The PhotoCEO™ Podcast

The ability to redirect negative self belief and thoughts of doubt is a key factor of success in photo business (or any business). Listen to this episode to learn one of the techniques we teach The Photo Business School students and apply it to your daily inner life today.

Megan was supposed to go to New York City...but then got Covid. Here's how she recuperated her costs through her photo business and the lessons she walked away with. 

In this solo episode, Megan talks you through a recent breakthrough she had while struggling with motivation. The breakthrough? Implementing a motivation reset day before jumping straight into work again after having time off. Brilliant! Listen in to learn how she does this, take notes and see how you can apply this tool in your life.

This is the finale of season two! Grab a pen and paper, take some notes, because we lay it alllll out there for you on when and how you should be offering discounts (and when not to). 

Would your rather book fewer clients, consistently all year OR pack your schedule for 8 months and take 4 months off in the winter? ONE episode left til Season Two Finale! We'll be tying up season two with a beautiful bow when we tell you WHEN and HOW to offer strategic discounts.

On this week's episode, listen in to a conversation between Megan and her mom, Sharon as they discuss:

• What was Megan like as a little kid
• How Megan's parents handled things when Megan told you she was leaving university to build a photo business
• Advice for parents out there who may be facing the same thing
• What Sharon thinks is one of Megan’s biggest strengths as a six-figure photographer
• What challenges there were in raising someone with an entrepreneurial spirit
• What it was like to watch megan’s transformation from not always being disciplined in her business to hyper-disciplined
• What Sharon has learned from Megan
• The most important trait that sets Megan apart that other up and coming photographers would be wise to develop in themselves
• Sharon's advice for other parents of entrepreneurial children who may want to start their own photo business
• And finally, The funniest memory Sharon has of Megan 

The world feels chaotic and it has for a while, hasn't it? With no signs of slowing down anytime soon, what's a photo business owner to do? With respect to your clients, learning to alleviate your very valid overwhelm is a must. In this episode we talk about the things that have increased our anxieties lately, but more importantly: what we are DOING about that overwhelm and anxiety. The only way to alleviate it, is to do something about it. So we give you our top ways to alleviate the overwhelm feelings that come with being a business owner in a chaotic world.

1. Self Reflect on how much you can tolerate

2. Prepare and

3. Take Care

Rikki's husband joins the podcast today to answer questions written by Megan about the best and worst things about being married to a founder and entrepreneur. We talk about how things like money stress and keeping up with household chores during a busy season has affected us, how we took an unconventional approach to Rikki's major health challenge in 2021, and we share a bit about our big vision for why we keep pushing forward on the less-certain path of entrepreneurship. If you're in a relationship and you're a photographer/business owner, you'll want to give this a listen.

Have you ever felt like you were working so hard in your business and not getting where you want to go, by the deadline you've set? Us too. Listen to this episode right to the end, even if you have to take breaks. It's a long one, but there are so many golden nuggets in here about how Megan persisted through pain, made the tiny tweaks in business that mattered most, and went from broke photographer to her first six-figure year.

Death of a loved one, an emotional break-up... how and when do you tell a client that you may need to rebook? Or how do you apologize after the session for "not being your usual self"?

Life is not separate from business, they are an integrated whole. So even if you haven't experienced tragedy that affects your work, you may at some point. Having these tips, and using them in a way that's genuine to you, will help you when life interjects in business. Thank you to Sydney B Photography for your vulnerable question.

Get honest feedback (not a testimonial) so you can improve your photo services, impress your clients, and address any potential issues before they post it on a public forum (like google reviews) as a testimonial.

Thank you to Lucas at The Creativ Cast for letting us share the interview he recorded with us last week! We had a great time chatting with Lucas and we think you'll love it too. In this episode we cover different topics, including: dealing with and normalizing how much rejection can suck, how charging what you want helps you stand out, and the 3 steps you have to master as the PhotoCEO of your business. 

We give you our simple 3-part framework for how we decide where to invest in coaching. This will help you know what you need help with, where you need to invest in coaching, and how to choose a great coach that's going to be worth your investment. In the last 12 months, we have invested over $26,000 in our own business coaches. And when you're making that kind of investment, the stakes are high and you want to make sure you're going to get results. This framework will help you do that and choose the education that is right for you.

Learn about what social media trends to stay with in 2022 with Social Media Manager, Abbie Musil! Abbie owns the 111 Marketing Agency based out of Vancouver Island, Canada and helps clients maximize their time on social media, while also prioritizing necessary breaks from it.

Ever have trouble getting raving reviews? Or getting your clients to follow through on leaving you a review after you've delivered the gallery? Here are our best tips for how we get MINDBLOWING reviews so that you can increase bookings and your searchability online. 

Today is also the ONE year anniversary of our love triangle with this podcast! Who woulda thought love triangles could be so good for you? To celebrate, we are doing a GIVEAWAY over on Instagram. Head to our Instagram account to get the details! The giveaway will be posted around 12 PM PST and you are guaranteed to win!

Struggling with motivation? We did too. Listen in on our personal stories of overcoming the need to be motivated and what we do instead of waiting to feel motivated. Learn what we did to build momentum in our businesses and personal lives and start applying these tactics today.

Love it or hate it, the reality is that personal relationships affect how you do business and grow your business. Why? Because they affect your emotional state. If you're experiencing relationship stress and feeling like crap because it, you likely can't operate to your highest potential. Which means that you may be unnecessarily stunting your growth as a photographer. But this doesn't have to be your fate, even if you have to deal with complicated relationships. Listen in on how we navigate our deepest personal relationships and take our power back when we need to so that our businesses don't get side-swiped and destroyed by drama or trauma.

Market saturation is not the problem. The problem in the photo industry is that everyone is running their businesses in exactly the same way without questioning the status quo. Are there things you want to do differently in your business but you're scared you'll lose out in some way if you do? Maybe that's a good place for you to start. What is one thing you can do differently today? Before you employ your new thing, understand WHY you want to do that differently and put a strategy in place so that it works for you. Believe in yourself, because at the end of the day, self-belief is the backbone behind a solid business strategy that separates you from the crowd and keeps you in photo business for the long haul.

Does it feel good to you to assess your value and use that as a way to price your sessions? How will you feel if you price yourself with this strategy and then suddenly, you stop getting inquires and people stop booking with you? We want to have an honest conversation about this because it does deeply affect mental health and business longevity. We will also give you some advice on how to structure your pricing in a way that takes the emotion out of it and allows you to confidently provide your pricing when someone asks...without being tempted to give them a discount.

2022 is well underway and there are so many opportunities to make this your best year yet, regardless of what is happening in the external world. With these questions you will be able to do an intentional deep dive into all things mindset and business so that you can work with the highest amount of focus and clarity this year. Enjoy!

Mason Neufeld has been a photographer for 8 years. She started her journey when she left university in Saskatchewan, Canada, hopped into her car and moved down to Joshua Tree. Mason lived in her car as she built her business from scratch, and followed her intuition, her heart, and manifested her dream business. When she's not working in the high season and travelling in her van, she prioritizes rest by taking 6-8 months off to explore her new home in Costa Rica and following her other passion - rock climbing. 

There is nothing to say here except.... Get - your - notepad - out! Karrie Brady joins us on the podcast this week and takes us to SCHOOL in a big way. She is a sales psychology expert, author, and 7-figure entrepreneur whose mission is to put more money in the hands of women and creators like you.  Listen to it once, listen to it 3 times, and take notes. We dive into the importance of selling, how to feel good about it, and the 4 types of buyer behaviour.

We give our best tips for how to get through the "quiet" photography seasons and how to plan ahead so that you can keep growing your photo business all year long. 

We have recently switched CRM platforms so the HoneyBook discount mentioned is no longer available.

Make sure to come back next week for another AMAZING episode about money. We invited Karrie Brady, sales psychology expert and best-selling author, to lay down some major truth bombs for how to sell your services as a creative business owner. This will be an INVALUABLE resource for you to book more clients and earn more money with confidence.

Struggling with feeling self confident in your internal life and mind? Or perhaps in your photo business? You have the power to change that by acting on one trait: self-integrity.

Most people don't want to hear about how they're not being self-integral. But on the inside, you know how often you either break your word to yourself or keep your word to yourself. You say you want to do this thing or that thing.. you make to-do lists that rarely get finished and at the end of the week you wonder why you feel down or depressed, like you aren't good enough. We talk about why and how self-integrity rebuilds broken self-confidence and broken self-trust. We dive into our own stories of how we did this and how it transformed our inner confidence and increased business performance.

There’s a difference between working toward your dream business and chasing your dream business and we dive into that concept today!

This week Nyachia Knight joins us to talk about all things vision creation and why you need to make that a priority when you're building a creative business. Nyachia is a renowned Event Planner who has worked at New York Fashion Week and other celebrity events. Eventually following her dream and moving to the South of France, Nyachia built her own luxury wedding planning service, NKT Events. When the pandemic hit, she pivoted and started coaching creatives on how to cultivate their vision and go after their dreams.  

We've all been there - a client you thought was going to book you goes with someone else and doesn't even let you know. They ghost you. You feel rejected. You feel like  you failed. Or maybe you had a client who didn't like the service you provided and now you have to fix a potential issue. The feeling of failure and rejection is so prominent amongst photographers and creatives of all kinds. 

This episode is dedicated to reframing what it means to experience failure and rejection as a photographer. The way to work through these feelings without letting them bog you down is to reframe what they mean in your life, or mean about you as a person.

This case study episode features a past PhotoCEO student, Laura Schnitzler. She is a German photographer who started her business during the pandemic after she lost her job. She tells her story of how she transformed her fear, comparison, and imposter syndrome and how shifting her mindset has impacted how many bookings she has been able to get within her first year of business.