#003 Photographers, Believe in Yourself!

Prosperous Photography Mindset: The Key to Business Success

In this episode, hosts Keith and Melissa, seasoned photography business owners with over 25 years of experience, emphasize the importance of mindset in achieving business success. They reveal that a strong belief in oneself, beyond just technical skills and business tactics, is crucial. They discuss how mindset impacts various aspects of business, including client relationships and financial success, and share personal stories about overcoming limiting beliefs and self-sabotage. The episode underscores the connection between mindset and business outcomes and promises to explore this connection further in future episodes.

00:00 Believe in Yourself: The Power of Mindset
00:26 Meet Keith and Melissa: Your Photography Mentors
00:44 The Role of Mindset in Business Success
03:36 Overcoming Limiting Beliefs and Self-Sabotage
04:49 Personal Stories: Stepping Out of Your Comfort Zone
08:20 Setting Specific Goals and Manifesting Success
13:37 Resilience and Daily Intentions
14:03 Conclusion: Developing a Prosperous Photography Mindset

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Transcript

You have to believe in yourself, and where does that come from? That comes from mindset. Mindset, if you don't believe it, then you can't even fake it. I can, they all fake it to you, make it only works if you actually believe in yourself. And then what's with the other stuff will just will come if your website can get better, your portfolio will get better because you, with experience, you're going to get better.

But if you don't actually believe that you can do this and that you can make this successful, then none of the rest of it matters.

Welcome. We're Keith and Melissa, photography business owners for more than 25 years. And our mission is to help you find the success you want. And we know firsthand the role that mindset plays in figuring it all out. Now, today's episode.

Welcome to the prosperous photography mindset. I'm Melissa, I'm Keith. And so after a long time of running a successful photo business at 25 plus years, we've noticed that. After mentoring advising, teaching, coaching that even though there's a lot of [00:01:00] talent there, again, across the board, there's all sorts of things that were being done right.

There seems to be a common thread through most of it, and that's mindset. Mindset is one of those things that people don't really think too much about. They think of what's the word, visualization as some kind of hocus pocus that of course if I think about it then I get it, like that's just some kind of magical thinking.

But it's not, because it goes well beyond just I think it, I want it, I get it. No, there's, you think it, you want it. Then there's an awful lot of work that you have to do in order to make that come true. But it is 100 percent true and doable and with this podcast we're going to go in personal stories and observations that we've had that will help you come to this same conclusion.

So we want to examine the connection between your mindset and the success of your business And of course success means [00:02:00] different things to different people.

So you're gonna define what success means to you We want to show you the connection between Working on your mindset and how that equates to having a successful photography business So to build a photography business, we have to better understand our thought processes

And have an unwavering conviction in yourself.

You have to believe in yourself. And where does that come from? That comes from mindset. Mindset. Yeah. And if if you don't, if you don't believe it, then you can't even fake it. So yeah, I can, they all fake it to you, make it only works if you actually believe in yourself.

And then what's with the other stuff will just will come like you can, your website can get better. Your portfolio will get better because you, with experience, you're going to get better. You can tell people, okay, I can do this and then wing it and figure it out. But if you don't actually believe that you can do this and that you can make this successful, then none of the rest of it matters.

Exactly. Exactly. And not to throw a bunch of. programs out there that teach photographers how to run a successful [00:03:00] business. I think that what they're doing is focusing. Of course you need a solid business foundation. Of course there's fundamentals that have to be in place in order to have a successful build a solid foundation for a business.

But I think if you're not ready for that, if you're not ready to increase your pricing, if you're not ready and you're not confident with your price list, if you don't believe in yourself, what you're trying to sell to your clients, if you don't understand the value that you're providing for your clients, then they sense that.

That's something there, there's something you give off when you don't believe in yourself, and sometimes that's what definitely deflects customers or potential clients from working with you. 

So when it comes to mindset, it's a very broad topic. And there is a lot that we will cover over a lot of episodes, but some of the topics that fall under mindset are limiting beliefs, imposter syndrome. How you think about money, right?

Anything, yeah. How you think about yourself. True. Underearning, that's a big one. Especially with photographers, underearning, that [00:04:00] you don't value yourself correctly. You work for, or you work hard and you don't get paid enough, right? Self sabotage is a big one, and there's a lot of subcategories under self sabotage. There's a lot of ways to self sabotage. Self sabotage, yeah, so when we talk about photography, my God, self sabotage will can affect your whole life. Exactly. And a lot of this actually does tie into your whole life. I think how you're running your business is a reflection of what your life looks like as well.

So everything that we're going to talk about on this podcast, I think is going to translate to incorporating it into your life as well, because I know myself speaking all the things that I've said right now, I can tell you. 10 examples from each of how that has affected my business. But also once I started recognizing that it affected my life in a positive way.

To talk about personal examples or, within our own business, I think back to, we had a business coach, I don't remember how many years ago, a while back, [00:05:00] and it was a little disruptive at first. For me, I think you may have had more Confidence and what the direction that he was suggesting and of course he's a coach so he's playing off of what we want so he's suggesting that we niche down and niche down which makes retrospect, it makes a lot of sense then it makes sense now, but when you're starting something new that when you're actually going to somebody for coaching you're obviously looking to get out of your comfort zone right off the bat.

Otherwise you wouldn't be there. But even though you want to be there and you want your business to grow and you need to shake things up. You need to change what you're doing. That's not easy. It's getting again out of your comfort zone. So I had to do things that I wasn't doing before and wasn't really on board doing going in but He was a specialist. I appreciated what he had to say. I respected his credentials and the results he seems to have had. [00:06:00] So I would if it wasn't working, what he was saying, I assumed it was probably my fault.

, not necessarily all professionals actually, necessarily good what they say what they are, but this person happened to be. Yeah, so buying into the program, buying into what he was suggesting, I struggle with that because when he said niche, hyper niche down, like what is going to happen to the clients that we already have?

Because when we're niching and we're raising our prices, that brought up a lot for me and a lot of it came from my beliefs around money and a scarcity mindset. So like we had two small children and. Quite honestly, what happens if we hyper niche down and raise our prices What happens to the client base that we already have so that got me concerned and I started oh I don't know about this and but once I realized that niching down doesn't mean Don't you can't work with everybody else who wants to work with you?

But when you hyper focus your website or your wording and you're going after a target audience like your [00:07:00] ideal client You And actually it ends up attracting more clients anyway. But I didn't know that at the time. Like I didn't, I had to get through a lot of the limiting beliefs I had around money.

I had resistance. I had, I could probably, the laundry list would be like this if I had, mentioned how many concerns I had, but did it work out? Yes. Yes. But the moral of the story is that I had to step out of my comfort zone, look at what was being offered to us and decide, do I want to push us out of it?

We were working together, but am I on board with this, that pushing us out of our comfort zone and Moving our business to the next level. And I think it takes, it can be scary. It can be very scary. Oh, it's totally. I get the scary part, a lot of things that are fun and worthwhile are start off with scary and jumping out of a plane.

It's a blast, very scary to inch your way toward that door, but worth it. They do. And I think having the faith in yourself, that's the root of it. And we spoke about [00:08:00] briefly confidence, self confidence, and then believing in. What you're setting out to do. So once, once we wrapped our head around, this is what the next trajectory was for our business.

I think that once we were 1000 percent on board and all of our efforts went towards that thing. It's amazing how fast the business, the trajectory happened. It really starts moving quickly because Bringing a manifestation as another word That word wasn't used probably that often, you know a million years ago what we're talking about But when you think of manifestation, it's really putting something out there.

It's putting out a goal It's putting something out in the universe that You've decided like you want to hit that goal and then once you decide you want that outcome for yourself for your business It's amazing how all the pieces come together It's not just wanting it. The manifestation is definitely more than just wanting it, because we all want something.

I want all sorts of silly stuff, but there's a, but there's a difference [00:09:00] somehow between what you would like versus what you, and maybe what you want versus what you determined that you're going to do and you need. I have done, I've wanted all sorts of things throughout my life, but every time that I've actually come to a conclusion that there's something that I'm going to do and I, my mindset just shifts and it happens, it happened.

And it's, I wish I could do that every single time for everything I want. I can't, I just, but there's things that I'm just determined, I, they have to happen and They do. I just get them done and they just, those obstacles just fall away. And yet all these other silly things like, I would like this, I'd like to drive a Formula One car.

I'd like to, just, that's just superficial. But when it comes to your business and you put a, I don't always love the word goal, a goal, an outcome, a possibility. You put that out there for your business and then it's up to you [00:10:00] to figure out how it's going to happen.

And I think when you start putting your mind or an example using the coach that we were with when he started questioning us like really on a weekly basis about What are the outcomes that we wanted and that really made us pay a lot more attention to the direction that we were going and there's something about being held accountable to whether it's a gym or a business coach or a Friend or actually for photographers of the photography community can be hugely supportive Surrounding yourself by people who are encouraging you towards that goal is massive and that helps these outcomes Come to fruition because without that support somebody that you can bounce ideas off of and verbalize what you're going towards and, having it out there in the universe, that's when it starts to come true.

So if this sounds woo not planning it, you're going to see if you if you come back regularly, you're going to see how we're going to lay this out and there'll be exercises [00:11:00] and there will be concrete ways that you can start making these things happen, outcomes, possibilities. Discussing all the other things that we were talking about like under earning and the limiting beliefs and the resistance that you have and that you may not even realize like it really takes a lot to step back and be objective and look at your business and say, Am I really doing everything I can to move the business in the direction that I want to go?

And that's something it's hard. I think it's hard to sometimes take a step back and look at yourself and stop. Okay. Thank you. the blame game of saying, that's other people's fault, or they know what they're doing. I don't. Or again, that's imposter syndrome thing. And all the other photographers know what they're doing and you don't.

Another aspect is being specific. I get, if you're not specific, just wanting things. And even if you you decide I'm going to do this, but if you don't actually come up with specific, You can't possibly do it. It's like the you want to go someplace, but you have never been there and you have no map You have to be specific.

Otherwise, if you do get there, it [00:12:00] will be just absolute dumb luck So you need to have the desire, but you also need specifics. So all these things come together it's true. It's like a North star. If you don't have the direction that you want to be going, it's impossible to go in that direction.

So you need your North star. If that's a number, if that's a certain number of clients you want to work with, if it's earning a hundred thousand dollars a year, if it's increasing your sales by 20%, whatever that is, you need to have a specific goal. And then once you have a goal, you need a plan to get there.

So again, it's a process of setting your eyes, setting your sights on a target and then working your way backwards with action steps that you can do. They seem daunting, but again, if you keep the goal in mind and you're determined to get there, you'll make the plan. It's funny how that works. Like I can't think of how many times I, once I decided I just started writing things down on paper and bam, let's go.

It just lays itself out in front of [00:13:00] me. It's silly, prior to that I seem stuck. The objections are what become the steps and it seems counterintuitive That all the things that I'm saying that can't happen are actually the things and when you Reverse engineer when you reverse engineer them that's the path.

I mean that lays it out for itself Just like you said, And it's a lot it is a lot of hard work to grow a business actually it's it's hard work But it's satisfying work. It's not quite as complicated as you think once you once you Accepted it and you're determined and then suddenly it becomes fun and a scary kind of worthwhile way.

Exactly. And I think resilience is probably the number one word I would apply to having a successful photography business. Showing up every day with intention is Versus showing up every day to scroll through Instagram or do, 10 an hour chores in your business when you should really be doing the big work that moves your business forward.

Having your own back, believing in yourself [00:14:00] is really the center of finding success in your business. 

 I promise you, we're going to have lots of exercises and lots of valuable information to help you develop this prosperous photography mindset.

So this podcast is less about tactics and more about mindset, again, not that tactics aren't important But mindset is the core of everything. So that's where we're that's where we're here to help. See you next time!