The Thing I Ignored for Two Years

333 - For six years straight, this podcast released a new episode every single week without fail. Until it didn't. And honestly? That missed week tells you everything about what's been happening behind the scenes. Here's a question I want you to sit with: if your photography business doubled tomorrow, would it break? Mine would have. So I fixed it. Here's the full story of what I rebuilt, why I waited so long, and what it made possible.

What to Listen For

• Why I missed a podcast episode for the first time in six years
• The moment I knew my business needed a full rebuild
• Why growing too fast can actually break your business
• How Frankenstein systems quietly kill your momentum
• The four phases of a photography business and where you fit
• Why I couldn't market my own programs with full confidence
• What it means to re-decide in your business (and when to do it)
• The subconscious reason photographers resist visibility and marketing
• How cleaning up your backend unlocks your belief in your own offer
• What becomes possible when your systems finally match your vision

If you've been ignoring something in your business because the project feels too big, this episode is your sign to stop waiting. The rebuild is always worth it. Go check out the new home base at NicoleBegleyEDU.com.

Check out our new digital home!

www.nicolebegleyedu.com

Learn how we can work together here: https://www.nicolebegleyedu.com/work-with-me

JOIN THE PARTY:

• Connect with us on Instagram
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• Discover effective pricing and sales strategies for all portrait photographers.
• Ready to grow your business?  Elevate helps you do just that.
• Check out our recommended gear and favorite books.  

Transcript

Nicole Begley (00:00)
Welcome back to the Freedom Focus Photography Podcast. In today's episode, I am going to let you know why I went MIA last week, as well as what has been going on around here at previously HOD HQ, now NBE HQ, and how these monster projects could affect your photography business. Stay tuned.

Nicole Begley (00:23)
I'm Nicole Begley, a zoological animal trainer turned pet and family photographer. Back in 2010, I embarked on my own adventure in photography, transforming a bootstrapping startup into a thriving six-figure business by 2012. Since then, my mission has been to empower photographers like you, sharing the knowledge and strategies that have helped me help thousands of photographers build their own profitable businesses. I believe that achieving $2,000 $3,000 sales is your fastest route to six-figure businesses.

that any technically proficient photographer can consistently hit four figure sales. And no matter if you want photography to be your full-time passion or a part-time pursuit, profitability is possible. If you're a portrait photographer aspiring to craft a business that aligns perfectly with the life you envision, then you're in exactly the right place. With over 350,000 downloads, welcome to the Freedom Focus Photography Podcast.

Nicole Begley (01:25)
Welcome back to the Freedom Focus Photography Podcast. I'm your host, Nicole Bagley. Joining me today is Heather Lahtinen Hi, Heather.

Heather (01:33)
Hey, how are you? I mean, that's kind of a funny question because I know how you are. You have been very, very busy.

Nicole Begley (01:42)
I have in fact so busy that something happened for the first time. When did this podcast start? It was before COVID. So it was 2020. So this is the six years of this podcast. This week was the first week we didn't release a new episode. Yeah.

Heather (02:00)
Really?

You should have told me I could have thrown something out of here.

Nicole Begley (02:05)
I know, I know

I have a whole bunch in the, the, the whatever, but even that there was, there was no time. My husband asked me once when I was in a very busy week, ⁓ it's a question while I was eating. And I think I like answered it while I was chewing. And I just basically said, I don't have time to chew this week. Like, so that's now, that's now just our ongoing, like I don't, I don't have time to chew.

Heather (02:27)
No!

my gosh. I used

to say that about going to the bathroom at weddings. When you're photographing a wedding, that's actually legit. You don't have time to... You can't miss something, right?

Nicole Begley (02:38)
yeah.

You're like, I don't want to miss something. Uh-oh. Yeah,

no, it was, it was Monday morning. So let's back up here. ⁓ for those of you guys that maybe have not been around, well, even if you've been around, I've been a little MIA this year and there is good reason. And that is we have basically been completely rebuilding my entire business front end and back end. And we hit go live.

yesterday. Hence why there was no podcast this week. So it was Monday morning and we were like, working like mad to get things finished up. And it was just like, I just, I just, I just can't, it's not happening. We're skipping a week. So sorry guys, but it was for good reason.

Heather (03:27)
Yes. Okay, we're I don't even know where to start with this because your your business has many arms, if you will.

Nicole Begley (03:38)
Yes. And I mean, it was like Medusa. It just kept

growing more. I mean, I guess that was snakes in her hair. But imagine if Medusa snakes were all arms. That's what my business I felt like had become. So let's roll it back. I started my photography business in 2010. We started the online education arm of it in 2016. So it's been 10 years, 10 years of

Heather (03:46)
Same idea. Yeah.

Nicole Begley (04:07)
Creating new products, expanding programs.

building new offers, portals, moving communities, updating front end, back end. When I created it, I didn't know what systems were. Like this actually fits in really, really closely. Like I always talk about, you know, one of the things I teach in free to focus formula is that there's four levels of a business, right? So we get started.

or maybe learning how to manage our camera. Like it's okay to do all inclusive, like lower cost digital, all inclusive package. At that point, you're like learning how to use your camera. It doesn't mean you shouldn't get paid. Like it's totally fine. You can't build a business while you're doing that. always say like, if you like started to use your camera and then also said, I'm charging $5,000 per session. Even if you were getting clients to that $5,000, you don't have the systems built in your business.

to open the door, learning how to use your camera and doing this at the same time, it's just, it's too much. You don't know what you don't know. So we built our businesses over the past 10 years, not knowing what I didn't know in terms of longevity and scaling. And this fits really well into photography businesses too, because there becomes certain pinch points in our photography business where I think we need to

re-evaluate what the business looks like and sometimes re-organize or re-build it.

Heather (05:50)
You know what this also reminds me of is like in simple terms, how you organize your photos on your hard drive or even your hard drive systems. It's like you start out a certain way because it makes sense at that point based on what you photograph or the volume. And then as things evolve or change or you grow, then you have to reevaluate those systems and maybe organize them differently. And I mean, usually that's because it's become that monster, you know, and it just doesn't work anymore.

Nicole Begley (06:17)
Okay.

Heather (06:20)
So one of my business coaches says that, you know, fairly often in your business with different aspects, you have to re-decide. Redecide if this is what I want to photograph, if this is how I want to approach it, if this is what I want, my CRM. You know, I started out without a CRM. I mean, I would assume most of us do. You don't have one right out of the gate. And then I had one or two of them over the course of several years. And then I didn't because I didn't need it anymore.

It's just like it's an evolution and it's always changing. So, yeah, it makes sense. You have to re-decide. and also it grows. It grows differently. So what worked then doesn't work anymore. And also with your business, well, mine as well is like new software came came into the picture. It's like what we were you. ⁓ for example, when I started photographing Lightroom didn't exist. There was no Lightroom. So it was capture one. We use capture one.

Nicole Begley (06:53)
Mhm.

Mm.

Right.

Heather (07:18)
And then also, I mean, way that Photoshopped and Adobe camera, Photoshopped, Photoshopped and Adobe camera raw work, change, everything, okay, you get the message, things change.

Nicole Begley (07:31)
Yeah. Yeah. So you and I have used the same platform for our online like the Flourish Academy, Hair of the Dog Academy. Those were the two original pieces. And yeah, back then we used Kajabi and it wasn't nearly as robust as it is now. And then other softwares would come out and be like, oh my gosh, this is so much better. then we like,

You ended up Frankenstining together this entire business. And I think this happens to a lot of times photographers too, where they're like, okay, this over here and this over here. And then pretty soon you're like that Medusa head with everything in every directions. Everything's like taped together and it's just, it's just exhausting. So I was going to say, I don't remember the main impotence, but I do. I do. I remember there was a woman in my mastermind, Julie Cardi. She helps.

Heather (08:00)
Mm. Yeah.

Nicole Begley (08:28)
⁓ middle-aged women with like human design stuff. And she went all in on like everything in Kajabi because the Kajabi communities used to be not great and then they've really upgraded them. So they're really just as good as a circle nowadays. ⁓ and so she had everything there and I was just like, wow, that is really nice. And I had this feeling like,

You guys know when there is something that needs your attention. You might not want to admit it.

Heather (09:06)
but you can sense it.

Nicole Begley (09:08)
You might want to like hide your head in the sand, but you know where there is a major evolution waiting for you in your business. And you know that like, okay, this is the right next step, but it might be a significant project.

Heather (09:24)
Yeah, yeah. You can sense when something needs to shift and you need to give it the attention it deserves, but then you're like, well, I don't know. Do I have the capacity for a project this big? So when did that happen for you and when did you get to the tipping point?

Nicole Begley (09:36)
Mm-hmm.

have been feeling this for years, probably about two years. And I think it all started. So the evolution we had hair of the dog Academy, was, ⁓ started with our Photoshop course, right? Photoshop and Lightroom way back in the day, like 2016, 10 years ago. And then, ⁓ I created business pet photography.

Heather (09:59)
way back. Yes.

Nicole Begley (10:07)
and I ended up putting them together in a membership. And then we just kept on adding and adding and adding and adding and adding. And then a few years ago, you know, we were getting a lot of feedback of people that were in the Academy and not using the business stuff or just the business and not the craft. So it's like, let's, these need to be separate. They're separate promises, separate transformations. It's just a separate, two separate programs. So we split it, the Hair of the Dog Academy, Master Your Craft, a pet photography, freedom focus formula.

Is, ⁓ you know, grow and scale your business. And at the time, like it's like, they're two, they're two separate things. So was like, they need two separate websites, like two separate Instagram, two separate. They're two separate things or two separate programs. And so the mistake, what was the mistake, the path that I took at the time thinking it was right was having two separate portals, like a freedom focus portal, hair of the dog, Academy portal.

I'm sorry guys, that was really confusing. And I knew it was, but I didn't know what the answer was. And I kind of had this idea of like, I feel it needs to be like under my name, but the thought of creating another site, of creating this umbrella ecosystem, Nicole Bagley education, like seemed so overwhelming. And just like,

Heather (11:07)
Hahaha!

Right, right.

Nicole Begley (11:33)
the amount of time and effort myself and my team were going to have to put into that was just, it was massive. but I knew it was the right next step. And then it just got to the tipping point. It was like, if I want to grow, this needs to happen. And the other piece of it was I knew I could serve my clients, my existing clients so much better by also doing this. ⁓ so it was creating a new website.

NicoleBegleyEDU.com, it's up now, creating an entire new Kajabi portal. When we pulled, we didn't just pull the classes in and duplicated them. We streamlined all three of our flagship programs, Hair of the Dog Academy, Freedom Focus Formula, and the Commercial Pet Photography Academy. Like, redid the portals for each of those classes. And the Hair of the Dog Academy used to have like 16 products.

Heather (12:30)
It was a lot. Yeah.

Nicole Begley (12:30)
because we just kept on adding things, but like,

my gosh, how are you supposed to know where to find things or where to start? So all now in one product. mean, we went, I don't know how many hours my team and I discussed tags and how we wanted to tag access and people and discourse mean you own it. Does access mean this, ⁓ which spoiler alert.

And our tags course means you get to keep that content and access means you have access to the coaching access comes and goes course. means you get to stay in that, that piece doesn't go away. So anyway, like we, we have just dissected the nuance of all these things. Cause we started, we started fresh, like tags and Kajabi tags and kit. mean, literally, literally everything. So we've started with the three main programs and now.

Now we're updating the onboarding, going to update the marketing of it. We're updating the backend support. mean, it's a lot.

Heather (13:35)
Hey, can ask you a question?

This is like a tech question from Kajabi because this happened to me recently. I ran out of the number of tags I could use. Have you hit this yet, this limit in Kajabi?

Nicole Begley (13:38)
Yeah.

No,

because I'm in a brand new one and we're using like 20. We moved to a whole new thing and we're starting clean and like five, 25 tags. That's it for the whole business. Like we got it down to there are literally two towel. Cause we had to then take, we're like, all right, we have, Oh, I don't know how many thousands of people.

Heather (13:50)
that's why you were Yeah, okay. That's right.

Yes. Yes.

Nicole Begley (14:15)
that are like previous customers. So we had to go through all that data and then figure out, map who has access to what piece in the new portal. Cause all three of those classes have the course and then a coaching portal for the people that are in the active coaching part of it. Man, was a lot, like, know,

It's like when you like reorganize your room or like that drawer, that junk drawer in your kitchen and you're like so proud of it and people come over and you're like, look, look this is beautiful. Have you ever seen a junk drawer like this?

Heather (14:46)
Look, Yes.

Yeah. Well, I understand what you're saying, where you like, you're so proud of it. You can't stop looking at that. I felt that way about my QuickBooks. I still do. I love getting QuickBooks just to look at it because it's so beautiful. It's so organized and clean. I love it. Yes. So I do get that.

Nicole Begley (15:04)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

And did you, to get there, I know I did, like my QuickBooks was not a total disaster, but it was not clean and organized. And when we both started working with the same accountant and he has Kelly that works for him that I call my QuickBooks fairy, cause like she cleaned all of that up. And when something doesn't work right, I just email her, I'm like, Kelly, can you please help me?

Heather (15:22)
Yes. Yes.

Same. Yeah,

I remember it was either her or Matt asked me like, why do you have so many categories for I forget if it was expenses or income or whatever. And he was like, Heather, it's like income expenses, it comes in or it goes out. And I said, Well, what if I want to track it a certain way? And he said, Have you ever used what he pointed to something I had? I've never used that to report on anything. And I said, No, but I might want to. So

Nicole Begley (15:49)
Yeah.

But I have data FOMO.

Heather (15:56)
I have data. Yeah. What if I miss out? And he just obviously showed us that there's a different, better way to organize that. But yeah. Okay. So I'm on your Nicole Begley edu.com website and it is beautiful. It looks so good.

Nicole Begley (16:10)
I mean, this so much

is like I had to create a new brand, like a new branding identity for this because the three courses are all differently branded and I wasn't touching those.

Heather (16:15)
Yeah!

Right, right. So you had to find a way to make it cohesive. Right. So you did it through this. Okay. This looks beautiful.

Nicole Begley (16:26)
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Thanks, thanks, I got people.

Heather (16:34)
Yeah, it's so you have your flagship programs and it's just hair of the dog Academy freedom focus formula in the commercial pet photography Academy and it's very, very clear. Not sure where to start. Here they are. Okay, that makes sense. Okay. But you had a lot like that's that's almost cosmetic in that it just points to the same things, but you had a lot going on in that back end.

Nicole Begley (16:46)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

my gosh. Yeah. And we still do. Like this is, this is a work in progress. ⁓ some lessons that I learned from this, at least for me, hashtag ADHD, like I needed a deadline. So our, our go live deadline was today, April 1st. ⁓ and we have our commercial pet photography people are all in. We got them in yesterday because they were the smallest group so they could get in and test to make sure things are working so far. good. ⁓ and then.

Heather (17:04)
Yeah.

⁓ good. Yeah. Smart. Yes.

Nicole Begley (17:33)
I'm going to do a final look over of the data of our freedom focus and our hair of the dog Academy people. And we're going to be bringing them in later this week. So by the time this airs, they'll all be in as well. ⁓ and then. Yeah, like it was, it's really, it's, so many steps, right? It's like the first step is to bring in our active coaching clients, like our active members, ⁓ whether they're active coaching or just have alumni coach or

course access, like whoever's involved in these three flagships, this is where we start. We get them into the community. We get them into the thing. We've because that's where we're hosting our calls now. I mean, it's still through zoom, but there's new community like there's there's a lot.

Heather (18:07)
Mm.

There's a lot. Yeah, you've been obviously you've been sharing all of this with me as it goes along. And I must admit that occasionally I was like, ⁓ what?

Nicole Begley (18:27)
But here's the thing, sometimes you have to invest the time to restructure things so that you have more time later.

Heather (18:28)
A little confused. But I mean, I understand.

No, this is actually the most important point here is you really were trying to think of your future self or your future business so that you can expand and grow. And the only way to do that is to clean it up. You have to clean that up or it's only going to break more. Not that anything was broken, but it's like it could. Right.

Nicole Begley (18:46)
Mm-hmm.

Hmm.

Yeah. Well, it couldn't handle it. If my business doubled

with the systems we had in place, it would have broken it. So that's, that's something to ask about your photography business. If my photography business doubled tomorrow, would it break?

Heather (19:08)
Right, right, so.

No, listen, I love that. That is a legitimate question. If I got 20 new clients today, would my systems, my structure and my nervous system be able to handle that? And actually for most photographers, I know this because I talk to them every day. The answer to that is no. So do you find it interesting that they struggle to be consistent with visibility in marketing?

Nicole Begley (19:39)
Yeah, because subconsciously they don't want 20 people to say yes, even though they know consciously that that's a good problem to have. They also know consciously that it's unlikely that anything is going to result in 20 new clients just all calling the same day. That's just not how this usually works. ⁓ But they're still driving with their foot on the gas and the brake by having that concern, even though it's a subconscious thought.

Heather (19:42)
Because they can't! Yes!

Yeah, this is something we're diving into Elevate a lot recently is all of it in the visibility workshop. These ideas of like, are you sure you want to be visible? Because you tell me you want to be visible, but you struggle, you know, you're hesitate with consistency or whatever it is. But I don't think it's because of why you think it is. I think that you're telling the universe, I'm so busy, I'm too busy. And there's this fear of what if I get clients and then I have to deliver, I have to photograph. What if not, you know, you say,

Nicole Begley (20:22)
Mm-hmm.

Heather (20:34)
you start to freak out. So of course you're going to hesitate to market your business. I mean, it makes complete sense. You self-sabotage to protect yourself. Like it's lovely. I mean, it's a good thing. Your brain is trying to keep you safe. We have to clean up the backend or at least the knowledge of what we need to work on. Like we know, and we need to shore up our workflow, right? Because things are falling through the cracks. So, okay. Just like knowing that.

Well, I guess you could ask yourself that question and maybe you did, is what is subconsciously holding me back from growth?

Nicole Begley (21:10)
And I knew mine was, is I could not, I could not market Harrods Dog Academy or Freedom Focus, like my two main programs and feel 100 % good about it because I knew the backend experience could be a million times better. And now it is, so look out. ⁓

Heather (21:32)
Interesting.

What I was going to say, right? What does this make possible, Nicole?

Nicole Begley (21:40)
Yeah.

So now like, I think I've, I've been governing my own thing of like, like I've been wanting to do some, you know, evergreen webinars and build these evergreen things. I'm like, ah, but like the onboarding, but like, I can't even bother updating the onboarding right now because like the actual, the actual program, the content was always good, but it was not set up in a way to encourage.

people to have the most linear and easy success. They had to work for the success. And we had things in place, like when they got in a video ask where I could give them, OK, start here, start there. I could tell them personally where to start. ⁓ But now ⁓ it's so much more streamlined and so much easier for people to get the success that they want. So now I.

Like we always talk about for selling our work that we need to believe down to a molecular level in our body that it is worth the price we are asking, that it is worth twice the price, that people that don't say yes, well, that is too bad for them. And if you don't feel that, you're going to have a really hard time booking clients.

Heather (22:56)
Yes.

Nicole Begley (23:05)
What, whether they're photography clients or coaching clients or whatever they are, like you need to know and feel like your product is just the best it can be, which now mine is.

Heather (23:16)
Yeah, no brainer. It's like worth so much more than this. Yes, absolutely.

And if there's any doubt, look, that's okay. It's just like, what do I need to do to shore that up?

Nicole Begley (23:28)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. But I think people can more easily just hide or stay busy doing the busy work, but not actually doing the big work. I'm not going to lie. This was a massive project and it's ongoing. Like this is just phase one. But.

Heather (23:30)
And in your case, it would

Nicole Begley (23:56)
I have never felt so energized about my business in 15 years.

Heather (23:58)
Hmm, interesting.

Yeah, what are you thinking that's causing that energy?

Nicole Begley (24:06)
that we have up leveled every bit up leveled front of house up leveled back of house up leveled our team like my team, team is a small but mighty team and they are amazing. ⁓ yeah, like it is all systems go.

Heather (24:19)
Agreed.

What's next? What do think is next? Well, no, before you answer that, don't answer that. Stop.

Nicole Begley (24:30)
No new programs.

Like people ask, what are you doing? I'm like, no, no, because here's the other thing. And this happened in my photography business too. I started off doing families because I was like, there's no way people just paid me for dogs. Um, that was 2010 by 2015. I went all in on pets and equine. I mean, 90 % dogs, a little bit of horses. And, I, I closing down the family side of my business was terrifying.

Heather (24:34)
No.

Mm.

Nicole Begley (25:02)
Because A, I didn't not like it. I liked it. I loved the dogs. I liked the families. I did nothing to market the families. 100 % referral word of mouth. $3,000 plus average sales. Beautiful artwork, every family. Like it was easy. But.

Heather (25:10)
Hmm.

so easy, right?

Mm-hmm.

Nicole Begley (25:30)
I was at a crossroads because I couldn't create more time. I needed to decide where I wanted to spend my time because I only had a finite amount of work time because I had two little kids. Yeah, so I decided I wanted to focus more on the dog stuff and so I needed to make room for this to grow. So that has also been part of the process over the past few years.

Heather (25:43)
Yeah.

Nicole Begley (26:00)
of me getting really clear of like, what is my actual superpower? Like, what do I love teaching? What is the most effective thing that I am teaching? Like, how can I get my students the best results? And how do I double down on that? How do I like laser focus on those pieces and let go of the other things? Because I'm not going to lie, over the past 10 years, like,

There were thoughts and you and I have had conversations about it of like feeling like we need to offer the support for everybody all the time at every level of business and have a resource for anything under the sun that can come up. But that that is exhausting and it's not serving my clients or me or the business. So it was getting really clear that hair of the dog Academy will help people build

Heather (26:34)
Mm-hmm.

Nicole Begley (26:55)
a professional level portfolio, whether you're beginner or intermediate, like to get you to a professional standard, wonderful, like I can help you improve your, your pet photography. Now, if, if you want to go learn like every single artistic edit, I was going to say, we don't have that, but we have the summit. So you can jump in the summit and, and, and, and grab that, but it's, I don't feel like I need to explain.

Heather (27:17)
Yeah, yeah.

Nicole Begley (27:24)
every single button in Photoshop, I need to teach people, these are the ones you're going to use all the time. This is what I find the most efficient way that works for me. ⁓ And then like for the pricing piece, I'm like, okay, yeah, I still help people with marketing, still help them with workflow websites, all that stuff is supporting them. But like the main focus of my superpower is a 10 minute conversation with a photographer. I can double their sales every time.

Heather (27:32)
Right.

Yes, you can.

Nicole Begley (27:55)
I'm like, I, I need to double down on that. That's what I do. I hope you make more money. And I, and from teaching and coaching photographers in business for the past 10 plus years, like it was a progress lab. And I realized this, that people were feeling shameful if they had an offer that was like $3,000 all in, they got the digital files and they're like, but Nicole, I'm capping my sale. Like, but your current sale is $700. Like are you.

Heather (27:57)
Right. Right.

Right.

Nicole Begley (28:25)
Would you be happy at a $3,000 sale? They're like, aesthetic. I'm like, great. Let's do that. And then, and then when you start to like, feel like, okay, I'm leaving money on the table. Then we change it again. That that's that like stepping stone of those four phases of business. And it just blew my mind that nobody was teaching it that way because so many educators say, this is how you do it. This is the process. This is how you do it. No, this is how you do it. No, this way right here, the only way.

Heather (28:28)
Yes! Yes! Right? I love 3000.

Right.

Right.

Nicole Begley (28:56)
Nothing makes me more angry.

Heather (28:57)
I know we've talked about that. Listen, but this is because you and I have evolved so much in our businesses, you know, collectively. So let's say like 30 to 35 years worth of knowledge between the two of us in this business. And here's what I've noticed sort of at the meta level is when we started with Lightroom and Photoshop, this is just one example of what I'm describing. We were like more, more, more.

We want to show them everything. Let me show you every little tool, how you do every little thing. And then we were like, wait a minute, that doesn't serve them. That actually makes it more difficult. What could we strip out and what do we need to leave in just to make sure that it's the best, most comprehensive that they need to get their images where they need to be. So we added, added, added, and then we pulled back stripped out, which is what you just alluded to. You said, you know, what do need to give them?

Nicole Begley (29:44)
Mm-hmm.

Heather (29:53)
And then, but also with the pricing, for example, and marketing is, all right, it's not you, it was me. Okay, it was me. I was like so set on there was a certain way to do things and it worked for me, so it would work for everyone. Okay, I recognize how naive that is. It's like stupid. Please give me a break. I was very young in my journey. And then I figured out that, wait a minute, there's a million different ways you can structure any and all of this.

and I don't actually know the right way. I just know that there are options and it's gonna work differently for different people. So those two high level things, the like stripping away to make it more accessible and less confusing and giving options, so stripping away in terms of the business and the craft and then giving options to how you can run pricing, for example, it's just like really the easiest example I can think of.

is what has evolved us to the level we're at. And that is wisdom and experience from working with thousands of photographers over combined 30 years. That's a lot of wisdom. And we made mistakes for sure. And then we learned like, ⁓ that's not the only way. And then someone will come up with a new idea and we'll be like, there's another way. I didn't realize that. And it works differently for different people. Yeah. So I'm with you. This idea that

It should be done this way or this only way. just, that flew out the window for me about 10 years ago. You know that? You can do it however you want.

Nicole Begley (31:18)
Yep.

Yep. Yeah. And, and the, the same technique might not work for two different people that have different thoughts and different feelings about that technique. If one person's like gung ho like, my God, this is amazing. It's probably going to work for them. And if somebody's else like, I am terrified of this, it's probably not going to work. Yeah. So, my gosh. Yeah. So, so many things. So

Heather (31:31)
Yeah.

Right, well that's stupid, right. ⁓

Nicole Begley (31:45)
Anyway, I just wanted to come back on here, chat with you about where I've been and ⁓ yeah, what's coming forward. Yeah.

Heather (31:54)
Hey, let me ask you what,

what percentage, I know you said this is like, you know, phase one essentially, cause there'll be more, but what percentage would you say are you are done with phase one? Like where are we at right now?

Nicole Begley (32:09)
95. Yeah. Yeah. There's just a couple little things still to, to a couple, like five more videos I'm recording this week to get into the new Hoda section. Like I re-recorded every single editing video because some of them were old. Like the tool still worked because I had updated some with the new tools, the AI tools in general to fill in all those. ⁓ but I mean, there were some that were pretty old in there. I'm like, it's, it's time. It is time to rerecord.

Heather (32:10)
⁓ nice. It's great.

Nice.

Nicole Begley (32:38)
So it was a great time to like really truly, I asked myself, because I've been teaching photographers for well over 10 years, that I was like, what do they need to know? If I was teaching, somebody knew they came into my office and they're like, teach me pet photography. What would that look like? That's what I pulled together and created. And most of those existed somewhere, but like we put them in a new linear fashion. ⁓

Heather (32:57)
Mmm.

Yes, yes.

Nicole Begley (33:07)
So it's really exciting. So yeah, so phase one is building the thing and updating the content, bringing our people in so they can start experiencing the content, getting the support. ⁓ We'll still have our coaching calls and all that. Phase two is updating. So that's like updating back of house. Phase two is updating front of house. So we have that new website, but next up I need to update.

Heather (33:16)
Yes, yes.

Nicole Begley (33:36)
the other two websites, cause hair of the dog Academy website will stay up for that program and freedom focus formula will stay up for that program and the podcast. ⁓ but those websites need to be updated. ⁓ so that that's next and like the, the, the, ⁓ sales pages, information pages for these programs need to be updated cause they've shifted a little bit as well. So that's phase two and then phase three is new marketing pieces for it. So it kind of goes back again to our,

Heather (33:40)
Mm.

Nicole Begley (34:05)
Our conversation that we had the last, I think it was the last one. can't remember if it, it, if I sent it out yet, I'm pretty sure I did. No, I did the one with the decision matrix of, it a client? Is it a client like fulfillment or is it a marketing piece? And so that works here too. This is a client fulfillment first, and then I'm going to move on to the marketing piece of it.

Heather (34:17)
Yes.

Yes, yes.

By the way, side note, I did end up creating a worksheet for that for Elevate. I put all of that transcript from our podcast with my notes into Claude AI. And I said, help me generate a worksheet in a decision flow matrix. I wanted it to be visual. So I created that. If you're in Elevate, it's posted. I had sent a link out to our discussion as well as, you know, with that worksheet, because you can just very easily look at.

Nicole Begley (34:44)
⁓ f**k.

Heather (35:02)
I mean, it will tell you if you're messing around or if you're focused. It's like, are you just trying to stay busy or are you actually focused on work that needs to get done?

Nicole Begley (35:05)
Yeah, yeah, no.

I love it. love it. Claude is my new BFF. I broke up with a chat. We're done. Dunzo. He's out.

Heather (35:13)
Yeah, me too. I wouldn't say

I'm dunzo dunzo because it's still on my screen, but I'm in the final, final phases, ⁓ final step.

Nicole Begley (35:25)
Yeah, it's going to be done

so as soon as my next payment comes until then it's still casual.

Heather (35:28)
Right. My, my transition. Yeah. My transition

is, is almost, almost complete. have a few things I need to map over some of those custom GPTs I've created for my different programs. I'm going to keep them. Some of them can remain as they are inside of chat, but I want to mimic them in Claude to test. want to see, do they look different? Do they work different? So I'm going to reach out to some of the people in Elevate soon.

And the like super users, the ones that are using my different custom GPTs and ask Kelly's one of them. Kelly uses them all, see if she'll test it out in Claude and if one responds better or I don't know. We'll see.

Nicole Begley (36:08)
Yeah, no, for sure. And actually we were just talking about this of hosting some extra AI training and elevate. And then I'm going to host a call for if you too are looking to explore a relationship with Claude.

Heather (36:26)
some things to consider here. Oh, also, I started with the free account. I meant to tell you this. I started with the free account. I thought I'll ride that till, you whenever it was like two days later around 10 a.m. I had hit my limit and I was like, yeah, we're done with this. I did and I did immediately. I didn't even hesitate. I was like, hurry, hurry, hurry. I was in the middle. I was in the middle of a very important conversation.

Nicole Begley (36:39)
It's like, you're done here. You got to pay to play, babe.

I love it.

Yeah. Yeah. Amazing. Yeah. We're going to have some more AI conversations. We were just talking about this. Another podcast we want to record too, is just like how we create our own personal kind of AI policies. Like, because I think this is a huge piece. Like it's here that, that it's, you can't put it away. Like it's here and it is going to infiltrate. Like, I mean, you go to Google and it's AI at the top. go to send an email and Gmail.

Heather (37:05)
Mm.

Nicole Begley (37:19)
there's AI aspect to it. Like it is everywhere. So I want to have a conversation around like, how do you put your own personal guardrails on it? How do you balance any sort of values, ethics, ⁓ with your use with where your, your personal, like kind of boundaries, your, your personal policy, your business policy, do you have a business AI policy? I feel like that's something that is going to be more common.

So anyway, excited for that conversation, but that will be another day.

Heather (37:51)
Yeah, right. have a lot, we always have a lot of things we need to talk about, Nicole.

Nicole Begley (37:56)
I

know, I know, I know we'll chat again soon. All right. Well, thanks for being here and letting me go down this little rabbit hole of letting you guys know where I've been. That's why I've been kind of MIA. I mean, my, my coaching clients have seen me. I've been still been doing all the normal calls, but, I have not really been posting on social and I, missed the first podcast in six years. ⁓ so it was serious, ⁓ but, ⁓ yeah, no, so excited for where we're going.

Heather (37:59)
Okay

was serious.

Nicole Begley (38:25)
you guys go check out Nicole Bagley or Nicole Bagley edu.com. ⁓ and yeah, and, and hopefully you can pull some of these lessons we talked about today into your business as well. Thanks everybody.

Heather (38:32)
Yeah, let's go.