Join us for an insightful conversation with licensed therapist and business wellness coach, Tina Salmon, as we explore the impact of personal money attitudes on professional success.
Discover how our past experiences with money shape our beliefs, behaviors, and business outcomes. Learn invaluable tips on shifting your money mindset, creating a healthier relationship with money, and separating self-worth from your business.
We also discuss the connection between personal growth, professional development, and the impact of mindset on our lives.
Don't miss out on practical tips for managing negative thought patterns and prioritizing mental and emotional well-being for a thriving career!
Tina Salmon: Facebook | Website | Instagram
Connect with Karinda!
Thanks for listening!
Join us for an insightful conversation with licensed therapist and business wellness coach, Tina Salmon, as we explore the impact of personal money attitudes on professional success.
Discover how our past experiences with money shape our beliefs, behaviors, and business outcomes. Learn invaluable tips on shifting your money mindset, creating a healthier relationship with money, and separating self-worth from your business.
We also discuss the connection between personal growth, professional development, and the impact of mindset on our lives.
Don't miss out on practical tips for managing negative thought patterns and prioritizing mental and emotional well-being for a thriving career!
Tina Salmon: Facebook | Website | Instagram
Connect with Karinda!
Thanks for listening!
Welcome to Mindset and Money Mastery for Photographers the podcast. We help overwhelmed photographers make more money while simplifying their business by mastering their you guessed it mindset and money. Tune in each week for practical and actionable tips to take your photography business up a notch. Let's dive right in.
Speaker 2:Today I am super excited to have Tina Salmon join us on the podcast and we're going to talk about one of my favorite topics. You all know, if you listen to the podcast, I love all things mindset and what I call the woo-woo side of being a business owner. I think it's incredibly important to recognize that we can't just be business owners. We also have to grow as people as we develop our businesses, and that's why I try to bring in experts in the mindset business type area to share their expertise and, hopefully, a different perspective on mindset from what you might have heard me or other guests talk about. So, Tina, do you want to start out and introduce yourself and tell everybody who you are and what you do?
Speaker 3:Sure, Hi everyone. My name is Tina Sammon and I am the CEO and founder of Coach Aniza. I'm also a licensed therapist and a business wellness coach. I help overwork successful business owners avoid burnout so they can prioritize themselves spending time with their families as they grow their businesses.
Speaker 2:I love that and I think the timing of this is perfect. I don't know that I told you this, Tina, but I actually took a small break from the podcast over the summer to just give myself some time to breathe and not have so many things on my plate, which I think all of us sometimes can be all too good at loading ourselves up and then going, oh my gosh, what am I doing? I have overloaded myself and I need to simplify and take a break and take a breather for some things. So I think the timing of having you here is perfect as well.
Speaker 2:Today we're going to dive into the whole idea of a money narrative and, for those of you who are listening to this, you might have heard the podcast episode last season when I talked to my own personal mindset coach, Christina Bold, and we talked a little bit about money and our thoughts on money and how it impacts us. But today we're really going to talk about that money narrative and how that can impact your business and honestly, I would go as far as saying it can keep you from making money and charging money and feeling confident like just going out and putting yourself out there as a business owner. So, Tina, do you want to introduce kind of what a money narrative is for people who might be listening to this?
Speaker 3:Sure. So, as I do with everything that I talk about, you know that we define a word or a phrase based on our lived experience. We may have some idea, but I always like to start off and read it like what does the dictionary say? What it says in black and white, because our definitions of things is based on our lived experience, which is ties in specifically with what we're talking about money narratives. So it says a narrative is a story that we create about a certain subject, in this case, money.
Speaker 3:Right, it's based on our account of a series of live events or experiences. We create these narratives by using our five senses what we see, what we hear, what we touch, what we taste and what we smell, or a combination of those things. Right, we also include these narratives from our caretakers, so, like our mom, our dad, our grandpa, our grandma, aunties. We also get it from our peers, like you know, as you're in school and you identifying what certain cool kids are doing. So you're developing narratives about different topics based on your lived experiences. And also a big influence and that's what we're seeing more abundantly at this time is we also get influence from the celebrities or social media, and that's why there's a lot of anxiety in different things that are happening currently based on our narratives about certain topics, including money, and which is applicable to us as business owners. We see certain people on social media and we think certain things about money and how it should be made.
Speaker 2:I think this is so important as business owners and primarily what I teach photographers has to do with charging money so you can make money. In order to do that, you have to kind of sell your work and your art and your portraits. And so many times, like we start talking about money and how much money you actually need to charge to make a good living doing this, and I ask people what number did you come up with and how does that make you feel? And everyone is like I am terrified. That is scary. I think I have to make thousands of dollars per client. Like holy crap. This isn't saying you're crazy. There's no way people can do this. No one's going to pay this much money for what I have. I'm not worth that. And I'm like but I'm sitting here telling you my clients do it every day. There's thousands of other photographers that will tell you their clients do it every day. They're like yeah, but it will never happen for me. And at that point I'm like okay, we got to look into this. Where is this coming from? Like, why do you feel like this? And I think our money narrative kind of shapes this. So I'm going to share my story of when I realized that my money narrative and the things that have happened in my life were really impacting my business. Very briefly for those of you that haven't heard it, and I think this will help you all identify this and then Tina can share some tips on, like, how to identify these things in your own life, in your business.
Speaker 2:In my personal life, my husband and I got married. We put our entire wedding on credit cards so we could not afford to pay for our wedding. And then, after we got married, we went and did good old Dave Ramsey and we learned how to pay off our debts and I became the debt. I don't even know what to call myself. I would like debt crazy. Like we had a spare penny paying off debt.
Speaker 2:We weren't doing anything fun, we weren't doing anything luxurious. I was going to pay off all of our debt, no matter what, like I didn't care if we didn't eat food. I was paying off our debt and got a little crazy about it. And then I started noticing in my business that when people were trying to give me that money that I needed to pay off the debt and to pay my own bills, I started feeling really uncomfortable and I started realizing that when I would tell a client my pricing I kind of wanted to crawl in a ball, go in the corner and hide and it just made me so anxious and I was like that's weird. And then another thing I realized was I would refuse to take credit cards in my business because I felt like if somebody put their portraits on a credit card they were going to debt for me and I didn't want anyone to go into debt for me. That was huge.
Speaker 3:That's a unique one.
Speaker 2:And I was like that's silly, like well, I might all of them people pay on their credit cards, maybe they just went airline miles, I don't know. And then I just started feeling like such a sense of dread and impending panic and doom. Every time I had to talk about pricing. I would have a phone call with a potential client and we get to the pricing part and I was like I don't want to say it or I write down the price, because if I didn't have to say it it made it easier, or I'd find my voice like cracking and doing weird things. And then I'd get to my image reveals where I'd show them their portraits and be like you want to buy this piece of art and I'd be like it's going to be $300 and I would be terrified. Now I charge like $3,000 for the same thing that I was terrified of saying $300 for before.
Speaker 2:But I was driving down the road and I remember it hit me All of a sudden like all of these things hit me and I was like I think I have a money mindset issue and at that point in time I had no idea what all this stuff was.
Speaker 2:I was just like I think I have a money mindset issue and I went to Google and sort of Googling it and was like, oh, this is me and I found someone to help me. So I think this is where Tina probably enters into this and it's where Tina is like, yes, this is where you need someone like me in your life. If you feel like that and you're saying the things and feeling this, feelings current, as she felt, that is a good sign. I think sometimes we think that our money impacts us in our personal life, but we forget that it really impacts us in our business, probably more so, because we start reflecting the money on accident and then we go why are we making any money? So what do you think? Some signs are that this whole idea of a money narrative could be impacting people's businesses.
Speaker 3:Sure, and so thank you so much for sharing your story. I wanted to have like pom poms and like sharing you on. I am going to be sharing some tips at the end of the episode to help you, and I think that you kind of explain that, because one of the things I share is that you should rewrite the narrative, and one of the things that you just shared was you had a narrative about someone using a credit card and you just simply just shared that. Hey, maybe the narrative that I can write is hey, the person wants to use a credit card so they can get extra airline miles, right, or you can go further into that later on. So how can we recognize that this money narrative is affecting us in our business? Is that we're overworking ourselves, we're feeling anxious, we're feeling overwhelmed, we're feeling stressed, we're always feeling like we're about to burn out, we're trying to stay afloat All of those things? If it's coming up for you, those are indications that your money narrative is not aligned with the vision you have for both your life and your business. The way that I work with my clients is very integrative, because I don't feel that, even though, as an entrepreneur, you set your own time, you don't have a hat that you take off and you go spend time with your family. It's really integrative process and it's important that we be mindful how these narratives are showing up both, as you said, in our personal lives and our business.
Speaker 3:So I wanted to share my story because I think when you hear someone's story, you could identify with certain parts of it. My story was that I was working my nine of five and got really burnt out, and I was working my business at the same time, in the midst of the pandemic in 2020, and had lost a loved one. So there was a lot of what we call life events going on and my nervous system gave out and I started having what it felt like anxiety. I felt someone was electrocuting me throughout my own body randomly at any time and I couldn't control it, and this feeling then led to insomnia and panic attacks and different things like that, and when I went to the doctor, they couldn't really identify what was wrong with me. And then, after like long hours of searching, I went to the cardiologist. I went to the neurologist my primary care doctor and no one could really understand what was going on, and it was one of those in the middle of the night you can't sleep and you just started googling your symptoms and then, because I've been in the field for so long, I finally put it together.
Speaker 3:What I was experiencing was anxiety jolts, and that pretty much means that the nervous system is overstimulated and it just the neurons are having a party, and just you wasn't invited to it. That's how I like to explain that situation. It's just like too much is going on and eventually what I realized is I was burnt out. So, with that said, my narrative, what contributed to me burning out is that I realized that I felt like I needed to work hard to get the money.
Speaker 3:So that meant sacrificing everything and my relationship with everyone to get the money, because I was burnt out of my nine or five. I wasn't happy and I was trying to start the business and it meant that I needed to give it my all Right 24 seven. I would be on date night thinking about the business. I would be hanging out with my friends and be talking about the business. It was the business, the business, the business, because everything was tied to quote unquote making the money. So that's pretty much my situation and that's how some signs that you can see that your your money narrative is impacting your business.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that's super interesting because people sometimes forget that your mindset, the things that are happening in your brain, can make you physically ill and they need to. These weird things happening sometimes in our bodies that we can't explain and everyone says you're fine and you're like no, I'm not okay, something is wrong in the doctor's, like no, you're fine, all the tests are good. But it's kind of self-induced putting ourselves through torture at the expense of success and the hustle and working all the time. And it's funny that you brought this whole thing up, because this is very, very, very important Success and the hustle and working all the time. And it's funny that you brought this whole thing up because this has been on my mind a whole lot lately, you know, dr Julia.
Speaker 3:Yes, yes.
Speaker 2:So I went to Dr Julia's retreat in April the end of April in Los Angeles, and at that time I was coming up a very big event. I had like a month of my time where I worked 24 seven, knowing that after I'm done working 24 seven for that month, I get some time off and I get to relax and breathe. And I got there and it hit me like a ton of bricks, like wow, I am choosing to make things harder on myself than they need to be. I am doing more than I need to be doing. For who like torturing myself? I sat there and was like this is silly and I don't know if you know Kristen Carversmith. She actually stood up and she sang and I shared a little bit of thought on a podcast episode earlier and she was like I didn't know what to say but I felt like if she needs to stand up here and I need to sing this for you, and she just like sang this song and was like let it be easy. And I was just like, and it just like hit me and I think that the fact that this just came up and the fact that I had that experience and I left LA I sat on the bus on the way back to my airport, from the bus, from the rental car drop off, and I sat there crying, typing up this big long thing about choosing to let it be easy and I'm sure everyone thought I was crazy on that tram, but it's fine and I think that's really important.
Speaker 2:Like, sometimes we overcomplicate things when we make things harder on ourselves, and I think that the real reason that we do that a lot of times is rooted in this whole mindset money narrative and also the way we're raised that in order to be successful, we have to work hard or we have to work more. And I know that that's not 100% our money narrative here, but it's all interrelated. Like we're told all of these things about success and what being successful looks like, and then we grow up and we do what we're told, growing up and what culture tells us that we should do, and then eventually it all comes crashing down on us at one point in time and then we're like, holy crap, I need to take a hard look in the mirror and see what happened that led me astray. And I think that when we do that, we start to stop and to look back at like, how did I get to this place to begin with.
Speaker 2:And it's so like these little things that have happened in our life and these narratives that have been built into our brains that we don't even realize, like somebody, like a parent or a relative or friends, parents that used to go to their house a lot saying something like oh yeah, well, I'm so successful because I work all the time. Oh yeah, I'm on the phone all the time because I'm working hard to make money. We have to work hard to make money. We have to be on the phone all the time. We have to do those things. So, yeah, I feel like that is the root of why this mindset little, why looking at our narratives and all aspects of our business is so hugely and wildly important.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I wanted to share that. When I did the deep inner work, when I got burned out, I realized that my money narrative was almost over 60 years old. Like it was like two generations deep. You know, when you get to the root cause of it and like when you ask yourself, the quality of the questions you're asking yourself is really important. And it's like when you get to it I realized it was because my grandparents had a lot of money and lost it due to a certain lifestyle of, like gambling, for example, and they lost it all. So then they had to rebuild it back and it was hard and it was difficult, right, because you had to work really hard.
Speaker 3:That was 60 years ago and because of that upbringing my mom and my caretakers they really had this idea that everyone's like we have to work really hard. We have to work really hard. And it took away from the relationships, right, the quality time. It took away from just the expansiveness of what you could achieve in your life and different things like that. So sometimes you think it's like you, but it's actually stuff you, it's so generational, it has such a generational impact, right, you don't even know, unless you really are curious to see where this stuff is coming from.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think sometimes when you grow up and you just hear these things and you don't realize and those of you that are listening to this that have kids like this is ooh, this is time to pay attention. Like listen up here, because I have a two and a half year old and I am like gosh, I don't want to instill these same bad stories about money in my child as my parents instilled in me. And now that you say that about like grandparents, I start to think about even like my grandparents now, which I've never even gone that far to think about my grandparents, but to think about the way my grandparents were about money. I remember like little things, like my grandmother when I was growing up. She was taking care of me. We went to the grocery store because my parents were out of town and I was staying with her and we were getting the register and she goes where's your money? You didn't bring your money to the grocery store. I'm like I don't know in sixth grade and I'm like, no, I'm like never likes it, and be like can we go get ice cream after the? No, we can't go get. We cannot spend money on ice cream. You have ice cream at home right, yeah, yeah, the whole little bitty things live with us forever and they impact us in our business.
Speaker 2:I mentioned this earlier. We have to grow as people and we have to look at our own selves and our own lives and we have to identify those things to be able to move on from them. And I would say this is why sometimes, sometimes you can do this stuff on your own, but sometimes you need professional help to do these things. Sometimes you need a person like Tina to be like. So, corinda, tell me about your grandparents. What were they like with their money? Did you know that Sometimes you need somebody to dig to get you to that place, because it can be really difficult to like, really reflect on those things on your own. Yeah, as hard as we would like to be able to say I can do this on my own.
Speaker 3:We're just vibing because you see how simple it was, as we were talking about grandparents, right? And it was so simple that I didn't even need to ask you about your grandparents, right? That lived experience automatically pre-populated in your mind, so the neurons in your brain was able to come to a conclusion based on the content of that conversation. So that is how simple it's like. It just goes on, it's like a default that we talk about something and your brain searches and it's like, okay, what do we know about this topic? And then that's how it is about money. Every time we're gonna go sell something, we remember all of those experiences that are linked to that specific experience. I just wanted to point it out, because it's so simple, as an example of how you were able to retrieve that memory of being in the grocery store.
Speaker 2:Yes, Can you, for people that who are listening to this and you're like, what brain neurons, like what Can you share like a very quick synopsis of this? Stuff is not just woo-woo based, like I used the word woo-woo, this is not woo-woo based. This is 110% science backed. Like you can study this, you can research it. If you're like I don't believe in, like the mantra, right, I don't believe in this whole, like you make a new mantra and you make a new story for yourself and it changes things, but can you explain, like the scientific piece of this or like very basic, what that looks like? I can kind of stumble throughout, but I'm sure you know more about it than I do.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I like to read the books and simplify it for everyone.
Speaker 3:So, pretty much, you're born with a certain number of neurons in your brain and then, through your life, the connections between the neurons and your lived experiences.
Speaker 3:They make connections in the brain and every time certain things come up, your brain then retrieves the information without getting too scientific. So, as I said, it's like based on our five senses. We're like okay, these five senses is like a data. So the way I could like simply explain it, it's like a computer and all the data that you're putting into it from the five senses, say like you're treating it like a Google search. So it's like all the data that you're gathering through your five senses the smell, the touch, the taste, what you hear and what you feel. You gather all that data and then the brain makes a conclusion about it and that is how this whole thing works. So every time, just as we were given an example, we were talking about grandparents, we were talking about money narrative, we're talking about spending money, and then all of that stuff your brain interpreted it and it made a recollection of something that happened when you were in sixth grade. Does that make sense?
Speaker 2:Yes, I think that's a great example and I think it's kind of also like you don't always realize that your brain is making the connection. Sometimes your brain isn't saying like here's this memory that happened that's making you feel this way. Sometimes it's just as simple as a tightening of your chest or this like super uncomfortable feeling that you get, that you're like I kind of feel weird about this and I don't know why I feel resistance. It's the same part of our brain that keeps us from putting our hand on a hot stove. Our brain knows that that hot stove is going to hurt us. It doesn't have to tell us that when we were a little girl, we touched the stove when our mom put us on to and we burnt ourselves. The brain just knows I probably shouldn't do that again, because it's not a good idea and the only way to start to make shifts in that is to rewrite our stories and to use these mantras.
Speaker 2:Or look at, hey, the thought of somebody using a credit card makes me feel uncomfortable inside, because I watched family members use credit cards and rack up credit card debt and that resulted in major problems in their life. So for me, I don't want to touch a credit card. I don't want my clients to have to touch a credit card because it could mean the same thing for them. But what if the music of credit card is actually better for them? What if the music of credit card actually gets them airline miles so they can? For example, now we use credit cards so we can go to Hawaii every year and use our airline miles.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Like what if that's the case? What all I'd been told in my own brain was that it was disastrous. So I think that kind of brings us to this point of how do you start to shift the narrative about your money and your life, because really this is a personal life thing before it's even business. How do you start to shift that narrative? What would you tell people if they're like oh man, I feel the resistance money freaks me out. Yes, I've been listening to Krita's podcast and I hear her telling me I need to start to change thousands of dollars and that people could spend $10 or $20,000 on portraits. That's insane. How do I start to fix this and how do I start to essentially reprogram my brain so that my brain stops getting in my own way?
Speaker 3:There are so many things that are coming up for me I don't even know where to go. But one of the things that keeps coming up as we're speaking and I just hope that we can talk about it because one of the things that I think I had to deal with in becoming an entrepreneur and a lot of people is that you are the CEO of the business but you're providing a service, and even though that you're the CEO of the business, the product is not tied to your self-worth. So the concept of charging you have to make that separation. It is not you you're selling to the potential client, it is a service that you're selling to the potential client. And because it's very common for us to tie sales and money and all of that stuff to our own self-worth, and I think it's really important just to make that distinction that you are a person, you're priceless and you're providing a service. So the service is what the person is purchasing and not you or anything about you.
Speaker 2:I love that and I actually I don't think I've ever heard anybody say that like that, and I'm glad you pointed that out, Because I think as artists we feel like our work is literally a piece of our heart and soul. Like if we are selling our portraits, they are literally taking our heart and soul and ripping it out with that piece of art and I do think that is a piece of it is that we do kind of tend to associate selling our work and our art with selling a piece of us in our own self. In that and I think that does put things in a good perspective we are not telling ourselves here we are selling a service to our clients. So I love that you brought that up and I think that's a really important distinction to make.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's like you're using your skill set. You know each of us have our own brilliance and you're using your skill set to create a product Right. And oftentimes, being in the service based industry, for example, coaching I am not selling myself. I have expertise that I have acquired through the years that have provided me with a skill set and expertise to provide a service to the client. But that has nothing to do with who I am or what I feel about myself. I mean, I'm human and stuff is going to come up, but it's my ability to navigate. That is what's different, right? So some tips to really shift the narrative If it's not aligning with the vision you have for your life and your business.
Speaker 3:The first thing is what I just pointed out is to make sure that you're not connecting yourself worth to the products or services you're selling. So I like to think about it like it's something simple, as like it's like an actual product, like the product that you're providing is the same product that's on the shelf at the stores. If you just kind of simplify it that way, it's like providing a tangible product that's on a shelf that has nothing to do with the people making it.
Speaker 2:I like that and I've been saying this a lot the last year and I feel a little bit cynical when I say it, but it's like if you were working for someone else and you were selling something for someone else, how would you treat it differently?
Speaker 3:Yes, definitely, it's a different version of the same thing but it's just like really removing yourself worth from the product you're creating.
Speaker 3:Yeah, they're not intertwined, it's totally different. It's like a skill set rather than you as a person. One of the things also I wanted to point out that you said that I wanted to expand on was when we have certain feelings we feel very restricted, right, we feel stressed, we feel overwhelmed, whatever that feeling is for us, anxious, some people get depressed, different things. It's really important that you know how your body responds to these undesired emotions. Right. For me, when I feel that way, I could see myself on the screen like my ears. I just feel like heat is coming out of my ears. Some people get really sweaty palms. Some people, they don't start cooling up. Some people, their heart starts raising. Some people, they start sweating profusely. Whatever that is for you, I think it's important to attune to how your body is reacting and listen to that, because if you try to push through that, that is when it's not nice. The body starts getting overwhelmed and stressed and different things like that. So being mindful of how those symptoms show up physically is really, really important. Then the other thing is that when you have that feeling arise, definitely change your environment. Right, because, as I said at the beginning, your environment plays a major role in that. So, if you can possibly change your environment, possibly go to the bathroom. If you're in an office space, if you're at home, possibly go outside, get grounded, plant your feet on the ground and take three deep breaths. But also, it's really important that we do a lot of writing, because when we're writing stuff out on paper, it just allows us to not ruminate on the situation or whatever we're going through. So even I mean, I prefer handwriting. I know a lot of people have the phones these days, which is a good alternative, but it's really good to get old school and get pen and paper printed out. There's a whole bunch of signs to back up why handwriting is really important, and these are some questions that I asked my clients to review.
Speaker 3:Identify what feelings are coming up. Get super, super clear on what feelings. Are you feeling anxious, stress, overwhelm or even feeling depressed? Try to identify what narratives are contributing to that feeling. Right, like, what are you thinking about that would lead to this feeling like oh, I don't want to do this thing because I feel like people are going to judge me, or I don't want to do this thing because maybe the client would say no to me. What specific thing is leading to that? And then this is the most powerful question when did this feeling originate? And that is like the key indicator, because, as we wish I mean, I know we keep talking about this one thing, but I think it was like really powerful.
Speaker 3:That came through you was that question about you and your grandma in the supermarket? Like you had a belief about something, because that's where this narrative was originated. Right, it was in that moment, because I don't know how old you are, but like it's based on all this lived experience that you've had since then. But the brain was able to connect it to this moment in time, in this current conversation. So where did the feeling originate from? Acknowledge that it's not serving you because it doesn't feel expensive, right, it's actually making you feel really crappy. It's not really serving you. And I ask you to, once we identified our original narrative, to create a new narrative. So like, as you gave us a really great example about how you created that new narrative about the client using the credit cards, it's like, hey, now I give them an opportunity to create more miles on their credit cards so that they can go, have amazing experiences and vacations with their families and beautiful places like Hawaii. So that is what I would recommend.
Speaker 2:I love that. Those are such good practical tips that I think anyone who's listening to this like get your piece of paper out today, do not put this off. Like, do this. This stuff is literally life changing and I think that we have two options as business owners. We can decide that we're just going to keep working ourselves to the bone and we're just going to work, work, work really hard. Or we can take a step back and say how can I work on myself, how do I stop these feelings that put me in a bad place, and start to shift them and really just deciding, like today, to stop letting something as simple as the silly sideways remarks that our family and our friends said to us when we were really young that they meant it's harmless Thank you that have stuck with us till today and to just make the decision to start to change those things. And I think it's also important to remember here if you feel like these things are too big for yourself to dive into, because you have a lot and you're like there's a lot of, there's a lot of baggage here, karinda, like the thought of even thinking about those things makes me want to just cry. Get help.
Speaker 2:I'll bring this up and Tina, this is kind of out of left field, but, like, if you have a therapist not all therapists are created equal you might need to find somebody who is a coach and I use the word coach because I think coaches, from what I've been told and what has been explained to me from actual clinical treatment therapists is that coaches have the ability to help you in more ways than a traditionally trained, only therapist does. If someone's working under the title of a therapist, they're held under the license of therapy world and what they can and cannot do in the ways they can and cannot help you. Really, I would say seek out a coach, somebody who specializes in coaching people through these feelings and these emotions. And also there's a lot of coaches that are clinically trained in the therapy space or the social working space or all of those things, and they are so good at what they do. I say this because I have talked to so many photographers in the past. I have multiple coaching clients who tell me like I've had a therapist that I've gone to for years and we've never talked about this stuff.
Speaker 2:It might be a good sign today that maybe you need to find a new person to talk to or at least interview a few people and find out like, maybe if there's some better options for you out there, if you do need that more strategic, personalized help to go through these things. I can guarantee you that if I had held on to all those stories about money and my money narrative that I had, I would not be where I'm at. I would have given up on my business years ago and I would say, if I could attribute one thing for just completely opening up an entirely new level in my business, it was working on myself and my own mindset and my money stories. It changed everything for me. So hopefully that gives those of you that are listening to this a bit of advice.
Speaker 2:And also, if you're feeling stuck on this and you're just feeling overwhelmed by it, don't have to do it alone. There is an opportunity to get help and guidance and support. And this is the first thing in my coaching program. Like the very first module of my coaching course is mindset, and we talk about mindset and we go through, like all of these things and all these fears and all these worries that you might be experiencing and we talk about how to change them. I am by no means a mindset expert. I am no enough to help. I am not as smart about all of this stuff or not as trained as people like Tina herself would be on this topic, so I think this has been hugely helpful and really cool to just talk through this. Do you have any other thoughts on this, tina, that you want to share, or anything else that you're just like? This has to be said right now because I need to get this off my brain.
Speaker 3:Oftentimes one of the things is like we do the black or white kind of concept, where if I have this feeling it's a bad thing, and we start shaming and building ourselves into it, know that it shows up for the best of us, even myself.
Speaker 3:So I am human, just like you, and I want to let you know that it's normal. The anxiety, the depression, the overwhelm, the stress and I even attest that I was burnt out myself the thing is that it shows up. It's how frequently and the longevity of it showing up is what really matters, because it's all there to keep us safe. We want to make sure that we get stressed out because it's saying that we're overworking ourselves. So it's really important for us to identify that it's okay to feel those things. It's how often it comes up and how long it stays for. So it's okay to feel anxious because you're doing multiple things at one time, or maybe things are just not going as planned for a day, but if you're continuously anxious, day after day after day, that is when it's really important that you seek professional help. I just want to make sure that we're clear on it's totally normal to feel the things. It's how long and frequent that it comes around.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that's a really great point and I think this is why, when I made my coaching program, I felt like it was so important to address this whole mindset thing. First, in the creative space, you have people who talk a lot about taking pretty photos or being a better photographer, and then you have people that talk about business, but there's not a lot of people that talk about the fact that sometimes your mindset and your brain and your emotional well-being impacts your business and how to manage that and how to deal with it. Because it can feel like a roller coaster at times and I try to be honest and transparent with people and show the good, the bad and the ugly. And I'm 11 years into business and there's still some days when I'm like dang, this is hard, but over time it gets easier to deal with, I think in the early years and I use this analogy and I heard this actually somewhere else, so this is not my idea, but someone said it's like there's a roller coaster and when you're in business, you can either choose to ride the roller coaster with your business emotionally or you can choose to sit on the sidelines and watch the roller coaster and say, wow, man, kind of in the low spot right there.
Speaker 2:What are we going to do to get it back up? And for years I used to ask myself this, and I'm much better. I find the days I have to ask myself no, this are very few in part between. But I used to ask myself this are you riding the roller coaster today, or are you choosing to watch the roller coaster? And I think that this relates back to that whole thing you said of like you're not selling yourself, you're selling a service, you're selling your work, not yourself. And I think it's that same thing of separating business as well, and I'm sure we can get on a whole topic about.
Speaker 2:This probably has to do with boundaries on your time and your energy and all of these things too, that impact these things, but I think that that is super, super important to remember.
Speaker 3:Definitely definitely.
Speaker 2:I am so glad we got to talk today about this. There's so many other things I just want to pick your brain about and just go on and on about. So tell everybody how they can find you, where you're at, what you're up to, how you can help them if they want more help with any of the stuff we've talked about today.
Speaker 3:Sure. So my name is Tina Simon, just as a reminder, and the name of my business is called the Coaching Isis C-O-A-C-H-A-N-I-Z-E-R. The name was founded because we are all part of systems and I help you organize all areas of your life. The difference between what a traditional business coach will do is that I sit down and we talk about leads to your laundry, because they both lead to stressors in your life, if you don't know. So you can find me on social media at Coaching Isis, both on Facebook and Instagram, and my website is wwwthecoachingisorcom.
Speaker 2:I love that, and I'll include all of Tina's links in the show notes as well, so you all can go link right to her. Thank you so much for joining us. This has been so fun to talk through with you and I love everything we've gotten to share today, and I cannot wait to hear what everyone's thoughts are about this. Send us a message, dms, let us know what your thoughts are, what your takeaways were. Go share this podcast on your stories or on your page if you feel like there's somebody that really needs to hear this stuff. I think even your non-business friends and your non-photographer friends could benefit from this type of conversation, and I think that if everybody in the world knew that this was a possibility, the world would be so much of a better place. So thanks for tuning in, guys.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed this episode and you'd like to support the podcast, please make sure you share it on social media or leave a rating and review. As always, you can check out the links and resources in the show notes over at masteryourmindmoneycom. To catch all the latest from me, you can follow me on Instagram at masteryourmindmoney and don't forget to join our free Facebook group photography business. Tune up with Corinne Decay. Thanks again and I'll see you next time.