We’re a little over a month into 2019. HOW is it already February!! Time goes by so fast!

Today we’re recapping our highlights from 2018. This coming year is going to be so exciting for Chelsea and Hannah Photography. We have some exciting things happening within our business. SPOILER: We are traveling to Alabama and Kentucky for two destination weddings. Since we are photographers based in Nashville, Tennessee, you can imagine how excited we are for a change of scenery. It is our dream to travel all over the world for weddings, so being able to go out of state is one step in the right direction!

2018 was a year of growth for us in so many ways. We did a complete rebrand by changing our business name, revamping our website, and creating a new client experience for all of our brides. We doubled our income from our first year of business, and started to grow our lens inventory (hello, 50 mm 1.2 and 100 mm 2.8) There were so many highlights in the last 365 days, so we want to make sure they are documented so we can come back and remember this year that felt like a complete and total blur.

OUR REBUILDING YEAR

At the beginning of the year we knew it was time for a complete rebrand. After taking several business courses, we knew it was time for a huge change in our website and overall brand. We wanted to start over from scratch and to bring our brand to the next level.

To be honest, this change was one of the smartest things we’ve done yet as entrepreneurs because we elevated our business and made the right changes to slowly attract our ideal bride. We may not have gotten as many weddings this year, as we did in our first year of business, but we started booking weddings for 2019 with brides who we are so excited to work with. To give you an idea, in 2017, we booked 7 weddings, and in 2018, we booked 2 weddings, one elopement, and one bridal session. So far for 2019, we have 8 weddings total and 2 already on the books for 2020!

Back to 2018….There were a lot of big things we tackled as a team. Just designing the website alone and switching to a new platform was a huge task. It took at least two months to get everything up and running.

OUR CLIENT EXPERIENCE

Along with creating a new website, we put together an entirely new client experience. Our main goal for our client experience was to find ways to help our brides have a stress free wedding day. We developed all sorts of informational guides and gifts that would do just that.

Content Creation:

We started blogging more in 2018. We tried to pick at least three days a week to blog and post on social media. We didn’t always stay consistent, but wrote several posts covering all topics from photography education to wedding day tips to our own personal stores.

WHAT DIDN’T WORK:

There were times throughout the year that we didn’t blog consistently. We found it hard to write weekly blog posts, and try to move the needle forward in our business. A lot of times entrepreneurs spend so much time working in their business instead of on it. We had moments throughout the year where blogging fell through the cracks as we got too busy with portrait sessions and weddings.

HOW WE ARE MOVING FORWARD:

We’ve learned a lot lately about the importance of batch working. As entrepreneurs, we have so much on our minds, it is so easy to become overwhelmed. Sometimes we feel like our brains have a million tabs open. Often times we fall into the trap of trying to multi-task that we don’t focus on one task from start to finish. We’ve read so many articles about doing one task at a time. So instead of writing blog posts the day before it needs to be posted, we are spending a weekend batch writing enough blog posts a month in advance. We just recently had our first batch writing weekend, and we are excited to see how much free time we have working on our business instead of in it. We will keep you posted!!

What a year, right? As we look ahead as to what next year will hold, we pray that we continue to follow our guts, trust our intuition, and keep building our dream business. We are so excited about the way we used 2018 to be a launchpad for our most perfect year ever. In 2019, we’re planning to travel a bit more, shoot at more venues, and even sell more products outside of our portrait photography services. We’re really looking forward to an intentional year of growth.

Taking time to really reflect, see your progress, and look at how far you’ve come is incredible! We’d love to hear about your biggest win of this past year, so comment below or head over to Instagram and let us know about some of your biggest accomplishments from 2018!

-Chelsea and Hannah

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