Episode 004: Choose Happy… in life and business!

 

The story for this week’s short podcast changed, but the theme stayed the same. Out of curiosity, I looked up the word happy this week and found the definition:  feeling or showing pleasure or contentment.

I wasn’t really satisfied with that, so then I looked at the synonyms. Here are a few of my favorites: radiant, joyful, carefree, untroubled, and over the moon.  Now we’re getting somewhere.

I talk a lot about building a business that brings you JOY, but really we are just talking about being happy.  In this episode I am encouraging all my creative entrepreneur listeners to ask themselves 4 fundamental questions about their business.

1. Are your offers still making you happy?
2. Are you paying yourself a salary that makes you happy?
3. Are you working with clients that make you happy?
4. And are you happy with the amount of work you are currently doing?

Those sounded more like where I’m trying to go with this podcast. So keep those in mind, as we talk about today’s topic. A few years ago, it made me absolutely HAPPY to get a break from my family, while I was away photographing other people’s families. Recently, not so much. So late last year, I made the decision to stop advertising travel sessions and only do them for existing clients.

Now guys, if you can’t say yes to all four questions, it’s time to make a plan. Because you can totally be happy with your offer, but not getting clients that you like working with.

You can totally be happy with your offer, but unhappy with the number of hours that you are spending, providing that offer to different clients. Do you see where I’m going? You need to have a, yes, to all four questions, in order to build a balanced business for yourself. And I definitely realize that it’s a place of privilege for me to tell you, if you’re making the money that you want, but it’s not making you happy, you should still make changes. Because a lot of us struggle to say no to money. I know I’m one of those people, like if someone is willing to pay you thousands of dollars for a service, I mean just suck it up and do it, right?

No, you shouldn’t just suck it up and do it. Because if you end up doing that over and over and over again, you are limiting yourself to not being able to find and build a business that would actually make you happy long term. So, once again, if you can’t say yes to all four questions, I think it’s time to think about making a plan. Because where you are in your business today, isn’t where you have to stay.

You get to change your mind. You are the boss. You get to decide who you’re gonna work with, what they’re gonna pay you, what service you’re gonna provide. These are all questions that you get to decide. Most of you know, me as an in-home documentary family photographer. But guys, when I first went to open my photography business, I planned to offer senior sessions, so high school seniors, and then posed newborn sessions. Because when I started learning photography, anything related to not having to get a child to sit down, and be still ,and smile for the camera, sounded like absolute heaven to me. Can you guys imagine me saying that? I mean, I do the exact opposite now.

I don’t care what the children are. I capture their joy, doing whatever they love doing, but the fact that, I started this business, thinking that I wanted to do the one thing, and then for my entire career, I’ve offered the exact opposite, is a true testament to the fact that you should figure out what makes you happy.

And just because something is profitable, just because something is easy to do, doesn’t necessarily mean that is the service that you should offer to your clients. Because guys, life is way too short to sit in misery for too long. If you built your business on an offer, that seemed like it was the thing that was gonna make you happy, and the most profitable, and a few years later you decide it doesn’t make you happy, do something else. Okay.

Are you ready to start thinking about making changes in your own business? Well, first of all, if you haven’t listened to episode one of this podcast where I talk about doing an offer audit, go back and listen to that.

If you haven’t listened to episode two, where I had guest Britney Jeanine on, who told us about the three types of pivots that you can do in your business, if you are not happy, go back and listen to that episode.

And then I want everyone to schedule one hour on your calendar, to really think about what is currently making you happy and unhappy in your business right now.

What do you want to spend your time doing and what is currently taking up too much of your time?

Who is your absolute favorite client that you’ve worked with and who would you never want to work with again?

What offers are you excited about completing and which ones do you dread so much that you avoid and you procrastinate completing the service.

You’ll use this list to think about changes that you could make in your business going forward.

• Do you need to reevaluate your prices?
• Do you need to outsource?
• Do you need to change your marketing strategy?
• Do you need to change how much you are working and when?

But guys, I’m not telling everyone to run out and just immediately make changes. I think that a lot of us skip from being unhappy to immediately modifying, without taking an appropriate amount of time to just sit down and brainstorm.

So that is what I want you to do after today’s episode, sit down, blank piece of paper, little bit of music going, maybe another podcast, and figure out what is currently working for you in your business and what is making you happy. 

I would love to hear how this went for you.  DM me on Instagram and let me know what you come up with!