The Prosperous Photography Mindset

#007 How Self Sabotage affects your Photography Business

September 06, 2024 Keith Pitts and Melissa Madden

Overcoming Self-Sabotage in Your Photography Business

In this episode we focus on the concept of self-sabotage, drawing from 'The Mountain is You' by Brianna Wiest, explaining that it stems from conflicting conscious and unconscious desires. We share personal experiences and examples of how self-sabotage can impede progress in a photography business. Key self-sabotage tactics include resistance, perfectionism, hitting upper limits, justification, and fear of success.  We emphasize the importance of recognizing and addressing these behaviors to move forward and achieve one's full potential in the photography business.

00:00 Introduction: Overcoming Limiting Beliefs

00:27 Morning Walk Reflections

01:56 Today's Topic: Self Sabotage

02:20 Understanding Self Sabotage

05:55 Personal Stories of Limiting Beliefs

08:15 Examples of Self Sabotage in Photography

10:30 Metaphors and Real-Life Examples

16:27 Breaking Through Upper Limits

18:41 Perfectionism and Justification

22:52 Fear of Success and Failure

26:25 The Busy Trap

30:21 Conclusion and Call to Action

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There are no business roadmaps, no marketing strategies, no magic pricing guide, and no piece of gear or technical knowledge.

That can overcome your deeply held belief system. That's holding you back. That's keeping you stuck.

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.

Hi, welcome back. I think it's so interesting when I went outside today on our morning dog walk, we walked by part of where the Olympics was held and now everything's gone. The stands are gone. All the The beautiful things for the Olympics. Yeah, if you want to call it beautiful, I'm just so happy they're gone.

Uh, again, they just blocked off so many things that were just, again, you just took for granted. And just so, so again, nice for the, the local citizenry to, uh, to be able to use that they couldn't use for this whole Olympic period. So even though it looked beautiful and all the photos and it was a great success.

 Again, that's the beautiful thing about photography and, uh, and video. It only shows you the stuff that's beautiful. It cuts out all the horrible stuff on the outside. All about the angle. That was, pardon, pardon me being a little bit, uh, down, but now I'm actually really up because I can't wait to, to use the city in, in, in the way that it was meant.

It's back, and it's back in its full force because Le Rentre happened, which is when the French kids come back to school, or school starts, after taking the month of August off, everybody's back to work, the cafes are full. It's kind of quiet during the Olympics, so it's nice to have all, all the life back in this wonderful city.

So anyway, we digress, but yeah, again, it's gorgeous out. Yeah, it's been a great week. I had a, uh, really good one on one, uh, street photography, , workshop that went very, very well. Again, because the weather was perfect. Then, of course, luckily, the rain held out. This is Paris after all. 

 But none of that means anything of it to what we're going to talk about.

 Welcome back. whenever you're listening to this, it is early September. And today's topic is self sabotage. That's a big one. I think anyway, as far as running a photography business goes, or any other business, it would show true. And since we're only talking about photography here,

that doesn't mean that other people can't learn from what we're talking about. So let's get started.

So in Brianna, we spoke, I'm not sure if I said her name, right? So I apologize if I said it wrong. The mountain is you fantastic book. If you haven't already read it, all of this will be in the show notes, but she describes self sabotage as it is not a way we hurt ourselves, but it is a way that we try to protect ourselves.

Self sabotage is when you have two conflicting desires. One is conscious and one is unconscious. You know how you want to move your life forward, or your business, and yet you are stuck for some reason.

When coaching photographers on getting their business unstuck, I feel that this concept of self sabotage is at the core of the struggle. People want to learn from Keith and I because we have a proven blueprint for creating and operating a prosperous photography business for the long term, but, and this is a very big but, We could hand them the keys to the castle, and guess what?

Many people, many photographers have a conflict between these conscious and unconscious thoughts.

That's true. You get so many times you can, uh, and we've had this discussion between ourselves and with other people in the past, you can, people ask, well, why would you, uh, like sell your, uh, your secrets? It's not a matter of selling secrets and then holding stuff back. You can give everything away for free and a very, very small percentage of the people would actually, uh, execute.

So you, you can, You can give you, the person, the path to the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow and most of the people, most people will just not follow the path. Exactly. And I feel, honestly, just a few things that we've even already spoken about in these just handful of podcast episodes we've put out are very simple.

They sound simple in theory, but it's exactly these things that are holding people back from executing these, this, this. This blueprint that a lot of people pay a lot of money for. And I think that it's a missing link, which again, is why, why we're here. Because I think, as I think we said in a previous episode, it took us this amount of time to really recognize that that is the, the issue for lack of a better word that we can hand people, leave them the horse, leave the horse to, to water.

And. You can't make them drink so we can give you everything we can tell you how much we charge how what our contract that we could literally share everything with you but that does not give you the belief in yourself to institute it and carry it out successfully so That's why talking about self sabotage is really at the center of a lot of this.

Many people, many photographers have a conflict between these conscious and unconscious thoughts. The result they'll remain stuck. They want their business to move but there's something holding the secret is secret is that there are no business roadmaps, no marketing strategies, no magic pricing guide, and no piece of gear or technical knowledge.

That can overcome your deeply held belief system. That's holding you back. That's keeping you stuck. That's so true. No piece of gear, no, it's not the camera that's holding you back. It's not the software that's holding you back. It's only you holding you back.

Yeah. It's not the oversaturated market. It's not the millions of photographers in your area. That is not what's holding. That is definitely not what's holding you back. Our belief systems are so ingrained in us that you believe it as a truth because you have never questioned it. You grew up with these beliefs around money and what was possible.

You may have never consider that this is the key to you figuring out what is in fact the very thing that is keeping you stuck. These belief systems can keep you limited. And you don't believe what you're capable of. You can't imagine other possibilities.

And because of that, you creating this business that you say you consciously want, it will never happen the way you would like it to, unless you address these long held beliefs around money and the limits you have unconsciously set on yourself.

Well, I'll give you a personal example. And then maybe you have one as well. I'm sure I've got an example for something you usually do. Without even knowing it from how I was raised in the communities that I grew up in, I had an unconscious ceiling for what I could earn and what my possibilities were.

Couple that with a childhood that had divorce, cross country moves and several school changes. Watching a single mom work really hard, I definitely developed a scarcity mindset around money. Money was hard in our house. Money was for other people. Money was something that you spent the minute you got it for things you needed.

No talk about savings or investing. This thought pattern in my subconscious was not believing that I was capable of making and keeping money. Keeping money for me is really has always been a struggle. Well, you know, that to push my business forward.

I'm jumping through a few decades here. I had to increase my threshold, raise the ceiling of what I thought was possible for myself. I had to start believing in me and that there were bigger possibilities available than I had ever imagined. Again. So I think this probably one of the things that, uh, brought us together and kept us together is the fact we have a very similar story.

And then growing up was my mom, single, single mom. Uh, working two jobs at various points was just, uh, just keeping, just making ends meet was so we weren't talking about me being an entrepreneur when I grew up. It was, I was fairly certain was that I was just gonna work for somebody didn't know, who didn't know doing what, but.

It was not likely going to be with my, my own company because it's not what I had observed. Exactly. I never saw that example. I grew up around wonderful, loving family members, but no one ever spoke of being a photographer or being an entrepreneur or being a small business owner. Like I literally had no experience with that.

So it never even entered my realm of possibilities until after college. But you're right. We had a very similar upbringing and, again, both of us were having, uh, again, a certain scarcity mindset that we have to get past.

And we have, again, we have gotten past and not that it doesn't, , I bump up against us here and there, but you just have to get through it. 

I wouldn't have known what a scarcity mindset was. I'm not even sure if they use that terminology. Right. Yeah. I know. Yeah. No, I, I, I never heard of it, but yeah, obviously I lived it, but. Yeah, exactly. Now that when you look back, we, I can recognize the patterns, 

 I wanted to bring up today. A couple of ways we solve sabotage as photographers.

The first thing that comes to mind is resistance. We have to identify unconscious beliefs that are preventing us from showing up , and moving from where we are now to where we want to be. Here's a story from a photographer friend of ours. It's hard not to wear that coaching hat when you're hearing your friends tell a story.

This friend uses resistance to self sabotage herself and her business constantly. So it's something that I'm used to, to hearing, to hearing. And why is it so much easier to recognize these patterns and others than yourself? Well, it's in the idea that it's easy to give advice. It's much harder to take it.

. She came up with a very unique portrait session that would be a hit with her clients because anytime she's done it in the past, people love it. And even though it is her own idea and a potential moneymaker for her business, She has decided to put it off, to not offer these sessions during this upcoming portrait season.

She's sticking with an outdated mini session model that she uses. It makes her a little bit of money, but she'll continue working with the wrong clients that are looking for quantity over quality and at a lower price point. When I ask her why she isn't offering the other, more, I'll call it a fresh, it's a new take on a portrait session, especially for her.

She gives me a litany of reasons, and some involve her playing the victim, finding excuses, blaming others, and then she starts with the, I'm so busy, I'm so busy doing all these other things, it's easier to do the mini sessions, and then, you know, I'm a single mother, you know, the whole story comes out, I have it so hard, my whole life, things have always been wrong for me, I've tried everything, and I'd rather go with the sure thing.

Then in the same sentence She says something about how she'll never book clients, even though I point out to her that every time she does these newer portraits. She gets a great response, followed by inquiries, like, to me it's a no brainer. Hearing this dialogue she has, I realize she is willing to accept more of the same because she's resistant to change.

She's afraid. She'd rather make less than put herself out there and take this chance. This is a great example of self sabotage, because I know she wants to make more money, because she constantly tells me she needs to make more, but she is resistant because if she puts herself out there, she might be judged, fail, or she might succeed.

 So when I was in, uh, photo school, like a bazillion years ago, uh, I remember coming up with a great idea that how about we, uh, when we graduate, we, uh, we jumped out of a plane to, to, uh, celebrate how cool is this. And so. I had a ton of people, a ton of, uh, my classmates, like, wow, that's a great idea.

Well, over the course of time, a bunch of people fell out of the program. In the end, a little over 60 of us graduated. So as graduation day was approaching, I'm like, hey, let's, I mean, let's get this thing organized. I'm like, I'm really looking forward to this. One, I'm looking forward to graduating, but two, I'm also excited about jumping out of this whole plane thing.

Needless to say, it was good. Almost everybody that thought that was still left that thought it was a great idea. Absolutely. What are you crazy? Like, that's just silly. I'm not going to do that. , so from the, uh, the big group, it came down to, uh, three of us and, uh, yeah, it was scary. There's, there was a fear of what's going to happen after graduation.

I mean, just from having to actually get out into the real world and that, and there's a fear of, Going up in a perfectly good airplane and jumping out of it. But you do just because it's, yeah, you, you're climbing up there. This perfectly fine aircraft is, uh, is getting you a nice and nice, beautiful view of everything.

And suddenly it's like, okay, time to jump. Uh, I know there's something that everybody just fast forward, everybody jumped, but. So, uh, there were three, me, including me. Yeah, so, yeah, so we jumped, you know, there are, you can imagine that some people would just get so nervous that you get up there, you look down, oh my God, this is kind of crazy.

And then they imagine, but with all the bad things that could happen versus how much fun this could be and what would happen if. Everything goes right. Some people would just focus on what would happen if everything went wrong. And then they all just ride the plane back down. I would be lying to you if I said, Oh my God, I came running to the door and you're jumped out or who?

No, I'm, I do what I do. When I get nervous, I start talking more and faster. And the, uh, the instructors were looking at me going, dude, you can calm down. It started getting me cool. I'm like, Oh, I'm not, I'm not nervous. I'm not nervous. I was. Probably terrified, but I was talking myself through it. I walked to the door and I jumped and it was amazing.

So much fun. Had I not, I would have never known what that experience is like, but. So do you see this as a metaphor? Because a couple of things you said, when I think of, when you said you look out and you see this beautiful Vista, however, it's kind of like the education that you're getting in photo school is that beautiful Vista that's showing you everything that's possible.

Yeah, they're showing you, they're showing you the world that's your oyster. And this, this can all be yours. It just requires some work, but it becomes again, scarier to go, okay, well, I have my daily schedule. I know I've got this class. I, I've already passed that test. I'm doing this. I, I, I ended up graduating oddly about, I never think of myself as the greatest student, but I did actually graduate with the best portfolio, which was a surprise to me.

But, uh, again, I was, it was a good surprise. But do you think that, like, getting to the edge of the plane and jumping out is, it's really the equivalent of graduating? Well, it's the equivalent of graduating. It's going, yeah, because how many, there's a bunch of people, people that I went to school with, and then stories I'd heard about prior graduates that they go through this whole program and they are now, again, ready.

In theory, to go take on, technically ready to take on the world and, but the fear of, uh, again, the fear of starting was not just the fear of, yeah, literally resisting and now they're going to go back into what they're used to, like they're going to, they'd rather, , Just tread water and, know it's coming because it's the exact same thing that's been happening versus go out there and get into a world that, that looks so exciting, but once you're actually facing it, then you're like, Oh my God, I don't know what's going to happen.

So let me just go back into my safe, little, comfortable, whether, uh, Not even comfortable. It can be completely uncomfortable, but you know it, but you know it, right? Yeah, it's, it's what you know. It's fear of the unknown. Exactly. You're afraid basically. And yeah, and yeah, and again, there's, fear is normal. Oh, absolutely.

Fear is totally normal. It's just a matter of what you do. When faced with that fear, , if you can imagine if, historically speaking, let's go, people were afraid of everybody wouldn't face their fears. We wouldn't have like, we'd be still was it blind? Yeah. Yeah. We'd be drawing was supposed to say figures on cave walls and only seeing it in the dark or in the daytime after it was with the light came back up again.

 The cell phone. I mean, everything, the smartphone and computer, everything obviously was people who didn't give up going in spite of the resistance that they probably felt. So I'm curious that, um, you may, you may not even know the answer to this, but of the people that graduated in the class, how many are still photographers?

I don't know an actual number, but I do know maybe the three that were on that. Uh, I know for a fact, actually, yeah, the three that were on that plane, we're all still doing it. And, uh, Yeah. I know, I know it's going to, uh, I periodically see another one who pop up in social media and I know that she's still doing it, but I don't know about the rest.

 It's interesting. I think that there's definitely a correlation between the people who are willing to, you know, the metaphor of jumping out of an airplane is the same thing. It's really. Running your own photography business is like jumping out of an airplane practically every single day.

 That's a great story to share because I think , all of us can put ourselves in that position and recognize like where resistance shows up for us, especially in our business, but great. That's a really good example. Yeah, I think you need me to tell you that, but I think that was a very, yeah, and 100 percent true.

I'm not, again, most of my things are metaphors. That was actually true. Which brings us to a couple of other examples of how we self sabotage. Another one? Hitting your upper limit. I already discussed this about myself earlier. When you start to surpass your upper limit, that's when the self sabotage kicks in.

Your brain wants to be comfortable and familiar and keep you safe. It keeps you in your comfort zone. So, again, when I was younger, like, I never realized that you could earn six figures as a business owner, photographer, you name it. Like, I had, I had A cap on what I thought was possible. Women only earn, you know, max a hundred thousand dollars a year.

Never even dreaming it's possible to earn so much more than that. that was my ceiling. That was something that I kept myself under and couldn't even imagine going past it.

Well, again, your, your plane example is a perfect metaphor for, for this trade as well. And then I think they really have to take this slow if you allow yourself to gradually start hitting your new limits. You'll be more comfortable and you'll allow for it because , it's not like a magic wand that you can just wave like, Oh, I'm going to make a million dollars a year.

You have, you have to make certain decisions along the way that open your mind up to these possibilities. If you're someone who thinks photographers can only make 25, 000 a year, well, then you have to keep raising, , that that limit of what you think is possible in order to get out of your comfort zone and get to those levels.

 It has to happen. Not small steps, but it has to be, has to be methodical. You also, they don't want, once you have hit some, whether it's an arbitrary number or not, push past it. What's, what you're saying that was, that that is your cap,

If you allow yourself to gradually start hitting new limits, you will be more comfortable and you will allow for it.

My friend might have this going on as well. She's used to scraping to get by. She's used to lack in her life. She's constantly in and out of debt. She has an erratic relationship with money. She might not know what to do. If everything went smoothly, If she was paid more for her photography and had an easier life.

This right now doesn't work for her belief system in order for her to believe that offering this new portrait session or rather than the outdated mini sessions could be a profitable, viable option for her to have an easier life. This takes some time. She would have to expand her upper limit and realize she's worthy and capable of more.

That's definitely easier said than done. Much easier. A few other self sabotaging tactics fit into this scenario as well. Perfectionism. Ah, perfectionism. That's one of those things, I can just imagine, yeah, people are like, I'll start this whole thing, but I just need my, uh, my website to be perfect.

I go, let me, like, I'm so close, I just have to find the right font. Who cares about the right, not that the right font isn't important, but instead just start with a good font, and then, and make it better as you go, because. If you're waiting, I guess you start, while you're looking for that perfect font, somebody who doesn't really care about your font is knows you're actually offering something and they can buy it from you. They can get your services. Now, if you're just sitting there again in the dark, I was just waiting to go to turn the lights on until you find the exact last Possible.

You just, you just theoretically left an awful lot of people looking for other, other people giving the same service here. Like I need that perfect portrait lens or I need X, Y, or Z in order for my business to be ready. Really. I mean, if you have a camera and the willingness to do it, your business is already ready.

Of course you need all the other things. I'm a big believer in having a really solid foundation for your photography business. I think that sets you up for success. However, Not getting started is the leading way that you will never find success. Yeah, the only thing you can guarantee is that you're not going to get any clients if you don't actually start.

 And I think that, , don't worry about doing well, just do it, show up, focus on getting something done in spite of it not being perfect. Right, just make it better as you go. And photography being very personal, I think that's, it's a, it's a moving target always. Always. If you don't get started, you'll never arrive. That's as simple as that. Another one is justification. My friend in the example I gave, she is making excuses for not giving these new portraits a try. She needs to stop accepting her own excuses. She could approach it in a more methodical way and quantify her progress.

 Maybe one day she could run her mini sessions on, say, a Saturday, and then on a Sunday run her portrait sessions. She could do a test, and maybe she could then see, , just black and white, if you look at the numbers, and that she could see that which one was a more viable option, rather than deciding ahead of time that it's not going to work for the variety of reasons that she instinctively made up so she could stay in her comfort zone.

Not sure if that made sense. Other examples are why you can't charge more because your market is saturated. I mean, there's, I'm sure we could come up. Who's to say that, uh, people aren't going to pay a certain price once you've gotten an arbitrary, uh, you hit your arbitrary target.

Push pass. You don't know that people won't pay more. , but it seems that people have this arbitrary thought about what people are willing to pay. You don't know what people are willing to pay.

Let's say that I live in Phoenix and the market can bear what? It can bear a lot. It can bear, you know, a 10, 000 portrait session and it bears a lot of 50 shoot and burn mini sessions, too. You don't know what's important to your potential client. You think you do, and you're offering something that your hope is valuable.

But don't, don't limit the value you put on it to a point where you, if you look at some of the purchases that people go out and make, they just make you scratch your head, I've seen once where people that will still live at home with their parents, but go out and buy it.

Uh, a BMW, they'll go into debt to get, to get, to get some crazy car payment, to get a cool car, but they're going to still live at home with the mother. So they were, they're putting out this cool image up front, but the reality is they can't bring anybody home in it. Value. We also have had clients who are wearing 1, 500 shoes.

Yet they don't want to pay 50 for a four by six print. So that means they don't value the photography enough. They, they value other things more. So you don't get to decide for somebody where their value lies. But that said, somebody else is going to say, Oh my God, I I'll put certain things aside because I want this portrait of my family or this portrait of me or this portrait of whoever.

They're going to, they're, somebody's out there that's going to value this over some other purchases that they might have made, which they can get later, but they're going to prioritize this.

. Fear of success is another example of self sabotage.

I don't know. This one, this is a big one. And I think it, maybe a lot of people don't recognize that it even happens to them, to themselves, I mean, it's something, doesn't seem like something you want to do to yourself. So you're, you're, you're placing external, uh, externalities on your situation thinking, well, I would do this, but, all right, I, of course, I'm excited to do this, but,

Like taking my friend example, and the fear of success, I think is a decision and the example I'm using about my friend that she's probably feeling like she doesn't deserve to have more success, more money, a successful product offering, working with the right clients.

She's holding herself back people sabotage their higher earning potential because they aren't comfortable with having more money or success or proving themselves wrong. So they put themselves back into a lack mentality and stay within not hitting their upper limit.

Like all of these seem to work together and then. But fear of failure, I definitely think is a one of, one of the most obvious when you look back at it that I people, you know, prevent themselves from success. Mm hmm. Well, again, they're, they're, they, the, the name is different, but they're pretty much tied and they're roughly the same. They just. It's a fair way of failing.

Yeah, totally. Nobody likes to fail. But failure sometimes is something that people are used to. By failing, it keeps them in the neighborhood that they're comfortable in versus going out and exploring the wilderness, which might have the promised land, or it might not. It might have some big Mean bears.

Right. And then we don't even try something because we're so afraid of what the outcome could be. Or we're afraid of being judged by our friends or other photographers that we keep ourselves small or we keep ourselves in this, lack position in order to not fail. When really failing, failing on purpose is something else, but failing because you're trying is a whole different thing.

Yeah, , it's, I, to bring up another analogy, I think that, it's the same thing as if you want to learn How to get someplace, getting lost in your car is, uh, is, or on foot, however, is a good thing if you learn from it, because if you get from point A to point B without any mess up, then you're only going to know one way to get there.

So every time you're going to get from point A to point B, if there's any detour or something, you're going to get lost because you don't, you've never been off that road. Now, if you have spent the time learning from these various mistakes. then you're eventually going to have such a big picture of the area that nothing is going to be able to keep you from your destination.

You just move different ways to get to the exact same spot and nothing can stop you. Yeah, that's very true. That's a great analogy and metaphor.

We don't, but we don't even try anything. We don't try something because we're afraid to fail or look bad at doing something. I wish people understood how you can actually learn quite a bit from trying something just like you explain.

And if it doesn't work out, we learn something. I mean, my friend, she isn't failing because she's trying something new. She's failing because she isn't showing up as the best version of herself and in her business. She doesn't want to try something that's a whole different, There's a different way of defining failure, failure for not trying versus failure for trying and then trying over and over and over again until you get it right.

I mean, you learn more from your mistakes and you do your successes. I totally, so the last one I think I'll mention is a lot more, but the last one I want to mention in the context of what we're talking about here. It's being busy. So what does so busy even mean? Like, what do you, when you hear people say, I'm so busy, what does it, what does that mean?

Does that mean I'm disorganized? Well, I, it could be, well, I think it could be, it was going to, some people were legitimately that busy, but I think majority of people, I, I'm going to. Assume just haven't prioritized what's actually important in the day. And, uh, I've, uh, again, guilty so far, guilty of everything.

So, yeah, that's just, yeah. So, yeah. Well, when you look at, you look at so many people that can do like a million things in a day and still raise the family, do this, change the world. And, and they seem to not even sweat. I mean, it makes you feel like a slacker, but. I mean, not everybody's that person, but everybody does have the ability to prioritize what is important and in a given situation.

And if you actually spend your time prioritizing and doing the big things, not just focusing on the minutiae, the little tiny things. Is those little tiny things aren't getting you forward. They become important farther down the line. But again, no one cares if you haven't done this, if you haven't done the big stuff.

Well, and I think also, especially when you're a solo, well, we work together, but there's a lot of solopreneurs that are photographers and they have all the tasks of their business. But what happens on an average day is they end up doing all the We'll call the minimum wage tasks. And they don't focus on really like the creative tasks.

So the things that actually make you money is the photography and then your relationship with clients and getting out there and networking and building your client base. Those are the important, those are the CEO type interactions that a small business owner should be having on a daily basis.

Instead, they're like, , let me scroll through social media for endless hours and stuff like that. And that's not something that's moving the needle forward. But they're so busy because they fill their time with really useless tasks that aren't moving their business forward.

Now, again, it's so straight. It's, putting tactics above strategy. Now, if you have, again, if you don't have a strategy, your tactics aren't going to do anything. So you really have to prioritize. First, you need a strategy. Then you come up with the tactics, how to, how to execute. So you can, so your strategy will, , will work.

Yeah. But if you do, it doesn't work backwards. No, it doesn't. And it really becomes part of the whole vicious cycle. And when you decide to prioritize.

So again, like doing the 10 an hour tasks versus the CEO type tasks that actually really move your business forward, those busy tasks that make a difference that bring in more money, that move your business forward.

It's the things that you do that keep you hidden, that keep you small, that you waste your time doing all these things over here that, that really aren't helping your business. And I think that, being busy is just a cover for really avoidance. It's a buffering tactic of not wanting to dive in and do the hard stuff. The only way to move your business forward to get where you want it to be is to do the hard work and to stop saying you're busy and to actually get out there and execute like you said from priority from top priority down.

And again, I think we spoke about that last week or two weeks ago where you write down the outcomes that you want for your business and then you write down the steps that you need to take to get there. And that's a great example of instead of being busy all the time. There's a ton of stuff, right? But uh, it's really important to be, to really treat yourself and be intentional and prioritize.

Yeah, you want to be busy, but again, be busy with important, important things, not just minutia. Exactly. Well, again, now I guess we are at the end of just really the, we're scratching the surface on the self sabotage tactics. These seem to apply for what we were talking about today. And I'm hopefully you recognize a little bit of scratch that I just said, God, my voice only when I'm recording.

Well, that wraps up today's chat on self sabotage. I'm sure we could talk on the subject and I know it'll come back. We will talk about it again in different, in different ways. There's a ton more to discuss on this topic, especially how it relates to your photography business. It's one of those things no one really wants to have, but we all have an example of it.

As a matter of fact, why don't you, if you dare, put in the comments something that you recognize as self sabotage and whether you've either overcome it or maybe you're still stuck there. I know. And again, it's something we all work through constantly. It's not like it just goes away magically. Like it's something you probably work on forever because there's always new things, you know, coming into your business life.

And then you're, so anyway. Thank you. Thank you so much for tuning in and listening. Thanks. See you next time. Take care.

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