Nicole Begley (00:00)
Welcome back to the freedom focus photography podcast. I'm your host, Nicole Begley. And today Heather and I are having a conversation about burnout. Now, often we think burnout is because we just have too much to do. Maybe we are in a busy season with too many clients, too much editing and too much marketing we need to do. We're just feeling like there's just not enough time in the world to get things done. I'm, I feel like that often. but actually a lot of times that burnout is not.

actually from too much work. There are five little hidden things that can help lead to burnout that we are going to uncover today. So stay tuned.

Nicole Begley (00:41)
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 (01:40)
Hey everybody, welcome back to the Freedom Focus Photography Podcast. I am your host, Nicole Begley, and today we've got Heather back in the saddle with us. Hello, Heather Lahtinen and welcome back to the show.

Heather (01:53)
Thank you so much for having me, Nicole Begley. am happy to be here.

Nicole Begley (01:57)
Yay. so yeah, last week we talked about Taylor Swift. We're not talking about Taylor Swift today. However, we're are going to talk about something that like is related and that is. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It is related and it is, ⁓ the burnout, but not burnout per se of like how we usually, we usually reach it. Heather has five, I'm calling them super sneaky ways.

Heather (02:07)
It is. We are kind of talking about Taylor Swift, but yeah.

Nicole Begley (02:26)
burnout can sneak up on us. It's a lot of sneaking, but you know.

Heather (02:31)
Yeah, okay, let's begin. Let me ask you this. Have you experienced burnout in your business? What did it look like if you did?

Nicole Begley (02:37)
Okay, well first

I want a definition of burnout because I feel like it could be that can mean a lot of different things.

Heather (02:42)
Okay, fair.

fair. I would say that it's typically related to work, like we're talking about it in the work context or business. And it's characterized by chronic stress that is not being managed successfully. You know, because you can have you're going to have stress in your business, but there are ways that you can regulate your nervous system, right? So this burnout to me is chronic and unregulated. this would

Nicole Begley (02:52)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Heather (03:14)
This would look like f-

Nicole Begley (03:14)
What does that look like?

Does it look like just not being able to do things in your business? Does it look like, like just kind of checking out, feeling hopeless? Like what does, if you are filming me, what would burnout look like?

Heather (03:26)
Yeah, that's good. It is that. It is feeling drained or depleted. Like you're just tired, but not just in a physical sense, although that does add to it. But there's this sense of like, I just don't have anything left in the tank. And you can feel maybe ⁓ indifferent, maybe numb, or maybe really, really irritated and disconnected from your clients, from your work, from your

purpose, might feel overly emotional. things like personally might start to become a problem where it wasn't before, but essentially your filter is diminished. ⁓

Nicole Begley (04:07)
do hormones fit into this? No, just kidding. It's

not that kind of podcast, but I have less filter these days than I used to.

Heather (04:18)
That is hilarious. Yeah, Nicole and I are, a little bit older, but we're in the same age range and we're experiencing some hormonal fluctuations. And what we have learned is it can lead to rage.

Nicole Begley (04:30)
I'm going to do strange. Yep. Happens. But back to burnout. Okay. So yes. And, we were starting to think about this beforehand and you kind of asked me and the first thing that comes into mind for, for business is certainly like after I lead one of our like two week workshops, you know, like we're traveling around Iceland for a week or we're in New Zealand and it's just like two weeks of being on 24 seven.

Heather (04:34)
Okay.

Nicole Begley (04:59)
I need a minute. I need a minute to recover from that. I love it so very much, but it is it's exhausting. so I, but you said that's not necessarily burnout. That is just physical exhaustion and probably some mental exhaustion. I just need some recovery because I'm, I'm still coming at it from like a positive, like that was amazing. I want to do it again. I just, I just, I just need to recover. So that's more of a recovery type space.

but you definitely weren't a, a burnout situation back in your wedding days when you first like ramped up the wedding clients without guardrails on your personal sanity. What did that look like?

Heather (05:45)
Yeah,

that's the difference. So in your case with the retreats, it's well, let me say this burnout tends to come from high effort with low perceived reward or control or or Yes. Yes.

Nicole Begley (05:57)
So when you're like working really hard and you're not seeing like, you're like, I've done all the marketing. I'm not seeing the client.

I've updated my pricing and you're just like, it's like super frustration.

Heather (06:10)
Yeah, that's it. Super frustration and it involves some sort of misalignment, maybe even a core value conflict. So in the case of your retreats, you are very much in your purpose. There's meaning, there's alignment, there's high reward. You feel amazing emotionally. You're just physically tired and you might need a nap for a week. That's okay. Yeah.

Nicole Begley (06:17)
Hmm.

Mm-hmm.

I might need to hibernate. Yes. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. No. Okay. I can, I can see this for sure. So I think for me, one of the areas that definitely leads to the most frustration has gotten significantly better, but you know, and it's been very public, like the struggle with just like time and feeling this lack of time and feeling behind. I think that does start to touch up against burnout for me sometimes when I just feel like there's so much to do.

I don't have the time to do it. I don't even know where to start. I don't even want to do it. I'm just going to like go sit over here and play a game on my phone.

Heather (07:11)
Yeah, so listen to this, but perfect tie into something I just said, which is burnout comes from high effort and a low perceived reward or control. So the reason that can feel like burnout is because you don't feel in control of time.

Nicole Begley (07:23)
Mm-hmm. Mmm!

Yeah, uh-huh, 100%.

Heather (07:32)
And then you just start to spin of like, yeah, there's, then yeah, you go scroll on your phone or do whatever. So that's a, that's control. I'm putting in all this effort. I want to do all of these things, but I have no control. And you just, you feel.

Nicole Begley (07:45)
And there's there's

what's the point of even starting because I'm not going to be able to finish it today anyway. Yeah. ⁓

Heather (07:49)
Right. It feels helpless. Yeah, that's

so when you're putting in a ton of effort, and it feels helpless. Yeah, that equals burnout.

Nicole Begley (07:58)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Heather (07:59)
Because the more in control like your retreats, you feel very in control, you know exactly what's going to happen. And it's all very orderly in your mind, by the way, it's orderly in your mind. Correct. Correct.

Nicole Begley (08:09)
Oh yeah, cause just not orderly. Like when you show up to go to New Zealand and you don't have a visa and they're like, no,

excuse me. What?

Heather (08:17)
A lot of what you do is very dynamic and fluid and to some people will feel out of control, but you feel very in control in that regard. But with time, you don't, which this is a, this is a really important point because two people can work equally hard. One can experience burnout and the other might not, but the difference is not stamina. It is meaning. is agency and it is alignment.

Nicole Begley (08:42)
Mm-hmm.

Mmm. Mm-hmm.

Heather (08:49)
When you feel in control and you have those three things, you might work harder than anybody I know and feel great. But if one of those comes out of alignment or, you know, worse, they're all three not in alignment and you're working hard, that it's going to lead to burnout. it's just, it's people oversimplify it and say that burnout equals too much work.

Nicole Begley (08:57)
Mm-hmm.

Okay.

Mm-hmm.

Heather (09:18)
But it's not that straightforward because it's more about misalignment.

Nicole Begley (09:23)
Yeah, no, that's a huge. That's a huge caveat.

Heather (09:29)
So I am back to the wedding days. The first year I hit 30 weddings, which I mean, that may not sound like a lot, but that's photographing a wedding every single Saturday, May through October. So sometimes twice in a weekend, because there aren't that many Saturdays in that timeframe. And I had very, very small children. I mean, I don't even know if Evan was a year old. I can't remember exactly what year this is that I lost my mind, but

Nicole Begley (09:46)
Mm-hmm.

Heather (09:58)
It was Christmas time and I was taking a little bit of a break and I started baking cookies and then January hit and I couldn't stop baking cookies. And I was like baking an abnormal obscene amount of cookies, like dozens and dozens and tens and hundreds of dozens of cookies. I was just giving them away. And Craig came home from work one day and he's like, so like, when are you gonna get back to work? And I was like, ⁓ no, I'm baking cookies.

Nicole Begley (10:20)
you

Heather (10:24)
No, no, like with a crazed look in my eye, you know, like you actually look insane. I had definitely hit burnout and it was mental and emotional because you think about it. It was January. It wasn't physical at that point. Weddings were already done. So I wasn't I wasn't burning out physically. I was emotionally out of my mind, meaning not in alignment and was just really challenged by.

a lot of my own thinking around my business, what I had executed the year previous, but then how was I going to keep this up? Again, I have two small children and I can't do this again. And so there was a value conflict for me. I see that now, but at the time when I was wearing my apron that's embroidered with my name, it says Heather, ⁓ I was out of my mind. Yeah, I just lost it.

Nicole Begley (11:16)
Yeah, yes, momentarily misplaced it.

Heather (11:22)
A little bit, yeah.

Nicole Begley (11:23)
Yeah.

Yeah. All right. So awesome. So you said we have like five kind of little sneaky, sneaky ways or like five different ways that burnout can, kind of come up, creep up on us that maybe we aren't aware of. Do we want to dig into those?

Heather (11:37)
Yeah, I have five, five things that actually create burnout. This is my thesis. And this is based on the Taylor Swift documentary because, you know, we watched her work relentlessly. It extremely, it extreme physical demands with an extreme mental load. And for years, years, creation, rehearsal, travel, pressure, all of it.

Nicole Begley (11:59)
Mm-hmm.

Heather (12:03)
And there was no, not that I saw, there was no public narrative in or out of this documentary around burnout for her. It did not come up ever.

Nicole Begley (12:12)
No.

Yeah, right. But, but I will rewind into the reputation era where that very much was burnout because there was so much out of control or feeling out of control, feeling unalignment, feeling like everyone's out to like, you know, like destroy you. You have this mountain climb and probably I'm sure value conflicts in the whole nine yards. so there has been a time, but it was not from the amount of work.

Heather (12:46)
Correct, which means it's not a workload problem, it's a meaning problem. It's how she was thinking about it that was the issue. And I didn't even hear her say in the documentary that she was, I don't think I heard her say anything around like, I'm so exhausted or I'm so tired or I need a day off. Like I didn't pick up on that at all. Yet her schedule was insane.

Nicole Begley (12:52)
⁓ huh.

Mm-mm.

She did say, like, she was excited during breaks for, the band and the dancers and the crew to get a minute. So, like, it never came from, need a minute. It was definitely, like, I want to make sure my people get what they need and have a minute with their families and back to normal life for a little bit.

Heather (13:35)
Correct. Isn't that interesting? You know, and she had probably learned that from the reputation tour. She figured out she's so smart. She's so astute. She figured out what created that for her previously, and she knew how to manage it for herself. But yet she was looking out for her team as well. Brilliant. OK, I want to dive into the first thing that actually creates burnout, not the physical workload, is the misalignment between effort and

Nicole Begley (13:41)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Heather (14:04)
values because you can work very hard for something you care about and feel energized. You can work moderately hard for something you don't believe in and feel completely depleted.

Nicole Begley (14:22)
Hmm... Mm-hmm.

Heather (14:24)
So burnout

in this case happens when you're producing work that doesn't reflect who you are. It's a value conflict. You're saying yes out of obligation, not alignment. And you're chasing outcomes that don't actually matter to you. Even though you think they do.

Nicole Begley (14:42)
Hmm. This also,

not just in the photography space, but think about like how many people that are out working for corporate America or wherever they're working for, for some job that they are not necessarily aligned with the mission. just need a job to put food on the table, put a roof over their heads and people in those types of jobs tend to hit burnout much faster. mean, I worked for years in the nonprofit space in the zoological animal world, like

Like I said, when I was an assistant director of animal programs, I was making $35,000 a year, but I loved my job. So yeah, was, and I knew the mission behind my job and I was all in on that mission of, you know, protecting these animals, educating people in the conservation work that, you know, our organizations help support. So yeah, it's so much of that alignment, the value issue.

Heather (15:19)
You're right.

It's so misalignment between effort and values equals burnout. That's number one. Number two is the lack of agency because burnout will skyrocket when people feel trapped and they think things like, I have to do this. I don't have any other option. I can't change my pricing, my niche, my schedule. And Taylor Swift's workload was enormous.

Nicole Begley (15:45)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Guilty as charged.

Heather (16:10)
but it was self-directed. So that means, what I mean by that is she had complete and total agency over what she wanted, even though there was a lot, obviously a lot of moving parts and things that maybe were beyond her control, but she had full agency in how she was showing up. And she wasn't saying things like, I have to do this. She would have never said that.

Nicole Begley (16:12)
Mm-hmm.

No, uh-huh.

Yes. Yeah, I mean, I think I heard her say several times, like, how lucky are we that we get to do this?

Heather (16:42)
Yes, correct. And if I look back on the wedding burnout that one particular season. Yeah, if I look back on the wedding burnout, I was having a lot of thoughts like, I have to do this and I can't, there was like nothing I could change about it, which I know is like not true. None of that's true. But one thing that was really out of alignment for me was I hated working on Saturdays and everybody freaking gets married on a Saturday.

Nicole Begley (16:43)
⁓ They get to be exhausted.

Heather (17:11)
And I just didn't see a way out of that. And it was that was very misaligned for me in the first several years. It was not a problem because I was like, this is my job. I work Saturdays. Who cares? I really didn't care until I did. Yeah.

Nicole Begley (17:23)
Yeah. And you loved weddings. You're like, it's, it's, it's

what has to be in it's fine. Yeah.

Heather (17:28)
Yeah, and then I felt like I had lack of energy.

Nicole Begley (17:30)
I think

another piece of that too is you are at the point where you're like, how do I grow this business without working more? There is no more of me to give. I'm already in a value conflict with giving up all of my decent Saturdays in Pittsburgh. Spoiler alert, if you're not aware, December through March in Pittsburgh is awful. ⁓

Heather (17:56)
Yes.

Nicole Begley (17:59)
Yeah. Yeah. So there's just so many, so many being out of, that's, that's the big one for me when I would feel that way or get the most frustrated or feel the most run out is when I felt like I just did not have agency over my schedule over my time. ⁓ yeah, it comes down to a lot of it. am, I am a control. I am a control enthusiast though, Heather. So, I mean, really hard for me.

Heather (18:19)
Yeah, you're still having that.

Yeah, I know. I know you are.

Yeah, you're still having that agency over time thing we need to continue to chip away at.

Nicole Begley (18:29)
I do, I do. And there's, think there's

an agency over, ⁓ travel and like, you know, responsibilities. And like, if it was, would, I would teach a workshop for you guys every month, but that's, that's just not, not doable. ⁓ so anyway, so yeah, there's, there's, that's a big piece of, of that.

Heather (18:51)
Okay, yes. All right. Number three is being disconnected from your vision. Because working without a compelling future will drain you. And burnout will thrive when you don't know what you're building toward, or your goals feel like not your own like borrowed. You've lost sight of why

Nicole Begley (18:59)
Hmm.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Heather (19:21)
this matters. So I have two equations. love to put things in equations. Effort plus vision equals momentum. But effort minus vision equals exhaustion.

Nicole Begley (19:33)
⁓ uh-huh. Yeah, yeah. And I mean, I think it's pretty easy as photographers too, to remind ourselves, like think of that one client of, that's come back to you maybe years later and tells you how much the, your images that you created of their family, their dog, whoever, their wedding, how much that matters. ⁓

Heather (19:36)
So simple.

Nicole Begley (20:00)
That's an easy way to kind of drop back into that. Like, what I do does matter because I think it can be easy sometimes to be like, I'm just taking pictures, especially when you have other people that maybe don't understand why we do this or how this industry works. And they're just like, it's just a nice camera. Like, what are you doing? You can't charge that. And they're like doubting you every step of the way. Like no jig into that. Jump into that vision of just like how much it matters to our clients.

Heather (20:20)
Yes.

If you get really connected with your vision, like really deeply rooted in it, then the effort will just come naturally and you'll feel excited and you'll have momentum. But the minute that slips, that's when you fall into exhaustion, both physically and emotionally.

Nicole Begley (20:40)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Love it. Yep.

Heather (20:49)
Okay, number four is around emotional suppression, not physical output, because burnout is emotional, not physical. So common culprits of this is overriding your own needs, like putting the client so much ahead of you that it builds resentment. You start to feel resentful towards clients.

Nicole Begley (21:13)
Mm-hmm.

Heather (21:16)
⁓ Whether that's your pricing or when you schedule sessions or how you handle things with them.

Nicole Begley (21:20)
Saying yes to projects or clients.

Yeah. Yeah. Saying yes to projects or clients that you know are not aligned or you don't want to serve anymore, but you feel like I should anytime you feel I should. ⁓

Heather (21:27)
Yeah. Yes. Yes.

Yes.

Well, that's it. That's what actually is what I have in my notes is doing things the way you think you should or quote the right way the way you should instead of the way you want because hard work again does not burn people out. But these emotions where you feel like you are overriding again, emotional suppression, I called it you're overriding your own needs or your emotions like mine was.

Nicole Begley (21:45)
Mm-hmm.

Heather (22:02)
I should photograph weddings on Saturdays because that's when people get married and I felt very, very stuck in that. I don't know why people don't pick Tuesday. That would be really fun. I just felt again, this was like all of these were like double, triple, quadruple whammies for me because I had this the right way was people get married on Saturdays and my way Tuesday was never going to happen. Lack of agency and overworked.

Nicole Begley (22:09)
Hmm

Heather (22:32)
putting them, you know, ⁓ I would often get requests for engagement sessions on Sundays because people are off work. And a lot of times my brides didn't live in Pittsburgh. Yes, correct. And it was very, very taxing physically, but I would argue because it was emotional for me to do that. And so for years I would, would accommodate a Sunday engagement session until finally at one point,

Nicole Begley (22:42)
Well then you're working your WHOLE weekend!

Heather (23:01)
I just said, I'm absolutely under no circumstances working on a Sunday, period. And people were upset or they figured out how to take a half day work or come into town early or whatever that looked like. And I started to see that I had a little bit more agency and I could, that particular thing I could do my way.

Nicole Begley (23:22)
That is, that is huge because I think so many of us are scared to make decisions in our business for fear out of what does this, what, how, what effect is this going to have on my business and my clients without taking into consideration what we need to stay out of that burnout lane. Like for years was definitely, like you said, not physical a little bit, but mainly it was like, my gosh, I'm already giving up half my weekend. You want me to give up more of my weekend? Like.

Heather (23:49)
Yes. Yes.

Nicole Begley (23:52)
Can I have one evening home with my family? Yeah. ⁓

Heather (23:57)
Yeah, that's exactly what I was saying. Okay, the

last one. And this one is subtle, but can be I don't mean to use strong language here, Nicole, but it can be devastating. And that's in integrity gaps is what I called it. You say one thing, but you do another. You know better, but you act on it like you schedule a Sunday engagement session, or you betray your own standards.

Nicole Begley (24:13)
Okay.

Heather (24:26)
repeatedly, so this is integrity value conflict. When you are in integrity, it creates energy. When you compromise your integrity or you go against your values, it drains it. So again, if you're doing something that you really don't want to be doing, or worse, you're out of integrity when you do it, I'm trying to think, I can't.

Come up with an example for this. Mine was more of a value conflict. Wasn't an integrity problem, but...

Nicole Begley (25:02)
Well,

I think it could be a burnout. Let's do it from a pricing standpoint. Client A is like, can I get this special deal? Or like you're making up pricing as you go based on what people you think people will pay. Like, no, yuck. That is going to lead to burnout real fast. Yeah.

Heather (25:14)
Yes. Yes.

Yes. Yeah. Situational pricing. Not

probably not a good idea because you you're going to know what you've done. And if you offer this client like my clients at the time were paying five thousand dollars. If I turn around and did a wedding the next weekend for twenty five hundred for whatever reason, then that's that's on my soul. My conscience.

Nicole Begley (25:37)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Yeah.

And this is a whole nother podcast because this kind of dynamic pricing is like sneaking its way into all of our lives more so than we ever imagined. they've been, the travel industry has been doing it for a long time. Like hotel rooms Christmas week are more expensive than like a random Tuesday in October. ⁓ plane tickets, dynamic pricing, like want to fly during spring break. You're going to pay twice as much. ⁓

Heather (25:59)
Mm. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Right, right.

Nicole Begley (26:10)
So those businesses have always done it, but now they're rolling out different ways for when you shop online based on your zip code, grocery stores based on your zip code, based on what you've purchased in the past, it is dark and it is, it is messed up, messed up. So there's going to be a lot of people in burnout with an ethical ⁓ integrity coming up soon.

Heather (26:25)
What?

Wow, I did not know that, but you know

that makes me wonder about the people behind the scenes pulling the strings on that.

Nicole Begley (26:38)
No,

mean, okay, this is going to go down a big rabbit hole. This is a whole other podcast. But yeah, no, it is it is crazy. And I was even at I was at a ⁓ one of my one of my meetings and Sam cart, which is a an online like cart software came to chat with us and they were talking about like, having some AI capabilities to and the one thing that said I'm like,

I didn't mean it like that. ⁓ Part of it would be really cool of like, hey, someone purchases this and it can see what they've purchased in the past to then say, well, here's the best option if there's something else to kind of complete your collection. But the way it was said was like it would also be able to be like, they've purchased all this. So I bet they'd pay more in here. I'm dynamic pricing of things. And I'm like, hell no.

You guys have my word. will never too dynamic pricing on you. feel like that is so wrong. And like the price is the price and this is the price, you know, that I was just like, wow. And, so we started talking about it and like, is starting to creep into all sorts of different areas of our lives based on, ⁓ they've even started doing, forget what stores think Walmart's one of them too, where like the pricing is now kind of digital.

and they have like the capabilities now with our phone to like know what you are, what the price is for you might look different from other people. Like it is some crazy dystopian stuff that the technology is going to allow them to do soon. Anyway, this is a whole other podcast.

Heather (28:18)
No, that's messed up. That took a turn.

Yeah, but listen, that Sam Cart thing, they're onto something really interesting about like being able to see the client journey and hey, you might like this product. That sounds right, helpful. Yes. Yeah, that's good. Okay, just side note, I read something recently that there are many lawsuits against Dollar General, not for the AI, but for the electronic pricing that's on the shelf.

Nicole Begley (28:30)
Yeah, that'd be great. That's awesome. I think that helps serve my clients better. Yes.

⁓

uh-huh.

Heather (28:47)
oftentimes does not match what it scans at the register. And it was like, at first they were like playing it off like, wow, you know, it changes so rapidly and that was a mistake. Yeah, the intern did it. It was like they were they were claiming that would just sometimes, okay, which you could believe sometimes technology, there could be a mistake, I wouldn't think it would be perfect. But I don't know, lawyer types dug into this. And it's like to the tune of like millions and millions of dollars.

Nicole Begley (28:49)
⁓

The intern did it!

yeah,

it's a mistake if it's like one product here and there accidentally.

Heather (29:18)
Right. So they're,

have lawsuits. Um, they're categorized as deceptive fraudulent pricing on their products. So if you're to buy some kitty litter up there at dollar general, you better check when you go to the register, that's the right price. Cause they're supposed to map it if it doesn't fit. Okay. All right. Those are my five ways, but I have, I just have one, a couple of things. I always say one thing. Yeah. Yeah. The reframe is that.

Nicole Begley (29:26)
Mm-hmm.

Wow. Yep. Yeah. Crazy.

Okay, bring it all together. Let's do it.

Heather (29:46)
Burnout is feedback. It's not failure. And it's not, it is not your body saying, stop working. You shouldn't be doing this. That's not what it's saying. It's your nervous system saying, hey, you might want to pay attention because something feels a little off here. So the fix is not fewer goals, less ambition, playing smaller. That is not the fix. The fix is clear values.

Nicole Begley (30:04)
Mm-hmm.

Heather (30:16)
Less ambition could be, right? It doesn't have to be tied to ambition or sorry. I was looking at my not ambition. The fix is clear values, clear, cleaner decisions and a vision you actually want. So, OK, if we take this back to Taylor Swift, she is very clear values, very clean decisions. She knows exactly what she wants to create for.

Nicole Begley (30:29)
Hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Heather (30:41)
for her fans and she, and then she can just go all in. She has complete agency. She sets the tone. She leads with her identity and her values and her self concept, which all of this, all of this combined leads to her ability to exert extreme physical effort and not have burnout.

Nicole Begley (31:06)
Yeah. Preach it sister. Yeah. This was, this was really, really good. I love it. Yeah. Let us know. Let us know. Shoot us a DM or Nicole Begley official or flourish.academy. Is it flourish.academy on, Instagram or just flourish academy?

Heather (31:07)
Fascinating. Yeah, you got it.

I hope it was helpful.

Instagram

is just flourish academy. Yeah.

Nicole Begley (31:26)
Okay, one word.

Anyway, so drop us a note. Let us know what you guys thought and yeah, we will see you next week. Bye everybody.