We were lucky to catch up with Tammi Camp recently and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Tammi thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Being a business owner can be really hard sometimes. It’s rewarding, but most business owners we’ve spoken sometimes think about what it would have been like to have had a regular job instead. Have you ever wondered that yourself? Maybe you can talk to us about a time when you felt this way?
To be honest, everyday isn’t a good day. Owning your own business is not an easy road to take. It requires a lot of dedication, sleepless nights, early wake up calls and many late nights. There are amazing highs, but quite often intense lows as well. A lot of time can be missed with loved ones as you build your career, your business, and work towards goals.
Regardless of the bad days, there is nothing quite like owning your own business. Although sometimes a 9-5 job where I can clock in and clock out seems tempting during the hard days, I truly can’t imagine working for anyone else. I’ve always viewed myself as a leader, so it just makes sense too be my own boss. Being a business owner, I’m able to feel a sense of pride and accomplishment, while also a great sense of humility and grounding. I get to feel a deep personal connection to the people I get the opportunity to work with. More than that though, it gives me the opportunity to volunteer my time or make donations to charities of my choosing.
To be successful in life, I do believe that you have to master discipline. It takes a lot of time and dedication to run a business. Resilience and good work ethic is crucial for anyone wanting to succeed. Staying focused and your eye on the prize helped me tremendously get where I am today.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
I’m Tammi Camp, a cosmetologist turned wedding, portrait, and brand photographer. Originally, I planned to work in a salon and maybe open my own one day, but things changed drastically while in beauty school. I started my own photography business mainly as a hobby, and from there the love of the craft grew and people wanted me to take their photo.
I graduated beauty school and continued work in a salon, but it didn’t fulfill me like photography did. So I took the leap and went full time with photography and haven’t looked back since! It’s been a decade now since opening my photography business.
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
Early on in my career, maybe a 3 years in, I was told by a close family member that I was doing nothing with my life being a photographer. That I needed to get a real job. At that time, I believed them. I went back to college to start a career path for dental hygiene.
Once I finished my general education courses and graduated with my Associate of Arts degree, I got on the waiting list to start dental hygienic school. The wait list was 2 years and during this time I realized I wasn’t living my life and running my business like I wanted. I was too worried about what others thought or the what ifs. I let fear rule me and every decision I made because it felt like the safe and smart choice at the time.
Being waitlisted was the turning point for me. I was about 5 years into running my business and at that point I decided I was not going to give up on my small business. I was going to become something and make a difference in the industry. I was going to prove to not only myself, but others that I could build a career doing what I loved. I worked even harder to build up my business and reset my focus. I haven’t looked back since.
We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?
We live in a world of social media popularity. Mindset is everything. I began showing up and being myself on social media. I shared my work, my story, and my philosophy in my craft. It has made me relatable and approachable.
My biggest advice is to be yourself. Share what you love! Offer value to your following. Make yourself relatable, be real, be professional, and most of all show that you’re human. We aren’t robots and social media can be so overwhelming sometimes. Take breaks from it. Your mental health depends on it!
Contact Info:
- Website: tammicamp.com
- Instagram: instagram.com/_tammicamp
- Facebook: facebook.com/tammicamphoto
- Other: TikTok.com/@tammicamp