Scaling your photography business?

We’ve got you covered with some quick tips for your growing business.

A few key moves at this point in your business will save hours of headache (and money) later.

• Do an audit on your systems and habits:

  • Are you keeping your business and personal finances separate? If you’ve been sloppy in this area, spend a couple of hours tightening things up. If you have an assistant or a bookkeeper, rely on their help in making sure all business income and expenses are coming in and out of your business account.

  • Do you have everything in one place? If it feels like things are falling through the cracks now, making more money will not fix this. A scaled business = scaled problems. Get organized NOW - if you’ve been using a spreadsheet or paper/pen, now is a good time to get set up with a software like Quickbooks. Hire a pro if you’ve tried it before with no success - it will save hours of troubleshooting.

  • Do you have a team in your corner? A good CPA and a good bookkeeper will enable you to focus on your growth without financial headaches holding you back.

• Plan for taxes.

  • When you have a high growth year, you will feel it when tax time comes around. Get proactive by setting aside money every month to save for taxes.

  • Keep excellent financial records so that you can strategically plan ahead for taxes. Also, engage a good CPA to help with tax planning so that there are no big surprises at the end of the year. They will guide you on key moves that will reduce tax liability and spread things out throughout the year.

• Keep a close eye on your cash flow.

  • If it feels like you are always running short of money at the end of the month, you have a cash flow problem. The fluctuating nature of a photographer’s income can cause a lot of stress. Plan ahead by building up a savings account for those low income months.

  • Open a savings account and transfer a portion of each sale to this account to save for taxes and pay yourself.

  • Watch out for your owner’s draw. This can be a silent drain on cash flow. A few swipes of the business card for personal expenses here and there can really add up. Be careful not to pay yourself more than your business can support. As you are scaling, there may be a year or two that are really tight due to larger investments. Anticipate this with a spending and savings plan.

  • Monitor your spending. We recently did a deep dive into our expenses and discovered an area that had been slowly eating away at our profit for a few months - it wasn’t until we did some year to year comparisons that some budget cuts became apparent.

See more resources for photographers: click here.