Helping pet photographers build a profitable and fully booked business, season after season.
I built my pet photography business from a $5,000-a-year side hustle into a multiple six-figure business, and now I help other pet photographers do the same, as their coach and mentor. I teach the strategies and systems I’m still using in my own business right now, and I don’t gatekeep any of it.
You started your business because you love photography and you love pets. But the business side is not where you want it to be.
You're posting on social media, your website looks great, but the right clients still aren't finding you.
If this sounds familiar
Your bookings come in waves. Some months you're booked out, then you've got three months of nothing, and you're not sure how to keep the revenue steady.
And underneath it all is the worry: how do I keep this business going?
I get it, because I’ve been there. I’ve had those panicked, anxious, 3am thoughts, wondering if I should just go back to a day job. Your photography is amazing. The business side is where you need more support.
If you want to grow your pet photography business into something that brings in consistent revenue and supports the life you want, you’re in the right place.
The journey
Scroll through the years that took me from photographing my heart dog to coaching pet photographers around the world.
2009
I picked up a camera while I was working in the Australian Public Service and never put it down. For years photography was a side gig. Events, families, newborns, weddings, whatever came my way. I loved it, but I was only earning about $5,000 a year from it. It felt more like an expensive hobby than a business.
2019
Mac was my heart dog. Photographing him through his illness changed how I saw the work. I understood how much these images come to mean. They're what people hold onto. That was the year pet photography became the only thing I wanted to shoot.
2020
I launched Ina J Photography as a proper pet photography studio, built around storytelling and a client experience that felt special. It grew into an award-winning Canberra business with higher sales and fewer, better sessions.
The turning point
But it wasn't a straight line. There was a stretch where I came home from a long trip overseas with no marketing running and nothing waiting for me. My calendar was empty. I remember the panic, and I wondered if I'd have to go back to a day job. I got out of it by learning how to create bookings on demand. Real marketing campaigns that bring the right leads in when I need them, season after season. Once I could do that, the fear of the quiet months went away, because I finally knew how to fill them.
Today
Today my studio is still running and generating $305K+ a year, while I coach pet photographers all over the world. That's the part that matters to me. I'm not teaching a business I used to have. I'm teaching the one I'm still in, this season, with the same campaigns I use myself.
Results
Booked out for six months from one marketing plan
I've never done one marketing plan and it's booked me out for six months.”
Three seasons booked back to back
You didn't hold anything back. You're so generous with information, and so generous in helping photographers.”
How I’ll help you get there
Most coaches hand you a generic playbook. I don’t work that way. I look at everything you’re already doing, find the gap that’s actually costing you, and we fix that one first. You probably don’t have all of this broken. You most likely have one. This is my Consistent Ideal Client Method.
Your positioning isn't pulling in the right people, the ones who take one look and go “yes, you're the pet photographer for me.”
The right people don't know you exist yet, and you don't have a reliable way to bring leads in.
You've got the enquiries, but they're not turning into booked, higher-value clients.
We start with whichever is furthest upstream, because better visibility just sends more of the wrong people towards a message that isn’t landing yet. We fix the biggest gap first, then build the systems and campaigns you can run again every season. There’s more underneath it, your pricing and profit, your mindset, the systems that let you step back. But we always start with the one thing that’s costing you the most right now.
Recognition
The studio everything I teach is built on has picked up some lovely recognition over the years. But the thing I lean on most isn’t an award. Before any of this, I was CPA-qualified and worked as a finance and business manager and a business analyst. So I come at your business from a numbers and systems point of view. That’s the part most photographers never get taught.
A little about me
I'm one of those obsessed dog mums. I love my dog so much I talk about them all the time, and I'll stop mid-sentence for a dog on the street. Not even a little sorry about it.
I run on matcha and cold brew, and I love a bubble tea too.
And I love seeing the world. Before COVID my goal was a new city or country every single year, and I'm getting back to it. I'll try the food I can't pronounce and talk to a stranger's dog before I talk to the stranger.
I mention all this because it’s the whole point. A business that books consistently is supposed to give you the life you want, whether that’s travel, more time with the people you love, or just space to breathe. That’s what we’re building here.
If you’re a pet photographer who’s tired of the quiet months and ready to book the right clients season after season, that’s what I help with. Come and see how we can work together.
Prefer to listen first? My podcast, The Pet Photographers’ Journal, is a good way to get a feel for how I think before we ever talk.