00:00:00 Hey, everyone. Welcome to the hair of the dog podcast. Today. I am talking with Heather Lahtinen and we are going to be sharing the shadow side of education and conferences. You don't want to miss this one. 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,

00:00:21 you've come to the right place. And now your host, pet photographer, travel addict, chocolate martini connoisseur, Nicole Begley, Nicole here from hair of the dog. And I am here once again with Heather Lahtinen, your favorite hair of the dog podcast, guest, and mine don't tell anybody else, but hello there. Welcome. Thank you so much for having me,

00:00:46 Nicole. Of course, of course you guys might know Heather again from our podcast here. She's also the creator of the flourish Academy. She is the head editing Ninja and hair of the dog Academy and also our leading mindset coach in the Academy and also in our coaching group, elevate Heather. So good to have you here today. So good to be here.

00:01:08 I'm excited for our topic today because it is that time of year. It is that time of year. Everyone's now like what, what type of year is it? Right? It's it's winter, but it is conference time of year conference season in the photography world, because most of us, at least here in the Northern hemisphere are not shooting as much this time of year in first quarter.

00:01:35 So a lot of educational events are being held and a lot of them are being held virtually this year, which is awesome because more people can attend them. But it's also is challenging. Now some of you guys might have attended imaging USA and Kirsi and Caitlin from the pet photographers club. Just put on an amazing conference that Heather and I were both speaking at that was done virtually and just incredibly well done,

00:01:59 kudos to both of you ladies. But here's my question for all of you guys that have attended either of those or any other educational piece in the past two months, what have you done with it? Have you done anything with it yet? Have you implemented yet? Have you implemented, have you even taken the, taken any action towards a particular goal based on what you have learned?

00:02:22 We so often tend to fall into this trap of learning or what I call consuming, consuming content, learning something, you know, obviously with the hopes of becoming more competent in different areas of your business and you want to learn so that you can grow, but you cannot just learn to grow. There's a step in between it's called action. You actually have to implement and do something.

00:02:48 And I just see a lot of photographers learning, taking courses, which is fantastic. Of course I support that. But then my, my question, as you just stated, Nicole, is have you done With that information? Yeah. And I think most people get stuck in that student trap as okay. I learned from this person, Oh, but this person teaches that too.

00:03:09 I should learn what they have to say, Oh wait, maybe this person does a differently. I need to learn that. Oh, but could it be this or that? And they feel like they have to have literally every possible piece of information on a particular subject before they try and move forward and that they need to have the perfect plan and launch it in this perfection manner,

00:03:32 which we know that perfection doesn't exist and being done with our business doesn't exist. You're always continuing to work on it. So I feel like that's the easy way to kind of fall into that trap of, I don't know enough. I don't know enough. And I had better get the perspective of at least 83 different people before I put something together myself.

00:03:52 And that's just a fallacy. Certainly you need to learn like, let's take pricing. For example, maybe you need to take a course and learn some price. Absolutely. But do you need to take it from 14 different people to see their different perspective? No, the answer is no. You need to learn about it and then implement take action so that you can get the feedback from your market,

00:04:14 from your specific business. However you want to establish it and then make changes as necessary based on what you learned from taking action and listen, no judgment. Nicole. I have fallen into this trap. I have taken several courses on one particular topic. By the time I took, you know, say the fourth or fifth course, I was like, okay,

00:04:35 Heather, now you're just wasting your time and money because you already know this. So I think part of what's happening here is a lack of trust in oneself. Would you? Yes. Yes. And I am with you. I'm also a course junkie or it's like, Oh, I want to learn that because I love to learn. I love to learn.

00:04:58 But yeah, I think when you are, well, I think there's a couple of different things. There's definitely, I think that fear of, you know, that fear that's holding you back and it's that okay, it's not perfect. So I can't go forward, but I don't think people realize that the only way to start to get to that perfect is to actually move forward and get that feedback like you mentioned.

00:05:19 So the more action we take the more quickly we can actually move to a place where we're like, Oh my gosh, this is working for me. This is fantastic. You will get there so much faster. If you took one course, it implemented took action. You would get there faster than if you did not take action and took 10 courses because it doesn't matter until you start to implement.

00:05:43 So I found myself actually falling into this trap. This is several years ago, I was really big into personal growth and development. I became a certified life breakthrough life coach. And I was just, I was in this mode, Nicole. I called it consume. I was just consume, consume, consume. I would watch content. I would take notes.

00:06:00 I would outline things. I was a good student. Okay. But I wasn't really taking any action or at least not, I don't think enough action. So here's what I did. I would allow myself to consume while I was on the treadmill, first thing in the morning. And then once I stepped off the treadmill, I changed my mindset. I went from consumption to creation.

00:06:23 So what I'm suggesting here is that you set aside time in your schedule for learning and education. That's what I'm calling consumption and time of your schedule for creation. And I think that this should be weighted heavily towards creation taking action. Yes. Still watch your courses of course. But do you need to be watching the courses all day, every day and then sitting around and overthinking why you're not doing it,

00:06:47 that's not helpful and it's not moving your view forward. So could you look at your week or your schedule and decide, okay, I'm going to allocate, you know, this day, at this time I'm going to, because I actually love to watch courses. So I have to limit myself or I would sit and watch them all day. So I have to say,

00:07:04 okay, I could watch a course on this day from 11 to noon or from noon to one while I'm eating lunch, maybe. But then the other hours of the day that are dedicated to my business need to be about taking action and creating something. Yes. Yes. I'm the same way that I limit myself to, I kind of reward myself a couple of times a week with a late afternoon education binge,

00:07:31 sorry now. Yeah, exactly. I've been learning, maybe Michelle, Parsley's elevate your art beyond the brushes membership to learn Photoshop painting. So that's something I'm like, okay. You know, a couple of times a week I sit down and I watch a lesson and I do some practice and I upload my practice files and get some feedback. And that is something that is my,

00:07:52 I don't have a name for it, but I have, you know, in the morning I try to do that. The higher end, the higher energy, more creative things, the action, because I'm more mentally sharp in the morning. I am not an evening person. I am not one of those night owls. That's doing my best work at 2:00 AM.

00:08:07 If I'm up at 2:00 AM, nothing that's happening that day or the next several days. So I find my kind of energetic slump is in the afternoon. So I tend to reserve the afternoons for doing, you know, kind of rote admin tasks. That's when I'll do my client editing, that's when I'll do some education to kind of pick me back up again,

00:08:28 it's better than cookies. I do that too though, but that's what I've found works for me. I do love what you said before that one of the reasons people maybe need to keep consuming and they're not ready to take the action is that they don't trust themselves, that they don't trust that, you know, maybe that they have what they need or maybe I think it's also part of that by not doing it,

00:08:57 they're avoiding any future rejection of not doing it. Right. And I heard a great quote the other day. I'm sure you'll have something to say about this. That fear is essentially just worrying about feeling a future unwanted emotion. Yes. Oh, I agree with that. A hundred percent. And that comes heavily from Dr. Joan Rosenberg's book 90 seconds to the life that you love.

00:09:20 She said it's not fear at all. It's you are avoiding a future unwanted emotion in this case. I think you are 100% correct. It has nothing to do with learning or action. Okay. It does. What I'm saying here is it's more about this trust issue and the lack of trust that you have in yourself to make what you are labeling as the right decision.

00:09:45 But you know, here, hair of the dog, we don't believe in right or wrong decisions. We just believe in making choices that lead to different consequences. So if you make a decision that maybe isn't ideal, then you just adjust and you make another decision, but we don't label them as good, bad, right or wrong. Because of course,

00:10:03 you're going to, if you do that, you're going to try to avoid the bad or the wrong decisions. And so you continue to seek out education, hoping that you will avoid all possible pitfalls and thereby experience nothing but perfect, beautiful success and feel great about yourself. Well, that's just not how being an entrepreneur works instead of avoiding the pitfalls because they are calming.

00:10:29 Can we learn to adapt and be okay with making a decision that's less than optimal and just make the decision anyway. And years ago I will never, I'm not a Dr. Phil fan. Okay. Let's just, I mean, he's fine. Whatever, if he helps people, that's great. I just happened to overhear him say something like sometimes you have to make the right decision and sometimes you have to make the decision,

00:10:50 right. Which I, to just make the decision and then adjust the most successful people I know are very quick to make decisions because they know it will get them to their end game faster. Even if it is labeled as the quote wrong one, they know that taking action will get them where they need to be. So I wonder if people could just ask themselves,

00:11:15 could I trust myself just enough? I mean, you're smart enough to be able to put a price out there or a photo or edit without overthinking and looking for the exact right. Well, you know, that actually begs another question. When people say I'm not ready, especially with pricing, I'm not ready. I need more information on pricing. What,

00:11:39 there's an underlying assumption there. And that's, there's a right or wrong answer because they don't want to make the wrong one. And that's not true with any of this. There are just different choices that lead to different outcomes. So if you could just reframe even not your thinking, but your words around it, I think you might feel differently. And if you could be okay,

00:11:57 saying, okay, how about you screw this up? I say it all the time. I'm probably going to screw this up, but I'm okay with that because I'll learn something. And then it will point me in a better direction. Exactly. Nothing is permanent, nothing that we are making these choices in our business are permanent. And we can change our pricing.

00:12:18 We can change our sales strategy. We can change our marketing. We can change our website. We can change literally every single piece of this business. There is not one piece of a photography business that I can look at and say, Oh, that's permanent nothing. Right, Right, right. It's not like having a child. In fact, that's a good point.

00:12:36 I have this whole kind of mentality that I teach in elevate around decision-making and I say this to people is the decision reversible. Can you change it? And the answer to that question, 99.9% of the time is yes, there are actually very, very few decisions that are not reversible. If that's the case, could you then just relax into it? Nobody's putting concrete on your feet.

00:13:04 You know, people act like, well, if I choose this pricing model or this particular price, they, they agonize over that decision. They spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about or watching courses on it. When the reality is you can change it. If you couldn't change it the next day, if you decide that you don't like it it's as you just said,

00:13:25 Nicole, not nothing is permanent. In fact, everything is very, very temporary. Yes. A hundred percent. So what advice do you have Heather, for people that are listening to this and they're saying, Oh, I've been, I've been binging on this content and I have not been implementing, Oh my gosh, What should I do? Yeah.

00:13:46 The first thing you do is you have to take action on one thing. And I think another trap that people fall into is there's multiple things they're looking at. So they're overwhelmed with many different projects. Maybe that's what I need to get better at my craft shooting and editing. Oh, any pricing or any marketing or any business or whatever. Could you choose one thing,

00:14:05 one thing that if I call this actually the domino goal, the push goal, which is the one that's kind of weighing you down the most, which one is sort of causing you the most distress, pick that one for lots of people, not everyone, but a lot of people that seems to be pricing. So if you say, okay, I'm just going to put something out there with pricing,

00:14:24 you need to do it like today. Somebody said to me last week, well, it's my website. You know, it's really bothered me and it hasn't been done and I just need to get it done. And this was in the morning and I said, okay, great. You have, until the end of the day, he was like, what?

00:14:36 And I'm like, how hard is it to upload a photo to your website? You know how to upload a photo to your website. But for some reason, your PR, well, I got to go through my images. I got to find the perfect. I said, no, you don't just go. Just pick one, just make a decision rapidly.

00:14:52 Could you challenge yourself to make a decision and take action and try to schedule or balance that the consumption versus the creation much, like you just said a moment ago, Nicole, I reward myself with watching courses, but it's only after I've taken action. And I'm the same as you, my morning is my most productive time. So I do my difficult tasks or what I call my heavy lifting.

00:15:18 I do that in the morning. And then in the afternoon, if I have the space for it, I will allow myself to maybe watch a course or read a book. If not that it's maybe later in the evening, because I love to, of course, we all have to learn, and I'm not suggesting that you stop that. But I am suggesting that you pick one thing,

00:15:37 you take action today. And another one is somebody said to me recently, I need to change my prices. And I said, Oh, okay, go like you have an hour, you know, go do it. You have my permission go. She Said, well, I've got, I said, how hard is it to hit backspace on the keyboard and change a number?

00:15:56 It is not. Or write down a new number. It's not hard at all. What's hard is the thinking. And you're overthinking also ask yourself is the amount of thinking, learning, et cetera I'm doing on this particular subject. Is it equal to the outcome? Let me give you an example. One of our members said she wanted to order a 16 by 24 print of a specific image.

00:16:19 She posted the image and she was agonizing over this decision. Okay, that's my word. She might not say that, but it sounded to me like she was really struggling. She said, do you think this crop will work is a 16 by 24? And what if it does? And I don't know what to do. And on and on. And I said,

00:16:34 hold on a second. How much does that? 16 by 24 cost. And I can't remember what it was. I want to say, what is it like 30 or $40? I don't know. It was maybe 60. I don't know. It doesn't matter. It was so inexpensive. I said, well, what's the risk. You're out 40,

00:16:51 50, $60. Who cares? If that's the case, then you should upload the photo and hit order immediately. Now, if you are thinking about ordering a sample album, that's $500. Okay. Okay. Take a minute. Take a minute to consider. Is that the album you want to show to your clients, but I mean, does it,

00:17:09 does it warrant the amount of time you're spent, think about this? Does by overthinking warrant, the amount of time of this particular task, the answer is usually no, it does not. So could you just take action, any type of action to get you moving? I see this a lot with people starting their business and agonizing spending weeks and months,

00:17:30 trying to figure out the perfect logo. Oh my gosh. Here's the thing. A logo is not going to make or break your business. Feel don't care. What your logo is. Grab a font, put it in a, just a, a font, text, only logo, go to creative market, grab something that's just simple and minimalistic and understated and pick a couple of colors and go,

00:17:53 and guess what? When your business starts to be built and you are dialed in your style and you know, kind of what experience you want for your clients, and you just have more information, then you can certainly go invest in a graphic designer. That's going to build this amazing brand identity for you. Because if you don't know who you are, it's really hard to build a brand identity about it.

00:18:16 And again, no, one's going to look at a beautiful website and beautiful images and this a great experience to be like, man, I was going to hire them. But that logo no, no people go to five guys. I mean, that has the most boring logo ever. Yeah. I was going to ask you, do you think you've ever lost any business because of your logo?

00:18:39 I don't. I don't think so. The opposite is also true. Has anybody hired you because of your logo? I actually said this. I said this at elevate the other day I was doing a social media audit and I said, get your logos off of your Facebook profile page. Nobody buys a logo. They are not buying your logo. They don't care.

00:18:58 Okay. Do you want it to look nice and represent? Of course. All right. Whatever, but just put something. Nicole, how many logos have you had, would you say over the years to, Oh, okay. Well, you're pretty focused. I probably Have ten first one. My first one, I took My signature and made that my logo and just put photography and Sarah sansera font underneath.

00:19:18 Right. And then it was classic. It was simple. There were no illustrations. It was my signature done. And then, you know, then about five years and I invested in a full rebrand with a professional graphic designer and that's where I had all the illustrations and everything else. But again, my logo is again, just my name and this time with a Sarah font.

00:19:38 And it's just very simple, but Nicole, I can't start my business. I don't even, I don't have a name for my business and I don't have a logo. What should I name? Right. Talk Tography at the end, it's hard to Understand or spell or people, you know, or there's too many, you know, if you're Jane Smith and there's three,

00:19:57 Jane's missing your market already. Okay. Maybe some initials, maybe, you know, maybe you have to think a little bit more outside of the box, but again, no, one's going to say, Oh, her photography business is cute. Dog photography. And her photography business is Jane Smith. And I am not hiring someone named Jane Smith. It doesn't make any sense.

00:20:16 You know, by first They bought my business was Heather law to then photography and I, and I just a cursive font with my name. And I learned very quickly, nobody could say law to them when they saw it. So that was stupid. So I was like, okay, that was stupid. I changed it to Hal photography. I think the issue here is people.

00:20:33 People don't want to change something, meaning I just want to stick with it and I want it to work forever. And if you put that type of pressure on yourself, it's no wonder you're spending buds to think about it. I didn't care. I just thought I'll just call it. I mean, I didn't, I guess, you know, you do what was good for me back then,

00:20:52 because this is 17 years ago. Now the interwebs didn't have the courses like they do now. I didn't have the resources. So I did have to make a decision. Correct. There was no other, I mean, unless I went and got a book or read a book on branding or, but I didn't, I felt more urgency to get this out there.

00:21:10 So I put Heather lots of the photography and I think it was like a, a camera icon or something really very basic. I had a one-page website that had that and my phone number and two or three photos that I had taken one page, one page website. And then, because I listened, I wasn't delusional. I knew it sucked. I knew that I wouldn't stay here forever,

00:21:32 but I knew that it would get me into action and doing things and then I could evolve and change it. So yeah, that's why I've had a lot of logos, several different names and it evolved over the years and it got better and nicer and more refined. You just can't expect yourself to pick everything exactly. As it's going to be 10 years from now,

00:21:52 because you don't even know what that looks like. Right, right, right. Exactly. Completely unrealistic. Yeah. That's why I love a name that can go any direction. When I started off, I did families and pets. So if I had my name is some cute family photographer name, you know, chubby toe, whatever, chubby cheeks, shabby toes,

00:22:12 let me head Whatever tography, you know, Then it becomes harder to pivot. And so I was, you know, when I started and it wasn't even necessarily, it was mostly by accident, but I look at it, I'm like, okay, my signature never going to change, never going out of style. Right. My name it's easy enough to say and remember and spell.

00:22:34 And so it was just a no brainer to just do that. And it, it served me well because I mean, I had the same logo, Heather, but I had many iterations of different fonts or different colors or different. I mean, the colors kind of stayed the same, but different patterns and branding elements that, you know, work my way through as I evolved my branding knowledge.

00:22:57 But again, I was writing a six figure business with nothing fancy, right? Absolutely nothing fancy. I did my call on elevate this morning and saying that we were talking about workflow and client management systems and things like that. And I'm like, guys, I held up this folder and I said, this is how I ran a six figure business With folders And a magazine on the wall that I would staple on my workflow to the front of the folder and move it down the rack as like,

00:23:26 don't overthink it. Just take action. What do I need right now? Like, what's my goal. Where's my business at, what do I want my business to look like? What is the most important action to take right now to get me there? You know? And if you're looking, you're like, all right, well, I don't have pricing.

00:23:42 I don't have marketing. I don't have a CRM. I don't have this or that. It's like, okay, what do I need? You need to have a legal business. Okay. What do you need? I need to have something to sell some sort of pricing, even if it's just digital files and prints. And then you have a couple sales and you add on a wall art,

00:23:56 and then you have a couple sales and you add on an album, like, it's fine. It's a growing process. You don't need to start your business with a beautifully designed professional inquiry guide and fancy product guide and this and that, and a perfectly automated, amazing CRM and all these things. They come later. So he makes me crazy when people do that with the CRM,

00:24:17 someone in elevate recently said to me, while I've been working, you know, for, I don't know, several weeks, months, you know, just so focused on the CRM, the CRM, the CRM. And I said, how, how does the CRM get you? Clients? Does the CRM make you money? You know, the sealer,

00:24:30 it makes you more efficient, which ultimately could make you more profitable. I'm not arguing that I had a CRM for years. I use TAVI back in the day, but you need to be focused on leads and sales or getting out there and shooting and taking action and certainly work on the backend. You know, the website, the CRM, when you can,

00:24:51 and when you have time, but don't wait to move forward in your business because you don't have your CRM up and running and you don't have these automated email responses and your perfectly designed inquiry guide. When you do that, you wait forever a and you, you say things like, I'm just not ready yet. I'm not ready. And I, I really disliked that because I think,

00:25:13 well, how would you know, when you are ready? Like what's the gauge or the metric, well, I'd have it done. Well, how would you know what it's done until you test it? And you're using it, you will know if it was working right anyway. Yeah. A hundred percent. And then even if you are managing to put this together perfectly and you start to test it,

00:25:34 there are still going to be things to update and change. So you're going to get to what works for you, because I believe strongly that no two people run a business exactly the same way. You know, they're, we're all running things a little bit differently. We all have different goals for our business. We all have different personal obligations that we need to work our business around.

00:25:53 We all have different products that we love. We all have different markets, even though I kind of think most markets are pretty similar. So I kind of hate that excuse of that won't work in my market. Like unless you live in a town of 10 people, we can, we can probably make most of these general things work in your market, right?

00:26:14 So even if you have this business, you know, that you are learning from somebody that you are going through these courses, you're going to need to adjust it a little bit for your own personal use for your own personal business. So let's get there faster. This is actually a really excellent point. It's like, how can I, how can I create this so that it works for me?

00:26:39 Or how can I change things? You know, what I'm thinking of specifically is first, we're both profit. First people, the book by Mike<inaudible> is an excellent resource. We teach it inside of elevate. And he says in the book, and I so appreciated this here's the structure, but make sure it works for you. And if you don't need or want,

00:26:59 I forget, I think he's like five or six accounts, you know, in, for work for you. Or maybe you need seven that's okay, too. You have to make it fit your business. And you're right. Your business is like your fingerprint. It is 100% unique to you. And as it should be, because that's what we're creating here was what I call lifestyle businesses that work based on our season of life.

00:27:20 So it's going to look differently for everyone, which by default means that there's no right or wrong way to do it. Yes. Yeah. The only wrong way to do it is not to do it. Yes, yes. Oh my goodness. Okay. You know what I'm thinking? No, I'm thinking, how do we structure things so that, you know,

00:27:42 you and I both teach Courses, how do we Structure these courses so that we, our students don't fall into the trap of consume, consume, consume, and not create, this is actually something you and I have been working on pretty diligently over the past several months, because we want to make sure that our students specifically are taking action and getting results because we want them to win when they win.

00:28:04 We win. So what are your thoughts around? No, man, this is so good. This is definitely something that I have given so much thought and take an action in the Academy because the hair of the dog Academy has so much content and you know, it's easy when there's a lot of content for people to come in and be like, Oh my gosh,

00:28:24 there's so much, Oh my God, there's I have to learn all this before I go out. And that's not the case. And, but I didn't want to take stuff out of there because someone in this point in their business might need that content. But somebody over here needs this. So all that information in there, it's still so important just at different places for people.

00:28:44 So we actually created the success paths, which we have three craft related ones, three business-related ones that allow people to say, okay, this is where I am. Okay. So here's the content that is mostly going to pertain to you just kind of walked them through. So they have a clear path of what they should work on next. Yeah. And then,

00:29:03 you know, of course, to help get them out of the overwhelm there's support and able to ask questions of actual people, whether it's students in the Facebook group itself, the coaches, office hours, laser coaching, things like that. I have found though for me personally, and, you know, tell me if you agree, but there is also a way to take it up a notch.

00:29:25 And I used to be the person that again, still course addict, like I love courses. And I noticed this, this was my pattern, Heather. I would get all into a course like, yes, this is amazing. And I get like two thirds of the way through and I'd fall off when it actually finished the course, even though the course was amazing.

00:29:46 And that was getting to the meat of the course. But then I'm like, Oh, squirrel, this is shiny and new over here. I bought another course. And so I wanted to start that one. And this is, this has been a challenge for me throughout all of my businesses, you know, this project. Okay. I need to finish that before I start here,

00:30:02 but I started over here. So that's my personal, my personal squirrel issue. But the thing that was a game changer for me, and I think for you too, is having actual coaching feedback and support to help me get out of my own way. It's more than accountability. It is just having someone talk out things with you. I mean, you and I Voxer pretty regularly.

00:30:30 And actually you helped me talk out the other day. I had a question about something that I was going to create for the Academy and I'm leaving you this five minute message. And then I totally get clarity at the end. And I'm like, great, thanks for this. Talk to me. You figured it out on your own. You just needed to speak it.

00:30:46 Yeah. So sometimes you just need just to make it. And sometimes you and I both do this where we'll say something, we're like, I'm thinking of this and that. And then the other person is like, have you thought about this? Or what about that? And it's the most obvious solution, but we can't see it because we're so focused on with our blinders of this other challenge that we're having.

00:31:06 And we're just so close to it. So sometimes having that other person that can look at it from the outside and say, what about here? Have you considered this? It's like, Oh no, never thought of that. Thank you. So yeah, for me, I don't think I will ever be in business again without some sort of support and the term of coaching and,

00:31:27 and things like that. I will never again, run my business without a business coach. I've been in business for 17 years and I've had a high level business coach for a little over two. And I I'm just kicking myself actually for waiting that long. Right. Which is fine. I don't, I don't have regret or worry about the past, but never again,

00:31:47 will I be without one? You know what? My thoughts are like you and I spend a lot of money on high-level coaching in particular, I spend a thousand dollars a month and that is a lot of money, but this is what I tell myself. If I'm spending a thousand dollars a month on high level coaching, but it's helping me to grow my business.

00:32:02 As long as I am making $1,100 per month, I'm never leaving. Never because that growth compounds itself over time and those lessons never leave you. So I look at the compound effect over time of that coaching. And I will never again be without a coach, but there's a couple of things here back to what you said a moment ago of like you have all of this content in the Academy,

00:32:25 that's amazing. And people can jump around and watch whatever they want. You created success paths to help people stay focused on a particular topic. And then we have coaching, which is to help with accountability. But you're so smart. You added one thing into that and That's accountability plus a deadline deadline that says, because here's the thing the accountability could still go on,

00:32:49 you know, indefinitely because people have excuses and they're in their heads, or they're not taking action. Even with a coach that doesn't guarantee that you're going to have success because you still have to be the one that, you know, we can't do your pushups for you. So I would like to hear a little bit more about what you've created for the hair of the dog Academy,

00:33:07 around accountability, plus a deadline. Oh, I love a good deadline, Heather. I love it. This actually was born from a weekend that you and I spent together in West Virginia planning. And you know, you guys see amount of mental energy that Heather and I put towards helping our students succeed as shocking. And it's so fun. It's over the top.

00:33:34 We actually, we love it. And we, we contemplate it very deeply. Sometimes even lose sleep over it because we want you to win. We want you to succeed. So, you know, over the course of the past several years, we've created the content we've created the success path. We've added the coaches, the accountability, and every iteration,

00:33:54 we learn something. We learn, okay, this worked, but I still see some people struggling. How could we help these particular people? And this came to fruition, this idea of having a deadline where you have accountability coach and Oh, by the way, you better get it done. Hurry, hurry, hurry ASAP. This came from that weekend.

00:34:13 So tell us more about that. So this is the Academy accelerator. Hello, alliteration. And yeah. And so we realized there was, you know, cause we see students in elevate have such amazing success. And you know, I see students in the Academy having success from like, how can I help more people have that success quickly in a, in a short time and you know,

00:34:38 in a, a way that's accessible for everybody. And so we came up with the accelerator, which is helping pet photographers accomplish more in four weeks. Then in the past year, boom, we want you to quit the press nation, say goodbye to this overwhelm and get massive results quickly because how many of you have been working on some semblance of the same thing?

00:35:00 I don't know. Since, before you left the house without at least a year, at least a year. And so our goal is to help you like, okay, if it's been that pricing, if it's been figuring out some sort of way to work with your community, if it's been getting more visible with your marketing, if it's been learning studio photography,

00:35:22 if it's been getting higher averages by adding variety in studio and out of studio, like all of these different things, what would help your business move forward the most right now, that is what the accelerator is, is getting access to some of our elevate coaches for four weeks, four calls, one call a week. The month of March is going to be action March action month.

00:35:45 It has a new name and it's going to be awesome. So Our version of March madness, it's just more, Yeah, it sure is. And actually the content, if you want to check it out, you can go to hair of the dog academy.com/accelerator. And all the courses are listed today. That's myself and Heather and there's six accelerates total. So four,

00:36:13 other of our coaches are going to be leading incredible little groups, limited to 20 people. So they're all going to be really small. They're going to be intimate. You're going to have the, the content, but it's not about the content coaches. We'll make sure you have the content you need. And then you're going to take the action. You're going to get feedback on the action.

00:36:34 And at the end of that, you're going to have a transformation that, that is done, that you no longer have to be like, ah, when I get that done, then I can move forward. No, it is going to be done. And you're going to be so stinking proud of how well you've gotten it done that you're going to be unstoppable because here's the thing everyone always says,

00:36:52 Oh, when I get motivated to do that, I'll do that. Okay. Motivation doesn't happen on its own. Motivation happens when you start to do something and you take action. And that action leads to more motivation and it's like a cycle and it keeps going round, right? Because of, you know what I'm going to do, I'm going to manufacture motive.

00:37:18 I actually say this all the time. I'm the queen at manufacturing motivation because you're right. It doesn't just happen. I can't just rely on waking up one day and feeling motivated to do something. So I manufacture it. And as part of my accelerator, I am going to help people learn how to manufacture motivation by just taking action to gain momentum. And then it's actually not that difficult.

00:37:38 You just have to keep in motion, right? Absolutely. Absolutely. So you guys check it out. This is for Academy members and if you're not an Academy member, it is open for you to Academy members get a little, little bonus. They get to sign up first before the general public, but definitely check it out. The details are up now and we would love to have you in there.

00:38:01 And Heather, thank you so much for this call and what you guys, I want to come back for a second. And you know, even if you don't join the accelerator, here's my call to you. You need to take action. So if you have attended a conference in the past two months, what have you done do three things, write down the three most impactful things and do them.

00:38:24 That has been how I, Heather, I'd like to ask you to, when you would go to a conference or one, you know, anytime you go to some, you know, educational event, how do you manage come home and get things done? I know for me, I take a whole bunch of notes. And before, like when I'm on the plane or I'm headed home or towards the end,

00:38:43 actually throughout the whole thing I keep my first page in my notebook is an action item page. So I write those down. And then when I get home, I kind of looked through my notes. I look at my action I page and I'm like, I pick out three, three things. I don't have to do them all, but I pick out at least one,

00:38:58 usually about three. That's actually a really good idea to have the first page of your notebook. Dedicated action. I'm going to do that. I love that's a good idea. Yeah. The only one let's say the only thing that make a better, if I brought highlighters to color-code it. Okay. Right, right, right. And then you can put it into your Monday board.

00:39:15 That's right. What I do is I take a lot of notes obviously, but there there's sometimes maybe disparate meetings. They're just like, it's a brain dump of what I'm learning. Right. So I like to then take those notes, reread them, look at them and ask myself, what can I do right now towards this goal? Like, what is the action I can take?

00:39:34 If I just look at my notes, I tend to feel overwhelmed because it looks like some big project. Right? I haven't defined anything, but if I can pull out a couple of action items, like literally do this right now and implement it immediately, then I can sort of get the ball rolling again. I can create momentum by just taking action.

00:39:54 So I was watching one of the speakers in imaging a couple of weeks ago. And he just like in passing, mentioned a book and I was watching on my laptop and I'm sitting here on my iMac and I immediately added that book to my car and ordered it. That's what I'm talking about in terms of action. And that book is here and I'm halfway through it.

00:40:14 And I, you know, and I learned about it a week ago or maybe two weeks ago. But my point is I could have written down the name of that book. Or you could write down the strategy or the idea and just stare at it and your notebook, but that's not going to help you. You have to do something with it. So I think if you take your notes,

00:40:31 say you take a pricing course or even a marketing course. And there you have all of these notes. Could you look at those notes and just extrapolate one to three action items, things that you could do right now, I'm not talking about projects. That's where people get a little bit, like they might say, well, I need to update my website.

00:40:50 That's a project. And what I mean by tasks are okay. I need to upload a new photo to my, about me page. I need to test my contact form and I need to change the price that you'd link the new PDF. Those are tasks and you can do those. But when you start to look at projects or all of your notes,

00:41:06 that's what it starts to feel overwhelming, which is when you shut down and you don't do anything by the way side. No, I believe overwhelm is a really convenient excuse to not take action. And it is also a choice. You are choosing to use that excuse to let yourself off of the hook for taking action. Maybe you aren't actually overwhelmed. Maybe you're just using that word so that you can say,

00:41:30 see, it's just too much. It's an excuse. You are choosing it. Could you choose instead to take action? The answer is yes, you could. And if you truly are overwhelmed with which action to take, I like to brain dump everything I need to do. Like if it's so many things that you feel like they all need your attention right now.

00:41:48 And you're in the midst of this, just fire of just things raining down upon you that I need you to no, no, no. Now write it down, write a, get a big piece of paper, write it all down, brain, dump it down and then pick what's the most pressing one to three things and the rest can wait. And this took me a while to,

00:42:06 to realize that I will never get to the bottom of my to-do list and it's never done. Right. And it's, it is okay. Just like I probably will never see email inbox zero it's okay. It's fine. So long as I have a way to periodically reschedule what the most pressing things are and to not let the fact that there's these other things here pull so much attention away from those things that I need to do,

00:42:36 that I get nothing done. Then, then I'm winning. Yeah. People say that about their website. They say, I need to get my website done. And I say, good luck. Your website is never done. Right. You're always going to be iterating or changing something. So could you instead say, I need to get, you know,

00:42:54 this page done finished on my website or again, this pricing uploaded so that I feel comfortable sharing it. And then you can, you can work on your website over time. I was working with one of our elevators a couple of weeks ago and she was lamenting. She didn't have her website up. And I said, you have until the end of the week to get a two page website up two page website.

00:43:13 What I meant by that is a home page and a contact page. Could you put a whole page up there with a couple of photos and your name and your logo? I don't have a logo go to creative market or just throw something together in Photoshop. Stop trying to make it perfect and done forever permanently and just get something out there. So one page home page and a contact so that people could see your phone number,

00:43:35 your email, and get in touch with you if they wanted to and then get it out there and then you can iterate and you can add to it because you're right. It's never going to be done. You're never going to get to the end. What does a done business look like? Anyway? There's always something I could be improving upon. And I think if you can just shift your thinking around that,

00:43:53 like just work on your tasks to move forward, take action, gain momentum. I think things could really start to change for people if they did that. I agree. I agree. So that's it guys. That's what you have to do this week. Take some action. Let us know. And they hear the dog Academy members, group and Facebook or the hair of the dog podcast community on Facebook.

00:44:10 Let us know what action you have taken. And if you want a little bit of help around that action to get more done in March, then you have, since, you know, pre pandemic life, check out the accelerator page, here's the dog academy.com/accelerator/accelerator. And you can check it out there. Let us know if you have any questions and registration for the members opens on February 19th at 9:00 AM.

00:44:36 And it opens to the rest of the community on Monday the 22nd at 9:00 AM as well. So that should cover all time zones to being awake. And that's an important distinction because we've kept these accelerators pretty small, very small. I believe that they will fill very quickly. So if you aren't remember, and this sounds like something you would love to do because you want to get something done,

00:45:01 I would not hesitate. I would not overthink. I would just jump in and get it done. Agreed, agreed, Heather, thanks again for being with us for a, another fantastic podcast episode. I hope you guys enjoyed it and I can't wait to see what actions you take and we will see you all soon. Bye everyone. Thanks for listening to this episode of hair of the dog podcast.

00:45:26 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.