You want to start or grow a headshot photography business but you don’t have money. What do you do?

Well, first, you need a camera to take pictures, right? So you have no choice but to invest in a camera. Maybe you put that investment on a credit card.

Then you might invest time in learning how to use the camera.

You might invest time in learning how to light your subjects.

You might even invest in buying some equipment for lighting, a computer, and some hard drives. You know, the basics.

Down the road, you might realize that as you do retouching, you get more accurate using a Wacom tablet so you invest in one of those too.

I can think of very few businesses where an upfront investment isn’t necessary for the business to produce a product or service to then make money.

Because without the camera, you can’t take pictures. Without the computer, you can’t process the pictures. You get my point.

When you’re launching a business or trying to go from part-time to full-time, the return on your investment is slower BUT you need to have faith that there will be one if you put in the work.

💁🏼‍♀️Think of it this way.

If you want to open a restaurant, at the very minimum, you’d need to invest in a space, an oven, actually scratch that, a whole kitchen with all the tools and a dining area with tables and chairs right?

You can’t expect your restaurant to grow by buying just a stove, no dishwasher and one table with a couple of chairs. That simply doesn’t work.

The same goes for your photography business. Yet when it comes to investing in business and marketing, too many photographers don’t. They stop investing after buying all their technical gear.

You know you can’t make a living on just referrals alone right?

If you want to play in the big leagues, you need to invest in more than just equipment.

You’ll need to invest in a website. Even if you build it yourself, you’ll need to pay for hosting, possibly a template, and some software.

You’ll need to invest upfront in things like advertising and search engine optimization (SEO) for your website.

Perhaps you’ll need to invest in more education like a social media course (if you don’t know how to get clients organically through social media).

You can start with the basics, sure, but the old adage “it takes money to make money” is oh so true in our case. BUT don’t let that discourage you… keep reading.

Notice I never once used the word “pay”. As in, pay for a website or pay for SEO, because doing whatever it takes to become a business is partly a mindset shift.

It’s not about paying for necessary tools and thinking of them as costs. It’s truly about thinking of them as investments. Investments pay for themselves.

If you’re struggling with this idea, ask yourself 🤔how many clients you need to make back your investment.

Put a number on your goal and try to avoid that little scared voice inside of you that screams “no don’t do it!!” and charge forward. If you put your mind to it, if you’re all in, you’ll get there.

You probably know my story. When I first started out, after I sold my car, I invested the entire whopping $3,000 into my photography business to become full-time.

But that was just the beginning. A couple of years in, I invested another $15,000 on a new website, all kinds of tools, ads and marketing.

I didn’t have $15,000 to invest. I put it on a credit card. I was scared sh*tless but I did so believing I was all in and that if I wanted my freedom, to live life on my terms, I had no choice but to succeed.

And whew, I did. I figured it out.

I’m here to remind you, you can too.

Having a career in photography is NOT a pipe dream. Your market is NOT over-saturated. That’s your scared inner voice telling you lies.

Tell me your struggles below in the comments my friend.

Want to work together? Start here!