Feeling small is everyday life for solopreneurs when everything starts from the little person behind the business. For us as photographers, everything starts from wanting to make our vision a reality, wanting to make a living doing something we love. We want to make a difference in people’s lives, whether it’s small or a big difference. We want to make people smile when they see their photographs. Laugh, cry. We want to make them feel something. We want to create memories for our clients, and for ourselves, so that in the years to come we can look back and say we created something tangible. Something we created starts a journey and sticks with them. In 50 years something we created will be a part of their memories.
The worst advice I’ve ever gotten was when we were advised to be a bit more neutral because the more neutral you will become, the easier it is to be something for larger audience and thus it will make you a safer choice. And I was stupid enough to take that advice. It almost cost me my will to go on. It almost cost me my business. It eats you up when you try to act like you are someone else every single day. You cannot be anything but yourself and who you are is the biggest asset for your business.
You might think that you have lots of bad qualities that you don’t want to show to the world but as my good friend just pointed out to me – they’re not bad qualities but potential inside of you, waiting to be put into action. This past weekend I was once again going through multiple Instagram accounts, analyzing what makes them successful. I analyzed one account for over an hour, going through photos and captions and writing down what I saw. Writing down that could be done in the future. Putting a quality I always thought was a bad into action ended up helping a colleague (maybe even more than one). It made me even realize that I know so much more than I thought I knew and that this is something I want to do more in the future. But if you always doubt yourself and think of those qualities as something bad, you will end up holding yourself back from the world full of people waiting for your help without you even knowing about them.
Life is short (oh really…).
It’s too short to choose a mentality (this just might be my new favorite word!), where you think that I will do this sometime in the future or I will do this next week. If you can do it today, don’t think. Make a difference and change this world today, by being yourself.
I wanna say I lived each day, until I die
And know that I meant something in somebody’s life
The hearts I have touched will be the proof that I leave
That I made a difference, and this world will see
I was here
Beyoncé – I was here
// Johanna
Leave a Reply