Nicole Begley (00:00)
Listen, money is important and we all need it, but it's not the whole story. In today's episode, Heather and I are exploring what happens once you've got enough and how purpose becomes the key to building a photography business that actually feels good. Stay tuned.

Nicole Begley (00:14)
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 (01:14)
Welcome back to the Freedom Focus Photography Podcast. I'm your host, Nicole Bagley, and back with me, my favorite guest, Heather Lottinen. Hey, Heather.

Heather (01:21)
Hey, thanks for having me again. We have fun things to talk about this week because it involves money, sort of in a way. Yes.

Nicole Begley (01:28)
That seemed very committive.

Heather (01:30)
Yeah, right, right. Because it's a different

take on it. So if you listened to the podcast last week, let me rewind and say, if you haven't, I might even recommend pausing this episode and listening to the one last week where I interviewed my friend Kelly. She's in Elevate and we talked about her goals for her business because after that conversation, I reached out to you and I said, I think we really need to talk about this.

Nicole Begley (01:56)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Heather (01:58)
So this was around her goal for her photography business is not based on money. So she's not driven monetarily. She is in a position where she can afford to do things that fuel her soul and drive her that aren't without the need for money. she said that when she was working with us, okay, before she started working with us directly, she was listening to us.

Nicole Begley (02:18)
Mm-hmm.

Heather (02:27)
And she felt a little like an outlier because we often talk about money goals, revenue goals, and sales, and hitting sales, and average sales, and increasing your sales, and getting more clients. And she was like, I don't know if that's me or should that be me? What are your thoughts on this as we start this conversation?

Nicole Begley (02:48)
Well, I mean, there's been several studies on that money does not help happiness after a certain level. So certainly like we all need money to survive. Like it's just the world we live in, you need to buy food, we need to have housing. Like we need a certain baseline of money to, to live. And then there is a certain level of money that makes life more enjoyable by doing the things that, that you enjoy.

spending obscene amounts of money on horses, ⁓ vacations, food, travel, purses for some people and not me. Anyway, there is a certain amount of money that helps. think like kind of that piece of money, and this is my own thoughts, not any study, is when you have enough money that an unexpected bill can be covered without like,

Heather (03:20)
In travel. ⁓

Mm.

Nicole Begley (03:46)
pulling you into a spiral of stress and anxiety because you don't know where that money's coming from. So, I mean, it's not about being able to afford everything you want. I think it's about having that security that comes with having enough money that you know that you're okay, you have some money in the bank, you can handle a couple unexpected expenses. And then once you're past that, money really doesn't have a direct impact on your happiness because your general needs are met.

Heather (03:50)
Right. Right.

Nicole Begley (04:14)
It's like the Maslow's hierarchy of needs. need to make sure those needs are met. And then you can get to that self actualization, which is like the highest on that pyramid, which is, think kind of where Kelly was talking about being where it's like, I'm doing this because it fuels some creative piece of me. And it's part of my passion, which I think for a lot of people sometimes they're like, I don't deserve to be paid for my passion where we are often like, you do.

Heather (04:38)
⁓ right.

Yes!

Nicole Begley (04:42)
which is why

we end up talking so much about money and revenue. And so many people in our audience are trying to make the shift to making photography a full-time ⁓ thing to replace a corporate salary or something to bring in some additional income during retirement or whatever that might look like. There's usually still ⁓ a big piece of that goal is monetarily driven because they want that to help contribute to that lifestyle that they want to lead.

Heather (05:10)
Yeah, and do you know the last I heard it was $70,000 that anything... It has to be, right? Yeah.

Nicole Begley (05:14)
I think there's more than that now. I don't know

if you've seen the price of an avocado recently, but ⁓ they're not eating avocado toast apparently.

Heather (05:24)
That's so true. Yeah, it was 70,000, but yeah, it's certainly increased. But to your point is like above a certain amount, it's not increasing your happiness, even though it could give you the freedom and flexibility to do more, of course. But so what she said to me, she said it almost caused her to hesitate joining Elevate because she felt a little bit lonely as if she might be the only person

Nicole Begley (05:27)
haha

Mmm.

Heather (05:53)
And then, know, when you feel like the outlier and you might be the only person, it feels very vulnerable. And you're like, well, I don't want people to know, you know, should I be driven by money? Everybody else is driven by money. What's wrong? It's all Heather talks about is money. I mean, I'm to be honest, I do like money and it is a big driver for me, but mostly because I think it's fun and I want to see what I'm made of. But we do talk about revenue a lot, because as you just mentioned, people want to leave their jobs or support something in their lifestyle.

Nicole Begley (06:14)
Hmm.

Heather (06:22)
But I wanted to talk today about different motivations for different people when starting or growing a photography business. And just because we talk about revenue does not mean we don't appreciate support and know that there are other types of motivations out there. So it was important to me to, know what this reminds me of? That conversation we had about pricing where we had said, and we continue to say, there's no right or wrong price.

Nicole Begley (06:51)
Mm-hmm.

Heather (06:52)
There's

just profitable pricing. We don't think that you have to do IPS. We don't care what you do with digital or how, but there are profitable ways to do it. There are ways to increase your profit to generate more revenue. But as long as you're doing it in a way that's profitable, we don't care how you structure your.

Nicole Begley (07:12)
Are you

selling what you want to be selling? Are you making what you want to be making?

Heather (07:16)
Period.

Yeah. So this is kind of the same thing. It's just different. Okay. It's the same in that I don't think there's any right or wrong way to run or have a photography business. Like it doesn't matter what your goal is. It just, it just matters that you know what that is. You're really clear on it and you feel, you feel strong and settled. So here's the key because she saw so much of what we were talking about other people going after the revenue and she felt kind of like she was different.

Nicole Begley (07:28)
them.

Heather (07:44)
I kind of thought maybe she was doing it wrong. I mean, if you speak it out loud, you're like, no, of course I'm not doing anything wrong. But there's just this like, yes, yeah. That everybody else should be, this happens with IPS, by the way, is that people will hear of these 10, $20,000 sales and IPS and they think that is the way that I have to go because of, and that's not true. You can do whatever you want.

Nicole Begley (07:47)
Mm-hmm.

Oh, that's subconscious, so it's hard, yeah, it can be sneaky.

Mm-hmm.

huh.

Heather (08:15)
So I wanted to talk, mean, to be honest, I honestly cannot come up with anything else. So I'm leaning on you pretty heavily right now. Is that like, okay, money's a driver or money's not a driver. You know, she has some charitable things that she wants to do.

Nicole Begley (08:34)
purpose as a driver.

Heather (08:36)
Yeah, what are some other purposes one could have that don't involve the charity, the charitable stuff or money?

Nicole Begley (08:48)
So off the top of my head, I can think of revenue and then I can think of like your own creative outlet. Like you, your purpose is just to create. Like I love creating a new, like whenever I create a new image that I'm proud of and it fuels something in me. So that could be enough. It could be ⁓ you're fueled by the service to others.

Heather (08:56)
Mmm!

⁓ yeah.

Nicole Begley (09:12)
which is, when

somebody looks at their images and tells you how much they mean to them, that that fills your cup. And that's why you do this. It could be a charitable aspect of helping get a dog's adopted, helping raise money for rescues or whatever charitable organization is close to your heart. ⁓ I think those are probably like the main ones, but it generally comes down to a purpose, a purpose driven aspect. But here's the kicker that even though we talk a lot about money,

Heather (09:35)
Mm. Mm-hmm.

Nicole Begley (09:42)
I think it's really hard to have money be your main driver if you also don't have a supporting purpose aspect to it. Like if there's not some part of you that's fulfilled by doing the thing that you're doing, it's not going to be as successful or it's going to feel like an uphill slog to get it to be successful. For instance, ⁓ you and I, know both just

Heather (09:51)
Right. Yeah.

Nicole Begley (10:09)
love, is nothing that makes me happier than when I hear from a student that had a big breakthrough. Like that. That is why I do this. That is what fuels me. That is my purpose in doing this is helping people move closer to living the life that they want to live and not just living a life in the box that society says we're supposed to live in. And so that that is actually what motivates me. And the money ends up being

Heather (10:13)
Yeah.

Nicole Begley (10:38)
what I need so I can continue spending my time on the things that motivate me. Cause if I didn't get paid to do this, I would need to spend my time making money in some other capacity so I could pay for my mortgage. and so when those two are together, then I think it's a lot easier to find success because you're being

Heather (10:42)
Mm. Mm-hmm. ⁓

Well, it's certainly a

lot easier to overcome challenges.

Nicole Begley (11:04)
Yes. Yeah. Yep.

Heather (11:06)
If you are locked in on that, purpose, ⁓ the goals for the money, yes, and the purpose, it feels, I don't know, more motivating because there's a reason to fight, you know, beyond the money. Because I think at some point you don't want to fight for money or you get sick of fighting for money. So there has to be a reason that fuels you beyond the money. for everybody, yeah, you know, now that you say that, I think there's probably like multiple reasons

Nicole Begley (11:18)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Heather (11:36)
purposes, know, like different layers to that that want that or compel us to go into a photography business, you know, like the love of photography, obviously, and delighting a client and creating images and whatever all of your purposes. And it's not just one thing. And I wonder if it might be helpful to do some sort of exercise to get really clear on what drives you because otherwise

I don't know, you might feel a little bit lost.

Nicole Begley (12:07)
Yeah, potentially. And I think part of that could be how you build your business too. Like part of the thing that I love that lights me up is creating a big, beautiful piece of artwork. Like that, I find the creative passion of like me creating something that looks beautiful for me. And this might sound callous, but please don't cancel me is more important to me than the byproduct that my client loves it.

⁓ of course that's important to me. Of course I want my clients, let's hear me guys. I want my clients to be happy, but the main thing that makes me want to go out and photograph another session is to create that artwork that the client is going to love. But it's, it's not for it's for them, but it's not the main driver of it. It's that makes sense. I think that money though, becomes an easy way for us to, ⁓ measure.

Heather (12:38)
Yes. Yes. Yes.

Right. Of course. Yeah.

Right. Right.

Mmm, that's

true. That's true

Nicole Begley (13:05)
⁓

And again, it's all driven by the fact that we all need to pay our bills and ⁓ most of us are in a situation where we have to still be making money in our lives. So when you're lucky enough to not be in that situation, then yeah, you can focus fully on the passion. And yes, like we all of us I think are sometimes feeling like we're outside of the tribe. So

Heather (13:29)
Mm.

Nicole Begley (13:30)
And when everybody else is focused more outwardly on the money, you might be like, my gosh, why, like, is there something wrong with me? But it's just different, different situations, you know?

Heather (13:41)
Yeah, yeah, they do feel that. Like, why am I different? You know, that reminds

me that we have a person in Elevate who has been with us from day one. Long time Elevator. And she said to me in the beginning, she was like, I'm not driven by money at all, Heather. just does not, that's not, okay. And I said, okay, it's totally fine. Let's get really clear on what does drive you. Because in, and she felt very stuck because she,

Nicole Begley (13:50)
You're welcome.

Mm-hmm.

Heather (14:11)
She thought that, okay, she didn't think this. This was not like conscious, you know? was like, a ⁓ sub level, she thought, well, money should be the driver and it's not for me and therefore I'm wrong or I'm different and I don't know what it is. And she was really struggling with this. She felt really badly. And then we uncovered what does drive her. And by the way, she still needed to charge. There was still this level of value exchange between herself and the client.

Nicole Begley (14:41)
⁓ 100%. I wanted to talk about that. Yes.

Heather (14:43)
Yeah, that required her to... So we

uncovered all of this through taking action and figuring out because action leads to clarity. So she wasn't sure at first. And then so she started doing some things for free and then she was resentful. And then people weren't valuing it. And so I was like, I understand that money doesn't motivate you, but we have to put a dollar figure on this in terms of value for you and for the client. So she then experimented with different prices.

Nicole Begley (14:57)
huh. huh.

Mm-hmm.

Heather (15:13)
until

she landed on one that she feels good about and the client feels good about and the ⁓ James would say this, the energetic level was equal. Yeah, yeah, that's it. The exchange, right? Yeah.

Nicole Begley (15:22)
The I-N-Y. Yes. Uh-huh.

Yeah. Which is, think, I don't know if it's a Native American thing, that I-N-Y. But anyway, it basically is an equal exchange that money is simply energy and it's a way for us to, like, instead of trading nuts and berries, it's something that is like, has value for everyone so we can exchange it. Because I want you guys to think about

this? Well, I can give an example for me. If I purchase a $37 little something course online, like, I never get to it, no big deal. When I pay $25,000 to be part of my mastermind a year, you can bet your bottom dollar that every call is on my calendar. And that's a do not miss call. And that is a do not miss event. So like when you pay for something, you are committing

to showing up. And so when your client pays for something, they will value it more because they elected to say, yes, I want to be part of this instead of like, okay, sure. Yeah. You know, like that, that energetic exchange, that money exchange is, I think, critical for everybody to feel valued and also to value it.

Heather (16:46)
Yeah, because it's still your time. Even if money isn't your driver, it's still your time and your time is worth something. And if you want people to respect you and your time and your work, I just feel like there has to be a number there. Or otherwise, why would I care?

Nicole Begley (16:48)
huh. ⁓ huh.

Yes.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Mm-hmm. Yes. Yes. And in that number, I say this a lot of times to people too, as you know, I talk a lot about is your build your photography business. There's kind of four levels of photography businesses. found out coaching people for the past decade that when you start off, it's kind of maybe all inclusive. You're learning how to use your camera. You don't know how to order products yet, but like you should still get paid for your time. So let me take some photos. It's a couple hundred dollars here, some files, and then we start to bring in the products and.

you know, starting to kind of work that part of the business. Maybe you get your first four figure sale, then you get to the main kind of goal, that two to $3,000 average sale with a nice, great, beautiful experience that your client loves. And then there's an optional like high end 5,000 plus ⁓ option if you wanted to go there.

But my clients are often wondering like, when is it time to move from one level to the next level? And that is when you start to notice you're like, I am now resentful for the amount of time, the amount of money I am getting for that time. And it does not matter if like you need the money or not.

when you feel like your time is no longer being valued, because even hanging out with your dog, taking your dog for a walk, sitting on the couch, reading a book, like that's still valuable things to be doing. So for you to focus your energy on something else, there needs to be some sort of exchange ⁓ that often needs to be more than just passion. Yeah.

Heather (18:31)
Yes. Yeah. Even if that's what's driving you, which is fine. That's not a problem, but there still

needs to be, it's like you were saying about the nuts and berries, which made me chuckle. There still needs to be an exchange of something that we both put value on. And that needs to be, I think it needs to be money.

Nicole Begley (18:50)
Well, money's the one like you could find if there was something that was definitely a great barter where everybody felt good about it. Great. But the money is, you know, if I value chocolate mousse, then yes, I can go out and buy the chocolate mousse if you don't have any chocolate mousse to give me.

Heather (19:07)
Yours always goes to chocolate. I think about like, well, I can barter eggs because we have chickens and eggs, although they're a decent price right now. You know, they've been in the past, they've been really, really expensive. And I was like, man, you know what? We're sitting on a gold mine up here with these eggs.

Nicole Begley (19:13)
Ooh, I would take some of that.

They haven't really gone down that much. That whole avian flu threw a ⁓ freaking those eggs. Yeah, they're still pretty expensive. If you don't know, you don't have to buy eggs. Lucky you. Yeah.

Heather (19:27)
are they still expensive? I didn't know that. Yeah, it's true. It's true. You

know, at our height, this was like maybe a month or two ago. We're getting about a dozen a day. Yeah. So we give them to our friends, you know, we share. Yeah. Anyway, OK, the point was the point was you can structure your business however you want, and we will support you, of course. I think it helps if you can get clear on what that looks like for you.

Nicole Begley (19:37)
Wow. I wish I was local.

Yes. Yeah. And I think it's important. one of the first things I have people do is figure out like what that monetary need is of like, what do you need your business to do for you? Like, do you need to replace a $85,000 salary? Are you looking just to fund a $10,000 vacation? Like, what does that look like? So we can have that as a starting point. And then from there, you know, you can start to dial in those different, those different pieces kind of.

had to go up and down a little bit.

Heather (20:27)
Yeah,

I like this idea of like, is the money for? And sort of having these, I don't know, buckets of, well, this is what I live off of, or I do have a lot of photographer friends that this is extra money for them for vacations or fun things. I personally am starting a fund. It's called my Visit Nicole Fund because flying, as we discovered today, flying from Pittsburgh to Charlotte, which is a one

Nicole Begley (20:31)
Mm-hmm.

huh.

Heather (20:54)
Our flight is currently sitting at $1,000.

Nicole Begley (20:58)
This is insane. My husband had to go and were living in Pittsburgh. He had to fly to Newark for work. So he works for a company there, Hechtler-Orchard, New Jersey. It was $1,300 from Dubai, fly from Pittsburgh to Newark. I'm like, I could fly to Australia for that.

Heather (21:14)
What is the deal? Is it Pittsburgh? Is Pittsburgh the problem?

Nicole Begley (21:16)
No,

not necessarily. mean, America is the only airline that has direct flight from Pittsburgh to Charlotte. So that's the problem.

Heather (21:23)
Yeah, that's the problem. Well, I need

to go get more clients so I can save money to come see you apparently.

Nicole Begley (21:30)
Or we just need to go run our little house in West Virginia. Uh huh. Yeah. Yeah. Or I need to come up and we go see Liam.

Heather (21:33)
Yeah, because we can meet halfway and that's perfectly reasonable. yeah, you can set up your.

yeah, then we write that we get our photos. perfect. Yeah. So you can set up your business, your pricing, your marketing. You can do it however you want in whatever way fuels you and fills your soul. But also there's some exchange of money and we just need to get to the heart of it.

Nicole Begley (21:42)
Yeah.

Yeah, I think it is like even if it's all passion, the passion will only drive you as far as it can and as far as like you're in control kind of of the passion. What I'm thinking is like, let's say you're like, yes, I just I love doing this. I don't need the money. I just I love doing this. I don't need the money. I just want to go photograph dogs for people because they love their dogs and I love giving that to them. That's wonderful.

Heather (22:28)
Mm-hmm.

Nicole Begley (22:28)
What

happens when you photograph somebody now and you're doing this out of passion, but they're like, okay, but I would like X, Y, Z, and they're starting to make requests from you, but you're just doing this out of passion. Then you're being put in this place of like, now I'm no longer doing it straight from my passion. Now it's, it's what do they want? I'm serving them in a different way. Like you deserve to get paid for that.

Heather (22:53)
Wow, that's a really good point. That's like when things go a little bit sideways, passion is not gonna get you through that or it will only get you so far. you know, I'm sure you've experienced this when you started out, the lower pricing, those clients required a little more hand holding. Yes, yeah. When the pricing was really high, they didn't, they just asked for the link to pay. You know, there were no questions.

Nicole Begley (23:10)
They have a lot more opinions.

Yeah, yeah.

And it was like, I'd ask them something like, what do you suggest? I'm like, oh, well, I suggest this. Like, great.

Heather (23:24)
done, right? And so it's very clean and it's clear. But you're right. Like at some point, somebody, free client is going to ask for something and you're going to be like, my passion does not extend this far. And no. So there has to be something in there that's that's an exchange. But again, if you're if you're cool with whatever, then you don't have to be like the rest of the tribe. You can structure this.

Nicole Begley (23:29)
Uh-huh.

Passion does not cover this. ⁓

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Heather (23:53)
However, you would like, it doesn't make you right or wrong or different. It makes you a trailblazer. We said that on the episode. was part of our conversation is like, you're not left behind. You're actually a trailblazer doing something different and unique.

Nicole Begley (23:58)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

I love it.

Yeah.

And I think all of us, no matter where we are, is it's important to keep an eye on our thoughts and our attitudes. And if we do start to feel like that little bit of resentment creeping up towards our clients, because that's not fair. It's not fair to them. It's not fair to us. So we need to make sure that we're keeping an eye on that and adjusting what our value levels are and our pricing according to that.

Heather (24:34)
Yeah, yeah, that's very well said. Perfect. I think this is a good place to wrap up. I wanted this to be a short episode because I just want everyone to feel comfortable and safe when they work with us that we will support you no matter what it looks like, even though I speak of revenue very often. It's a driver for me. ⁓

Nicole Begley (24:57)
Yes.

For sure. For sure. And if you guys are out there and you're listening and we didn't mention, you have a passion that's not mentioned, please let us know. DM me, Nicole Bigley official or Heather at Flourish Academy and let us know. We'd love to know. But awesome. Thanks guys for being here and I will see you next week.

Heather (25:14)
Yeah, perfect.