Go Boutique Live is a once a year, three-day virtual event for photographers who offer printed artwork instead of digital. And today I want to share some of my favorite moments and programs from this event.
We’ve been doing this event for six years and I think this was the best one yet.I love to open the event with big-picture thinking that is then woven throughout the entire event. I opened the first segment really talking about a great book called The War of Art by Steven Pressfield. To quote him directly, he said, “Most of us have two lives, the lives we live and the life within us”. He’s talking about that unlived life that you’re called to have, to be a photographer that creates artwork that lasts for generations. But then there’s that thing we can’t see that is stopping us from living the life we are meant to live. You’re at point A, and you want to go way over there to point B, but right between the two of you stands the enemy. And this is an enemy that holds us back. What’s crazy about this enemy is that it’s invisible. When we talk about you trying to grow and what’s in your way, that enemy has a name standing right there in front of you. And the name is resistance. Anytime you want to change or grow or do something different, resistance is right there all day long.
I want to talk to you about how you can recognize the enemy that is stopping you. Pressfield says, when you can learn how to control the resistance you’re feeling internally, you can have everything you want in life externally. The battle is won inside our brains, not outside. Resistance doesn’t just work on us. Resistance recruits allies. This is the part that’s the most frustrating to me.
We finally get up enough courage to overcome our own resistance and those close to us start to get uncomfortable and act strange. Have you ever tried to lose weight and you declare it to your family and all of a sudden they come home with pizza and a lot of sugary stuff? It’s because they’re struggling against their own resistance. This is why we need each other so much. This is why I created the event Go Boutique Live, and this is why I’ve created such a community of ride or dies. Other photographers who will stand by you no matter what, because we’re artists. We’re here to fuel our passion to create, but also fuel our desire to create income to pour back into our families. And often no one else gets that.
During Go Boutique Live, we had breakout groups for other people to cheer for all of the attendees. We had speakers who showed their path, and what they got through and what is possible. They were serving as an example and inspiration to help you beat your own resistance.
Let’s talk about how we beat the resistance. The first thing we have to do is to understand that resistance tells lies to you. Resistance talks all kinds of smack right in front of your face because it’s in your head. It doesn’t discriminate. So sometimes people with the most resources are more stuck than anyone else. The students I see succeeding are overcoming all different kinds of things. But resistance is fueled by fear and it wants you to believe the lies. As you feed into the fear that you have, it’s amping resistance up.
Resistance wants you to procrastinate. Understanding this first lie of procrastination helps you see that resistance wants you to think you’re going to do it later and put it off. The second lie is rationalization. We justify why we haven’t gone all in on our business and haven’t grown it to the potential that we could. Rationalization is the resistance’s wingman.
The third lie is thinking that your shadow calling is your real calling. This is when resistance allows you to do a version of what you’re called to do, but you’re not actually doing the thing you were called to do. You are called to become a photographer that creates lasting artwork for people. You’re just taking pictures. Maybe taking some money here and there, but a lot of times they’re not printing them, they’re not ordering them, you’re running in circles, but you’re telling yourself you have this business.
The fourth lie is about pleasure, not fulfillment. Resistance is trying to get you a cheaper form of the thing that you really want. I get that you had fun doing the session and photographing the little kids or the people with their new puppy, but you didn’t get the fulfillment from seeing them cry when you presented their images. When the teenager gets their self-esteem poured into when you’re gushing on their images as you’re talking to them and presenting the images. Stop rationalizing, hiding in the shadows and seeking pleasure, but not fulfillment.
Once you realize you have a resistance and you can push it away long enough to learn the “LENS” Framework. Picture a pyramid and the bottom brick on that pyramid is the L. The L stands for leads. You have to be working to get the right leads because when you get the wrong leads and then you book them, the rest of the process doesn’t matter. It keeps you stuck in quicksand.
The second step to my lens framework is E, elevation. Your marketing and your model attract the wrong leads, or you don’t know how to talk to them, book them, you are unable to elevate them into a higher order. We have to elevate the right people with a two-step process.
N is narrow. Now you’ve booked the right people who love artwork, who want what you do. Now you’re at the narrowing step. This is what makes your business so much fun. You’re narrowing what you’re photographing because you have a strategic plan based on the products you know they will buy.
The is S is sweet spot. Once you can generate as many leads as you want and you book them to elevate them, that gets you out of quicksand right there and you start to get traction. You have a strategic sales plan, you’re cutting your time down by 90% because you aren’t overshooting and then you’re only retouching what your clients order instead of hundreds of images. This is when life starts to become sweet. When you have more time in your life where you’re setting up really cool activities with other local business owners because you have the time to do that. It’s because you’re serving your clients and you’re showing up as a happy person.
Go Boutique Live is a conference that the Photography Business Institute puts on every single year, the last week of February. It’s your time once a year to really bubble up with people who are doing what you’re doing, who are fighting the resistance monster, who are putting themselves in a position to have a community of people who will support them instead of telling them why it can’t work for them. Keep working on that business.
Download the Episode Transcript Here
