Welcome to the hair of the dog podcast. I'm Nicole Begley. And today we are talking with Dorie, Hal from IPS, M also known as IPS mastermind, IPS, standing for in-person sales, whether you are doing in-person sales or not, this podcast is for you because we are talking about feeling the fear and doing it anyway, which is something that all of us as a business owner are going to be intimately familiar with. Stay tuned.

Welcome to the hair of the dog podcast. If you're a pet photographer, ready to make more money and start living a life by your design, you've come to the right place. And now your host pet photographer, travel addicts, chocolate martini, calmness, sewer, Nicole Begley.

Hey everybody, Nicole here from hair of the dog. Thanks so much for joining me for yet. Another podcast episode. This is our first podcast episode for 2021 a new year, which is really just one of my most favorite things, because we start with a blank slate and quite frankly, a new year after 2020, hopefully the only place to go is up, right? So today we're talking with Dorie Hal, but before we get to that conversation, I just wanted to take a minute to thank all of you for being listeners to this podcast. I am so happy that we started this, uh, at the beginning of 2020, I've really enjoyed this platform. I've loved talking with everyone. I've loved getting your comments about how these different episodes have helped you. If you find the podcast helpful. I would so very much appreciate if you would take a few seconds and leave a review. One of our latest reviews is, um, coming to us from Italy. It says I'm listening to the episodes of this podcast with great interest as they are full of useful information, inspiring ideas and practical suggestions. I highly recommend this podcast. Thank you so much for leaving your review with us. Really appreciate all of those. And it keeps myself and my team motivated so that we can keep serving you guys via this podcast and all of our other channels. So would super appreciate taking two seconds to do so, but in the meantime, let's jump back into our episode. Shall we and roll that episode with Dori, everybody at Nicole here. Welcome back to the hair of the dog podcast. I am here today with Dorie Howell from in person sales mastermind, IPS mastermind, IPS, meaning in-person sales. We've talked about that bit on the podcast. Um, but Dorie, welcome to the podcast. I'm so happy to have you here. Thank you so much, Nicole. It's a pleasure to be here and I'm glad we finally got this scheduled. Yes, yes, for sure. Oh yeah. So good. Tell us, well, first of all, before we dive into what we want to talk about today, go ahead and just give us a little bit of background of you and your business and how you, how you've become who you are today.

I am a portrait photographer based out of the Washington DC Metro area right outside in Virginia. And I specialize in newborns and families, mostly for newborns. And I'm making the transition like a lot of people in their businesses is that, you know, I did babies for 10 years and yeah, that's a lot of babies. It's a lot of time with a lot of time down on my knees. It's a lot of time leading over and getting peed on and all that good stuff. And so I'm really trying to shift my business now to work with older families, with older children and just do something different. I think a decade is a long time to do something in this. We as creatives, we stay in a niche for a long time because it's comfortable and that's what people know us by and that's, what's paying our bills, but at some point in time, we just got to say, all right, it's time to do something different. So

That's funny. I was going to say just a real quick, I, um, the there's some similarities there between babies and pets because we are down on our knees all the time, too, usually laying on our stomachs and God knows what goose poop or who knows what weird substance in the city. Um, and making crazy noises and also getting peed on. Sometimes

It's very, very similar. So it's just one of those things where I kind of started making this transition last year. And then my mom got really ill and passed away. And so I closed my business for about seven months and I'm just now starting to get back into marketing and letting people know I'm open for business and all that type of thing. And I would've done it sooner obviously, but we had this little thing called the pandemic that I kind of sat back and be like, okay, I'm just going to wait a little while. And then almost four or five years ago, I met my business partner, Rachel board. And we started at his mastermind, which we Mark. And it is an education site for photographers to come and learn how to run great businesses using IPS sales methods.

Yeah. Perfect. And that works no matter what genre you're in, certainly portrait any portrait genre.

Absolutely. You've taught for us and we've got other photographers really involved with us. And so it's a nice way to be able to serve our clients very well with the things that they love and the people. And cause I consider, I know most people consider their pets. They're people they're not, they're not pets. They're people, right? Whatever you photograph or whatever people you photograph. Awesome.

Absolutely. Yeah. I actually started my business back almost 11 years ago. Now once this calendar Switzer flips over, it's going to be 11 years and I started doing families and pets two separate John Aras under one brand because I thought, Oh, there's no way I can be just a pet photographer. There's no way you can make enough money doing just that. So I did families for five or six years and I loved them. I really enjoyed family. So it wasn't like I did it because like I tried newborns and that was not my thing. I was like, no, no I'm sticking with the families, dogs and families. But then it got to the point where I started to get so busy that it was, I couldn't market my pet side as I wanted, because my family's was all word of mouth. It was, you know, just family after family coming and filling my calendar with great sales. Like it was a super profitable business, but my heart wasn't in the family side, I wanted to grow the pet side and I was like, I have to stop this. So I have time to focus on that other thing, which was the scariest decision in my business to date, I think I was like turning off this basically free income stream that I did nothing to market anymore. And you know, it was$2,500 average sale wall art for everybody. It was like, it was, it was good. And I liked it. No, I didn't dislike it. So yeah. So that was the hardest thing. But you know, it turned out, it was definitely the right move and I'm super happy that I did, but Oh, those things are scary.

Yeah. It is. It is scary to make those transitions, especially when things are rolling in to the outside world, everything looks really good. So when you have to explain to maybe a partner or a spouse or your family, that you just really don't want to do that anymore. And the only reason is because it's not fulfilling, but you can't own finger on it because it's not about money anymore. That's scary. It's just, it's in your business. When you make those big transitions that the fear element can really, really pop up.

Yeah, absolutely. I think, um, it's actually transitions nicely to what we were to talk about is that this fear element, it affects so much of our business, um, and really our life. But then once you put all of your, all of your work eggs in a basket that you are responsible for as a self-employed entrepreneur, like that fear just skyrockets to all new Heights. And

Then that's when the sleepless nights come in and very scary. And I've studied fear now for quite a few years and fear and competence to me kind of go hand in hand because it's one of those things where I believe there's two different kinds of people in the world when it comes to fear and competence and specifically about the competence. There's people who see like, Oh, I want to do that. I can do it. Like they believe that they can do something, even if they've never done it before. And even if they've never taken any steps towards accomplishing that action, kind of like with me, I believe I can make a chocolate souffle. I have never ever made a chocolate souffle, but am I capable of making a chocolate souffle after I watched a few YouTube videos and everything? Absolutely. And it's going to turn out and it's going to be good. And then there's another type of personality that says I cannot make a chocolate souffle until I have all the perfect ingredients. Everything lined up perfectly until I've done it 10 times perfectly. Then I can say, I can make a chocolate souffle and the person who needs to have everything lined up, perfectly, everything, ready to go. All of those different things. That's the person who's going to slow down on their progress because every, everything has to be checked. And we see this in photographers a lot too. It's very easy to put people in. Once you realize those two different personalities, I can point I can see it really easily right away, because it's the people who are asking, well, should I put prices on my price list? Or what kind of albums should I get or is getting bogged down at all these tiny, tiny little decisions along the way, because they're fearful of making the wrong decision versus someone like me who says, okay, I need an album. I've heard this. One's good. I've heard this. One's good. I've heard this. One's good. I invested in going to imaging. I've seen their reviews and all that kind of stuff. I'm going to start with this one, knowing that there's no really wrong decision and I can always change my mind. So if I get it, I don't like it. That's what I have to offer to my clients. Or I can for a little bit until I find something better.

Yeah, no, I I'd love that 100%. I can totally see those two different personalities there. And so many people in that perfectionist side get so stuck in student mode where it's, I need to learn all these things. I need to have all of these setup. I can't possibly open for business until I have an inquiry guide and a product guide and customized this and that and all of this special automated things where once you just start taking progress and moving forward, then you add on and spoiler alert. Your business has never done. I don't know about you. I mean, you're you just said you're switching your whole business to more families. Same way. Like my business is never done. There's always, Oh, I'd like to tweak that. Oh, I'm going to update that. Oh, by the time you get around to it now my website's five years old. I need to update that. Yeah.

It's never done and it's never perfect. You can't make, is there a right or wrong way to, for example, put pricing on a website? Well, no, there isn't put it all out there. Don't put it out there. Guess what? Play with it. And I think a lot of business owners don't realize that like marketing takes time. You have to play with it, see what works, throw it out there. If it doesn't work, you adapt, you change. And you're always in this constant movement. It never is just like, it's never just like I finished. I've done creating my business. Now. It's just not like that. The less you can get caught up in these little day-to-day decisions that hold you back. And the reason they're holding you back is because you're scared of making a wrong decision. You're scared of doing something wrong. It all comes back to fear. Once you can move past that and realize, okay, if I don't like it, I can change it. No big deal. It releases so much of that pressure. And you can just make for, you can make those steps and then go back and adjust if you need to.

Oh yeah. And also knowing there's no right answer. There's no have to do it this way. I mean, there's certainly best practices that we should learn and maybe try to incorporate. But I know people that have built successful profitable businesses flying in the face of all the best practices, you know, they're, I, I'm a huge, huge believer in in-person sales, huge, but I know people that have built a profitable business without, but they know the pricing basics. You know, I believe in getting people on the phone to build the value and getting more information, but I know people that have the pricing online and they run a profitable, great business. So there is literally no right or wrong. So we can take that fear hopefully off the table. Just remind yourself. There's yeah. There's, there's just testing. It's like what works best for my business. And I think the piece that a lot of people are missing and I used to miss it a lot more. I still, every once in a while have to remind myself, but before I do anything, I have to say, what's the intention of this. So if I'm pricing on my website, what's the intention of this price. And on my website, I'm not just putting it there for my health. Like there's an intention there. So

Exactly. What do you want to do when they see this? What is the reaction that you want them to have? And then what is the action that you want them to take? And some people don't want any pricing out there because they just want people to call. I kind of like things to be a little, you know, pre what's the word free. Yeah. So the people don't want to call me. They're not, I'm not charging$15,000 for a session, but I'm also not charging$200 for a session. Right. They kind of know what they're getting into before they send me the inquiry email or give me a call. Um, some people don't want to be contacted via email. Okay. Well then you need better have your phone number all over the place. They don't want to be called on the phone, which I actually like. And I think, I think because of the, just seeing, you know, I was talking to my friends this week and we were commenting on the trend of moving back towards phone contact, personal contact with people just via email, because right now, especially people have been sitting in their emails, sitting on their social media, sitting with their devices for seven months. And having those conversations with people I think is fulfilling on more than one in more than one area.

I agree. And I, yeah, I think too, that people want a quick answer and our emails are so full that I know me. Like I never loved the phone. I use it, but it's not like, Oh, I love the phone. I would rather call a business and get an immediate answer because I know if I do an online form, they're going to reply and it's going to get lost somewhere. And my disaster of an inbox, even though, you know, there's just filters. I just got a lot of email. I know I'm not going to see it. So I think there's a lot of that out there too people. And

I think there's one email first came out with 20 years ago or so we were crawling at email boxes all the time. That was the cool way to communicate with people. I know me check my email maybe once a day. And most of what's in there as junk and try as hard as I tried to unsubscribe and clean out my inbox, that I know all the different tools that are available to do all that. It's just, it's a heavy thing. Like 500 emails sitting in my inbox right now looks like trash, most of them, but that real personal connection is something that I think our clients are going to be wanting more and more, especially in the us and everywhere where this pandemic and this shutdown continues. Once that opens up, it might go back the other way. But now people need connection. And so reaching out and calling clients, reaching out, calling inquiries versus just shooting an email is something that people maybe want to consider when it comes to a customer experience standpoint. But a lot of just coming back to the whole fear part is, especially when you're new and you're just starting out. There's no wrong decisions. That's just what I tell myself this all the time, because I'm married to someone who becomes paralyzed by decisions. And I did tell him there's no right or wrong. Like what's for dinner. That's a big decision for him. What do I want? Cause he wants me to just get there's no wrong decision here. It's okay. It's okay.

I'm pretty happy. If anyone cooks me dinner, I was just about anything because I didn't have to cook it

Easy to make me happy there in fear. And just realizing that any time there's a holdup in your business and in making a decision in your business, whether it's shifting gears and deciding who you want to serve or putting your prices on a website or what products you want to want to offer or designing price sheets, we get so many questions about designing price sheets in our freebase cooker. Does it matter? Does it matter? Like we don't even have a price sheet. That's just like a shocker to anybody. Well, how do you let them know your prices? It's like such a novel concept. It's I communicate to them. They're fully informed. I just, I don't have a price sheet, like, or a pricing booklet or anything. Right. Just cut it out because that's how you want to do business. It's your business, your rules. So do it, how it works best for you.

Yeah. I think a lot of people get hung up on thinking, yeah, that there's that one best way. And then two to reach that quote way, they end up making a lot of, uh, what's the word, like cutting a lot of quarters on what they want out of their business. So they stop looking at their business of how can I build this business in a way that fits with my lifestyle and a business that serves me. And instead they're like, well, I have to do it this way because this is the way that everyone's been telling me I have to do it. So I'll just make that fit in my lifestyle. But that, I think you'd just become resentful and your business becomes this, you know, more of a burden instead of something that, that you love and serves the lifestyle that you want to leave.

Yeah. You should, your business lives to serve you, not the other way around. And so you get to create it any way you want. And even though just like there's pillars of marketing, there's a lot of businesses that don't pay attention to those pillars of marketing. And they're very, very successful. Like you mentioned earlier. So remembering that this is you can make it whatever you want to be. The other side of that is if you make it totally what you want it to be, and you don't have any clients, then you have to kind of re you know, maybe revamp and say, okay, if I want to have a business, there are some things that I might need to Institute or add to my business, or take away from my business so that people are attracted to me to want to hire me. That's kind of the balance of things.

And keeping in mind the, what your client is seeking, what's valuable to your client and finding that spot where this is what I would offer. This is what they want. How do I make those mesh? Oh. And let me run the numbers and make sure it's profitable. And yeah. So to be able to look at it from all those sides, yes.

Oh, there was some strategy in there that some people find overwhelming, but that's when you get some help and people can be with it. And it's not a hard thing to work out. It's just, everybody has a coach. Professional players have a coach, professional basketball players have a coach, professional singers, have a coach. Everybody has a teacher or a coach in some way. So you go out and you talk to the Cole or you talk to Dory and you get a little help, some guidance in the right direction. And you try it and see how it works. And that comes back to the whole trial and error. You try something new, it works. It doesn't work. You tweak, you try and get between you tweak. That's just how it works.

Yeah. I think so many people are scared to do that because, um, if they tweak and it fails, then they make up all this junk in their head of what that failure meant. And they start telling themselves, I'm not cut out for this C uh, I can't have a profitable pet photography business in this market. And they just like, let it reinforce whatever junk stories they've had in their head. Yeah.

Yeah. The beliefs, the beliefs are strong and we both know that. And you know, you can tell yourself, you live in an oversaturated marketplace, but maybe your market isn't oversaturated. Maybe your clients have become more savvy of what's available out there. And they're tired of seeing the same offer, put out there over and over by multiple. So you have to be creative. You have to offer something new. And that's, that's the challenge. And maybe it's not the fact that your family doesn't support you. Maybe the fact is that you've tried to do things before and you haven't succeeded and maybe your family is tough. Isn't sure that you're going to follow through on this one. So maybe just a little bit wary. So many times the beliefs that we have reinforced over and over and over aren't anybody else's fault, but our own doing that self-reflection and taking ownership of that, isn't always comfortable and we like to be comfortable.

Yup. Yeah. And sometimes you just can't see it yourself. No matter how you try, you can look, but you just, you have this one perspective and you are married to it. And it takes talking to somebody else, you know, to be able to have them help you flip it, for instance, the saturated market, you know, the one thing, the easiest way that I like to try to flip that for people, especially the pet photography Minnich, because it's still a somewhat unknown niche as far as like the general public knows, because how many times somebody asks what I do? I'll pet photographer and 95 times out of a hundred, they say, what's your, what? You just photograph dogs like just pecks, that's it?

Yeah. I love their pets. Right.

But you know, when you get that answer, 95% of the time that tells me that the general market doesn't even know that we exist really yet. So isn't it great. Instead of looking at, Oh, there's five other pet photographers in my market. What if you said looked at it as like, there are five other pet photographers marketing in my market, raising awareness for what I offer so that it becomes an easier, just more people know, more people are searching, pet photographers, more people are seeing your potential business. You have more people to share the value you can bring to them. Yeah.

And the easiest way to stand out in an over saturated market is not only by making offers that are different than everybody else, but also making sure that your artwork is different than everybody else have to shoot a dog in a studio on a black backdrop. You know, so many different things that you can do to make yourself stand out. And that's when the artistic side comes in, is that making sure that your skills are up to speed and that you have everything you need for the jobs that you want to take and you can provide an awesome session, no matter what the situation, because I could keep sometimes with talking too much a business and not talking about the artistic side a lot. It's like, no, no, that's a given to me, the discipline need to be on point that if you're going to hang your hat out as a photographer, that you are good at what you do. If you have enough skill and enough talent to provide someone with something that will be memorable for generations. And if you don't have that, then that's your number one starting point.

Yup. Agree. A hundred percent. And I've seen a lot with potential students or my students that there are when they're starting out. There's two, two sets of people here too. They're the people that 100% have beautiful work ready to hit the market that think their work is not good enough yet. So they have this whole self-conscious thing about their work. And then there's the other hand people that their work is not ready necessarily, but they think, Oh, whatever, it's great. It's good to go. So there's, you know, especially just those people that have that work and it's ready, but they have so many stories in their head that it's not ready. I don't know if they're comparing to like, you know, the people that have been in business for 10, 15 years, but even that their work, when I look at it is as good as there is sometimes, you know,

We all know photographers who are really, really good at their craft who can't make any money. And we all know who are really, really horrible, who are making a good living. And we see this all the time, especially when it comes to the topic of IPS. Am I good enough for IPS? Is my work good enough? And my standard result, my standard answer for that is, do you have people wanting to hire you? Do you have clients? And usually the answer is yes, which is awesome. I said, well, good enough. Really? If you have people who want to, who want to hire you for your services, then we're absolutely good for, I guess.

Yes. Yeah. Oh, go ahead.

No, no. And it's usually the people who are asking those questions, like you were saying earlier, whose work is gorgeous. And everybody's like, are you kidding me? Right.

They worry, I get a lot too of people like that that are worried. Like, wow, I don't know if, you know, if somebody hires me and I don't, I don't know if they're going to be happy with what they get, you know, what I create for them. And I want to be like, I always tell them like, okay, are you creating something that is on par with what you're showing them on your website? Yes. Then yes. They're going to love it because they looked at your website and hired you because they liked what they saw

When you're going out with that client. That's not the time to necessarily test all your new skills that you've learned in a workshop or Sodom, YouTube video. You still have to deliver the standard session that they want. And then maybe test a little bit at the end. But if it's on par with everything that they've seen on your website and you know, you can recreate it. Yeah. And we don't force people to hire us. That's the other thing too. It's like, I'm not going, we're not insurance to buy insurance. People hire us because they want to, because they've discretionary income that they want to spend on something specific and they want to get it from you.

Yeah. I had a great experience with five feet on the other side of that when I went through a rebrand, uh, about six years ago and I was looking at different graphic designers. And then I found this one that I really connected with their website was totally different. Everybody else was like, Oh, I'm a graphic. Does it? Like they had, you know, the normal photographer, boilerplate website. And they're all kind of sounds the same. And then this other company was so different and their personality was so on there. And I'm sure they repelled quite a few people, but they pulled me in and I loved it so much. And like, this is who I want to make my new brand. I'm putting in my inquiry. And I'm like, Oh my gosh, I hope they choose me. I find out what their prices are. It was like twice as much of what everything else was. And when I was planning on spending, but I'm like, Oh, but I really want this. Oh my gosh, please, please say yes,

Please. Oh my God, this is what I want my clients to feel like. And what many of them

Do? Like they are, they are excited to spend their money because they see the value of what we're offering. And yeah. Like, no one's forcing them to, they're not handing it over. You know, it's not like IRS tax day where they're like here, take my money. Um, they're, they're excited to do so.

Right. Yeah. And it's so much of what we talked today is, is just, you know, it kind of falls under the umbrella of mindset, but when you start to really kind of analyze where people are coming from and their perspectives and how does the slightest, just the slightest change of having to look at a situation can make such a dramatic difference in your business, in your life. And it really keeps, maybe don't always look at it from, I was, this is what I tell people is trying to try and change the negative story that you're telling yourself into a positive. And we had that problem with IPS M a long time when someone else basically copied our entire format and started a new site. And it was really, really rough. And I had a really hard time with it. And I mentioned that I was working with, at the time, he basically said, what does this mean throughout all the things that this needs? And it finally got around to where it means that we're doing something right, because they want a copy. Yes. They want a piece of our pie. They see that we're being successful. Now, all of those things meant that we had to rise above and provide something different so that people might be attracted to us, but it keeps us on our toes all the time, which is good. It keeps it, it's a challenge, which is good. So if you just switched the perspective versus like, Oh, there's so many photographers in my area, they should just like me. I can never ever do it. No one's going to hire me to, Hey, I have a real opportunity to see what they're doing and then pivot and do something different that people are going to want. That's all you need to do to just get that your brain working in a different direction. Yeah.

That's and that's the exact story I use. Um, and I try to encourage people to adopt when they see like these different companies that come in and do, Oh,$39 for a photographer will show up at your door two hours or people that are worried, Oh my gosh, have you seen the latest iPhone? It's gonna put us out of a job. I'm like, okay. And I phoned, can't remove a leash and iPhone can't shoot at like 1.2 with creamy backdrops and editing and creative edits and all of these things, uh, an iPhone doesn't know how to set the dog up or know how to set them up in the best light. Like we have all of these things. And the it's just encourages us to continue to raise the bar, to continue to learn more, to continue to offer something extra ordinary to our clients, um, which everybody wins. Yeah.

And it absolutely is a win-win for the industry, for you as a professional for you as a business person to keep raising that bar and feeling better. And if you can't, if that seems overwhelming, then that's something you need to consider because that's never going to change. Technology is hot on our heels. Every single day, we have to be able to provide something different and I will start to worry when they come out, like with the photographer robot who can start, you know, communicate all those different things. But I don't think it happened for a really long time.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I don't think it can never happen with pets, so

You're good.

You'll be switching. You'd be like, huh, I'm moving to pets from families,

Everybody. My sister, she rescued a dog a few months and months ago. And I keep saying to do somebody sell pictures of her because she's just, she's cute. Little mutt, cute little thing. And I don't think I'm up to the task hire professional because I don't think I'm up to the task of making her look.

That's so funny. I mean, it's so funny. All the different genres are so, so different. I mean, I am a, uh, you know, fairly accomplished photographer, but if you were like, go take newborn pictures right now, they would look like garbage because all the different genres have so many unique pieces to produce the best work in that genre. So it's yeah. And a wedding, if you told me to go shoot a wedding, I think I would cry.

Let's say that. I think I could probably produce decent pictures of any genre. Yeah. But you don't want just decent. So yeah, but I have a newborn Nicole, like the client that calls me that's in my area. Just send them my way

That, that, that has been, um, recommended to someone else for years, like three I'm like, this is not the patients to like, Oh, like I could, I could wait and reset up a dog for a shoot, like 37,000 times and never lose my cool and like, love what I'm doing the whole time. Like waiting for a newborn to fall asleep. I did do some lifestyle once I liked a little bit more, but you still wanted some like nice sleeping babies. I was like, Oh, I don't have the energy for this.

Well, you know, total sidebar, it's hard when the parents are getting frustrated with it.

So say, well, that happens with pets too. Cause the chair. Yeah. They're like, sit, sit, sit. I'm like, no, they're good. So that's definitely one of the things that I always tell them is your dog just has to be a dog, you know? And when we're set up, I'm like, Hey, stands up. And they said, I'm like, Oh, he can stay on. He's fine. Like, yeah. It's cool. And then, yeah.

So to sleep, just like yelling at a two year old to try and get up and smile, it doesn't really work that way. And I think when you walk in the door as a parent, like even as a photographer, it's like, yeah, she's 13. I can't get the picture of her. She gives me, she is just like, give me a hug. You know what it is. I feel the blood pressure going and it's hard to get that separated. And so I understand what my clients go through. I'm always reassuring them. They're doing what they're supposed to be doing. This is what they mean by nature. So it's all good. Yeah.

So my dog, even my dog does the same thing. I go to photograph her and she's just like, has this like stoic face? Like you give me any of those cute expressions you do. And I try all the things that elicit the expression when I don't have the camera, but she's just like, no, I give you the serious face.

I'm not going to smile it yet.

You're the hardest actually. Yeah. Photographers dogs are definitely the hardest clients to photograph because they've heard all our noises like normal people's dogs. Haven't heard my random hunting whistles and all my weird wines and all those things. But photographers, dogs.

Yeah. This is not, you got to work a lot harder. Um, so yeah, jumping back. Yeah.

Fear. And when people realize that they're like, they're getting a little paralyzed or they're getting stuck in that indecision other than just saying it's okay. Just make a decision to move forward. Are there any other tactics or things that they can try to try to get them out of that?

You know, I think sometimes just removing yourself from the situation, go concentrate on something else. I think for me, when I have my most creative ideas or my, my, what I think of my best ideas, I'm not sitting in front of my computer. I'm not sitting in front of my camera. I'm not sitting in a chair saying ideas, ideas I need to, and then ID him now in the swimming pool, I like to swim. So I'm in the swimming pool or I'm walking with my husband. Usually it's doing something physical and having a conversation with someone about something else, or I'm observing a marketing tactic that someone is using while I'm walking through the grocery store. And so I feel that when you're really, really stuck in those types of situations, sitting there and trying to pound it out is not going to help you. You need to remove from the situation, go take a 15 minute walk and just give yourself some space to think about something else. And I don't think entrepreneurs a lot of themselves that breathing room as much as we should. That's really where the good ideas come. It's not sitting at the computer, trying to work out a strategy for something. We have a joke and IPS. Then when we're really trying to work on something, you kind of come up with some creative ideas to do some I'm like, can someone just go to the bathroom, just go in the bathroom, all of us, we just need to take a break, go outside for a minute and get a change of fresh air in that kind of Lilly. Really just, it can help or just work on something else, distract from the thing that's causing you to hold you up for right now and just go work on something else. So if you're trying to decide what album, when you really, really can't do it, guess what? Go ahead at some pictures for awhile, do what makes you fulfilled creatively, give your brain that space, whatever that means for you. Um, remove yourself for a moment from what's really causing that anxiety. Cause that's, what's gonna start happening is the more you try and make yourself come up with a creative idea or make yourself make that decision. It's just going to become harder and harder and harder to do so.

Yeah. Agreed. I definitely get my best ideas of the barn or in the shower. I need to get like a whiteboard shower whiteboard. Cause I, yeah. And then I get out, I'm like, wait, what was that?

I know I have a waterproof case for my phone now. So actually do you take it in the pool? Um, that's more just like to record videos for Instagram or whatever, cause I can do it under what I know, but um, I will, you know, jot it down or do a voice memo or something when you will forget.

Yup. Yeah. And um, I found one of the other tricks for that too, for, you know, coming up with getting out of getting unstuck of things when you're feeling a little overwhelmed is just to re ask yourself that question in a different way, like ask yourself, is there a better question I can ask, um, of myself here instead of like, you know, what, what can my inquiry process look like? How, how do I want clients to get in touch with me? Oh my gosh. She's like, I'm so overwhelmed to creating this inquiry process instead, maybe ask what, what does my client need from this inquiry process? What do I need from this inquiry process? What's the easiest way to combine these, but like just switching the verbiage, which sounds silly. And I remember when I first heard about this and like, okay, whatever, but it really does help because you know, I've said this on podcasts before where I, you can't say, I can't say right now, don't think of a pink elephant. Like in all of us just thought of a pink elephant, you know? Yeah. Like it's actually a possible. So by asking yourself these different questions, like your brain has to try to answer them and then just give yourself some space.

They will, they will totally pop in. I find changing the scenery, changing the perspective, changing the question, jolts herself out of the rat that you're digging yourself into. All of those things are helpful when you need to move ahead.

And that's really what our business is, is a constant constant, moving ahead, little bit here and there. And it's just always moving forward. And you know, if you got to get comfortable with facing that fear every now and again, because it's going to keep popping up because once you get over that, then you're going to get to else. You'll be like, Oh wait, well, this is new because our brains say, Oh no change is bad. Change is scary because I might die.

I can compare that to the Italian grandma, no effects. Over-protective Brammer that wants to keep you safe and feeds our brain, keep us safe. And so the minute we're forcing ourselves to think of something in a different way that might change our reality, our brains build while everything's good right here. We don't like this more ravioli, garlic bread. They say, you don't need to go on that date. She's got you covered. She's she's taking care of you. That's not staying safe is not going to help you achieve your goals. Right. You have to realize that they're looking out for your best interests, but they don't know what your best interest is. It's from great perspective. And you need to hold track, hold tight to your perspective on the situation.

Yeah. And I think also flipping the switch a little bit or the script a little bit about like when you start to get a little bit uncomfortable, that probably means you're working towards something good. Because any time yeah, anytime we're going to have any sort of growth, it gets uncomfortable. And the new question like was this right? Oh my gosh, this is getting really, really crazy.

Had you never been there before? You're behind, you can only send you messages based on where it's been or what is familiar to it. So as soon as you walk into the unfamiliar, then it doesn't, it doesn't know how to process it. It's like all of a sudden everything starts going haywire and short-circuiting and you start to get that fear. You start to feel comfortable because it doesn't know how to tell you what it needs to tell you, because it's never been there before. So you have to tell your brain to settle down. Say, trust me a little bit. We're good. Shut up. No thanks. We're good.

Yeah. Yeah. Oh for sure. Oh man. Dorie, this has been such a good conversation and yeah, I think really helps. Some people hopefully keep moving forward and realize that that little bit of fear is actually means we're on the right track. But before we go, are there any words of wisdom for, you know, photographers that are in the first year or two of their business and they're in that place of just like, Oh my gosh, there's so much to do. I don't know what the next step is.

Help remember that when that feeling of overwhelm comes, that is because you have put some sort of timeline or expiration date of when you need to have this done by and many people put this on themselves, they start thinking like you start seeing all the tasks that come in and you start to become feeling overwhelmed. Well it's because you feel like, Oh my gosh, I could have everything done by Saturday. No you don't. You really don't. And many things that new photographers think they have to do as you learn from the experts who've been there, probably don't need to do it. Really? Yeah. Like I said, price sheet, you don't even need to have one. Yeah. It's okay. So pick and choose from people who've been there before. Learn from their mistakes. There's many people like Nicole and myself who were absolutely willing to say, Hey, I tried that once. This is what happened to me. This is my perspective. This is my experience. Take this for what it's worth, but we've been down the road. We know we know how things are and what our client base has reacted or how it's impacted our business from some decisions that have come up and let us help you let us help you. There's no, there's no ego here or anything like that. It's just us wanting to see people be successful. Yes. Yeah. A hundred percent. I mean, nothing makes me happier than when I see my students that have success, that they, you know, maybe one in a pad or wouldn't have had as quickly. Um, you know, that, it's just, that's why I do what I do. Yeah, for sure. So, um, yeah. So tell us where people can find you if they want to learn more from you Dorie. Okay. Well, there's a few places. So if you're on the grounds, that would be either, um, the Dorie Howell or at IPS mastermind. Those are the two social media accounts. We have a wonderful step of set process for the IPS system that we sell with called discovery buys. And that is offered through IP SM. And you can find more information about that, that we love ips.com. And if you're on Facebook and you just want a really, really big community to connect with, to compliment what you're learning, inherit the dog, then we would love to welcome you in our Facebook group, which is just, um, I kissed mastermind and he looked for the little registered trademark circle for the group and then, you know, you're in the right place. Perfect. Awesome. Thanks again for being with us again, Dory and, um, yeah. Have talked to you soon. Thanks Nicole.

Thanks for listening to this episode of hair of the dog podcast. If you enjoyed this show, please take a minute to leave a review. And while you're there, don't forget to subscribe. So you don't miss our upcoming episodes. One last thing, if you are ready to dive into more resources, head over to our [email protected]. Thanks for being a part of this pet photography community.