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Hi, everybody. Nicole here from the hair of the dog and welcome to Episode seven of the Hair of the Dog Podcast. Today we're gonna be talking about how to navigate our new normal. Ah, the world's been a crazy place the past couple of weeks and getting crazier by the day. But I want to help you move away from fear and overwhelm and start to see a path forward because this too, will pass. 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 come to the right place and now your host, Pet photographer, Travel Attics, Chocolate martini connoisseur Nicole Bigly. Hey, everyone, Nicole here today is Let's see March 19th that I'm recording this and a lot has been going on for the past couple weeks around the world, and I just wanted to dio this podcast episode to maybe help you start to reframe a little bit of what been happening. So for me personally, the past week has been kind of insane. I found myself being kind of feeling totally unfocused, completely unproductive and really just kind of lost and unsure what comes next. I usually don't watch much news. I check in every once in a while. But for the past week I've been glued to the television for better or for worse, usually for worse. And I just I just can't get enough. I can't turn it off And part of that is I I'm kind of a scientific nerd a little bit and really find Varada ji and epidemiology really, really fascinating. So for that part, watching it has been really, really interesting. However, at this point, I'm OK to let that interest go, and we can all go back to normal because I think I've had a little too much of it. I'm I'm all done now. So because I was spending so much time there, I could just feel the kind of stress and overwhelm and lack of focus. And it was just it was getting to be quite a bit. I was not feeling like myself, and then I realized that I have the power I can't control what happens in the world. I can't control what other people do. I can't control really a lot of things I can't control in my life. The one thing I can control are my thoughts. I could control what I'm thinking because our thoughts lead to our emotions. What we're thinking determines our emotions that determines how we feel. It determines just really the stress in our body. It determines a lot of things. So there is one thing that we can all control, and that is our thoughts. Jim Forton, who is a mentor of mine and he has a podcast. Definitely check it out. If you're into learning how to re program kind of your subconscious. Mind how much power our thoughts have over us. It's a really interesting podcast that that will really help you shed new light on on how we're living our lives. But anyway, Jim, 14 check that out. J. I M F O R T. I am. But he has said you are. I am the thinker of my thoughts. So that means that that I control that I choose what I'm thinking. If I start to think and going down a yucky, yucky rabbit hole, I can stop that and I can start thinking new thoughts. And these thoughts are what then make us feel good, Make us feel bad. So remember that when we're starting to feel overwhelmed and fearful, pay attention to what you're thinking and where you're putting your attention because we can change that. We can change how we're feeling by really just choosing to think a different way by reframing what we're thinking. And I find the quickest and easiest way to reframe what I've been thinking is Thio practice gratitude. So I love to make a list of what I think before and if you the longer the list, the quicker you're going to get yourself out of whatever funk you're in. So if you're feeling particularly icky, maybe you want to write down like 35 or 40 things. If you're just ah, you know, just want to kind of maintain I'm feeling pretty good and just go ahead and write down two or three. But the worse you feel, the more you need to list for your gratitude list. And truly it is. Actually, I I think pretty much I don't know scientifically, but I think it's pretty much impossible to be fearful and have gratitude. At the same time. It's just two emotions that do not overlap. They do not happen at the same time. And so the quickest way to start to feel better about yourself, your situation, your world, everything else is to practice gratitude. So, like I said, the worse you feel make the longer list. So definitely go ahead and get started with that exercise. All right? And then, you know, for some of you guys, I have a lot of getting a lot of questions about how we move forward in our photography business during this crazy, unprecedented time. What do we say to clients? How do we show up? I know for me in the past week, I was hiding from you guys a little bit. Not because I don't love you, but mostly because I was just letting myself get trapped in my own thoughts and emotions. And then I was worrying about Well, I don't know what I'm going to say. I don't know if I know to say the right thing. I don't know what to say. I don't know what's gonna happen. Like it was all of this fear that was just rolling around in my head. And then my ego is like, yes, fear. Great. excellent how we got her now. Um, yes, you're right. You don't know what to say. Go sit down and be quiet. Um, so that's just kind of how that stuff all plays together. And then I started to think, All right. No, no, I can't do this. I need to show up. People need me. I need I want to help. I want to help my audience. How can I serve? And that's the key question to ask yourself is, how can I serve? How can I show up for the people that are following you for your clients, for your potential clients, For the people that follow you on social media, how can you show up and serve them? And it might be a simple as just showing up in sharing a cute picture of your dog. I mean, surely how much, as I, you know, spent far too much time on screen time in the past week? I mean, I think I usually average, like, two hours a day, maybe just still disgusting, but I think I was upto like, five and usually about two hours a day includes some podcast and some music, but, you know, I was just, like, glued to Facebook and the media, and it was it was very, very bad. Anyway, rewind back to what I was saying how much of our feet is taken up by, like, scary or yucky news, But then you see the other half the smile half. I think that's one of the reasons are Brain gets addicted to it. So, like, 01 more hit a dopamine. But anyway, we could be the ones that are sharing things that make people smile, things that make people feel better, things that help them experience gratitude in their own life. Like, Hey, who's working from home now and has the best co worker ever? You know, a k their dog. You can talk about things like that. You can ask your audience. What have you been doing with your dog today? If you guys found any new walks? Are you enjoying being outside? Thank goodness this isn't Here's a good thankful question. I'm glad this is in January. At least I could be outside a little bit now because the weather is starting to get nicer. So ask yourself, just what does my audience want to hear from me right now. How can I serve them? We do need to be cognizant of what? Our messages right now because people are nervous, people aren't sure what's gonna happen. So there definitely probably not in the frame of mind to say, Hey, I'm gonna book a whole bunch of photography sessions right now, so we need thio still be in touch with them on this lighter way. This just sharing this experience with them and it's okay to if you're feeling a little overwhelmed, that's okay to share a swell cause other people are, too. They're gonna build that connection with you, they're gonna understand, and it just shows that you're human. So don't be afraid to do that. And then if you still show up even in times like this, then the people that are following you just become even more committed to you. They become they like you even more, and they're going to want to do business with you later on. One thing start to return to normal, So definitely don't let that slide. Don't let this be an excuse that you hide and you don't show up for your audience anymore. All right, the next thing I want to talk about is the beliefs that we're telling ourselves. So remember I said on the thinker of my thoughts and those lead to emotions. Well, there's kind of a middle step in there, and that is, I think, these thoughts. And then I assign meaning to these thoughts. I assign beliefs to these thoughts, and then they cause emotions. So I want you guys to also be very cognizant of what beliefs you're assigning. Thio. Everything that's going on. For instance, how many of you are thinking, Oh my gosh, there's no way anyone's gonna have the money to pay for a pet photography session because we're about to go into a global recession and you know, it's possible we might. Nobody knows we might not win my bounce back pretty quickly, but you know, there might be a tough year head for the economy. But that doesn't mean that everybody is is hurting. That doesn't mean that there's no one out there that can afford discretionary income, to purchase pet photography or to do things that they value. That's simply not the case. And I cautioned you about getting wrapped up in that even if say the unemployment rate goes up to 15%. Then instead of focusing on Oh my gosh, there's a 15% unemployment rate. Focus on the 85% employment rate is 85% of people that are still having disposable income that are still living their life that are still working, that are still making money. That probably still value what you do and may invest in. What you do is so there are always gonna be people in every market that can still afford what you can d'oh! And for the people that may be, you know, fallen on tough times and they were ready to book. But now they're scared to, or now they can't. If you stay in front of mine and you stay connected with them and you still share on social media and you just, you know, just keep up that connection, then as soon as they're feeling more secure, they're still going to come back. This is a long game. All of our marketing is always a long game, and people do business with people they know like and trust. So it's really important that you still show your face in your business in your audience in your social media. Just connect with your clients with your email list. Email. It's my favorite thing so important, such a critical aspect of our business. That is a great way to connect with people. You could even just send out a fun email and be like, You know, hey, I know your inbox is full of, like, crazy, depressing emails. But here's a cute picture of a dog. What's your dog's nickname? What's what have you been doing with your dog during, you know, during your shelter in place if you're in an area like that, So just make connections. And as we look at these quote problems, I want you to ask yourself, How can I reframe this instead of looking at it as, Oh my gosh, I'm gonna be stuck in the house. Um, not gonna be able to do this, or I'm gonna have to cancel a couple sessions or postpone a couple sessions. Why don't you look at it as an opportunity of how can I turn this into something that will benefit me in the long run? Maybe taking that time that you would have been shooting right now, and taking that to finalize your workflow. You know, on your client management system, maybe it's to finalize your pricing. Maybe it's to research how to go through your in person sales and start moving from online galleries and person sales. Maybe you want to create a marketing plan for the year. That's a critical thing. You know how many times if we always said to ourselves, Oh, man, I wish I just had more time to plan or Holy cow house that already October. I need to think about what I'm gonna do for Christmas cards or Mother's Day is coming up. Instead of having all of this reactive marketing, why don't we take this opportunity as a chance to do some proactive marketing to do some marketing planning? I want you to sit down with a piece of paper and brain dump everything single marketing strategy that you could come up with. There are no bad answers here. Just put it all down and then jump into a trail aboard. Start putting that all on like a you know, a master brain dump list, and then do a January February March April do a month for each column and start putting some different things in the different columns start to figure out. Hey, what can I do for like, a Christmas card thing right down sits in different ways. You can put a whole bunch of different strategies on there, and then maybe, you know you can pick and choose different ones that you want to try As you get closer, you can flush out all of these different marketing strategies. You can start to think about what businesses kind market with what kind of marketing activities can I do with other businesses. Now is a great time to reach out to other pet businesses to they might also be a little bit slower, and it might be a good time to say, Hey, I'm another local pet business. I would love to talk with you. Maybe we can find a way to work together to help both of our businesses start to recover. After this, you can do contest with them. You can d'oh! You know just so many different things special offers for their clients and special offers for your clients, for their clients. You know, just so many things and really just talking to them you'll start to figure out how you can help them, especially if you approach it from Hey, how can I help you? Maybe they need some new marketing images and then you do that and then they'll let you, you know, have a display. Or maybe they need new artwork in their business, even if they're not gonna pay for it right now. You start that conversation and you confined different things to Dio. What about rescues? Can you get in touch with rescues and say, Hey, I would love to create some special charitable sessions for you. Once things start to get back to normal, you can plan all of that out now so that once things start to get to normal, you get the green light and you're ready to go. You have everything ready to go. You have your artwork, you have your coffee and you have your plan. They know how they're going to promote. You know how you're gonna promote it. That's one of my favorite marketing strategies. Is connecting with a rescue or a charity and offering sessions to their people usually get a slight discount or they get a special offer them. It's available for the general public, always having urgency in that offer because otherwise people won't purchase because they put off decision making. So offering them a special offer for a certain amount of time and then usually it's part of that session fee is a donation back to the charity that I make, so they're supporting the charity. They love their getting dog photographs that they will love. You're getting work that you love, and the charity is getting a much needed cash that they love. So a lot of charities, we'll definitely be looking for these types of things. So this is a great time to get in touch with them and plan these things out. So I hope you can start to see that there are so many opportunities in a situation that maybe it first doesn't seem like it's a situation where there'll be opportunities. All right, so speaking of marketing, I do have a special gift for you, My wonderful podcast listeners. If you would like to receive free my marketing class, it's the top three things that I did to grow my business to build my business. Three marketing strategies totally free. Go to hair of the dog academy dot com slash marketing, and you can enroll in that class completely free. That way you can start using this time that you have to build your business for moving forward. You can lay the foundation for business growth instead of just sitting by the sidelines and worrying about what's gonna happen. You can start to could take control because, remember, you do have control of certain things. You have control of what you think you have control of the actions you take. So the actions you take now are going thio 100% directly affect what your business looks like when the world starts to emerge from the interesting crazy times we're in right now. So I highly recommend take the time, go through that, make a plan start to create some marketing plans, start to work in your business. So that way, as soon as you can start marketing again as soon as people have kind of settled into a new normal that you can then start building your business again. So I want to leave you with this. Is that you have two opportunities right now kind of two different directions. You can go in, you can choose a where you kind of sit. Let your fear and overwhelming worry kind of consume you not move forward with your business. Not use this time wisely to focus on the things that you can control. And then when it's back to business is normal. You still are in the same place that you are now, with all of these things that you want to get done, that you feel will help your business run more smoothly. Or you can use this time wisely. You can remember that you are the thinker of your thoughts, that those thoughts will directly affect the feelings and emotions that you have that any time you start to feel a little icky, you can start to practice some gratitude that you can then start to reframe and look for the opportunities that are in front of you. You can start Thio, work on your business, make a marketing plan, do whatever you need to do to build your business so it is ready to roll. Once things start to go back to normal because they will, this is just a passing phase. In the meantime, make sure you join us in the hair of the dog Facebook group. Simply go thio hair of the dog academy dot com slash f b group and you'll be taken there and join us. 12,000 pet photographers sharing their work, talking about business, talking about all things pet photography. It is a great place to pass their time. And I know I, for one, am very thankful for the Internet so that even in times like this, we still have a great community that we can connect with each other and help each other through these times. So look forward to seeing you guys there. Thanks for listening to this episode of Hair of the Dog podcast. If you enjoy 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 episode. One last thing if you are ready to dive into more resource, is head over to our website at www dot hair of the dog academy dot com. Thanks for being a part of this pet photography community