This week, Samantha talks with newborn and family photographer, Dana Graham.  Her whole life, Dana just wanted to be a mom.  But, in Northern Virginia, the idea of just being a mom is hard, especially when her husband was working for the government.  

Dana felt lost in her professional career and didn’t have a clear-cut path.  Then, a Facebook ad came up in her feed about photography.  One thing led to another, and she has been able to create a full-blown and fully-booked photography business and has a podcast for moms who feel trapped in the corporate world and are looking for a way to get out and follow their passions.  She understands that she isn't the only one who felt that way and wanted to create a community of moms that can support one another through her podcast.

She has to remind herself sometimes that she started her photography business so that she could spend more time with her kids.  There are phases in life where you are pulled one way rather than the other.  This is the mindset shift she has had to make because she knows what will work for her.  Dana wants to grow her business, but along with that comes more time spent on her business and not her family.  So, she has to be able to set goals and label those specific goals.  To her, time is the most valuable thing, so goal setting has to be done with time in mind; where time will be spent and with whom the time will be spent.  Now that she is moving internationally, this will be even more challenging because her business is referral-based and she is moving to an entirely different country.

Values are a broad topic.  For Dana, she wants to surround herself with moms who have built businesses and value spending time with their family.  She wants to involve her kids in her work and she wants to have them involved and around while she works.  This is what she values and wants people she works with to understand that it will be a reality with her.  

How did she get into photography?  It was a targeted ad that came across her Facebook feed.  She had just had photographs done with her baby.  It was something that she could start for a very low cost and she knew that she loved making babies laugh, so it made sense for her.  The only hang-up was a seemingly saturated market.  At the time, she was so desperate to make it work, she knew that if it didn’t work, she would have to go back to the job that she knew was taking her away from her kids and keeping her from seeing them grow up.  She describes the leap to leave her job and become a photographer as the most savage decision she has ever had to make.

Dana and her husband’s savage decision to leave the security of her job for her to pursue photography has shown her that a lot of times these types of decisions work out for the best.  Making that decision and having it work out has given her the courage to make more risky decisions.

So, what’s the biggest lesson Dana has learned along the way?  It is separating her own mindset from the rest of the world's.  Everybody has a different opinion about everything, so when you’re making decisions, you need to make decisions specific to yourself.  Nobody knows you better than you, and when you can surround yourself with people that are aligned with the way you think, you can get much better advice from friends.  She believes you should spend more time in your own head than you do in other people’s heads.  Also, confidence is hard to build.  Dana believes that if you can just do something, whether it ends up as a mistake or not, or whether or not it becomes a failure, you will gain confidence.

You can also apply to your mindset the fact that other people have already done what you want to do.  You can find those people via social media or other means and be willing to expand your circle to include those people and open up those new possibilities and get some encouragement.  Her podcast is a place where moms come to tell their stories and where women can come and find a community of moms that have done things differently.

If you want to find more information on Dana Graham, her photography, or her podcast, visit:

Or on Instagram: @dana_graham