In this episode, I share my personal journey from veterinarian dreams, to professional equine photographer. I share my story in detail, including the challenges of starting a business, embracing a niche that my heart wasn't into, to ultimately doing what makes my heart go pitter-patter and nurtures my core.
Join me as I recount how an internship led to a profound career shift and chance encounters shaped my path. From establishing a brand to crazy, ambitious goals, this story celebrates finding joy in work and making bold choices that resonate with the soul.
Discover the importance of perseverance, inspired by my mother's resilience, and the pursuit of a passion that ignites the heart. Tune in to sprinkle some magic into your own business pursuits and join our community on social media and our free Facebook group for continued sharing, learning, and growth.
Read Pepper's story here.
Pre-Order The Unicorn
Join Your Magic Year here.
Use the code PODCAST to receive special pricing when you enroll.
Connect with Karinda!
Thanks for listening!
In this episode, I share my personal journey from veterinarian dreams, to professional equine photographer. I share my story in detail, including the challenges of starting a business, embracing a niche that my heart wasn't into, to ultimately doing what makes my heart go pitter-patter and nurtures my core.
Join me as I recount how an internship led to a profound career shift and chance encounters shaped my path. From establishing a brand to crazy, ambitious goals, this story celebrates finding joy in work and making bold choices that resonate with the soul.
Discover the importance of perseverance, inspired by my mother's resilience, and the pursuit of a passion that ignites the heart. Tune in to sprinkle some magic into your own business pursuits and join our community on social media and our free Facebook group for continued sharing, learning, and growth.
Read Pepper's story here.
Pre-Order The Unicorn
Join Your Magic Year here.
Use the code PODCAST to receive special pricing when you enroll.
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:Hey guys, today I'm going to be sharing a little bit about my story and my journey that has gotten me to where I'm at today in my business. Being in Kentucky for Imaging brought back so many memories, because my equine photography brand was actually born while I was visiting Kentucky. So I decided I'm going to take you back on my journey of building my business and tell you a little bit more about how I got started, how I ended up where I am today, because there's a lot of new listeners on here from Imaging and I figured it'd be fun to just share a little bit more about myself, my own journey, and maybe you'll learn a few things along the way. So my journey to building your photography business started my senior year of college. I actually have an animal science degree and I was in college at Texas A&M and I got to my last semester and I thought what am I going to do with my life? I have this animal science degree. I actually wanted to go to vet school when I started college. However, I was on the horse judging team in college, which meant I traveled a lot and I missed a lot of school, and taking nearly every organic chemistry test in your professor's office is not a great way to end up making a great, great and hard-gantt chemistry, and I very quickly realized that maybe I wasn't going to go to vet school. So the choices were go back and get my master's degree or figure out what to do with my life and honestly, I kind of always knew that I wanted to own my own business.
Speaker 2:Growing up I watched my dad run his own business and I'd always thought like I want to do something where I can be my own boss. I had interned for a livestock photography company called Show Champions. They're based out of Canada and they photograph a lot of the major livestock photography shows all over the world and I had interned for them my freshman year of college with zero intention or thinking that I would ever be a photographer, and my job was helping depose animals and to also write down image numbers on cards and to help people check out with their ordering station, and really I did that. No thought of ever being a photographer, I didn't even cross my mind While my last semester of college I was working as a working student at a barn Shout out to Windenall Farm in Magnolia, texas, and Fran Deering now Frank her she had actually said, said why don't you come work for me and be my working student? And I was like no way. That's crazy. I had always looked up to her growing up and so getting the chance to go work for her in college was a huge deal. She's a phenomenal trainer and she's also a judge. If you are involved in the horse for the research world, you've probably crossed paths with Fran and you know how amazing she is.
Speaker 2:When I was working at the barn, I had some free time and I happened to have a camera sitting around in my mom's room and I won't bore you with details of that. But I got that camera and I went to the barn and started taking pictures and I had free time while I was waiting for another next horse to tack up or to do something with. So I just started photographing people riding their horses and I would sit there and I would play with the camera settings. I did not learn anything professionally there, I just sat and played. Then I was like, huh, maybe I could do this. This is cool, I enjoy taking photos. That was pretty much it.
Speaker 2:My sister got married and she had a photographer. I don't really know what the situation was, but I took my camera and took some pictures of her wedding too. I photographed my first wedding kind of not really. I was just the sister with an annoying camera. It was a very small wedding. I wasn't really doing anything to get the photographer's way although now I know much better guys, so don't come at me Along the way of me photographing horses at the barn, sharing some images on social media.
Speaker 2:The owner of Show Champion actually contacted me and he asked if I wanted to come work for them and I was like well, I have nothing else to do. He said we'll train you. I have an old camera body, I can tell you, and some lenses so that you have the right equipment. And off I went. I remember driving to the State Fair of Texas to go pick up a new camera body from him and I was going to go work for them and that's what I was going to do for a bit. It wasn't a full-time thing, it was just here and there when they needed an extra photographer.
Speaker 2:About that same time, I think two or three weeks before then, I was contacted by someone that ran a wedding venue that my husband actually worked at in high school. All this story is very wild and a little bit twisty, so just follow me here. So Austin had worked at a wedding venue in high school and in college a little bit, and he worked in the back like helping set up wash dishes, get food ready, do all this stuff. The ladies that ran the venue. They reached out to me and said we have someone getting married and she's not going to hire a photographer. We know you are just getting started. We saw the pictures you took at your sister's wedding. We've been seeing all the horse pictures you've been taking. You should come photograph for a wedding. I was like what? I can't photograph a wedding, I don't know what I'm doing. And they were like it's fine, you don't need to know what you're doing. We know exactly what the photographers do at every wedding. We will take you around and we will teach you as we go. So all of this is happening at the same time Starting to work for the livestock photography company, getting a new camera and also saying like, hey, you photographed this wedding.
Speaker 2:I think I photographed that wedding in October. Then, right after, I went to the state fair and worked at the state fair and photographed my first livestock show under show champions. It was right around the same time. One might have been before the other. I essentially knew that I needed to be prepared for this wedding and I watched every creative life that there was about wedding photography a lot of Jasmine Star that's, who was big back then and teaching a lot in weddings and I learned a lot about shooting weddings from Jasmine Star and some other photographers that were on creative lives back then. This was all in 2012,. I think yeah, it had been 2012. So that is how it got started with photography and I said, well, I guess I'm going to start a business now that I'm photographing weddings. So there I went. I started my own Facebook page and I got a website I think it was through Zinfolio at the time and I was a photographer For me.
Speaker 2:I saw photography as a way to make money when I got out of college, because I needed to figure out what I was going to do with my life and I thought I could build a business doing this. I could make money doing this. I think Little did. I know it would take quite a while to get there, but look at me now. So that's how I got started. I ended up becoming a wedding photographer and photographing a lot of weddings after that. I am so incredibly grateful to the amazing people at the wedding venue that showed me the ropes at my first wedding, because they literally took me around and said the photographer stands here and the moose here and does this and does this and that. With all the creative lives I had watched, I was like I got this. It wasn't too shabby for my first wedding. You know. I'm so grateful that I was able to be there.
Speaker 2:And over the next two years I photographed more and more weddings and I was doing seniors and I was doing kind of everything. I was not doing newborns until I guess I was in my second year of business. I ended up hiring a business coach. Her name was Erin Phillips. I'm forever grateful for her and Erin was a newborn photographer and a lot of her coaching clients were newborn photographers. My timeline might be way off, guys. I joined her coaching program and soon enough I had become a newborn photographer too. Before I knew it, hanging around a bunch of newborn photographers, I was photographing babies and I photographed babies in weddings for, I think, a solid five years. Then I had kind of become really well known for what I did with my weddings and my babies.
Speaker 2:We built a newborn photography studio on our property. I was freshly out of college he was still in college trying to finish his degree while working and we had bought property. We were living in a fifth wheel camper just trying to figure out how to do life and we got married in 2013. So he was like you know what? I'm going to support you. Whatever you need to do, just go for it. And I kind of just took the leap and did the thing and we lived very minimally. We were big believers and went through the whole Dave Ramsey thing and we were paying off all of our debt. Because we went into debt to get married and we didn't have a whole lot of stuff. We really just scraped by. We pretty much budgeted our money and survived. But we did it and we did it on our own and we lived a simple life and it was amazing and it was crazy. But we built the newborn photography studio because ultimately, my newborn photography stuff and my business stuff was taking over our camper. There was only so much space in the camper. My husband also traveled for work a lot, so sometimes he would take off and go work in other places, but that's a whole other story. I need to tell you all that story another day. So we built the new word photography studio.
Speaker 2:Before long, I had built two separate photography brands. I was running a wedding photography brand and a newborn photography brand, because I was under the impression that if you wanted somebody to believe that you were the best at what you did, you need to specialize in that which. There is some truth to that, but also I will tell you that now, going through it, I would avoid creating multiple brands in your photography business. Instead, I would look for things that are commonalities or common threads or common beliefs and values between your clients, even if they're different, and speak to those things, because then you will attract all of the clients in a way that feels good, without running two separate brands and two separate websites and two separate social medias. That was a lot of work. I was really well known for the wedding thing. I was very well known for newborns. I had inquiries coming in, it was easy peasy and I was doing a good job running my business. My sales were not nearly what they are now, though. I think at the end of my wedding days I had a wedding, a bride that spent over $10,000. That was in my last year of photographing weddings. I had a really large wedding and I was like I could keep doing this if every bride is paying me $10,000. But it was a lot of work. If you buy our book, the Unicorn, you'll hear my story about this.
Speaker 2:I really dreaded wedding days. I dreaded the process of getting ready and I would sit there and worry and worry and worry about all the potential things that could go wrong. How many of you all have the nightmares before your sessions or your weddings? Yeah, that was me. I would literally have nightmares about all the potential things that could go wrong, but I loved my brides and as soon as I got to the wedding, all that went away and it was amazing and beautiful and I just loved and adored my brides. They were my family. They still are. I love watching their babies grow up. Y'all get it. If you photograph weddings, it's really cool.
Speaker 2:But I dig it to a place where it was really hard for me. I love photographing babies, but I did just feel like something was missing in my business, like there was something there that I should have been doing, because obviously I started out photographing horses. But I did what you're supposed to do, which is photograph weddings and babies, and I did the thing and I was doing what everyone else did and what everyone told me I should do to be a photographer Until I made a trip to Kentucky. I went to Kentucky for a horse photography workshop thing and I rented a car and I remember I went a couple days early and I just drove and drove and drove like all day long through back roads in Kentucky and just drove and looked at all the farms and all the horses and just really fell in love with Kentucky and really thought to myself, like what am I doing?
Speaker 2:I went to the first day of the equine photography workshop and I went back to my hotel room that night and I said I'm going to be a horse photographer. What have I been doing with my life? Horse photographer it is. I stayed up that night and I built an entire equine photography brand. I took my wedding photography logo, which was beautiful and I loved I had like an alternate logo. It was kind of like a wreath thing that kind of looked like a horseshoe, and I made that my equine photography logo. I built an entire website and one night because I'm a crazy person and I also made a tagline Ciao our blog, their Story.
Speaker 2:I decided I was gonna share horses stories. It was something that I hadn't heard of anyone doing and I didn't think anyone was doing it, and I thought to myself their stories deserve to be told, just like people's stories deserve to be told, but all too often we don't get to tell our horses stories. So I made this brand. That same night I also decided and declared that I was gonna photograph 365 horses that next year, because I quickly realized that from photographing babies in weddings that in order to do something and be really good at it, it took a lot of practice. And you know, when I was photographing weddings and I was only doing like 15 weddings a year, I really only loved doing one wedding a month. That was kind of my sweet spot One, maybe two some months. But I loved having just one bride a month because she got all my attention and then my portrait clients peppered in there as well. But it took a long time to get really good at what I was doing, because I was doing such a small number of weddings and what I realized was that if I wanted to get really good at doing something, I would have to do it a lot. So 365 horses in a year, why not? That sounded like a great idea.
Speaker 2:And the next day I went to the second day of the workshop, I think and I was like, guess what guys? I built an equine photography brand. I'm an equine photographer. Now here's what I'm doing. And it's so funny because, at Imaging, one of the ladies that was there at that workshop her name was Becky Becky came up to me and she goes Karinda, I remember being at that workshop with you when you decided you were gonna be a horse photographer and I was like I know, crazy, right. And she was like it has been so cool getting to watch you on this journey, like it's been so crazy and cool and just seeing the things you've done since then. And it was really cool to hear that. And part of the reason I decided to record this episode was to share with y'all how I became a horse photographer and how I got to where I am today. Becky really reminded me of that, but being in Kentucky also really reminded me of that.
Speaker 2:So did this workshop? I don't know how many days, it was a few days and the next thing I was gonna do was start building my clientele. So what did I do? I found a client someone I was connected with on Facebook, built in Kentucky, and I reached out to them and said, hey, I'm in Kentucky, I'm a horse photographer. Can I come photograph your horses? We had mutual connections so I knew they weren't gonna hopefully murder me or anything, went into their farm, met them and I declared to this stranger, like a crazy person, I'm gonna photograph 365 horses this year and I'm gonna share all their stories on my blog. And I read this lady just looked at me and was like, oh cool, and here I was just doing something wild and crazy off the cuff, like no thought process really went into it, no, real, like what ifs? It was the true definition of just deciding. I was gonna do it and do it.
Speaker 2:And the reason that I wanted to tell you this story is because in your business, I wanna encourage you in your business, to just do the thing, to know that done is better than perfect and to know that if you sit around on an idea and wait long enough, it will never make it out into the world. And what you do and your purpose on this earth should be shared. It should be put out there to people, but all too often we let the fear and the worry and the anxiety stop us from putting it out there because we don't think it's good enough or done enough or perfect enough. If I would have done that, I would have never launched my equine photography brand. But I did it, and I did it scared and I did it blindly and I did it without having any idea of what was actually gonna come of it. But I trusted and I put it out there and I shared it boldly and loudly for the world to hear and the world to see.
Speaker 2:And over the next year I photographed 365 horses. Now I started before the year began because I was smart enough to know that I wasn't gonna start the year not having photographed any horses. I started. I don't know what month I started, but I started photographing horses before the year started and by January I had already photographed 60 horses and every single day I was sharing a post about the horse, sharing their story on my blog and putting my work out there. It was such a wild journey, guys. I think my business coach at the time told me that I was crazy. My business coach told me there was no way I could do image reveals and IPS for every single client I photographed and I said guess what I'm going to? Because I took her advice in the beginning and I did online galleries, even though I had really never done online galleries my whole business.
Speaker 2:I started out doing sales IPS from the early days and I did a fierce set of horses in an online gallery and I thought this is stupid. I'm not making any money, nobody's buying anything. I'm doing IPS for 365 horses and I did. And I learned so much, not only as a photographer. I learned how to coach my clients through holding and handling their horses. I learned how to do in-person sales. That's the same year that I started doing in-person sales, virtually because most of my clients were not local to me. I traveled all over the US for 365 days of horses, so most of my clients were not local to me. It was really just such a cool journey and such a cool experience.
Speaker 2:The reason behind that was to get really good at photographing horses. It was to build a following, to build an audience, to grow my email list. It was really a marketing thing. But the other piece of it was to make money and to sell and I did all of those things I did so much more than I could have imagined. That year I set out on Instagram that I was gonna grow by a thousand followers a month on Instagram, which was crazy. But we did. We grew by nearly a thousand followers every single month of our 365 days of worst project. Now I will admit Instagram back then was a lot easier than Instagram now. Instagram now is temperamental and like an angry old man that doesn't like me anymore. But back in the day Instagram was happy and friendly and loved people. I would say it's not that great anymore. So don't take that thousand followers a month thing and be like I'm gonna get a thousand followers a month, because that's a little bit harder in today's day and age. But really it was such a cool experience and it really built what I have today in my business. It really laid the foundation and it's what I'm very well known for in my portrait business to this day.
Speaker 2:And after that first year of 365 days of horses, I closed down my wedding business. I stopped taking weddings, I stopped taking babies and I said I'm doing this full force. For that year, when I was doing 365 days of horses, I was running three separate websites, three separate social media channels, one for each of my brands, and it was hard. It was so hard. So if you ever come to me and say, should I separate brands or should I keep them together, I'm probably gonna tell you to keep them together because, trust me, you don't want to end up running three separate brands. It isn't super fun, but the really cool thing about launching my equine brand was not only the project that I did, but also I got to build a business fresh from scratch and not make the same mistakes and the same road bumps along the way. I got to set my pricing where it needed to be. I got to do all those things from the get go, which made my growth easier because I wasn't constantly redoing and reworking the system. I had a system that worked and all I was doing at that point was then tweaking the system, so it was a really cool experience.
Speaker 2:I want to add a side note right here, because you're going to hear this and you're going to be like that sounds amazing. I'm going to go photograph 365 sessions. I'm going to encourage you to go do big, crazy things, but do them smartly. I wasn't photographing a session every single day. I was sometimes photographing 15 to 20 sessions in a day and the sessions were quick and short 15 to 30 minute sessions in one location. I wasn't traveling to 365 different locations to do this. It was a very strategic way that it was done.
Speaker 2:So if you decide to do a big, crazy project, like I did, find something that feeds your heart and soul, be unique to you. Don't just do something because you're like that sounds cool. Make it your own, build it in a way it's not going to burn you out. I will say I do a lot of crazy things that my business coaches told me I'm crazy for doing, and I will admit that sometimes I tell my coaching clients be careful, you might get a little burnt out doing that, because it's kind of big and crazy, but I've done it myself. So I can't really speak for that, because I am the person that does big, crazy and same things in my business and I don't always think them through and I don't always do them perfectly, but I do them when I set my mind to them. Don't be afraid to do big, crazy things, but also do it with caution and do it in a smart way. Do it in a way that makes you money. Do it in a way that feeds your soul and feed your business. It isn't going to burn you out, because there is always that that happens and I've seen it happen time and time again when people have tried to do something similar, as they've got to that burnt out place but at the same time, it was so cool to do and it was such a great experience.
Speaker 2:And so if y'all are wondering and you've tried to look me up on social media what's current is portrait business on Instagram it's actually 365 days of horses, so, funny enough, that is a bit of a weird thing that sometimes there's a bit of a brand disconnect and if you ever hear me talk about branding and business names and all this stuff, I always recommend Sigeen with your name, because a lot of people follow 365 days of horses and are very familiar with the account, but sometimes they don't have the brand recognition of that's Corinda because the name is different and, honestly, it was so well known that I've been told by a lot of my personal mentors that I need to change the Instagram account name. But it is such a big part of me and my story and my journey that I love having it around because it's great to share, like. Here's why my Instagram is called 365 days of horses, and we're actually bringing it back at the moment in my portrait business and another variation where we're photographing 365 horses for charity. So it is kind of coming back into my business and I'm trying to bring it back in and bring it full circle not necessarily in a year this time, because I have a lot of other things going on too in my business, so I don't know that that would happen in a year. But who knows, we did 210, 220ish horses last year, I think. So not too far from 365 again, but a little bit different. The thing is is that if I wouldn't have done the big scary thing, if I wouldn't have just jumped in blindly, if I wouldn't have just acted when it felt right, it would have never happened.
Speaker 2:And also, if I would have just listened to what I wanted to do in the early years of my business, which was photographing horses and animals, because that's what I loved, I like to wonder, like, what things would have been like if I would have started that brand from day one. How would things have been different if I was an equine photographer from day one? Don't get me wrong. I'm incredibly grateful for my experience as a wedding photographer. I learned so much. I compose like nobody's business and under pressure and 10 minutes bust out a whole giant gallery of portraits with a couple. I can do so many amazing beautiful lighting things and I can work under pressure. Because I photographed weddings, I can manage people, a whole herd of people, because I photographed weddings, because I photographed newborns, I learned patience and how to be calm in situations when your person that you're photographing or your animal that you're photographing does not cooperate. You have to learn how to be calm and just clear your brain and just let it go, because babies can feed off of you and so can animals. There were things I learned, but I do also wonder what if I would have just done what I wanted to do from the beginning and not listen to what the world told me I should be doing, which is weddings and babies and families and all of those things? Right, I'm going to challenge you with this Do what you want to do in your business, do what feels good to your heart and soul, don't just do what everyone else is doing.
Speaker 2:I think this last week at Imaging, I talked to so many photographers that were doing headshots and personal branding type things. And I asked them I said is this what you really want to be doing? Like, does this feed your heart and soul? And they were, like no, but it pays the bills. And I stopped so many photographers that said that to me and I said don't do the thing that just feels like it pays the bills. Find a way to make money doing the thing you love. And I was talking to a super, super freaking talented photographer months ago and that was something she said to me. She said I was told that my style was never going to pay the bills, that I was never going to make money doing this, that it was too different, that it was too weird. But look at me now, and so what I really want you to think about is are you building the business that you love and that is what you want to be doing, or you're just doing the thing because it's what you're supposed to do as a photographer? And the other thing I want to remind you is do the big scary thing. Jump off the cliff when you aren't ready. Just do it, because the results and the things that come from it are so amazing.
Speaker 2:When I did my 365 days of horses project. People had to apply to be a part of the project and they had to submit their stories because I wanted to share powerful stories. I can remember this like it was yesterday. I remember the applications pouring in and every application that come in I would be so excited to read it and decide whether it was, you know, a good fit for the project or not, or you know what it was. And I remember sitting in the camper at the kitchen table, which was my desk, and I remember my husband was in the shower and it was evening time and he was getting ready for bed and I just popped on my computer because I had a bunch of applications come in and I remember opening up this application and reading this application and I remember sitting there and crying, literally reading the story and crying. And if you want to read the story, just go search my name, carinda K Pepper, kentucky, and you'll find this horse's blog. And I remember reading the story about this horse and it brought tears to my eyes. And I remember Austin getting out of the shower and he was like what's wrong with you? You know, I really think great Carinda's cried on to your podcast now, but it was a story about this horse that had essentially been this man's safe space while he was going through cancer treatment and he eventually did pass away, and it was a story about his horse. And, oh man, for some reason that story stands out to me more than anything else.
Speaker 2:I did it in that project. That horse stands out to me more than any other horse I photographed in that project and when you go look at the blog and you read the story and you find the photos of Pepper she's this chestnut mare You'll know why, right, and I think it was at that moment that I really realized this is what I'm supposed to be doing with my portrait business. There is something so incredibly powerful and valuable and magical with horses and the way they heal us and take care of us and nurture us. These are the stories I'm supposed to be sharing. I knew that I had to go to Kentucky and I had to photograph that horse and I did. It was truly amazing and it was a very small. Obviously there were a lot of horses that I photographed, a lot of people, a lot of horses I met that year, and there's many of them that pop into my brain that stand out to me, but that one was just the moment that I was like this project is what I'm supposed to be doing, and it was so powerful and it was so amazing. Y'all I'm just prefaced this If y'all go back and look at those pictures Pepper's pictures are amazing, but not all those pictures are amazing. I was learning, but it was such a cool journey and it was such a cool experience and I really realized that that's what I was supposed to be doing. Those were the people I was supposed to be serving. Those are the stories I was born to be telling with my portraits, with my blog, with my platform.
Speaker 2:If thinking about what you're doing in your business doesn't excite you like that, it doesn't make you feel that passionately Like I feel about this, then that's your sign to look at this and reevaluate it. I have a couple of podcast episodes. We also talk about it in our book, the Unicorn Finding your why. The thing that makes your heart go pitter-patter is so important in building your business around. That, from the types of sessions you photograph, the way you talk to your clients, the way you pose them, the way you guide them, the way you direct them, the products you offer, everything in your business should be shaped by your why and when your business is shaped around that, you're going to attract those people that make your heart go pitter-patter and that make you fall in love with your business each and every day when you work with them, and that is valuable and that is important, guys. So I just want to remind you that.
Speaker 2:I hope that hearing my story has been good and inspiring. You know, when I was talking about the early days of our journey, I was first out of college. My husband was building his career and trying to finish college while working full-time and going to school online. We had nothing. We had nothing. We lived in a camper. We bought four acres that we own, our finance and we fought and called our way to get to where we are now, and I can honestly say there were a lot of years in the beginning that I didn't get to pay myself much, if nothing at all, and now my business is finally at a place where I'm like whoa, this is amazing. My business has allowed me to do so many cool things, not only in my life like we've been able to buy a house, we've been able to buy vehicles. We just bought a big camper for the business, because we travel so much with the business and do events and different things and we needed somewhere to stay.
Speaker 2:All of these things that I'm able to just go do because of my portrait business and because of this, and I want to encourage you that if I can do this, y'all can do this too. Like I'm a hot mess sometimes y'all. I had a client phone call today and my three-year-old was home with me and he was being a turkey and he was running off and screaming and I had to tell my client hang on. Because I had to run and chase him and slide him out of my husband's office because my husband left a work call and my office is not perfectly clean and my desk is messy and you know what? I'm pretty sure I have ADHD and probably all of y'all agree, and I'm really an introvert. I'm feeling sometimes exhaust me.
Speaker 2:But if I can do this, y'all can do this too. But you're going to have to do it. You're going to have to do the scary thing. You're going to have to dive into things head first. You're just going to have to jump off the cliff, even when you're not sure, and sometimes you're going to need someone to kick you in the butt and jump off the cliff. And if you ever need that, know that I'm here and I'm a professional butt kicker and I'm great at pushing people off the cliff to do the thing they need to do. That's what my coaching clients always say. They're like Karinda, we know you're going to kick us in the butt and make us do the thing, but sometimes we all need it. Sometimes, you know. I think the funny part is I don't think I ever had a business coach that really encouraged me and do the scary thing. I think a lot of times my business coach be careful about this, be careful about that. And I took their warning sign sometimes and played it small and then realized, screw their warning signs, I'm going to do big things in my business. So do the big things in your business. Do what you love. Do what makes your heart go pitter-patter, even when somebody tells you it's not going to pay the bills, or even if you're sitting there thinking I don't know if it's going to pay the bills. Do it. If I can do it, you can do it too. Guys, nobody needs photographs of their horses. They don't. It's not a necessity, and you know what.
Speaker 2:I make a living doing it. I make a great living doing it and my business has changed my life and I want each and every one of you to be able to experience the same thing. And also my business has allowed me to pour into other people. My business has allowed me to give the half. We wrote a check for like $15,000 and we still have another $5,000 that we're going to send to a charity from last year. Being able to donate that much money to a charity, that's a lot of money to be able to donate.
Speaker 2:There was a day when I used to dream and think, oh, would it be cool if I could give back to a charity or start a scholarship fund or do something cool like that. And I'm able to do that. It's the same reason I'm here, able to record a podcast and pay for it and just share these things with y'all and encourage y'all and be in your ear and just helping you along the way in your business is because I make money doing my portrait thing. I'm able to pour into y'all and to serve y'all and spend all this time and energy writing a book to share with y'all all of this wealth of knowledge that I have had to fight and claw and just learn over the last. I can't even keep track of how many years 12 years now as a business owner this podcast, my coaching business, the book, all these things I'm doing to help photographers is because I want to help y'all succeed. I want to see y'all grow and I actually haven't ever really shared my full story like this.
Speaker 2:And recently I did a Facebook live in my private Facebook community for photographers it's called Photography Business 2.0 with Karina K, if you're not in there, but I did like a live video and I actually kind of walked around our property and I told the story of where we started, the things we've done, kind of how we've gotten to our rats today, and people were like I am so glad you shared that, karina, because I think it's important to remember that not everybody just wakes up and has things. Some people have to work for things and you know I was very lucky to have a lot of amazing things growing up. But my parents went through a really terrible divorce and my mom and I were kind of left to hung out and dry for my last year of high school and we had to survive and I watched my mom fight and claw her way and seeing my mom do that, I think, was a big piece of why I was able to do this and build my business. My mom had been to stay at home mom for 30 years or something when my dad filed for divorce.
Speaker 2:My mom had a college degree that was not super great for getting a job. She had a home ec degree and she went back to college when she was how old was she 58? And I watched my mom sit there not knowing how to type and literally peck the keyboard on her computer and type papers and I watched her go to class with 20 year olds and study and work so hard to just give herself the education so she could go get a good job and do things for us. And it showed me like perseverance If she could sit there and pack out an essay for college with her pointer fingers literally. Whom I'd say I can't do something right? Whom I'd say I can't do something when her whole life was ripped off from underneath her? Whom I'd say I can't do anything whenever I watched her fight so hard and I had to fight just as hard.
Speaker 2:I had to fight to finish school and hang on to the life I had and go to college and do the things and survive, and it wasn't easy, but through that I learned so much and through that I learned how to be determined and how to fight for what I wanted, and that has definitely carried on in my business. It hasn't always been easy and my life has not always been what it is today, but I fought for everything, me and my husband like. We've built this from the ground up and I say we because he is my biggest cheerleader and he is my biggest support and he is doing the same thing in his life and his career too. But just know that, no matter where you're at, if you're ready to fight and if you're willing to do the hard thing, and if you're willing to jump off the cliff and do what you need to do and do it scared and do it imperfect, you're going to get there.
Speaker 2:I love y'all. I hope you've enjoyed hearing my story. I hope that it's allowed you to see who I am, see a little bit more of my heart. I could really go on and on. There's been so many crazy, incredible things on my journey of where I could have ended up in life, but I know that this is where I was meant to be and I am so thankful that I ended up here, even though on my journey in life, if you would have told me I would have been a photographer, I would have told you you were crazy. Probably up to the month before I started my business, I would have told you you were crazy. But here I am and I'm doing it, and I'm here to show you that anything is possible. So go out there, fight for it, do the things, build your business and, most importantly, as you're building your business, take the time to learn and be a good student. But don't just be a good student. Be a good implementer, because I don't want y'all to be lifetime students. I want y'all to be the people that understand something, take the knowledge and you implement it in a way that feels good to you and your business, because without that, you're going to look back and you're going to say how did I end up here? That's not what I wanted, and I'm not happy and I don't want you to be there.
Speaker 2:Thanks y'all for listening to this. I love each and every one of y'all. I know y'all might hear me say this. I actually said this to somebody at Imaging. I said I love you so much, you're so amazing. And they looked at me and were like but you don't really know me yet and I was like yes, I do. Like we have talked for hours, that's just too much. I just love people but I love y'all. Even if you've never met me, I love you too and I appreciate you trusting me to listen to my story and to follow my advice and my guidance as you build your business. I hope that you took something away from this. If you did, send us a DM, post a screenshot on social media and share with us that you're listening to the podcast and tag us.
Speaker 2:We don't really know who listens to the podcast unless you DMS and tell us podcast statistics and analytics are super weird, so we really only know if y'all are listening, if y'all share with us and DMS and let us know. So let us know what you're loving on the podcast. Let us know what you want to hear more of this season. If you haven't already grabbed our book, the Unicorn of Business Books for Photographers, go grab the book. It is so good.
Speaker 2:If you're interested in joining one of our coaching programs, whether it's your magic gear or our Master your Mind and Money coaching program you can apply. Link is in our show notes or you can apply at masteryourmindmoneycom. Forward slash apply. I would love to talk to you, even if you're not sure if you're ready to join a coding program or get help in your business, just know that I'm here for you. Also, if you want to join our free Facebook group Photography Business, tune up. I love y'all. It's been an amazing week and I hope that this podcast brings you a little bit more magic in your business this year.
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 masteryourmindmoneycom, 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.