Becoming a Business Owner at Age 17

I grew up in a family of entrepreneurs, so starting a small business and being a solo-show just seemed normal to me. Getting up and going to work for “the man” everyday was never something I thought of as my only options for my future. At age 9, I pooled my birthday and Christmas money together to buy my first Nikon Coolpix camera. It was purple and I thought it was theeeee coolest thing ever. I took it everywhere with me - taking photos of flowers, landscapes, my cats, and often bribing my sister to dress up and be my model. As I got older I continued to love taking photos and I’m thankful to have parents who nurtured my hobby and bought me my first dSLR when I was in 7th grade. A dSLR is what most people call a real camera. It’s the one that you see all the soccer moms toting around with multiple lenses that they don’t actually know how to use.

When I was a sophomore in high school I had a friend who was complaining about finding someone to take his senior pictures. I jokingly offered to take them and, to my surprise, he actually took me up on the offer. I read a lot of photography blogs at the time, so I thought I knew what I was doing. We spent two hours driving around to pretty pastures, cornfields, and chasing that perfect gravel road sunset (although I had NO IDEA that I shouldn’t have my subject facing directly into the bright sun - so embarrassing now). I then used the best free editing software I could find to finish out the job. The photos didn’t turn out half bad and I was pretty proud of my work. This guy’s mom even paid me after she received the photos! Then I got to thinking, “Wait...people will actually pay me for this? ….like, real cash?? Woah!!!

Taking senior photos of one of my friends during my first "real" year of business. I was also a senior in high school at the time!

I started recruiting some friends to model for me and still bribed my sister every chance I got. The following year I had two people ask me to take their senior pictures and even did some family photos, too. This is when I got serious. The summer before my senior year I designed a logo using free fonts I downloaded online, chose my brand colors, and had cards printed that advertised for senior pictures which I then mailed to every member of my class. I took on as many jobs as I could handle throughout my senior year and continued to grow as a photographer as I started college. I really wanted to start doing wedding photography, but I had no idea how to convince people to hire me when I had no wedding or engagement experience to show. I figured there would be no better way to learn than to follow the lead of other photographers, so I crafted an email in the beginning of 2018 where I basically begged to be hired as an “unpaid intern.” I sent it out to three wedding photographers that I admired and to my surprise, two of them responded and allowed me to tag along on a wedding day! I learned so much from these experiences, and was even hired back as a paid second shooter for their other weddings. I was able to build my portfolio and book five weddings of my own for 2019.

Following my freshman year of college, I had an internship at an agricultural cooperative in *very* rural north-central Iowa. I worked 40 hour weeks at my internship, but I was amazed at all the free time I had when there wasn’t school work to be done every evening. Living alone in a tiny town with a population just shy of 500, I didn’t have much else to fill my time with so I rolled up my sleeves and got to work figuring out how I could take on as many photography jobs as possible from June 1st until the end of the year. I set a goal to book 20 senior sessions and fill every other open time with family sessions. I started booking 2 sessions every weekend and another on Wednesday nights, and for all of it I’d drive an hour back home. I would wake up, go to my internship, come home and edit photos until 11 o’clock or so, and then do it all over again. I LOVED what I was doing and was ready to continue the same schedule into the fall. Remember when I mentioned earlier how much easier life was when I didn’t have to worry about homework all the time? Yeah, I kind of forgot about that when I was busy booking sessions. I went back to school in the fall and was taking a full schedule of 18 credits. On top of that, I was training to be a group fitness instructor, which took up a lot of my time. Editing photos and driving to sessions became just another thing on my to-do list, often getting pushed to getting done late at night or in the wee hours of the morning, and it didn’t seem as fun and exciting anymore. Christmas break finally came and I decided I needed to take a breather. I just couldn’t keep going at the same speed that I’d been maintaining for six months. Through that season in my business, I learned that in order to keep doing what I love, I can’t go at full speed ALL of the time. It’s necessary to have times of hustle just as much as there needs to be times of slowness in order to keep passion part of the equation. After taking a few months of a break, I feel so much more equipped to jump back into photography during the summer and fall months. It’s awesome what a few months of slowness and dreaming can do to get me feeling pumped up about work.

If you’re still reading this, thanks for sticking around. Whether you’re pursuing a business on your own or you just took interest in my story, there are three things I’d like you to take away from this rambling post:

1. If you don’t start somewhere, you won’t start at all. Being scared of what people will think of you or worrying about failing isn’t worth your time. In this instance, done is always better than perfect. Take that leap of faith and you’ll be surprised how satisfying it really is.

2. Overcommitting yourself will cause more harm than good. If your work doesn’t feel like work, make every effort to keep it that way. Your work will be able to show if hustling hard and feeling fulfilled or if you’re drowning and losing passion.

3. Do you what you have to do until you can do what you want to do. You may feel like you’re the only one around who’s burning the candle on both ends to get everything done. Anytime I’m feeling like I’m missing out I have to remind myself that all of the hard work that comes with starting early on my dream will pay off in big ways. Sometimes this means missing out on activities that seem more fun, but it’s important to always keep the end goal in mind.