#012 Make a $1M in 12 Months: Our Audacious Goal for our Photography Business

Make a $1M in 12 Months: Our Audacious Goal for our Photography Business

Breaking Mindset Barriers: Achieving Financial Success in Photography

In this episode, we discuss our *new* audacious goal of making a million dollars in 12 months. We emphasize the importance of shifting mindsets and beliefs around money to achieve financial success. The episode includes personal anecdotes about overcoming limiting beliefs and strategies for creating a prosperous photography business. It concludes with an exercise featuring five questions (see below) designed to help listeners examine their relationship with money and envision new financial possibilities.

00:00 Introduction: Transforming for Success

00:10 Welcome and Mission Statement

00:27 Discussing Money and Mindset

01:04 Personal Experiences with Money Beliefs

01:55 Keith's Journey and Abundant Mindset

06:41 Setting Big Goals: $1 Million in 12 Months

07:11 Overcoming Limiting Beliefs

17:12 Visualizing Success and Taking Action

18:57 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

20:31 Outro and Call to Action

5 Exercises Worksheet (DOWNLOAD)

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Transcript

In order to make a million dollars in 12 months, like I honestly need to become a different version of myself. Cause clearly the one bringing the baggage with her is not the same person that can make a million dollars.

Welcome. We're Keith and Melissa, photography business owners for more than 25 years. And our mission is to help you find the success you want. And we know firsthand the role that mindset plays in figuring it all out. Now, today's episode.

Welcome. Welcome. Today we're talking about money. And as you get to the end of this episode, there will be an exercise with five questions that will make you question your relationship with money and start to create the possibility of new outcomes.

 To get started. I need to remind myself and you lovely listeners that In order to elevate our businesses and make more money, we need to bring up our belief systems around money. we actually feel about money. We just go about life, not really thinking about it, right? We treat our realities as just facts.

I know that was me. I never questioned my beliefs about my financial reality or money. Whether I'm in debt, I haven't raised my prices in 10 years. I can't book enough clients. No one wants to pay full price. I can't make more than 25, 000 a year in my photography business. Why I'm laughing. I don't know, but these are the things I hear people say over and over and over.

Facts, facts, facts. Everyone just presents these as facts about their life and their business. After being in this business for more than two decades and doing a lot of personal growth work, , I now recognize that many photographers operate from a scarcity mindset.

And how do I know this? Because I was one of those photographers.

Where you just feel like there's not enough to go around, there's not enough clients, there's not enough opportunities, . There's not enough money, it's an oversaturated market, like how am I going to stand out? The beliefs we have around money directly affect our photography business, good or bad. Beliefs shape our realities and therefore shape our outcomes. So Keith, what are some thoughts you had about what was possible for you as if, why am I laughing? Why am I still laughing today? I'm sorry. This is a serious subject.

 What are some thoughts you had about your possibilities when you were starting, not even when you were starting out, but just overall like your. I remember coming out of,, photo school and I thought the sky was the limit.

I came out pumped. I won best portfolio. I started the process of securing a job from our, speaker of honor, who's a really big guy in photography. Oh my God. I'm going to make multiple six figures a year. I'm going to be like the male Annie Leibovitz.

I mean, there's just, the sky's the limit. I just, I'm gonna have to struggle to get there, but it's been done before. Why can't I do it? I'm like, okay. I didn't come from any of this. So it was a complete, I, nothing that I even grew up thinking I could do. But now this seemed to just be a thing. There's a path already out there.

I don't exactly know what that path is, but I'm going to do it. But that's a good point, because if someone's done it before, it can be done or you're the trailblazer yourself. But the fact that you have that abundant mindset, that's, that's amazing. Yeah. I don't know where I got it either. , I didn't have a lot of people I could look at in my, uh, my past that, uh, demonstrated this, but again, I just figure why not me?

Yeah. That's true. Why not start your business with that, with that good attitude. Just having fun.

 So then I guess it was me that, is it just me in our business that operated from a lack mindset?

I mean, I didn't believe anything was possible around money and that there, I really did not believe there were enough clients that there were going to be enough opportunities out there. For all of us, it was just so hard for me to believe. Um, well, but I'm jumping ahead here because by the time I, you and I joined together working, you were already several years into your photography business.

Yeah, I was still, I was shooting weddings on the side just cause I had realized, I think at that point, uh, maybe not, maybe it was a little bit later, but. The celebrity photography thing was not going to be me. That was that just, it was just not my personality. , but I still then thought something was going to work out.

, I had a five year cap on how long I was going to assist people. I, I figured if I hadn't done it in five, it's good to give yourself, give yourself goals because it's just so easy to continue to make money and continue to get better at what you're doing and then just go incrementally along.

There's nothing wrong with that. But. Let me see here. So I set myself a five year goal on how long I would assist people. And then after that, I'm like, I'm going to make or break myself, just getting my own clients. That's excellent. Because having, putting that out there that you named your outcome and you were striving for that, and then you could measure whether or not you were moving in the right direction.

That's fantastic. That's it. I think I'm not going to judge you. It's definitely scary because I said I had no, I'm not the greatest planner. One of my problems sometimes is I see the, I see the promised land, but I forget to look down and see what I'm about to step on.

 I'm a very big picture without ever really looking to, well, not with that ever, but frequently not looking down to find out what, what the path is to get there. You have to have that, that the dream, right? It's hard to get there. If you don't have the idea of what you want to get to.

So oftentimes for me, it was really hard to wrap my head around that. We could have a prosperous, successful photography business and that we actually was in our hands. Like we could create the amount of money that we wanted to. And I know earlier when we were talking through the outline for this, you had mentioned to me, well that's interesting because you said something like, you would've thought I would've had a positive.

Oh, yeah. I found it's just kind of strange and ironic to me that when I met you, you were so much more successful than I was. I, I was a, a photo assistant, in my early thirties at that point. Out of the navy. While I'm at you, you're obviously doing very well, uh, with your C suite job.

And, uh, and here I am, a person out of the Navy, person who dropped out of, uh, college to gave up the chance to be a doctor so that I could pursue a photography career. And at this point, I'm basically And assistant for a bunch of people. So yeah, my path was not exactly a super smooth and I'm sure most people look at it and think it was silly, but I, I trusted in myself, right.

You have the self confidence and you have the goal. So I think those two work really well together and you had already decided that you were going to make it. And that's big. Yep. There were a few little, uh, a little few little curves in that road, but I knew where that road, I wanted that road to go. Yeah.

Eventually. 

 Okay. So now here we are and. I have this big audacious goal right now that I know you're on board because I'm glad we're always on the same page that in the next 12 months, I, we, when I say I, I think I'm the harder one to convince here that we want to make 1 million in the next 12 months.

That kind of scares me like that's a scary sounding thing. We've never been that much fun in that short of time. Exactly. So that's our new goal. So that's our new goal we have for our business. So what comes up for me? I'm asking you is if you can tell me what comes up for me,

a lot of internal programming to start with. Like I have so much that comes up for me thinking that that people like me don't make a million dollars in 12 months. I don't know what that means. People like me, but I guess I'm thinking that means that what I can earn is more limited because I guess that's just how I was programmed.

When I think back, when I started actually reflecting on where this money mindset came from, for me. And plus I have all the built in excuses like I'm busy, I have two kids, I live in France and I'm trying to learn French, I'm trying to deal with the French bureaucracy, I'm running a couple of photography businesses, but people like me can't do these big things and I only have an undergraduate degree, I don't have a graduate degree, I don't have an MBA.

The narrative I've been taught by my upbringing, society, and lots of proof that I've self created, I've self created, I'm not even going to blame my, I could have been long past what I was taught in my childhood, but I kept it with me. Most of it is the proof that I've self created to back up my hypothesis that just, this can't be true. , since my brain can't see the trees through the forest or however that expression goes, so I think I can't do that because in order to make a million dollars in 12 months, like I honestly need to become a different version of myself. Cause clearly the one bringing the baggage with her is not the same person that can make a million dollars.

But what if I can? It's not even a what if you can. Just assume that we're just going to. If I aim for the moon and if you missed, you still knowing the stars, but if you, uh, if you don't aim, if you frequently people aim low because it's more comfortable and it's where we're, Oh, I grew up with, as you, I grew up with that much and, uh, I don't see any reason why you should, what are reasonable goals? People say, Oh, you should set a reasonable goal. What's reasonable led by, by who, like who's, who gets to choose for you. What reasonable is, I think we spoke about ceilings and having, we all have our own ceilings that we set for ourselves and that we can't break through them.

That doesn't mean you don't get incremental raises , move up in your company or your photography business makes incremental 5 percent a year increases. But for some reason we do set that ceiling and it's just conditioned and that's breaking through the conditioning, which is what I'm trying.

You're trying to do right now and publicly do it by. by putting this ridiculous, audacious goal out there that really isn't ridiculous, but by putting it out there and knowing that we're going to work towards that. And I think by putting it out in the universe certainly makes things start to happen.

And it just, you can now measure what you're doing against, does this help me get to my goal or does it not? it gives you a road map and street signs and saying, yes, goal this way, all this other stuff not.

It's very true because it's just, it's a path and it's, or it's a staircase that each step is a step that you need to take to get to the top of the stairs. I wonder if I, with all these doubts I have, I wonder if I can, what if I truly started understanding my limiting beliefs? What if I changed my hypothesis and told myself that lots of people make a million dollars in 12 months?

Lots of women who are in their mid fifties with an undergraduate degree and 30 years of real life experience and have two kids. Those women make a million dollars in 12 months and many make a lot more. And why not? I'm creating evidence for us, for me. Just the same way I looked at 

my family had, most, some of my family had said, uh, well, why would you not want to be a doctor? Like, how are you going to make money as a photographer? And I said, look around, there's photographs everywhere. There's plenty of people that are very, very successful as photographers. So why they're not believing it, but I believe it because.

I wasn't blazing a brand new path. I was following another path that I know can be done. Why your point of these other people were doing it? Why can't we? . Of course, it's more than having positive thoughts.

Like we're talking about, although that is the base of any of this happening, but I know it is more about me taking action. Just like I said, creating evidence for myself that this is attainable. I think we just did a really good job of explaining that because if you don't create the evidence, it's hard, it can be very hard to believe.

I think. And it's not that, that if no one's done it before you, that it can't be done. Well, no one, no one made an iPhone before the iPhone was made. Exactly. And you look at, Ford and Edison and all these people, those were people that were thought to be truly crazy. 

You can blaze a unique path if you want, but it's that much easier to go down a path that's already been traveled. Yeah, someone else is already, you're following in someone else's footsteps. Yeah, it might be the path less traveled, but it's not the path never traveled. Right, true. Otherwise it wouldn't be a path.

With photography. At least what we're talking about here. It's our path, never traveled, because we have not made a million dollars in 12 months. Lots of other people have, and we're going to prove to ourselves that we can achieve this. And my head spins because I think of all the roadblocks that will pop up for us, but

why it can't, why it can't or won't happen. I waver, I go back and forth.

I, I don't want people to judge me, judge. Well, I don't, I don't, I mean, people probably don't even ever think about it. But I, I, I have this weird thing that I, I guess I'm afraid of being judged.

In the end, it's, it's the open. Who cares? Yeah. Nobody does care what we're up to. Sometimes I think it's just comfortable. I have my mind will go back and forth. Like I said, it's like a ping pong ball and I'll think it's like comfortable here, right where we are.

Like we know we can make six figures. We know we can run multiple businesses. We know all these things. It's very safe right here. But safe isn't necessarily fun. So again, why should you, so you can see if you're thinking that, , you're safe and that's where you want to end up. Then that's when the world just passes you by.

That's true. I have to keep evolving. I want to continue evolving because it's fun. Like I just enjoy seeing new things and doing new things. Achieving your goal isn't the fun, it's chasing your goal. Yeah, it's the process. It's what you learn along the way. Definitely it's what you learn along the way.

I mean, I know I need to stretch, but I question whether I'm ready or not. Well, you never know. You are who you are. That's why I'm putting this out there, because if I don't,

I'll just rest on my laurels and stay comfortable right where we are. But then I remind myself that we have come a long way. That we used to not make six figures in our photography business.

And now we have for multiple years and multiple businesses. I mean, I love the game. I love showing up every day. I love the challenge and I know you do too. It's fun. It's fun to get out there and challenge yourself and. To defy all odds and nobody would think 25 years in we still have a photography business.

I know we talked about that a few episodes ago. I mean, that's a really low statistic of photographers that are in business that long and feed their kids the whole time with that. It's something that shows our tenacity, our resilience, and somehow, even though I do have a limiting belief around money, and I have a lot of, I think, mindset issues when it comes to money, I'm able to slowly overcome them when I need to.

It's amazing how I can kind of park them, move past them, park them, move past them, and still have things that, that linger and that I have to keep working on. And that's why I think personal growth and, development really never, I don't want to say never ends. 

It's just something that I enjoy. Discovering more. Yeah. So I think it makes us, makes us better . Just the idea of moving forward, just not letting the grass grow under your feet. What's around the next corner? What's over the next mountain?

I'm always wanting to go there, and here is always. Cool. But here was there at one point. True. True. And then having this, this big audacious goal that we want for our business and for our lives, it is possible, as we said a minute ago, because others have done it. And that kind of gives me assurance that I can do this because it's happened before I'm becoming very repetitive, but I need to hear it.

I think it's because my obstacle is really me. I mean, I , I'm the one between me and us getting that goal because if I keep pulling us back, thinking we can't do this or well, we both have to be supportive of each other and we both have to.

Continue to set our sights forward. If it doesn't work, if one is, uh, saying, okay, let's, let's fall full speed ahead. And the other is the anchor hole in the back of the place. So, and if we keep, if we change and end up, one does, we just change jobs, but we stay in equilibrium. True. Because one day it'll be you, one day it'll be me that needs that extra enthusiasm or push to, uh, to, to get the going, to get, to get us going.

But I mean, at the core of what I believe is holding me back is definitely my belief around money. . So I need to have an unwavering belief that I can do this, that we can do this. No matter what period I have heard a million times of what you focus on and you're more of, it's a nice sentence and it makes sense.

And as we just said a minute ago, like your North star, when you're pushing towards something. The likelihood of it happening because you've articulated it, because you put it out there, because you've said it, that just increases the odds of it happening because like all roads lead to, to that, that goal, to that North star, to that outcome, whatever name you want to give it.

So think of a time in your life when you wanted something, you put it out in the universe, and then you started working towards it. Even if it wasn't as cognizant as it may seem now in retrospect, remind yourself of the big and small wins, because sometimes we don't give ourselves enough grace. We just focus on the negative, what we aren't doing, but write down the good, the small wins, and remind yourself of what you're capable of.

But now here we are, we're at another fork in the road. We could stay safe right here. Cause you know, it's pretty safe right here, even though we, we take other, you know, personal challenges, but right now financially, this is we're in a safe spot, but we want this big audacious goal to be out there and.

I will battle these limiting beliefs that are going to, I know they're gonna hurl, they're gonna hurl themselves at me, they'll come fast and furious even if I make up half of them, but I'll get past the judgment I'm sure to get.

Or at least I'll think I'm getting judged. I will do a lot of visualization of what life will look like making 1 million in 12 months. I mean, I have to visualize like, what does a person look like that may not physically look like, but look like in their, the way they behave and the way they show up to work and the way they show up in their life.

I have to start visualizing what, what that person looks like in order to. Become that person 

 but I know we'll make mistakes and we know we're going to fail here and there, but even if we don't hit that target number, and I think you spoke about this , That even if we don't hit that exact target number of a million dollars in 12 months, like we're going to become bigger versions of ourselves.

There's always the chance that we fall past the goal. That's true. Isn't it funny that my mind went to wonder if we don't get to the goal and yours went wonder if we go past it. That's interesting. Yeah, so I have no intention of just stopping hard on it. That's interesting. Where my mind's stopped. My mind's like, wonder if we don't get there, and you're like, wonder if we blow right past it.

Yeah, I'm not going to just put the brakes on it. I'm like, whoops. Hold on. That's good. Thank you. You'll see. This is what I mean. I'm making progress, but I'm still not like, and I'm an optimistic person. It's just, I'm not, I can have it's cheers. So, I mean, we'll definitely evolve our belief systems, or at least I will.

Sounds like you've already got your belief system in line and what we're capable of. And , I'm glad you want to take that chance. Why not? It's a little scary, but it's fun scary. It's not like we can get hurt doing it. And this isn't sure. Yeah, true. Again, we're like you said, if we fall short of the goal, we're ahead of where we were to begin with.

So it's only moving forward. Exactly.

And remember, taking action, not luck, creates money and the business that you want. So, I think you said earlier, but I think it's worth repeating because I think that's very, very true. And, you know, the old thing about, , one walk favors the prepared. It's one of my favorite , quotes from, uh, a teacher of mine way back when, and somebody else said, uh, you create your own luck.

Exactly, that's a great quote. Both of those are great quotes.

 In the show notes is an exercise with five questions that is going to help you discover, where you may be limiting yourself around money. And I think it's a really important exercise, especially if you do want to grow your photography business. You don't know it's when you stop and think about your actual views on money.

It's it's it's can be quite surprising. I remember thinking money could be bad. Money can't be bad. Money can't be good. People are bad and people are good. Money just gives you a chance to be more of whatever you are. These five questions actually try to uncover that.

Like, what are your say, earliest beliefs around money and those sorts of thought processes that, , how you judge people possibly that had money, how you judge people who made a lot of money. , these are like more like journal prompts, grab a piece of paper, your journal, and just work through these five questions because they're eye opening and they'll definitely help you discover, if nothing else, , what your thought process is.

 It can't hurt you to know what you think. Absolutely not. And we all want to create a more prosperous photography business. I know I do. So hopefully you enjoyed our new microphones. And I know I did. All right. We'll see you next time. Bye. See you next time. Bye.

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