Gaining Confidence with Heather Lahtinen

#004 - One of the things pet photographers often tell me is that they just need to develop more confidence. With more confidence, they’d put themselves out there, start booking clients, and finally build the pet photography business they’ve dreamed of.  Sound familiar?  

In this episode, award-winning photographer and teacher Heather Lahtinen joins me to call BS on this line of thought.  Learn why it’s not actually confidence you’re after, and how to reframe your thinking around improving your craft. 

What To Listen For: 

• The difference between comparison and inspiration, and inspiration vs. copying
• How a lack of confidence can lead to unhappy customers
• The importance of determining your core values
• How feeling stressed out is actually a gift
• Why you need to master the art of taking terrible photographs :) 

Hear how to outsmart your self-sabotaging brain, shift your focus away from lack, and build a business—and a life!—that’s aligned with your deepest values. 

Resources From This Episode: 

• Hair of the Dog Academy: https://hairofthedogacademy.com
• Steal Like An Artist, by Austin Kleon: https://austinkleon.com/steal/ 
• The War of Art, by Steven Pressfield: https://stevenpressfield.com/books/the-war-of-art/ 
• Heather’s Core Values exercise: https://www.dropbox.com/s/gt3nhjyhmztbwgu/FA%20Values.pdf?dl=0
• Hair of the Dog Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/hodcommunity/ 

CONNECT + LEARN MORE:

Explore all things photography education at nicolebegleyedu.com

Ready to build a profitable photography business? Visit freedomfocusformula.com

Master the craft of pet photography at hairofthedogacademy.com

Follow along on Instagram - @nicolebegleyofficial 

Transcript

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Speaker 1 0:51

Hi everybody. It's Nicole Begley from hair of the dog and welcome to episode number four. Today we're going to be talking about how to gain confidence in your work, in your business and other aspects of your life. I've brought a very special guest, the chief editing Ninja, and also someone who's really good at calling out limiting beliefs and starting to reframe them. Heather Lennon and I can't wait to jump in with you. [inaudible]

Speaker 2 1:19

welcome to the hair of the dog podcast. If you're a pet photographer, ready to make more money and start living a life by your design, you've come to the right place. And now your host, pet photographer, travel addicts, chocolate martini connoisseur, Nicole Begley.

Speaker 1 1:39

Hey everybody. Nicole here from hair of the dog and I am here with my good friend Heather [inaudible] . She was a successful wedding photographer in Pittsburgh for many, many years and now she runs flourish Academy and the hair of the dog crowd. You guys know her as our chief editing Ninja, inherit the dog and she's also one of the coaches and elevate, which is our high level group coaching program at hair of the dog to help people move their business forward. Really, and one of the things we love to do is talk about beliefs and things that are holding us back, which is usually caused by all sorts of junk rattling around in our head. So hello Heather. Welcome.

Speaker 3 2:19

Hey Nicole, thank you so much for having me

Speaker 1 2:21

or oars . Thrilled to have you here. So one of the things, I'm sure you hear it a ton too, I know I hear it all the time is people saying, I just need more confident Justine , more confidence. I had more confidence, I do this, I had more confidence. I do that. But that's just not really about confidence so much is it?

Speaker 3 2:38

No, it really isn't. And I do hear this very often that I just need to feel confident with my camera or I just need to feel confident with editing, light room , Photoshop, and then it becomes business and then it becomes marketing. But I don't really think it's confidence that they're seeking, well, first of all, let's back up and say that confidence comes from competence. So if you feel competent in a given area, then you obviously had confidence around it because you have acquired the skillset and you feel like you can do it. Like for instance, let me ask you, how confident do you feel using the restroom? I think I've got that covered. Pretty, pretty confident . My confidence level is high because you're competent. It's just something that you do repeatedly if there's a restroom nearby when you need it. So the point is you see , you learn something, you learn through, of course, seeking education, studying your craft, practicing repeatedly photographing, using Lightroom and Photoshop. So competence is very key in gaining more confidence. But we've also noticed that sometimes people are actually really amazing photographers and they don't believe it.

Speaker 1 3:47

I say this all the time. Yeah. And you know, it's interesting because I feel like there's two types . We have the, and you know there can be of course people in the middle of the spectrum, but I feel like at one end there's the people that are producing really solid rate work, but they are comparing themselves to everyone else. They don't believe in themselves. They think their work is just terrible, not up to par. There's no way anyone's going to pay for it. They're so self conscious about it. And then there's people on the other end that no , there maybe at the beginning of their journey they, they still have quite a bit to learn. Maybe their work is not quite yet up to what I call a sellable standard. So it's just not consistent with exposure, white balance or whatever. So there's still some things to learn and go, but they are super confident that that their work is great, that they don't have that confidence issue. Like they're still learning and growing and which is awesome, but they don't have that confidence issue that I see lots of people that have already done all that work to hit that competence level. They've hit the competence level, but they're just not confident yet.

Speaker 3 4:54

Isn't that interesting? So it's obviously not about the skills then. Where do you think, where's the disconnect there? Where's that coming from? I mean, the only thing I can think about is , uh , the beliefs they have, right? I think so. I think it's what they believe. So the people who maybe aren't quite there yet, just believe that they can do it and that they will do it and they're getting there and they're kicking butt and taking names and look out world, nothing's going to stop them. It causes them to behave in a more courageous fashion. Yup . Because of a belief. So maybe it's not about the confidence per se. Maybe it's just you need to believe in yourself and that you can learn this and figure it out in order to gain the competence that will help you to feel more confident. But if you believe you can learn it and you can do it, then the sky's the limit.

Speaker 1 5:36

Absolutely. Absolutely. And if any of you guys are out there like, Oh wait, Oh shoot, where am I? Am I one of those people that's confident but my work is not yet this. This is where now you don't need anyone to say, I am the mayor of pet photography and I anoint you able to go forth and sell your work and be confident you don't need that, but there is a time and place to get professional eyes on your work. People other than your family and friends that are just like, Oh my God, that's great to get actual people that can critique your work in a constructive manner and tell you what you're doing well and tell you areas to improve and same way as to say you're crazy, your work's great, it's sellable when you're like, I don't know, I don't think it's good enough to sell. Yeah , no, you're good. Again, you don't need that like stamp of approval, but sometimes I think that helps because sometimes it's hard to talk ourselves out of beliefs cause they run pretty deep.

Speaker 3 6:26

Oh they were an extremely deep, you don't even know that they're there. You don't. You might say that you believe in yourself, but your actions prove otherwise. If you are behaving in such a way that shows a lack of confidence, you don't believe in yourself whether you think you'd do or not. And I agree with you, there are no photography police so you can do whatever you want, but getting a professional to help you is really important because they'll point out things that you might be able to see. Yeah , absolutely. And shameless plug in hair of the dog Academy, which is our membership site at hair of the dog. We do have a very incredible Charlotte Reeves that runs critique corner to give you feedback on your work. But anyway you get better, right? You get better. Truly , I still get feedback on, on my work, you know, and I'm, if I'm getting stuff together for a print competition, I'll send it to trusted people that I know and said, Hey, how can I improve this? What do you see here? Like, cause sometimes we just got too close to it. It's like proofreading something you read. There can be glaring mistakes because your brain knows what it's supposed to say. And the same thing sometimes when looking at our work like maybe it has a little yellow color cast but our brain knows what it looks like when we shot it so it like self-correct so you don't even see it sometimes. Yeah, you definitely some Charlotte's amazing with this. She can point out things. I've watched a couple of her critiques, she points out things where I honestly never would've seen that and just those small tweaks can help make the image so much stronger and when you hear it coming from someone like her who is an trusted industry expert, you can, you can be assured that you will be moving in a better direction with your photos, with her guidance. Absolutely. For sure. So what are some ways that we can start to help improve confidence? I imagine one of the biggest is avoiding that whole comparison late-night Facebook stalking. You literally just read my mind. The first thing I was going to say is stop comparing know and know that's easier said than done because I want to make it very clear distinction here. There is a difference between comparison and inspiration. If you are looking at a photographer's work and you feel badly about yourself, like, Oh, I'll never be that good. How do they do that? That's comparison. And it does not serve you. So stop. It's a stupid thing to do. The opposite of that is inspiration. If you look at someone's work in you , you think, Oh man, I've got to go pick up my camera and find my dog because I'm going to make that happen. That's inspiration and that's a good thing because it elevates you rather than holds you back. So if you find yourself comparing to other photographers, stop is not healthy and it's not productive, but certainly use other people for inspiration. Okay, that's part one. And I gotta pop in. I'll come back to the inspiration. Go ahead. Go. Part of this is, are you focused on other photographers or are you focused on the client that you want to serve? Right? Where's your attention when you're, when you're comparing, your attention is on lack and what you don't have compared to another photographer. Uh , so I'm going to give you a little clue here. That photographer does not pay your mortgage, but a future client will. If you focus on serving your clients and you take the focus off of yourself and other photographers, you will be much happier. It becomes bigger than just you. And it really is. I have this quote that I like to share all the time. It's amazing what you find yourself able to do when you make your journey about something bigger than yourself. If you're miserable or struggling in this area, it's because you're focused on you. If you truly on improving your craft to serve your customers, to give them the images that they would love or in cherish for a lifetime, it doesn't, it's no longer about you. It becomes about them and how you serve them. So if you're, if you're not feeling great about something, you just have to ask yourself, where's my attention? Oh my attention is on how terrible I am, or all this confidence I need. Well, okay, again, that's stupid. Let's put our attention on something else. Like how can I get better to serve these clients? And by the way, they don't have the same critical eye that you do. Well maybe, maybe you're setting the bar super high for yourself, which is great. Continue to do so but, but it's misaligned with what your clients are looking for because they just love their dog image of their pet. Agreed. Agreed.

Speaker 1 10:31

I just want to jump super back quickly back to that inspiration part too because this is kind of a hot button topic in the pet industry right now is inspiration versus just straight up they you see something and you love and you're like, Oh this is amazing. I it inspires me. And then you go out and you shoot the exact same thing. That is not what we're talking about here with the inspiration and honestly I feel like doing that, approaching inspiration in that way will lead to confidence in shoes because you are not the same person of the person that inspired you. So you are not going to be able to create an image exactly like that. That would give you that same feeling. But what you can do is take that image and say, what about this image draws me in? Is that the expression? Is it the wide angle? Is it the color? Is it the monotone? Is that the negative space? What is it that is rhyming into this? And then start to make a note, look at your work. Oh wait, do I like my images when they have that same thing and pick and choose different pieces and you know if there's something where you're like, Oh, I would love to learn how what that technique is. Certainly go out and shoot that image for the technique. But that is a learning opportunity. It's not something you're shooting and sharing and calling your yours. You're going out to say, Hey, that's an interesting technique. How do you do that? I want to practice it. Which then leads to more confidence, but then you can take that and mold it with other things that inspire you and create something that is yours and unique and will therefore give you more confidence because you have created it from your creative part .

Speaker 3 12:01

I could not have said it better. I agree with you 100% if you, if you straight up copy someone else, you will lack confidence because it will be inauthentic. It's not you. But if you learn a technique and you apply it and you figure out how to do it for yourself, your confidence will soar because you created it. Did you read steal like an artist by Austin? Great book. Yeah .

Speaker 1 12:21

One that I love is the war war of art. War of art by Steven Pressfield.

Speaker 3 12:29

Yeah . Yup . Yeah .

Speaker 1 12:31

Plane ride reads like you sit down on the plane and you read it and you get off and you're done.

Speaker 3 12:35

It's very, very simple. However, I have seen photographers take Liberty with steal like an artist and use it as an excuse copying and that's just poor behavior. I think what you pointed out was really important. If you look at somebody else's work and you identify, Oh I really like their shallow depth of field and they're low wide angle, Oh okay, the next time I'm shooting I can do something like that. And then you create it for yourself and that. So that's the difference between inspiration verse copying. And I think that's an important distinction to make .

Speaker 1 13:05

Yeah , for sure. And the stuff that you're taking to practice, to learn a technique is not something that you're sharing of like, Hey, this is me, this is my work. Because you're , it's , it's your school, it's your assignment to learn something and apply to your future work.

Speaker 3 13:19

All right . Can we , um , try something here real quick? I have no idea. I would like to do a quick little role play with you because yeah ,

Speaker 1 13:28

I feel like all of a sudden I'm in like grade school, like calm or something,

Speaker 3 13:32

the bait or something. So the reason I want to do this is because I don't think people were really looking for confidence when they ask us how to gain confidence. And I'm about to prove that to you. So what I want you to do is come to me like your a student or a photographer that's saying, Oh, I just need competence. Um, and I'm gonna , I'm going to walk you through to find out what it is you're really seeking.

Speaker 1 13:53

All right, perfect. So I'm like an a new photographer, maybe just started my business. I've got to get us Headspace. I've got to got to my inner actress.

Speaker 3 14:03

And let's say you don't have many or any clients in , you're still learning your camera operation, like you know how to shoot, but you're still learning. You're still learning the editing process. You want us to start building some clientele. Your, you have some fear around , uh , how are you going to do that? And you're not sure that you feel confident about it because it's just not something you've done before cause it's new. Right. And that's okay to feel that fear. I just want you to push through anyway. I just want you to continue making forward progress.

Speaker 1 14:31

Okay. All right . Okay . I am, I am in my zone. Okay, good. All right . You need that . You need to come to me or do I need to come to you? You need to come to me with a question like, gotcha. Gotcha. Um, I other, I'm a meat geared now . Um, I just started my business and I feel like, like if I just had more confidence, Oh it goes, we'd going so much better. And if you did have more confidence, what would that do for you? Oh , um, I'd probably maybe put myself out there more. Okay , great. Like on social media, right. Less , less scared to maybe share chair stuff I'm creating. Perfect. Okay . So you would put yourself out there more than, what would, what would that give you? Um, well I imagine more people would start to see it more, more exposure of potential clients. So marketing people would see your work. So if you had good marketing cause you put yourself out there, what would that do for you? Well, more people would see my work, so hopefully that means that I'd get more inquiries. Would do . What for you ? Well, hopefully that leads to more clients. Okay .

Speaker 3 15:34

This is good. Well this is what we wanted was more clients. Okay. If you had more clients, what would that give you? A cash and who does ? Yeah. You know what side we are making a pretty big assumption. You do like money, right? Money is good. Money is good. Okay. So if you had more cash, what would that give you? Um,

Speaker 1 15:52

I'd have more money. It would, you know, I could continue investing in my business of new lens, new education, continuing to him,

Speaker 3 15:59

improve my craft. Oh good. You would improve. So what would that do for your business?

Speaker 1 16:02

Nah. Well, assuming that I am continuing to show more work and I'm approving, then I would start getting more clients and growing my business

Speaker 3 16:10

would grow your business and growing your , your business would lead to what?

Speaker 1 16:15

Um, I mean would lead to actually building the business that I intended to build that I'm hoping to build when I started out.

Speaker 3 16:22

And if you had this business that you envision, what would that give you? Freedom. Oh, and there it is, ladies and gentlemen. Freedom is what you're looking for. Not confidence. You're looking for freedom. A confidence. The freedom. Confidence leads to the freedom. So that exercise, I've actually put a lot of photographers through that exercise and I asked them, well, what would that give you? What would that give you? And I don't stop until I get to the core value. And the core value is typically not money and it's not success. But for people who want to start a business, any entrepreneur, a lot of times, not always, but a lot of times it's freedom. Freedom, flexibility, options. That's what you want. Yes, absolutely. My, the core value exercise is such a great exercise to do. If you guys haven't done that , um, you know, maybe Google thumb, maybe we'll do one better. Nicole, I can provide you with a worksheet that you can put in your shoulder in order to do that exercise. Just quickly overview is you print it . There's a bunch of words. You circle your top 10 core values, the things that are important to you that you are currently living out. Do not repeat. Do not circle who you aspire to be because that's not what values are . Values are not aspirations. Values are not goals. Values are lived and they're who you are. So I can tell you just from knowing you personally as a friend, that freedom is absolutely one of your top core values. My absolute number one by far core value, right? You wouldn't be able to do what you want when you want. How you want in your business gives you that. So if you come to me saying I want confidence , um, I , I'm never going to be able to convince you when or how that's going to be enough cause that's not what it is. What you're looking for is freedom. And you have tied building your business with income to freedom w which is reasonable. That seems,

Speaker 1 18:06

it's funny too I think and I think other people would find this too with their top number one core value, all the other kind of leading up core values, lentil into that core value where you know, the, you know, of course you want to have abundance and financial security. Well what does that give you? It gives you freedom. What do I want to do with my own business? I want, you know, I want my time to be my own. That gives me freedom. Um, I want to be able to travel when and where I want.

Speaker 3 18:32

Oh, that's freedom. It seems to be a repeating pattern. Isn't this. Interestingly , we both work with a lot of photographers. We teach and coach and they come to us for confidence. But here's the thing, I don't believe I could sell them a course on confidence . I don't believe I could put a course together and say, okay, you take this 10 step process for confidence because that's not actually what they're looking for. Right? But if I said , let me help you build your dream business so you can attain the free freedom that you seek, well, that's a different story because that's tied to a core value. If you can get really clear on your core values, it will drive your decisions and your behavior and it will help you to become more locked in on your future and serving and growing your business rather than what you lack in confidence or how you compare yourself. It's just, it's just a , um , I always call it a reframe. I always say it's hashtag reframe, just reframe it and kind of shift and it changes how things happen for you. Absolutely. You know, Heather, this made me think of something of something else with core values that oftentimes if you're feeling stress or something feels heavy or something is just not feeling light, it's not feeling aligned. That's often a core value conflict because your life is just in conflict with one of your core values. Always a core value codify . In fact, when I'm, when I'm coaching photographers, I'll say, Hey, do you feel stressed? You know, and we laugh because everyone feels stressed, right ? And I'll say, okay, what's the conflict? What's the core value conflict ? Let me give you a quick example. At the height of my career, I was photographing 30 weddings a year and it was my dream to build that business. I had two core values, excellence and efficiency. Those summers where I was photographing all of those weddings, I was actually pretty miserable. You have to know you're in Pittsburgh, so I'm 30 weddings a season. The wedding season in Pittsburgh is not the same as the wedding season and like Maui , it's very short. So actually what that meant yet, you're right . For context. I shot every Saturday and some Friday straight through from may through October. That's third because there are not 30 Saturdays in the summer. So I'm doing all these weddings. I'm growing my business. I should be happy, but I'm not. I'm stressed and I'm miserable. Now at the time I didn't know this because I have not gone through the exercise, but later on now looking back, I can see it was a core value conflict between excellence, inefficiency. So if anyone listening has watched any of my editing videos, you know that I am very focused on efficiency. I like to do things as quickly and as efficient as possible, but I also like to do things well and oftentimes as it did in those summers, it conflicted for me because if I'm doing 30 weddings I had , I had to step up the editing. I had to be very, very efficient, which sometimes squeezed out the excellence. Now of course I did my best, but the point is I was having a major in a constant battle of these two core conflicts. So now how value conflicts. So now what would I do? Looking back on that. If you're feeling stressed, ask yourself what's the core value conflict? One of them, it depending on the season, always gets prioritized over the other. So in those seasons, efficiency was prioritized over excellence. How'd I recognize that? I could have just accepted it and on I was resisting what I didn't know. If I'm not photographing 30 weddings a summer, but I'm doing far fewer in a more focused on excellence because I have the time and that makes sense. This can actually resolve a lot of stress in your life with your business and even your relationships. If you understand what drives your behavior and maybe even your partner's behavior, it just eliminates a ton of conflict because you know what drives your decisions and maybe the other person's as well.

Speaker 1 22:04

Yeah, for sure. Yeah. No, I can tell when I start to have the core value conflicts and I start to get a little stress , which you know, I know I've Oxford you about a month ago. I'm like, Heather , I can't, I haven't felt this overwhelmed in a long time. I was just, and that was because my core value of freedom was the virally getting squashed because I was on the middle of far too many time intensive projects with some team changes of hair of the dog, a new website being created, the copy. Even though I hired a designer and developer, I still had to do the copy. I still had to get some images together. I still had to drive the messaging on the site, creating this podcast, learning new things like I, I've never done a podcast like I had to learn all of this. Then learn these Oh RSS feeds. I thought those diets like 1998 with blogs I was, it was stressful. It was probably a two weeks where I was just beside myself because my worklist , which I love working and I I to a fault, like on Saturday mornings I wake up and nobody's up yet and I'm like, Oh my office. I go, I'm like, I have a hard time stepping away. But when you're forced to work well past your , your pumpkin hour, I call it a person and so, and it's like seven o'clock at night and like we've already in dinner and I'm ready to go, like relax and then I have to come back in here and have to come in an hour, hour or two of work. I just, it was major value conflict .

Speaker 3 23:29

Yeah. You, you had compromise your values and as your friend I could see that happening, but I also recognized everything is temporal. Yeah . So why short term, which I knew was very short term and I knew like you're going to be okay because it's only a couple of weeks. You know where you have a lot going on and then you'll come out on the other side. But so because here's the thing Nicole, sometimes you don't know your limits or your boundaries until you cross them. Then you realize, Oh, I have compromised my core value of freedom. That's why I am so grumpy to everyone. Back to the podcast, you did have to learn an entirely new skillset . Okay. So what is the difference between you and moves forward and doesn't anyway, and somebody else who, who might be frightened out of it because they don't have the quote confidence,

Speaker 1 24:14

right, right. No , you just , you just do it. You just have to do it and then it, you know, they make mistakes. For instance, I'm a recording this on podcast launch day. It's March 3rd. So it's the day all the podcasts are supposed to launch. Last night I, you know, I signed that for my Apple iTunes account well in advance. It's been approved there for like a week. And then last night I'm like, Oh, okay, I'll publish episodes two and three because I wanted them all out this morning. Yours by the way that you publish this morning is out your 40. Oh my two and three are not. And you Apple. Yes, I know. And I learned that , um, it takes up to 24 hours for Apple to hit the RSS feeds. I'm like, okay, mental note, I need to release those earlier. So , um, thanks everybody for bearing with us while they are , you know. Yeah . But the difference is you believe that you can figure it out. Everything is figureoutable. Thanks for right in you. And you never once said, Oh, I don't know if I should be doing this podcast because I don't have the confidence. Never once with photography either because I was with you. You did. You believed that you could learn and do it because you believed in your , in your skillset , you believed in your intelligence. So it just comes down to do you believe you can learn something? And I tell people, well, you can read, right, you can read and you can watch a video. That means you can learn it. Because at one point you didn't even know how to operate your camera. You learned that you can be okay. Making a few mistakes. I listened to, I always introduced myself when I'm teaching like an actual photography class and I say, my name is Heather. I have mastered the art of taking horrible photographs. I delete them. You don't see them. And I keep moving forward. And that's what led to my good photographs. You have to be okay being bad at something or you are good at it. And I think that brings up another great point too with this whole comparison thing because you're looking at other people's highlight reel, like no one's going to put their out of focus image on their website. Like you know, if you see which on some of my courses like my behind the lens, I show all of my straight out of camera and images, every single click of the shutter from my entire session. So you can see it's like, Oh some of those action photos are out of focus. Oh I really screwed that one up. Like , like there we're calling for a reason. There's a reason we don't give our clients all of those images. So anyone that I think that happens a lot or people are trying to learn action cause that's kind of a unique dog photography skill and can be yes Alan shore and they come to me and they're like I don't, what am I doing wrong? Some are out of focus. Like are they all out of focus? Are you catching some and focus ? And some of course will still practice, continue to do better, but you're never going to get to the point where you nail the focus every single time. It just doesn't happen. I missed a ton of shots. I mean I always say, listen, I photograph about 3000 images in an eight hour wedding and I deliver about 500 um , I don't know how good you are at math, Nicole, but those aren't good odds. I don't know . I deliver, I deliver even less. Mine usually about 10% I shoot about 300 in a session, I deliver 30 then we just know we have confidence that we can produce that subset of amazing photos. Right, right. This is just a matter of, I mean if we could leave people with something to help them push through this. I think I really wanted to talk about this because I think people are getting really hung up on the confidence and it's a waste of their brain power because that's not even what they want. They want something else like in your case, freedom. My

Speaker 3 27:35

case as well. And if you could focus on that, it would just shift your attention from what you're headed towards verse what you're lacking. And if you do really feel like, Oh no, Heather, for real. I'm brand new. I don't have any confidence. Okay. Take some courses. I mean I happen to know a photographer named Nicole who has amazing courses on her hair of the dog Academy. Um, and yes, I do teach some of them that anyone and if that's what you need to do for you to feel better about putting your work out there to the world for sure. You know, make sure you're taking the classes. But don't let that stop you because I was willing to put my work out there when it was terrible so that I could get better

Speaker 1 28:13

for sure. Absolutely. And seek out feedback and um, you know, the other thing, I think we're , a lot of people feel like they struggle with confidence is when it comes time for sales and IPS. And I always tell people that, like we were saying before, you need to take the focus off of you cause that's just your ego saying , um , this is not safe. This is not safe, not safe. Right . Turn around, go hide, just put up a gallery. And if they're not happy, you don't have to know . They weren't happy, which they've hired you. They've gone through the whole process, they're going to love the images. And I encourage people to do two things. Number one put themselves into a situation in which they cause two parts. One part of them is they're not confident in the work that can part is they aren't confident asking for money because of money beliefs, which that's a whole nother podcast we'll have to talk about because otherwise this will go on for awhile . Um, I tell them to put themselves in the situation where they were excited to buy something. And did you have any ill Phil eel feels forced . The salesperson ringing you up at the cash register. You were like, I really want this new purse.

Speaker 3 29:27

Yeah. Like they never put a gun to your head and made you buy that right here. Great. Thank you. Thank you. Have a great day.

Speaker 1 29:33

I's like if you are somewhere, say you're at a really nice restaurant and you want, I'd like the steak and this and then the waitress says, but you also like a salad. You're not going to say

Speaker 3 29:42

no, screw you. I don't want a salad. Oh , nothing. It's the same thing happens

Speaker 1 29:49

session when you're like, okay, we've done your wall art . Great. Um , here's an out albums. This is how a lot of clients love to do these. So you know, here you want to look through, are you interested in an album? Oh no, no thanks.

Speaker 3 29:59

It's the same thing as turning down the salad at a restaurant. I think photographers, honestly, Nicole just need to relax there. Why would you focus on somebody not liking your photos? Why not just go into it? Believe, listen, if you're going to lie to yourself, make it a good one. Why don't you just go in there meaning that they're going to love them. And I always say, if you, if you have worked on your website, your social media, that is consistent with what you're delivering to this client. Okay, think this through. If you sit down with a client and what you're showing them is consistent with what's on your website and they don't like the photos, who is the idiot? Because they hired you, right? They knew what they were getting. Right ? By the way, the chances of having an unhappy client are very, very slim. I'm not going to promise you it's not going to happen because you won't please everyone, but it's really not as common as people build it up in their mind. Yeah, and I,

Speaker 1 30:47

the only time that it becomes a challenge is when they, like when it starts to happen, is when they let that fear stop them from providing the customer service that they wanted to provide in the first place because they're scared of what that person will think. So therefore they hide and they don't stay in touch and they don't tell them what's next and they don't share their images in a timely manner. So you're creating your own unhappy clients by letting that fear, that lack of confidence when instead of just saying, Hey, hashtag reframe this person thought my work, they loved my work, they hired me, they're excited to work with me. Let me approach this situation from a place of serving them, focusing on how I can serve them and

Speaker 3 31:25

and it'd be great for anyone. It's going to be a win. You know what? Cuddling really important a second ago, which is that fear, lack of confidence actually becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. That's true. If you, if you really have that fear, you hide from the client and you don't get back to them and your communication is terrible, then yeah, you're going to have an unhappy client and guess what? You created it. That's not dumb. Bring that on yourself again. Just assume they're hiring you because they like you and they like your work. And by the way, I go out of my way to make my clients like my best friend, especially on the day of the shoot , because if they like you, they're going to like their photos. Absolutely. And people buy from people they know, like, and trust though. Um , IPS, it's going to be fine. You will not get mauled by a bear. Nobody's going to hate you. Nobody's going to think you're sleazy, you're serving, it's a service and they want to buy photos of their pet, wants to pay you money, allow them to do so. I beg of you

Speaker 1 32:19

for real. Oh Heather, this has been a fabulous little talk about, I think some really hopefully much, much needed in terms of, it's pretty common. So if you're out there feeling this way, you're not alone. So don't start to think like, Oh my gosh, you know, obviously we were doing this as episode five of the podcast. That's because this is how often we get this question. So , um , yeah, you guys aren't alone out there. You guys can definitely find Heather in the hair of the dog Academy. Um , she has created much of the post-processing for pet photographers course and she is also in there helping with these types of beliefs and things like that and coaching and our elevate program, but had their , where else can they,

Speaker 3 32:58

well they can find me anywhere on the interwebs at flourish Academy. If you just look up flourish Academy, you'll find me. My name is Heather Lawton in , but I got to tell you Nicole, what am I? I'm, I'm an expert in Lightroom and photos . I'm actually an Adobe certified expert. I say that to tell you I love to teach it, but I really enjoy being a coach inside of your elevate group because we break through a lot of these barriers around limiting beliefs about what's possible in what you can do and when we're on a call and we have somebody who, who was brought to tears, they just

Speaker 1 33:31

had such a massive breakthrough with their business. That is extremely rewarding for me. Of course. Yeah. Spoiler alert you guys, the most common cause of being held back in your business is your own brain. Nothing else except for your own brain. And same thing with me and Heather. I mean I, all of us, every single human, no matter what you're working on, we are our own biggest hurdle and limitation though sometimes it's really nice to kind of talk that out with other people. Absolutely. So just get out, get out of your own way and make it happen. Yeah. Nice. Awesome. All right , thanks so much and again, if you guys want to learn your core values, check out the show notes. If you go to hair of the dog academy.com/podcast you can navigate to this particular episode right there and you can download that and figure out your core values and remember when you're out there and you're feeling a little heavy or misaligned or stressed, often that core value conflict though. Thanks for joining us on this conversation and we will see you next time.

Speaker 2 34:36

Thanks for listening to this episode of hair of the dog podcast. If you enjoyed this show, please take a minute to leave a review and while you're there don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss our upcoming episodes. One last thing. If you are ready to dive into more resources, head over to our website@wwwdotharemphotogacademy.com thanks for being a part of this pet photography community.