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Balancing Business & Family in Summer · Luxe & Legacy Podcast

Welcome to the Lux and Legacy Podcast.
I'm Marie from Marie Elizabeth Photography.
And I am Amber from Light Live in Photography.
We created this show for photographers who are ready to run a luxury business with clarity, intention, and elevated artistry.
Each week we uncover the strategies behind high level brands from shooting and styling to client communication, to marketing, to designing heirloom products that increase your value.
If you want to attract aligned clients, produce, work with a recognizable aesthetic and build a business that supports the life you want, this podcast will guide you there.
Let's dive in.
today, Amber and I are getting into something I know so many of you feel deeply, and that is how do you actually run a photography business when summer hits and your whole routine goes out the window? We're talking about what our summers actually look like and how we plan ahead so things don't fall apart.
And this makes it possible to show up for your family and your business without feeling like you're constantly dropping the ball.
So let's get into it This episode is definitely for the mamas because if you don't have kids your s summer schedule might not change all that much But when you have young ones at home and you have to figure out juggling work around them being home it can get a little bit complicated So I feel like summer for me doesn't really look super balanced in the traditional sense It definitely comes in bursts So there's different seasons here that clients usually want So we have dahlias we have lavender we can still do rose gardens But for outdoor sessions usually there's a season for certain things So what I do is I typically take time off in between those seasons and then condense clients into weeks like a week or two at a time where I have a lot of sessions whereas during the year I try to keep things just one session a week ideally one or two sessions a week For example I just took a full week off to go to Mexico with my family and it was like a family reunion with my husband's family and it was really nice I just really needed a reset and to just not think about work at all for a while I've also been dealing with pneumonia and things like that so I just really needed some time to just completely get rid of everything on my brain and spend time with the family But the reality of taking time off is coming home to a bit of a full plate So right now I'm jumping back into one of my seasonal bursts because lavender is in bloom right now and I was gone for a week This week I'm jumping into several client calls for ordering appointments and next week I also have four sessions which is definitely gonna be a lot for me personally But it's lavender season and I squeezed everything in so I'm just having to plan around that with childcare my husband's work schedule all of that So for me my summers are more like intense work blocks followed by intentional time off And I think it's important to say that because I used to think balance meant every week had to look the same and I had to be still busy all the time But summer has taught me that sometimes balance looks like giving your full attention to one thing at a time and then shifting Yeah, absolutely.
Summers are also very laid back in my business for me.
I'm still photographing sessions, but summer is typically the season where I'm doing the least amount of work possible.
My husband is a teacher, so he's home all summer, which you would think would make being a business owner easier, it actually makes it trickier in my household since he loves to plan activities for the whole family every day.
And this is a good thing for sure, but it definitely means that the business is completely pushed to the back burner in summer.
usually have a summer fun checklist of places we wanna go or activities we wanna try.
This can be anything from going to a local park we wanna explore or taking a day trip to a small town a couple hours away.
way, we usually plan to do one activity a day or at least a few times a week.
We usually will also end up going to the pool a few times a week.
Now, this doesn't interfere too much with sessions since I'm usually only photographing one or two sessions a week, and my outdoor sessions are either close to sunrise or sunset.
I'm someone who struggles when I'm outside of my normal routine, so summer can feel tricky for me since my schedule is usually different every day I don't have a lot of guaranteed work hours to get things done.
I do love exploring new places and activities with my kids, and I do feel fulfilled that I am giving them my all in summer.
Now, the extent of the work I do in summer is just maintaining my business at the minimal level.
I only work in my business, not on my business in summer.
So this means I am only doing normal client calls and photographing, editing sessions.
And talk about this a little later on, but I have batched blog posts in winter and spring to be scheduled all throughout summer into fall, so I don't even have to think about that part of my business.
I try to squeeze in about an hour of work a day, whether it be a client call, like an ordering appointment or just preparing a gallery.
I'll often do is if Zach, my husband, is driving us to one of our summer excursions, I'll bring my laptop and connect it to my phone's hotspot in the car so I work while we drive, so have the rest of the day completely free.
And this past week, two girls are in camp, my son's camp doesn't start until next week.
So I have really only worked about a solid hour or so each day.
After dropping the girls off at camp, my son and I will go to a local skate park where he bikes around.
We'll toss some balls, then maybe go to a local playground.
we plan for one main activity a day right now.
So one day we went to the local airport museum.
Another day we went to a restaurant for a nice lunch.
Today we got frozen yogurt.
So I'm squeezing in admin tasks when we're home, and usually we'll only have one or two calls a day.
But this is a season where family truly comes first I love that because really what's great about being a photographer is your business should work around your life not the other way around We should be setting up a schedule for ourselves that works for us and our family and that's why we became entrepreneurs right So mine is the opposite from Marie I still have a lot of work packed in but it's like I said before in bursts and when I have scheduled time off with my family I'm fully focused on the family and then I have one or two weeks of work packed into there so what my daily schedule looks like though on a week where I have work my older son has swim team so that's our main thing this summer We don't have a lot of day camps because we planned a lot of trips this summer We have Mexico and Hawaii and camping which I'm really excited about but it made it just so we just were like we'll just keep the kids home and deal with that around work So in the morning my husband he usually works remotely most four days a week he works remote So he is takes some time off work to take the kids to the pool and I use that pocket of time for consult calls So that works great because his swim team's at 930 and I usually start taking client calls around 930 between 930 and 12 so that's when I'm doing either consult calls for new clients or ordering appointments for sessions that are finished And I'm really lucky that I have my mom close by I know not everyone is that blessed We moved here really because of my mom that's It's really nice to have someone that can take the kids a couple days a week She doesn't do fulltime care or anything like that but she will take them for a few hours a couple days a week and that really gives me a good amount of time to work or get things done emails and things like that And I didn't feel like we really had to do the day camps all day because also between my husband and my mom and the kids are actually at a sweet age right now My youngest is almost seven I can't believe it and my oldest is 11 already It goes so fast you guys But they're at that age where honestly they don't need a lot of handholding for anything They can go play Legos or draw they can ent entertain themselves for a couple hours if I need to work and yes I do get interrupted which is a little bit hard But it's a lot easier now that they're not toddlers So I do have that advantage as well in not having to like book intense care for them around from 900 to 300 to get work done And yes I will admit I let them play video games or watch a show while I'm getting some work done There's no shame in that in the summertime I did it as a kid And I think it's okay to let them have some screen time while mom gets a little bit of work done and then have them go do activities in the afternoon Another thing that really helps is swapping time with friends So I have a friend that lives up the street with kids similar age One's a little bit older but we'll swap a couple hours here and there her kids can come play at my house and I'll watch them and then my kids can go play at her house and she'll watch them And then the kids are more entertained because they're playing with each other so it's even less work for mama when the kids have someone over to hang out with And then it also gives us each some quiet time to do whatever tasks we need to get done She works on her husband's business as well so she kinda does the same squeezing in work where she can as I do So it works out I highly recommend if your kids are at an age where they're easy enough to kinda swap a little bit of childcare time with friends And honestly the other tip that I have and we've talked about this in a full outsourcing episode before if you want a whole lot of detail around it But outsourcing in the summer is so great and that includes both outsourcing for editing So a few things that I use for editing to speed up my time I use Imagen to get my edits pretty close to the colors that I want it's been getting even better now that I've been using it for a while It gets it real close so I only have to do some really minor tweaks in Lightroom The thing that takes me a long time is removing people and distractions in the background especially if it's at a rose garden or something like that So when I take my trips I just don't wanna be stressed out about getting behind on editing so that's when I'll usually outsource Like last week I outsourced a couple of sessions for the Photoshop parts where people in the background need to be removed or a little bit of liquify here and there sometimes Evoto that's another tool that I use for really quickly doing a light skin smoothing and making it more beautified I would say quickly And that does get rid of the hair frizzies but it doesn't always do 100 Sometimes you have to go into Photoshop and really make sure that it doesn't look wonky on the edges So that's something that I had my Photoshop editor do So they don't do the full edit but more like the final touches and that's really the part that can get to me It gets tedious and it's not my favorite part anyway So I highly recommend outsourcing someone for that And the last thing I outsource is grocery shopping If I could do laundry I would do that as well Wouldn't that be great to have someone just come over and just do the laundry But the one thing that I feel like saves a lot of time for the cost the delivery cost yes there's a monthly fee for the Instacart app yes but I feel like that fee really outweighs what the time that I save and that I can actually focus more on my business if I'm not driving to the store picking out all the items checking out driving back Like it's at least a full hour of time So I feel like that 15 or whatever it is that I spend on the fees is worth it to save me that time in the summer and just be able to spend time more intentionally either working or with my kids so those are just a few tips that I have for working as a mama in the summertime and trying to squeeze things in really the cheapest way possible the other thing that I do and Marie is really smart to preplan all of her blog posts and all of that That's That would be the ideal thing But if you didn't do that and you're like Oh I still wanna get some blogs up but I just don't have time with the kids I do highly recommend a VA And you can get a find a VA for whatever amount of time you want really There's people who are working remotely and will either take on a oneoff job or right now I have a VA who's doing just five hours a week for me cause that's really all I need right now Sometimes I do 10 hours a week But the gal I have right now she has four kids she works from home so she's happy to just take on really small projects that are just five hours a week And you can have your VA work on your blogs or some content Run ads for you if that's something that you like to do for me it's more on the education side because that takes up a lot of my time and it's there's a lot of back end book like bookkeeping and admin tasks preparing for my sales that are coming up Like I have a big summer sale on all my courses coming up for July 4th so right now she's working on all of that stuff But even if you don't have an education part of your business having someone that can just stay on top of all the admin things just a few hours a week even can be really lifechanging for a mom that has especially if you have really young kids at home and you just don't have that much time to work but you need to keep your business going with traffic if you completely stop for the summer it could impact your fall bookings so you definitely wanna keep going with your Instagram posts and your blogs on a as much of a regular basis as you can while still being intentional with your kids at home Yeah, I love that you also have your boys play video games or have some screen time when you have your work because that is currently what my son is doing as I record this podcast episode.
He loves when I have meetings, No shame at all in that I think that kids deserve some off time in the summer too Yes.
And that's like when I'm not having that like hour block of work time, I am Trying to make summer as fun as possible for my kids.
And my son and I, we already had our frozen yogurt date today, and so he loves his opportunity to just sit down and relax.
and so you brought up a few other things I'm gonna touch on, but basically we...
And Amber kinda started talking about this, but we wanna share how we recommend that you plan summers out in advance.
the biggest takeaway that I want you to leave with is the word advance here, because it's really hard to juggle everything when your su- schedule suddenly changes for an entire season.
So it's important to think ahead and know exactly what going to look like with your kids at home, things just, off the normal routine.
So the first thing I do is I have my vacation days mapped out in advance, and I know, Amber, you've talked about this before as well.
I don't wanna get any client calls or sessions scheduled, and so it's easy to let life happen to you instead of taking the reins yourself.
So it's easy to let sessions or meetings creep up, and then you're in a pinch scheduling, whether it be a new session or family time.
The last thing I want is for my family, the ones who I built this business for, want them to get pushed aside for a or ordering appointment.
And this also applies to your working hours in summer.
You want this mapped out and noted in your scheduling calendar before summer hits.
You might take off Mondays and Fridays or just have a couple working days or hours.
Maybe your hours change to later in the afternoon.
No matter what, you want this figured out beforehand so you're not scrambling, feeling frazzled in the moment.
And the next thing I do is batch all blog posts.
So blogging is an important part of SEO, or search engine optimization, and since most of my clients find me via SEO, I wanna make sure that it's still up and working and serving me in summer, even when I'm not working.
My blog posts are only scheduled to post every other week, so if I write one blog post per week in winter and spring, I'll usually have them all scheduled to post consistently in summer.
So I'm not touching my blog at all.
And then, Amber, you're reminding me about social media.
And so I still post on social media in summer.
It's not too much work for me.
But something I just did, that we'll have to chat more about maybe in a later episode, I live right by a major university, and if you live near any kind of- college or university, there are some pretty good opportunities there.
So what I did was I reached out to their school of business and basically said, "I'm a local business, and I'm ba- wondering if you have any students that would be interested in an internship."
They had this whole website where you can post jobs or internships, and so I currently have a social media intern.
And so she is working a couple hours a week for me, and it's an internship, so she's a student, and she's amazing, first of all.
And I'm not investing as much as I would if I hired a professional social media agency.
But she's very adept at latest trends.
And so anyway, if you've seen any reels posted by me, they're her.
Oh my gotta go check them out I've been off of my Instagram pretty much all week so I'm excited to see yeah I've been thinking about having someone for helping me with reels too I'm really great at posting my creative shoots and my my carousel posts do very well But creating reels is something that if I'm m gonna make a reel I want it to be really good I don't do them very often because I if it's gonna be just a boring reel I'm like What's the point rather do a carousel and get really high engagement So I've been thinking about having someone to do some more creative reels that are just done really well And the kids these days they it's like their natural sixth sense I know.
And it, she has studied my engagement and and I'm learning from her.
So she's laying a blueprint for me.
I don't know how long I'm gonna have her.
It's very sustainable because she's only working a couple hours a week and she's an intern.
So I want her to stay.
But I was always one of those students who I could learn exactly what the teacher wanted, and this is that skill in action.
Seeing her lay out the this process I'm learning more about how my brand can show up in this way.
Anyway, it doesn't need to be...
Like, you don't need to hire someone to grow your following or anything like that.
You could reach out to a local college or university to get an intern just to post once or twice a week for you in summer so you don't have to even think about it.
So that's also something.
It wouldn't be a huge investment, and it's a way to maintain your business.
And hey, these young Gen Z-ers know a lot more than I do about this kind of thing, so it might very well grow your following or your engagement.
And Yeah but to even just to keep up with it for the summer to make sure that traffic is continuing to flow And Instagram does punish you quote unquote if you take too much time off of it completely It does lower the amount of people that it sends your posts out to So the less you use the app it is like either you go snowball in in the negative direction or you snowball in the positive direction So if you're not gonna be on there much in the summer it is good to at least have someone doing keeping up with it and it probably will grow your following But most importantly it's gonna continue your bookings from it That's the most important thing.
A following doesn't do anything for you unless people who are following you book you, right? I, and I knew that I didn't want to devote...
For me, it would take hours to come up with reels each week, and it would just be a time-waster since I didn't, going to research what was trending and spend a lot of time making these videos.
But by seeing my intern do it, I'm learning a lot more.
And so I knew this is something that I don't wanna invest a lot of money in right now, but it's something that my business could use a little oomph.
And so I highly recommend it.
She's amazing.
These young kids, man, they know social media.
So lastly, my summers are definitely slower session-wise.
I photograph less sessions, and in spring I photograph more sessions than normal, so it evens out in the long run.
Now, if you're thinking, "All of what you said is great, but I didn't plan out my summer calendar in advance, and right now I'm just treading water," would say just focus on the necessities.
Just focus on taking care of your current clients, posting the bare minimum on social media.
you're overbooked, just raise your prices.
That's a very easy fix.
It's a great sign that you're working too much.
Your family comes first, and that'll just help get you through the end of summer.
But otherwise, maintain your business.
No need to grow it, just get things done to keep it chugging along.
Definitely And as my kids are getting older and I've been doing this for pretty much their whole lives I've learned too that summer is something that I need to start protecting more of So having the completely intentional time off is important for me in several times during the summer completely disconnecting from the business which is something that in the past I've struggled to do So that's what I'm working on this summer because the work will always be there but our kids won't always be this little And I think that what summer reminds me of every year it's okay if my business looks a little different in the summer It's okay if growth slows for a minute Sometimes the important thing is you can build in this season is memories Absolutely.
Okay, we hope this encouraged you to give yourself some grace this summer and to build a business that supports your life, not the other way around.
We'll see you next time Thank you so much for spending time with us today on the Luxe and Legacy Podcast.
We love being part of your journey as you build a luxury photography business that feels aligned and elevated.
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