My Goals for 2016
My Business Goals:
1. Shoot 15+ weddings in 2016.
2. Create a wedding welcome packet and continue to work on branding (new business cards, stationary, etc.).
3. Continue building relationships with other vendors and photographers.
4. Purchase more gear.
Specifically the Canon 100mm 2.8L lens, Canon 24-70mm 2.8L lens, and another 600 flash and a light stand (so I can start doing off camera flash).
5. Serve my clients well and find ways to bless each of them individually!
6. Attend a workshop and continue developing my photography skills.
Specifically I'd really like to focus on learning off camera flash this year as well as continuing to grow in lighting and posing and framing pictures well.
7. Do at least one styled shoot.
8. Make a sample album and begin selling albums.
9. Improve my culling, editing, and blogging process and make it more efficient.
10. Blog AT LEAST 3 times a week every week.
I really want to work on getting better at pre-blogging so that I don't get so overwhelmed that I neglect blogging.
11. Start offering business mentoring and coaching and design and teach a class for beginner photographers.
I have to admit, this goal REALLY scares me!! I still have a lot to learn and in a lot of ways, I don't feel ready to teach others. But I've had a few precious women seek me out for mentoring and I'm truly amazed and honored that they want to pay me in order to learn from me! I love mentoring and would LOVE to incorporate more of this into my business this year. I've also had a lot of beginning photographers and moms wanting to take pictures of their children reach out to me and so I want to create and teach a class for them to learn beginning photography skills.
My Personal Goals
1. Spend time in the Word and prayer daily.
I want to spend at least 30 minutes every morning in the Word and prayer.
2. Memorize a book of the Bible (probably James because I'm studying it with a group of women right now).
3. Work out at least 30 minutes 3-4 times a week (I REALLY failed at working out this year!).
4. Grow in loving my husband better, encouraging him more frequently, and exercising more self control by withholding mean or unhelpful words.
5. Continue finding ways to serve at Grace and continue working on building relationships.
I want to accomplish this by getting coffee with at least one woman per week and having at least 2 women/couples/families over for dinner each month.
6. Read 10 books.
A few on my list are: Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God, 1776, The Speechwriter, Spurgeon's Autobiography, The Measure of Success, and Iain Murray's biography on the Life of Martin Lloyd Jones. Please let me know if you have any suggestions!
7. Spend less time working and more time with Alex and with friends.
I've struggled more than I have in the past with work/life balance this year. I'm learning that when you're an entrepreneur and you're the ONLY employee at your business, it's easy to work constantly because the tasks never seem to be done! It's also easy for me to get very wrapped up in work because, thankfully, my business is something I enjoy and am passionate about. However, about six months ago I started to see that I was neglecting friendships and doing a bad job of pursuing people. I think I've improved a lot in the past few months and have begun meeting regularly with a few women, going through Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God with a friend, and attending a bi-monthly bible study on the book of James. I really want to continue learning to work more efficiently and to be more organized so that I can choose people over tasks more frequently!
8. Take WAY more personal pictures this year!
This one kind of makes me sad. I used to be SO good about documenting everything. When I look back on the last year, I have almost zero pictures of friends and family. Yikes! Its so easy to get caught up in photographing everyone and everything else that you have no time or energy to photograph your own life! I'm going to make a really intentional effort to photography for myself more, even if I don't feel like it. I also want to spend more time growing creatively and photographing just for the joy of creating art.
9. Learn basic sowing skills.
I don't want to learn anything complicated, but I just want to learn how to sew up holes, hem pants, etc.
10. Continue to grow in being frugal and saving money and BUY A HOUSE!
This is a big goal that I'm not sure will really happen but Alex and I are hoping for it! We would love to buy a house by this time next year. I think it's pretty doable if we do a really good job of saving and spending carefully. I definitely struggle in this area because I have to admit that I love shopping! Marriage and God's grace is helping me learn to be more frugal though!
