← Book More Photography Clients Podcast | Photography Business, Photography Leads, Marketing
Book More Photography Clients Podcast | Photography Business, Photography Leads, Marketing
Planning Your Most Profitable Photography Year in 2026
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I know we're not quite done with 2025 just yet, but I'm already thinking about 2026 and I want to encourage you to do the same. In today's episode, I'm going to walk you through a three part process to planning your most profitable photography year yet. In 2026. We're going to start with some reflection because you can't know where you're going if you don't know where you've been. Then we're going to move into a DRE goal setting section and finally we're going to talk about how to take your dreams and goals and turn them into an actual action plan that you can implement. Are you ready? Let's dive in. Welcome to the Book More Clients Photography Podcast. You can stop spending hours on Google and YouTube because you just found your number one resource for growing a profitable and sustainable photography business. Hi, I'm Brooke Jefferson. I'm a believer wife, mama to two and Oklahoma family photographer. I left the classroom in 2018 to pursue my photography career full time. Now I'm here to help you do the same. In this podcast, we're covering the most asked about topics including pricing, marketing, client experience, and all things systems and workflows. You won't find any fluff or BS here. Just tried and true strategy. Are you ready? Grab your kids some snacks and charge those camera batteries. It's time to jump in. Before we can set meaningful goals for 2026, we need to look back at 2025 and see what it actually looked like. I'm going to give you a list of things to review from your photography business and I want you to grab a notebook or open up your notes app in your phone and write these down as we go through them. So here is what I want you to review from 2025. The first part is going to be some questions on looking at your numbers. What was your total revenue for 2025? How many sessions or clients did you book? What was your average booking value? Basically meaning what was the average amount a client spent with you? What were your total expenses for the year? And then this one is super key, so don't skip this one. What was your actual profit? The money that you got to keep? Then I want you to ask yourself these questions about your time. How many hours per week did you actually work in your business? This doesn't just mean the time that you were, you know, photographing sessions or editing. This is also the marketing, the admin, which, whatever, whatever part of your business that you played, how much time did you actually spend in your business? And then how much time did you spend shooting versus editing? Were you working the hours you wanted to work or did your business control your schedule? Man, this one is going to sting for some of you, but you've got to get honest on what it looked like. And I will tell you this question. Were you working the hours you wanted to or did your business control your schedule? I'll be honest with you. Mine was touch and go, depending on the season. The next section of questions is about your clients. Who were your favorite clients to work with this year? What type of sessions brought you the most joy? What type of sessions or clients drained you? And then where did most of your clients come from? Was it referrals, Instagram, Google, or somewhere else? Then we're going to look at your marketing. What marketing worked for you this year? What marketing flopped for you this year? How consistent were you with showing up on social media or or in your email list? Did you have any months where inquiries where leads actually dried up? What was happening during those months? And then the opposite question that you can ask. Were there months where you felt like the leads were coming in hot? What was happening during those months? This is very important that you look at this, especially when you're planning, marketing and strategy for 2026. Okay, the next one is about your packages. What did you actually sell in 2025? Look at your packages. Did you have package options or were you custom quoting everything? Which ones sold well and which packages didn't sell at all? Did you raise your prices this year? If you did, how did that work out for you? If you didn't, why not? And the last section of questions to reflect on is about your personal life. Did your business support your life or did your life suffer because of your photography business? Were you present with your family or were you constantly on your phone or computer? Man, I feel like we're in therapy right now. But these are important questions. Last question. Did you take time off and did you have boundaries? I want you to sit with these questions. Don't judge yourself. Don't lean into the emotions. Just be honest. This data and what you're finding is pure gold for planning 2026 because you need to know these things. You need to know what worked, what didn't work, and what needs to change moving forward. Feel free to pause me if you've got time to go through these questions. Go ahead and pause me, work your way through them and then you can come back and we will go through the next two sections. If you're listening in the car on your way to work and you just want to hear me lead you through the process and then you come back and re listen. You can do that as well. So now that you've reflected on 2025, let's dream about 2026. And I don't mean coming up with these super far fetched dreams. I just mean let's dream about your business and set some goals with intention and purpose. Here's the question that I want you to ask yourself. What do I want out of my photography business in 2026? Really think about that, okay? Not what other people want from you. What do you want out of your business in 2026? So I want to give you a couple of ideas that again, these are some more questions, but this is just to get your brain going. You don't have to write down all of these. So let's think about some goals you might set for yourself. And let's start in a financial goal category. Do you want to increase your revenue? And if you do, by how much? Do you want to raise your prices so you can work less but still still earn the same amount or even more than you did last year? Do you want to book a specific number of sessions at a higher price point? Do you want to add a new revenue stream like bringing in prints, albums, or maybe even education and mentoring? Let's look at some lifestyle goals. Do you want to work fewer hours while making the same or more money? Do you have a goal to take Fridays off or have no weekend sessions? Do you want to take an actual vacation this year? Do you want to be fully present with your kids after school? Now let's look into some business structure goals you might have. Do you want to finally get systems in place so you're not reinventing the wheel every time? Do you want to hire help, Maybe an editor, a va, someone to help you take tasks off your plate? Do you want to streamline your workflow so editing doesn't take over your life? Do you want to create packages that make booking easier for you and your clients? Now let's look into some creative goals. Do you want to shoot more of what lights you up and less of what drains you? Do you want to attract a different type of client, maybe a more luxury client or a more laid back type of client? Do you want to level up your skills in a specific area? And finally, let's look at some marketing goals. Do you want to show up more consistently on social media without it feeling like a second job? Do you want to finally start that email list or maybe utilize the one you already have. Do you want to get more referrals from past clients? Do you want to be fully booked three months in advance? So here's what I want you to do. Pick three to five goals that actually matter to you. Don't choose more than five because you're going to be so overwhelmed, you're not going to be able to have a priority. Your goals need to be very specific, and they need to be something that you can measure. Right? I want to make more money is not a good goal. I want to earn $75,000 by booking 50 sessions. That is a goal, right? That would be a goal. So look at the difference. And now I want you to take some time and set those three to five goals for yourself right now. Now we're moving into the last section of the planning, and that is turning your goals into an act. So now you've set those goals. But here's the important part. I believe anybody can set goals. It really doesn't take a rocket scientist to set goals, but it does take a very intentional and a dedicated person to follow through on those goals. And how that happens is through an action plan. Because a goal without a plan is just a wish. I love that saying. It is so, so true. So let me walk you through how to take your goal and reverse engineer it into a step by step action plan. So step number one, you've got to take that goal you set for yourself, one of those three to five goals. And we're going to break that down into quarterly milestones. We're going to go back to my example of saying that you want to earn $75,000 in 2026. If we broke down $75,000 into four quarters, we are aiming to make $18,750 per quarter. Okay, and again, a quarter is three months. So quarter one is January to March, quarter two is April through June, quarter three is July through September, and quarter four is October through December. So now we're not super overwhelmed looking at that $75,000 goal. We're just looking at roughly a little over $6,000 per month for which feels more manageable. And I also want to say I picked a bigger goal to go for instead of a smaller number because I just want to show you what's possible. I know that those of you listening to this podcast are in so many different areas of life and different, you know, profit goals. And so I just, I wanted to go a little bit higher with my example than maybe where you are listening to this and this might be way lower than what you want to make in your business. But either way, way, I wanted to meet in the middle. And so that's why we're using a $75,000 goal. Step two. Now we need to identify what needs to happen in order to hit over $6,000 a month. What needs to happen? And so we're going to say if, if the average session price is 1500, then this photographer would need four sessions a month. If you're someone that is charging. Let me grab my calculator before, before I continue, let's say that you want the goal of $6,000 per month, but you only charge 500 per session, then you would need 12 sessions a month. So I'm just going to give a couple of examples as we go on. So now instead of, oh, I need to make $75,000, it's okay, well, now I need to book one client per week, or I need to book three clients per week. Per week. That is an actionable goal. Right now you know how many sessions you're looking for and you can trace that back to your marketing, which is step three. If you need one booking per week, then you probably need three to five leads per week to account for people who don't book. So the question is, well, how do I get three to five leads per week? And this is where your marketing comes in. This is where you've got to decide, what marketing am I using in 2026? Am I going to post consistently on Instagram? Am I going to be having an email list? Am I asking for referrals? Am I going to run ads? Am I going to get found on Google? You want to pick one to two marketing strategies that actually worked for you from 2025, and you want to double down on doing those consistently. Step four is to set up your systems. You cannot hit goals if you are literally drowning in chaos. So you need to really ask yourself, what systems do you need to put in place? Do you need a CRM? Do you need email templates? Do you need a consistent editing workflow? Do you need an automatic booking calendar? Do you need to batch your admin time? Instead of trying to do it inconsistently, you need to figure out what systems are the right ones to support your specific goal. Step five is to literally schedule your action steps. And here's where most people fail. They set the goals, they write out a strategy plan, and then they don't put it in their calendar. They don't know when they're Working on things. So that's why it could be January 1st and you're super excited. But by February 15th, you don't even, you don't even remember what you're supposed to be doing because you didn't put it anywhere. You've got to block time on your calendar for each of your tasks or even use a paper planner, but actually look at it every single day. What you don't schedule, it will not get done. So make sure that you are, you know, making time to take the action steps that you're putting together right now. Step six is to build in your own accountability and check in so that you can stay on track. So just set little reminders in your Google calendar or in your phone or whatever it is you're using just so you can say, okay, am I on track? What do I need to adjust? Am I taking the actions that I planned out for myself? If you need to find an accountability partner, can you find another photographer or business owner who will check in with you and hold you accountable? Do you need a photography business coach? Do you need to join a program or join a community where you're surrounded by people who are also doing these things? I want to take just a second now that I've walked you through those steps and I just love being very real and very honest and transparent about what is going on in my own life, especially with, you know, different businesses. And I'm always wearing three to four hats at a time. It's just who I am. I've always been this way and so I just, I want to share something personal with you. 2026 is going to look very different for me in a way that I haven't seen in almost a decade because I'm going to be working a full time marketing job on top of my photography business. And this isn't because my photography business isn't profitable or it isn't working. It is literally because I used to run my photography business and that got me by for a really long time. And then our family grew and our goals grew and the finances that we needed grew. And so then I was blessed with this education part of my business. And during COVID it was such a blessing because it was kind of just built out of an Instagram challenge and then bam. I had coaching clients and programs and you know, a digital shop and it was amazing. And so I got really used to having really big financial goals and seeing really, really big income months with two full time incomes. Right? The photography business and the online education business. Well then 2024 came and it completely rocked my world. I went from, you know, having five figure months to now like barely being able to bring the income in outside of my photography business. And so I had to go find supplemental income again. I don't know if this is because of inflation or because of polit or because of just the economy. I have no idea. It could even be me for pivoting or whatever and that's fine. But for me I was like, well, I don't want to just cut everything out of our life and just disregard all of these really big goals that I have. So instead I'm going to go find something to take the place of this online education business income. And that is why last year I ended up working for seven months in the insurance industry, very part time. And then I was like, this is not the gig for me. So I went back to doing this full time. And then my husband ended up getting a new job in, in a new town. So we moved over the summer of 2025 and here we are, we are now settled into this new place, new jobs, new schools, we literally got a completely new life. And I was just very blessed to have a marketing job opportunity open up at our local chamber of commerce. And so that is what I've been doing part time since July. And I've done that on top of a very, very full time photography business. I am averaging six sessions a week. It's a lot, I will be honest with you, it is a lot time wise. And so moving forward, I was blessed to have my part time marketing position turn into for the very first time in history at this place, a full time marketing position. And so I have accepted that. And that is what I will be doing beginning January 1st of 2026 on top of having a photography business. So in full transparency, I do plan to cut back a little bit on my photography sessions just because I will be four and a half days actually in office and then managing sessions in the evenings on top of that. So. So with all of that being said, it's going to look very different for me. So that means that I have to be even more intentional with my time, my systems and my boundaries. And you know what? That's okay. That's okay. Your season might look different too. Maybe you have young kids at home, maybe your young kids are old enough to go to school for the first time and you're actually going to have a bunch of time to work on your business. Maybe you have had to go back to a full time job. Can I just tell you that you are not alone. A huge percentage of photographers that once left their jobs ended up for a variety of reasons, not even just financials. Sometimes people just want peace of mind. When they clock out at 5 or 4 or whatever time it is, they just want to come home and be done. And I get it. But you are not alone. If you've had to go back to a job or pick up a side job or whatever, that doesn't mean you failed anything. Do not let anybody make you feel like you are not a legitimate photographer if this isn't your only source of income. So please hear me when I say that if I wanted to, I could do nothing else but my photography business. But guess what? In this season of my life, I landed a job that I am so very passionate about. And so I want to go to work anyway. All of that being said, I wasn't trying to make a huge tangent, but I just want to remind you that your photography business, it doesn't have to look like anybody else's. It just needs to work for your life. That is the whole point of being a business owner. So as you're planning 2026, I want you to build a business that serves your life, not a business that requires you to sacrifice your life. I hope that you found clarity, you found encouragement through this. I hope that you have your entire 2026 strategy so you can plan your most profitable year, or maybe even your most peaceful year in your photography business, because that is a huge win, too. Come share your goals with me. Head over to Instagram at Brooke Janae Photo. Send me a dm. I would love to hear your thoughts and your takeaways from today's exercises. And even if you just want to say, hey, it really was encouraging hearing you, you know, give us a transparent peek into your life. I am always an open book here, not to hide anything. Not trying to tell you that I make seven figures, because I certainly do not. But yes, I hope this was encouraging. And I will see you on the next episode.