We recently connected with David Perlman and have shared our conversation below.
Hi David, thank you for joining us today and sharing your experiences and acquired wisdom with us. Burnout is a huge topic these days and so we’d love to kick things off by discussing your thoughts on overcoming or avoiding burnout
When I first started with wedding photography, I thought burnout was a myth! I loved my job so so much, and I couldn’t ever imagine having too much of it.
Then in the second half of 2021, when all of a sudden I was photographing 2 years of weddings within 6 months… I became a wedding photograph making machine, and I lost myself. I absolutely love my couples, and I wouldn’t have missed their weddings for anything, but I just had nothing left outside of being a wedding photographer. And that’s when the feeling of burnout became very real.
In 2022, I realized I was still prioritizing my business. If someone asked me to identify the most important thing in my life, I would probably say my family, my husband, my health. But in reality, I was prioritizing my business over all of those things when it came to my time and my day-to-day focus.
Once I became present to that reality, I realized that I needed to have a big breakthrough in trust so that I could hand over parts of my business to other people. As a soloprenuer, there are so many hats that I wear, and I felt that only I could do a lot of those things. But when I saw the cost that had on my life, and when I created the possibility of trusting other people, I was really able to create something new and exciting for my life.
I hired a full-time assistant and gave her all the stuff that I don’t *love* to do. My favorite part of my job is connecting with my couples, so I still do every call, every email, every interaction with my couples because that is what lights me up, in addition to the photography of course. But there are a lot of behind-the-scenes thing that I can now trust other people to do.
This has freed me up to enjoy my life, love my job, and ultimately overcome burnout!
Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
I like to think of myself as someone with a lot of hobbies that happen to make money. This reminds me that I don’t *need* to do any of the things I’m doing, it reminds me that I am choosing to do the things that I love.
I’ve been a photographer for a while, and the reason I love weddings so much is that I get a front row seat to some of life’s most intimate and emotional moments. How many times in our lives do we get together with all of the people that are most important to us and really allow ourselves to be emotional, to be present, to live and laugh without reservation? How many moments do we experience where it feels like nothing else on earth matters? I think weddings are so special, and I love that I get to be part of those moments for so many incredible people.
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
I think the most important thing was that I didn’t force anything, and I allowed my journey to be organic. I started photographing headshots for people for free just because I liked it and I wanted to get better. Eventually, people started seeing my work, and they wanted to pay me for it, so I started charging a little. Then more and more people were interested, and I needed to raise my rates to keep my schedule manageable.
Wedding photography was very much the same. I had gotten a few requests for it, and once I actually started, I charged so little just because I wanted the experience. I soon found myself pretty busy, and I needed to keep raising my rates in order to not be completely overbooked. That’s really how I built my business – extremely organically. Sometimes I see people get ahead of themselves and try to start in the middle of the journey instead of at the beginning. I think it helped that I started doing this just because I loved it, and I didn’t try to demand a price that I wasn’t quite worth yet.
Before we go, any advice you can share with people who are feeling overwhelmed?
There have been moments where I feel like I’m working around the clock, and there have been moments where I wished I could clock in and clock out of my job.
Then it hit me! I *can* clock in and clock out of my job! Sometimes I create work hours for myself, and when the work day is up, I stop. I don’t answer more emails, I don’t finish that one job I wanted to get done…. I just clock out until the next day. It’s pretty freeing, especially coming from a place when I would always be working – like always.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://davidperlmanphotography.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/davidperlmanphotography
- Other: https://www.theknot.com/marketplace/david-perlman-photography-new-york-ny-1061845
Image Credits
David Perlman Photography
