Freedom Focus Photography

The Gratitude Hack with Jeff Brown

• Nicole Begley, Jeff Brown • Episode 258

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258 - In this episode of the Freedom Focused Photography Podcast, we're thrilled to welcome back Jeff Brown, The Photographer's Mentor, for an insightful conversation on how to elevate your photography business by harnessing the power of positivity, gratitude, and strategic visibility. 

Jeff shares his unique journey from military photographer to renowned photography mentor, along with practical tips for transforming your mindset and daily habits.

We dive deep into the importance of curating your environment—both online and offline—to foster positivity, how to use gratitude as a powerful tool for personal and professional growth, and why visibility is key to establishing credibility in your industry. 

Jeff also shares his daily routines that keep him focused, energized, and on track to achieve his goals. Whether you're looking to boost your business, improve your mindset, or simply find new ways to stay motivated, this episode is packed with actionable insights.

Here’s a sneak peek at what we’re covering:

Embrace Positivity in Social Media: Jeff highlights the importance of curating your social media feed to eliminate negativity and focus on positive, inspiring content. This can drastically improve your mindset and productivity.

The Power of Gratitude: Jeff explains how starting each day by writing down three things you're grateful for—focusing on a person, a possession, and an experience—can set a positive tone and energize your day.

Visualization Techniques: Jeff discusses the importance of visualizing your ideal future in detail, writing it down as if it’s already happening, and listening to it regularly to reinforce your goals and ambitions.

The Importance of Visibility: "Visibility is credibility." Jeff emphasizes that being consistently visible online, whether through social media or contributing to publications, builds credibility and opens doors to new opportunities.

Anchoring New Habits: To build new habits, Jeff suggests attaching them to existing routines. For example, replacing your morning news with a gratitude practice while enjoying your coffee.


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Welcome to another freedom focused photography podcast episode. In today's episode, I am talking about the ultimate gratitude hacks with Jeff Brown. Jeff's been on the podcast before. It's one of our most popular episodes. Anytime I have a conversation with him, you guys are going to want to take a listen because it is going to be excellent. This one's no exception, so stay tuned. I'm Nicole Bagley, a zoological animal trainer turned pet and family photographer.

Back in 2010, I embarked on my own adventure in photography, transforming a bootstrapping startup into a thriving six figure business by 2012. Since then, my mission has been to empower photographers like you, sharing the knowledge and strategies that have helped me help thousands of photographers build their own profitable businesses. I believe that achieving two to $3,000 sales is your fastest route to six figure businesses, that any technically proficient photographer can consistently hit four figure sales.

And no matter if you want photography to be your full time passion or a part time pursuit, profitability is possible. If you're a portrait photographer aspiring to craft a business that aligns perfectly with the life you envision, then you're in exactly the right place. With over 350,000 downloads. Welcome to the Freedom Focus Photography podcast. Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the Freedom Focus Photography podcast. I'm your host, Nicole Bagley, and today we have a repeat guest on.

We have Jeff Brown from the photographer's mentor over in the UK, joining us again to chat about all the things. Jeff, welcome back. Thank you. It's a pleasure to be back. It's always good to be on the show. Yeah, I'm actually, again, I always forget to look up and see what episode we were on before. Here we go. Episode 137, the secrets to business success. That was April 5, 2022.

It was two years ago. How did it go that fast? Well, that's a great episode. So if you guys haven't heard that one, go back to the archives. Episode 137. It was a good one. We talked about all sorts of things, even your experience of being a military royal photographer, doing all sorts of crazy things in the background for people that maybe didn't hear that. Can you give us just a little bit high level review of how you got started in photography and your background, what you do?

Yeah, so I start off, I was into photography as a hobby, then I joined the military in my mid twenties and then trained to become a military photographer. I did eight, nine years as military photographer. I also worked for the intelligence services for two years as what we called an intelligence image analysis. So basically looking at aerial mapping and aerial reconnaissance videos and photographs of certain targets around the world.

And then while I was in there, I set up, I started doing the odd weddings and photographing people's dogs and kids and families on weekends, and decided I would leave the military, set up with another military photographer and staff, our first photography business. And from there we went on to have five different photography businesses. And then I did a change of direction in 2015, started an online training program for photographers, and now work with photographers in about 25 different countries around the world.

I'm an ambassador for Om system, Olympus cameras, and also president of the BIPP, which is the British Institute of Professional Photography, the oldest photography association in the world. And I've written four books now, photography business books, which have all gone into the bestsellers. So, yeah, quite a. Quite a varied career in photography. Yeah, I would say that it's a very roundabout, distinguished and interesting career. Definitely a unique start for getting into this business.

I don't think a lot of people have that same story. Can you tell us just real quick on the four books? I've seen your website book, which is really, really good. If you guys are wondering what you need to put on your website, go pick up Jeff's book on Amazon. It's so good. What other books do you have? So we got. I've got three of them here. So I've got a website book, which is all about websites and how to create a brand.

Then I've got my. This is the new one. This is the second edition, the ambitious photographer's journal. And this is something we'll talk about a little bit today, which is all about goal setting and time management and actually getting stuff done. And then my latest one is the photographer's gratitude mindset journal, which works hand in hand with, with the other book. And then finally, I think I've still got one here in my LinkedIn book.

Yeah, that was my first one. So, yeah, I'm a big advocate of LinkedIn. I've got about 60 odd thousand followers on LinkedIn myself. And, you know, I help photographers train photographers in utilizing LinkedIn. I do workshops, in person training, and it is an amazing platform for photographers, but not many photographers use it. Most photographers go to Instagram and to Facebook. But LinkedIn is a real place to get business.

Yeah, whether commercial clients or portrait clients, I feel like LinkedIn is an untapped resource that most people, I think we just kind of get confused with it. But, yeah, I've taken your trainings before. They're so good. So if you guys want to learn more about LinkedIn. Definitely check out Jeff. But yeah, so today we're talking about just really, I think, again, a little bit more of the unique differentiator because we were just chatting before we hit record, and you're seeing the same thing that I am in our community, where we have some photographers that are killing it this year.

Best year ever, doing just incredible. Like, it's now July 31 that we're recording this and they're already hitting their goal number for the year, which is awesome. And we're not even into third and fourth quarter yet. And then there's the other half of the coin, which seems to be the word on the street and the word in a lot of Facebook groups, which inquiries are down, the business down.

It's harder than ever. What's actually going on? Well, you know, the funny thing is, because I've been a photographer. I've been a photographer since 2004, is a professional commercial photographer. Five different businesses, and we've been through God knows how many recessions, the big crash of 2008. And what I've learned from my experience is I had a big financial set back in 2015. One of the reasons I changed direction, I lost about 160,000 pounds.

And I was for the 60,000 owed out when I bought a pub, which turned into sort of like a wedding venue. And I was going to do the wedding photography there, but everything went wrong. Within about twelve months, I suffered a big financial setback. I stupidly tried to take my own life, but obviously didn't and suffered for about six months of depression. And I ended up coming up to here, to Northumberland.

I moved away from the city into the middle of nowhere. Northumberland is a very remote county in England and started again. And what I had to do to get myself back on track again was to reprogram my mind because I'd been to the lowest I could ever be. I wanted to get myself back and better than before. So a big focus for me initially was to cut off all forms of media.

So I can't remember the last time I bought a newspaper. I don't actually watch the news. I get updates of friends and family who say, have you heard about this? Have you heard about that? But I started to realize how draining and how negative the news was. And then I remember back in 2020 when Covid happened, that was another form for me to go in and really call my facebook.

But I didn't go around unfriending people because I think that itself is a negative thing to do. But I just unfollowed people. So my Facebook feed. I know you say, people say, you know that the word on the street is this or the word on the street. All I see in my facebook is positivity. So I left all the local groups where people are complaining and bitching and stuff came out of all those groups.

Anybody who was saying something political or anybody who was saying something very negative, I just unfollowed them or I'd snooze them for 30 days. But what I did is I started to build up my newsfeed of stuff that I wanted to see. So people who are very successful in business, who only preach positivity, I love landscapes, I love travel, I love nature. So I joined a lot more groups around that.

Some of the groups might be a bit negative, so I just unfollowed them. So now my Facebook newsfeed is actually pretty, pretty positive. I don't see, and if I do see anybody, you know, touching on the political or the negative side, I just snooze them for 30 days. Yeah. Yeah. Because I think if you have the mindset that somebody says this year is really bad, you're going to struggle this year.

You're setting yourself off for failure because you're believing in that. And whatever your mind believes is basically the direction you're going to go. Yeah, I mean, our mind is absolutely set to look for and, you know, whatever we're thinking, it's going to look for the proof of that because I forget the actual stats. But there's so much information coming at us all the time that our reticular activating system filters it because we can't possibly bring all that information into our conscious mind.

So it's going to filter whatever it is you believe. So then you're not going to see the opportunities, you're not going to take the action because you don't believe it's actually going to be successful and it's a self fulfilling prophecy. Yeah, I wholeheartedly agree with that. Something else that I thought was really interesting on my last trip, it was for my mastermind meeting. We had Eliza Kingsford. She's like a psychological researcher.

She was speaking to us and she was talking about your nervous system regulation and how so many of us are living in this constant fight or flight state that, you know, if you look at a gazelle out on the savannah, Africa, they're happy, they're munching some grass. They're like regulated central nervous system. They see something, they see a lion, they perk up, rush of adrenaline, they take off.

They, like, make sure it's gone do a little shake and just go back to eating grass. So like that's what it's supposed to do, right? Like big spike, take action if we need it and then like go back to homeostasis. But so many of us are living in this like elevated, just cortisol dumping all the time. Just like ah. And then we get to the point where like it's total shutdown.

Like a, you know, kind of play dead sort of thing for, you know, some people end up being kind of the doom scrolling like, I've just spent 2 hours on social media. How the hell did I do that? And so she was talking about the different things to what our triggers are that like how we know, oh, okay, I've got to this like really low kind of like I don't want to get out of bed.

I don't want to do anything. You have no energy to move forward. And then the fight or flight one, which is usually a surge of surge of energy but not necessarily positive energy. And then of course our more commonplace where we want to be or a more stable place, I should say. And then making, figuring out what it is that can help move you between those levels. So to help us get back there and gratitude I think is like one of the most important, often overlooked and like biggest payoff options.

Would you agree? Yeah, definitely. But if it was like nine years ago when I had that big setback and I lost all that money, I was starting from a place where I had pretty much nothing and I had to get back to where I wanted to be again. But actually I wanted to be further than that. So I wanted to be further than where I'd already been. And so the first thing I did is obviously I cut off all that media.

Then the next thing I did is I started getting out early on the morning for a good walk. And I'm a dog owner. You know, at the time I had a rhodesian ridgeback Jed, and, you know, go out. Me and Jed would go out for a good walk for about an hour and that would be my time for thinking. But then I started listening to audiobooks. So I replaced the morning tv or the morning social media scroll with a really positive audiobook.

And I've listened to some absolutely amazing life changing books and also a lot of books from very successful people like Richard Branson, James Dyson, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, even loads of musicians. Because my daughter wants to be a musician. I've listened to loads of musicians books. And you realize that these people aren't successful and haven't been born successful. They've had a journey, very much like all of us, that's gone up and down, up and down, up and down.

The guy who founded Nike, know, you listen to his book. Even when the company was worth over a million, he was basically on minimum wage because he was paying all his money out to everybody else and he was still struggling. But what everybody, all those people had was a strong self belief. And also they were very grateful for what they already had. Whether that was. They were grateful because they were, they were fit, they were healthy, they had a roof over their head.

And I think it's a combination of self belief in where you want to get to and also being grateful for what you've already got now, you know, because even when I'd lost all that money, I still had a roof over my head, I still had my fitness, I still had my daughter, I still had a family, I still had a car where I could get places. So gratitude became a really big thing, as well as.

We'll talk about this next, as well as visualization. So with gratitude, what I did is part of my morning routine, and this is what I put into the gratitude and mindset journal, is it takes five to ten minutes out on a morning to sit and write down three things that you're grateful for, but for three different areas, it makes it a bit easier. A person, a possession and an experience, and what that does when you think about a particular person.

So you might say, I'm really grateful for my friend Stephen, who's been, you know, I'm talking about one of my Navy mates who I just met up with last weekend, you know, really grateful for my friend Stephen here. We've traveled the world together. We've had some great times. I remember when we climbed Malta venue in Transylvania. So if you're writing that down, what that does is it triggers all those good memories coming back.

Then you think about possession. So you say, I'm really grateful for my coffee machine, I'm really grateful for my new gym trainers or something like that. And then you talk about being grateful for an experience. So that could have been a holiday that you had with the family or the day you went on a training course somewhere and you learned so much information. So when you put those three things, when you think about all those things, it does, it, it fills you up with loads of sort of real good stuff.

It starts you off to a really positive day and it makes you think, wow. Yeah, I do have quite a bit to be grateful for. I love that. And I love the idea of having those kind of. Because I think a lot of times it's too vague and people are just like, I don't know. And so then they kind of default in the same thing every day where this can kind of give you a little direction to start to think of some other things.

And I think it's really important, too, to kind of look at the gratitude of sometimes being super thankful of, you know, I define myself. I'm just like, getting water out of my fridge and I'm like, I am so thankful that I have clean water. Like, not everyone in the world can say that, you know, so, like, finding those little things that we take for granted and just like, stopping for a minute and being like, oh, no, this is actually a pretty big deal.

Like, look at indoor plumbing. Yes, I have a toilet. That is great. It would be a lot different if we didn't. When you put it down to that, I mean, one of the. One of the things, I'll open a page in the book, so, you know, it's an example, is where you're actually expressing gratitude. It's not a lot. You only fill in maybe two or three lines because if you had to sit down and write four or five paragraphs for three different things, you might do that for a week, and then you're going to get fed up and you're not going to do it.

So the purpose of the journal is to get you into the habit of writing two or three lines for each of those three things. You write that two or three lines and then you put the pen down, you drink in your morning coffee, and you think and you experience that memory of being grateful. Then you move on to the next one so you don't have to write. It's about writing that stuff down because it's an action and it forms a habit that you keep repeating all the time.

But your writing is just a trigger for all these good memories that you have. Then you move on to the next one and to the next one. So the effect of writing, bit, maybe three to five minutes maximum you're writing, you know, but you might spend maybe 15 minutes sometimes you might get a bit lost in thought and start reliving that whole previous experience. And when you think, you know, being grateful for something, one of the ways to people don't understand of the power of gratitude.

And I think, well, how do you feel when you are grateful? You feel happy. You want to feel bad, right? Yeah. But then you think, right, well, think about the flip side. How do you feel if you're really ungrateful? So if you're really ungrateful, you're very negative, you know, negativity breeds negativity. You probably don't have a lot of energy. You start making bad choices. You can't be able to do anything.

So you think about the reverse, and then you can see how you can be really miserable if you're ungrateful and then think. But people don't take into the happiness for the gratitude. And a good thing to think about is think about if you had something taken away. You know, so you might have the best car, you might not have your dream car, but if somebody came and took your car away today, and then tomorrow morning you got up and you had to go and get your groceries, you wish you had that car back.

Yeah. Yeah. The easiest place for people to kind of gloss over that is their health, because it's something that we just totally take for granted. And then all of a sudden, that can change on the, you know, the drop of dime, you know, for. I broke my collarbone a year and a half ago, and I was never so grateful when it finally healed enough that I can brush my own hair and put my hair up in a ponytail again.

So I was like, oh, my God, I have to go through, like, the next two months of my life without being able to. I could brush my hair with my left arm, but I couldn't put it up in a ponytail, and I certainly couldn't, like, style it. So it's just like, this is awful. Besides the fact that then you're just like, oh. Like, I had taken for granted all the opportunities when, you know, I need to take my dog for a walk, and it's like, it's hot, I'm gonna get sweaty.

And I should wait till later until, you know, something happens and you can, and you're like, man, I really wish I could go for a walk. Yeah. Yeah, totally. Yeah. Crazy. So with your morning gratitude, is it something that you do in the evening too, like, where you, like, write down specific things from the day? Yeah. So my routine is the gratitude, but before that, I do my visualization, so.

And then on the evening, I do what I call my reflection. So it's how well the day went. I don't look at negative aspects of the day. I think how I could have maybe improved something, but also good takeaways. You have a good win for that particular day, but the visualization aspect is something that I found really hard to do when I was in the process of doing it nine years ago, where you had to visualize your dream life from where you wanted it to be, but you had to visualize it in as much detail as possible.

And I felt stupid writing all this stuff down because I just lost a shed load of money and I couldn't imagine myself having all this money. I wanted all this opportunity and all this stuff when I just lost a load. It seems so far off. But what it is, I wrote down my dream life, not in a sort of a list, more as if I was talking to somebody in the pub, as if it had already happened.

So I'm writing it down in the present tense as if I'm already living that life. So I wrote it all down. It was about page and a half of a four and then read it into a dictation app on my mobile phone. I listen to it first thing in the morning every time I walk the dog talking. I'm really grateful that I've got this, I've got that, and it's been great that I've gone here, I've done this and I've achieved that.

So as if it's already happened now, the funny thing is, when I look back at my first list from 2015, everything on there I've achieved. Wow. I wanted to write my first book and get that to bestseller. So my LinkedIn book had twice become an international bestseller. Just at the beginning of the year. Three of my books were in the top three in Amazon Us, and Amazon us is a big market for photography.

One of the things I wrote was to be heavily involved with all the professionals, some of the professional photography associations in the UK. I'm now president of the oldest photography association in the world and I work with the other three major players in the UK. One of my other things was to speak internationally. Last month I was in New York doing it, presenting a workshop at Peter Hurley studio.

You know, so all these. Another thing I wrote down was to be an ambassador for canon cameras. Because I used to use canon, it's happened, but wasn't canon. I've now become an ambassador for Olympus. So everything I've written down there has actually happened. I think there are two important things that happened there when you're writing all those down. Number one is you're writing them down and I love the idea of recording it, that you're listening to it again, so then it can really sink into your subconscious mind and you're embodying those beliefs a little bit more.

So that's definitely one piece, but I think the other piece that so many people don't do is actually getting clear on what the heck they actually want. I think you could walk up to so many people on the street and be like, what do you want? They'll be like, oh, more money, more time. Like, well, that's not very specific. Like, here's a quarter. Like, you have more money.

So, like, being able to clearly define, like, your actual goals, what you want. How much more do you want to earn? But even taking it away from the money aspect, how much more do you want to serve, which will lead to the money. So, like, that's something I look at when I write my goals of, all right, how many people do I want to serve in this program?

Not, not the financial ramifications of it, because I feel like that allows me to look at the problem or the challenge of being able to find that many people to serve in a different way, too, because, you know, it's just coming from that, more of a place of service and keeping me focused on what the whole reason that I'm doing that really is anyway. And then the financial piece of it is just a side effect of it, which, of course, is needed to pay bills and things like that.

But I feel like that's a big shift that a lot of photographers can do because it gets really stressful when you're doing this full time. And, yeah, you need so many clients to come in to pay your mortgage, to pay for food, to send your kid to school, that if you're focused just on that, then I think it's really easy to be attached to that finance piece and stress about it and not have the belief rather than, like, drop into, all right, how many clients do I want to bring into my studio?

Where are they? What are they doing? How are they going to feel after they come in and get this great service and have beautiful artwork on their walls and starting to tap into that will actually, like, just activate all those other pieces of it, I think, so much faster than just a financial goal. I think the other big thing is when you have this visualization statement where you've written it down in as much detail as you can and you listen to it.

And I think one of the things is when you read it back to yourself, it might take about two or three times to do it, so you get it perfect. But when you do it, when you read it back, read it back as if you're really excited, don't just go, yeah, my life is, and I'm doing this, put some enthusiasm and excitement into it because you'll feel that while you're listening to it.

But the other thing is, once it becomes ingrained and embedded and I rerecord mine every maybe three or four months because things are happening and then I'm looking at other ideas and I'm implementing that. So I'm basically re recording my six month future or my year's future. Now, when I'm listening to it, when I'm out for a walk in the morning, what I'm doing is it's just reminding me of where I want to get my business to be.

So I might see something come up on LinkedIn or on Facebook. Oh, hang on a minute. That person works for this company. I want to get in with a company like that because I'm reminding myself every day, that's why I'll drop him a message. Because there's so much opportunity out there. And sometimes it's just a case of getting in front of another person or another company, having that dialogue, having that conversation and stuff naturally starts to happen.

But you've got to know the direction you want to go in and so you can start looking out for that opportunity and be ready to receive it when it. When it comes. Yes, that is huge point, because I think so many times that opportunity would have still been there. Like, it would have still showed up in a 3d world of somebody else, but they would not have been as open to notice it.

Like, it would have just, it wouldn't have been picked up by their particular activating system. It would have just gone on by. They would have been like, they would have noticed the post underneath where someone was complaining about something instead of seeing that and taking the action of like, look, this is perfectly line. That's fantastic. One big thing I did want to stress for people out there, if you're hearing this and you want to do something similar, correct me if I'm wrong, Jeff, but you want to make sure that you are saying all of these things in the present tense as if it's already happened.

Like, I have x, y, z. I'm so excited that I am now a blah, blah, blah and not I will have or I want to have because you want it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, like, you know, you know, maybe six months or a year ago, I might have saying, I've just come back from a great workshop in the USA where I was doing this. And, you know, so I'm talking as if it's happened, but that is on my goal list of what I want to achieve.

You know, I think there's so many, it's funny, I speak to so many photographers and when we do this as part of my program, the brainstorming and the goal setting, which is at the very beginning of the program, I'll go through things and I'll identify different areas, like opportunity, and I'll say, have you ever thought about being an ambassador? What camera do you use? Or Nick on Sony?

Have you ever thought about being an ambassador for Sony? No, no, no. I'm not good enough. And I'm like, what do you mean you're not good enough? You're a much better photographer than me, you know, yet I'm an ambassador for Olympus, I'm president of the BIPP. I think it's that self belief, photographers are so self critical and they have so much knowledge and experience within photography, but also within their industry and what they do, you know, so if the pet photographers, they know how to handle pets and deal with animals and stuff, so much stuff there that is beneficial to other people, and then it's their skills, you know, they, we always judging ourselves against other photographers.

But companies and ambassadorships and affiliate ships, they're not like that. You know, they're looking for people who are advocates, who are strong, who have self belief, who have that positivity, who put themselves out there. And I think that can be the big difference. It's being visible, being seen and having that confidence. Yes, 100%, actually. Do you know what the number one downloaded podcasts from all of my 250 plus episodes is?

Finding confidence. Yep. And really it's just, I think so many people get so focused on what everyone else is doing and they get in this comparison piece, and as long as you're there, there's always going to be someone better. There's always going to be someone further along. There's always going to be, you know, something to make you feel like I'm not there, I'm not good enough. But no one is the same as you.

Like, maybe they're further along here, but you're further along on this other aspect of your life. You're so unique. And I think being able to really focus on that, that confidence piece and just trusting that it's all going to work out. I think if you can come from a place of trust and belief, hey, this is all going to work out, that it's a lot easier to have that confidence and take advantage of these opportunities that come by.

I think one way to kind of start to collapse that for people, because maybe their goal is like, I want to earn $150,000 in my photography business. But, like, if you say this year, they're like, God, that feels really hard. Or like they're not in belief that that can happen. So one thing I'd like to ask my students is, can you believe that that's going to happen at some point?

Like, can you believe at some point you'll have a year that you had $150,000 and they're like, oh, yeah, 100%. So I'm like, well, great, go there. Like, it doesn't have to be in a certain timeline. I think if you expand that timeline to whatever and just say, hey, I'm going to have this, and I know it's coming, then it's a lot easier, I think, to work from that belief in that confidence and take those steps.

And there's a big thing now. The way the whole industry works is different than 2004. When I started up, it was all about yellow pages, adverts, and. Yeah, and physical high street studios, and people come in and knocking on the studio door. But, you know, now it all comes down to, I have the saying, and I always get my photography mentees to write it. Daniel, visibility is credibility.

And credibility leads to authority, and authority leads to more success and more opportunity. It is really, a lot of it is about being visible and getting yourself out there, getting yourself seen. So even something as simple as removing the, you know, have yourself a financial goal. Yes, the financial goal is 100,000 pounds or $150,000. That's the financial goal. But now what you didn't need to do is give yourself weekly goals of tasks to do, and a byproduct of these tasks will be money.

So, you know, I have, I said to my, some of my clients here, right, one of your tasks, you've got to post four times a week to LinkedIn every, every month or every two weeks. I want you to write a blog. I want you to reach out to magazines that serve your, your ideal clients, you know, so if your wedding photographer reach out to a wedding magazine and say, I'd like to write an article on how to have a stress free wedding morning.

Now, if you write an article for a magazine that gets seen, it gets seen by other people in the wedding industry, brides see it. What happens as a byproduct of that is your opportunity rises. Your social media following rises as a byproduct. Inquiries might come into your business. So as opposed to trying to chase the money, do jobs that buy a byproduct, the money will come anyway. By posting to social media regularly, you're going to grow more followers, you're going to get more engagement.

And because you're regular and you're out there and you've been seen, you showing up the newsfeed more than your competitors, you will start to get more inquiries. If you don't post, you're not going to get seen. And the algorithm doesn't care about you. It cares about content. So if your content isn't being made, it will show your competitors content. It's not loyal to you. And that's one. And I've seen people who started posting, started creating a blog, started reaching out.

All of a sudden this. I've been one of my clients. She went, right, I'm going to do it, Jeff. She's a boudoir photographer. She's written her first book because I pushed her to write her first book. And it's a body confidence journal for women. And I says, right, the book's now ready for launch. You've got to get yourself on podcasts, radio stations, magazines. So she helped her script out this, this, this letter, and she sent it off, and she messaged me the next day.

She says, geoff, you won't believe this. She says, I've secured three BBC radio into the user id. Wow, that's awesome. She was talking about the value she can bring to their listeners, you know? And now she's actually in the process of rewriting her body confidence journal for women, and she's now creating another journal called Body Confidence for teens, teenage girls. I love that. Yeah, yeah, I love that.

I think one of the other important points that you had in there was talking about when you're breaking down those goals of figuring out what the actions are, because we, at the end of the day, if our goal is like, I want to book five clients next month, like, we can't actually control if somebody books or not, but we can control what actions we do that will lead to five people booking.

So, yeah, so what actions do I need to do to bring in, say, ten inquiries if we're going to have 50% book? Okay, who do I need to reach out to? Who do I need to, like, what do I need to do on my socials or my blogs or x, y, z and then make that your goal of the actual action? That's a binary. I did it or I didn't do it.

And. And then, yeah, all that other stuff happens. I remember having a conversation with a wedding photographer a few years ago, and now he is that person, which is. Which is brilliant here, because I reminded him of this conversation and he was talking about a particular, we're talking about venues. And he says, oh, yeah, this, this particular photographer, he's in this venue. He's, he's the preferred photographer for this particular venue.

I've seen him in this magazine. And I went, you know why? And he's like, why? I says, it's not because he's any better photographer than you. Because that's. He sent me to the photographer's website. I says, because he's actually actively getting out there. He's going to the venues and saying, I'd like to, you know, I'd like to do a joint venture with you. He's going to the magazines, he's going to the bridal shops who are taking in his leaflets.

He is visible everywhere. And you start doing what he, now, this guy is that person. His photography hasn't changed. He isn't any better photographer. He's better at getting himself out there and he's more confident. And once you get one or two under your belt, it just gets. And we all know those other photographers who are like, tim, again, I've seen him now. He's in this magazine. He's got this venue.

He's partnered with his dog groomers, or, you know, be that person who's everywhere. And the difference between, like, an online influencer, you know, somebody with hundreds of thousands of followers, they're not any better than anybody else. They just, they all start with one follower on their first post, and then they made the second post and the third post. It's. They're showing up every day. They're not self promoting.

They're giving value, they're giving good content. And they've just been, they're just getting there. They've formed a habit and they're in that. Yeah, that actually, there's somebody new in my mastermind. They are travel influencers. So, of course I was like, total fangirl and I'm like, I love you guys. And then I found out that I had saved a whole bunch of their reels because I've trained my instagram to be funny dog videos, travel stuff, and, like, affirmations.

So, like, I actually love my Instagram scroll. But anyway, they said they started it. It was during COVID And they have just, like, they made a commitment. Like, we're doing one thing a day, like, come hell or high water, it's getting posted. Something's getting done every single day. And they have like a million followers and build an almost million dollar business from their Instagram account of showing their travel stuff.

It's incredible. So show up, everybody. Just keep showing up. As we start to wrap up, can you just kind of give us, we started to touch on your little bit of a daily routine, but I think this is so important for people to figure out what works for them and create one. So can you just give us, again, a high level overview of what your kind of daily gratitude, just your daily jeff getting it done routine is?

I'm an early riser because I like to get up early. So it's not because I'm ex military, it's just the way my body's wired. I work better early morning, so I'm usually up. This morning I was up at 04:00 because my first call was at five to a client overseas. So I had to get up and walk the dog. But one of the first things, it's funny how you state the mind can change in a fraction of a second.

So I woke up this morning, I didn't have a great sleep, but one of the things I have to do is I have to do my press ups first thing in the morning. And the last thing I wanted to do this morning was do my press ups. But I put my headphones on, went and selected a very sort of hard rock track, and within seconds, I could feel myself being energized.

It's like having a triple espresso. You just like you've got energy and you start doing it. So it's like anything like that, that can boost you. So for me, exercise first thing in the morning, my press ups, and then getting out to walk the dog, that really helps a little bit of exercise out with the dog. Listen to my visualization statement, which I keep updating all the time.

So I have that in, I listen to that. It only takes three or four minutes to listen to. Then I'll listen to whatever, the, whatever positivity book I'm currently listening to. Then when I get back, I practice my gratitude and I do my three things that I'm grateful for. The, you know, the person, the possession and the experience. And then from there, I look at my goals that I've written down.

I broke down. So I break my goals down in that other journal that I've got, the ambitious photographer's journal. And I look at the key things that I've got to do every single day. You know, so it might be do a post for LinkedIn, connect with ten people, and I break everything down. So today I'm busy writing a. A travel book. I've teamed up with another author. We've got a publishing, publishing contract to write a travel book for the county that I live in Northumberland.

Writing a book sounds really hard and I'm dyslexic, you know. So what I do is I say, right, on Tuesdays and Wednesdays and Thursdays I've got to write a minimum word count of 700 words for this particular book or this particular blog. So I never say write a, you're going to sit down and write a book. Just look at. I'm going to write this word. And sometimes it's a good idea to under do it.

So if you don't think you can write 700 words easy, set yourself word count of 250. Because if you can achieve something easier, then you're going to keep it up. If you set yourself up to fail right at the beginning, you're just not going to do it. But even if you write 250 words or 500 words a day, if you're doing a series of blogs, you just, those blogs could then add up to be a book and then you publish your first book.

So that's a big thing. Having your marketing plan, so having your self belief in your visualization and your gratitude, then having your marketing plan for your business and doing little bite sized chunks every day. So my marketing aspect might only add up to 2 hours of the day, then the rest of the day is running my business and doing my calls and working with clients. But you can't just run your business, because if you just work in your business and you don't work on improving your business, then your business will stagnate.

And once it stagnates, then it starts to go backwards. You've got to be looking to be visible, be visible, be credible, gain authority and gain opportunity. I love that. That's awesome. And then do you have, you have your, at the end of the day, your kind of recap. Little habit, too? Yeah, yeah. I always finish off with, you know, like, I can, you can pick a win out of everything you've done, even if it was like something stupid, like, well, I didn't have that bit of cheesecake I wanted.

I resisted. So it's a tick. That's a big, a big win. Really hard. It's been my daughter's birthday this week, so there's been a lot of delicious cakes and things in the house. And I have a major sweet tooth. It's been a big problem. Yeah, me too. I love it. Oh my gosh, this has been such a great conversation. Jeff, thank you so much for coming back and sharing this great motivation.

Like you guys picking those little bits. I love what you said about, like, you know, if you had the writing goal, that 700 is too much, like, make it easy. Like, don't feel like you have to go and shift your whole entire life to like, I have to have this three hour long morning routine because you're not going to stick with it. So what's one thing that we did today that's an easy thing that you can implement and quit is something you already do.

So if you go and you watch the news on a morning and you have a coffee before you start work, say, right from next week, I'm going to have my coffee in the same comfy chair, but I'm going to switch the news off and I'm going to write things, three things I'm going to be grateful for. And you concentrate on doing that for about a couple of weeks.

Then you'll say, well, after that, I'm going to record my visualization statement. And then after I've done my gradually, then I'm going to, don't try and do everything at once. So don't say, right, I'm going to do press ups, then I'm going to do yoga, then I'm going to go on the exercise bike, then I'm going to go for a swim, just master one thing, get good at it, and then start adding little things a bit at a time.

Yeah, I think that's where I know that's where I've always fallen off the rails before. And I'm like, I'm going to change all of these things. Yeah, it's too hard. Yeah, a little bit at a time. My gosh, Jeff. So, so good. Thank you so much. Let everybody know where they can find you online. And then, of course, all your books are also findable on Amazon, right? That's right.

Yeah. So you can find me at the photographersmentor.com or you can find me on Facebook. Jeff Brown, the photographer's mentor drop me a friend request or drop me a message if you have any questions. I always do voice clips back and reply to people. And then if you're on LinkedIn, check me out on LinkedIn. It's just the photographer's mentor, Jeff Brown, the photographer's mentor on LinkedIn. And drop me a message on LinkedIn.

And if you're not on LinkedIn, you need to get yourself on LinkedIn. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And Jeff is the man to help you do that. All right. Thank you so much, Jeff. Thanks, everybody, for being here with us. Hope you enjoyed this conversation. I sure did. See you next week. Thanks again.