i didnt pay attention too much in my business courses in college. i remember sitting behind a girl with long brown hair and a leather wristband in a short jean skirt and wishing i were anywhere but sitting five rows up in a lecture hall listening to things i’d never use. “i’m never going to run a business”

at times, i wish i could go back to that 19 year old version of myself and slap her silly.

according to some business models, there are plans for growth in certain years…building years, revising years, a year to make it or break it, etc. but like i said, i didnt pay too much attention so i’m sure i have those years all mixed up. 2011 was our third year in business as olimb photography. it was the year we finally felt settled. we’d paid off everything for the business, i let go a bit of control over every tiny aspect of the business, i learned to live my life as a person and not strictly as a photographer, i began to learn how to turn off the “how can i blog about this” mentality and just enjoy my life, i accepted that to name your fears it to overcome them and i watched my first lunar eclipse. in 2011 we launched a new blog and website that really reflected us, we finally felt like things were in place and we had a system for things and we were comfortable. but towards the end of the year, as we rounded out the last of our weddings and looked towards 2012, i realized that i dont want to be comfortable….being comfortable breeds complacency and complacency kills creativity. and yes, i totally just made that up…but it sounds legit doesnt it?

at the end of 2010 i said that there was a lot of change coming. and in 2011 there was. we started the year off with change and hoped to solidify our business with those changes. so, in 2011 here’s what worked and what didnt

  • incorporate a new filing system. for the most part, our new filing system worked perfectly. minus a few errors on my part that were just due to laziness, i still love the way our filing system functions.
  • complete the office redesign. my office redesign was one of my highest priorities for the year, however lame that sounds. i spend the majority of my days in this office. for the most part, i stare at a screen and i sit in the same position and drink the same coffee and get distracted by the same things. finally, i completed the office. i bought my dream desk and my made my husband put it all together while i watched {dont judge, i like his muscles}.
  • implement a blogging schedule. this was the biggest chunk of my year. i wanted to really stick to this. i wanted to blog more, i wanted to write more. so i did. i made a point to blog at least four days out of the work week. every thursday, minus a few occasions, i blogged about something that we loved, our favorite things if you will. i didnt blog on the weekends, except for christmas, and i made a point to post my weddings in a timely manner after the wedding was complete. it worked. it made me write more, i blogged, i felt like i was growing. that is, until i realized that i was writing for writing’s sake at times. which all in all, is fine. but my writing began to lose a bit of heart because i was tired. i was out. i ran out of words to write. my biggest “what didnt” in this category was the things we love thursdays. it was too much. i shouldnt have posted every thursday because it became more of a something i like rather than something that i love. one of my biggest pet peeves is using the word love to loosely and by posting every thursday out of requirement, i used the word too loosely.
  • launch new blog and website. february 16 2011 we launched our new site. it was the first step towards making our business really reflect who we are. we worked with rachael earl and spilled milk designs through show it and after much preparation, we went live. our site is such a reflection of us but i was horrible about updating it. to this day, i still havent updated things. even as i type that i’m hanging my head in shame. our work develops, who we are grows, whats in our heart changes, and with show it, it’s so easy to make those changes and yet here we are almost a year later and our site is still the same. it’s time to update.
  • submit a minimum of 5 weddings. the first wedding i submitted to an online blog was accepted. it boosted my confidence and i submitted a second. it was denied by the first site i submitted to and accepted by the second but has yet to be published. another wedding was submitted against my knowledge and while i’m thankful for the submission and the publication in the magazine, i began to feel discouraged. i let that discouragement take hold of me and prevent me from submitting any other weddings out of fear. so, i submitted only three. i cant let that fear keep me from using the awesome resource that is two bright lights. i have to submit my weddings. it’s the only thing that is going to keep me growing and push me to get my work out there.
  • book 20 weddings for 2011. as i wrote this goal originally, i was terrified. it seemed too great a goal. it seemed like i would fail. and i did. in a way. andrew and i didnt shoot 20 weddings this year, but in shooting our amazing 13 weddings this year, we realized that 20 would have been far too many. 20 would have drained us. 20 would have prevented us from giving our all to each and every one of our brides. so, this also helped form our 2012 goals as our failure proved to be what was needed to learn our limitations for ourselves.
  • shoot three creatively themed shoots. early on in the year, i made a list. i wanted to shoot a summer themed shoot with watermelons and oranges and water balloons. i wanted it to be full of life and color…but i didnt know how to get there. so i scaled back a bit for my first themed shoot. i decided to try it in a different way. the result wasnt quite what i hoped so i took notes and changed some things on my list. the other two themed shoots were going to be a fall themed and the other a camp out. neither of these shoots came to fruition but the list remains.
  • shoot less and get more. this goal has been one of the best things for our shooting style. before i felt as if i was behind the camera trying to keep up – quickly change the settings, quickly catch that shot, quickly get the best angle…but at every shoot, every opportunity to put someone in front of the camera, i slowed. i made sure that the shot in front of me was the shot i wanted. i got ahead of my shots instead of trailing along behind. and bonus! it made the editing process much faster.
  • purchase a 35mm and a macro. done and done!
  • make our materials match our brand. also done!
  • build better relationships with vendors. this is still a work in progress. naturally, i’m not a person that put myself out there, i’d much rather write emails than return phone calls and i’d rather return phone calls than meet someone in person. naturally, that’s who i am, a wall flower, a loner, someone content to sit and watch others from afar. but as a photographer, i have to change that part of me and its not easy. but i want that to change, i want to make those i work with feel special.
  • keep tax information up to date and filed. initially, this was difficult work but once i was walked through everything, and after a few conversations with an accountant and someone from the florida department of revenue, i felt i had a handle on it. in december, i wrote my {hopefully} last check for 2011 taxes. we’ll see how i did and if i’ll be singing from the rooftops or drowning away my sorrows with some triple espresso gelato.
  • get more creative with posing. this was incredibly difficult for me. it’s a constant struggle not to default to poses that i know, poses that naturally, i myself do with my husband whenever we’re in front of the camera. but despite the difficulty, and though not at every shoot, i felt like andrew and i pushed ourselves a little here and there to find some diversity in our portfolio. while we’re still learning to read the love languages of our clients and how the hold one another’s hand, or lean against each other or even how comfortable they are kissing on camera, we still naturally gravitate to certain posing that just makes us swoon. but we’re learning and growing.
  • inspiration boards. part of my office redesign was my inspiration boards. and sadly, what i had up, did not work. instead of inspiring me, they made me feel like a failure, as if i wasnt accomplishing what i wanted. the reason they didnt inspire was because of me…i didnt really ask myself why i put those images up in the first place. i put them up cause they were pretty, but i didnt dig deeper than that. so about halfway through the year, as that realization took place, i took everything down. i slowly put up a few quotes and photos i love of andrew and me. it’s the beginning of 2012 and i’m still working on those boards. i’m only putting up things that i really want to do, or things that i want my business to enable me to do. it has to matter, it really has to inspire me.
  • pay off our business credit card by december 1 2011. when i mailed our last check to our credit card company and realized every piece of photography equipment was paid off, i froze. while i’d like to say i jumped up and down and ate cake, i froze. shortly after coming to life again, i was overwhelmed with thankfulness that our Provider had blessed us with the means to pay off our purchases so soon. and then i jumped up and down, went out to dinner, and finally, ate cake.
  • save to convert to mac. after receiving the quote from apple for all the things i’d love to covert over to with mac, i almost cried. it’s going to take some time to convert and part of me wonders still if it’s a smart business plan. so much of me wishes i could go back and begin again with mac just to save the trouble of the cost of conversion from hp to mac but for now, we’re still saving and probably will be for some time…at least until i can make a decision on whether or not being a mac girl is completely necessary.
  • document our life. andrew is always wanting to take the camera or the flip with us where ever we go. i on the other hand, never really want to do that unless it’s something important. anything else, the day to day things, we have our iphones that are capable of taking photos. but this wasnt the goal. the goal was to be able to document more of our life together. while we didnt have all the professional photos of ourselves we wanted taken in 2011, we did come away with one incredible shoot with pure7studios, with photos of our families, with funny videos and photos of every day life. this will be a year to year goal because i dont ever want to forget our life together. i dont want to be this photographer that grows old only to realize that i dont have proof of my own life, that i cant share photos and relive memories of my own. one of the things i realized this year came from sitting and staring at my blog with absolutely nothing to say. so, i sat there for at least an hour and just started at the beginning and read. i went back to the start of our blog and as the time passed and i read further and further, i realized that our blog is also a precious resource in remembering and reliving our lives. yes, i want to document them on camera and with albums i can take down from a shelf when i’m old and grey and making cookies for my grand kids, but our blog…it’s a window to our past and i’m so thankful that it’s a way we can look back and remember where our lives have been and how far we’ve come.

the further and further into this list i got and the more reflections that i wrote, the more and more i again felt a sense of failure. but these were my goals, my aspirations. even in my failure, i’ve grown. and while it seems like laziness and fear won out against the majority of my goals, andrew and i still accomplished so much.

i could write on for days and days but reviewing the year is always incredibly exhausting and fulfilling all at the same time. so what’s next, where do we go from here? that’ll come in time, but for now, i’m going to remind myself that failure or not, i’m pressing forward.

dwell in possibility…