Welcome to the hair of the dog podcast. I'm Nicole Begley. And today we're going to be talking about what you really need to get started in your business. Stay tuned.

Welcome to the hair of the dog podcast. If you're a pet photographer, ready to make more money and start living a life by your design, you've come to the right place. And now your host pet photographer, travel addicts, chocolate martini, connoisseur sewer, Nicole Begley.

Hi everybody, Nicole here. I am so glad that you are joining me again for another podcast. Gosh, it feels like it's been a little bit. Since I recorded a podcast, I tend to batch these and we actually went on a vacation first real vacation of 2020. We spent nine nights in Utah exploring the state or the national parks and some state parks. They were absolutely beautiful, kind of a last minute trip. We really had a wonderful time. So it was just so good to disconnect and take a few days and be able to come back super fresh and excited for what is in store around these parts here at hair of the dog. We have a big challenge going on right now when this episode is released, it just started yesterday. So it is not too late to join us. It is the unleash, your style challenge, and it is going to be so much fun. I should say it is so much fun because by the time you listen to this, it will actually be going on. So I'll just say it is so much fun because I know it's going to be fun. We have already opened up the Facebook group and Oh my gosh, there's so much activity, so much great positive energy in there. I am so excited to help everyone unleash their style, refine their style and take their craft to a new level. Here's a quick little bit about what it's about, and I hope that you will join us. Remember it's not too late. Go sign up now. And, um, it's only 15 minutes a day, so there's not much to catch up on and we can't wait to see you there. Hey, pet photographers, are you struggling to bring your vision to life? Do you long for creating a style that is true to you? Are you ready to leave the fads and trends behind and learn how to create a style that is uniquely yours so that your work can stand apart here at hair of the dog, we are hosting a free five day unleash your style challenge to help you do just that registration is open now. So go to www.hairofthedogacademy.com forward slash unleash to save your seat. We can't wait to see what you create. Okay. Did you guys pause it? Did you go to hair of the dog academy.com/unleash and sign up? Uh, you can pause again, if you haven't make yourself a note, I hope you go do that because no matter where you are in your journey, whether you are an amateur or a professional or a hopeful, you know, we can all take a little bit of time and focus on our craft and our style and the evolution of that. So I would love to have you join me and I can't wait to go through this with you. So what we're talking about today on our podcast is what we really need to get started because in the hair of the dog Academy, Oh my gosh, we have so much content and so many things, and it's really an incredible place. But I see a lot of people that get overwhelmed that they end up stuck in student mode and they feel like they have to learn so much more and they have to implement all of these things and they can't start their business yet because they don't have X, Y, and Z. And this isn't perfect. And that isn't perfect. Can you guys relate? Can you relate to feeling like there is no way you can move forward because we have all of these other things to do. I know I get stuck in that. Sometimes it's an easy hole to fall into that I am here to help you, hopefully get over that little hump and figure out the important things that you do need to make sure you have in place before you start your business. And then all the other stuff is gravy. The other stuff you can build as you go, you can update as you go, because here's the truth. And this is a big kicker. You're never going to be done. You're never going to be ready or perfect. Your business is never going to be exactly where you want it. Once you build everything, you're going to want to re do this or update that or change this or change that. So this idea that we can create our perfect business and we need to make sure all of our I's are dotted and T's are crossed. And it's all wrapped up in a perfect little bow before we move on and release our business to the public is just a farce. There's, there's no way that can happen because you're never going to get there. You're never going to get to the point where you feel like there is absolutely nothing I need to do in my business. Now I'm not saying this to make you feel stressed or think like, Oh my gosh, what do you mean? I'm always going to be feeling overwhelmed and stressed like this. No, no, no. There's going to get to a point where things are humming along, but you still have projects you want to do. So there's still fun, exciting things to look forward to and an off season and a January where you can focus on it's time to optimize a website, or I need to update my client, education materials, things like that. Or maybe I'm going to update my pricing or my sales structure. Those kinds of projects I think are really fun. Um, and you know, they're not something that you have to take on all the ones, you know, once you get these basic things, we're going to talk about going, you can run your business off of these things for quite some time and then start adding in the extra things as you go and updating as you go and just know that it's always going to be a constant evolution. So without further ado, should we get started with what we need? Okay. So the first thing we're going to need for our business is to make sure that our business is legal because, well, it's a business right now. I want to say this before we even dive into all of this, you don't have to, I have a business. If you love photographing dogs and you want to do this as a hobby and you, you want to, you know, maybe photograph a dog here and there, but not really have a full-on business. That is totally okay. And you can still listen to this podcast and check out heritage for our educational stuff. Cause we have a lot of crap focus things. I just wanna let you know, that's okay. If you want to take this to a new level and become a business, then 100%. Yeah. We support that as well. Of course. And if you want to go that route, I'm a big, big believer in committing to that and putting my stake in the ground and saying, yes, I'm going to start a business and I'm going to go all in. I'm going to create this business. So these are the things that we're going to do to get that business off the ground and to make sure that our I's are dotted and our T's are crossed so that we are setting our business up for success. Because as our business grows, it becomes a lot harder to backtrack on some of these things. Yeah. And you know, you just end up wasting a lot of time and energy. So if you know, you want to be in business, do all these things, get it done, and you're going to feel so much better about it. And it's going to be so much easier to add on these little pieces and do the little tweaks and updates as you improve your business. And you know, the basics and the foundation of your business are in place. Okay? So back to number one, getting legal, this is good require researching what your laws are in your local area. If there's County or township or state requirements for running a business or registration, that's going to differ wildly for all the different municipalities. So definitely look into your league, local resources. There, you can look could a local chamber of commerce. Those will often have information for you or your secretary of state is where you can also research what you might need to do at a state level to start your business. So that's number one is do that research and figure out what you're going to need to do. Number two is to determine what name you're going to use for your business. Are you going to use your personal name or are you going to use a fictitious name? If you're going to use a fictitious name, like fuzzy paws photography, you're going to need to register a doing business ads. You are probably also going to need to do something to register your name as a fictitious fictitious name. So look into that as well. If you're using just a personal name, so your actual first or last his name and just your business, you don't have to do that. And it doesn't matter if somebody else has that same name because it's your personal name. So that can't be trademarked. Now, if you're going to use something like a fuzzy pause,[inaudible], you need to make sure that that name is not trademarked, that somebody else isn't already using that. Uh, so you definitely want to look into that because even if somebody else is using it and they haven't officially trademarked the name, you know, do you really want to businesses have the same name? That's going to be really, really confusing for potential clients for customers, because they're not always going to notice that, Oh, one's located in another city than you are. So that's definitely something to look into now, as far as pros and cons of using your name versus a fictitious name, really there's pros and cons for both. And only you can determine what is going to work best for you. Some of the pros of using your personal name are you can take that in any direction you choose. Maybe you're starting with pets and then you want to add horses, or then you want to add high school seniors, or maybe you want to start doing weddings. You can add whatever you want under your name. You can take that brand in any direction that you choose. If you're going to use a more fictitious name, while depending on the name, you might be a little bit of pigeonholed into what you're photographing, or maybe it becomes something that's a little bit, you know, too cute, where your style becomes much more refined and elegant and timeless till there's just things like that to consider. If you're going to do a fictitious name, the fictitious name also requires those other steps, registering your fictitious name, setting up a doing business as, and possibly federally trademarking your name. So you can protect your business name. So all things to consider. So that's step number two, step number three, once you know what your name's going to be, at least in the United States, this will be different for those of you in other countries, but in the United States, you want to register for a federal E I N. Number. This is completely free, takes a couple minutes. And what that

It does is it gives a tax number

To your business. That is not your social security number, because you know, of course, we should try to protect our social security number from identity theft and all that good stuff. So any place that you can not put your social security out there on documents is always a good thing. So that EIN number will put a tax number with your business. If you're going to be an LLC or some other corporate entity, you will definitely need an EIN number. If you were going to be a sole proprietor, you don't need an AI in that EIN number because you can just use your social security number, but since it's free and easy, even if you're going to be a sole proprietor, then you know, definitely want to get that takes two minutes and you can just Google get my business at federal F E I N. Number that's also called an F E I N number. So, yeah, so that's number three. Number four, of course, is determining what kind of corporate entity you want to be. Do you want to be a sole proprietor or do you want to be an LLC? Some of the benefits of an LLC are that you have some legal protection from your assets instead of a sole proprietor, where if somebody sued your business, that could to you for all your personal, personal property as well, because there's no separation between your business and yourself, where an LLC gives you some legal protection there. The LLC is also very flexible with how you want to be taxed, whether you want to be taxed as a sole proprietor, or if you want to be taxed as an S Corp. So this is getting into crazy stuff and I am not an accountant. So I highly recommend talking to an accountant because based on your personal tax situation and your state laws that will depend whether one is more, um, more beneficial for you. For instance, in Pennsylvania, it was$125 to become an LLC. And there was no, or very minimal, maybe$25. But I think there was absolutely no fee on ongoing years to keep your LLC. Whereas if you're in California, it's$800 a year to keep your LLC. So in Pennsylvania, it was a no brainer to make my business an LLC. And then I can choose to do my taxes either as a sole proprietor or eventually I moved to an escorp just based on what my tax situation was and how much money I was making in my business. Again, you have to talk to your accountant for advice on that, but, um, you know, it was a no brainer to have that extra protection where in someplace like California to have that big$800 bill a year requires just a little bit more thought. So you might want to talk to a lawyer to see what kind of protections you would have by going with an LLC versus a sole proprietor and what the best choices for you. Now, if you're getting stuck with these things, it's important to note that you can always start as a sole proprietor and then change to an LLC at a later date. So this is not something that has to be done before you start. It's just a good idea to start thinking about it and start getting the information that you might need from the professionals that you want to work with. Alright, tip number five, you need some liability insurance. Gosh, you know, all of these early things that are not fun and so many photographers just ignore them because they're not fun and they're overwhelming and you don't know what you need, but they're all so important. And this liability insurance is also very important. Hopefully you never have to use it, but if you do, you're going to be really thankful that you have it because most of our personal insurances, at least here in the United States will not cover any sort of business thing, any sort of business incident. So your homeowners association, your, or your homeowners, I'm sorry, insurance, your auto insurance, things like that are not going to cover you. If it's a business thing, whereas business liability insurance will cover anything that happens in your business. So super important, and it's really not expensive at all. Um, I had a million dollars of coverage for anywhere from$175 a year to like$210 a year. Really, really reasonable, really, really enforceable. First I asked the same company that was doing my homeowners insurance and my auto insurance, and they offered business liability. So I got it through them. And other places you can look for is Hill and usher is a business or a photography insurance. They specialize in insurance for photographers. So they'll have a good policy there too. They'll also have gear insurance, you know, well, not quite as critical liability wise, but definitely critical. If you can't afford to replace all of your gear that you've spent tens of thousands of dollars on having insurance for your gear is very important. If you're a member of PPA, they have a free policy. That's included with your membership that you do need to opt into, but that free policy is math. It's okay. It's not replacement value. It's just whatever the cost of your gear is. So it'd be like, you know, if I had a five-year-old camera, instead of being able to get a new camera, they would give me like a thousand dollars, whatever the resale value of my camera would be. But with that insurance, you can upgrade to a paid policy. That is a really good replacement coverage. That one covers a mysterious disappearances. So if you're at an event and your gear gets stolen, or you're at a shoot and your gear gets stolen, it would cover something like that. It often covers if you are shooting near water and your camera took a swim, things like that. So it's really great to have for peace of mind, definitely something to look into Hill and usher is another great company that can talk to you about gear insurance. Cause not all personal insurance companies are going to offer something so specific that we need. So the things you want to look for in that gear insurance are definitely replacement value that if you lost your five-year-old camera, you can buy a new camera. You don't have to go buy a five-year-old used camera. That's definitely one of the big things and, you know, damage, if you damage it in water or falling, things like that and mysterious disappearances. So if it disappeared on a shoot, that would be covered too. I feel like those are the most important pieces to look for when you're looking for insurance for your gear. All right. The next thing you're going to have to do is to sign up to collect sales tax like goodness, Nicole, are we done with these insurance and taxes yet? Not quite, almost, almost. We're getting there, then we'll get into the fun stuff, but yes, you need to collect with your register with your state to collect sales tax. Thankfully, this is a very easy process because the state wants you to collect sales tax for them. So if you just Google your state name, sales tax collection, it'll be really easy for you to find that department of revenue page. And they're going to tell you exactly how to do it. You usually just have to put in your EIN number, your business name, address, and, um, there you go. And it's going to tell you how often you need to submit whether it's monthly, quarterly, or yearly. Usually you start quarterly and then they'll change you depending on, um, what your receipts are and how often, or how much money you're submitting quarterly. You might get changed to monthly, but they'll let you know. So definitely registered to collect sales tax in your state pen. Then moving on, we need a contract. We need a contract. Even if you are shooting for free, even if you are doing portfolio building, even if you are not in business yet, I highly recommend you create some sort of contract or a session agreement for your clients to sign in the hair of the dog Academy. We do have a sample contract in there. So it was created by a lawyer in my state. Definitely still recommend having a lawyer look over it for your business, your state, your local laws and your personal needs, but it's at least something to get you started. So you definitely want to have that contract because it should include things like your business terms and conditions, your limitation of liability copyright. So what clients can and cannot do with their images, things like that are just all really important pieces of the contract, Oh, model and property release as well. Also an important piece of the contract. All right, next up a little bit more fun is getting a business bank account. If you're going to be in business, you do not want to be putting all your business money in your personal account and commingling all of your personal and business cash that is going to become an accounting challenge slash nightmare. When it comes for tax time or heaven forbid if you're ever audited. So you definitely want to keep those separate. If you want to learn more about accounting, definitely check out one of our past podcast, episode 31, easy, easy accounting with Candace camper. It was a great fun conversation about how to set your business up for some easy accounting. So definitely give that episode a listen, but, um, yeah, you want to create a business bank account check with your bank that you already use for your personal account and see what the requirements for a business account are. Ideally, you can find one that doesn't have any fees or maybe they have a minimum balance. So you can just put that minimum balance in there and make sure that it stays at that minimum balance. Sometimes looking at smaller credit unions or local banks, they have a little bit more favorable business account terms. So definitely look into that.

Grab yourself that business bank account

And, or we'll actually definitely want the business pick account, but you can also add a business credit card or just choose one of your personal credit cards. So you're only going to use for business expenses again, that just keeps things so much cleaner come tax time and accounting wise and heaven forbid if you were ever audited, it's much more obvious what money belongs to what so definitely want to look into that. And spoiler alert, added bonus. Having a business credit card is a great way to earn all sorts of perks and miles and, um, free travel. That is one of my favorite pastimes is using the miles I've earned from my business and personal cards to travel the world. So yeah, you can look into that. The points guy.com. It's a great site. It will tell you all about this crazy little credit card points to airline miles hobby, where you can get lots of free travel too. All right, moving on to things that start to become a little bit more fun. So all of those things we've talked about, very boring people put their head in the sand because they don't want to deal with it. But believe me, if you take care of those things, you're going to be setting your business up for so much more success. If you do those things at the beginning, and then you can focus on the important things like finding your clients and serving clients and growing your business, knowing that your business is built on a solid foundation. And it is legally ready to roll and ready to start making you some money. All right. So our next have it is a website. This is the storefront for the 21st century. Every business needs to have a website, even if you're building your business on referrals, which is great. If somebody is referred to your business, don't you think they're going to look you up online before they contact you? Um, you bet they are. So everyone is going to look for you online, even if they've heard about you from another source. And even if they're really excited to book you. So a website is a nonnegotiable, definitely something that you need to have now, Holy cow, what can I possibly build my website with? There's so many different things out there. My personal two recommendations are Squarespace and WordPress. Those platforms will grow with your business as your business. That's gross that you want to put different things on your web site. You won't feel stuck with a free website like Wix. A lot of people that have I've worked with a lot of my students that have started with a Wix website, often find a lot of limitations. It's like starting your photography business with a consumer camera. It's okay at the beginning. But then all of a sudden you realize, wow, I'm really limited by this camera. The ISO can't go high enough. The shutter speeds just, you know, the focus is not that great. You know, things like that, that you start to notice limitations, same thing with certain website providers. So WordPress will grow with you and definitely as well. Squarespace, I've always used WordPress. I have not personally worked with Squarespace. However, a lot of people love it. And from everything I've heard, it's really user friendly and very easy to navigate and learn. So definitely recommend that. And then you can let your business grow with your website and you're not going to get stuck in a couple of years, having to rebuild your website from scratch. So what you need on this website, well, you don't, I'll have to go crazy and have 20 pages. The things that you need to have on your homepage is who you are, who you serve and where you serve them. So many people I see do not have their location on their website. And if that happens, people are just going to leave because they have no idea if you're going to market or serve to them in their market or not. So definitely make sure you have your location all over your website right there at the beginning should be who you serve, how you help them and where you serve them. And then the other things you need to have on your website is some sort of portfolio or a gallery to showcase some of your work. You don't need to have 37 images, five to 10 is sufficient at the beginning, and you can add some more in the future. Remember, your portfolio is only as strong as your weakest image. So you want to make sure you're putting on the best of the best. Even if that's a smaller amount in your portfolio. You also want to have an about me section on your website with a photo of yourself without a camera front of your face. Oh my gosh, Nicole. Really? Yes, we are personal brands. People want to know us, want to connect with us. People are going to be working with us. So we need to show our faces to our people. And so do not be afraid to put a picture of yourself. You can do, you know, a picture of you shooting or an action or the camera to your face on one of the pictures on the site, but not on your about me page. Make sure you have a picture that clearly shows who you are. So people know who they are working with and the other page you need. So we need who we're working with or who we serve our gallery and about me page and then an investment slash process page, where we talk about how people can work with us, what that process looks like and our investment or prices. You don't need to put all of your prices on there, either a range or a starting at, or most clients spend at least just to give people an idea. I like to put my products, pictures on there and have a starting out price. Walmart starting at four 99, you know, print starting at one 25, whatever it is, it's nice to just have the starting out prices there so people can start to see what they can expect. And then the only other thing you really need on your website is a contact form is a way for people to get in touch with you so that they can inquire about your services. So with that website, remember to start simple and you know, you can always add to it later. And a nice clean site with easy navigation is always going to be a cluttered, hard to navigate site. So keep it simple, keep it clean, easy to navigate with big, beautiful images. All right, next up, after we have our website, we need to have some sort of pricing. If you have no idea where to start with your pricing, whole bunch of information on that inside the hair of the dog Academy, you can also grab our free pricing one Oh one [email protected] slash pricing one Oh one. And it will walk you through how to create profitable pricing and only an hour. So definitely check that out. If you are new to the pricing game now with your pricing and what products you want to offer, don't feel like you need to offer everything under the sun. If you're just getting started, you can start off just offering some prints and digital files. Then you can add on a wall piece and then maybe there's a little album. And then maybe there's another type of wall piece you can slowly add on these different products. The important thing at the beginning is just to know, what am I selling? How much is it going to be? And you know, so you can tell people what you offer. Uh, it does not have to be everything under the sun. You should not offer everything that your lab offers pick and choose the things that you love and keep it simple. And then you can add things on as you grow. All right, next up, we have our pricing. We need to figure out how we want to sell our work. So what does that look like? Are you going to do all inclusive packages? Are you going to do in person sales? Are you going to do zoom sales? Are you going to do online galleries? Potential pitfall alert. Online galleries can be very challenging to make money because people tend to order only what they know, which are small print. And if you're selling products as a pet photographer, often we need to be focused on albums and Walmart. And those are really difficult things to sell in an online gallery. Collections are great. One of the challenges of having them order a collection is that's a big barrier to entry before they see their photos. And even if they trust that you can create beautiful photos, they don't trust that their dog is going to behave for their beautiful photos. So if you're going to do collections or something where there's a large amount of money upfront, always good idea to have a guarantee where if they don't love their images, she'll refund every penny that they paid. So that takes that risk off the table for them, where they will feel a little bit better about having a big purchase when they're not sure how their images are going to come out and remember, and I'm not sure how their images are going to come out. It has nothing to do with you and everything to do with how they think their dog is going to behave. So, yeah, don't let turn that around. Thinking that they're judging you because it's not, they are just worried about how their dog's going to do. That's definitely one of the biggest objections to, to get over for a potential pet photography client. All right. So we know how we're going to sell our work. The other thing we need is a way to take money and we need a way to get paid. Of course you can take checks. Not a lot of people have checks these days. So I highly recommend finding a way to take credit cards, whether that's PayPal or Stripe or square, or if you're using QuickBooks, there are so many payment processors out there. And a lot of them now just have a flat fee per transaction, not like a monthly fee like they used to before the players like Stripe and square came on the scene that really kind of changed up that whole merchant services arena. So definitely look into a way to do that. I hear a lot of people complain about, Oh, but they're going to take a percentage of my sale. That's okay. It's a normal cost of doing business. Just work that into your profitability so that you're still profitable. Even with the credit card fee, taking a piece of their sale because you need to make it easy for people to give you money and do pay you. So that's it guys. Those things that we've gone over are really all. You need to start your pet photography business. You don't need to have of fancy client education pieces. Is it nice? Absolutely. I want to eventually get there. Absolutely. Do you need it out of the gate? No. You know, you can add these other things on as you go. The things that I've gone over today are the bare minimum of what you need. I am going to have a downloaded checklist of these things right here on the podcast. If you go to hair of the dog academy.com/three five, just the number is three, five. That will take you to this podcast. Show the notes page and you can download the list of these things too. Check them off and make sure you have everything you need to get started in your business. And then it's all about getting out there and just practicing and getting out there and doing it because where are you going to learn the most is once you actually putting these things into practice, into motion and starting to work in your business, then there's going to be massive learning. Sometimes it's going to feel like a failure and that's okay. Without failure. We can't learn the lesson and we can't move forward. So just be aware. It's okay. If things are messy, just get in there and start doing it because the longer you stay trapped in student mode and you stay trapped in this learning and preparing just, you know, you're missing out on moving forward and starting to take the action because you're going to have to take these beginning baby steps anyway, like no toddler learns to walk perfectly at the beginning, whether they start walking at 11 months or one and a half years, everybody still takes wobbly first steps. So get these things. We talked about an order and start taking your wobbly first steps. And you're going to be a lot further along in a couple of years or in a year or even in six months. And if you waited for everything to be perfect, because again, nothing is ever going to be perfect. And the best time to start is always, as soon as you're ready now, not just waiting for a future date or some future, you know, milestone to hit before you start. And then once you are started and once you start putting these things into place, then the last piece of the puzzle is to learn some marketing, figuring out how to get your business in front of more potential clients, focusing on leads, which will lead to sales and you know, just building your business that way, which is something else we talk about inside hair of the dog Academy. We have a lot of marketing. We really go through every piece of building your business. And you know, I just wanted to make this podcast to help you cut through the overwhelm and stop living in the space of feeling like you need to do a million things before you can move forward. So this is what you need. This is their bare minimum. And then you move forward and you update as you go and you continue to work on your business and it is ever evolving. And it is so very reinforcing and such a wonderful experience, but you just need to get going. I really hope that you found this podcast helpful. Don't forget to download your checklist and don't forget to join us inside the unleash, your style challenge. Can't wait to see there. Have a great week. Everybody talk to you next Tuesday.

Thanks for listening to this episode of hair of the dog podcast. If you enjoyed this show, please take a minute to leave a review. And while you're there, don't forget to subscribe. So you don't miss our upcoming episodes. One last thing, if you are ready to dive into more resources, head over to our [email protected]. Thanks for being a part of this pet photography community.