Today we have the third part of a series of guest posts by Brittany Salay of Brittany Lauren Photography.  Brittany is a photographer in Charlotte, North Carolina who also happens to have a degree in Finance.  She will be sharing important information in a series of blog posts all about the financial side of a photography business.

In the last post, we broke out how many hours you spend for each client down to the smallest 15 minute task of writing a thank you note. I calculated I spend about 13.5 hours on each of my portrait clients. Today, my goal is for you to see how many clients you SHOULD be taking on per week not how many you can try to squeeze in. In the next post we will translate that in to what your average sale should be to make your desired salary every year. Don’t let your head explode with numbers talk just yet! We’ll take it step by step.

Every week you spend time on non-client related tasks in your business for things like marketing, education, expense tracking, social media planning, networking, website upkeep, organizing your email inbox and the list goes on and on. You can’t and shouldn’t be spending all of your time on clients only. You need to be investing time in your business so it can grow.

I know every week looks very different but let’s go ahead and get a general idea of what you’d like to be spending your time on per week. First, decide how many hours you’d want to work a week. I’m going with 40 for right now. That means I have 40 hours a week dedicated to Brittany Lauren Photography to get the things done I need to do and commit the rest of my time to my personal life. In those 40 hours, I need to make it happen. A good way to do this is set an office schedule and STICK TO IT.

Your task!
Write down all the other activities you do non-client related and how many hours you do or would like to dedicate to per week. You can see mine below. My total came to 13 hours I’d like to spend on non-client related tasks bringing the time I can give to my clients to 27 hours (40-13). If I am spending 13.5 hours per client, I can now take on 2 clients a week and keep my sanity.

These simple tasks of breaking down the time you spend in your business will translate in to $$$$ in the next post. You should make sure you are keeping up with all of your “assignments” from every post. We are going to build those each time. If you missed them, make sure you go back to Understanding your Bare Minimum and Time is Money.