Personal Lessons After 10 Years in the Workforce & 15 Years in Photography

Glimpse of hope once we pass the chaos.

This evening, it suddenly struck me that I have been in the workforce for 10 years now — 3 years under employment and 7 years self-employed, building my own visual company. Looking back, I think, arts have always been my thing, though I was a major in full science steam with accounting. I knew very early on that I am not the book smart type, as I am bad at memorising things and can only learn things through understanding their logic, because my mind is always curious and wanders around daydreaming. Somehow, I was able to score well to qualify for nearly every field and chose to go into finance and investment just because it sounded cool. Thankfully, I did well and went interning in a Multinational Corporation under accounts payable, which later converted into full-time executive and developed a flourishing career path in a short span of 3 years, moving from accounts payable, payment coordinator, treasury executive, then treasury analyst, before I quit to pursue my goal of becoming a full-time photographer. I guess having experience with multiple qualifications and positions in the early years allowed me to realise what I wanted quite early. In fact, I had already laid out a game plan even before I started my corporate life. My resignation letter was already ready 2 weeks after entering the office, though I wish I wasn't as naive and had done proper business planning before quitting.

Warning, this article about my personal lessons is going to be long, and I promise you, you will learn something about photography from it, even if you don't wish to go full-time.

To put things bluntly, the choice of doing something for yourself is difficult and selfish, but rewarding in a way. This is because you are not doing things the way people expect you to, purely for your own satisfaction. Back then, my parents were uncertain about my decision. Family members and friends advised me against it, including those I hadn't spoken to in a long time, told me to give up when they heard that I am pursuing photography—presumably because of my promising CV. Former college friends were also shocked when they heard my decision, as I was a high flyer back in college years. Therefore, you must communicate, communicate, and communicate. As there will be instability (financially and emotional availability). And if you have a partner/fiancée/wife, they will be worried as it is hard to justify your actions at times. So do your best to help them get clarity. Trust me, being a creative, the last thing you want is additional emotional stress that will clog up your thought process. More importantly, it is going to be hard to understand why you need to regularly spend thousands on new equipment to do the same work, especially when you need to be saving up for our next home. Now, even if you have a very understanding partner, do not take the instability as an excuse for yourself to be reckless and irresponsible. Always refer to your spreadsheets and run the numbers because financial stability is everything. If you can't survive, whatever you do doesn't matter.

If possible, plan earlier and make sure you know where to get the money from before you go full-time. Here, I am thankful for my finance background, as the first thing I did going full-time was going through the spreadsheets and planning whatever I possibly could—probably because this is the only thing I knew back then about running a business. But spreadsheets can only go that far. At one point, you are going to have to deal with sales and whatever it takes to maintain the business. This is where you should know your worth, know what to charge, and where to invest. And just because that one job can pay off your gear doesn’t mean you can afford it. Try to run as lean as possible, using the bare minimum to produce deliverable results. Over here, skill sets matter more than equipment. Like every other business, the costs go beyond that:

• overheads

• opportunity cost

• maintenance

• subscriptions

• rent, utilities, food, insurance

Also, factor in the fact that you won't be getting jobs every day. If you are, you will be a millionaire in no time. (Eg: Avg RM5k per small size project, 30 jobs a month equals RM150K per month.)—I guarantee this magical number does appear in some of your clients' heads. But the reality is, one month you might close an RM30K project, spend a month working on it, and the next six months might be nothing. And you will start questioning your whole life.

Which is why, as you climb up the hierarchy, knowing your self-worth is incredibly important, because it will help you figure out your rates and also your niche. Rates here don't come from thin air or reference to your competitor. On top of factoring in what was discussed above, you will also need to factor in the cost for projected growth. This is crucial if you want to be able to afford a team in the future. Averaging RM5k job per month is okay if you are alone, RM10k might sound reasonably good, but to hire someone to be on your team, you are going to need more than that. To achieve that successfully, you will need to understand your niche/strength and play your cards accordingly. Here, I was fortunate to have experimented with a lot of genres in the early years and quickly found mine to be around lifestyle architecture within a year of going into full-time and have been building on it to focus more on hospitality work since. Others might take longer, and that is totally okay as long as you are working towards it. Make sure to explore enough before settling down. Not just because it has to be what you are passionate about, but because I also believe the best specialist is also the best generalist. The fundamentals of photography and problem solving do not change, and to handle unique cases, you will need a great exposure to many disciplines. Personally, this is what I do; I try to learn everything as much as possible and extract what is applicable to form a hybrid approach. Probably in the process, have other hobbies, as they do help to give you inspiration and escape to keep your sanity on top of building a deeper skill set. In my case, I regularly work on my personal projects documenting the life and changes in George Town. While they are still mainly photography related, they are different enough to allow me some form of breather experimenting with different techniques and gears. Besides, I also invest a lot of time looking into hospitality branding, architectural design, and writing for one of the world’s leading photography platforms, sharing insights on the fundamentals of photography and gear reviews.

The higher you go, the harder it gets. Competition is really steep at a certain level, because of globalisation and the internet, you will also be competing at an international level. And to survive, you will have to be good enough at what you do to be in the top few percent to charge enough rate. This is where your well-defined niche will be your biggest sword, giving the client the reason to hire you and not others. Being good at your niche also means you care about it enough to go the extra mile, developing your skillset, and put in extra effort to deliver additional value. Hopefully, people will appreciate what you do and hire you. Though in reality, most clients are probably just comparing rates. Therefore, you should also know where to draw the line, because not every job is worth your time and effort, and not every client needs polished visuals. Now, if you are lucky enough to be there, stay curious, observant, and hungry. Constantly challenge and learn everything within your ability, especially if you want to maintain your competitive edge and grow your creativity as a photographer. Here is my observation; greater challenge stretches your creativity, and in return, greater satisfaction and greater happiness to keep going. Lately, I have not been stretching that enough due to a packed schedule, and I think I will need to do something about it soon.

Progress and success are also going to be slow, especially when you are alone. It is really hard and does take a lot of time, especially when it is photography-related. Contrary to what is glorified and shown to us on the internet, there is no such thing as work-life balance. This is because when you are starting out alone, you are limited mainly by manpower, money, and, to a certain extent, time. Thankfully, time is also the only thing that you can access easily. Therefore, be ready to work at least 12 hours a day; even then, it still feels like nothing. The only upside is that all this effort will do for your own company, even if it's small. Besides, running a small-scale creative business also means you are going to need a lot of time alone to work, think, learn, experiment, digest, find inspiration, and rest. And this is still just the tip of the iceberg. Trust me, it's hard to explain what we are working on even to those who are in the field. I think it's mainly because the creative business growth at this stage relies heavily on self-development, and sadly, the rewards from all the time invested are not even instantaneous, calculable, or proportional to our commitment. Which is why you should really be selfish and prioritise where you put your effort, because it is a resource that you cannot afford to waste.

Self-doubt will also never go away. More clients and bigger clients won't fix it either. My suspicion is that we have developed this pre-conceived idea from today's environment that progress and success are easy and effortless. While it is true to a certain degree because we can pretty much gain access to any knowledge or pay for any solution these days, this results in an accelerated learning process. Hence, causing us to doubt ourselves when we are slow. Realistically, there is really no shortcut in photography due to the nature of photography. Putting in more money might get you to a level of adequacy, but it also magnifies your lack of vision, technique, and executional ability when you are at a certain level. Truly, in photography, you can only learn through what you put in, as creativity is earned through what you do. In short, consistency is everything. Show up even when no one forces you to, work even when there is no work, constantly experiment and reinvent yourself to grow horizontally and vertically. Stay humble and never ever forget your roots and why you started it, because that is the core that you are building on.

Being committed to the craft is also important. If you believe it and have the means to support it, you should go all the way through. Though with the rise of living costs, I do admit it is increasingly difficult to be motivated enough to do what you are passionate about, unless you inherit some form of wealth or are willing to go to the extreme to live below your means. This brings me to my next point, being a small business owner also means you should be ruthless to move on from things that don't work, as you cannot afford to be wasting resources that are limited. If we observe our society today, it has become quite a norm to give up when success isn't instant. And I do think that perhaps, it is also not a bad thing at all. At least in the long run, with enough changes, you might be doing things that you enjoy and are good at to achieve full potential. Though I have to say, you won't always know if your decision is right, so do trust your instinct and do the work as you go.

Lastly, here are some precautions that you should know. Being self-employed and expanding the business might be glorious, but you should always be cautious with the way you do it. Expansion should always be parallel with your projection, and be careful who you trust when you expand your team. Also, do not be afraid to ask for help when you need it; you are going to need a lot of it at this point. If you are lucky enough to reach this level, congrats! But if it didn't work out for you, be willing to put down your ego and move to Plan B without hesitation. At this point, survivability is more important than anything else, because the pursuit of creative freedom is a long journey, and you will need to first survive long enough to see it flourish. After all, there is really no risk in change; at least you might learn something about yourself in the process.

If you read this all the way to the end, thank you! I hope you did learn a thing or two by knowing what you might sign up for, especially if you want to pursue photography full-time. Even if you don't, I hope you did learn a few lessons about how to discover your own niche and the importance of it.

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