Welcome to the Hair of the Dog Podcast. I'm Nicole Begley. And today we are going to be talking with Krystal Hise from Krystal Photography on the Space Coast of Florida. Now Krystal is going to be sharing her journey that she started only three years ago and how she kept on moving forward to gain some confidence, gain some clarity and started to get massive results. She's sharing her secrets to growth with us today. 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 addict, chocolate martini connoisseur, Nicole Begley.

Hey everybody. Nicole here from Hair of the Dog. And today I am joined with my special guest Krystal Hise from Krystal Photography on the Space Coast of Florida. Welcome Krystal. Welcome to the podcast. Hi, thank you so much. I'm glad to be here. Oh, I'm so excited to have you here, I guess, tell everybody a little bit more about you or just tell us a little bit about, about you and your business and all that good stuff. Awesome. Okay. So let's see. It's 2020. I officially started my business back in 2017, uh, came from a completely different background. Um, but I, I guess I was, as a lot of us probably started, the quintessential girl with the camera. Uh, growing up, took a black and white film photography class in college. Oh my goodness. So much fun. I remember it was the most magical thing to watch an image appear in that first developer bath in the dark room. So cool. Actually believe it or not never I've shot film, but I've never, um, develop my own film. I don't know that magic. It was pretty cool. That is really cool, but I never really thought I could make a career out of it. I mean, I had some great hobbies. I did dance growing up, but you know, never thought about pursuing that. I loved photography. My dad was a big photography buff, got my first camera from him to do that film photography class. So that was kind of a fun thing that we did together. The first credit card I applied for was back at Circuit City. If you can believe that back when I was still on the path. Yeah, exactly. To get my first DSLR camera. So that was kinda neat before going into college. Nice, nice. Started when you started your photography, was it always animals or what kind of things did you photograph when you started? So I guess growing up, it was always just whatever was going on. If there was a party, I had it because I wanted to document what was going on, friends, family, that sort of thing. And so that followed suit when I first opened up my business, it was a lot of friends and families and, and a little bit of headshots too, but what was really cool is that the first personal branding shoot, I did that wasn't a professional-looking headshot, but more a lifestyle type of branding shoot. We included her dog and it was the coolest, most fun photo shoot I'd ever done. She was more laid back. It was

Just genuinely more exciting and more fun and it just felt different. And if something really clicked during that photo shoot. So I started asking people, Hey, so for this family session, do you have a dog? Can you include your dog? Cause that would be great. Nice, nice. I love it. It's like magical accidents where you're just like, well, wait, let's, let's follow this. Um, I think that's how all good things happen is when you start to have a little bit of curiosity and then you just kind of follow that path and see where it leads exactly. This led you to places. Absolutely. Awesome. So when you started your business in 2017 and it was kind of mainly people, all of things and then now your very pet specific, correct? Yes. Yes. Just pets. Awesome. Awesome. And how did that transition look is there was at that session that you had that you're like, Oh my gosh, I want to do pets or was it kind of a gradual changeover? So that was probably the origin of the shift I decided to start looking into, Hey, is this really a thing? Started doing Google searches, pet photography. Is this an actual genre? Oh my gosh. It really is. That's actually how I found the Hair of the Dog group. Uh, that was, that was pretty exciting, but I realized, okay, well I need to build my portfolio before I just, you know, flip a switch and try and change everything over. So it was a gradual process, but that was what I believe to be the starting point, so to speak. And I had a dog. So then I went home and started practicing with her, which is really fun. Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah. When I started with my pet photography stuff, I actually didn't have a dog. I've had Zoe for four years now, I believe. But, um, yeah, I actually just, uh, was the dog photographer that just had cats. So I would so far everyone else's dog people out there. I get that question all the time. Like, do I need to have a dog to be a pet photographer? No, you don't need a dog. I mean, it's nice to have a built-in model, but, um, I, quite frankly, Zoe is hard to photograph and I think a lot of photographers dogs tend to be because they know all of our noises and all of our tricks. And um, yeah, Zoe has like this serious photography face. I mean, she'll say he just has this, the same look for blue steel look the whole time. And it's hard to actually get her other goofy faces because it's like in working mode when it's photography time, she's like, Oh, I'm sitting, there's treats out. Oh my gosh. That's when I usually enlisted my husband's help to get her all like excited and bring out the toys and try moving around. And then you get the cute faces. Oh yeah. She, she puts back on that blue steel real fast. Oh really? Anyway. Anyway, I digress. So yeah. So then you started doing pets, and then your market, because you're on like Brevard County Space Coast, you know, you're what about an hour from Orlando? There's not really any big cities where you are. So do you draw most of your clients from the Brevard County area or are they coming from further away? Where do you mainly target? So for the most part from Brevard County

Now Brevard is really tall and skinny. So it's actually quite a large county, but it's very narrow. So it goes up past Titusville and down past Palm Bay are two cities near the Northern and Southern parts. But I mean, there's quite a few people here with dogs. It's not, unfortunately it's not a very dog friendly county, but things that way,

I find a lot of, uh, a lot of Florida areas, so many parks are not dog friendly. It's really hard sometimes to find places to shoot.

It's so true. We have so many miles of beach coastline, and yet there are only two sections of Brevard County that allow dogs on the beach. And so even when you think of the Florida beaches and all, you know, dogs running and having fun and playing in the water, it's really confined to two tiny sections. And one of those two just opened up last year. So very, very, very new. And then the other one is only like two streets long. I mean it's tiny, absolutely ridiculous. Of course, you've got the people who live on the beach who break the rules, but you know, pet photography sessions where, you know, we're trying to do business. Right, right. Yeah. Working out, trying to find locations is tough, but yeah. Well some pretty spots for sure,

For sure. No, that's good to hear because I think a lot of people have this belief that if they're not in a major metropolitan area, that there's not going to be enough clients for them, but you know, as long as there's people nearby and there's still, I feel like a slight luxury market for whether it's cars or purses or clothes or whatever, if there's some sort of luxury market anywhere near your area, then you can definitely start to find clients that, you know, can afford some discretionary income. And then you just have to find the ones that afford it can afford it and also value it because again, not everyone's gonna value

What we do and it's just attracting, tracking those that do. So that's really great to hear

Started your business. What did that look like? Did you start off doing in-person sales and products or did you start off as all digitals? What's the evolution of that?

So I did a whole lot of research before I jumped ship from my previous job. I'm definitely the kind of person who loves spreadsheets and watches videos and collects a whole bunch of data, which makes my career my previous life. Um, so I learned all about IPS before I actually jumped ship. So I started right from the beginning with the in person sales. And that was really awesome. I mean, it was, it was drilled into me by the people that I was following online and the education that I was doing at the time before I started. So I feel like I definitely had a bit of a leg up in that department cause I didn't have to go through the shoot- and-burn phase that some photographers do.

Right, right. Yeah. So all of you guys listening out there, if you've been listening to many of the Hair of the Dog podcast, guests, pretty much all of them so far have been doing in person sales. So that might tell you something about, um, you know, the, the type of business that is often most sustainable. Not saying that selling digitals is, you know, can never be profitable. It certainly can, but you need to make sure that they're priced appropriately. I think it's very hard to be profitable in a business where, you know, you're doing a full 10 hours session for your clients and you're only charging$200 because you just you're getting paid less than minimum wage. I mean, you're probably actually paying them by the time you pay your taxes and all the other expenses in your business. So anyway, just wanted to throw that out there.

You get to connect with them when you do sales, like it's an, it's an additional touch point where you get to have that meaningful discussion and go over all of the photos in person. I mean, that's, that's exciting.

Yeah. And I think people have this fear with in person sales where, Oh my gosh. You know, first I think it's a fear of putting their work out there of, you know, what is this person going to think? I guess, let me back up a second. I think that fear is based in, they're not overly confident in their work yet. And truly guys we've all been there. I mean, Crystal, were you confident in your work as soon as you started shooting?

No. It was definitely a process.

Yeah, exactly. And even still now, I mean, I've been shooting for over a decade and every once in a while I have a session that's not my best. And I'm like, Aw, they're gonna hate it. They don't, they still love it. So yeah. So I think the sphere of in person sales starts out from people not being confident in their work, which again is a normal part of this process. And the confidence just comes from repetition. And from realizing that, Oh no, my clients love this. And so they're scared to be in the room to show people their work because I don't know what they think is going to happen. That, that person's going to turn to them and say, you stink. I can't believe you do this as a profession. You, these images are terrible. I'm so disappointed. I'm outta here. And they walk out like that's, that's never going to happen. But I think that's what we build up in our head. That's going to happen from, in person sales. So, and I think then the other piece of that fear is a fear of feeling slimy, that they think that in person sales has to be this high pressure situation where you're there. And you say, if you don't buy this now, you're never going to see this image again. And forcing people to buy things that they don't want or spend more money than they want to spend. And that's not true either. I found and tell me if you found the same, that your clients love this piece of the puzzle, like that's such a service that you're helping them and they appreciate it. And they thank us for it because it's really overwhelming to see all these images. Like here's a gallery with 40 images. You look through it and tell me what you want. That's really overwhelming. Right?

Absolutely. It's part of our job to be the trusted advisor, to be able to guide them from beginning to end. And it really starts the first time you really are talking to them about their pet and how much their pet means to them. And what do they love about it all the way through to the end when you're helping them design something for their home that they want to see every day? Yeah, yeah. That

Conversation definitely starts from yeah. The website to our inquiry to our planning. And truly by the time we get to that sales session or, um, design consultation, whatever you want to call it, then, you know, they've already made that sale in their mind. They know what they're doing. And we're just here to share these beautiful images that they are going to love and help them design something that is going to fit perfectly in their home that they're going to love for years and years to come. So it's this incredible service. And then the bonus point, of course, is it becomes more sustainable for us because, you know, if you're putting this up online, then everything becomes a commodity and they're not going to order a 40 by 60 print for their living room because they've never ordered anything bigger than maybe an 11 by 14". They will then also tell themselves, Oh my gosh, people are going to think I'm crazy that I'm going to have this giant portrait of my dog in my house. So they let themselves get talked out of it. And then they ended up ordering whatever they know, which is prints and maybe adding on some digital files and, um, you know, by, by having this conversation with them and having this meeting with them where we're going over and we're showing them samples and we're giving them really a subconscious permission to purchase these beautiful items that it's okay, that people do this, they see it at our house. I know they come to my house. I do my in person sales in my, in my sales room. It's a formal dining room that we use as a sales room. And I have a 40 by 60 image of my daughter and a horse, like a silhouette image on that wall. And they come in and they immediately see, Oh my gosh, she uses this decorate her own house. Yes, it's okay to decorate my house with these images. And that just does so much for, you know, for growing our business. And again,

And permission is exactly right. I have a similar setup to you where I do my design consultations in my living room area, which it's kind of a living room, kitchen, dining room all is one room. And I've got a huge collection just behind my dining room table of Freya. There's this large pano piece and then three squares. So the total area it takes up is almost 50 inches by 30 inches ish with all four. And then next to the fireplace, I've got this tall and skinny piece. That's a composite piece of her and people come in and they love that. They're like, Oh my gosh, look at those huge pictures you have of your dog on your wall, like I know you're in the right place.

Yeah. Yeah. I do. I love to tell people too, you know, it's like, guess what all the traditional artists have been painting for a long time, people and animals, you know, like it's, it's been a normal piece of our art for, you know, centuries. So now it's just a different medium.

Yeah. So much joy. It's fantastic to have them large and up on the wall because you look at that and you're going to smile and it's just, it's just lovely.

It is. It is. Absolutely. Yeah. That's fantastic. We've talked in person sales, um, which is just again as you guys could tell Crystal and I are both big believers at it. And crystal, I have another question for you and that would be in the

Three years or so that you've started your business. What have you found is, has been the biggest, I guess the biggest leg up, the biggest change, if there was anything that happened in your business that you feel has made a big difference to get you from where you started to where you are now. Great question. Um, so my business has definitely felt a little bit like a roller coaster at times. You know, you, you are on a high and everything's going great. And then something will happen or, well, maybe you'll have a sale that wasn't as great as you thought it was going to come your eye. It could be almost anything but owning a business can feel a little bit like a roller coaster. And a lot of that for me has come from mindset and confidence levels like my husband and I like to joke with every photo shoot session that I go through I leave the session and I'm on a high, things went really well. And then I started looking through the photos and I'm like, Oh, did I get what I wanted to get? Oh my gosh, do I have anything? And I get home, put them on the computer. Okay. So it's like this and then down and then up and down, surely that number goes away. I mean, have you found, at least for me, I found that it started to get a little bit less severe, but that still always happens. And I don't think I've ever left a session where I didn't say to myself at some point either when I'm editing or when I'm, you know, right after I left, I'm like, Oh shoot. I wanted to capture that. I should have done that too, that I don't think ever goes away. It's kind of like when you always get nervous before a shoot or at least I do, even if I was super excited about it, there's still like those butterflies before you get started. Definitely. But the last year or so, I've gone through a huge amount of growth in the mindset and confidence perspective. And part of that has come from just practice. Uh, last year I did a book project that was super awesome, great fundraising project. And it really put me out there in a way where I had to deliver. I mean, I had a timeline that I set out there and I knew that these were my goals and I needed to get it done. I had more clients than I'd ever had more in person sales sessions than I've ever had before. Met more people connected with more businesses. I mean, it was, it was a huge step function of growth for me and for my business. And it was great. It was also exhausting. So at the end of the year, I had already decided, okay, this book project was amazing. I want to do another one. I want to take what I've learned from this last year and figure out how can I do it better? And I made the decision to join the Elevate group through Hair of the Dog, which I absolutely loved. And as a function of learning from the coaches and reading some books that have been suggested, I have been able to grow not only just within my business, but really kind of have this mental shift of confidence and really supported by goal setting and visualization. And I just felt a huge sense of confidence just within myself and every part of my business. And it really comes from having a bit of a plan. I'm a planner. I've definitely that spreadsheet person I mentioned. And so gathering my thoughts together, thinking about where do I want to be? What do I want to do? How am I going to get there? And then also talking about it. So having a small group of people that are my accountability group that we meet on a regular basis, Hey, what'd you do this week? What do you want to get done next week? How are you going to do that? How are you going to make this a success? It has been phenomenal to my mental success, my mental gains- which is where it all starts. Exactly. Exactly. Because then if you think about what you want to accomplish and how you want to accomplish it and okay, well where could things go wrong? And is it going to be okay if it does go wrong? Yes. It puts you in this whole different state that allows you to achieve things that you wouldn't be able to achieve if you were operating from this place of scarcity or nerves, or nobody's going to want to buy what I have to sell or my price too high or whatever we tell ourselves that make us scared and nervous. I just had such a level of growth. It's been,

I love it. And we've loved witnessing your growth. That's been fantastic to watch super quick though, just to mention that book project, if you guys want to learn more about the book project, um, if you listened to podcast episode 10, I interviewed Kaitlyn McCall, who does the Tails Of series. We talked all about book projects, so that's your crystal followed. So definitely check that out. Um, but back to the mindset stuff and this confidence, I think, you know, one of the biggest changes or the biggest ways that we can help to gain more confidence because really what is confidence? It's it's I think this is not an official definition. It's Nicole's definition. Confidence is when we start to realize that, you know, are we stopped basically here? Confidence is when we stop assigning meaning to all of these random things. And then it becomes not about us anymore because as humans, I think our biggest, I mean, it's just how we're built is something happens. And we assigned to meaning an inquiry comes in, we talk to them, they don't choose us because we're too expensive. Obviously that means that no one's ever going to book us again, that who are we kidding? We're not actually cut out for this, no way our business is going to take off. I better lower all my prices. I should've just stayed at$200. You know, it just goes into this whole rabbit hole where when you start to realize what that internal dialogue is saying, and you start to see that you're assigning meaning to this thing. Maybe this person contact you with their inquiry and you know, maybe somebody, their hours just got cut. So they still really want to do this, but they just really can't spend the money right now. But they're going to come back later on. Maybe they're in grad school. I've had clients that have gotten in touch with they're still in grad school when they hire me three years later, once they're out of school and have a job. So, you know, it's, it had nothing to do with me. And there was nothing that I could have done to change their mind and just, it just literally had nothing to do with me, but it's so easy for us to take that and make it everything about us. Whereas once we start to realize that internal dialogue and we stop it and say, what meaning am I giving this? And then we can just move forward and say, okay, well that particular client didn't work out here, but let's move forward and see how else I can get other leads. And then that gives us direction, which gives us this confidence, which just attracts more leads and attracts more potential clients. And then that leads to more clients because we're attracting more potential clients because we're working from this place of possibility instead of from this place of, you know, uh, none of this is going to work out because the secret is where we're putting our attention. So the longer we stay in this attention place of, Oh man, this isn't gonna work out. You know, there's who am I to be doing this? Then that's where our attention is. That's where we stay. But if we can stop that conversation and look ahead, then that's really the secret and that's the hard work. And it's so intangible then, you know, so many people are just like, well, just tell me my marketing strategy, but there is no secret marketing strategy. The secret is to just keep going and to know what you want and to have a goal of what you want your business to look like and keep moving towards it, knowing there's going to be setbacks and not assigning meaning to those setbacks, just picking up and saying, all right, this happened, how do I do better next time? And just keep going the new lesson. So, yeah, so there's a whole little mindset tangent for all of you guys, but that, that is the secret to having a successful business life, whatever, like it's not pet photography specific. Um, you know, that's really just the secret for getting what we want in life in general. Agreed. Cause you can find yourself in either a positive feedback loop or a negative feedback loop in that kind of thing. Because if you're stuck in this negativity, negativity, negativity, it can be really hard to pull yourself out. So it's almost like you have to just stop, take a breath, think about what's going on and how you can make the shift. And then when you find yourself in that positive loop, it's like, wow, things are going great. You're setting your goals. You're visualizing them. You're doing what you need to be doing, taking advantage of opportunities and operating from that place of service and gratitude and abundance. And then things are just going to continue to get better and better. Yes. Yup. Yeah. And one of the other things that really helps is, um, being surrounded by other people that understand that and get that and help hold us accountable to that, which is, I think the secret of our Elevate coaching group is that, you know, we all have setbacks and we can feel kind of bummed about it for a minute, but then we're all here to be like, okay, well that happened. What's next. Um, and, and to know that you have that support of, Oh, I want to try to do this, but I'm not sure what that looks like. So I that's where a lot of people get hung up too. They have this idea, you know, whether it's a book project or a new marketing strategy or creating their business where they have this idea and here's where I want to get to. And they see this goal, that's 500 steps ahead, but they want to have all 500 steps mapped out before they even start, which is never going to happen. And even if you do, there's no way you're not going to change it because I'm wanting to have it

Perfectly planned before you hit the go button. Boy, that can be a scary trap to fall into. I've definitely heard from our group a dozen times, at least the whole imperfect action. You just didn't, wouldn't have to be perfect. Just get started. And that can be hard, but it's so true,

Really hard and really scary. And yeah, and you know, you just sometimes need to know the next step and then the next, the future steps after that start appearing, and then you can make so much more progress just by moving because just by sitting is just, you know, you're never going to get anywhere. So we've definitely got to keep moving. And I think that's all a trap that a lot of people, especially when we're starting our business fall into, um, is student mode where I'm just going to learn. I'm just going to learn. I see that a lot sometimes with Academy members and hair of the dog Academy and I try to encourage everyone, okay, get out of student mode. There's a lot of information in here and there's a lot of information you need to know to start your pet photography business, but you don't need to know it all before you start and you don't have to be an expert in all of it before you start, because then you'll never start. And I don't know about you, but I've found the biggest teacher for me has just been experience. So it's been getting out in the arena, doing it, putting it out there and then learning lessons from it.

Well, a lot of people are afraid of failure and that's something where it's not a bad thing to be afraid, but you can't let that stop you. I mean, it's almost like I heard someone say, just fail faster, you know, just, just get out there and try it because every time you do, it's an opportunity to learn and to get better next time. And that has really stuck with me in a big way. Just fail faster. It'll be all right. Just get a hundred nos

Because yeah, because then you're going to get some yeses

Exactly.

Yeah. But if you stay home afraid of that one, no. Then you're going to get zero yeses. Cause you haven't asked anybody. Um, yeah. Not afraid of failure. Again, that comes down to the meaning that we give it because putting out a marketing, um, promotion in which we get no, nobody booking, you know. Well, what does that really mean? That means nobody booked. Does it mean, you know, that you stink? That's what we're telling ourselves. That's not what it means. It just means, Oh, this, you know, nobody booked. So could it be, I didn't put it out in the proper channels. Could it be my messaging was off. Could it be it wasn't clear enough. Maybe there wasn't urgency. Like those are the things to look at, but our mind takes us into, Oh, it's all about us. So we just stay safe and we don't do anything because if we do that, then that must mean these deep seated fears of I'm not good enough. I'm not worthy enough. Who am I to be doing? This must be true. So yeah. That's that whole confidence thing again. Exactly. Yes. Oh my goodness. Oh Crystal, this has been such a good conversation. I don't know that. I love it. I love it. Um, you actually, I do want to talk about this real quick before we go. Cause I love fun stories like this. Sure. Yeah. Because you know, you and I, and, and um, our Elevate crew, we are always believing in the power of again, where we're putting our attention and, um, the power of action and the power of making decisions and the power of what we tell ourselves. So let me back up here briefly. Um, Oh gosh. It was like a month or two ago. There was, I was listening to a podcast and I was out grazing my horse. And it was talking about basically how you just need to decide that something that's going to happen and you know, and then take the action towards it. But the first step of the process is committing to the decision of, this is what I want. This is where we're going to go. And I had always pulled myself. I've been like, you know, out in barns, since I was eight, never once found a four leaf Clover. And I always just told myself, Oh, you know, whatever, they're hard to find. So I had the story that they're hard to find. Now, if I continue to hold onto that story for the rest of my life, is it going to affect my whole life? No. Like never finding a four leaf clover is not going to drastically change the trajectory of my life, but it's just an illustration of these little beliefs. Some are benign, some are not, but we don't even know that we hold them. And then I was there and I was listening to that podcast and I was like, you know what? I've never found a four-leaf clover. Cause I never decided I was going to find a four-leaf clover. I could find a four-leaf clover. And I literally looked down at my feet and wherever my eyes settled was right out of four-leaf clover. And I was like, okay, now that is weird. That is a little crazy. So I know you had a situation like that recently because we were talking a little bit in Elevate Marika one of our coaches was sharing how she does her vision boards. And then I shared, I have one in my office of just future travel. I want to take, cause my number one value in my life is freedom. You know, freedom to do what I want freedom to run my own business, freedom, financial freedom, freedom to travel, freedom and compensating, all things. Um, and so, yeah, so then you started making some plans to call your little story. So I have recently been working through a goals and time management series of exercises from Heather. And one of the early exercises as part of this program is to write down a hundred dreams and a hundred that's a lot when you sit down. And I think a lot of people, you know, so many times I'm guilty of this too. Heather even asked me, Heather's one of our coaches in Elevate Heather Lahtinen. And she's also coaching the Academy. I was in Pittsburgh and we got together and we were talking about stuff and she's like, what are your goals? What do you really want? And I actually was stopped for a minute. I'm like, my God, I don't have them specific enough. Like I can't just list them out. I should be able to list off 10, like boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

I did it because I it's not, I don't think it's a natural state. Like we have this natural state of wanting more of wanting things so we don't get specific and we don't spell it out. And that's the magic. So yeah. So a hundred, that's an amazing exercise. I think for the most part, our, our general goals tend to live in this vague nebulous brain wave of who knows until you actually are asked to write it down. And so I actually had to do it in stages. I would do like 10 to 20 at a time, come back to it the next day and write another 10. And it's funny. Cause when I look at this sheet, they're all in different pin colors.

Right?

I love stuff that I had recently accomplished. Some of it's business related, some of it's fitness related, some of it's travel related a lot like a vision board, except in written specifics. I didn't pull this from magazines. I pulled it from my head. And so I'm writing and working on this and I printed it out. So this is pen and paper kind of thing. But I had my computer open and I had Facebook on, in the background, you know, and I see a, um, post come up about, um, potentially working on maybe being interviewed in a podcast and I'm like, huh, now that's interesting because I was literally writing. I think I was on like number 70 or something like that. And I looked a couple of pages back and okay. Staring at me right in the face. Then number 12, be featured on a podcsat.

Number 12. I love it.

I'm sitting here with this piece of paper in my hand, looking at my computer screen, going okay, you're talking to me right now because had I not written this down, I probably would have seen that post. Hey, are you interested in being featured on a podcast? I would have thought, yeah, that sounds cool. And then I would have kept scrolling. That sounds intimidating. That sounds big. It sounds like something that someone who's been in the business for 20 years would be invited to do yet. I'm looking at this piece of paper that says be featured on a podcast, written in purple in my handwriting. And I'm thinking, okay, Crystal, if you really want this, if this is a goal you should respond to this. There's an opportunity. What are you going to do about it? Are you going to reach out and take it? You said you have this goal. You visualized it. If you know, opportunity's knocking, what are you going to do? And so I watched people start to respond and I'm sitting here. You should really type something

M-E. Two letters.

So I think there were like four responses and I'm like, okay, seriously, just do it. And so I type, okay, I'm interested, I'm nervous, but I'm interested. And I just hit enter and I got up and I walked away from my computer.

Don't delete it. Don't delete it.

It also felt really, really good because it's one thing to have this vague notion, Oh yeah, I want to do this. It's something else entirely to do an exercise like this and actually put into words. What do you want, what are you interested in? What do you, what do you dream about? What do you love? All of those sorts of things. And it's great to want those things, but in order to actually accomplish them, you've got to go out and do things. You've got to take advantage of opportunities that you see. You can't just wish for it to land in your lap. And so when I saw that post come through, it just felt pretty incredible to go from writing down a goal, thinking about the goal, letting my subconscious percolate on it, and then seeing that come up and doing something about it. And now I'm sitting here talking to you. That is so exciting and also amazing. And thank you.

You're welcome and thank you. Cause I mean like the things that we're talking about too, I mean, I think it's going to be resonating so much with so many people out there because we all suffer from this. We don't want to call it a confidence problem, but it is it's our, our, this fear in our brain of, you know, and it's fairly irrational because by us putting our business out there or maybe doing our first Instagram post or, you know, creating an actual website for our business or claiming and saying I'm a pet photographer, you know, all of those things, none of them are actually going to make us lose our house, lose our friends, lose our family, have to live alone in the woods and survive against like saber tooth tigers. Um, but our brains still think it might. So it's really easy for it to be like, Oh no, you're safe here. Stay in this job. You don't like, you know, it's just a hobby, you can't make this a real thing. So just, just taking these little steps, just one at a time, um, yeah. That's just where the magic is. And, and then

But also dreaming bigger, I mean, I think that the fear prevents a lot of us and I definitely was guilty of this, especially in the beginning. You know, you think that because of these fears and these limiting beliefs that you maybe won't be able to achieve big things, but then when you realize it's one of the quotes that again, Heather, um, coaches said, nobody wins when you play small. I mean, you've got to, you've got to dream big. And um, for me that these dreams that I wrote down, they were, they were pretty, pretty big dreams. Like how is it going to happen? Unless you put it into writing, you, you take it from that vague nebulous notion and you put it into words and you make it specific and then do what it takes to, to achieve the ones that mean something to you

Truly when you start to do that, the path becomes so clear and opportunities seem to arise out of really thin air. Um, and it's really pretty magical how that starts to happen. Agreed. Yeah. I love it. Oh, this has been such a good conversation, Crystal. Thank you so much for taking the time to chat with me and um, all of our listeners. So they can hopefully be inspired to take some imperfect action to, you know yeah. Keep moving along on their journey and, and they, to their successes is inevitable, if you guys have these thoughts, like we would never be given. I believe this firmly that we are not given dreams or goals that we are unable to attain. It might take work. It might be hard. There might be setbacks, there will be setbacks, but if you've been given a dream, you can, you have the, what you need inside of you to attain it. If you're willing to put in the work and to take the imperfect action. So yeah. Get to work. Don't be afraid to dream big a hundred percent. And then, you know, remember the reason that we don't dream big, it's usually because we're afraid of, again, the meaning we're going to assign it. So if you start to feel bad about something, you know, and this can be anything. If you start to have these negative emotions around something, just ask yourself, what am I, what meaning am I giving to this? Because when you're feeling bad about something, it's usually because you have assigned a meaning to it. And that meaning is, you know, something bad. So therefore you feel negative. So that simple question of whenever you feel overwhelmed, insecure, scared, bad, you know, sad, like, just ask what meaning am I giving this? And that sometimes it's all, you need to see something in a new perspective and surround yourself with people who inspire you. That's definitely been a big help for me to be spend time with and talk with people who make you feel motivated, make you feel inspired that are a sounding board, and that can help excite you about the things and the goals that you have that you want to achieve a hundred percent. Awesome. Thank you again, crystal, tell us where people can find you and follow you out there on the interwebs. So my website is krystalphotography.com and that's Krystal with a K and then on Instagram and Facebook, it's Krystal photography, LLC. So again, Krystal with the K photography, LLC. And do you have any questions reach out? I'd love to talk with anybody who is nervous about getting started or dreaming big or anything like that. It's been quite a, quite a journey and I've played nice i. And if you're listening out there and you're looking for your people, we have various communities, we have our big Hair of the Dog, um, Facebook group, that's our big fee free group with my gosh, I think 13,000 plus pet photographers now. And then we have the Hair of the Dog Academy, which is for those pet photographers that are ready to start taking action to improve their craft and grow their business. And then of course we have Elevate too, which is a smaller group coaching program with, um, you know, various coaches and, and, um, just a higher level of support. And, um, yeah, we would love to have you join us in any of those groups. So just reach out and let us know if you have questions and definitely go follow crystal and reach out to her and let her know if this interview has helped you at all. Cause there's nothing that makes any of us feel better than when we find out how something has impacted you in a positive way so that, um, you know, makes us all feel amazing. And this is why we do that. So thanks for joining us again, Krystal and thanks for joining us, everyone at home. And we'll talk to you soon.

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.