Going through college I couldn’t make up my mind on what I wanted to do with my future, that is partially the reason why I double-majored with communication and marketing (with a minor in economics.) It was safe to say my mind was made up on one thing: I wanted to be a powerful business woman. I envisioned said woman strolling the hallway in loud clicking high heels and sitting with my heeled feet up on the desk in my corner office. The funny thing? I always said that I never wanted to work from home. I frankly would tell people, “I want to go to work every day and if I ever get married and have kids, my husband can be the stay-at-home dad, I want to work.” Well, clearly the “now” Jenna is laughing at herself because it takes a mighty feat to convince me to put on real pants and a bra and Lord knows I can’t be caught dead in heels. Oh, if I would have known then, what I know now. The coolest part? I still get to be a business woman and now I get to use all of those strategies and teachings to lift up the photography industry (even cooler!)
Looking back over the last four years of figuring life as a business owner post corporate life, I think about how I wished I hadn’t figured it all out on my own. There’s something so isolating about running a creative business and while so many of us quit our salaried jobs to pursue our dreams, we quickly realize that the thing we love doing the most (like photography) becomes the thing we do the least. We are so busy juggling things like: branding, client communication, marketing, advertising, accounting, workflow, editing, delivery, design, and office work that we rarely get to spend time on what we do the best. While so much of my journey as an entrepreneur has been trial and error, I am on a mission to make sure that other people don’t go it alone. Why try to reinvent the wheel when it’s already ready for you to implement? Why try and strategize alone when there are principles and strategies that lead to success? I kept asking myself where the marketing courses were for creative entrepreneurs but the truth is, they really don’t exist… at least, not in a way that creative business owners understand. The truth about running your own business and being an artist is that it’s hard to separate the two. Our creative side tells us it’s all about art, our business side says “girlfriend, you need to be able to pay your mortgage this month.” It’s hard to mix the two and the more I educate on marketing, the more I see the gap that photographers have in knowing how to strategically build a solid brand and market their work effectively.
Introducing: The Jenna Kutcher Course – Marketing for Photographers | I am SO excited to announce that a week from today, I am launching my first mini course specifically for photographers! It will cover things like: workflow, communication, social media strategy, streamlining your workflow, and profitability. I will be including so many tools to create systems around each process of your business from Lightroom presets to email templates, workflow print outs to a customizable pricing guide. This course will guide photographers through a process of establishing the foundation of their brand in order to build a marketing system around the work they want to produce. I am so excited to share more about this launch and what it all entails, but stay tuned! Next Monday on Cyber Monday the course will be released and the best part? We are keeping this mini course super affordable at an introductory rate! I want this to be accessible to photographers because no one needs to navigate the unknown marketing waters alone.
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So excited for this!! 🙂
thanks Jenna, this is the thing I have the most trouble with…I’m creative, the business part is such a CHORE.
I am so happy that you asked me to design the course material! Not only did I love working with you, but I also received a refresher in marketing for my business! 🙂