Stepping back & saying NO!
Life has a way of chucking stuff at you when you think you’ve got everything sorted. The year of 2016 was going to be a year in which I reached out to lots of different potential clients, and built on the foundations laid over the last 12 months. All was going well, my networking efforts were paying off, and the future was looking rosy. Then BAM!
In mid January, my wife was diagnosed with breast cancer. Those two words strike fear into your very soul as soon as the consultant sits you down in a small room and tells you straight. You leave the hospital with little knowledge of what lies ahead, apart from the fact that it’s not going to be pleasant. You tell the children as best you can, then both face the reality of it – laying awake for nights on end while your mind comes to terms with it all. Once the scans and biopsy tests are completed, and the clinical treatment plan is laid out, it becomes more manageable, and you can plan ahead to some degree. Thank the lord that it hasn’t spread, and she is otherwise completely fit and healthy – (running right up to the date of her first chemotherapy treatment). If I ever had a glimmer of belief in a god, it has been truly eradicated by the act of this disease being forced upon my beautiful, kind girl with our two young children who has never smoked, doesn’t drink, is in perfect shape, and exercises regularly.
My wife runs a dog-care business with four employees. It has a tangible value as an asset (unlike me, who is basically a guy with a camera), so we can’t allow it to drop-off the map. We can’t take six months off sick as we’re both self-employed, so it was time to take some tough decisions to ensure continuity until this period in our lives was over. I had to take a bit of a step back from my business in order to take responsibility for Tina’s company in the event of her being incapacitated due to the effects of her treatment. This meant advising some of my clients who needed me to be available on demand that I was no longer available to work on that basis. I’ve basically decided to work with one high-end client, who allows me the flexibility to arrange shoots around looking after the kids/my role with Tina’s business/hospital visits etc. The short term goal is to simply earn enough to pay my costs, and contribute to our household budget.
Yesterday I received a call from a dream client looking for regularly updated imagery for a big portfolio of holiday homes in the North East. They’d used a top interiors photographer based in the South east for years, but he’d decided to retire. This was a golden opportunity, but I was forced to say no due to my present circumstances. Not great, but it proves that my efforts in reaching out to that market have been successful.
One positive aspect of all this is that I’ve made my business leaner and meaner. All my excess gear is being sold off – stuff like huge 1500W flash heads that I’ll never realistically use again, giant heavy tripods, softboxes, massive 7ft brollies, old lenses, Peli cases etc. This has also meant that I’ve been able to reduce all my insurance premiums hugely. My telecoms costs have been slashed by only using an iPhone 6s Plus with unlimited everything, as opposed to having different devices to do different things, my scores of books are up for sale on Amazon, I’ve left the BIPP, and less travel means way less diesel and servicing costs. Once we’ve beaten this idiot, we’ll emerge at the end of the summer with a family, and two businesses in great shape (ready for a holiday probably).
Wish us luck!
