Hello, it's Nicole and welcome to episode number 13 of the hair of the dog podcast. Today we're going to be talking about where we go from here. We're still in the grips of coronavirus, but even if you're listening to this at a later date, I think you're still going to find some important things to consider no matter what is going on in the world. Stick with us. I think you're going to really enjoy this episode.

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 welcome to another episode of the hair of the dog podcast. It's still a crazy times around here. I'm recording this episode on May 5th which is a Tuesday, it's been almost two months since everything started shutting down and things are starting to change a little bit, so I thought it was a good time to record this podcast and kind of chat about what the future might look like, where we go from here, what happens as things start to open up. Now I am going to talk a little bit about how I plan to start kind of reopening my photography business to the world towards the end of this episode. Before we wanted to get there. Before we get there, I wanted to talk just a little bit about really the control that we have over our future in how we have more power than we think on what our future can look like. So in my group, there's a lot of people that are really concerned about what that future looks like. They are focusing on things like the unemployment rates and people being out of work and thinking that that means there's going to be no demand for our services for who knows how long. They're really, really caught up in the uncertainty of it all. And I want to start off by saying that, you know, life is always uncertain. This uncertainly thing is not anything new the way that it's presented and the reasons around it are certainly different than before. However, there's always an element of uncertainty in our lives and as the pet photographers, entrepreneurs, we need to be able to thrive in that uncertainty because we run our own business. So everything is always uncertain. Although that's truly just a belief because one could also say that running your own business is more certain than say working for someone else where you really aren't in control of how long you have your job and layoffs and things like that. So in that way, having your own business, it's almost more certain because you can control a lot more things than you can when you're working for somebody else. But anyway, let's go back to focusing on our future and what we focus on is really going to be directly responsible for what our end result looks like. Our future is entirely up to us how this plays out for our life and our business is entirely up to us and it all depends on what we choose to focus. For instance, you can focus on a 10 or 20% unemployment rate or you can focus on a 90 or 80% employment rate. You can focus on people that don't have disposable income anymore, or you can focus on the people that have more disposable income than ever because they've spent the past eight weeks in their house, not traveling, not spending any money, not going to concerts, not going to sporting events, not going out to eat, not spending money on anything except for food. So they have more disposable income than ever. It is 100% your choice. Which of those possibilities you want to focus on. Now, the challenge here for when we start to focus on things is number one that we're focusing on it, right? So we're, we're putting our thoughts there, which our thoughts create emotions and emotions create things so that that is part of the kind of creation process of the outcome that we want. But the challenge really becomes when we start to assign meaning to these different predictions that we're giving. So when we start to say, Oh, there's a high unemployment rate, so that means no one is going to be able to afford what I'm offering. That's when you're assigning meaning to things. And that does not serve you. When you start to assign meaning to these things, these stories that don't serve you, that doesn't allow you to take the action that you need to take because you're telling yourself a disempowering story and then your subconscious and your conscious brain is just says, well, what's the point of taking this action? Because look, it's hopeless anyway. So it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy because it stops you from taking that action. So instead what we need to do is we need to flip the belief of this story. We need to look for ways to reinterpret these beliefs. So instead of looking at current situations and assigning beliefs to them and patterns and stories, I want you to look only at facts, not the predictions. The one prediction is that we're never going to have a normal society again. That's not a fact. A fact would be there's a virus on the loose that I need to plan around as I reopened my business. Can you see how looking at those two statements that are really talking about the same thing drastically affect our power in figuring out a response and figuring out our plan of attack and our next action? I find this as a really helpful thing to do whenever I'm starting to face something that I'm labeling as a problem is if you start to look at that problem and then you, you realize, okay, I'm seeing this as a problem. I'm seeing this as a negative. I'm seeing this as an obstacle and I'm assigning a belief to it. Instead, why don't you look at that same situation and ask yourself a different question? Ask yourself, how can this situation become an opportunity? What is the lesson here? What's the opportunity here that I can look at this in a different way. And just by asking that question a little bit differently, it's such an empowering question that gives our brains the opportunity to find the answers that we're asking and find a new way to look at this, which then gives us new actions to take and results in completely different outcomes. I'm actually starting to see quite a few opportunities here in the situation that we're living in right now. Uh, number one is a great opportunity for us to reevaluate how we've been living our own life, our business and personal life balance. What we've been saying yes to how we're spending our time. It was that serving you, is that where you want to be spending your time? Are you living into your values? I know for me, my number one personal value is freedom and I'm realizing that that I was way too busy before. Um, I almost wore busy as a badge of honor. And part of that is because I have so many ideas and so many things that I want to do and it's fun and it's exciting. And I love what I do and I love helping all of you guys and I love my job, but I was doing that too much. I was working all day and then the evening would come and it would be rush around, take the kids to the activities that they do and hurry up, find some dinner, get the kids to bed, do it all over again. I wasn't unhappy. I enjoyed it. I liked it, I loved my life, but now I'm realizing, wait, it's okay to slow down even more. It's okay to have weekends where I literally have nothing planned now what? I'd like to be able to go out to dinner on those weekends. Yeah. What I'd like to be able to get on a plane and go on vacation. Absolutely. And those days will come. But I can look at what's coming right now, what, how things have changed in the past two months and ask myself what lessons do I have that I can take with me that I can take to improve how I'm looking at my life and how I'm living my life and what opportunities there are now on the business front. In terms of the photography business, what opportunities are there? Well, I see a whole lot more people at home with their animals, spending a lot of quality time with their dogs. Realizing how important their dogs are that their daily sanity to their life and how much they love them. And well, if that isn't like the best state of mind for our potential clients to be in for when we come back to being able to offer them the opportunity to create our work and create something that will, you know, and castle the memories and the character of their pet for a lifetime. I mean, I don't know what is. So this is a great time to be able to start thinking about what our messaging is going to be when we come back out and we start marketing our business against the world and we start talking to those potential clients of ours, speaking to their identity of them loving their dog and how much their dog is their family, and that deserves to be captured. So there is 100% of an opportunity there. Remember, all we have to do is look at what we're thinking. And the hardest part of that is to be cognizant and conscious of what is going through your brain and not letting whatever you're thinking just take over your emotions and kind of be a slave to whatever your emotions are. The hardest and easiest step, but it's simple, I guess it's not easy, is being able to short circuit that and say, Oh my gosh, what am I thinking? What am I saying here? What's my belief here? What could be another belief? What can be something else that is also equally true that will serve me better? And then you can start to think that and you can start to look at that which then changes you, how you look at it, which changes your behavior, which will in fact change your results at the end of all of this. So what's everything going to look like when things start to open up? Right now it's early may a lot of States in the United States are starting to relax their stay at home orders. Actually throughout the world, they're starting to relax their stay at home orders. The businesses are starting to reopen. There's just some movement to start to get back to whatever this new normal is going to be. Now of course, even though we're starting to relax things, you know, the virus is very much still out there and is definitely something that we need to keep in mind. You know, I don't get my news from the news media or the politicians, you know, I watched that a little bit here and there, but you know, both of those, both of those platforms tend to have ulterior motives under them. I like to get my information from scientific articles, scientific publications, and my friends on the front line and the medical community. And from those two areas, it is clear that this is still something that we need to take seriously. And this is still something that we have a responsibility to approach responsibly for the rest of society. So do I think we can open our photography businesses soon? Yes, I think we can. Do I think we need to change how we were doing some things. Yes. I think we also need to do that now when you can actually go out and start shooting is really gonna depend on your local, um, your state or your regional rules and the different phases and where what we do falls under those phases. Generally I've been seeing that, like, it's not the first phase, but usually the second phase it looks like in most cases that we're able to start shooting a little bit now where we're shooting probably makes a difference. I usually don't shoot in the studio, but if I had a shoot studio, I honestly don't think that I would be starting with studio sessions right away. I am going to start shooting outside. Not quite yet. We're supposed to open our state backup later on this week. Um, I haven't heard anything otherwise. I'm still gonna give it a few weeks before I reschedule my sessions and see kind of how all of this plays out. But when I start shooting again, I'm going to only shoot outdoors for now. I'm going to require that my client wears a mask and I will wear a mask as well. Of course, when I need to use a noisemaker, I will make sure that I am, you know, a good 10 plus feet away from anybody when I'm doing that. And then you know, you can pull your mask down a little bit for that because we can start to look at these rules and have, you know, common sense. If you're far, far away from your client, of course you don't need to have the mask on if there's no other human near you. However, when you're getting closer, even if you're near that six feet, I would probably recommend still wearing that based on all of the scientific and medical guidelines for my clients. Of course, I can still take pictures of them and their dog together. They don't have to wear a mask for that. Although one math, one picture with that might be kind of funny for them to remember what 2020 was like, but I think that's all seared into all of our brains. Um, but you know, for pictures of them and their dog, there'll be sitting in an area around no other humans. I can use my long 70 to 200 lens. I can be plenty far away and give them plenty of space to be able to capture that without them having to wear a mask. So wearing a mask is not going to be detrimental to being able to continue with what we offer. And then moving on to sales. I have always done in person sales in my home while I used to go to my client's house. And then I started doing in person sales at my home studio. Right now. I probably, honestly, I'm going to start doing video in person sales. So video, live sales, I guess it should be called, cause they're not in person but they would be live. So it really just be taking my sales session and doing it over zoom or Skype or some other video conferencing app. Of course if they want to see some samples, I could try to have those at the session that I can open my trunk, I can walk back, they can walk over and touch them and look at them and I could talk to them from a safe distance. So it's really just figuring out the different ways that we can do what we need to do about while being medically responsible. You know, I was even thinking too, if we got to, cause I don't want to take all my frame samples to a, you know, to a session and then they wouldn't remember what it looked like anyway. And so I was even thinking if I was doing the online sales and they wanted to get a framed piece but they weren't sure on the frame, we they can come to my house that could have the frame samples outside and we can, you know, they could look at them that way while I stand back. So, you know, there's definitely ways to start to do this. And then as far as delivery, my clients usually pick things up at my home. Um, but I'll probably just drop ship their items to them for the near future just to really look at throughout my process and see where those physical contact points are and see how we can make sure we can do those things safely. So I think if you start to look at your business in that manner, I think it's going to be, you know, definitely possible to start resuming things sometime in the near future. Again, follow your local laws and your local rules in your local guidelines and definitely follow the medical guidelines of the doctors and the health organizations in your area. But I think that it won't be too long before we start to be able to move forward with this. And before we go, I just wanted to remind you guys of one thing and that is something that I heard from my mentor, James Wedmore. That is simply that fear is your attention focused on an unwanted predicted future that you believe is going to happen. Not a fact, it's just a belief. It's a prediction based on things that you've heard, things that happened in your past. None of it is set in stone. So before you get stuck down that beer kind of spiral and remember that where we put our attention, well 100% affect the outcome of what we're focusing on. So focus on the different beliefs, change those beliefs. If you need help changing those beliefs, reach out inside our Facebook group because there is pretty much always an opposite belief. There's an opposite reaction. There is an opposite outcome that can happen. None of these things are set in stone. So that's about it for this week. A simple and short and sweet episode for you to hopefully help you stay in the right mindset. As things begin to open up and you start heading back to work in different parts of the world. Make sure that you guys number one, stay safe out there and join in the conversation in the hair of the dog Facebook community. We have a big free Facebook group of over 13,000 pet photographers from all over the world and I like to say it is definitely one of the most friendly groups in the interweb so definitely come join us there. You can go to www.hairofthedogacademy.com/fb group and that will take you right there to that Facebook group and we look forward to seeing you in there and in the meantime they safe, happy shooting and we'll talk to you soon.

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