This is part of a series called "One Entrepreneur's Journey," where I'm talking with solo entrepreneurs about their successes (and failures) along the path of entrepreneurship.

In this interview, I spoke with Anastasia Chomlack, a lifestyle photographer near Vancouver whose work is truly fun and inspiring and demonstrates how passion can develop into a thriving business.

Tell me a little about your business.

I'm a photographer, and I focus mostly on lifestyle.  I do weddings and babies and maternity and families, and then recently we've been doing a little bit of travel and commercial work as well.  I say we, I bring my husband in to do a lot of my design for me, since we've grown, and he photographs weddings with me.

I know a lot of people who are very interested in photography, but it seems like making the leap from hobby to business is where people get hung up.  How did you make that leap?

That's probably the question I get asked the most, "How do you make money doing photography?"  I have to say, for us, we lucked out.  It was just easy.  We moved to a smaller town, and I had just had my second little boy, and I was, of course, taking photos of my children.  I think it's a few things.  One of them was just the place I was in.  I was going to moms' groups, and I was getting to know a lot of the families, and if they would come over to our house and see pictures on the wall or if they'd go to a friend's house and see the pictures I'd taken of their kids, people started talking.  Word of mouth just flew, and all of a sudden, my phone just started ringing, so I really just sat down over a cup of coffee with my husband, and we had the discussion, "Can we do this?  Should I pursue this?"

The first thing I did was take a couple of online classes in Photoshop, and I spent hours and hours on the computer looking at other photographers, reading magazines, looking at kids' magazines, going to the library and getting out old photo books, and really just studying photography as an art.  I knew I didn't want to be a typical portrait photographer.  I wanted to do something different, so early on, I was able to find a style that I really loved, and I just pursued that style.  I found a niche for myself early on.

How did you bridge the gap from doing what you're passionate about but still treating it like a business?

You can have all the talent in the world, but if you don't have a good business plan or a good concept of business or being an entrepreneur, I think people would find it very hard to succeed.  I'm very lucky that way.  My dad is an entrepreneur.  I grew up watching him have his own businesses and saw his work ethic.  Then early on, just in life and different things we did, we traveled a lot, and I worked in a few orphanages, and I always took the admin side of things, as far as the vision and, "How are we going to make this happen?"  I've been a list-writer for as long as I can remember, and that really played well in photography.  It was probably a couple of months before I sat down and thought, "This is taking off.  I need to sit down and create a business plan."  I went on a photography business forum and started asking questions to other photographers, "What do you do with this?  How do you charge tax?  How do you package things?  What does your customer service look like?," everything that is the back end of photography.

How about approaching things like promoting your business, scheduling, and all the day-to-day things that go into keeping the business moving?

I do all of that at this point, but I definitely within the next couple of years will be looking for an admin assistant to be helping me do some of that, just because as we grow, the front end is as busy as the back end.  I can be out there taking photos every single day, but I still need to be marketing myself, being on the blog.  There's so much social networking that needs to be happening, not to mention the invoices and bookkeeping.

From a marketing standpoint, is your business growing purely from referrals and word of mouth, or do you see some other things that have helped you gain some traction?

Absolutely word of mouth and referrals have been huge for me.  That is how I started and grew so quickly, but the other side of that has been my blog.  Blogging consistently, posting photos, writing a little bit of personal so that people get to know who I am before they hire me.  I have anywhere from 500 to 1,000 hits on my blog a day.  The blog has really given people a lot of interest.  I think that has been huge.  The other thing has been social networking - Facebook, Twitter, being super involved on the Web, being linked to other websites and other blogs.

What do you think you're getting right so far as an entrepreneur and as a small business owner?

There's a few things.  One of them, again, is social networking.  I think I jumped on at the right time, as far as making my blog, Twitter, and all of that a priority.  The second is that I stayed true to myself and my style, and I've seen as the years have gone by that I've come into my style even more, and more people are interested, and I'm getting just the kind of clients that I want to get.  The third thing, and I think that this is probably the most important, is that I've been incredibly generous within my business, and hopefully that doesn't sound conceited, but I would tell people again and again who are starting their business, "Be generous."

There are a few ways that I've done that.  One is that I'm always generous with my clients.  I always enlarge an image that I love from their session and give it to them for free.  Part of that is great marketing.  It will be hung on their wall, and it's an image I love of their family, and all of their friends and family are going to see it.  I always pick the image that epitomizes my style and what my favorite one was.  They're always so, so happy.  Giving them little bride books or albums that they can tuck into their purses, giving wallet-sized images for the dads to put in their wallets to bring to work, putting their slideshows online for a long time so that they can send it to their friends and family to view - I want to do it, because I always love my families, but also, it's incredible marketing, just to be generous, be kind.

The second way that I've been generous is, I started a "Celebration of Life," and I offer a free session every month to a family in need, so this could be a single mom or a child who has just been diagnosed with cancer or a mother who has just been diagnosed with cancer or maybe just a family that's going through a hard time financially.  I invite the community to nominate somebody, and I have a wait list, and every month I choose a new person, a new family, or a new cause.  I love this.  I get to shoot entirely for myself.  There's no expectation.  I've gotten a lot of work and referrals and recognition for this, which isn't the intention, but absolutely has been incredible for my business.  It really serves purposes all around.  It serves my heart, and it's also been great marketing for the business as well.

In a way, it's almost a selfish thing, because you're getting so much out of it.

That's right.  I always think those sessions are a little more for me than for anybody else.

But, at the same time, it lets the community and the world around you see what you're all about and just be inspired by your work.  It's really a great thing that you've got going there.

So, how about struggles?  What are the things that you feel you still don't quite have a handle on as an entrepreneur?

One is that I tend to take on a little bit too much.  I think as a woman and as a business owner, that's pretty normal.  I will just get caught up and decide we're going to do some huge promotion or take on some new project.  Taking on too much at times and working too many nights, that's definitely a struggle.  I can get wrapped up in the details, wanting everything to be absolutely perfect.  A little bit of time management would be a huge help for me, and I think we're at the point where I need to have an assistant come in, and that's a transition.  I'm going to have to give up control, and that's a hard transition for me.  When you build something up from the start and it's your vision, it's hard to let go.

Is there anything you wish you would have known before you got started?

Sure, in some ways, my business just happened.  I started taking photos, people started calling, I had a business.  There are certain times that I wish I had been able to go, "I'm going to start a photography business," written out a business plan, gotten a business loan, and then walked into it.  A lot of it I think you just have to learn as you go.

I also think we were a little bit job by job in the beginning.  Now, I sit down and tell people, "When you're trying to figure out your pricing, this is what you need to think about."  I could have jumped up to higher pricing earlier, had I known that I should be thinking about how much my cameras cost to get cleaned or new equipment every year and how that all needs to be put into your pricing structure, even just learning, "How much time does this actually take me to do?"

What's your best advice for new entrepreneurs?

Be okay with making mistakes.  Also, get a community of people around you.  Really network.