The Number
$14,200. That is what I spent in one quarter to make sure this face, this wardrobe, and this feed looked exactly the way they needed to look. Not to impress anyone specific. To maintain the standard that keeps the doors open. People see the result — the photos, the events, the bag on the arm — and they think the image is free because it looks effortless. It is not free. It is the most deliberate line item on my sheet.
A plug-and-play spreadsheet that tracks sales, expenses and profit for any side hustle, so you can see what you really keep.
The Itemised Breakdown
Photographer retainer — $2,400. Monthly. Two shoot days, edited gallery, commercial rights. Non-negotiable. A blurry photo costs more than a crisp one ever will — it costs credibility.
Wardrobe — $3,800. Three statement pieces, two of them borrowed through a stylist relationship I spent two years building. The $3,800 is what I actually purchased. The borrowed pieces have a cost too — I'll get to that.
Hair and makeup, on-call — $1,900. Six sessions. Not every event, but every event that matters. There is a difference, and knowing which is which is its own skill.
Skincare and treatments — $1,100. Quarterly. This is infrastructure, not vanity. The camera does not lie, but good skin gives it less to say.
Event access and memberships — $2,200. Two private dinners, one charity gala table, one annual club renewal. You do not go to these things to have fun — or not only for that. You go because the room itself is a form of leverage, and the people in it have longer memories than any algorithm.
Content tools and software — $800. Scheduling, analytics, a light editing suite. Posting es mi 9-to-5, and every 9-to-5 needs its tools.
Time — approximately 210 hours. Planning, shooting, editing direction, caption writing, DM management, pitch responses, brand negotiation. At a conservative consulting rate, that number doubles the financial total. I do not include it in the $14,200 because time does not appear on a bank statement. That does not mean it was free.
The $14,200 is what I can show you. The real cost of a curated image is always higher than the receipts suggest — because the receipts only capture money.
What the Numbers Do Not Show
The borrowed wardrobe cost two years of relationship maintenance — showing up for other people's launches, remembering names, sending the right message at the right moment. That does not have a line item.
The events cost more than the table fee. They cost the mental overhead of reading every room, every conversation, every silence. By the end of a gala I am not tired from dancing. I am tired from working.
There is also the cost of consistency. The image cannot take a bad week. When I am sick, when I am bored, when I would rather stay home — the feed does not know that, and it cannot. Sustained image is sustained discipline, and discipline has no receipt.
The $14,200 is real. But the number that actually runs this operation is bigger, quieter, and it never shows up on a statement. That is the cost nobody quotes when they tell you the image is the asset.
It is the asset. Manage it accordingly.