#015 The Power of Consistency in your Creative Business

Building Momentum in Business: The Power of Consistency

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In this episode, Keith and Melissa, seasoned photography business owners, discuss the importance of perseverance, showing up consistently, and the role of mindset in achieving business success.

They emphasize that building a successful business is akin to going to the gym—requiring consistent effort and commitment, even when immediate results aren't evident.

The episode also highlights insights from interviews with other creatives, including last week with Claudia Johnstone, emphasizing the diverse paths to success while recognizing common elements like consistency and setting goals.

The hosts reference books like 'Deep Work' by Cal Newport and 'Atomic Habits' by James Clear as valuable resources for managing time and focusing on tasks that drive business progress. This episode serves as encouragement for listeners to embrace the journey of continual improvement and maintain momentum in their business endeavors.

00:00 Introduction and Key to Business Success

00:29 Meet Keith and Melissa

00:54 Interview Insights and Creative Journeys

02:18 Consistency and Perseverance in Business

04:05 Momentum and Overcoming Challenges

10:40 Effective Time Management

11:23 Recommended Reads for Business Growth

12:52 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

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Transcript

Having a successful business isn't. It's not rocket science as much as I want to pat myself on the back. Yeah, it's perseverance. It's, it's, it's showing up. Again, it sounds cliche and cliches typically become cliche because there's a, uh, large element of truth there.

It's just a matter of you. It, it starts off slow. You, you, you recognize you want something done. You make a commitment to do it. And then you go, and then you go, and you go, and you go, and you don't recognize anything happening, 

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. 

Well, welcome everyone. And I just want to comment that two things. One, I apologize already. I don't love my voice, but today with a cold, I really, really don't enjoy it.

Another thing I wanted to mention was how much I enjoyed interviewing Claudia, like how much fun it is to interview other creatives and to hear their process

because all of us have a different path that we travel and I think it's great to hear other people's experiences so that we know or that we're reinforced that we're not alone , in this journey. It can be tough sometimes. And rewarding. And fun. And just, Hanging out with nice people.

The purpose of doing these interviews, I think we'll probably release them every other week is to just show you what's possible and to see the other creatives doing the hard things and creating businesses and anyway, just to find inspiration for everyone who's listening. The funny thing is, uh, there's so many, it seems that there's so many different ways to get to the same goal and to the same point, but.

When you start to break stuff down, you start to recognize that, uh, a lot of it is actually the same thing. It's just called different names, but the processes, the successful processes typically have the same thing going on. Absolutely. And I think this is something we were talking about yesterday morning when we were having our morning coffee.

And if for some reason we go off course and end up not talking about the reactionary business, that'll be Friday's episode because I can see where this is going in a positive way that we were talking the other day when we were having coffee about, like, it's like going to the gym, , doing reps.

I mean, having a successful business isn't. I hate to say it. It's not rocket science as much as I want to pat myself on the back. Yeah, it's perseverance. It's, it's, it's showing up. Again, it sounds cliche and cliches typically become cliche because there's a, uh, large element of truth there. But yeah, we were talking about the, uh, the gym aspect of it.

It's just a matter of you. It, it starts off slow. You, you, you recognize you want something done. You make a commitment to do it. And then you go, and then you go, and you go, and you go, and you don't recognize anything happening, typically, other than that you hurt. Uh, you're, you're, you're a little soreness, whether it's the soreness in your wallet or the soreness in your muscles.

And so it just seems that you're putting an effort and you're getting nothing in return, which is when people quit. Sometimes it's frequently people quit. Cause they, they, everybody wants, immediate results and immediate results, the only, the usual immediate results are pain, but that helps you recognize that you're on the same path that everybody else has been on.

 You just have to keep showing up and eventually you just happen to notice that, uh, Oh, look, my waist is my, my, yeah, my biceps look a little bit better. My pants are a little bit looser or something like, and then you feel good about everything seems to start happening faster. And you recognize, wow, with that effort, I some, I've gotten something from it, even though it seemed like I was getting nothing back and I was just, I was giving and getting nothing back.

This is how it works. And it's that way with dieting. It's that way with the gyms. It's that way. It's totally that way with business. So yeah, it's like not where we were thinking originally going with this, but let's keep going for a second, because I think that's really important.

And now that I have a few of these interviews under my belt and only one has been released so far, but the common thread, and we know this just from being in business ourselves, that when you show up consistently every single day, With a goal in mind to have that.

semi permanent goal, like right out in front of you that you're working towards now, but you don't know where that's going to take you five years from now, 10 years from now. And using Claudia, if you did listen to, if not, I recommend that you do listen to it because her trajectory was like, like everybody's there, there was no sure path that she was on with her photography business.

But basically like you just said about going to the gym, you put one foot in front of the other. Try different things and then see what works. And then the other people that I've had the good fortune of interviewing as well, that happened to be photographers, but we will be interviewing other creatives as well, because the journey is very similar for, for whether it's a photographer, a graphic designer, makeup artist, florist, whatever your creative path is, it's about showing up every single day with intention and with intention to move your, your business forward. And I, think that referencing the Claudia interview 

When you see where someone started and then where they are several years into their journey, they're not where they started. It's just like, again, the gym analogy or the gym metaphor. You may be in better shape after a couple months of going to the gym if you show up with consistency.

And yeah, consistency is the key. I was watching a YouTube video the other day and this one guy's whole point was I, what is your number is like before your, your channel starts to take off. He said his number was 160 because your number might be 20. It was the number in question is I, what number, uh, episode for this, or what day of your business is that day that you're going to, everything's going to click and you don't know until you know, and you know, the only way to know is by showing up every day and putting the effort into it.

Say if your number were using the episode analogy, because it's a shorter number, say you're, you're lucky and your number is 20, but after 19 episodes, you decided that you're just not getting anything back and you quit and you didn't recognize, you had no idea that one more and it would have taken off.

It, everybody's numbers different. And the only way to know what your number is, is by showing up every day to do it. Well, yeah, it's a tipping point. I would think kind of like the tipping point is opposed to using some form of a naval or a better sailing analogy, more of the mountain kind of sea you climb, climb, climb, climb, you eventually get to the summit. And then you get to see what's on the other side of it and get to go down and, and, uh, momentum, gravity will help carry you to your eventual goal.

But up until you spend the effort climbing up, I'm just a Mr. Metaphor here. So you spend all the effort climbing up that mountain. You can't see over the top of it. You don't know what's on the other side. You're just projecting what's there. So once you get to the top and can see it, And then everything starts to become easier and more fun.

But before all that fun happens, you, you just have to embrace the, uh, the effort. Well, and then the, the goal or the effort keeps moving, like you get to that place that you want to be, where you consider. Whether that's success at the gym or success in your business, you get to that spot, but then, then you want more, you want to keep going.

 It's the, uh, the journey, not the destination. Absolutely. Once you get there, okay. right. Are we there yet?

Yeah. And that's, I think when people, they just, they just want to see what's next, but what else they can do. They can get in shape, they can grow their business and then they want to see how far they can keep going. Yeah. I guess people don't rest on their laurels. They get to that point and they keep going and it's just human nature, which is a good thing.

Cause, uh, you're going to. Want more once you get more not be not thinking that in the in a selfish way. It's just a matter that It's just fun and just doing it and just setting a goal and, uh, and achieving it is, is fun. And so who doesn't want to continue to have fun? You know, And you grow as a person, right?

You become a different version of yourself. Trying, it's funny that we're talking about this because I should be talking about it more. We just created a video, a three part video series about momentum, this free video series we put together last week.

So that I'll link that in the show notes, because I think exactly what we're talking about is momentum. So when your business gets that. That push and it's like a snowball and it starts getting bigger and bigger and bigger, and then you keep pushing it. And then all of a sudden the momentum, as you said, gets you to the top of the mountain, gets you to the place you want to be at the gym or your business.

Anyway, momentum is what every business needs in order to get to that outcome that you want for your business. Yeah, so whatever you're doing, whether it's business or anything else, momentum helps, because otherwise if you're just climbing and, and, and struggling the entire way.

Then that's, yeah, we have to see your efforts culminating in something. If you do diligently show up every day, it's impossible for there not to be momentum building it. Let me rephrase that because if you show up every day doing those $5 tasks that I keep referencing and you're not doing the CEO type tasks that move your business forward, busy work is not the work that I'm talking about.

I'm talking about. Actual work where you're putting yourself out there and failing yourself forward and small little steps where you make mistakes, you get back up again, you try again, you don't stop just because it didn't work out the first time.

Right. And I think that's the type of momentum that, you know, That can catapult you to where, to where you really wanna be. Yeah. But that's when you're saying momentum ver and versus say the, uh, the $5 or, or whatever you're, choose the minimum wage of your choice, the things that are just a slog.

The things that get in the way of you're actually doing things that are going to move your business forward. It's easy to, uh, again, to buffer. Yeah, just keep yourself busy and, and pat yourself on the back, talk about how hard you're working, but you're working hard on tasks that aren't actually helping you.

You're just getting in your own way. I've been so, so guilty of this so many times in the past, so I'm not saying this yet. And yeah, once you just clear that off and you recognize what you need to do to move your business forward, whether it's marketing, uh, research, whatever things. That you can do that are specifically related to getting your business forward versus , going down various rabbit holes, so you get in your own way by doing these, uh, small tasks that can be easily delegated 

Well, this might be a great spot to interject reading Cal Newton's book, Deep Work, because that really helps you identify

Work that needs to be done versus all the busy work that we try to do to. And I think we think that this busy work is helping our business, but in the end, it's not because you're not focusing on, on the important things and reading a book like that, that helps you prioritize your time and your calendar can really help you, I think, get a handle on all the busy work that you're doing.

Yeah, I agree. No, it was a great book. Cal, Cal Newton. Thank you. Yes. We'll put a link to that in the show notes I see that book on everyone's must read list. It's a really important book. He did a great job really breaking down like how to just zone in on, , the important work that needs to be done throughout the day.

 While we're on the subject of must read books to move your business forward. Especially when it comes to time management, which I know that we didn't really expect to start talking about time management, but I think that's pretty much what we're talking about.

Momentum, time management, showing up every day, moving your business forward. Atomic habits. So that was great. A must read.. Cause I can't remember off the top of my head who wrote atomic habits. James Carr. There you go. So you're clearer than I am, but I'm a bum. Yeah. Uh, I should another one. Look into his backstory because yes, because.

Not only did he write the book, but when you hear his story about how he had to show up every day to get this book done, he has a really interesting backstory that is relevant to what we're talking about. Yeah. This is where the book came from. Yeah. And it was actually, I think more as good as, uh, uh, deep work was and is I thought atomic habits was, uh, just a quicker, easier, a nicer, more, a more pleasant read, but they're, they're both, they're both what's called on very important books.

That's a good point, because I think the Cal Newton one's a little bit more dry and scientific, but what he talks about, , in summary, something that we can all benefit from. Yeah, yeah, don't, don't write it off because you're, uh, it's, it's a worthwhile read. It's not a difficult read. It just, that was called the atomic habits is going to sit with you that are just going to connect with you quicker.

 So we'll put those both in the show notes and I. We digress. So we'll probably cut this episode here. This'll be a little bonus episode. And then we will get back to our regularly scheduled program. Anyone who knows us knows how good we are at digressing. And yet we still get stuff done.

What we do, we absolutely do. Even when we're sick. All right. Take care. See you next time. Bye.

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