Nicole Begley (00:00)
Raise your hand if you've ever had a week where everything hit the fan and your business still expected you to keep showing up. Well, I think we've all been there or if you haven't, it's coming soon. Well today, Heather is diving into exactly what to do and think when life throws chaos your way. It's real, it's unscripted and I think it's going to hit home. So stay tuned.

Nicole Begley (00:23)
I'm Nicole Begley, 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 $2,000 $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.

Nicole Begley (01:22)
Welcome to the freedom focus photography podcast. I'm your host Nicole Bigley, but today I'm turning this over to Heather. is a Heather solo episode that she previously released on her flourish Academy podcast. And we are talking about, ⁓ what she does and what we need to think when life just gets crazy and hectic and life throws us curve balls and we still need to continue showing up.

in ⁓ our adulting responsibilities. So this is a great conversation. I hope you enjoy it. Here's Heather.

Nicole Begley (01:57)
Before I share what's on my mind today, I wanted to let you know that beginning the week of August 18th, I'm hosting a free challenge for photographers. It's called Book Four Clients in Four Weeks. And I'm going to allow you to guess the premise. I want to show you how to book clients without relying on

social media or how many inquiries are coming into your inbox. I just want to empower you to go get clients when you want to get clients. You'll find the link in the show notes. But for today, I wanted to share something that happened yesterday and I actually do not have any notes for this episode, which might be a little bit dangerous, but I really just wanted to share from my heart what my thoughts are. And I think that you'll, I hope that you find it valuable.

I was speaking with one of my Elevate members and friends on a strategy and alignment call yesterday. She's been in Elevate for at least a few years and we've become friends. And I just want to say she is so coachable. She is open to hearing things differently and looking at it from different perspectives. And I'm always so impressed with her ability to receive any coaching that I give her.

even when it's challenging. And I really believe that what I was helping her with yesterday could feel very confronting. And I'm putting myself in her shoes. If I were getting coached like that, I probably maybe could end up getting a little bit defensive because I would find it confronting. So I just want you to know that what I'm going to tell you, I recognize could feel confronting to you.

And that's okay. Her question was around how to maintain consistency in her deliverables with her clients in terms of galleries, images, and products when, you know, as an entrepreneur, you're also just managing a life. She's a busy person like many of us are, and things happen and you have to shift priorities, change your schedule, make decisions, and these decisions

aren't always easy. So for instance, if this is not her case, but if you had a sick child and you had session scheduled, you might have to reschedule. If you get sick yourself, but you have five sessions to edit that may put you a little bit behind on your editing in terms of when you told the client to expect their images. So again, she was asking, how do I maintain consistency when

Things just seem to happen occasionally. And at first I thought, well, okay, let's talk about some strategies. Everybody wants tangible action steps, do this, this, and this, and that will take care of the problem. And certainly one of those strategies is to share with your clients when they can expect their photos and give yourself enough time, flexibility, margin.

with that time frame so that if something does happen, you'll be fine. For example, I would tell my wedding clients they could expect their images within four to six weeks after their wedding. And I always, always had those weddings completely finished in one week. So that gave me a lot of margin to deal with life. I always in 17 years, always delivered those images at the four week mark.

because I wanted to surprise them. I wanted their package to arrive on their one month anniversary. Of course, we all want to over deliver, but I did give myself that extra room just in case. So there wasn't ever a point where something would happen and I would have to send an email or make a phone call and say, hey, your images are going to be late because you know, this event occurred. It's important to note here, I don't have a problem with that. If you tell your clients to expect their images within two weeks,

and you have a death in the family, I think it's perfectly acceptable to reach out to that client and say, we've had an unexpected death and it's going to take me a little bit longer to get your images to you. I would assume that most human beings would be understanding in that regard. I just want to say that because I think some people view me as being a perfectionist, meaning if I say I'm going to deliver those images within four to six weeks, I always did. There was never an incident.

and that's because I approached it this way, whatever. And I just want to leave room for being a human. If something had happened in my life that caused me to go beyond six weeks with my deliverables, I wouldn't beat myself up over it. So that's another thing is we judge ourselves or we feel badly because something happens. And then at that point, we are just multiplying our suffering. So what I suggested to her is, first of all, let's develop a protocol. A protocol is a

is a plan on how you will execute. So actions plus your thinking. So this is what I'm going to do and this is how I'm going to think. And with that thought plan, I just want to encourage you to never ever ever have judgment in that thought plan or beat yourself up or feel ashamed because you didn't hit a deadline because it just makes it worse. So there you go. There are the tangible strategies, but

those are only, I don't know, I'm making this up 5 % of the equation because the other 95 % is how you think about it. So let's look at this phrase, when life happens or life just happens. And it's something we say all of the time. And I just, don't appreciate that phrase because life does not happen to me. That just, that is not something that occurs in my world. I recognize how that sounds. It's like,

Heather, don't things just happen circumstances out of the blue for you? Yes, they do. But I would never ever use that phrase. And I would never classify it as like, well, you know, when life happens, because I think that that puts you in the victim mindset, like there's nothing you can do about it. It just happened. And now here you are. And what are we going to do? So when she said, when life happens, I chuckled, we have a good relationship. Okay, so everybody, let's relax. She said,

know when life happens and I said that's funny life doesn't happen to me and thankfully she took that in the spirit with which it was intended in other words that's just not how I view it I would phrase it this way I would say events occur circumstances happen and then I make choices and because I'm the boss of me I can make decisions about how I move forward in light of these events and feel really good about it

own those choices and empower myself so that I maintain some semblance of control. But it's like if life just happens and we're the victim and we're totally out of control and we totally completely disempower ourselves. And I would like to think I have some authority on this subject because, and I quote, life just happened to me or to us, I should say, when my husband required emergency open heart surgery.

to save his life two months ago, one might say, well, my gosh, life just happened, right? That was not within your control and you had to manage it. So, you know, somebody would say, that's what I'm talking about, Heather. That's what I mean when I say life happens. And again, I would just offer that that's not how I think about it. A circumstance occurred. I made choices on how to approach that. I did have to reschedule a few calls. I did not beat myself up over it.

rarely reschedule calls. Everybody was understanding. So there's actually no problem. I just want you to think of it this way. When you say life happens, the way you're phrasing that is that it's a problem. Life happens. It's a problem. I have no control. I'm the victim. Life is the villain. And what am I going to do? It is so, so disempowering. Circumstances occur. And then you as an adult,

or an entrepreneur, a CEO of your business, you make decisions and choices on how to manage that. And usually when you're coming at it from this angle, you make better decisions, again, from a place of empowerment. I just don't want anyone hearing this, thinking to themselves, yeah, right Heather, as if life doesn't happen to you, you're some special unicorn. I just want you to know that that is not at all what I am saying.

I am just looking at it from a completely different angle, one that serves me. And it might be true, things in life might happen, but how you process that, how you think about it leads to how you feel and then what you do. And I just want to have more agency in those situations. And so I do, but I just give it to myself by how I think about it. So she was also explaining in that same conversation, she was saying, well, I just.

You know, I wake up every day expecting that there are going to be some obstacles. There will be challenges and then I'll deal with them and, whatever that looks like. And before she continued, I said, wait, hold on. I just that sounds really negative. And I just don't know that I would look at it that way. And she said, no, no, it's actually it doesn't feel negative to me. It feels like this is the reality. I'm just being realistic.

things are going to happen obstacles and I'm going to manage them. And she had it very clean in her mind, but I said to her, just, I just want to show you how dangerous that can be that you're making the assumption that obstacles are going to happen because I just don't think that way. Even if it's true, even if things happen, I don't think I don't wake up every day thinking, well, obstacles are going to happen. And you know,

gonna have to deal with them and who knows if I'm gonna get done what I wanted to get done because of these challenges that just arise. I do not think that way. My thoughts are everything is always working in my favor. It works out in perfect timing. Everything is easier than I think. And as a result, that's what my brain offers me and shows me. So in her case, we went on to coach some more. And I said, I just want again to demonstrate to you.

that when you think there will be obstacles, you are telling your brain to scan your environment for obstacles. Your brain always wants to prove you right. So it's going to serve up obstacles to you on a silver platter repeatedly. And it's gonna say, here you go, here you go. Here's a challenge, here's an issue, here's a situation. Because you're expecting them, they happen. Your brain wants to prove you right.

is good news because you can use it in your favor. If I walk around thinking everything works out for me, everything is easier than I think, I get so many things done so much faster than I expected, good things come my way because I think that my brain scans my environment and looks for evidence to support that thinking. So her approach was if I believe there will be obstacles, I'm just being realistic and I'll handle them.

And I just wanted to give her a different way to look at it. So we went through some examples and she started to realize that that was true. Again, she's very open and very coachable. And I saw her face a few times where she was like reflecting like, my gosh, what? I had never thought of it that way. So for example, her refrigerator had stopped working the day prior. She explained that sometimes if she doesn't defrost it, it forms this clump of ice and then it stops working. So she has to defrost it and take care of it.

And that was one of her examples of life just happening because she also needed to edit some client photos, but obviously she had to prioritize the refrigerator. And so see, this is what I'm saying. Life just happens. And then I get behind on my work. And my thought would be, okay, bummer. The refrigerator stopped working. This is not ideal, but I have to fix it. So I'm going to make a choice. This is my decision, because you could choose to ignore it. You could.

That's an option, but I'm going to make the decision to fix the refrigerator and then come back to the client photos either later in the day or the next day. And then I'm not going to feel guilty about it. There's no shame. It's not a problem. It's like, okay, this is what we're doing. I shared with her, it somewhat reminds me of my husband's reaction to his heart surgery. There was no point in time where this guy made any of this a problem.

I would ask him periodically, how are you feeling? Are you nervous? Are you scared? And he was like, no, why would I be? It's like so simple to him. He was like, I have to go get this taken care of. We'll get it taken care of. And on the day of his surgery, you know, they're about to open up his chest, break his sternum. And I said, how are you feeling? And he's like, what do mean? I'm fine. I'm like, come on, major surgery. You have to be nervous. And he was like,

I just guess this is what we're doing today. OK, I love that attitude. Now, I'm not as calm, maybe as he is. But this this is our approach, which is if I have to fix the refrigerator, I will I will choose that. So I'm not at the effect of the refrigerator. I am in control of my decisions. Frigerator gets fixed. I work on the client images. And again, if I have.

a good workflow in place for delivery, then I know that I have margin in my schedule to get sick or deal with a refrigerator or take care of a husband. Therefore, you can safely ask yourself, I do this often when I'm getting, but when I start feeling anxious about something, I'm like, Heather, what is the actual problem here? there's not a problem here. Everything is always working out. But the reason I can do this and then move on and take

I think good action or I should say inspired action faster is because of the way I think about it has nothing to do with the actual events or circumstances. It is completely within your control and my control how we think about it. So I left her with this. Let's drop the phrase life happens. Oh well life just happened. Do you even hear the tone in that? It's just

displeasing to me. And let's not expect obstacles. I'm not saying they're not going to happen. Of course they are. not an idiot, but I'm not going to expect them. I'm going to expect that everything works out for me. So when an obstacle or a challenge does arise, I'm like, huh, well, that's interesting. I guess that's what we're doing today. And I address it. And then I move on. But in no way, shape or form in any of this.

Does it need to become a problem or do I need to judge myself on how I approach it? And because of this, I grow faster, I move forward faster. And that's how I want to encourage you today to just think about things differently. The next time something happens that seems outside of your control, I want you to just kind of shrug your shoulders and say, that's interesting. I guess that's what we're doing today. I'm going to make the choice to do that thing today.

and then I'll get back to this other thing later. It's not a problem. I hope that you found this useful. I'll see you in the next episode.