So it has been quiet here for a while. I thought I could keep up writing while moving a thousand kilometer up north, adjusting to life in a new country and trying to have the headspace to pick up my company where I left it.
Sadly, that was not the case.
Rebuilding my photography business is taking longer than I hoped already. In the Netherlands I had a chamber of commerce registration and clients. But when we moved our address, I also had to give up my Chamber of Commerce registration and restart again here in Sweden.
This turned out to be more of a hassle than I thought. And 3 months in, I still haven’t everything arranged. The things that needed was the registration itself, I needed paperwork from the dutch tax agency (that was an epic long wait and many tears) and I need a bank ID, which I can only get with an ID card, which could only be arranged after I gotten mij personal registration number… and so on and so on…
Finally, this week my registration was approved and I have the documents to start my company again.
So, now, I am waiting on my ID card so that I can get a bank account here for clients to actually be able to pay.
But also, now I have to restart building up a client portfolio again and find both events, bands and paying customers to my services. This was in the Netherlands a lot easier than here in the north.
My biggest issues are the language, I do not yet speak or write Swedish and the geography of this country, which is so much bigger than in the Netherlands, so there are less people in my workable area. As I live quite rural now, it is harder to promote myself, to build a network and to drive to some event. On top of that, I did find a job that has me working weekends to provide income at least until the end of the summer.
But I haven’t been sitting idle. I have been picking up nature photography as, Nature we have in abundance here. And I did find a newspaper to shoot for on Freelance basis. Slowly I am starting to crawl out of my “moving house chaos” into a more focussed and ready to acquire new clients mentality.
An other project I have been working on is sharing my knowledge and gaining more knowledge on social media and how to market yourself better. The idea is to be a consultant and digital content creator for small companies like B&B’s, campings, bands, events, and venues. This way I can help them understanding the use of social media, how to use AI in this process, the way they can optimize it all for their company and shoot photographic content they can use. If you are interested, please check out “The Marketing Moose” (it's still work in progress)
Anyway, I thought I’d share a little update on how things are going. I will share more of my journey here in Sweden as I try to get back on the the photography path.