This time of year, I get it. It's hard. It's stressful with the holidays, the emotions of all the fun

parties and special performances and events at your kiddos school, gift exchanges, all of the

things, all while still handling your normal obligations like, I don't know, feeding your family every day.

Sometimes it's just easier to cast your photography business aside at this point and say,

it's December, the year's almost over, I'll just start again fresh next year.

Today, I am making the argument of why you 100% shouldn't throw the

baby out with the bathwater and pause your business, even if it's just for a little bit,

and what to do instead this month that will actually make your life better.

So the real question is how are portrait photographers like us able to run a profitable business and still put our families

first without selling digital files for cheap and working all the time? I'm Sarah

Petty your host of the Worth Every Penny Joycast,

and I went from a stressed out, overworked mama with three babies to being named one of America's

most profitable photographers without working my kids' lives away. Each week, I'll show you how to find

and serve boutique portrait photography clients in a world where we compete with free thanks to everyone having a digital camera in their pocket.

Take the first step to adding more joy and profit to your life by downloading your free photography business tools at joyofmarketing.com forward slash podcast. I think this conversation

that I'm about to have with you is one of the most shocking ones that I have with students in my

12 month coaching program. Part of the reason I have this program that's 12 months long

is because every month there's a different challenge. And in the month of December, it's a big one,

right? Wrestling with that, do I push harder, but then I'm not able to maybe put my family first

or what is the balance? What does it look like?

And sometimes it's easier just to get up. But here's the thing. After 25 years as a photographer,

without fail, balancing all of the emotions mixed with the exhaustion of the workload at the end of

...