Hey Photographers! It’s been years since I first walked away from my full-time job and entered the world of full-time self-employment. Since then, our photography business has grown, and we began the Hunter and Sarah Photography Apprenticeship, a program where we train newer photographers in their photography and business.

 

After running the program for a couple of years now, several of our Apprentices have made — or are currently making — the transition from successful side-hustle into full-time professional photographer. Not only have we made that transition ourselves, but now that we’ve helped others make it too, we feel like we have a lot of wisdom to share! That’s why, over the next several weeks, we’re going to be writing a blog series all about quitting your day job and becoming a full-time wedding photographer! And even if full-time isn’t the goal (or it isn’t the goal yet), we still think the tips will help you grow your business!

 

 

Make the Leap, Part 2: Build a Strong Personal Financial Foundation

 

Last week, Sarah and I shared about how important it is to build consistency in your brand, your shooting/editing, and in your client experience. Without that, it’ll be nearly impossible to build the momentum you need in your business to quit. In fact, without consistency, it’s hard to even convince others you’re a professional!

 

This week, we’re totally switching gears into something Sarah and I have never shied away from talking about: personal finances. In his famous life-changing book, Total Money Makeover, personal finance guru Dave Ramsey lays out a pretty simple principal: in America, financial wisdom is not the norm. Reckless spending, mountains of high-interest credit card debt, and living beyond our means is. So if you want to quit your job and exchange a stable paycheck (if you’re privileged enough to have one) for your own business, it’s crucial that you begin with a firm foundation. And in this case, having your personal finances in order is that foundation!

 

 

1. Why You Need a Personal Budget to Quit Your Job

Whether you know it or not, you’re living on a budget right now. How much you earn and how much you spend each month IS your personal budget. The problem with most of us is that we have no idea how much one (or both) of these numbers are. If you’re asking yourself, “When can I quit my job and do photography full time?”, one of the questions you’re really asking yourself is, “How much does my photography business need to make each month in order to support my lifestyle so I can quit my job, and get rid of what is, right now, my primary income?”

 

Obviously, it’s going to be REALLY hard to answer that question if you have no idea how much you make or spend each month! You already have spending habits. Why not write them down, and figure out if you like them or not? We’ve walked through the budgeting process with friends and family members a bunch of times. What we found with ourselves and what we almost always find with friends is this: what you say your priorities are and what your spending shows your priorities are are not always aligned.

 

 

If you say that your number one priority is saving money so you can quit your job and start your business, but your budget shows only $150 per month going into savings while you spend $500+ at bars and restaurants with friends, then your lack of a budget has allowed you to lie to yourself. If you say giving to your church or another charitable organization is your top priority, but your budget shows you spend double what you give on clothes, video games, or some other hobby, you’ve got a problem! And if you’re spending more than you’re making each month (barring some emergency or job loss), then your top priority is living your current lifestyle, even if it means going into debt!

 

I know that may have been a little direct (and maybe hit close to home for some of you), but it’s impossible to take control of your personal finances without making a budget. And if you’re serious about personal finance (or you’re trying to do the most while making the least), it’ll require not only making a budget (a road map for your monthly spending), but actually following it and filling it out each month! If you need help on the practicals of this, check out this blog called, “Make a Budget and Stick To It” that we wrote a few years back.

 

 

2. Don’t Forget About Expenses, Taxes, and Benefits

Once you’ve made yourself a budget and know how much you need to make, the financial questions surrounding quitting your job become much simpler. Say your current take-home pay from your job is $3,000/mo (that’s the number that hits your bank account after your employer withholds taxes). And say you’re living off of $2,500/mo and putting another $500 into your savings or into a retirement fund. Now you have a starting point for how much your business needs to make! But don’t be fooled. This doesn’t mean you need to make $3,000/mo in your business. In fact, you may need to make as much as double or even triple that.

 

There are three other things to think about when considering your business’ finances. What are your monthly expenses each month? How much will you have to pay in taxes each month? And what other benefits will your business need to cover once you quit your job? We could write an entire blog series about just these three things, so this is going to be a super brief introduction. But it should get you thinking!

 

 

Your business expenses are anything you spend money on to keep your business running. This includes everything from new camera gear, your software subscription to Adobe Lightroom, the fees you paid an accountant to file your business taxes, and the coffee you bought for you and your client when you sat down to chat about their wedding timeline. Likewise, knowing how much you’ll owe in taxes each quarter to the state and federal governments is also really important! We go over both of these topics more in depth in our Blog Series, “How to Officially Start a Photography Business”, and here are the sections on Tracking Expenses and Taxes.

 

Finally, something that a lot of new business owners forget about are benefits. If you make $36,000 each year from your current job plus benefits (health insurance, dental insurance, a retirement plan like a 401k, a free gym membership, etc.), don’t forget to account for all of those items too! If you aren’t under the age of 26 and on your parents’ health insurance, and you aren’t married to someone who gets health insurance through their work, you’ll be on your own once you quit. So you’ll have to factor that cost in as well!

 

So if you’re currently living off of $3,000 per month, plus you’ll have $1,500 per month in business expenses, plus you estimate you’ll owe $1,000 in state and federal taxes, plus you’ll pay another $1,000 for your own health insurance, that means your business will need to make $6,500 per month for you to live off of it! Clearly, the more you make from your current job and the better your benefits are, the harder it will be for your photography business to ever fully replace your “W2” job.

 

We had an apprentice once who was in college and dreamed of being a full-time photographer one day. But when she graduated and was offered a position with a tech company making almost $100,000 per year plus great benefits, we knew that she would have to really LOVE photography and loathe her software job — or be massively successful and in-demand as a photographer — if she was ever going to make the leap. Our guess is that photography will always be a fun, slightly-profitable side-hustle for her. Which is totally okay, because that’s what she wants right now!

 

 

3. Pay Off Debt Like Your Business Depends On It (Because It Does)

The last step to building a strong personal finance foundation is paying off debt. If you’re spending hundreds of dollars each month paying back debt, quitting your job and depending full-time on your photography business for income will only be more stressful! We recommend that you use the “in-between time” to aggressively pay off debt. That “in-between time” is the time when you’re still making money from your current job, but are also starting to make money in your photography business.

 

We’ll chat more about what it looks like to hustle in this “in-between time” in Part 4 of this series. But whether you’re making extra money from your photography business or not, it’ll take considerable effort and discipline to pay off debt, especially if you want to do it early. That’s why in 2019, we wrote an entire series called “Crush the Debt“! In it, we tell the story of how Sarah and I paid off $27,000 in student loans in the first 19 months of our marriage. During those first two years, we were making less than $50,000 per year in our full-time jobs, running an intentionally-unprofitable photography business (more on that in Part 3), putting away thousands into our emergency fund and retirement accounts, and giving thousands more to our church and other charitable causes we were passionate about.

 

I say all that not to toot our own horns, but to share that even if you aren’t making much — $25,000 per year for each of us certainly isn’t much to write home about for college grads with degrees in Biomedical Engineering and Political Science — and you have considerable debt, this is still doable. But it takes a budget, determination, and some serious will-power. But if you’re dreaming of being your own boss, running your photography business full-time, and enjoying all the perks that come with being self-employed, it is oh-so worth it!

 

 

Thanks for reading! Next week we’re going to dive into what it looks like to run a photography business while working a full-time job. But in the meantime, start putting together that budget!

 

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Check out the other segments in this blog series!

• Make the Leap Part 1: Establish Consistency in Your Business
• Make the Leap Part 2: Build a Strong Personal Financial Foundation
• Make the Leap Part 3: Build Your Arsenal of Gear (Debt-Free!)
• Make the Leap Part 4: Get BUSY
• Make the Leap Part 5: How to Know If You’re Ready to Quit Your Job

 

Want More?

 

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