Staying Energized while Scaling with Purpose with Michelle Taylor- owner of a 7-fig marketing company

Connect with Michelle:

Website: https://www.taylorbrandconsulting.com/

Instagram and Facebook: @taylorbrandconsulting  

LinkedIn: https://www.taylorbrandconsulting.com/

Summary

In this conversation, Christa and Michelle discuss the importance of energy mapping for entrepreneurs, particularly photographers, to achieve a sustainable work-life balance. They emphasize that it's not just about managing time but understanding and optimizing energy levels to prevent burnout. Michelle shares practical exercises for listeners to identify what energizes them and how to align their business goals with personal fulfillment. The discussion also touches on the mindset shifts necessary for scaling a business sustainably and the importance of having a clear purpose behind growth.

Takeaways

• Work-life balance is about energy, not just time.
• Energy mapping helps identify what energizes and drains you.
• Sustainable scaling is crucial for long-term success.
• Personal fulfillment impacts professional performance.
• Identify your 'why' behind business goals.
• Mindset shifts are necessary for overcoming burnout.
• You have control over your business happiness.
• Invest in your energy reserves to fuel productivity.
• Scaling should align with personal and professional goals.
• Practical exercises can lead to significant insights.

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Transcript

Christa (00:00.66)
Welcome everyone today. I actually have one of my closest friends Michelle here and what's really cool is Michelle is unlike our other guests She's actually not a photographer, but she is the owner of a seven-figure marketing company Taylor brand consulting as always we'll link everything in the show notes She is the founder and principal consultant and Michelle. We're just so excited to have you

Michelle Taylor (00:25.824)
I'm so excited to be here. I know that we've been tossing around the idea of getting on each other's podcasts for a little while now. So I am just so honored that you wanted to have me on and talk all things business and marketing and scaling.

Christa (00:32.575)
Yes!

Christa (00:43.716)
my gosh, it's gonna be amazing. And the cool thing is Michelle came in and did an intensive actually with my team just to help us be better and to grow. And then I passed along some of her words of wisdom that she's going to share today to my top level students. And they all were like, my gosh, this is golden. Like this is the Holy grail. And so I was like, she has to come in and share with our listeners. So Michelle, let's just like, let's just jump right on in. I'm so excited.

Michelle Taylor (01:09.844)
I am too. this is for everyone listening. And Krista mentioned that we're very close friends. This is the nature of our friendship too, is that we just get right into the nitty gritty of things and sometimes we'll make each other a voice note or a Marco Polo of a very direct business question. So I love it. Very true to our relationship. So in terms of really top level issues when you're thinking of your business in 2025,

Christa (01:17.998)
You

Christa (01:21.592)
Yes.

Michelle Taylor (01:38.59)
You know, the question of work-life balance is on so many of our minds right now. And I kind of hate the word balance because we're thinking of, most of the time you're thinking of your calendar and you're thinking of time, right? And you're thinking of how can we get more time if you're coding your calendar? And let's say your work is red and your personal life is blue. How do we get more blue on the calendar and less red? That's not the question we need to be asking ourselves. And we're kind of driving ourselves crazy thinking of it in terms of time.

Christa (01:43.201)
yeah.

Michelle Taylor (02:07.092)
Because really what we're trying to solve for is not time, it's energy. And when we're scheduling out as business owners, we look at our schedule, we're making this huge mistake of, know, okay, do I have time for this? Is there time in the day? The answer is a lot of times typically yes, but we're not looking at our energy reserves. Do we have the energy and the space and the capacity to take this on?

And that's where I worked with Krista's team and we had such a great conversation around renewing energy and energy mapping, not just mapping your schedule in logistical time, but mapping your schedule and your energy reserves. And that's where you really start to find work-life balance. And what you'll find too is the more that you find, more that you find

energy in the energy reserves and energy renewal that it fuels your work to where you're showing up how you really want to show up and you're also being able to operationalize those ideas that kind of run in the back of your mind as an entrepreneur and kind of stack up and you're like man that's such a missed opportunity or I really I know I really need to do this but I don't have time it's not that you don't have time like let's be real with ourselves like we could get up earlier we could stay later we could be more efficient

It's not that you don't have time, it's that you don't have the energy. So I think what makes sense for us today is that we really talk about energy mapping and then how to renew your energy and really identifying what gives you energy and how to channel that energy into your professional goals for scaling and then also into your personal lives so that you feel that well-grounded balance where you're not just

Christa (03:51.19)
Yeah.

Michelle Taylor (03:52.082)
you know, neglecting work all the time or, you know, just so into work where you can't, we can't find that rest to not get burnt out.

Christa (04:01.646)
Yeah, I love that. And I think Michelle, so many entrepreneurs are wearing multiple hats. A lot of my students are parents or if they're not a parent, they have other responsibilities. Some have other businesses. And so I think that is so important that it can't just be like, we'll stay up an hour later or wake up an hour earlier and expect to be just as productive. And I've done that before where I just like map out the calendar and then you're just trudging along. Like, man, you know, I just spent three hours at my desk and I couldn't even tell you what I got done because I'm just mentally like,

completely kaput's you know

Michelle Taylor (04:33.31)
Yeah, and I think that's something I love with what you're doing in your coaching is really reaching this audience of photographers who are burnt out, right? Like they're on paper, they may be succeeding, you know, and across all the standards of what everyone else would think would be success, right? Like they're booked, they've got weddings every weekend, they've got portrait sessions every day. But, you know, when they're looking at

Christa (04:43.928)
Right.

Christa (04:59.491)
Right.

Michelle Taylor (05:02.368)
a couple of factors of, wow, I don't have, why am I never able to take my business to the next level? And if I got hit by a bus tomorrow, the business is gone. Well, that's not really scalable, right? Like if it's just us and the amount of physical space we can book on our calendar, that's not scalable. It's also not sustainable because as someone that had, for your audience, I had a stroke when I was 27.

Christa (05:15.308)
Great.

Christa (05:24.163)
Right.

Christa (05:29.607)
my gosh.

Michelle Taylor (05:30.62)
It was so unexpected. mean, I never could have, I didn't have any warning factors for that. It was kind of like a freak accident that happened. And I couldn't predict that I wouldn't be able to build hours the same way that I had up until that point. And so that's something why I'm so passionate about scaling sustainably and to a place where even if something like that happened,

Christa (05:54.818)
Yes!

Michelle Taylor (05:58.496)
your business would still thrive, you know, if you need to. And then to life happens, especially as a parent. So I love what you're doing with, you know, photographers that even if they're like booked and blessed, they are at a point where they've really maximized their current step that they're on. And they really need to, they're kind of wrestling with why can I not take it to the next level to where I don't have to.

Christa (06:01.314)
Yes, and be able to run and yes.

Christa (06:24.728)
Right.

Michelle Taylor (06:25.812)
farm myself out every minute of the day to make some money.

Christa (06:29.582)
Right. And we've talked about before, like there are some mindset stuff where like it is scary taking the big girl steps. I've talked to you about that this year of like, Michelle, like, I really think I need to take this step, but I'm so scared it's adding X amount of overhead. And you did a really great job pertaining it to like Krista. When you were growing your business, you had to buy the camera that you needed to shoot weddings in order to like book more of those weddings, right? Like we have to like start making those steps and pouring that money.

back into our business in order to scale to hit that next level. So let's start by like talking about that energy reserve and what we can do as entrepreneurs or as moms running our business too or balancing multiple businesses. Like what we can do to make sure that we're able to stay at that like product, like that level that's productive. And then Michelle, I've loved our personal conversations and would love to like give a glimpse of them to the people just about like the purpose behind scaling and like what the greater.

what the greater goal is because that has been so eye opening for me.

Michelle Taylor (07:28.192)
Sure, so I have a little bit of a practical exercise for listeners. So if you are listening to this on your daily walk, maybe come back and revisit when you're at home and either with a pen and paper or you've got your computer in front of you. So what I want you to do is really list out, look at your calendar and list out every single thing that you do in a day, right? And that's not just professionally, but that's also personally, right? Like do you get the babies up at?

7 a.m. Do you pack their lunches? You know, do you fix their bottles before you take them to daycare or maybe you're balancing them at home and how do you structure that? Do you send client emails? Do you send proposals? Do you send gala like really map out every single little thing that you do in the day? And then after you have mapped out your full week of what that looks like I want you to go through and whether it's with a highlighter I I love office supplies so I have

have a whole little jar of different color highlighters right here. But whether it's with a highlighter or you're just kind of underlining, I want you to really note what does one of two things, right? So maybe one color is what gives you energy. And when I say what gives you energy, those are the things that, if it's personal, maybe it's the thing that makes you feel like a really good mom, right? Where you're like, when I do this, I...

Christa (08:47.148)
Yeah.

Michelle Taylor (08:50.08)
feel like I'm killing it as a mom. I feel that I'm the mom that I always wanted to be. That's the thing, as business owners, a lot of times we separate it out. Here's my business, here's my personal. That's really not helping us. That's hurting us because we're a whole person. In the scheme of a 24-hour period, we are moms.

Christa (08:55.879)
So it's not just business stuff. It's like personal too. Yeah.

Michelle Taylor (09:14.282)
We're business owner. We are friend. We're wife or husband, you know, if it's a men listening, we're husbands. So it's really harmful to separate those things out because you're a whole person. So we need to look at you as a whole person of what really gives you energy. And then your other color or your other, you know, star or whatever it is, is what takes away your energy or what does the opposite? Like what makes you feel like a crappy mom? What makes you feel like a crappy business owner?

Christa (09:37.902)
Mmm.

Michelle Taylor (09:43.04)
You know, and a good example for me is if I am just exhausted and if I ever tell we we do a lot of book reading in our house if I ever cut that short or I have to say like no more books I feel awful right and of course I do I feel of course there's a point where like I'm not gonna let them stay up till midnight and that's reading books but you know within reason if I'm so exhausted that I can't read them the five books or I'm just like a slogging through it

Christa (09:55.874)
Yeah.

Michelle Taylor (10:10.368)
feel horrible. So I know, you know, one of the things when we're mapping energy, I know that when I'm mapping my calendar and my energy, I need to do something in the day that's going to give me enough physical and mental energy to read the five, to read the seven books with them, because that is actually going to feed back into my energy reserves, bump that up and give me even more energy for work when I wake up in the morning. Because our personal energy reserves of being a mom, of being a wife, of being a friend,

Christa (10:11.363)
Yeah.

Michelle Taylor (10:39.858)
Again, we're whole people that actually feeds into our reserves of energy that we have for our business. So if you want to be a better salesperson on the call, if you want to shoot a better wedding, if you want to scale to the next step, as crazy as it sounds, fill up your energy buckets of your reserve of your mom energy, right? Because we talked about this in this room of moms and Krista's team. when I feel like a bad mom,

Christa (11:03.214)
I love that.

Michelle Taylor (11:09.194)
feel bad about everything else. Everything else, right? Like I feel guilty about being at work. I feel bad about being frustrated when I get home. I feel bad about being absent minded because I'm thinking about work later. So I kind of start with the root cause. Like if I feel stable, like if I still feel good about being a mom and like good about how I'm serving my family and showing up for my family, I show up at work and I'm kind of more worry free, care free, ready to really dive in and not feel bad about

Christa (11:10.626)
Right, right.

Michelle Taylor (11:38.954)
So as you're going through, really suggest, you know, mapping out what gives you energy and then what we're talking about to what takes away energy. So then I want you to be really, really mindful as you're mapping out your schedule, pay attention to how many times that let's say it's like if you're highlighting it in green, how many times that green is popping up. And instead of thinking about your schedule and time, think about it and energy, right? Like if, if editing like zaps the energy out of you, right? And you feel like,

drained and stressed when you're editing, then really start thinking strategically of how can I do less of this, but still maintain the integrity of my business. And that kind of gives you a kind of a little bit of a cheat sheet of if you're looking of whether making your first hire or outsourcing a little bit, or even like how to stack your schedule, right? Like if you want to be able to show up for your kids,

Christa (12:18.998)
I love that.

Christa (12:26.488)
Yeah.

Christa (12:30.605)
Right.

Michelle Taylor (12:36.832)
baseball game and be super excited and have energy, you probably then don't need to edit for eight hours that day. So we went through that and I think that was really helpful. It's been huge for me. I actually color code my calendar, not in terms of business and clients, I actually color code my calendar in terms of energy and what gives me energy and what takes away my energy and to make sure I have that really good balance every day.

Christa (12:43.02)
Right.

Christa (12:47.688)
yeah.

Christa (12:57.153)
I love that.

Christa (13:02.754)
I love that. And I think Michelle, that's so encouraging because for someone like me, if maybe things are going maybe not as well as I want them to in the business or frustrating, I want to use like anytime I have to like rebuild and figure it out and like try to piece it back together. And it was interesting when you said that it makes sense why working from a place like that often you're not really seeing things move forward, right? When you're working out of desperation, trying to piece things together, that's when you make some very poor decisions on

what you should be doing or the jobs you take on or the contracts you send that you regret later on versus it's okay to actually put that aside and work on these things that don't pertain to the business. One girl in my upper level group Michelle that I shared this with was like, I love spending some time midday just making sourdough with my kids. And she was like, it now makes so much sense because that does help me to pour better into my business versus looking at it of like, I should be working but instead I'm pausing to make sourdough with my girls, you know.

Michelle Taylor (13:59.036)
Exactly. mean, and I would challenge everyone listening to really think about, think about a time where you took a step back and you really poured into those energy reserves. And even if you weren't thinking about it subconsciously and in really, you'll find a pattern that you do create your best ideas, your best work. And you really have the energy to, because the thing is, as business owners,

Like we're human, but we're humans and our energy, our time is finite, but so is our energy, right? Like we only can use what we have. And then that's when you get into burnout is when you start pulling from energy you don't have. So, you know, it, really, it's kind of this vicious cycle when we get in this mindset that I have to constantly think about this issue and troubleshoot this issue because

Christa (14:42.54)
Yeah, that's so true.

Michelle Taylor (14:56.35)
I need to make this change in the business and that is the scarcity mindset. And really you'll be so just mind blown when you start looking at, and it also makes your life better too, but when you start looking at your energy reserves, and that's what's been really huge in my business over the last year of scaling, the majority of our big kind of scary scaling has happened in the last couple of years.

Christa (14:58.382)
Right.

Christa (15:24.867)
Yeah.

Michelle Taylor (15:25.76)
of really just taking on a lot more overhead and having bigger offices and hiring kind of rapidly and growing our team so fast over the past couple of years. And that is something I'll tell you two years ago, I burned myself to a crisp. If you could be burnt out to a crisp, I was burnt out to a crisp.

And that's what I was doing. I was, you know, trying to think about and troubleshoot these scaling questions, like every minute of every day. And in my mind, I thought I was moving the needle forward by ruminating on these things constantly. And it felt like, man, why are we like, why do I just keep hitting this wall? Why can't I fix this problem? Why can't I get that client? Why can't we, you know, increase revenue by X?

Christa (15:59.576)
Right. Right.

Michelle Taylor (16:13.28)
But then this past year, you know, I've really focused on more so this energy mapping and what I've seen is that number one I have better ideas, but when I have the ideas I actually have the energy to be consistent because Every everything that you want is on the other side of consistency, right? And I really just you know kind of leap of faith. All right I'm gonna kind of trust that if I approach it in this way

Christa (16:25.664)
Yes.

Christa (16:30.722)
Yeah.

Michelle Taylor (16:42.464)
I'll see the results and we really have. mean, it's been mind blowing the difference of two years ago to this year of, you know, just feeling like very grounded and more of like a whole person instead of fractured how I feel like a lot of business owners, you know, are feeling.

Christa (16:44.974)
Yeah.

Christa (16:59.246)
That's amazing. And I've thought that about you too, where you have. What I tell people when I'm talking about you, Michelle, and I'm sure listeners, you might know someone like this, like I got to know Michelle on a very deep level this year. Just we connected very deeply personally on some things, very much aligned in our parenting and our faith and how we view business. And it's been so inspiring. And it's funny because the more I got to know you, Michelle,

the more I just was shocked at the operation you have going on because when we've been together for girls nights or going to a movie or at dinner, you're not the person sitting there just really stressing about their business or that it's clear that that's the only thing that's really on your mind. Like I was shocked. I had no idea how big of operation you were running. And I think it is because you do those things so well. You make sure your cup is full with other things and that's just something so commendable.

to someone running like a seven almost multi seven figure business with 16 employees and all that payroll and overhead. So Michelle, speaking of scaling, like, let's talk about that now, right? Because I think sometimes photographers, entrepreneurs, we just get into this vibe of like, oh, we just have to be growing, growing, booking more, taking more, being more busy. And that's the benchmark for success. When, like you said, I have seen so many photographers even just this year, Michelle share, hey,

closing up shop, right? Taking a step back because it just wasn't sustainable. So like, let's talk about that a little bit.

Michelle Taylor (18:29.184)
Sure. I think, again, there's been a mindset just broadly of entrepreneurs thinking, okay, I have my personal and professional. And when you're not thinking of yourself as this whole person, your whole life, it's easy to have goals that actually conflict each other, right? Like if your professional goal is I want to 3X my revenue by the end of the year and scale, but your personal goal is to

Christa (18:50.445)
Yeah.

Michelle Taylor (18:58.848)
like be less stressed and you know, less stressed and like make sourdough all day every day, you know, like Those goals might conflict each other even if you're you know, you're thinking you want to book x y and z weddings but your goal is to work out six days a week like Those things might conflict each other So you really have to look at your life in a holistic view and a conversation that we recently had and this is something that even just like this is very recent to me

Christa (19:02.222)
Right.

Christa (19:06.946)
Yeah.

Christa (19:11.18)
Right.

Christa (19:19.575)
Yeah.

Michelle Taylor (19:27.742)
I just started asking myself when it's in terms of these business goals I have, just started asking, all right, of course, like the goal, I think the goal in the business community is always to scale, right? But to what purpose? why do I want to scale? Do I want to scale to make more money? And then even backing that up, okay, if I make more money, then what am I gonna do with it? Like, what's my goal to make more money? Do I want to reinvest in the business?

Christa (19:39.053)
Right.

Michelle Taylor (19:57.936)
and have better systems, have an extra admin employee, whatever that is, to give me more time back? Do I want to get a new house? Do I want to send my kids to a really bougie school? What is the goal behind that? Because I think it's a lot of business owners, myself included, I was not thinking about, I was setting these goals, these really big goals, and I never stopped and thought, all right, but why?

Christa (20:23.936)
Yeah!

Christa (20:27.596)
Yeah. Wow.

Michelle Taylor (20:27.752)
why do I want to do this? And that's not saying that scaling isn't going to be a common goal. mean, I think, you know, I think it's a natural progression in a lot of ways. And in a lot of ways, it does solve, you know, giving you time back in the future, because when you're able to scale, just like with your, your photography and your coaching clients, they don't, they won't have to book themselves out every minute of the day to make money, you know?

Christa (20:34.936)
Right.

Christa (20:51.554)
Right. Right.

Michelle Taylor (20:54.048)
And especially as as mothers that is so important that you know your your business can kind of pass the you know What if I get hit by a bus test right like? Or what if I have a stroke test that you know you're still gonna come coming in you're still gonna be able to take care of your family so You know I would challenge everyone listening to this is when you're thinking of your your goals and scaling specifically ask a few questions so the first is

Christa (20:58.743)
Yeah!

Christa (21:04.437)
Yeah, absolutely.

Right.

Michelle Taylor (21:22.258)
the big obvious question we talked about, why? And do I want to scale for which reason, right? So like you can scale to increase revenue, right? Like you just want to make more, like, you want, or maybe you need to more money. Like, you know, maybe your partner is deciding to like step out on a leap of faith and start their own business. So you're like, all right, the partner is on me now. You want to buy a house for the first time or, you know, get your dream car, whatever it is. So those are very real,

Christa (21:35.726)
Great. Sure.

Christa (21:43.658)
Yeah, right.

Michelle Taylor (21:52.232)
and valid reasons why you would want to scale to make more money. Then there's also scaling to build infrastructure, right? Like to build capacity. So, you you can scale not necessarily to make more money, but to grow your team. And a lot of times the end goal in this kind of scaling is for you to be able to step back a little bit in the future, right? And I want to give a word for scaling too, is that

Scaling is exciting, it is not peaceful. Now, often after you've done the hard work, then you get the piece as a reward for scaling because you've created systems that, and you've built that capacity for your business to run a little bit more independently. It's hardly ever, know, at the next step of scaling, you're gonna run completely independently. That's far down the road, but you're gonna get a little bit more flexibility each step of scaling that you go. But...

Christa (22:23.501)
Right.

Christa (22:30.028)
Right.

Michelle Taylor (22:49.212)
really thinking through and asking yourself those questions of number one, to what end do you want to sell? And then a lot of times too, when we have these big revenue goals, we don't even map out like, all right, if I make more money, what am I gonna do with it? And that is so important too, because someone who, I'm just gonna be so blunt, if you're having trouble managing $80,000,

Christa (22:55.31)
Right.

Christa (23:04.236)
Right, right.

Michelle Taylor (23:17.64)
as hard as it is to hear, you're gonna have trouble managing $2 million. And if anything, you can get in lot more trouble with $2 million than you can $20,000. So that's something that I think is so important to if your goal is to scale to make more money, which that's valid, right? Like there's a lot of reasons that you'd wanna make more money.

Christa (23:21.454)
Right.

Christa (23:25.624)
for sure. Right.

Michelle Taylor (23:38.228)
have a really clear plan of what you would want to do with that money when it comes in, because sometimes it's very tempting, you know, if it's coming in to, you know, kind of use it to stretch and flex a little bit and have a little fun. And there's nothing wrong with that to an extent, but you'll find that you're getting yourself in that same burnout cycle where you're just like, you're scaling, your burn rate is so high. So this is why these,

Christa (23:51.191)
Yeah.

Michelle Taylor (24:03.848)
Just a few examples of why these questions are so important to know why you want to scale and then to know what you're going to do with either the revenue or the capacity when you get there. Yeah.

Christa (24:14.254)
I love that. Yeah. I think the why, like that's what it keeps going back to. And you know, as much as social media, I feel like has made it a thing where you feel like, I have to compare and that girl says she has a six figure business. Like maybe I should shoot for that. no, that's not the case. And Michelle, I coached gals who join uncapped and it's because I just want to take two shoots a month and still make 5k months, but just do it in two shoots and not be gone from my family, right? Versus I've also coached girls.

Michelle Taylor (24:19.594)
Yeah.

Christa (24:44.472)
who just want to scale, scale, scale, scale, like take on more. And that's the season. I was in that season before I had kids. Like I could take on an amount that now I wouldn't want to. And so I love that why. So Michelle, any last like closing words for it? Let's say, know, mostly photographers listen to this who are right where you say, where they're like, okay, I'm burnt out. I need to make more.

I'm scared to outsource, right? We talked about that and like take stuff off of my plate since I want to make more money, but I'm burnt out and don't have energy. Like what would just be a great starting point for them or something to tell themselves or an exercise to do?

Michelle Taylor (25:22.036)
That's a great question. I would say just a few things. So first, find the why, right? Like if you have that goal in mind, even if it's vague, like I want to make more money or I want to work less or whatever it is, why do you want that? And think of it as holistically not don't just think of just your business, but think of your whole life.

Christa (25:30.349)
Yeah.

Christa (25:42.018)
Right.

Michelle Taylor (25:43.132)
What do you want your life to be like? And then work backwards from that. Work your business backwards because you're a human who lives a life who's running a business, not the other way around. The other thing, I think the second step, once you figure those things out, then you go into that energy mapping and that will give you some, that will paint color on the picture of what is leading to your burnout and what you need to focus on to start correcting that. Cause it's a process to come back from burnout.

Christa (25:46.082)
I love that.

Christa (25:53.537)
Right.

Christa (26:10.476)
Right.

Michelle Taylor (26:11.36)
I think the other thing is to is really start looking at, and this is what I tell my clients, because we work with a lot of larger corporate clients, when they come to me and we're like, hey, we need to do more marketing, we need to achieve X, Y, and Z goal. When you're looking at, once you have kind of your Y down, looking at your energy, then I want you to look at, as you're thinking of like, all right, how am I going to get there to that goal? Start to look at what your...

Christa (26:33.997)
Yeah.

Michelle Taylor (26:37.448)
already doing and the platforms that you own. like your, you know, your website, your blog, your podcast, your email strategy, and make sure there that you're following, you're following your own best practices, or the best practices that you're investing in, you know, to learn about through coaching or through workshops and courses. Because a lot of times we're like, we need to throw money into an ad here and ads are listen, I own a marketing agency ads are great.

Christa (26:58.126)
I love that.

Christa (27:04.811)
Yeah!

Michelle Taylor (27:05.844)
But I always tell my clients, we've got to make our core platforms that we own, like email, blog, website, we've got to follow best practices there before we invest so heavily into experimental marketing. And then the last thing I would say is a conversation we had previously, Krista, is if you're at a point,

Christa (27:15.81)
Yes.

Christa (27:24.044)
Yeah.

Christa (27:31.97)
Yeah.

Michelle Taylor (27:34.624)
where you're unhappy in your business or even just hitting a wall, the great thing is remember that you have control to change that and you're the only one who can change that. And I truly believe that we're all responsible for our own happiness. So if you're not happy, I just wanna give you the empowering belief that you have everything you need to change that or to take, start to take the steps to change that. And so I want you to think about if it feels really scary.

Christa (27:43.436)
Yeah. Right.

Michelle Taylor (28:01.088)
This is exactly like what I told Krista, remember how scary it was when you bought your first camera, right? Like it was a really big investment. Remember how scary it was when you told the first person that you were leaving your job or you weren't going to college or you were going straight from college into photography. And think of how scary it was the first time you did a wedding, right? Or the first time that you even rented a studio space and took on that.

Christa (28:06.988)
Right, right.

Christa (28:13.134)
Yeah.

Christa (28:21.123)
Right.

Christa (28:25.452)
Yeah.

Michelle Taylor (28:26.464)
first time you like got your own office or if you've made your first hire outsourced for the first time, think of how scary that was. And then now you can't imagine not having done it. And it's an afterthought. You don't even think about it anymore. Um, that's what the next step in your scaling is, right? So like, there's a there's a version of you 10 years from now, that has already been through whatever you're you're going through now and this next season and scaling and she's so thankful that

Christa (28:35.948)
Right.

Christa (28:45.11)
I love that.

Christa (28:55.661)
Yeah.

Michelle Taylor (28:56.264)
you did what you needed to do and you took those risks and she's right now, those risks seem like nothing to her. So just remember that, that, you know, if you're thinking you're that version of yourself now for the version of you that just started and really think about that and it really kind of puts those steps in scaling into perspective because at the time, I'm sure your first camera felt as big and as scary as.

Christa (29:16.876)
I love that.

Christa (29:20.962)
Right.

Michelle Taylor (29:22.078)
you know, as hiring a new person or investing in coaching or something like that.

Christa (29:24.557)
Right.

my gosh, I love that so much. That's such a good reminder, Michelle. So thank you for all of this. I feel like this is one of those episodes I'm gonna be going and listening to several times doing the exercises. And I would encourage you guys listening as well to really do that exercise, that energy mapping exercise with a pen and paper, buy some cute highlighters, if you're like, don't want to spend money on highlighters. Y'all, it's gonna lead to paying for that and so much more and really getting clear on that. So Michelle, where can people connect with you further? And we'll of course link this in the show notes.

Michelle Taylor (29:56.33)
Sure, so I would love to stay connected with everyone on LinkedIn. I post a lot of resources there. You can find me at Michelle Taylor. Our website is TaylorBrandConsulting.com. We're also on Instagram and Facebook and LinkedIn at Taylor Brand Consulting. So I would love to see you all over there. And then I talk with lot of business owners and CEOs in a lot of different fields over on my podcast at Business Per Usual.

So I would love to see all of your new faces and all those.

Christa (30:26.862)
Well, if this was helpful, slide into her DMs, tell her thank you. Michelle, we were so honored and excited to have you here. Thank you for sharing with us.

Michelle Taylor (30:35.732)
Thanks, Krista.