The idea of a work-life balance has taken me YEARS and years to navigate, so today I wanted to share with you the things that I choose to outsource so that I can live the life I want as a creative business owner AND mom to 3 young children.

I started my photography business when I graduated from college. At the same time, I started teaching kindergarten. That first year, I photographed 19 weddings and taught kindergarten M-F (and as I’m sure you all know, teaching comes with a lot of additional work outside the classroom and school day hours). I was constantly working. Fast forward a few years, when my husband and I got married. He had been shooting weddings with me for 2 years at that point and we had always planned on me leaving teaching when we got married and I was able to get health insurance through his employer. A huge weight was lifted when I was able to run the business full-time. But, I quickly let myself pour everything into it and nothing left to give. I still worked constantly. I did every bit of it by myself – I didn’t outsource tasks, I didn’t have an assistant…it was all me. And soon, it had a hold of my mental health, too. I was drowning in work and I had let myself become defined by my business and it’s success. After years of that, as we started growing our family, I found myself desperate for a better, more healthy lifestyle.

So, I started outsourcing. I’ve been outsourcing for years now and it changed everything for me, my ability to spend time with my family, and find a bit of separation between business and self. If you’re needing more time, more space, more energy to pour into personal things or the parts of the business you love to do, assess what feels challenging, bothersome, or frustrating. Start there and see how you can let go of one task at a time to free up more time and emotional space!

EDITING | I’ve been outsourcing my wedding editing to Hope Taudvine for years now. She’s amazing! She quickly learned my style and I feel confident in her ability to provide consistent edits for us. I typically edit 50-100 images from a wedding day as reference images and then send the gallery to her. Once I get the gallery back, I simply upload the photos for the couple, and we’re all set! It saves me SO much time!

BOOKKEEPING, ACCOUNTING, TAXES | We’ve been using Amy Northard for quite a few years now and absolutely love them! They do bookkeeping for us, send us a monthly review, and file our taxes for us as the end of the year. They are incredibly punctual, full of good information, tips and tricks, and are just a super solid team that we’ve had a great experience with.

ASSISTING WORK | There has never been such a solid virtual assistant as the team over at Jen Madigan Creative. Holy moly, the best of the best! I book a set number of hours each month and then what they help with is based on my needs that month, so it’s a really great way to get things accomplished on the back-end that I simply don’t have the time to do. A lot of the time they’re doing things for me that I honestly couldn’t get to for years or until I have a large chunk of time in the winter. They’re skilled in so many areas so can do just about anything! Anything from preparing blog posts, redesigning websites, SEO, Pinterest, creating products, helping with launches, etc.

HOUSE CLEANING | We have a sweet local woman and her mom clean our house once a month (if you’re local to Indianapolis and want her name, I’m happy to share). Definitely an added expense, but I feel so much better knowing things are deeply cleaned once a month and we aren’t running around cleaning all the time!

I hope this helps inspire you to take a bit off your plate and outsource so you can take back a bit more of your time!