How to Choose Brand Values for Your Equine Photography Business

About a decade ago, I sat down and figured out the brand values for Ride the Sky.

I came up with Relationships, Knowledge, Enthusiasm, Excellence, Creativity, and Organization.

And honestly, they weren't wrong.

I care about relationships. I love learning. I'm enthusiastic about things to a degree that probably exhausts people occasionally. Creativity obviously matters to me. And anyone who has spent more than five minutes with me knows I have very strong feelings about organization.

So yes. That list sounded like me.

But I recently went back and looked at those values again.

And I changed them.

Ride the Sky's brand values today are:

Connection. Excellence. Authenticity. Guidance. Legacy. Good Company.

That's a pretty different list.

Which made me think about what changed.

The business has certainly evolved since I wrote the original values. But I think I've also gotten better at understanding what a brand value is supposed to do.

I was asking the wrong question.

Instead of asking: What words describe me?

I should have been asking: What really matters in the way I want this business to operate?

Those are not quite the same thing. Your mission, vision, and values are related, but they each have a different job.

Quick Answer

Brand values are the principles that guide how you run your photography business. They help you make decisions about how you work, how you serve clients, what kind of experience you create, which opportunities fit, and sometimes which ones don't.

Choosing core brand values for your equine photography business isn't about finding words that sound impressive. It's about figuring out what genuinely matters in the way you want to run the business and then finding the words that best describe it.

A useful brand value should actually show up somewhere in the way you do business.

This Became Even More Obvious When I Looked at Unbridled Business

I have another business now.

Unbridled Business is mine too.

Same Betsy.

I'm still organized. I'm still creative. I still love learning. I haven't suddenly become less enthusiastic.

And yet the Unbridled Business values are:

Knowledge. Practicality. Honesty. Empowerment. Sustainability. Good Company.

That makes sense when I look at what that business is actually supposed to do.

If I'm teaching photographers, I want the information to be accurate. But I don't want to give you a pile of information and leave you wondering what you're supposed to do with it.

So Knowledge matters.

And Practicality matters.

I don't want to tell photographers there's one right way to price, sell, photograph, compete, market, or build a business when there isn't.

So Honesty matters.

I don't want someone to work with me for six months and still need me to make every decision for them. I want them to understand enough to make better decisions themselves.

That's Empowerment.

And I don't want to teach people to build businesses that make money while making them miserable.

That's where Sustainability comes in.

None of that means Creativity or Organization stopped mattering to me.

They just aren't the things I most need the UB values to protect.

That distinction was pretty important for me.

So What Do Brand Values Actually Do?

Let's go back to Ride the Sky for a minute.

Guidance is one of the current values.

I don't want clients wondering what they're supposed to wear, where we're going, what they need to do with their horse, how they're supposed to stand, how they're going to choose photographs, or what size artwork will work over the sofa.

They aren't supposed to know all of that.

I am.

Part of what they're paying me for is the experience I have doing this.

So I guide them.

Once I looked at the business that way, Guidance was obvious.

The same thing happened with Legacy.

I'm not particularly interested in creating photographs that get downloaded, posted to Instagram, and forgotten somewhere on a phone.

Horses get older. Dogs get older. Kids grow up. Life changes.

I want the work we're creating to still matter years from now.

That's one reason finished artwork matters so much in my business.

So Legacy isn't there because I thought it sounded pretty.

It's connected to decisions I've already made about what I sell and what I want the end result of this whole experience to be.

That's what I mean when I say a value should do something.

And Then There's Good Company

This one is a little different.

Good Company ended up on both lists.

Ride the Sky and Unbridled Business.

Apparently I feel pretty strongly about this one.

And I do.

I want to work with people I like. I want them to like working with me. I want us to do excellent work together. And I want us to have some fun while we're at it.

I don't think doing excellent work requires everybody to be painfully serious.

At Ride the Sky, that means I want the client to enjoy the experience of creating the photographs, not just love what ends up on the wall.

There's room for laughter. There's room for personality. There's room for the horse to decide that whatever we had planned is absolutely not happening.

The horse still gets a vote.

At Unbridled Business, Good Company looks a little different.

I don't want mentoring to feel like I'm sitting at the front of the room handing down the answers.

I want questions. I want conversation. You can disagree with me. We can pull something apart and figure out why it isn't working for you.

And hopefully we can laugh occasionally because we're talking about photography businesses, not negotiating world peace.

Same value. Different business. Different way it shows up.

That's when it really clicked for me that choosing the word is only part of this.

Okay, So How Do You Choose Brand Values for Your Photography Business?

I wouldn't start with a list.

Which is mildly inconvenient considering I have a list of 194 brand values.

We'll come back to that.

For now, think about your own business.

What are the things you keep protecting?

Maybe you're a horse-show photographer and you've built your entire system around getting images online quickly because your customers expect to see and buy them while the excitement of the event is still fresh.

Speed may actually matter to your brand.

Maybe you photograph a lot of young riders and you've become known for making kids who are nervous in front of the camera feel completely comfortable.

There's something there too.

Maybe you photograph sale horses and accuracy matters enormously to you. You aren't trying to make a horse look like something he isn't. Your job is to create beautiful photographs that still represent the horse honestly.

That's telling you something.

Or maybe the thing that makes you happiest is creating an experience where a whole barn can participate without professional photography feeling financially out of reach.

Different business. Different priorities.

I wouldn't worry about naming any of those yet.

I'd pay attention to what keeps coming up.

The Things That Drive You Crazy Are Useful Too

This may actually be easier.

Think about the things that happen in your business that make you think:

Absolutely not.

Why?

Maybe you cannot stand poor communication.

Okay. Is the issue really communication, or is it that you care deeply about reliability?

Maybe you've watched photographers push horses too hard trying to get an image and thought, I will never do that.

Well, there's a pretty important belief hiding in there.

Maybe you hate the idea of somebody spending a lot of money with you and then having absolutely no idea what to do with the photographs.

Maybe you never want a client to feel rushed.

Maybe you don't want your entire life swallowed by the business, even if working more could make you more money.

Those reactions tell you something.

Sometimes it's a lot easier to recognize a value when somebody steps on it.

Now the Big List Becomes Useful

This is where I think a list of possible brand values can help.

You've got the idea. Now you're trying to name it.

Maybe you keep coming back to the fact that clients should always know what's happening and feel supported through the process.

Is that Guidance? Service? Support? Communication?

There isn't a universally correct answer.

Read the words and see which one gets closest to what you actually mean.

And crossing things off can be just as useful.

Nope. Not me.

No.

Definitely not that.

Sometimes eliminating 150 words is easier than choosing one out of 194. If you need some words to work with, you can grab my free list of 194 brand values here.

I still like the exercise.

I just don't think the list should be the thing telling you what your business cares about.

You already need to know that part.

Don't Stop Once You Have the Words

Let's say you end up with five values.

Great.

Now I'd go back through each one and ask what you actually mean by it.

Not the dictionary definition. What does this business mean by it?

That's where Excellence became useful for Ride the Sky.

Excellence can mean almost anything.

For me, part of it means I'd rather do fewer things exceptionally well than a whole bunch of things adequately.

That has consequences.

I intentionally limit how many clients I take. I protect enough time to plan, photograph, edit, meet with clients, order products, and deliver the finished work at the level I want.

If I suddenly decided to triple my client volume without changing anything else, Excellence and I might need to have a little chat.

That's useful information.

Someone else's version of Excellence could look completely different.

That's fine.

We're not trying to agree on what Excellence means. We're trying to figure out what it means in your business.

How Brand Values Help With Business Decisions

Let's say one of your values is Family.

You built the photography business partly because you wanted more control over your schedule and more time with yours.

Then somebody offers you an opportunity to photograph an event series every weekend for three months.

The money is good. You'd enjoy the work. And it could lead to other opportunities you want.

So do you take it?

I have no idea.

That's your decision.

And I think that's important because brand values aren't magic.

They don't spit out the correct answer every time you have to make a business decision.

Maybe you look at everything involved and decide those three months are worth it.

But you're making that decision knowing what you're trading.

That's different from saying yes to every opportunity that looks good and eventually wondering how you built a business that doesn't fit your life at all.

Your values give you something to compare the decision against.

Sometimes that's all you need from them.

How Many Brand Values Should a Photography Business Have?

I used to recommend three to six. I still think that's pretty reasonable. Mostly because if you have 17 core values, I'm not convinced all 17 are actually core values.

But I'm not particularly interested in whether you have five instead of six.

You need enough to describe the things that really matter without having so many that you can't remember what they are.

If you get stuck with a giant list, look for overlap. You may have three words that are really trying to describe the same thing.

And ask somebody who knows your business well.

A good client can be especially helpful here.

I wouldn't ask: What do you think my brand values are?

There's a decent chance you'll get a blank stare.

Ask: What do you think matters to me when I'm working with you?

That's a much easier question to answer.

And the response may surprise you.

Other people sometimes notice things about us that we don't realize we're showing them.

Mine Changed. Yours Can Too.

Going back through my old Ride the Sky values was interesting because I didn't look at them and think, Well, that was completely wrong.

It wasn't.

That list represented where I was and how I understood the business at the time.

I just understand it better now.

Relationships became Connection because connection gets closer to what I'm actually trying to preserve in the photographs and the client experience.

Knowledge is still incredibly important to me, but Guidance better describes what I want clients to receive because of that knowledge.

Enthusiasm didn't disappear. Neither did Creativity or Organization.

They're still very much me.

They just aren't the best description of what Ride the Sky needs to stand for.

And Legacy, Authenticity, and Good Company became much more obvious as I looked at what I've actually built.

Your business is going to change too.

You'll get better at it. You'll learn things. You'll work with more clients. You'll discover things you thought mattered that really don't and things you didn't realize mattered that apparently matter a whole lot.

Your values can change when your understanding of the business changes.

They're not carved into the side of the barn.

So What Does Your Equine Photography Business Actually Care About?

Not what words would look good on your website.

Not what another photographer chose.

And not necessarily the words you'd use to describe yourself.

Look at the business.

What do you keep protecting?

What do your favorite client experiences have in common?

What drives you crazy when it's missing?

What are you unwilling to sacrifice just because something might make you more money?

What do you want people to experience every time they work with you?

And what do you want to remain true even if the business looks different five years from now?

There's probably a pretty good start to your brand values hiding in those answers.

Then you can worry about what to call them.

Because I've changed my mind about this part.

The words aren't where you start. They're how you name what was already there.