Seed Planting for the Creativepreneur
I am almost giddy to be typing a blog post. This is really where photography all started for me, 15 years ago. Back when blogging was for the love of writing and dreaming, and analytics were so hard to track we didn’t care (or know) if anyone besides our mom was even paying attention.
So here are some year end thoughts for my fellow creatives and entrepreneurs, since you all became the clients I get to work with and for- and love!
First of all, look how far you’ve come! Do you remember this time last year? If we created together since then, I hope the months have moments in between have been filled with realizations of a dream, one pixel at a time. Sometimes creative work feels like a scratch off card, and we are buffing away at the surface to see the masterpiece being revealed.
As for next year, one of the greatest lessons I’ve learned for life and business this year has to do with my backyard bushes, and this is what I’ve come here to share with you.
We are not yard people. We used to use the "young parent” excuse, being the only non-empty nesters on our cul-de-sac, but 10 years have passed and I think the excuse has been stretched far enough. So this summer I noticed a small pallet of young plants at Home Depot, thought to myself “I wonder how many of those I would need to plant a wall in my back yard?”, and proceeded to load up 26 bushes onto two flatbed carts. Luckily my mom was with me, and we shoved our way up to the register where a man with wide-eyes asked if I was taking them home to my husband to plant. Not that he wouldn’t have helped, but he was recovering from a torn ACL, so I kindly replied I’d be taking it on myself. Fast forward a few hours, and the entire Taylor Swift Tortured Poets Department later, and those babies were planted.
So here’s what I learned:
After years and years of hoping and planning for something along the back of our yard, I finally just did it. And now that I have to wait two years to see it grow into what I hope it will become, I only wish I had done it sooner.
I am beginning to see my business through this lens- my landscaper lens because now I AM a landscaper too- and I’ll share the questions that have given shape to my dreams because, just maybe, your answers will move you towards yours.
Describe a day in your life 5 years from now.
What are 4 things goals you hope to see met by then?
Which 3 of those things can you focus on this year?
What needs to be done in the next 2 months to get to those goals?
Which 1 of those can you start on today?
Around plant 14 I worried I had bitten off more than I chewed. That’s the point in any project is usually when I switch to Beyonce, and I added a water hose to my unreasonable optimism that I had the strength of an entire landscape crew. Help also showed up. My mom pulled up with her shovel and we knocked the rest out together. The entire hedge row is curved because I didn’t plant them in a straight line, but that’s beside the point!
Sometimes you do things afraid, weak, or unchartered, but if you never plant the seed, you never grow.
Need help?
I’ll be opening up coaching sessions in 2025 for photographers who want help niching down, or leveling up their best practices for business. Click “Education” above to see if any resources I already have available are what you need to get started!
