If you’re a photographer and have the opportunity to do a mentoring or coaching session with a photographer you look up to..don’t hesitate! Just do it!! I emailed Katelyn James back in March or April asking her if she’d be open to me booking her for a portrait session to get some headshots for my new blog, but knowing that she hadn’t been offering a lot of portrait sessions anymore…I thought I’d take a chance and figured it couldn’t hurt to ask…I was so excited when I got her response!…that she was playing with the idea of offering coaching sessions..she didn’t know exactly what they would look like yet, but asked if I’d be interested if the session included headshots…of course I said YES! Sign me up!

My Coaching Session with Katelyn has been by far one of the most helpful experiences that I’ve had in this industry (apart from second shooting)..I like to think of my time with Katelyn as a confidence booster session…she gave me the confidence and the push to move forward and helped me figure out the steps I needed to take to head in the right direction! I can’t speak about other photographers who offer mentoring, but Katelyn is just one of those people that makes you feel like a million bucks, but at the same time wants to help you grow and is able to gently push you forward towards your goals.

To get the most out of a coaching or mentoring session, I think it’s so important to do some legwork beforehand…If you go into a coaching/mentoring session unprepared, you might spend a lot of valuable time on things you could have done before in preparation! Here’s some of my best tips for prepping for a mentoring or coaching session!:

1. Pinpoint the areas where you know you need the most help. Start making a list of area’s where you want to see improvement in yourself or your business and then rank them with the most important area as #1. Try to be as specific as possible! Things like “I need help creating a better workflow chart to make sure I don’t miss steps when a bride books me” will be better to help your mentor know exactly how to help you than “I need help with my workflow”.

2. After you book your session, start creating a list of the more technical, non-specific-to-you types of questions that you may have, so that you can easily and quickly ask these and record your answers…These would be questions like “What’s the best size to export the images that you send to clients from Lightroom?”

3. Create an outline of the things you want to cover..this sounds semi-nerdy, but it was SO helpful in keeping us on track..I really think without the outline we would have spent the whole session just talking about our lives…We didn’t necessarily get through the whole thing, but it provided some really good guidance for the areas where I wanted to spend the most time..List broader topics as the main headings, with more specific areas and questions as the subheadings. Leave room so you can write down answers and advice under each heading and then print it out and bring it with you!

4. Be open to constructive criticism. This one sounds obvious, but it’s really important to go into a mentoring session with an open mind…you can’t grow if you arnt open to seeing the problems in your business, images, or the way you are shooting! Even the best of the best never stop growing or changing and that’s one reason why they are the best!

And here’s our sort of awkward, not-quite-in-focus self portrait attempt since I did my session one on one and there was no one to take our picture..we had to compromise and set the camera on a window ledge:

I’ll share more of my portraits of Katelyn and more about my actual experience soon! And in case you missed yesterday’s post: go vote on which color we should paint our new front door!