I became a Life Coach because I realized that in order to help photographers get to the next level - mindset work needed to be included in my photography coaching program.
So many photographers that I work with limit themselves from achieving the success they want. What is holding you back? Possibly a limiting mindset, let's explore.
Want the best year ever in your photography business. Join my FREE COURSE.
Introducing my FREE 3-step guide to create the foundation for your business to thrive. Follow these steps to scale your business, connect and convert with your ideal clients and make more money.
I became a Life Coach because I realized that in order to help photographers get to the next level - mindset work needed to be included in my photography coaching program.
So many photographers that I work with limit themselves from achieving the success they want. What is holding you back? Possibly a limiting mindset, let's explore.
Want the best year ever in your photography business. Join my FREE COURSE.
Introducing my FREE 3-step guide to create the foundation for your business to thrive. Follow these steps to scale your business, connect and convert with your ideal clients and make more money.
If you are looking to have your best year yet, join my free masterclass where we lay the groundwork that you need to scale your business, connect and convert with your ideal clients. Link is in the show notes below. Welcome to today's podcast. Today I decided to work at one of the beautiful national libraries in Paris. It was outstanding, probably the one you see on Instagram a lot with just floor after floor of gorgeous books. I think it's the Richelot Library, a beautiful part of town right near the Palais Royale, and it had been closed for a long time. So it was my first time in and I was very, very impressed. Their Wi-Fi doesn't work fantastic, which is probably a good thing, so I was able to write some copy for the website. It's a very productive morning and now here I am. I am recording today's podcast, so welcome. I want to introduce coaching to this podcast.
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During COVID, I was certified as a life coach. I did this for several reasons for myself and for my clients. Maybe I didn't realize at the time that I was doing it for myself, but in the end I greatly benefited from becoming a life coach and in turn, so did my clients. Deep down, I know I wanted to grow personally and I knew that to become a life coach I would have to step wildly out of my comfort zone. And I did and I grew and I discovered so much about myself. But the real reason I became a life coach was so that I could improve my ability to help photographers like you take their business to the next level. After years of coaching photographers, I was starting to notice that I was repeating myself. I was saying the same things over and over to the same people, telling them how to do something, how I did it, and I realized I was giving advice on how they could grow their business, how they should price themselves, what I did, and telling them all the hows. But even though I knew these proven strategies would work in theory they definitely worked for me and they worked on paper, but they could only work for my clients if my client believed it could work for them. But it was that disconnect. There was something more and it took me that long to figure out that the connection was in the mind.
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It didn't take long to hypothesize that many not all, but many photographers weren't able to take their business to the next level because they didn't believe that they could. Now these photographers didn't know this, and that's the hard part. They believed they were trying all the things and that, for a variety of circumstances outside of their control, they were unable to do the thing that they wanted in their business. For some it was making more money. For some it was working less getting rid of the overwhelm, working with better clients For aspect of their business they wanted help with.
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I started to know that many photographers suffered I mean that's too strong of a word, but for lack of a better word from the limiting mindset. It wasn't until I really started doing this life coach work that I realized a lot of us suffer from this. I feel that's too strong of a word, but we suffer from it. We have a limiting mindset. We may not, and other things, other things we may excel at and be at the top of our game. And then over here there's something else that prevents you from creating the amount of money you want or booking the right clients or creating the business that you know that you deserve.
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This limiting belief shows up in different places for different people. I think everybody has a limiting mindset somewhere in their lives, shows up somewhere Subconsciously for some, more obvious for others because they didn't believe in themselves, that they couldn't dare to dream about what was possible. It remained elusive, no matter how hard they tried, no matter how much work they put in, no matter how closely they followed my tools and how tos. They make slight progress towards their goal or the outcome that they wanted, but not enough to achieve what it is that they truly wanted. Just a little tiny bit of momentum, and then they stopped themselves. So my clients will make slight progress towards their goal and then kind of stops right there. They don't achieve what they truly want.
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I couldn't understand it. I needed to figure out why. What was the disconnect these photographers wanted to level up? They wanted their business to grow. They wanted more clients. They wanted to raise their prices. They wanted a photography business that they loved and created a life that they loved. Something was holding them back. I was confounded. These were excellent photographers, so good at their craft, completely capable of having a wildly successful business, yet they stopped themselves from achieving the success that they were looking for, and I will caveat that by saying success looks different to different people. So some of these photographers were running very good businesses by other people's standards, but by their own. They wanted to do more. They wanted to earn more. They wanted to maybe stop working with budget clients and only work with luxury clients, whatever the transition was that they wanted for their business. That's what I mean. We're talking about a full range of photographers, from brand new to experienced with an existing business, but wanting to level up and transition their business.
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And when I kept noticing that they would stop themselves from achieving the success that they were looking for, this is when I realized that I needed to understand the inner working of the mind, for me and for them. What is going on in each of our heads that holds us back? I needed to figure out how the mind works and how I could help photographers get past these blocks, these limiting beliefs they had about themselves and what they were capable of. That limiting belief that sits within them that they need to work on, and they don't even know that they need to work on it. But the tough part was that, with many not knowing, this is what was holding them back. I had to have the tools to guide them through this discovery. So entered life coaching.
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I am this person as well. I've been an under-owner at times, keeping myself small, worried about what people would think about me if I made X amount of money. I was just so afraid of judgment, worried what people would think of me when I went back to school at 45 to become a photographer. That was really, really difficult for me. Who does she think she is? She's got two small kids and she's going to go back to school to be a photographer, even though we own a photography business. To a lot of people, that just didn't make sense. Keith was the photographer. What on earth is Melissa doing going back to school at such an age? And I was also afraid of failure. I was worried about taking the next step, understanding how these long-held beliefs that were in my head about me were affecting my life, in my business life. It was eye-opening.
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As I mentioned earlier, the photographers that I was working with, that I was coaching, some had an interesting makeup, a bit of an ego about their work, yet selling themselves short in other areas. Others thought they had no talent, yet their work showed otherwise, at least to me and at least to the rest of the world. We could see this person's very talented, but they didn't believe in themselves, so much so that they weren't even able to price their products and their services at a rate that they could actually afford to live on A dichotomy of sorts that couldn't be reconciled with simple business coaching if they wanted to make the progress that they actually wanted to. I'm not a psychologist or a therapist, but I am someone who has faced these challenges myself over the years, so I know deep down that showing them what was going on in their mind would be a game changer for them, as it was for me.
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It had never occurred to me at different points in my life that I was what was holding me back. It is easy to point fingers at circumstances in our life, to explain away things that you don't want to dig in and understand better. Truthfully, I'm not even sure I knew I needed to dig in and understand. To be quite honest, I took things at face value. I remember blaming other photographers so I deemed not as talented, but I called them lucky or opportunist, kiss asses or whatever else I felt like projecting at them Of course, not actually at them in physical terms, but at them. Maybe it felt better to tear other photographers down than it did to take a look at me, but what they had that I didn't was a mindset that allowed them to prosper, to succeed, and I didn't see it then.
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Learning to be a life coach taught me so much about me and about you about you as photographers. I was quickly able to connect the dots as to how mindset and our thoughts are in direct correlation with the results of our business and our life. You have all the skills as a photographer. People need what you do, yet we can't find the right clients or make enough money because many of us believe our negative thoughts about what is possible for us, the limiting mindset, and we don't even recognize it.
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I want to start showing you your mind. I want to help you start seeing your thoughts. I want to show you how your circumstances aren't to blame. It is what you think about these circumstances and the actions you take that creates your results for you and for your business. Because of privacy, I will not be sharing real coaching sessions with clients, but I would like to start sharing overviews so that you can see coaching in practice and how looking at our mind can help with the how of taking your photography business to the next level. Oh, I'm so excited to have you with me for this, because it's an eye-opener. Anyway, thanks for getting to the end with me. I'm excited to start sharing more coaching and to keep talking about taking your business to the next level. Thank you so much. Have a great week. Bye-bye.
