Are you curious about my journey as a parent and entrepreneur? This episode is part of a series on parenting while running your photography business. I’m sharing my experiences over the last fourteen years of business and becoming a dad to three kids. Plus, I’m diving into my three priorities that have shifted the way I do business, which you can implement today. 

The Focused Photographers Podcast was created based on the idea that the most incredible tool for learning is a deep dive into any given topic from multiple perspectives. Join us every other week as we explore important topics, with host Daniel Moyer and a variety of guests offering different perspectives! Make sure you’ve hit that follow or subscribe button on your favorite podcast player to get notified each week as we air new episodes!

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REVIEW THE SHOW NOTES

My unique perspective on parenting (2:29)

The backstory of Daniel Moyer Photography (4:17)

Knowing your numbers (11:27)

Scheduling your time (17:45)

Your day-to-day (24:27)

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

022: My 2022 Work/Life Balance Experiment

074: A Simple Way To Calculate How Many Weddings You Need To Book Per Year

Daniel Moyer Coaching

CONNECT WITH DANIEL MOYER​

Website: https://danielmoyercoaching.com/

Wedding Instagram: @DANIELMOYERPHOTO

Business Instagram: @DANIELMOYERCOACHING

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Thank you!

-Dan

Review the Transcript:

Hey, photographer friends, I’m Dan Moyer and welcome to the Focus Photographers podcast where photographers gather before we jump into today. This episode is brought to you by one to one coaching with me. If you’re somebody I’m assuming that if you’re listening to this episode, maybe you’re having some struggles trying to put the work and the life side of your business together and have them be able to be married and happy with each other.

This is a very tricky area. The conversation around burnout and frustration is more of a conversation than it ever has been before. And I can tell you that it is possible. It is possible to be able to grow your photography business without sacrificing your personal goals, your personal time, your family time, without sacrificing your relationships.

And I’m here to help. So that sounds like you go to danielmorecoaching. com reach out and we can talk and see if we’re a good fit. Okay, today’s episode is part of a larger series on where parenting meets your photography business. This is a really interesting topic because a lot of the business education that’s out there is so much about, you know, hustle and grind and sleep at the gym or sleep at the studio or whatever the business is that you, you’re, uh, you’re launching.

But when your parent The tables and the games are just a little bit different. This is my, uh, story about the last 10 or so years. Um, actually it’s really about the last 14 years, but the first 10 of those, I had one priority despite having a marriage and despite, um, having kiddos and all that stuff. And that priority was my photography business.

I was just in the cycle of New secret, new hack, new workshop. What’s the next thing that’s gonna, um, give me more money and all that kind of stuff. But the problem is, is that the peaks were never high enough. The money was never enough, despite making really good money from year two, over six figures, made a lot of money, but it never felt like enough.

And this is my story of basically the last couple of years of feeling the most success that I’ve ever felt, um, while sort of working the least, or at least it feels like I’m working the least. And The things that I’ve implemented as I’ve started to refocus my life on being a dad who can play with my kids and can do things for myself while growing my business.

I’m really excited to share with you today. These are some big idea things and some things you’ll be able to implement today. Let’s go.

So as I was going through and trying to figure out what Um, I would bring to this series because we’re in this series of where parenting meets your business. Uh, this episode is part of a larger series that’s based on that. And I was trying to figure out what my perspective is, like, what can I bring to this series that is unique to me or, or some of the other guests have not been able to bring.

And I really came down to basically two things. One is that, uh, I’m a dad. I’m a twin dad. So I think having the experience of, uh, dadding two twins plus an older child is, is unique and interesting. Um, we also had to do that during the pandemic. Our kids, when the pandemic was happening was, were basically seven or eight months old.

So that made things challenging. I think another perspective that I have that’s unique is that I really work hard to to transcend that idea of just being a protector and provider. I really want to be a nurturer as well. I want to be there for my children, not in a performative way of, I just bring money and I bring protection to the table, but I also, um, am a nurturer.

I’m also there to kiss booboos and, and listen and value each of my children individually and see them through a wider perspective. Uh, lens of emotions that are available to me. And that’s what I’ve sort of coming at this from and through the struggles that I’ve had and all that kind of stuff. So if you’ve been following this podcast for a while, um, you’ve probably heard some of the struggles that I’ve had or, or a little bit of my story, but I felt like it would be, um, helpful to just give some of the backstory that really brought me to where I am today.

And then I can share You know, what kind of things I’m doing now and what things I’ve implemented over the last few years that have really set me up to feel the most successful I think I’ve ever felt in in very many ways than just, you know, the financial sense. So I’ve been in business since January 1st, 2010.

That’s when Daniel Moyer Photography started. Um, I had a very successful business. Uh, I still have a very successful business all the way up through to today. I think the best year I ever had was 2019, um, cause I was like hustling and all that. I spent a lot of those first 10 or so years really putting my business as the only priority.

I paid a lot of lip service to the idea that I had work life balance and family and maintain relationships and all that stuff. But in all honesty, I really didn’t as well as I could have. And I think that’s just, you know, It’s naive. Like you just think you like this is the most important thing. You think business is like, you know, it’s all about just getting money and, and the new things you can do.

But the problem is, is that the peaks are never high enough. The money is never enough. And you’re just chasing, what’s the next workshop? What’s the next thing that I can do to bring more money in and whatever. And you get to this point where it’s like, I made I’ve made really good money every single year, except for the pandemic years, right?

Like I’ve made well over six figures pretty much since year two, I think it was. And When you get to this point where it’s like, wow, like what’s next is, is when things get really interesting. And for me, that was, um, that coincided with my 10 year anniversary, which happened to be 2020. Let me back up just a little bit and I’ll go to 2016.

My daughter, oldest daughter, was born in 2016. My wife is in the corporate world, um, so she was getting up, she was going to work every day. I’m self employed, so I’m here with my daughter and we’re having fun and all that kind of stuff. And like I said, I want to be the nurturer. I want to, I want to be there and have fun and be able to do all the things and care for her and all that stuff.

But we did decide to put her in daycare for three days. And so I had Tuesday, Thursdays, uh, that were daddy daughter days. We do it in museums and all kinds of stuff. And I remember feeling in those days like, wow, I actually can’t. Get all the work done that I need to, there’s just not enough time. And so maybe I think like for a year or so, um, you know, as my schedule’s getting busier, at least I thought it was getting busier.

My, my daughter was in, in daycare for three days a week, and then I think we added an extra day. So she was in four days a week, like Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday. And I was still like, oh my gosh. You know, six or so months go by, I still can’t get enough done. I’m not getting enough done. I’m not focused enough.

You know, I need more time. And then we ended up putting her in five days a week. And so she’s in five days a week. And, and I’m still feeling like I can’t get enough done. I’m just like, I’m, I’m overwhelmed. I’m super busy. Then in 2019, we find out we’re having twins. And it’s funny because there’s no twins in either side of our families anywhere.

Um, so we find out we’re having twins. And we go through the whole thing. Everybody’s telling us you need a bigger house, a bigger car. You need to move. You need this. You’re not going to make enough money, blah, blah, blah, blah. Um, turns out we didn’t need a bigger house. Uh, we did need a bigger car though.

Cause a Ford Focus and a little Subaru Crosstrek are, are not enough to house three children in car seats. So we get a new car anyway. And then 2020 happens and that’s supposed to be 2019 is the best year I had in business. 2020 is supposed to be my 10 year anniversary. I’m honestly thinking about throwing like a huge party at the Phillies Baseball Park and inviting like all of my, as many of my past clients who had come there just like a 10 year.

Thanks for supporting me really as getting to this place in my business and everything’s supposed to be amazing. Pandemic happens and this identity was all I was, right? Like it was my. It was my in to my past, uh, people from my past from high school to college and it was just this way that I connected with people being a photographer.

It just gets ripped away. It was at that point I had to start taking a look at like, what, who am I and what am I outside of these titles of photographer and dad and husband and all these things. And I just kept looking back. Uh, I had to go through therapy and I’m still in therapy for, you know, the things that happened during that time.

But I think everyone needs therapy. I was just angry a lot. I was angry in the beginning because I felt like I was on the cusp of like the best year I’d ever had. I had all these practices in place and all that stuff. And I started to resent my family, which was weird to think back on it. Like this is, this is what I’m working for.

These, these three children, my wife, like I’m working so hard for these people, but yet like, What’s that saying? If you in 20 years from now, the only ones who are going to remember that you stayed late or you worked late are your children. And it took me so long to really figure out why I was, why the peaks were never high enough and why, you know, the money was never enough.

It’s because I just did not define what enough is. I didn’t define what the things are that are valuable to me that you’ll never get back. And if you want to go back and listen to like a really fun and interesting sort of early version of this, um, this, uh, idea, it’s actually episode 22. It’s called My Great Work Life Balance Experiment.

It was, it was, I think, the first episode of 2022, also episode 22. And it was just my early trying to deal with, with like wanting to get time with my family back because I just spent so much time on my business and it missed so much. And I realized that the true value, um, the things that make you feel successful are when you’re able to enjoy the fruits of your labor.

And when you’re just constantly go, go, go, going. You don’t get a time to enjoy the fruits of your labor. And so go back and check out that episode 22. Now we’re in 2024, and I’ve really honed in on just a, there’s a lot of things that I’ve done, but I really honed in on just these like three things that I’ve, that I’ve done that have given me structure in the flesh.

family side of my life, in the time management side of my life, to be able to enjoy the fruits of my labor, to be able to prioritize the relationships with my kids, the relationships with my wife, and actually having friendships again, and also doing things for me like that really helped to prioritize my physical health and my mental health so that I can feel successful.

And so these are the three areas that I have really been focusing on over the last year. You know, uh, three years or so that have really helped me to feel successful. As I go through these, um, this first one, there’s three of them. There’s a lot more, but these are the three that I think will be really beneficial to everybody and sort of like have a mass, mass appeal or a mass, um, applicability to everyone.

I’m going to go through them. I’m just going to keep them pretty simple. I don’t want this episode to be super long, and I’m already like eight or nine minutes in, but, um, there’s three of them. The first one is, uh, knowing your numbers and, and the, uh, your financial side of your business. So you can confidently say no.

The second one is looking at your time on a yearly basis. And the third one is how you manage your day to day. And there’s probably some things in here that you’ve not heard before. None of these are going to be like, wow, that’s like this really amazing groundbreaking thing, Dan. No, they’re not. But I think, um, hopefully the way I describe them and the way that I have, uh, implemented in my life will be helpful or unique, uh, unique way that you’ve heard them.

So this first one is about knowing your numbers and, and money. I, I went through a really, um, in depth, uh, podcast episode, episode 74, which is called a simple way to calculate how many weddings you need. This one is much more than money. It’s about defining enough. And there’s this really funny story. Not a funny story.

There’s really interesting story about an author and an artist. And if you just hear me out on this, there’s this author and an artist and they’re standing in a party, then they’re just chatting it up there and they’re enjoying conversation. And all of a sudden the author happens to notice a billionaire walk into the party.

And the author having written about the billionaire is like totally, uh, starstruck and they’re talking about. All the investments that this person’s made and all the, um, cool things that they’ve done and the things that, uh, they’ve done for the good and, you know, uh, just what businesses they own and their story and all this stuff.

And the artist sort of unamused is like, wow, that’s cool. And the author sort of, uh, taken aback is like, what, what’s, what, why are you not, why is this not interesting to you or whatever? And the artist basically says, well, I have something that this will never have. And the author sort of, you know, Uh, crosses his arms and looks over and says, Oh, yeah, well, what’s that?

And the artist says, Enough, I have enough. And this is this whole exercise that was in episode 74 is about defining what enough is for you. So you can confidently say no to work when you hit that target. I’m going to briefly go over this if you want a really in in depth overview of how I have defined what enough is in terms of my finances and things like that, go back and listen to episode 74.

It’s just a couple episodes ago. It’s a really good one, but I’ll briefly go over it now. Basically, the first step is to go through your bank account, your personal bank account, and figure out what you’re spending money on. You can, you can categorize it however you want. You can look at Google categories of personal spending and all that stuff.

But basically, you want to figure out. What are your necessities and what you’re spending too much money splurging on the splurging is things like Subscriptions dinner out dinner ordering dinner in basically anything that is not absolutely necessary Right. So what how much money are you splurging and then what are the necessities that you have to spend every month?

These are things like rent groceries, like actually going out and getting groceries and bringing them home, um, their utilities, they might be your gym membership. These are the things that like, if all hell froze over again, you need to make these payments, their debt payments, all that kind of stuff. Once you have that number, um, the number that’s like, this is the number I need to make per month, uh, for me to survive.

You take the number, you multiply it by 12 and that’s the amount you need to take to make per year. So let’s make, let’s make it 50, 000. That’s like an easy number. So you need to make 50, 000. Next step is you really go back and you take a look at your average package that people book. So you take your average package and you have to subtract out the Costs of goods sold and basically the other costs associated with shooting the wedding or running the business.

Um, you can get really nitty gritty with these, but for the sake of like simplicity and being able to sit down and like do this in a half hour and just have this ballpark number, you just subtract. So if you have, let’s say your package is 5, 000 and you need, A second photographer is in there and there’s an album in there.

Um, those are like really simple costs of goods sold. So you subtract those out of the package. Um, you subtract taxes out of the top of the package. Um, and you subtract, you know, a hundred bucks or so. I just keep it simple. A hundred dollars for, um, costs of shooting a wedding. And so say after that, you come up with 3, 500, uh, as your profit for this 5, 000 package.

What you do then is you take your 50, 000 that you need to make per year. Um, you divide 3, 500 into that, uh, and that gets you 14. 28 weddings or 15 weddings a year that you need to book. And so that’s it. You can say, wow, if I just, if I just get 15 weddings a year, I’m golden. And, and it turns out, uh, So many times when I talk with photographers, this is not the approach that they take to figuring out how many weddings they need.

They go off of, Oh, I just want to make six figures. I just want to make 200, 000 a year and have five months vacation or whatever it is. You have to write these things down and know What exactly you need? There’s no, there’s no gray area in this. It’s really, um, about knowing your numbers. So you can confidently say, okay, this year, you know what, when I get to 15, I, my family has been needing me.

So now I, I’m only going to accept 16 this year. I’m going to have a little bit extra, whatever it is, or, you know, maybe it’s, I’m going to take 25 this year or 30 weddings this year, bank that extra 15, and then have a mini, uh, retirement for a year where you only accept five weddings or you only accept 10 weddings.

You hear what I’m saying? Like when you know this, like very basic number of how many weddings or how many sessions you can do this with any session. How many houses do you need to photograph per year to hit? Um, 50, 000, how many, um, houses plus weddings plus engagement sessions, whatever you can divide all these things in and say, if I just hit these targets, I’m golden.

And then you can adjust in and out of there or, or however you want to adjust your lifestyle. I think when you know that number, when you come up with these numbers based on your lifestyle, based on how you spend, um, and how you splurge and whatever it is, you have this freedom to really choose how you want your year to be in your life to be.

So that’s this first one is really, um, knowing your numbers. You can confidently say no If I, if there’s one final thing that I have to say as we, as before we head into the next one, it’s that the freedom that you will get by knowing this number is undeniable. Um, it’s undeniable to know like, okay, I just have to hustle and get to this number.

And then I’m golden for the year. That is a very freeing and powerful thing. And if you’ve just been flying by the seat of your pants or taking whatever you want, It’s just leaving your fun time or your free time up to chance when you have this structured. It’s so freeing. So speaking of structure, the second one is about scheduling your time.

Now, there are a million different ways to schedule your time. There’s a million different thoughts on work life balance and all that kind of stuff. For many of us who are wedding photographers, Our weddings take up our whole entire year and they get scheduled a year in advance. And if you’re not careful, they just take up every part of your being, right?

Frustration and burnout and all that stuff is more of a conversation in our photography communities now because we’re overworked. We’re not sure how much we’re making. We don’t know our profit margins or we feel like we’re not getting enough soul filling activities. Our families are not getting enough from you.

And when there’s just like nothing left, it’s like, what do you do? The thing that we need to do is flip this on its edge, uh, flip this totally upside down and put us time first in a year format. We need to look at the entire year and put our stuff in there first. Um, I’ve talked about this a million times.

I love this law. It’s called Parkinson’s law. It basically says that work expands to fill the time allotted for its completion. Basically, if you schedule eight hours or two hours or whatever it is, guess how long it takes that project to get completed. That exact amount of time that you’ve scheduled.

It’s just the way that things work. And it works the opposite way where if you don’t schedule anything, we’re just going to take up all the time. So if you don’t schedule and stick with your family time, stick with your personal time, work just takes over everything. I’ve done this in varying different ways, but the way that’s really stuck with me over the last year or so, if you’ve heard this, uh, serial entrepreneur, Jesse Itzler, it’s an interesting guy.

Um, he has this, uh, sort of framework that he does, and I want to focus on the first two of his year. You schedule an entire year and you do one big thing for your year. It’s called a Masogi. Um, the story behind the, the phrase Masogi is really cool. You can look it up, but it’s M I S O G I. It’s basically the one big thing that your year is about and it’s personal.

It’s for you. This Masogi could be something that literally scares the daylights out of you that you need to train for. You need to work towards that you want to get done. But it’s this idea of something that sort of scares the living daylights out of you so much and then you go out and do it. Or I think Jesse says it as it’s.

One day that’s so impactful and it changes the rest of the other 364. This year, like I’ve done sort of big things, but this is the first year that I’ve really been intentional about implementing this. And I’ve got these, you know, big things that I’m working towards, but having this like one year defining thing, you Is so freeing because it’s, for you, it’s like this thing that’s like I, I’m taking care of myself with this one giant thing that I’m working towards personally for the year.

The second thing are mini adventures and um, Jesse calls this Kevin’s rule after a friend of his who they go instead of go adventuring with, and this could be. Things that are also just for you. Um, they could be things that you do with your family, but the idea is that you get totally out of your, your comfort zone and just do something totally different.

So, um, we’re not, you’re not really one of the sort of unspoken rules that you’re not really supposed to talk about your Masogi or whatever, but I’m gonna share here. Uh, I used to be a runner. I ran a lot. I did a bunch of half marathons, but I’ve never done a marathon. And I took a hiatus basically for the last, like, five years or so, um, because of kiddos and, you know, not really having the time to train and being away from my family with my work schedule and also my wife in the corporate world and me full time dadding it.

But, um, you know, I’m back on it now and I have full buy in from my wife and I want to do a marathon this year. So the big thing is, uh, the Philadelphia marathon in November of 2024. That’s the Misogi. That’s the big thing. But I have these mini adventures that I’m trying to just do a couple. Um, this year and Jesse’s actual framework as I think is one every other month.

Um, so there’s six, you know, mini adventures. I have, um, I’m doing a Spartan beast coming up, which is basically a 13 mile obstacle course race. Um, I’m also doing the broad street marathon, um, or not broad street run, not a marathon. Um, that’s in may, but it’s like, these are some of the things that like, I know I need to be more physical.

Um, and so these things help me put dates on my calendar to really. Um, keep me accountable. But there’s other things like, um, you know, I went climbing with some high school friends. Like they’re really into climbing and they invited me and I was like, yeah, let me go do that thing. You know, we, um, in, in terms of my family, right, we’re going on vacation for three weeks coming up.

When we get down there, I want to try to do some interesting things like get the kids out on a boat or just do these things that sort of shake up the routine. And, um, it’s these like, it’s this having, it’s taking care of yourself on this yearly basis where you’ve already blocked out big time for big adventures with your family and even mini adventures with your family to just spend this quality time together.

And again, it comes back to that Parkinson’s law thing, where if you don’t schedule it, it’s not going to happen. But the other part of that is when you schedule it, you have to make it happen. You know, my, my wife and I, uh, for some stupid reason, I remember way back when I first started, like, um, you know, in those first early years, like year two or three, 2012, I think, you know, my schedule was booked up.

I was, I was building my business and I was trying to accept every wedding possible, uh, every engagement possible, every, uh, portrait session possible. And I remember this one evening, uh, one of my engagement sessions got canceled. And I went to my then girlfriend now wife and was like, listen, we need to have a date night like that pronto.

We like, we haven’t had a date night in forever. And, you know, Things were so backwards then, like why was I not putting quality time in with the person who means the most to me in this world? Why was I not scheduling that out? Because you don’t think about it. You’re just thinking like, I just need to build this business.

I need to get money. I need to go after the thing. And it wasn’t, it was years, I think, still until we put a reoccurring date night on our calendar. And we really don’t miss it. Um, if something happens where business wise, like I need to do something on that date night, um, which is every other Wednesday.

Then I move it one, you know, either Tuesday or Thursday, but we don’t miss it. And right now it could just be a lot of, uh, sitting on the couch, watching the show together because we’re exhausted by the end of the day, but still it’s these putting these things in your calendar that are for you. And you know that these building blocks of family are taken care of.

So that’s the second one, which is the scheduling your time idea from, from this high perspective of the whole entire year. The third one. is let’s zoom out or zoom in from this yearly and focus on this day to day. And I think this is the one that is a lot of carvers really struggle with. I think just people in general struggle with, and this is going to vary depending on your life, but I’m assuming maybe you have a partner, maybe you have some kids.

If you’re listening to this whole series on parenting. I almost guarantee that you’ve heard this saying, uh, that goes, life is not the amount of breaths you take, it’s the amount of moments to take your breath away. I like that sentiment behind this, but I really want to add to it. Our days to, our day to days really matter, and a great life is not, margaritas on the beach or vacations or looking forward for six months to this, like two weeks that you get off.

It’s how your partner meets you at the door. It is how you wake up next to each other. It’s how you go to bed with each other. It’s how it’s the, the dinner time around the table. It’s playing on the floor with your kids or like Right now my one daughter is all about putting dandelions in my back pocket for some reason, like she’s all about it.

And it’s sort of annoying, but it’s like these little things, like this is what life is made up of. Yes, the, the moments on the beach are these like punctuations to the, the really great sentences of your life, but it’s not, everything. I think if we give it some intention to these little things, like the time around, um, the time around your, uh, dinner table with your kids or whatever it is, I think that these are the things that if we just take out Um, uh, take a step out of the flow of things that you really get to see.

Like if you’ve ever been canoeing before, you don’t realize how fast you’re moving until you’re on the shore and you watch somebody else goes by, go by. That’s what the day is like. You’re just like up and you’re at it and you’re getting the kids out the door. And then they’re, then they’re, you know, Often you have this five hours or six hours or in my case, you know, my twins are in school Monday, Wednesday, Friday from basically nine to 12.

So I’ve got three hours Monday, Wednesday, Friday to do focused work. And it’s like, then you get them and you get them for naps and you get lunches and you get dinner and then there’s homework and then it’s up to bed. And it’s like, before you know it, it’s eight o’clock and you’re recording a podcast at eight 45 when it’s due the next day, right?

It’s wild. But if we just start putting some intention around these things, if we just step out of the flow that’s pushing us along and just focus on the people that we’re with, put the phone away, um, and just be at present with the people that we’re with. I think there’s some really fun ways to do this.

If you’ve got kids, um, this could be when you sit down, uh, if you’re not praying people, you could do this thing called high low buffalo, which is really silly. Cause I think the kids just think it’s hilarious. And I did this, you know, a couple of weeks ago for this men’s challenge thing that I’m in. And my kids have been asking about doing it regularly now.

High low Buffalo is you basically talk about what’s, what was one high from the day. So something that was awesome. That really was standout low is, a low for the day, something that was, you know, made you sad or made you upset or angry. Then Buffalo was something that’s like really silly or, um, kind of crazy that happened.

And so we’ve been doing that. Uh, we walked up to the pizza shop tonight and, and did a high low Buffalo there. And my daughter brought it up and it was hilarious. Playing with them is really sweet, but like, you know, the, the date nights with my wife, or, um, before we sit down to watch a movie saying, Hey, like we haven’t connected in a You know, in a while, uh, short of, you know, laying in bed next to each other, sleeping or, you know, getting the kids ready to do stuff.

So maybe before we watch this movie, we just talk for 20 minutes about what’s on our hearts or whatever it is. And there’s a million different ways. One of the ways that I’m implementing this now is whenever my kids come in here on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and they’re like, Hey, Dad, will you play with me?

I I’m really trying. to work on playing with them whenever they ask me, for however long they ask me. Because I know many reasons they’re not going to do this all the time. And granted, a lot of the times, I end up going out there sitting and playing a game for like 15 minutes. It’s 15 minutes that are so well spent because I’ve gotten a break from the work that I’m in and I am able to come back to it just a set of fresh eyes.

And I think the biggest change in this is that none of this could happen if I didn’t change like my identity and what I think I can do. And basically it came down to, I used to say back when I had my first daughter in daycare all the time, I couldn’t get it enough done. I’m, I’m so busy and I don’t have enough time.

And now I have changed that to, you know, and, and my twins obviously through the pandemic ha you know, when you have to find new ways through because the kids are home the whole time, my oldest daughter’s home the whole time and you have to find ways through, I’m so much more efficient now because I decided that.

I’m a dad who has time to play with his kids and be able to get focused work done versus before I had so much extra time and wasn’t able to get it all done because I was just distracting myself or not working hard enough or going out and eating at cafes. There’s a million different things, but I think it’s once you get focused on the things that matter to you and cut away all the extra stuff, that’s when you can really get work done.

You can really enjoy the fruits of that labor. I think Thinking about this whole thing, you know, the first one I said was money and really knowing your numbers so you can confidently say no. The second one is scheduling your time on this yearly basis. And the third one is, it’s going to look different for everybody.

You know, I know went over some of my things, but, um, it’s going to vary depending on the stage of your life you’re at, but it’s really being intentional with your day to day moments. Oh, one thing I forgot that I really like is this, um, this 90, 90, 90 rule where before. Anybody leaves the house or comes back you spend 90 seconds just connecting with them asking what their day is going to be like asking what you’re looking forward to when they get home or what they’re looking forward to or how their day was just these like short little bursts of 90 seconds when either somebody arrives back at the house or when you are sending them off and I love that one.

If there’s one thing that I Hope that you take from this episode. It’s this one last thing. And that’s that all these things that I’m talking about today is so you can get your time back. So you can get your creativity back and your, your focus and your joy back. Once these things that I’m talking about, about, um, figuring out your finances and time with your family on this like great, you know, large year scale and the small scale, once they’re taken advantage of, you have systems put in place so that this time.

doesn’t fall through the cracks. Your mind is going to be so much more free to be creative in your photography, to make important decisions in your business and to enjoy the fruits of your hard work with the people who mean the most to you. So implement some of these things. Tell me what you’re implementing, um, that is helping you out.

There are a million little things that I’m constantly tinkering with or adjusting. Um, but these are the three that have really helped me the most. So I hope that this has really been helpful for you today. This is all really tricky. And if you’re in this place now where you’re really trying to figure out how to marry your, uh, the life that you have in your business and the life you have outside of your business and try to get them to talk to each other, if you feel like you’re sacrificing your work and your personal life and your family life and your mental health and your physical health, that is what I’m here for.

Go to danielmorecoaching. com. You can click on coaching there. You can just get in touch with me from the contact form. But this is what I work with photographers on is allowing them to grow their business without sacrificing their personal and their family goals and their family time. Go there danielmorecoaching.com and reach out. We’ll talk then. Hope you enjoyed this episode. There’s something that you took away from it. Make it a great day and I will talk to you soon.