We are going into our fourth month since Steve quit his job and, other than a few hiccups, we are amazed with how God’s plan is unfolding. Admittedly, I am a little scared with how long we can carry this on, but I have a great network of friends who remind me of the true faith we need throughout this time. This is soooo God’s plan and not our own! It’s hard to remember that when we have bad days and the discouragement sets in, but we just know that all of this is happening because there is something in store that is so much better than we could have ever imagined. It might not be the end result we were dreaming of, but it will be His perfect plan. In hindsight, in the last three months since we stepped off the boat we can see good changes in the business and for our family that probably would not have happened if Steve were still at his old job. Even though we continue to work on our plan, which is to work hard on the business and our relationships – especially with Christ, we still don’t exactly know what God’s plan is for us at this point in our lives. In the past few months Steve and I have been working on getting the business and our boutique shop up and running and finessing the Stacy Hart Photography experience from start to finish. We have been daily tweaking website wording, working on pricing worksheets and client communication, just to get things working perfectly for us. People probably see us hitting the gym and the beach and think we are partying, but the truth is, I have never put so much heart into any other project as I have this business. There has been a TON of rough days and days when Steve and I don’t see eye to eye. Days when it seems like this whole stepping off the boat thing was more of a suicidal leap rather than an example of faith. But, we press on. We dig deep. We realize that no matter what happens we have become stronger because of this. Our family is stronger. Our relationship is stronger. Our FAITH is so much stronger.
We want to thank you for sticking through this with us as we iron out all the details for our new way of life. I can assure you that your encouragement in the last couple months has given us the motivation to keep going and to work super hard to make this work for us and for you! We have just a few updates on some recent huge accomplishments.
1.) Steve submitted his application to Seminary about a month ago and we are waiting on word from the school to see if he got accepted. Then we get to work with Veteran Affairs to get the tuition assistance lined up for him. This is a HUGE step for Steve to go back to school full time and it will be a crazy couple of years, but we feel Steve is being called to do this and we are excited for the journey.
2.) One thing I did not know about Steve before we got married is that he is a Microsoft Excel nerd. I don’t get it. At all. BUT, I do know that his love for spreadsheets has helped us finally nail down how to run this business AS a business. It’s sad to say, but the first three years of my business, I had no idea what I was doing regarding pricing. Now things have been analyzed and calculated and put into formulas so that we can run this business to provide you with a special experience and products that are timeless and perfect just like I always wanted to. Photographers, how many of you are still guesstimating on what your pricing should be? It was eye-opening to see how much of a loss I was taking on some things. Yikes!
3.) We have started the boutique. Yes, we are still adding products and deleting products that we don’t like or we don’t think match our brand because our goal is to have the perfect products and a consistent process for you to create an overall experience that I already want to Squeeeee(!!!!) about.
4.) We are a few steps away from launching a new process in booking sessions so that every client has an easy, consistent, and seamless booking experience :-).
5.) After some fall newborn shoots, I am going to start selling all my newborn props. I have talked about this a lot in the past, but I really, really love focusing on the relationships between at least two people. I don’t feel like the posed newborn is something that allows for me to focus on this anymore. I will continue to do maternity and newborn shoots as a lifestyle portrait session. If there are any local newborn photographers, you will have an option to come over to purchase brand new bonnets/hats/hair bows/blankets for a fraction of the cost I bought them for :-).
Lastly, we have a HUGE giveaway going on right now. If you haven’t checked it out, please go here to enter!
Warmly,
Stacy
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