Connect Inspire Create
Welcome to Connect Inspire Create: The Mindset & Business Coaching Podcast. I'm Carol Clegg, your host and Progress and Accountability coach for women business owners.
Listen to conversations that delve into taking action, business and life coaching,
creativity, and different ways to foster a positive mindset. Whether you're a woman
solopreneur navigating midlife, seeking to overcome procrastination, or
striving for balance in your business, you'll find an episode or two on this show that will be insightful and motivating. That's the plan!
Let's embark on a journey to connect, inspire, and create a
space where our connections inspire us —welcome to Connect Inspire Create!
Connect Inspire Create
Boudoir Photography: Confidence Through the Lens with Liz Hansen
Ever wondered what happens when women truly see themselves through fresh eyes? Liz Hansen, owner of Chicago Boudoir Photography, reveals the transformative magic that occurs in her studio every day.
"Is that me?" It's the question Liz hears most often when women first see their unedited photos during a boudoir session. That moment of recognition, seeing yourself as beautiful, powerful, and sensual exactly as you are has changed the lives of over 2,000 women who've stepped in front of Liz's camera since 2018.
What began as Liz's own personal transformation through a boudoir session has evolved into a mission-driven business that goes far beyond photography. With an all-female staff and a commitment to creating a safe, affirming environment, she's built not just a successful studio but a thriving community of over 10,000 women who support each other in embracing confidence.
Liz shares powerful insights about entrepreneurship that apply to any purpose-driven business: "Ready is not a state of being—it's a decision." Whether stepping in front of a camera or launching a new venture, waiting until you feel completely prepared might mean never taking that first step. Her approach of serving just one client per day ensures a "queen for the day" experience while maintaining a sustainable business model.
For women hesitant about trying boudoir photography, Liz's message is simple: you don't need to change anything about yourself to be worthy of celebration through beautiful imagery. And for entrepreneurs struggling with the challenges of building something meaningful, she offers hard-earned wisdom: "Starting a business is the work of a lifetime. It's like having a newborn baby and trying to get it to grow up and be self-sufficient."
Connect with Liz at chicagoboudoir.com to explore free resources on empowerment or to learn more about creating your own transformative boudoir experience.
Hello from your host, Carol Clegg – your mindset and accountability coach for women coaches, entrepreneurs and small teams!
As a coach or heart led entrepreneur, you know all the right tools and strategies to support your clients—but when it comes to applying them to yourself, it’s easy to get stuck. You might find it hard to prioritize self-care, stay motivated, or maintain a positive mindset, especially when juggling the demands of your business. That’s where I come in.
I love helping women reconnect with their own practices. Together, we’ll explore what’s getting in the way, reignite your motivation, and put the right tools in place to support your well-being.
If you're ready to start prioritizing your own mindset and motivation, take my complimentary “Insights into You” (aka Saboteur discovery assessment” and follow up with a free coaching session to explore your results. Take your assessment here, or visit carolclegg.com for more details.
BOOK your ✅ 30-minute complimentary exploration call HERE
Let’s connect on LinkedIn and Instagram, or join my LinkedIn Group Flourish: A Community for Women Business Owners
...The advice I would give myself in my early days is just to keep going. It is not easy to start a business. No matter what field you're in, starting a business is, you know, it is sort of the work of a lifetime. It's like having a newborn baby and trying to get it to grow up and be self-sufficient on its own right. So it's not easy. I made a lot of mistakes, there were a lot of things I would do differently, but it's like you can't learn it without doing it.
Speaker 2:So just keep going Well, welcome everybody to another episode of Connect, inspire, create, the podcast that is all about empowering midlife woman entrepreneurs to take bold action, to spark fresh inspiration which especially comes from my guests that I love having on my show and to lead their businesses with heart and to tap into being mindfully present. So today I am joined by Liz Hansen, owner and photographer at Chicago Boudoir Photography, and since opening her luxury portrait studio in 2018, liz has photographed more than 2,000 women and has built a thriving community of over 10,000 members. Her mission goes beyond the camera she's dedicated to helping women embrace confidence in their bodies, their relationships and their lives. Liz's work has been featured on the TEDx stage, npr and by the Association of International Boudoir Photographers. And Liz, welcome to Connect, inspire, create.
Speaker 1:Hey, thanks so much for having me.
Speaker 2:It's great to be here, Carol, oh and I love that we're digging into kind of a new topic for my show. But it all ties back because there's always a link somewhere, isn't there, with confidence and stepping up. But I've got a bunch of questions that we're going to see if we can cover a couple of different aspects of what you're doing and where you're taking it to. So you had said under your own personal story, because we met via an email, so thank you for reaching out to me, but that your own boudoir session was transformative. What shifted for you that day?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So if you've never heard of boudoir, it's a fancy French word that means a woman's bedroom. What I do as a boudoir photographer is I've created a safe space for women to create sensual, sexy photos of themselves, to feel more confident in their own skin, and so about a decade ago I heard about this concept about boudoir. I was curious, but I couldn't believe that women actually went and did such a thing. I was a photographer. I was taking pictures of weddings and families and babies.
Speaker 1:I heard about this boudoir thing through some of my photography circles and I decided to sign up for a boudoir photo shoot for myself. I went and bought some lingerie. I showed up for this shoot. I was very nervous. This was very outside of my comfort zone. I definitely went into it thinking like you know, good girls quote unquote good girls don't do stuff like this. But here I am doing it anyway, and I am not exaggerating when I say that this photo shoot experience like it was transformative for me. I walked out of there feeling ready to show up in my life in bigger and better ways. I felt empowered to take bolder steps in my life and a couple of years later I did. I opened up my own boudoir photo studio to offer the same opportunity to other women.
Speaker 2:Because that ties right into. I was going to ask you how come you transformed what was an experience for you into a business. But I'm guessing that your experience, when it was so changing, was made even more importantly, special by the person who you interacted with at that time. I mean, it could have been a photographer who didn't give that to you. So there must have been a kind of a chemistry or a special connection to trust and to allow yourself to step into that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, signing up for a boudoir photo shoot is, you know, takes a little courage maybe. Maybe it's out of your comfort zone. So you have to trust the photographer. Right, you have to say I'm going to lean into this experience and allow her to create something and I hope that I like what she creates. Right, because it's a very vulnerable thing to do, right? So I decided to do that. I just I let her direct the photo shoot, I let her maybe push me a little bit to do things I wouldn't have normally done, and that's what I feel my role is as a photographer to be there, to be that safe space and to also say, hey, it's okay, we can try some new things together here today.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So I know, just as you shared now, that many women will kind of go oh, I am just not ready. So I mean, do you have something when you, I presume, have that conversation? Perhaps is it a Zoom call, is it over the phone? But what do you say to them when they say, oh, I don't know that I'm ready to do this.
Speaker 1:Yes, every photo shoot starts with a phone call where we find out about you and your unique goals and what you want to create from this photo shoot so I can customize something just for you. I will say I don't believe in being ready, right, being ready. Ready is not ready is a decision. Ready is not like an actual state of being right. You can just decide to be ready and then do it right. There's nothing you have to do to prepare for a boudoir photo shoot.
Speaker 1:You don't have to practice in front of a mirror. You don't have to practice in front of a mirror. You don't have to know what you're doing, right, just show up. I even have a beauty team on staff, right, so we're going to do your hair and makeup there, you know? Just show up, we'll celebrate you just as you are, and I think that has like parallels for a lot of things in life. You don't have to be ready to start a business. You just take steps in that direction, right? You don't have to be ready for a change in your career. You can just decide that you're going to make a change, right? So being ready is just a decision.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, I hear you on that one. And it's those small steps that once and dream why not dream? And then you take those steps. Do you notice that when you talk to women about their bodies before and then after a session, do you notice a pattern that women the change after they've experienced doing a photo, boudoir photo shoot with you?
Speaker 1:no-transcript. And then I do something really unique that a lot of studios don't, which is right after the photo shoot before you even leave the studio, I'm going to show you a slideshow of your pictures right then and there. Here's why First off, the instant gratification is just really fun to see your pictures right away. But also I want women to see themselves gorgeous, beautiful, powerful, just as they are, without any photo shoot, without any Photoshop, without a filter, right. And when I show women the pictures on the screen and they see themselves so often they say things to me like oh, is that me? Like I can't believe I did this. I've never seen myself like this before. And there's I mean, sometimes people cry, right but there's just this moment of recognition like that is me, that is a version of me, and I'm so glad that I captured her here today like that.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, Something that just comes to mind when you're sharing that no-transcript. I'm allowed to step into this beautiful experience and this lovely creation, and the fact that you let them have a look at those photos before any altering and that in itself just lifts them is really tremendous. What an awesome experience. So let's dive a little bit behind the business side of things and share with us how you've merged your soulful intention with the reality of running a profitable studio.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So boudoir, it's like a little bit of a taboo business to be in, right, I mean, it's a little bit naughty, right. So I have to be really careful about the ways I talk, about what I do, the way I share images, privacy, my messaging right. So, yes, I am a business and of course, I'm in the business of selling, you know, an experience photos, albums. But it's broader than that for me, like it is mission based, right. Like I do want women to come in and feel something. So I have 100% female staff.
Speaker 1:I'm very careful in the way I share and talk about images and the women who come in to my studio. For example, all of the pictures you see on my website, I have explicit signed permission from those women to share those images. There's nothing on there. If you want, if you come to my studio and you want your pictures to remain private, they will, of course, remain private. So all of those things work together to create a business that, yes, it's profitable but also brings me a lot of joy and hopefully helps women feel more confident as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and we will have, Liz, your website link further down. I'll have it in the show notes. But just a comment that I made to Liz, because whenever my guests come on my show, I like to prepare myself and I like to know a little bit more about you. So I always pop over to wherever I can to learn a little more about you. And your website just touched me because it was different, so I just invite listeners to click on that link when you're listening to the show and pop over and have a look. Liz, I don't know if this is your main reach, but your Facebook community is huge. I mean, we're talking over 10,000 women. So how do you wow, supporting that and keeping it going and being authentic in that group? Any tips to share with those that want to do the Facebook community?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I started that community because I really wanted to talk about these topics. I wanted to talk about what it meant to be a woman today, what it means to be in a career, what it means to, you know, family, motherhood, all of these things. And a Facebook group felt like a good place to do it. So I started really small right, just invited a few of my friends and then pretty soon they started inviting their friends and I made a point of posting a conversation question every single morning. That gets people engaged, that gets people talking, and I would post what was on my mind, what I was thinking about, what was in the news, you know, anything related to what people might be thinking about. And it's grown over the years to be really just a fun place to hang out.
Speaker 1:I have there are people in the group that I feel like they are my friends, even if we haven't met in real life, and if you want to start a group like this, I would absolutely encourage you to do it. It's free to start a Facebook group. It doesn't cost you anything, right? You can always start it and make the group something you know revolving not just about like it's not about selling something, right. So if you start a business group, it's not just like I go on there every day and I'm like, sign up for a boudoir photo shoot, sign up for a boudoir photo shoot, sign up for a boudoir photo shoot, but rather I mean, yes, the group is powered by my business, but it has this broader mission.
Speaker 1:So I always tell people like, let's say, maybe you are in the, you know you have a pet grooming business. Maybe you could start a Facebook group around pet adoption and fostering animals, like a little bit of a bigger mission. Or maybe you are a photographer that wants to take pictures of families. Well, could you start a group that's around family activities and local parenting tips in your area that moms and families want to join a group to find out the information you have there. Right, like, what is it that you can do to take your business to a broader mission? That's what makes a more successful Facebook group.
Speaker 2:I love what you've shared because it's showing up authentically, which allows people to trust you and to learn more about. And then there is so much more. Obviously, when people trust you and learn and you're sharing and giving encouragement, then it's like hmm, maybe I'd love to work with Liz. They can follow that trail by themselves. There's no pressure, because I'm exactly the same. I can't stand the pressure and the high selling it's. Let's just come together, let's support each other, let's build community. We all need each other and you just never know when someone might say oh, I want to do boudoir photography as a gift, you know, for my fiance. I mean, do you have a lot of that that these women, besides doing it for themselves, are gifting to their husbands or fiances, or boyfriends or significant others?
Speaker 1:Yeah, of course. I mean, boudoir makes a great gift, right? It's a gift that only you can give, and so, of course, when women come in, it's about them, the day's about them, and then who they decide to share their photos with. That's up to you no-transcript to put yourself out there so people can know you. Right, you are going to attract some people who like what you do, and you're going to repel some people as well, and that can be a little scary at first. You think, oh, I want everyone to love me and I want everyone to buy from me, right.
Speaker 1:But in reality, it's okay to kind of have messaging that attracts the right kinds of people that want to work with you and it pushes away the people that your product is not right for, because there are 7 billion people on this planet and you cannot serve all of them, right. So it is okay to have some differentiation there, but it can be a little scary at first to put yourself out there and say this is who I really am, this is who I'm going to show up on the internet. Internet's a big place, right. You do have to develop a little bit of a thick skin sometimes and learn how to delete and block people.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was going to ask you because boudoir, I guess, is a crowded field in its own way. Photography is a crowded field in its own way and have you's a lot of photographers out there. Interestingly, in my area there are not that many boudoir studios.
Speaker 1:So I do feel sort of like a little bit unique that I'm doing this in my area, and I always have to. Every person that comes into my studio has to feel comfortable, Like my, my. What I have to offer is not I'm not just selling cupcakes or t-shirts or something where I can just hand it out, right, Like the person who comes in for the. They have to show up and really do their part too. They have to be vulnerable, right, and so it's a unique business to be in. It's very white glove, right. I only have one woman who comes to the studio each day. That means that I, you know, I can't serve 100 people per day. I serve one person per day and she's the queen for the day. So that means constantly, you know, reaching out to new people, finding new people who would be interested in boudoir, showing up, talking to people like you, going to local events, being a part of my community.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And then, as always, referrals. I mean to me those are gold, because if somebody's had this wonderful experience, why are they not going to share that with somebody else and say you know, so, do you travel ever for your work? Or is everybody got to come? In other words, if we don't live in Chicago, what?
Speaker 1:do we do Right? Well, okay, most of my work is here in Chicago. I have a studio set up here, but I have a broader mission. If you're listening to this and you're not in Chicago, I'd still love to be in touch. I have some free resources on my website. For example, I have a free e-book about empowerment. You can take a boudoir quiz. I'd love to connect with you wherever you are in the world.
Speaker 2:Liz, that sounds wonderful. Yeah, that there is definitely so much more on helping empower women and, if they can't get in front of your camera, that they can still connect with you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and there might be a boudoir photographer in your area. Give it a Google, see what comes up, or make a weekend trip out of coming to Chicago. I'd love to meet you here too. Oh, that sounds wonderful.
Speaker 2:I asked you Studio days and what encouragement would you give to women who are trying to build a purpose-driven business? And, as I mentioned right up front, you know from the heart. I guess that was a two-sided question, so let's go with the first one Advice what you would give yourself in early days to start a business, no matter what field you're in, starting a business is.
Speaker 1:You know, it is sort of the work of a lifetime. It's like having a newborn baby and trying to get it to grow up and be self-sufficient on its own right. So it's not easy. I made a lot of mistakes. There were a lot of things I would do differently, but it's like you can't learn it without doing it. So just keep going.
Speaker 1:If you are starting a business, I wish I could, like reach through the podcast and give you a big hug, because I didn't have that many people cheering me on when I started my business. In fact, almost everyone I talked to was like a photo studio. That doesn't sound like a good idea. Everyone's got an iPhone in their pocket now. No one will want to hire you, but I believed in this and I believed in the mission and the experience of people coming to the studio is different than just taking selfies on your iPhone, and I kept at it. So if you don't have someone cheering you on, if you don't have a mentor, like see if you can find that Maybe it's an internet group of people who are running a similar business to you. Maybe it's someone like Carol, who can help you and coach you along. That is so valuable, it's worth paying for, it's worth investing in in order to get through those early hard times in your business.
Speaker 2:I couldn't agree with you more. In fact, I still host a free monthly gathering, a mastermind, and we come together. And it's amazing because when everybody lets down the pretenses, and and we come together. And it's amazing because when everybody lets down the pretenses, and then they all come together. We all need support and we all need somebody to hear our story and kind of help, hold us accountable and keep moving. So, yes, I agree with you, liz. You know, if it'd be a Facebook group maybe it's a LinkedIn group, maybe there's, as you say, a mentor or, you know, a mastermind of some sort but having somebody walk with you and just that little bit of encouragement that we need to keep going, because we can't look in the mirror and just say to ourselves you've got this, you're going to do this, it's all going to be okay, I mean that helps, but being with like-minded people that are walking the same road is definitely important.
Speaker 1:So, liz, yeah, go ahead. It can be hard to be what you can't see right, and so if you haven't seen a successful female entrepreneur who's running a heart-centered business, sometimes it can be hard to be that. So see, if you can find someone who's maybe even just two steps ahead of you, that will help so much Wonderful.
Speaker 2:And Liz, where will listeners connect with you? Where's the best place to find you?
Speaker 1:Best place to go is my website, chicagoboudoircom, and boudoir is a tricky word to spell, it's B-O-U-D-O-I-Rcom. Even if you're not in the Chicago area, check out some of the free resources I've got there. I'd love to connect with you.
Speaker 2:Thank you, liz. I'll make sure to have your website so that people could click on it along with the book that you spoke about, the e-book, so that'll be there as well. And so, to everybody, thank you for listening. If today's conversation just sparked a little something, I invite you to share it with somebody else who you think might enjoy it.
Speaker 2:And this week, I invite you to embrace your own unique way of connecting, inspiring and creating. Give yourself permission to be you, just like the name of my show Connect, inspire, create. May your choices bring a sense of peace and ease and flow into your world. And if you're a woman business owner in midlife seeking more balance, clarity and a powerful way to shift your mindset, I offer personalized accountability and positive intelligence coaching tools to help you build habits to quieten self-negative self-talk, deepen your self-love and move towards goals with greater confidence. Curious to know more? You'll find me on LinkedIn at Carol Clegg, or you're welcome to email me at carol at carolcleggcom. So until the next time, thanks, liz. Thank you for sharing and empowering and giving back to our community of women business owners.
Speaker 1:Well, thanks so much for having me, carol, it was a joy.
