As a photographer, do you often find yourself working on weekends and evenings?

With the exception of juggling two jobs until photography becomes your full time job (like I am now with teaching and shooting), just because you’re a business owner, doesn’t mean you HAVE to work your butt off to make money.

And yet, time management seems to be the number one struggle with working photographers and the number one question I get about how I manage my time.

Time management is partly boundaries and partly systems.

Let’s talk boundaries first.

I suggest setting hard as stone boundaries not to answer any emails/calls after 5, 6 or 7:00 PM (whatever is your usual quitting time) and on weekends and holidays.

To do this easily, make sure you have an outgoing email auto-responder spelling out your boundaries, your business hours, and holiday exceptions.

This way you set expectations and look like a pro instead of someone who takes too long to get back to people.

If and when you get calls after hours that you pick up because you were expecting a call from someone else, you may politely say something like “so nice to hear from you but I’m off work now and not at my desk, do you mind if I call you back during my business hours tomorrow?”

Sounds scary to say that?

It actually works in your favor my friend.

Because when you handle yourself like a true business, your clients automatically come at you with a whole new appreciation for what you do.

You won’t scare or lose clients this way. You’ll get better clients who will treat you with the same respect you treat yourself with.

Try it. You won’t regret it.

Next, let’s talk systems.

The key here is automation and scheduling.

If you’ve worked with me, you know that I’m a big fan of CRMs. Customer relationship management softwares.

CRMs allow you to automate the daily, tedious, time sucking tasks like sending confirmation emails, booking documents, reminders and more.

Using a CRM is a HUGE time saver. It’s like having your own assistant doing the things you would normally have to do manually.

If you don’t already have one, check out 17Hats. 👈Using my affiliate link gets you 50% off your first year and trust me, it’s worth it.

Last but not least scheduling.

Did you know that I only shoot two days a week?

Since I work in a high volume industry where I need to shoot 4 clients (or rather, I charge enough to only have to shoot 4 clients a week😉), but I don’t want to work nights and weekends, I schedule weekly shoot days, content creation days, and marketing days. 

For example, Wednesdays and Thursdays are my shoot days. That’s when I stack my four shoots.

If I’m working on-site for a corporate shoot, and need to shoot on another day based on my clients’ availability, I simply block off a Wed. or a Thurs. so it doesn’t get booked.

Because my hard rule is to shoot only two days a week.

Then,  Mondays Tuesdays and Fridays are my email/call days, my content creation days, my marketing days and my errand/doc appointment days so I run less errands on weekends.

I often batch my blogs on one day, schedule them on another. I create content on one day and edit them on another etc.

With this schedule I’m able to get to work by about 11:00 AM (because I tend to like my sleep and late morning exercise) and be done by 7:00 PM.

And of course, I’m not perfect. So there are days I’m not able to stick to my schedule and I fall behind, and need to make up time, and that’s okay. Give yourself some grace when you can’t always stick to your schedule. Life happens.

That’s a 40 hour work week without the need to work on nights and weekends… unless of course you’re working on building a digital course like I am, then yes you’re working on weekends!

Speaking of which, Headshot Academy will be released soon. If you’re not already, get on the wait-list here.

In the meantime, I suggest implementing boundaries and systems that are sustainable for you so you prevent burnout and have time for the rest of your life!

Tell me in the comments below your biggest struggle with time management in your business.👇