Half a wedding calendar and four months of runway, when did you actually quit the day job?

Sam Lindgren· Wedding and brand photographer going full-time after three years of weekends· Named it, Creative & Media·Jul 21

Three years of shooting weddings on weekends while doing marketing ops Monday to Friday, and I have told myself I would go full time in the spring for two springs running.

Where I actually am: fourteen weddings booked for next year, and my number to replace the salary is closer to twenty two at my current average, plus brand sessions during the week which I currently cannot take because I am at a desk. Savings covers about four months of household bills if nothing breaks. Health insurance would come off my spouse's plan, which we have priced and which is not free but is survivable.

The thing I keep circling is that the weekday work is the whole reason to quit, and I cannot prove it exists while I am unavailable for it. The couple of weekday brand shoots I have done came from people who happened to ask on a Saturday.

My plan, such as it is, is to give notice in January, when deposits for next season have landed and the calendar is as full as it gets.

For anyone who made the jump: did you wait for a number, or did you pick a date and then make it work? And what did the first slow month do to your nerve?

4 replies

Eli Stern· Open·Jul 21

Picked a date. I had about five months of expenses and three retainer style clients who each said they would send me work, of which one actually did. I would not recommend my version.

The first slow month was February and it was worse than the money, because I had time to sit in it. I took a part time gig doing camera work for another company two days a week for that winter and it cost me nothing except pride, and it meant I never once quoted a job from a scared place. Scared quoting is how you end up at $900 for a week of work.

Sam Lindgren· Named it·Jul 21

Scared quoting is a good name for something I have absolutely done. The couple I discounted last spring because I had a quiet April turned into the most demanding clients of the year, which I do not think is a coincidence.

The part time camera work idea is more appealing than it was ten minutes ago. There are two production companies near me that hire second shooters in winter, and asking them is free. That is a better bridge than deciding in January that fourteen weddings is somehow twenty two.

Cheryl Dunn· Open·Jul 22

Not your accountant and every state is different, but the two things that ambush newly self employed people in the first year are estimated taxes and the self employment piece on top of income tax. While you are on payroll it is withheld for you and invisible. The month after you leave it becomes a thing you have to do on a calendar, and the first missed quarter is where the penalty conversations start.

Practical version: separate business account before your first full time dollar, and move a fixed percentage of every payment into a second account you do not have a card for. Ask a local CPA what that percentage should be for your situation.

Eli Stern· Open·Jul 23

Seconding the separate account, which I did about eight months too late. For my first year I was moving money by vibes and then having a genuinely awful week in April.

Sam, the other thing is that your deposits are not your money yet in any practical sense. I burned through a retainer in March for a job I shot in August, so August was busy and I had nothing to show for it. If you set anything aside now, set aside the difference between what you have been paid and what you have actually delivered.

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