00:00:00,"In today's episode, we are talking about the myth of work-life balance, and as an entrepreneur, how we're actually working 24 7, but how this is actually a good thing, how we can alleviate any sort of guilt that might be showing up. We're also talking about what soul-aligned marketing might look like, and really that mystical, magical reason why certain marketing situations work for one person,"
00:00:22,"but maybe not the other. So this is a really incredible conversation that I had with my new friend, Lucy Baum. You are going to absolutely love it. This has been one of my favorite podcasts to record because we're just talking about all the things and a lot of these intangible things that really truly matter. So, sit back, pop in those earbuds and enjoy this episode."
00:00:50,"Welcome to The Hair of the Dog podcast. If you are 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. Welcome back to The Hair of the Dog podcast. I'm your host,"
00:01:11,"Nicole Begley, and today I have a very special guest with me, Lucy Baum, from Shine SparkL Marketing,  ShineSparkL marketing.com without the E in Sparkl. But we'll get more into that in a minute, Lucy. Now, so nice to see you here in the podcast. Welcome to the Hair Of the Dog podcast. Thank You for having me. Of course."
00:01:32,"So Exciting. Of course. Yes. I can't wait to chat about this. Yeah, we're gonna be chatting about, well, you guys are just definitely, you're gonna have to hold on and see, but you're gonna love it about all of these myths of work-life balance and marketing, and just really all of the things we're gonna be touching on today."
00:01:51,"But Lucy, go ahead and tell us a little bit about yourself and kind of what your background is and, and what you do Well. Yes. So excited to be here and talking to your listeners. My background is in marketing, actually. I had a, a career for 15 years in marketing. Before that, I studied psychology. So I think that made me,"
00:02:20,"it kind of helped to get into the marketing field, knowing how to sort of read people, understand human dynamics and behavior. And yeah, so I was working in marketing for many, many years in another city in Toronto, Canada. And then when I became pregnant, I decided that I didn't wanna work in that anymore. It was kind of a thankless industry."
00:02:43,"Marketing agency is very stressful. And I always had this thought that there was something more behind what I needed to do with my life. And when I moved, my daughter was one, and my interest in photography had grown over the years when I had been exposed to photography through my work. And, and so when I moved home to my home city of Montreal,"
00:03:10,"Canada, my husband upgraded my camera for my birthday. And so I decided to enroll in formal education to learn how to use it. And that turned into like university courses. And that turned into a two year commercial photography program that's offered here locally. So once I, once I caught it, I hit the ground running. So I'm a wedding and a family photographer,"
00:03:34,"but the marketing never left me. And I feel like I was well positioned to start a business because I had the business background already. When 2018 hit, I, I became ill. And I spent many months being unable to work as doctors, tried to figure out what was wrong with me. And so I couldn't do much more than, so I couldn't shoot,"
00:04:02,"I couldn't, I couldn't do any weddings or anything like that. It was kind of like having a gastro for eight months, if any, were food poisoning. If anybody could imagine that. Oh, that sounds Lovely. No, It was so awful. So I didn't really have bandwidth to do anything more than like lie on the couch and watch TV and scroll social media."
00:04:20,"And that's when I started to notice that a lot of photographers were asking marketing questions and were struggling with marketing. And a lot of time on my hands, well, going in and out of doctor's appointments, hospital visits. And I started to respond and people responded to me. They said, you know, this is a very common sense approach. You've made a lot of sense."
00:04:43,"Marketing is so hard for me. And eventually I started to repeat myself on these posts so much that I just decided to create a blog. And that's how my first iteration of Shine Sparkle was born. I named it marketing and business for photographers, so I could be like super literal about what I did. Yeah, yeah. Like, There's no mistake."
00:05:03,"And, and then it evolved from there. So eventually it turned into a website. I got treatment, thankfully, and I was, I'm better now. Good, Good. But, but then Shine Sparkle Marketing was sort of born at that time. And back in, earlier this year, I rebranded to Shine Sparkle Marketing from marketing and business for photographers."
00:05:26,"I love it. I love it. It is crazy how our path like twists and turns and like, I really had no intention when I started my photography business, gosh, 13 years ago, that I would create hair of the dog and be here and do this. And it's just, it's crazy how these different things in our life and just kind of like takes you down this path and all of a sudden you're like,"
00:05:50,"huh, how'd I get here? How did I get here? It's a good spot. I, well, how did this happen? Well, it was kind of funny because when I finally sugg my teeth into photography like so deeply, you know, like I just hit the ground running. 'cause I knew it was right. But then I thought to myself,"
00:06:08,"my God, I've spent half of my life in marketing, which like I said, was a little bit thankless. It was kind of difficult Yeah. Environment to work in high, high stress, high intensity, always being, you know, accountable to your clients. Yeah. 24 7 kind of thing. We'll talk about that. But I thought, did I waste all of this time that I could have been,"
00:06:32,"you know, being a photographer and, and now I've realized that the marketing has come back to be kind of a superpower. So many newer photographers struggle with it, and I don't really struggle with it. I actually embrace it. I love it and I love it outside of the agency, you know? Yes. Market. Yeah. When you market,"
00:06:54,"especially when you can be a little bit more creative with your own marketing and your own business. Yeah. And I think there's a double-edged sword here. So yeah, you get to be more creative, a little bit less stressed, but it can also be slightly more stress because your, your grocery bill determinants on your marketing, you know, and it's so close to you."
00:07:15,"I know I've heard from some photographers, they're like, I can sell things I can market, but when it comes to marketing me Yeah. And my business, like, it becomes a personal thing that we're putting ourselves out there and like, we like to try to make it mean if somebody doesn't, you know, choose to work with us, then we're taking it personally as like they're rejecting us personally as a human,"
00:07:38,"which, yeah, no, maybe it's just not the right time for them to get photos of their dog. It, you know, it's so true. When, when people are hired to do a job, you know, when I was hired in marketing, I could do it because somebody gave me a job description and told me exactly what I had to do,"
00:07:53,"and I did it. Yeah. But when it comes to your own marketing, I recognize that that's a huge obstacle for many photographers. I often say, like when people are, when photographers are talking about their pricing, I say that they're pricing their insides instead. Yes. Instead of their, instead of their businesses. And, and when you try and put a price tag on yourself,"
00:08:16,"what do you think is gonna happen? It's not, it, it's probably gonna be a low price because of your mindset. And We'll, like, I, I think we're gonna get into that a little bit later on too. But it's a, it's a huge obstacle for us. So I, I do have like a strategy around that is when we talk about what we're doing,"
00:08:35,"then we talk about it in relation to the business. So if I say I'm pricing myself, that's not quite right. The business is setting prices, right. So if we, if we try and remove it to be a little bit more objective, it, it can be really helpful. You know, so it's not just me and my, you know,"
00:08:52,"reputation on the line and my personal, you know, like every, everything that's me is on the line. Right? Yeah. So, Yeah. I love that. It's similar. My mentor always says too, that, like, to ask yourself, which is a great way to kind of switch your mindset of doing the things that we need to do in our business."
00:09:11,"Like maybe the things that aren't fun, maybe we're still scared of this marketing, or we're still like, feeling nervous about the pricing or whatever it is that we've been avoiding. But asking ourselves, what does my business need of me, you know, where it's, we're taking it off us. Like if I, like, what does the business need?"
00:09:28,"If I am looking at the business from the outside, not looking at me from the outside, like looking at the business, what does it need for me? Okay. How do I need to show up for the business? And the same thing with then for our marketing and, you know, and, and talking about our business, like to take the focus off us."
00:09:47,"'cause I think we get a lot of self doubt when we're like, oh, I, I wanna say the right thing. Or How are people gonna receive me? And instead focus on our client that we're talking to, whoever we're marketing to. Like, can we put ourselves in their shoes? What do they need to hear from the business, not from us?"
00:10:07,"You know? So it kind of can help give that little bit of a, a safe space where it's not so much like our raw emotion where we can look at it a little bit more objectively. It's, it's absolutely critical for us to do that. I mean, if you were hired by a photographer, say to be their employee in a studio,"
00:10:27,"you'd have no problem giving their prices, right? Yeah. You'd have no problem stating the policies, charging extra for whatever late fee or whatever it is. Right. But as soon as it's you trying to do that, it becomes this, you know, monster. Yes. The room. You know, and, and that's I think why the approach of shine sparkle marketing can be a solution to some,"
00:10:54,"in terms of how I've approached the philosophy of it, hope, hopefully sort of helping people understand that it's, it's not the monster in the closet that you have to like, beat back, you know? Right, right. Exactly. Exactly. Well, as you were going through your rebrand, you kind of came up with a five pillar marketing approach."
00:11:16,"Can you tell us a little bit more about how that came to be and what those pillars are? Yeah, So when I started in 2018, it was really responding to the needs of the photographers that were out there answering their questions, and then sort of understanding where they struggled. Most marketing plans usually is, is the biggest one, a business plan sort of an idea or a blueprint of where you're going."
00:11:41,"And, and then as I went on it, it sort of stayed as a side hustle because I, I was focusing on my wedding and family photography business, and I was also working part-time in the nonprofit sector, so it kind of stayed small. And then in July of 2022, I had what I called a, a night epiphany. It's like my intuition talking to me,"
00:12:06,"because when I can't sleep at night, this is when all these things come my brain. And I had this thought that marketing and business needs to come to the forefront. And I can't explain why at that moment it happened for me. But I listened to the intuition, which is part of the, the, the, the pillared approach. And I started down a pathway of rebranding,"
00:12:30,"and I didn't really know what I was gonna find there, but all I knew is that I needed to do something different. And so the, the first thing that I did was to really try to reflect on what was, what it was as a reality. So I looked at, you know, what I had built. I looked at the blog posts,"
00:12:48,"I had created the website and all of that. I did a d I y, I did everything myself. I just put together a space. Yes. Many of us do as we start off. Exactly. I had gone through a rebrand with a, a designer for my photography business quite a few years ago, but for this one, I kind of felt like,"
00:13:04,"you know, I'm gonna, I'm just gonna bootstrap it. Right. And as I went along, I, I kind of noticed a few things. I noticed that my voice was very masculine in my, like logo and the, you know, so the website colors the way I spoke to people. And it occurred to me that, you know, marketing is still,"
00:13:21,"you know, anyways, the traditional marketing landscape is still very much a man's world. Right. And as I was a young woman starting in marketing, I had a lot of incidents where I was asked to make coffee. I was, yeah, I was a project manager. I'm not the, I'm not The like intern assistant. Like, no. I was like,"
00:13:42,"I'm coming into the meeting to speak on behalf of my department. Right. You could get your own coffee. But I did, I experienced that. And I think that my approach to marketing became very masculine because I was sort of silently fighting that fight still. And I realized that I wasn't doing myself any favors, that it was sort of coming from the wrong place."
00:14:01,"And so as I moved on to thinking about that a little bit more, I was listening to an audiobook, and it was talking about an Easter philosophy of the five koshas. And the five koshas are our layers of being. So from the mo most tangible, which is our body to the least tangible, which is our intuition, and all five. So body,"
00:14:26,"mind, energy or soul intelligence, or wisdom and intuition are what make us up as human beings, right? So we all have these five components, and we can't sort of take them away from, we can't subtract one. Right? I love that they're, they're there. And as they were talking about the soul energy, I just had like this total aha moment that,"
00:14:53,"that is our brand for our business. It's the energy wrapper. Hmm. So when you have a business, and I have a business, you have a camera, I have a camera, you know, we all have the same education with that camera. What makes us different? And it occurred to me that it was really the, the energy that we bring and brand is so hard to define."
00:15:14,"You know, people say, what is branding? You know, is it a logo? Is it colors? Is it people just don't seem to grasp the concept, you know, like when we think of big brands, we can easily kind of say, yes, I understand they're very recognizable, but how do you create one of your own Right? When you don't have like a marketing team,"
00:15:37,"if we think about it as the energy. And so then all of a sudden, the five koshas became my five pillars of marketing. And they're not even of just marketing and business, but they're of our life because They're reflect. It's all intertwined as a entrepreneur. Yeah. All intertwined. Exactly. It's all intertwined. So the, you know, the mind and the body are,"
00:15:59,"are pretty self-explanatory. The energy is the brand of our business. The intelligence, or the wisdom is the operations of our business. And the intuition is the creative dream work. We are all creative entrepreneurs, photographers with a vision, wanting to, to put that creativity forth in the world. And so I was like that. That's it. You know,"
00:16:23,"and it just came barreling down on me. I was, I was walking, I was doing a fitness walk, and I was like, oh my God, this Is it. Look, I need to write this down. I need to write this down. I know. And, and so then kind of shine Sparkle was born out of, out of that epiphany right there."
00:16:38,"Yeah. Oh my gosh. I love that. I think those kinds of situations, I know they've happened to me on occasion, and it's just like straight magic. You're like, where did that come from? Because that did not come from me. It just like, boom. Yeah. It's just there. And, and some, some, somehow the puzzle pieces came together,"
00:16:58,"you know? Yeah. No, that's fantastic. Have you read Big Magic Elizabeth Gilbert? Yes. Yeah, I have. That's one of my favorite Books. Yeah. It's a, it's a good one. And it does, it does talk about that magic, like, really Well, it's that intuition, I think, you know? Yeah. And if you guys are out here listening and you're like,"
00:17:16,"well, I've never had the lightning bolt intuition, like, it's coming. You will, were you in the habit, Lucy, prior to that of kind of like asking for input from, you know, your intuition and universe or God or whatever you wanna call it, was that something that you were kind of used to putting out there prior to Yeah."
00:17:40,"Yes. But, but the caveat is that I didn't really recognize it for what it was until I had my, you know, shine sparkle moment. I, I guess you could call it, for many, many years, I have followed the artist's way, Julia Cameron, for journaling every day. And you guys could look that up. It's an older book."
00:18:02,"Yeah. Look that up. I don't know that I started, she, she has something called the Artist pages, I think I, you can't quote me that for Yeah. For the actual name. But what you do is, first thing in the morning, you write a certain number of pages. I, I don't really respect a particular length, but because what it does is help you just get all the stuff out in the morning and then it primes you for the rest of your day."
00:18:29,"And so I feel like I was kind of talking to my own intuition when I talk, when I, when I journal, I talk to myself essentially. And so that already kind of left me open to a few things. And then the other part of it is that when I, when I go to bed at night, I seem to have the,"
00:18:48,"like, I'm probably one of a million where everybody's got these thoughts churning in their head. You know, like as soon as you lie down and you're like, I wanna relax, like your brain is like going on full. But the thing is, is that it's not necessarily your brain. If you are able to relax that voice, then there's something deeper going on."
00:19:05,"And quite a few years ago when I did the rebrand for my photography business, a huge idea just threw itself out there in my head at night. And it was so powerful. It like literally sounded like a voice in my head that I, I, my eyes flew open and I was like, what? Where did this come from? I was sort of asking myself a question."
00:19:28,"I'm like, what is my purpose? What am I supposed to do here? And there was an answer, and it was like, wow. And then that's what kind of started a deeper relationship with my own brand, with my own photography and what I wanna get out of it, and how I wanna serve clients. So I have always sort of had those moments,"
00:19:49,"and I've, I've tried to bring myself closer through journaling, but I haven't. But now with, with Shine Sparkle, I feel like I've been able to, to give it more of a voice. Like it's more concrete in my life that I now seek my intuition versus just waiting for the lightning bolt. Right. I'm priming the lightning bolts, so to speak."
00:20:12,"Yeah. And everybody can do it. I, I'm absolutely certain of that, because we all have intuition, so it's just a matter of being closer or further away from your own intuition. You know, we block that a lot, right? Oh yeah. A hundred percent. Especially as women, we block it a lot, you know, so like an example in marketing is that we don't listen to the red flags when they're presented to us,"
00:20:33,"you know? So we're like, it's all business. I need, I need income, I need revenue. So I'm gonna just ignore that little voice that's saying, you know, don't, don't take this client on red flags. You know, you feel it in your gut. And then, and then you get embroiled into, you know, a,"
00:20:48,"a conflict of some sort. And yeah. It, yeah. That's what happens when you ignore it. Yep. I love it. I love it. This is kind of going off on a little tangent, but do you have any advice for people for kind of telling the difference between the intuition red flag versus just a, ooh, this is a scary step,"
00:21:10,"but it's the right next step. That's, do you have A way that you can like, tell the difference for you? Ooh, That's a, that's a great question. Actually. I wrote a blog post about it. I think the title was something When To Not Run, but To Sell, right? Yeah. Because I see a lot of,"
00:21:28,"blah, I see a lot of posts on social media where somebody's like, oh, the client asks for this, or more time, or, or extra outfits, or add grandma and grandpa. And, and people are like, run, run. And, and I'm like, why? That's like a regular business question that's not, you know, right."
00:21:47,"You don't have to run. There's, I think there, it's a series of steps that we have to go through. I think that if, if we can be honest and true to our intuition and listening to it, then it will tell us, right? It will tell us whether or not, this is just something I'm avoiding because I don't know much about it,"
00:22:06,"versus like, really, truly, I don't have a fit with this person. And it's, you know, and then also recognizing by gaining knowledge, right? So if you learn about marketing, then you will know when it's a situation where it's like more of a gut feeling versus a business transaction, right? So if you read any book on selling,"
00:22:28,"you know, Zig Ziglar, Dan Kennedy, these, these, you know, sort of historic great, right? Who the classics, these books Yeah. Selling is, is not without its ups and downs, and it's normal to have objections. It's normal to have questions. It's not like as soon as somebody asks you something, you're like, oh my God,"
00:22:49,"I can't do business with them. Right? And it's about recognizing that because our fear guides us very heavily in this profession, I find, and we have to start recognizing what is actual lack of business knowledge or process versus real red flags, you know? Yeah. So it comes with a little bit of practice, a little bit of education, but we,"
00:23:11,"we all have the ability to do that. And I think on some level, we already know, but it's scary for, for Us, just don't wanna trust it. Yeah, Exactly. Yeah. I love it. So good. So good. So one of the other things we wanted to kind of touch on too is this whole myth of like work life balance."
00:23:30,"'cause I'm sure we've all heard it, we've all been seeking it out of like, oh, work life balance, work life balance. You have a little bit of a different take on that. Yeah. I, I, it's funny, funny, I seem to have a different take on a lot of marketing stuff, and maybe, and maybe that's the refreshing part of it all right?"
00:23:50,"Right. Yeah. The work life balance, I mean, we hear it all the time, and for us as women as well, right? Trying to balance career and family. I mean, it's ever present, right? And when I've read a lot about the topic over my years, but again, it kind of crystallized with, with putting more thought and reflection into the shine,"
00:24:15,"sparkle marketing business and brand, is that really, we're going about it the wrong way. So I watched a, a video by the same author of the, the book that I had been reading about The Five Khas. And he said something funny, he said, he was speaking to an audience, he is like a guru, and he said, do me a favor,"
00:24:36,"leave your body for just one minute right now. Just, I'll wait, just leave and then come back. And I'm like, okay. Yes, that's a good point. We never really think about it. We can't ever leave our bodies, right? The only time we really ever leave them is if we're dreaming, for example, at night. But otherwise we can't leave our body."
00:24:55,"So it was curious to me then that we separate pieces of our life, like, like work and life. So I guess today's workplace and landscape is a little bit more fluid, but back in the day of the nine to five, even, you know, just a few short years ago, we would go to work and it's like, you suspend your life until you come back from work."
00:25:20,"You know? So life happens, you know, between 6:00 AM and 9:00 AM and then like from 6:00 PM to 10:00 PM And, and that's really sort of a, a very surface way of thinking about it. So as I got deeper into the whole shine, sparkle philosophy of the five pillars, I realized that it's not really about work and life, you know? Because when you say balance,"
00:25:41,"then you're seeking the balance, right? And that means you may not have it. So if you, if you use a photography analogy, if you've got your camera on a monopod, you're constantly balancing that monopod. But if you put it on a tripod, you don't even have to think about it anymore, right? Right. So in, in a dance analogy,"
00:26:00,"maybe a ballerina on point has, it's the, the beauty of the struggle of the balance, right? But if we were on point 24 7, that would get pretty exhausting, right? Even for a ballerina, she can't really sustain it for very long. Right? So it's really not about balance, but I think it's about steadiness or steadfastness. So create a tripod of your life,"
00:26:26,"and that's what the five pillars kind of do. So I, I just had a total mind shift when it, when it came to that I'm not really working and living, I'm, I'm actually living out my life's work. This is what we are actually doing. So I came into this earth as a Lucy, and I do certain things. I have certain personality traits."
00:26:50,"I have a brand, right? I have a soul and an energy that wraps me. And you have a different soul and energy, and you have a life's work, and you're living it right now. And I'm living mine, and we are all living our own life's work. And so, in service of that life's work, we are working 24 7."
00:27:09,"So, and everything is important. And there is no, you know, slog. It's not like a, you know, like right, I gotta drag my butt to work. You know, everything I do is in service of my life's work, and my life's work is of service to others. So when I'm sleeping, I'm not actually fully, I'm just not,"
00:27:31,"I'm not just not there. You know, it's an active rest and recovery, and I'm synthesizing all the things that I've learned today. If I learned a new photography technique, if I learned a new marketing technique, it's all being cataloged in there and I'm working, right? So when I go to bed at 10:00 PM I'm not like, ah, I should've stayed at the computer editing longer."
00:27:51,"Right? I'm actually still working. If I go and do a fitness routine, oftentimes, like my, my brain does this too, right? I'm like, oh, I'm gonna push off the workout today. Right? Busy. Yeah. I know it's hard. But now I consider it part of my life's work. Yeah. I have to have a healthy body in order to,"
00:28:13,"I mean, a wedding for all the wedding photographers out there, they understand how difficult it is to do a 10, 12 hour wedding day. My body needs to have rest and recovery, massage, physiotherapy, working out. That's all part of my life's work. So now I can take away the guilt of that too. So if I have a,"
00:28:35,"an off day and I go shopping, for example, so people are gonna be like, oh, so can I go shopping? And that's part of my life's work. And you know, obviously there's a line where, where it falls into excuses, right? Right. But overall, if I go shopping, or if I need to sit down and watch TV and just binge watch my favorite show,"
00:28:55,"that's probably something in my intuition telling me I need to take a break from, you know, sitting at the computer and in, in indulge in something that's related to my self-care. Or I need to turn my mind off. Because some idea that big magic is about to come, right? So if we respect that and we feel that everything we do is working 24 7,"
00:29:21,"but it's working on our life's work, then we may have a different perspective altogether on everything we do. So then you can remove all that guilt, right? So if you take time away with your family, if you take time away to work out, you're not actually stepping away from the business, right? You're enhancing the business. It's part of the,"
00:29:41,"the, the bigger picture, I guess you could say. Oh my gosh, I, I love this to think that. Yeah. Yeah. I'd like to think that I work 24 7 and it's beautiful because then I've got my pillars that are supporting me, and I don't need to struggle for balance. I simply, I have a, a steadfastness with my tripod of five legs,"
00:30:03,"five pillars, and that couldn't be more steady, right? So then I'm not fighting for balance anymore. And the fight for balance is what takes up a lot of our, our brain space, right? That's, that's it. I, I wanna stop the struggle. I love that it hurts everyone else to do the same. Yeah. I think the guilt piece is what leads to so much of that struggle,"
00:30:28,"because especially as a mom, it's like, you feel guilty when you're working. You feel guilty when you're not working. You feel guilty all the time. It's like, Hey, yeah, you had a kid. Here's the side helping of guilt for the rest of your life. So by looking at it this way, you're, you know, it does,"
00:30:44,"it just alleviates like, no, this is all, this is all part of it. Like, you know, I firmly believe that I'm living my life's journey purpose work right now. And, you know, and part of that was my family too. So when I'm working with them or doing things with them, it's, it's part of the whole,"
00:31:01,"like, none of us were put on this earth just to run their photography business. Like, you know, we, we were put here to do that. It's that way sometimes. Yeah. Sometimes. Yeah. It doesn't to, you know, to do that in accordance with all these other things that, that make us us. Do you have any sort of like,"
00:31:19,"markers, so people, 'cause I know sometimes people might be, you know, if they're listening to this, they're likely have photography as piece of their, you know, creative soul that, that wants to be expressed on this planet. But are there any kind of markers of like, oh yeah, you are on the right path to like living your purpose versus like,"
00:31:39,"there's something else that you should be doing and maybe you're just like drowning it out out of the expectation of my family said I needed to be a lawyer and now I'm doing this, but I know there's something else for me. Like Yeah. Are there any guideposts people can kind of look for? Well, I think there's one big one, and it's called fear."
00:31:59,"Because if you didn't fear something, it wouldn't matter so much to you, right? That's sort of the, the, the, the expressions I've heard recently, if you feel the fear, it's because you really want it, right? Mm. And so fear, it can harm us, it can be very damaging to us, but it's also a signal that you're doing the right thing."
00:32:22,"So that one's actually a big signpost. If, if you start feeling anxiety over doing something, you know, like first time I photographed the wedding, even even second shot a wedding, I was so nervous, I wanted to throw up and turn around, turn the car around and go home. What Am I doing? And it wasn't even, and then that whole,"
00:32:41,"like, what exactly what am I doing? Like, who am I like to do this? Yeah. But that was a signal to me that I had to push through that because it was something I really, really wanted. And at the end of that, I came out of there like feeling at the top of the world. So that's the other feeling when I get off a marketing call with photographers,"
00:33:03,"or when I deliver a website review, for example, and do a brand audit, and I get some feedback that like, like you hit the nail on the head, you know, like, you totally got me. I walk away like squealing. You know what I mean? And so that's the other signpost that it's good that I wa walked away feeling like,"
00:33:23,"oh my God, I could do this all day. Right? And even when we're doing other things, you still have, you kind of carry those feelings everywhere, right? So when you know, you know, it's right when, when you think about it outside of the time that you have to be thinking about it, right? Mm. So marketing is that way for me,"
00:33:43,"which is probably kind of scary for other people. May make them cringe a little, but I, like my audible is filled with, with business and marketing books, psychology Oh my gosh. Influenced insane. Like, I eat it up. And so I think about business literally every second of every day. Yeah. All the time. I mean, it's always on,"
00:34:03,"right? But if I'm working 24 7, it's okay, as long as I'm not, but it, but we have to recognize it's not just sitting at your desk, right? Right. So I can still be with my family and still have the little intuition, you know, gimme a little tidbit and I'll just take a minute to like, you know,"
00:34:20,"open my notes app or whatever, and make a note of it for later in my journal has turned out to be like a business book, essentially, because I'm, I'm, you know, moving ideas around. I, at one point, I had a really bad time with this because I had written so many things down, like amazing ideas and things like that."
00:34:45,"And I have books. I mean, like, I have a stack of journals, right? And I was like, where did I write that one idea down? It's somewhere in Here, and oh my God. And I was like, I should have labeled it, right? So I had to go back through like five or six handwritten, badly handwritten books,"
00:35:04,"trying to find that one idea that I couldn't quite grasp to remember. And, and then from that point forward, if I had an idea that I was writing down in my journal in the morning, I would put a little start at the top of the page and then earmark the page so I could go back to it. And now what I've done is I'm taking a picture of the page for my notes app,"
00:35:27,"right? Nice. And putting it straight into somewhere else where it will become actionable. Right? So, love it. I mean, it's just, it's the, it's always there. But if we recognize that it, that it has a time and a place, but we don't have to shut it off, you know what I mean? Just like,"
00:35:44,"we don't have to shut off the love of our family at any point in time in our day. Right? Like, when I'm working, it's not like, well, you know, maybe I can't take care of the kids. Right. But it doesn't mean I stop loving them or thinking about them or, or anything like that. Right. So we shouldn't feel guilty."
00:35:59,"I I, I have it in my idea book that I'm gonna write a guilt book, because you're so right. We have, as soon as we have children, we have guilt for something. Yeah. As women in business, we have guilt for something charging our prices. We have guilt for Yes. Yeah. So one day there will be a guilt book and A non guilt book Just to,"
00:36:20,"just to laugh at ourselves a little, right? Yes. Yeah. Oh my gosh. I mean, I, I love this so much. And if you guys aren't in the habit of like, asking yourself questions on the regular, just start. Like, I try to, some nights I just like end up going to sleep and just not really doing this."
00:36:43,"But like other nights I really truly try, like, before I go to bed, it's like, okay, is there a question I want to like, ask my subconscious tonight while I sleep? Or like, what's my intention for sleeping? Like, like I set my intention for sleeping. I might have a problem, but I'm telling you, my best ideas usually come when I like,"
00:37:02,"you know, wake up kind of early, but then fall back asleep. And that last little section of sleep, like, I can't tell you how many times I like wake up and I'm like, pen and paper, pen and paper right now. Right. And start writing things down. Yeah. That's just incredible. What's available to us if we're open to just kind of play with it."
00:37:19,"Well, This, this is the thing about putting the pillars together, is that you recognize that that is in support of your life's work, right? So you don't dismiss it. So I used to have trouble falling asleep, and then I'd be like, you know, God, I'm, I'm gonna wake up tired, I'm gonna have a bad day."
00:37:37,"Like, I was still lying. You get mad here. Yeah. You get mad. And, and then once I had the, the photography epiphany, it, it changed my philosophy on it. And now it's sort of solidified in the five pillars. But what happens now is I think to myself, if I haven't fallen asleep yet, that means that there is still a message that needs to come to me."
00:38:01,"So as soon as it comes to me, I will drift off. And that takes the pressure again, off of like, or the anger of like not being able to fall asleep. And, and sometimes I fall asleep without actually having a big idea and writing it down. Right. But it doesn't mean that the idea didn't come, it just means that something,"
00:38:19,"some process had to finish. You know, like when your computer updates, some process had to finish before, and sometimes That process takes a really long time. Yes. Sometimes it does. But if we realize that it's all towards the life's work, then we realize that there's a reason for it. Right. And the other, the other part when you asked about signposts,"
00:38:40,"the other signposts that we know it's right, is because it is because because it's happening, right? Mm. If, if you actually put out a little shingle saying, I'm a photographer and I'm looking for, you know, models, or I'm gonna start taking money, it's a signpost because it's present in your life. That means that it, it's,"
00:39:00,"it is because it's there. And so we can also think of it that way, is that if it found its way into our life, like you and I are just talking on this podcast, it was meant to be because, because we're doing it. Yeah. And it, it's kind of like a really kind of hard concept to get our, our heads around."
00:39:16,"But if we start thinking, you know, a little bit more esoterically about it all or holistically, then, then it can come very clear. So when we realize that business is not just what we sit down with our intelligence or our wisdom to do that, we have to put our energy into it, that we have to consider our mindset in it and our body and our intuition,"
00:39:36,"then we start realizing that it all, it all fits right? And it's all meant to be I love it. And this is why you'll see different marketing strategies that work really well for photographer A, but they don't work for photographer B. Yeah. And maybe photographer B is better served by these over here. So I think that becomes one of the most challenging pieces for photographers,"
00:40:00,"especially newer photographers, to figure out what their marketing might look like because they think there's this one right, only answer, right. For all businesses. And I think they also get drawn into the, the thought that, oh, well, I'm just missing this one strategy, just this one strategy. What's the one strategy? There's certainly some secret strategy that successful photographers are doing that they haven't told me yet."
00:40:27,"And as soon as I know I can do that action and boom, and then my calendar will be full. But That, that's sort of, I have a bit of an allergy to the whole give me your best tips and tricks. Yeah. Because then you have a, a, a post of a hundred tips and tricks. And when I talk about balance,"
00:40:45,"that's a balancing act. You're, you're just going through a hundred tactics, right? And, you know, you haven't realized that photographer A is in the west coast, you're on the east coast, they're serving a luxury market. You're serving a a middle market, you know, they're 10 years in, one year in, you have to evaluate and knock down each one of those,"
00:41:08,"and what a time consuming activity that is. So this whole tip and trick, your best strategy, what you wish you would've known before it, it's helpful when you need to sort of bounce some ideas or if you feel kind of like, like you don't know where to go, but it's really a lot of wheel spinning, right? So I really encourage people when they say,"
00:41:31,"what's your best tip? I'm like, think about what your best tips, tips are. Like, it's not very helpful, but, you know, they could go to my website and find more help on how to figure that out. But if you think about who you are, what kind of business you wanna run, what you want clients to walk away with,"
00:41:48,"how you would like to serve them, then your tips and tricks and your strategies come out of that. And that is absolutely the most effective way to create your marketing plan. So it might involve, you know, half of, or more of the things that you learned on the thread of the tips and tricks. But the, the thing is, is that it's how you do it,"
00:42:11,"right? So, you know, this person uses Instagram and they post five times a week and, and, but you just can't get there, right? It probably means that you should listen to your intuition and say, you are not a five day a week Instagram poster, and maybe you're a less per week Instagram poster, and maybe you're more of a Pinterest poster."
00:42:31,"But when they don't listen to their own internal workings and they just do, you know, so you just, you start posting five times a week on Instagram, and then you're like, I'm still not getting any, That's why this is not working, right? Why Isn't this working? And and that's really a signal that you have to go within rather than looking externally."
00:42:54,"So that it's, it's a really important point to, to remember is that yeah, they, we all look for it though, right? We all look for the quick fix, the one thing, but, but really the answers are, are inside. Yeah. I love it. Are there any external best strategies though that you see that kind of are an undercurrent thread amongst some of the most successful strategies that people are using?"
00:43:21,"Like for instance, like connecting with actual humans, you know, or, you know, just kind of different things of, I don't know, just any kind of common denominators that you see are at the, the root of a lot of success that people have? Yeah, I mean, there are just like a, a five pillar approach to marketing."
00:43:41,"There are pillars that underpin our success. And so it's really, you know, when you think about say, food, there are, you know, food groups, but how you put those all together in a recipe is very unique. And it could vary. There could be thousands of variations, right? So it's really about creating a recipe that works with some very base ingredients and the base,"
00:44:08,"some of the base ingredients are that you need to have sort of a handle on photography, right? So knowing how to use your camera, understanding your settings, you know, having a voice as an artist and a vision it, that's really important. So that's a, that's a pillar, right? Of success, is to constantly learn your craft and improve your craft."
00:44:32,"The other pillar is knowing who your client is, right? So if we don't want everybody, and you know, like if you know, like you're not friends with everybody in life, right? Yeah. You'll meet people and you'll be friends with some people and not with other people. It's the same in business. We, we gravitate towards a certain type of person."
00:44:57,"So understanding who you wanna work with and how you wanna work with them. So the, the strategy there is to really understand who you are in relation to how do you serve others, right? It, it doesn't have to be really complicated, but that, that's like a, a major pillar. And then we use a lot of the same strategies."
00:45:19,"You know, having a, a good professional website that has a good solid brand, that's really important. But how we do it is more crucial than, than what we do, right? So the basics should be there. And that's a website that's Yes. Connecting with people. It could be how you want it though, you know, so some people are like,"
00:45:40,"you have to get on a, on a phone call, you know, with, with people, because if you have anxiety of over that, eventually you have to meet them, right? Right. So one might think like, if you can't do the phone call, what? But some people are better in person than they are on a phone call,"
00:45:54,"right? It feels kind of awkward or forced, right? So you can work within sort of the limitations that you have, but the, the key is to know your limitations, right? Mindset is, is huge. So recently I have become very obsessed with some of the sports documentaries that I've seen, like tennis, cycling, golf, even golf."
00:46:18,"I'm like, I never thought I'd be interested in golf. But there's a, a great golf documentary circulating out there now, and the biggest takeaway from the success of all of these athletes, these like ultra successful top of their game athletes, is mindset. The game is played in their heads before it ever gets on any golf course or any court or any,"
00:46:42,"you know, racetrack or anything like that. It's absolutely one of the most common threads ever. So knowing your craft, educating yourself on marketing strategies, knowing who your client is, all finding good. If your mindset is not in the right place, yeah. If you don't believe it's possible, nothing's gonna work. Yeah. So I, I call mind the mindset pillar,"
00:47:03,"the great success maker or annihilator of our wisdom or intelligence pillar. So our wisdom or intelligence runs our business, right? And the mindset is absolutely the biggest ingredient that will affect that one. And if our mindset is not, not where it needs to be, that we will let the fear stand in the way, right? And then, and then that just puts a big stop sign in front of your,"
00:47:30,"your progress, right? So mindset absolutely is, it cannot be ignored. So a lot of times educators and marketers, they talk about mindset, you know, as an obstacle here or there, but for me, it, it's absolutely the, the biggest, the biggest one. So it's not something to be taken care of, like sort of in the wings,"
00:47:53,"like crying in the shower, whatever it is, I'm not making it. Why can't, why couldn't I do this? Why couldn't I stand up for myself? It needs to be a part of our business. Absolutely. Part of our business mindset training, challenging the thoughts that come up for us. You know, we can think actually anything we want,"
00:48:11,"we can think that we're good enough and we can think that we're not good enough. So if I have those two choices, I'll pick the first one. I'd like to think I'm good enough, right? I'm gonna believe. Right? Nobody's telling me I can't, I, I can't believe that one over the other. Right? Oh my gosh, I couldn't agree more that it's just,"
00:48:27,"I mean, a hundred percent critical. It's like the, the unseen success factor that once you see it, you can't unsee it. But a lot of people are just looking for that action. They're just looking for what they need to do, and they think that's the secret. But if you have all this mind trash going on up here, there's just,"
00:48:45,"yeah. You're gonna have a really hard time getting traction. So that's, that's sort of what I consider to be the, the, the secret of shine sparkle is that it's because we focus on one pillar, right? The business pillar, let's say, which is the intelligence or, or wisdom pillar to the detriment of others. So when you don't have your mindset there,"
00:49:09,"then you can't do pricing, right? Right. And when your body is exhausted from doing like a marathon of mini sessions for like 20 bucks a po right? And then you're working well into the night to try and edit those photos, because clients are like, already, you know, the non-ideal client is already messaging you saying, where are my photos?"
00:49:29,"You're ignoring your body. And, and then the red flags that we talked about earlier when we ignore the red flags. So I firmly believe that the Shine sparkle approach is an actual solution. And the people are like, why am I not advancing? Why am I not progressing? Why aren't I booking? If you look at not just the business, but the things,"
00:49:52,"the other things that surround the business, you will find your solutions in there. Yeah. I love that. So good. Where can people find more information on Shine Sparkle in yourself and find you online? Well, they can find [email protected] with the E or without the e at the end, because the L actually in Shine Sparkle, it's, it's spelled without the E because the L at the end is B."
00:50:22,"Oh. So the, yeah. And people could go to the website and find out exactly what Shine sparkle means. In my about page, I, I break it down, I'm also working on a document, a guide that takes everybody through the process of my rebrand. Yeah. Because that's a big thing for a lot of photographers. They don't understand how to do it."
00:50:43,"We talked about the difficulty of understanding what brand is, and so I'm working on a guide that will be ready soon that will take them through that. So they can go to shine sparkle marketing.com. And I'm also on Instagram, but it's a new account, shine Sparkle Marketing. They can follow me there, or they can follow me at Lucy Baum as well."
00:51:01,"That's my wedding. Okay, perfect. My have photography work On Instagram. Is there with an E or with no E. With no E. Okay. Perfect Marketing. And if they go to Lucy Baum, they'll find the link in my Bio. Okay, perfect. Awesome. Oh my gosh, Lucy, this has been so good. If you guys enjoyed this conversation with Lucy,"
00:51:19,"definitely go tell her on Instagram, send her a dmm, go check out her website. She is also just agreed before this to be part of the hair of the dog summit. So now it's official and it's public and you can't back up. Yay. So our hair of the dog Summit number five will actually be happening September 26th and 27th, and it is going to be two full days of all business."
00:51:45,"This time. We're gonna hold a craft only one in the future, so it's going to be fantastic. Hair of the Dog, or no, www.pet photography summit. If you wanna check out details of that.com, pet photography summit.com. But yeah. Oh my gosh, Lucy, this has been so great. I know everyone is gonna love this conversation. I,"
00:52:05,"I just love having conversations like this, so thanks so much for Being here. Me too. I'm gonna walk away squealing, go like, yay. Same. Same. Oh my gosh. So good. Hope this made you guys squeal too excitedly ready to, you know, tackle your life and business and be able to look at it from that more holistic approach and let go of that guilt."
00:52:25,"Because work life balance is a farce Way to go way to tell it. I love it. I love it. I'd say it like it is, we gotta Own it, right? Yes. Yeah, for sure. I do remember when I was starting my business, like every once in a while I'd be like, man, this person working at Starbucks probably doesn't have to think about work later."
00:52:48,"You know? Because it was just like all consuming. Yeah. Which Was awesome, but then also just feels tiring. But if you can change that, flip that script and reframe it as like, oh no, this is just how it is. And it's okay to say, I'm gonna just watch this show now. Just like calm down brain for a minute."
00:53:09,"Yeah. And watch a sports documentary because they're really inspiring. Oh my God. It makes me feel a little lazy when I watch these, these top athletes. But yeah, I'm gonna have to watch some of Those. There's some really great lessons there, so if you're gonna watch something. Yep. I love it. I love it. Or Ted Lasso,"
00:53:25,"we just finished Ted Lasso, my favorite. Oh, anyway. All right, we're gonna wrap this up. Lucy, thank you again so much for being here. Really love this conversation and we'll see you at the summit. Thank You. Welcome. Look forward to it. You're welcome. Thank you. Thank you. All right guys, and I will see you next week."
00:53:44,"Have a good one everybody. Thanks for listening to The Hair of the Dog podcast. This was episode number 207. If you wanna check out the show notes for access to any of the resources that we mentioned, simply go to www.hairofthedogacademy.com/ 2 0 7. 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."
00:54:07,"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] of the Dog Academy. Thanks for being a part of this pet photo community."