83: Breaking The Burnout Loop

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We map a practical path from burnout loops to steady bookings by swapping panic posts for a simple, repeatable marketing rhythm. We explore low-energy systems, seasonal urgency windows, and diversified channels that protect visibility beyond social algorithms.

• overbooked vs underbooked burnout and why both go silent
• the danger of panic posting and cooled audiences
• treating marketing as a rhythm not a sprint
• reducing reliance on Instagram with email and evergreen content
• repurposing one idea across many channels using templates
• proof posts and soft nurture to build trust
• seasonal timed urgency windows without chaos
• automation, recovery buffers, and future-proof SEO
• honest visibility audits and minimum viable marketing
• naming seasons and planning launches ahead

If you are thinking about joining the membership, you should. It’s really fun!

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From Burnout To Booking

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello everybody. Okay, so this episode is going to be about being stuck in a burnout loop to going to entering Wow, this first sentence is starting off amazingly well. Going pushing Okay. All right. Locating yourself from a burnout loop, relocation. Okay. Relocating yourself from a burnout loop to a booking loop. That's what I was trying to say. This is some insight into my brain as well. I'm here with all of you guys. I'm in the phase of having people ask me when their galleries are coming. And I'm like, ma'am, I am, my fingers are raw. I'm trying to do it. Um, so I'm right there with all of you guys. But how I see myself in the role here is basically just like your gentle nudger of continuing to do things right now because we're all in that space and the visibility is still important. So we're gonna talk about some ideas to help you reframe

Overbooked vs Underbooked Burnout

SPEAKER_00 1:04

it. Um, so the burnout loop looks like this you you're overbooked or you're underbooked, because people think that burnout can only be caused by overbooking yourself, but it can also be caused by not booking enough and then feeling like completely burned out on thinking about the fact that you're not booked enough. That those are both very destructive mindsets. Um, because what happens in the marketing world, they're destructive through multiple lenses, but through the marketing lens is because you just go quiet and then you start to panic, and then you post something, and then because you've been quiet, it doesn't hit, and then you go back into burnout. So both of those people, the burned out person who's overworked and the burned out person who's not who's underseen and underbooked, those two people are kind of they swing back around the circle to almost feeling the same. So, and obviously, like the underbrooked person may have even more of a panic because there's an income loss there. So, so then you think like, oh, well, that person, when there's an income loss and they're not booking, that's when they should market. Well, yes, but that's the hardest place to market from. It's like it's like trying to run a marathon when you haven't eaten in two days. It's just really hard. Um, and then what can happen is you get a booking and you kind of rejuvenate yourself, or on the other side of the spectrum, you get ahead with editing and you rejuvenate yourself. Um, and then instead of having a system in place, you go to like a dopamine hit sort of activity to fuel that feeling of euphoria, whether it be I got ahead or I got a booking, and then none of this is actually leading to any positive visibility on the marketing side. So it's a constant swing between exhaustion, anxiety, frustration, starting from scratch, guilt about inconsistency, feeling like

Panic Posting And Cool Audiences

SPEAKER_00 3:04

marketing never works, when in reality there's no pattern there. So there's nothing to cling on to, there's no substance. So the goal is to get substance. Um, we don't want to treat marketing like a sales, like a short-term sort of sales push of bookings, and instead switch it to thinking about it as like a uh ongoing rhythm so that you don't need a built-in recovery phase, you just keep going because it's part of a pattern, and the system can't rely on your energy and mental stability, it can't because this job is full of valleys and mountains, like that's just the nature of it. So if we're saying we're only gonna market at the top of our game, first of all, that's that's like literally the the least needed time to market. Like when I am at the top of my game, that means that my systems are functioning with little marketing, that little marketing energy for me. My SEO is really good. My the I have returning clients because I have a good client experience. I have systems in place that can help people book easily and build trust with me without me talking to them. That's not the time that I need to market. So that's kind of where people get really stuck. So, what happens when you're overwhelmed because of overbooking or overwhelmed because of underbooking, you disappear and then your audience kind of cools off. And then, because majority of us are relying on social media, as a side note, um, in the marketing membership, we had a call uh uh yesterday, and I was just telling them all how what I want all of them to become is marketers who are not reliant on social media if they don't want to be. Um, I try to be a realist about like where we're heading and what the truth is because I listen to a lot of marketing podcasts, and I listen to, you know, there's a couple photographers who have built up a social media following via a couple viral videos, and so they sort of like teach on

Why Marketing Must Be A Rhythm

SPEAKER_00 5:11

how all you need to do. That's always like a huge red flag for me, all you need to do on social media. But at the end of the day, all we really need to do is not have all of our baskets in one social media platform. And if I were to go around and interview a random 100 photo family photographers in the world, the chances are that the majority of them have most of their marketing in the Instagram basket. And my goal is to get the the people who work with me out of that loop and into strategic marketing that is based on um seasonal drops of what you're offering and marketing specifically around those and marketing via email list and other ways because um I'm honestly a little bit worried about so so this is hi, side note. Um, I working with seniors has really opened my eyes. So this is how my brain works. I'm always thinking five years ahead. So when I'm working with a senior and I'm noticing like how they utilize social media, first of all, a lot of them um use social media like Instagram is not at all the way that you or I used Instagram um five years ago. It's they barely post on there. It's a stories, it's just it's like basically like a stories app. So the issue there is that the marketing that they could do for you promotion-wise is fleeting. Most of the imagery that they share of themselves, every newer generation, has no staying power in terms of if you were relying on families sharing their images for you to gain brand visibility. So I zoom ahead five years, and now that senior is gonna be graduating college, and then a few years after that, they may be in a position to become a client of mine or yours. Maybe they're gonna get pregnant or have a baby. And so, what I'm thinking about is how can we start now to build systems that will support visibility no matter what a social media algorithm is doing or how user behavior reacts. And that way we can have a system that's foundational and structural to just visibility in whatever is going on. That would be the goal. Okay, so then back to this. When you disappear and your audience cools off and the algorithm goes away and then trust fades, what's really hard then? Getting back on the horse because you're you're just like, I the messaging that your brain is sending to its own self is that you suck. That's like the thing. So each restart feels harder because you come back on to Instagram. Not that most of you ever went off Instagram, you may be quiet on your own marketing, but you're probably heavy in the comparison scroll. Well, now you're really overthinking it because you're like, oh, all these people are marketing. And this the amount of photographers, I just want to say this, who are triggered by editing lists. This is just a side note, and this is what I want like a mindset shift that I want you guys to. This is a this is a statement that may hit some of you. If you are concerned about another photographer's editing list, you need to mute that person because they are in your head, whether or not you want to admit it or not. Their editing list and their busyness level and and and what they're doing has nothing to do with you and is not is not no nothing to do with your business at all. But the amount of people that are hyper focused on especially other local photographers and their level of busyness and how that somehow translates into some sort of self-worth statement for you means you need to go heavy on the mute button. Like I do not need to see, even though I've worked so hard on my mindset and I'm and I feel like I'm very secure in what I do, when I'm overwhelmed and feeling at all nervous or frustrated, the last thing I need to be inundated with is the perceived success of my quote unquote competitors. The human brain does not process that well.

Relying Less On Instagram

SPEAKER_00 9:12

So heavy on the mute. If you have any sort of feeling, negative feeling about another local photographer posting her editing list, I'm sorry, but it's a you thing. That let them what do you what are you gonna try to stop them from doing that? Let them do that. That's that may be their system. They may communicate with clients that way. They have may train their clientele to look at their stories to see where they fall in the in the editing list. And that's all it's about for them. They and and it may not even be about showcasing their busyness or whatever. It's basically just a bullhorn message to let people know um, here's here's where I am in this editing list. So that's just a side note. I've seen that so many times in Facebook groups and on social media, photographers complaining about that specific thing. Mute everyone if you have those thoughts. It literally is not about them, it's about you. Just get in your own lane. Sorry, that's just a little like thing. We gotta be aware of how much energy the perceived success of other local photographers is taking from our own building of marketing systems that promote our own visibility. Just be really careful with that. So, one thing I want to talk about is energy. So you don't have to have 100% energy to stay visible. Like, I think a lot of you are still relying on motivation. Motivation will not carry you through. You need systems, you need habits, you need something that keeps you findable and relatable even when you're exhausted, even when you're burnt out. And I'm not someone who's saying, like, oh, you're burnt out, you better, you better keep posting or you're gonna fail. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about this sort of, I guess it is sort of a panicky, motherly feeling that I feel right now, where I see a lot of you silent and I worry about the future, you looking back and being like, Man, I wish I would have just put a few systems in place and gotten some visibility to utilize this time of many eyes on my business. That's where like my brain comes through, not forcing you through overwhelm to continue to be visible, but just how can you not let this time that's sort of unique go to waste, even if it's something really small. Um, in the marketing membership, a couple of the what I do in the in the calls in there is I try to review some of the marketing ideas. I send out every single Sunday night, I send out a whole bunch of marketing ideas. There's real ideas, there's they're based around like education and um inspiration, and they're like categories like that. And then I have actual trends that are going on if anyone wants to dip into them and ideas about how we could repurpose them to be photography related. So then in the call the next morning on Monday, I talk about which ones of those are most important. So in that call, what I talked about was like this is a perfect time if you're totally stuck to just start recapping your 2025 because you will naturally talk about every season that you did and you can pull people into that. Recapping, if you're talking about how to best utilize the visibility that you have, recapping 2025 and talking about how excited you are for 2026 and things you're gonna implement and things you're gonna change or things you're gonna stay the same is a way better use

Future-Proof Visibility Beyond Algorithms

SPEAKER_00 12:25

of your time than showcasing the fall shoot that you shot yesterday. Because unless you have openings for that exact location, it doesn't make sense for you to be sharing that right now. So if you're looking for something to do, just get your mind in the process of creating a series that's all about right now recapping 2024. What you learned. It could be what I learned and what I want to do different. It could be how locations I use and locations I want to try. It could be your aspirations, it could be the things you you're doing differently in 2025 to help families feel more connected, to help families feel more prepared. That is the type of marketing that can be on social media, on a blog post, or out to your email list that is going to be such a better use of your marketing energy than just continuing to showcase fall sessions that you don't have any more openings for, or the leaves have now changed and it looks like a poop field. We just got to keep these things in mind. Okay, so what's the opposite of that? Right? That's over the the the opposite of like sadness. We're in the valley, we're crying, we're we're sad, we're we suck, right? We're in the suck valley. How do we get out? What does it look like? So it's a consistent lower energy rhythm that keeps everything moving forward. It doesn't take 100% energy. You're not running a sprint, it's just a slow jog around the track. That's that's kind of what we're thinking. It's a slow, year-long jog around the track instead of a sprint, lay down on the track, cry, stand up, put a band-aid on your heel, sprint again, cry. That's what I feel like most people are doing. So here are the core components of a steady booking loop. One is steady visibility. That means you need to show up. It doesn't mean that you need to, if you use social media as a way to show up, then part of your process is just repurposing that onto your evergreen places like your website or your email list. You could have an ongoing email list that's very, very engaging and fun all year round. Your email list could become something that you send out once a month or once every two weeks or something, and it's all about your town, local stuff that's happening. You're just becoming like an like a person who shares helpful local info and funny stories or whatever. That could be something that you would do that would be a low energy rhythm that keeps your audience warm and your business stable year-round. So it looks like steady visibility looks like if you need to, using scheduling tools and templates. I use templates for all of my marketing. I go onto a creative market or Etsy, I've talked about this a million times. And for social media templates, if you're doing ones that are like education-based, like you're trying to teach clients how best to work with you. I love to look for like um Instagram templates. Okay, here's exactly how I would type it. Canva

Comparison Triggers And The Mute Button

SPEAKER_00 15:19

templates for co restart. Social media Canva templates for coaches. There's a million coaches in the world. Um, and they uh they coach on any topic. You could have a coach that could coach you on how to train your dog to how to run a business, to how to like literally make your own soup. I mean, there's endless. And so to support all of these coaches of the world, many of graphic designers have created just really cheap, easy to use, super educational, good-based Canva templates for Instagram. So if you're looking for something, start there because here's the trick. Most of you will get stuck in that design loop, worrying that the thing you are making is not cute enough. That is a waste of your energy. So during this study of visibility, your priority is proof posts, like proof that your system works behind the scenes, client quotes, reviews. That's needs to be a huge part of what you're showcasing in the trust building phase. And also your excitement, your excitement throughout matters so much. The second is a soft nurture. So instead of disappearing and re-you want to repurpose old content, share reflections, keep people thinking about how you're thinking about your business, basically. Like you're just you're like, hey, I'm here. This is what I love. Basically, that's how you're showing up. I love to help you. And this is how that that's like your mindset instead of just informational, instead of just this is the shoot I just did. It's like, here's why this worked, and I would love for you to be a part of this. The third is I think it's really helpful to create time urgency window, timed urgency windows is what I wrote down. So it's like our business is seasonal for the most part, for the most part, for the majority of people. Some of you live in weird climates where it never changes. But for the most of us, we have predictable booking windows that are built around seasons. So start building into those timed urgency windows so that your audience over time knows what to expect. In year two, they'll be like, oh, here she is doing her spring push, and I've always loved her spring images, so maybe this time I'll buy in. That's what it looks like. If you plan them in advance, the urgency doesn't feel chaotic, it just feels like part of your system. Okay, have your recovery built in. Schedule downtime with buffers around how you're showing up for visibility. So, like when you're going into summer and you know you're about to start to market fall. So, like, for example, my fall release is in July. Schedule some evergreen posts that are gonna drop in the fall that you know work from past data. That's the type of thing where you're setting yourself up so that suddenly in the middle of October, your posts are going out, or your emails or your blog posts or whatever, and you're not even having to think about it. That's how you set future you up for success. That's how you build in your recovery buffer. Okay, the last one is system support. So you need to have some. Sorry, I have to move around. So you might hear some crinkle crunkling. Okay, so you might, you might need, you will need to have systems that support your workflow. So you need to figure out what those are. You want one piece of content, one idea to fuel multiple channels. And a lot of that can be done now with systems that you don't need to build yourself. They're already built. So there's there's repurposing tools, there's AI tools. Like, for example, I think it got, I think I need to re-reset it up, but like for the longest time this year, it was working flawlessly. I think they had an internal update and I need to I need to make sure I reaffirm my account. But for the longest time, every single podcast that I created wasn't was becoming a YouTube video without me doing anything. That's the type of thing I'm talking about. If you look into tools like repurpose.io,

Show Up With Low Energy Systems

SPEAKER_00 19:22

there are a million ways that you can take one content idea and spread it onto multiple channels, including a blog post. So blogging for 2026 for um the AI overview is going to become really important. That's another thing that I'm that I want everyone in the marketing membership to know in 2026 is how to use their SEO to get featured in the AI overview because I do believe that eventually, like I noticed that in my little chat GPT thing today or yesterday, it started saying like new browser, and it wanted me to use a chat GPT-infused browser. So I think that we're very, very close to traditional SEO going away completely. And I feel bad for everyone that spent a lot of time building their SEO that way. Um, but I want my marketing students to be on the forefront of understanding how to utilize that instead of being like, oh my gosh, it's too overwhelming. I can't even think about it and I'm not gonna try. I want it to be, okay, I built the systems and now I'm and now I see the rewards because I because I had someone helping me understand. That's like a huge goal of mine. So you need those support systems unless you're gonna have like an intern or something. And speaking of that, for 2026, I'm also gonna encourage everyone who's running a full-time business, meaning like you are running this and it's providing a full-time income for you, which generally means that you have a lot going on, to utilize local intern programs in your city because they exist. And I think they're really important. And I think it'd be really helpful, especially for teenage girls to having teenage girls myself, to have something on their resume that's like marketing intern. And that is exactly what you can provide. I want us all to step into the place of being like, these are functional, real businesses and really operate them that way. Okay, so what does the action plan look like? So audit what you're doing now. When was your last visible post? I remember I sometimes I'll call people out when they message me and they're like, Can you help me? I I'm marketing all the time and I'm not, and then I go back and I'm like, ma'am, it is October 15th, and you did one post in September. I see no updated blogs and I don't see anywhere. You tell me that you can't book your fall minis. This was like a conversation I had. Very kind. I'm always very nice, but like I do want to be truthful. They're like, oh, I can't book my fall minis. Do you have any advice? And I look, and one, there's they're doing there's nothing on their feed about the fall minis. I go to the website, there's nothing on the website about the fall minis. I'm like, how are people finding out about these? You need to honestly audit your current visibility. A lot of it is happening in your head. You're like thinking about marketing or you're marketing in your stories, and you're completely invisible unless someone's clicking into your stories. On your blog, and and majority of these people, when I ask, are not doing an email list and they're not running ads because I can also look at someone's Facebook page and I can look at their ad library. So I can see a lot and I see that not a lot is happening, yet this person feels like they are drowning in marketing because it's happening in their head. So you need to have an honest audit of what is actually going on. How long was it between your last inquiries and where did they come from? What happened with them? Did they book? Did they not book? What was the story? We need to start telling the honest story. What happens during your quiet seasons? Are you resting? Are you still visible? Are you burned out? Are you overwhelmed? Like, we need to take stock of this and be truthful about what it is. So then you need to define your marketing minimum visibility. Like, what's three things that you can do even when you're tired? Write that down and make sure you stick to it. Like it's it's like it's like going to do anything. You're you probably don't want to do it, whatever it is, unless it's the most fun thing in the world, but you still do it. There's lots of things that become non-negotiable for you. You still take your kid to school or make sure they get up in the morning if you're a mom, but there's a there's a high chance you don't want to do that. I it takes me, it takes so much energy to get my children out of bed in the morning. I'm like, go in there. Britt, my youngest is so funny. She's like, I need an alarm clock.

Recap Content That Actually Sells

SPEAKER_00 23:45

I'm like, okay. So I get her an alarm clock. It's just blaring in her room. I'm like, how do you sleep through that? It's driving me crazy. So I go in there, I'm like, hi, trying to be like nice because I I I remember being woken up partially sometimes when I was like, not by any, just like I'd be like woken up and it would be like feel like I was rushed, you know, and I just felt frustrated. So I'm like trying to avoid that. So I'm like, I'm like trying to be silly and sweet. I'm like, hey, wake up, wake up. And then she like I see her eye open. So I'm like, okay, you're up, like I'm up. And so none of that do I want to do every morning. But if I don't wake them up and get them to school, they won't go to school. And then that has its own long-term repercussions. It's the same with marketing. So batch out your energy. Take either 15 minutes a day or 45 minutes one day and take the next day off. Figure out where you can really spend some time and then set future you up for success. Like at this point in the year, like I said in last week's episode, you should be really taking stock of how this year felt and thinking about uh, let's say March 2025. What was going on then? What were you doing? Look back at your calendar. What did you have booked and where those bookings come from? If it wasn't enough, how could you 2x it? Those are that's a good way to spend your energy to see what needs to be done so that you're not just guessing because you have a lot of data. We just made it through a whole year pretty much, and you already made it through a winter in 2024, and you already made it through a spring in 2024. What did those look like? And how could you, the person sitting in the chair right now with the most visibility you're gonna have in the next couple months, help that person in 2025? If you need more spring, if you didn't have enough spring bookings, no one is coming to help you get more. That's the unfortunate truth. It's gotta be you. So the other thing you can do is you can name your seasons and then just like name them what it is, what you're offering, so that it's in and put it somewhere visibly. So write out on a piece of paper your sum, what does your winter look like? What do you want your spring to look like? What do you want your summer to look like? What do you want your fall to look like? And just have that paper top of mind because it will, if you're seeing it all the time, it will remind you what you're working towards. Those little, those little mind tricks are super, super powerful. So the goal isn't doing more and more and more and more and more marketing, it's removing the drama that is often self-inflicted from your marketing and turning it into small consistent consist consistent efforts instead of big bursts of panic energy. We're trying to shift it. Sustainability creates visibility that creates calm confidence. That's the opposite of chaos. A lot of you guys are gonna be chaos marketing as Black Friday. This is this is like such a common thing. So

The Steady Booking Loop Components

SPEAKER_00 26:46

what day is it? I don't even know. It's the first week of November. You still have time to build out a little marketing plan for anything you're doing for Black Friday or 2026 sessions if you want to take advantage of that energy where people are in the proper psychology to spend. If you want to, you could do it, you still have time. So I'm gonna nudge you to resist feeling chaotic and center yourself in calm marketing confidence. You know how to do this, you know what to do. You don't have you don't have a limit of ideas. The ideas are endless. You could find them anywhere. You could go into you go into anywhere, and you could say, you could say marketing ideas for family for there's no limit of those. It's just actually calmly creating and sticking to your plan. Okay, so I hope this was helpful. I know it's very crazy. I know that we're all maybe reaching our limit no matter where we are on the spectrum of underbooked or overbooked. If you feel perfectly booked and you feel perfectly calm in your energy, how can we get you feeling like that for spring and summer in every season? So it's the work isn't done just because you feel good right now. That's really good data for you to have because you know what it feels like to have enough bookings, enough income coming in, and to have enough time to spend with your family so you're not drowning in editing. That's like a really good balance. You have the data, you know how it feels. How do we recreate that feeling every season? Okay. I hope you guys have a good week and I will see you next Monday. Sorry, not Monday. I'll see you next week. Monday is for the marketing people that are in the membership. If you think about joining, you should. It's really fun. Okay, bye.