Learn 14 Practical Tips from Katelyn James
I used to spend 24 hours hopping from doing mom’s duties to working on clients’ projects without getting anything 100% done.
Then, I learned how to break up the two worlds from the established “photographer mom” in business (Katelyn James). I now get things 100% done without feeling burned out.
I am going to share with you the 14 powerful lessons I learned from Katelyn James that have changed my life as a working mom:
- Decide What is Important for YOU
Dirty dishes, play dates, meal prep, scheduling meetings with clients, editing photos, creating social media posts …
They are all calling for your attention. Which should you do first?
You are the only one who can decide.
Everything seems genuinely important, but only one thing is PRIORITY. The priority comes before other things, and it’s given the best time of the day.
As a mom, caring for your kids is the top priority (especially if they are still young). How do you fit your work in?
Katelyn James perfectly explains how to set priorities as a working mom:
“I look at my life and set priorities for life and work… in that order.”
She recounts how she said yes, yes, yes… to every job and then tried to fit her family into any space work left. The result wasn’t great.
She got burned out from struggling with running her photography business and being a mom. Her solution was to prioritize her and her family’s well-being and fit work around that.
If you are in the hustling stage of your career, you might be focused on hitting your financial milestones. That’s fine!
Katelyn describes a healthy way to do it. She recommends looking at your calendar and blocking out specific hours or days for your life and family time.
“It’s saying, maybe one weekend a month, I just wanna do a Sunday wedding and not a Saturday wedding…because I want to be at the soccer games…”
Katelyn explains that setting your priorities allows you to be in control without having “mom guilt”.
- Outsource and Delegate (You can’t do it all)
I’m fully booked!
This is every photographer’s dream sentence. How about handling expectations from multiple clients without getting frustrated?
Delegating and outsourcing aspects of your work creates more time for you to focus on the most important stuff.
Katelyn James recommends outsourcing your editing while creating time to take on more clients. That is, if hitting a financial milestone is your goal.
She recalled how she wouldn’t let anyone touch her pictures or do the editing. She believed no one could edit the pictures the way she did.
She explained how one piece of advice from her mentor changed her mindset about delegating and outsourcing:
Her mentor asked her, “What is the price tag on having beautiful memories of you and your husband before you have kids? What would you pay for that?”
She thought about paying someone $300 to edit a gallery of pictures to buy more family time. She immediately realized $300 wasn’t too much to sacrifice to spend time with the ones she loved.
She worked hard to find a good photo editor that matched her style.
The bottom line is to outsource what you don’t have to do and focus on the stuff that brings you more money.
- Set Realistic Expectations
Setting realistic expectations helps you keep your energy high while balancing mom life and business life.
Look at your schedule and set realistic expectations for your work and family.
“If you are in full control of your kids for the whole day, know what you can realistically achieve.”
Katelyn explains how she would start the day on a high note, excited about all the things she would achieve, then get frustrated when she couldn’t achieve everything.
Instead, she decided to accept that she could only achieve a few things at a time with the kids. That’s fine, too.
Every day won’t be a high-performance day.
- Reevaluate Your Expectations with Your Current Season
Motherhood is a lifelong journey of learning and adapting.
If you worked 5 hours a day with one grown child, things would be different with a newborn. Don’t compare how things grew before you had kids and now that you do.
You are a different person now. Things are different, and that is fine.
Katelyn recalled how she couldn’t do anything immediately after having her first baby. It took her some time to catch up, but she wouldn’t trade the moments she shared with her adorable daughter.
She advises moms to “…be realistic about what you can actually get accomplished, so you don’t have a meltdown…”
- Create a Support System or a Community of Like-Minds if You Have No Money
Delegating and outsourcing are great ways to take some things off your plate. So that you can have more time for your family and, most importantly, work.
What if you can’t afford it?
I understand that there are seasons in a photographer’s life when you are trying to get things off the ground. You may not have enough to hire someone, but you can explore other options.
Katelyn James talked about other options, like:
- Rotating kids’ watch/playtime with family or friends.
- Have your partner watch the kids in their free time.
- Getting other photographer friends to help out with tasks.
Another cost-effective option is getting an apprentice to help with little tasks while they learn.
6. Prioritize Alone Times
This is one of the little things with a big impact.
Prioritizing alone time for personal care/work brings freshness. An 1-hour alone to complete a task undisturbed can make such a big difference for you and your family.
Imagine a white space. Yeah, it brings that sought of clarity.
Katelyn James explains that she is a more joyful photographer and mom when she takes alone time to check something off her to-do list.
That sense of accomplishment sparks joy. Even if it is completing a small task like arranging photos in a gallery.
7. Break up the two worlds
Most photographer moms want to give 50% to work and the other 50% to the family. While I understand your quest for achieving balance, it doesn’t quite work like this.
Look at it, both worlds will be missing 50%.
From Katelyn James’s experience, I’ll advise you to segment some time to be a great mom (give it 100%). You likewise segment some time to be a great photographer (give it another 100%).
In the end, you have a whole family and a thriving business. This is what I am currently trying.
In her words, “break up the two worlds”.
“…Can we have a successful business with boundaries and a thriving personal life that is not demanded by the business?”
This might appear impossible to achieve. Following tips like:
- Delegating
- Outsourcing
- Having alone time
- And setting realistic expectations
All these tips will help you give 100% to these important aspects of your life.
8. Work with the Dynamics that Each Day Brings
Being a mom in business is different, and so is every day.
No two days are the same in a mom’s life. On one day, things are perfect – the kids played carefully and took a long nap afterward…
On another day, the kids are asking for snacks for the 11th time in one day, screaming for no good reason, etc.
It is important to understand that every day brings a unique set of challenges for a photographer mom. The goal is not to curse the low-achieving days. It is to leverage the high times and work around the low times realistically.
Katelyn says, “I set out with things I want to accomplish, then all of a sudden, someone wants to nurse when they are not supposed to nurse. I am learning to evaluate my expectations and catch myself when I am making these expectations”.
9. Decide the Image of Motherhood You Want to Paint for Your Kids
Every mom (especially photographers) wants to help their kids capture a beautiful image of motherhood.
You don’t want your kids to see you struggle, burnt out, and completely frustrated trying to do this work and parenting thing.
They are in the same environment as you. They can sense it when you are struggling or appear to be simply tired of them. That’s not how you want your kids to see you.
Being a working mom can be overwhelming. You are tired. Yes, I get it.
Finding how to work around all the stuff you have to do while maintaining your joy is equally important. A joyful mom makes a joyful home.
Katelyn advises, “The best way to remain joyful as a mom in business is to set realistic expectations of what you can get accomplished that day…”
Accomplishment brings joy and fulfillment that you can easily transfer to your environment.
10. Leverage In-between Moments
In-between moments are the best times to accomplish tiny goals. Tiny goals like responding to emails, having a quick chat, responding to comments, etc.
Avoid spending your in-between moments thinking about all the stuff you couldn’t achieve. Leverage that time to cross little things off the sheet.
Katelyn James gives an example of accomplishing some tasks when her kids went on a trip to get some ice cream.
11. Find Something in Your Business that Only You Can Do
There is something in your business that only you can do. Maybe you have mastered helping people strike the best poses, or you are the only one who can coach like YOU.
Whatever it is, find it.
Finding what only you can do and leaning towards that one thing will help you grow your photography business (while maintaining peace).
According to Katelyn James:
“Whether you’re a solo wedding photographer or running a growing brand—there’s one role in your business that can’t be outsourced.
That is what you should lean into. That’s where your magic lives.”
Focusing more on the one thing only you can do (getting better at it) while delegating other stuff is the most realistic way to thrive as a mom in business.
12. Celebrate the Wins
Wins are wins. A small win here, a small win there, they are all wins.
Celebrating small wins provides a sense of accomplishment while helping you build momentum for bigger wins. Most importantly, it helps you to be joyful.
The goal is to recognize these wins and celebrate them as wins.
Katelyn James explains how excited she was to make her first hire. Getting someone who could edit pictures just the way she would. It didn’t give her instant $ 100,000, but it was a win for her.
“I worked hard to find someone who could edit just the way I did, and I was excited I found someone.”
13. Set Boundaries with Technology
As a mom, you are already struggling to create a balance between your work and family life. Adding something unproductive into the mix might further steal your time.
Technology (AI, social media, etc.) might be causing more harm than good. You might feel like you have only a little time to combine caring for your family and work.
It will surprise you to discover how much time you can free up when you set boundaries with social media.
Have you ever calculated how much time you spend scrolling Instagram and screenshoting pictures you’ve never recreated?
Little things like this steal a lot of time. Cutting down on scroll/binge time will buy you more time to spend doing your work or being present for your family.
Katelyn James had to quit Instagram for a month to buy more time for her work and family.
“I quit Instagram… I realized that the scarcity of time I often felt was, in part, self-inflicted”.
She also emphasized that, apart from getting distracted, keeping up with other people’s lives can spring up a sense of jealousy and competition in you.
It also distracts you from focusing on yourself (the most important factor) instead on a couple of other people you don’t even know.
14. Don’t Forget to Live in the Moment
There are different seasons in life as a mom in business.
There are seasons when you can’t work during specific hours of the day, seasons when you can’t compromise your weekends, etc.
The goal is for you to figure out the season you are in as a photographer mom in business. Then, set achievable goals around your current season.
Once you understand and accept what you can accomplish in this specific season of your life, it is time to set expectations for your clients.
Let your clients know how and when you can work. Maybe your turnaround time for a project is within one week.
You only want to sign clients who understand your situation/what you can deliver. That way, you underpromise and overdeliver on tasks.
In Katelyn’s words; Set yourself up for success.
“I check my emails 3 times per week…If you email me on Monday, I will respond on Wednesday.”
This removes unrealistic expectations from you.
Wrapping it Up
Many moms talk about merging life as a mom and work as a photographer.
Juggling the stress of motherhood with the demands of growing a business. The truth is – YOU need help.
Do you feel like it is too much risk to delegate/ outsource? Maybe get a babysitter or hire an assistant?
I think the biggest risk here, says Katelyn James, is to give 50% to my work and 50% to my kids, but no one is getting the full, best version of me.
Your kids are getting a stressed-out business owner, and your business is getting a stressed-out mom.
The goal is to find some space to give yourself solely to parenting and solely to your business. It is a beautiful divide.
Trying to combine the two while telling yourself that you don’t need help makes everything super stressful.
Do you know the beautiful thing about clearing things up and finding space to thrive in both worlds?
It is that your family will see a joyful mom thriving in her life, purpose, and business. That’s genuinely beautiful.
I feel like this resonates with you on different levels. If it did, please leave a comment that can help other moms thrive.