, articles, client care and gifts,  oh yeah and shooting! As a mom though, our focus is thrown in a million other directions – we have a lot of additional responsibilities like cleaning, schedules, field trips, sick days, cooking, kids, birthday parties… My husband is pretty amazing, but his brain can’t handle all of these things swarming around. It is exhausting trying to juggle everything!  I think a lot of moms could relate to our situations at our session.

One of the things I shared with them is that I’ve been learning that it is important to outsource the things that take up too much time or is not one of your strengths. This doesn’t always seem to make sense when you have bills to pay. Why would you pay someone to clean your house when you can do it? I didn’t really get it before. Now I do. When we get help with things like cleaning, editing or whatever, we are freeing up our time to do things that we do best and can make more money at, or more importantly, it frees up our time to spend time with the important people in our life like our spouse or kids. As parents and entrepreneurs we NEED to buy time! We don’t have a lot of it! We need our precious time focused on the right things, so we are not always letting Dora babysit while trying to catch on emails 🙂 .

Oftentimes, we say our priorities may be something like God, Spouse, Kids, then work……BUT do our schedules reflect these priorities? Do our pocketbooks? Sometimes it is good to re-evaluate where we are spending our time and our money and create strategies in putting these back in the right order! I’m looking forward to 2014 being more intentional and balanced for myself and my family!

What are your own tips for bringing balance to your life?