INTRO: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the Posers podcast, the place where we skip the fluff. Say the quiet parts out loud and dig into what really matters. This is where photography, psychology, and business collide. I'm Jody, your host, and I'm bringing you my raw takes, hard wins, and a whole lot of unfiltered honesty about what it takes to build a photography business that actually connects and makes money.
So ladies, grab your headphones and get your tits up and your ears open because we are going to build something really incredible together.
Hello, hello, hello and welcome back my beautiful posers. We are back for another episode of The Posers Podcast and I am surprised that I am coming to you with as much energy as I have right now because I was, I would like to say I was out partying last night or I was out doing something incredibly amazing, but I wasn't, I was, momming it up. I is taking my 14-year-old [00:01:00] to a concert. It was his birthday present. He got to take three of his friends and I was delivering them all to the Las Vegas strip on a Wednesday night, a school night, nonetheless, and the concert got pushed back due to technical difficulties. And we didn't get home until almost 1:00 AM So I woke up pretty groggy this morning, but I got a little pep in my step.
I had a boudoir shoot today and now I'm recording this podcast and I am back in. My happy place, right? Another happy place that I will be in a little bit later tonight is I will be all snug as a bug in a rug on my couch watching the summer house episode that I missed last night while I was out momming so hard on the Las Vegas strip.
Because Summer House is my absolute favorite show on Bravo. And that is actually weirdly enough exactly where I want to start talking [00:02:00] today because I wanted to check in and see whether any of you listen to the Giggly Squad podcast. This podcast is hosted by Hannah Burner and Paige DeSorbo, who both met.
On I don't remember what season it was. I think it was possibly season three. They met on season three. We're just gonna say that. We're not gonna fact check that. I have no idea, but I'm pretty sure it's season three. Uh, they met on season three of. Bravos summer house, and they have become the Internet's funniest, most relatable duo.
They are powerhouses. They are not asking to sit at the table. They are building their own damn table. And like I'm their mom and I'm watching them take over the internet and it makes me a proud mama a bear to see these women seriously just killing their game.
They are best friends, they're business partners and now they're co-authors of a new book that I have obviously already purchased and [00:03:00] listening to the audio book. Because let's be honest, I don't really have a ton of time that I can sit down and turn actual pages, but I do love a multitask while I'm driving or while I'm walking Cooper through the park or something like that.
There is always a podcast or an audio book in my ear. I am not so much the music type, which we have already discussed. In case you are wondering if you are fans of Paige and Hannah then they talk often about whether or not something is page coded or Hannah coded. And I wanted to let you know that I am very much a full fledged page, but I do have Hannah tendencies.
I love Paige's style. I live for a good photo shoot. I love a full glam and a bouncy blowout. Are you kidding me? Uh, but my roots are very much Hannah. Right. I was an athlete growing up. I've got a little bit more of a crass sense of humor. I've got strong athlete thighs. So my energy says a little bit of competitive, like varsity volleyball player, [00:04:00] but my Instagram and my business and everything that I create and do, you know, is a little bit of a slow living aesthetic with a side of light filled luxury.
Okay. We can all be many, many things. Anyways, let's get back to this audio book. Okay. I was just the other day walking Cooper through the park, kind of minding my own business, listening to the first couple of chapters of this book, and Hannah started talking about the Burnt Toast Theory and I heard about the Burnt Toast Theory a long time ago.
So it wasn't the first time that I heard it, but I did sort of click in and think, huh, I wonder how much of this Burning Toast Theory can actually. Be thought of in regards to how we're running our businesses also. And Before I tell you what that got me thinking, uh, let me tell you what it is.
Sometimes when something annoying or inconvenient [00:05:00] happens, like. Burning your toast in the morning and it causes you to run late. It's sometimes not just bad luck, it's a little bit of a cosmic redirection. And the theory is, is that maybe that little delay of burning your toast and having to retot a new piece of bread, it actually kept you from something worse.
Like maybe it rerouted you away from. an accident that you could have gotten into it, it paused your clock, right? It made it to where you left the house 3, 4, 5 minutes later and it possibly changed your life, right? Or any other sort of inconvenience that could possibly happen in your life. Maybe you I don't know.
If you live in New York, I'm Hannah and Paige right now, so I live in New York. If you live in New York and you miss the subway and you happen to not run into the guy that you're going to fall head over heels in love with, but he turns out to be a narcissist and ruined your life, like [00:06:00] maybe that little delay kept you from something worse, right?
Maybe it slowed you down just enough to make you ready for the thing that's actually mint for you, or the thing that you actually want burnt toast. Isn't considered a mess up in this theory. It's more of a heads up, right? It's the universe saying, not yet, babe. We are working on something better for you.
Okay, so. The exact origins of the burnt toast theory are a little bit hazy. Some can literally trace it back all the way to an old parable of a Chinese farmer or something like that. I don't know. The research on the internet was a little bit vague. I'm pretty sure that Hannah and Paige got it from a tick.
Talk video because that's where they get all of their information. But regardless of its beginnings, the essence remains that minor setbacks might in fact be setting you up for major comebacks. And as I listened [00:07:00] to this part of the audio book, I couldn't stop thinking about how often this exact thing has played out in my own life and in my own business and.
I think that I started to sort of really hone in on this lately because I'm feeling a little bit stretched too thin. Not like an unraveling thin, but like a really cute, thin, it's like a high functioning thin. Okay. Because even though I'm in a season of major movement inside of my business with podcasting, running the studio.
whenever you listen to this, , I will be in the process of flying across the country to speak at a conference. I am parenting three teenage boys, as you know, but right now I also feel more aligned than I ever have, but it definitely took me a long time to get here. Okay, so. I am telling you a little bit of [00:08:00] this story because during the course of my entire business, I think that I have always really struggled with the idea that I wasn't keeping up.
I wasn't doing things fast enough. I wasn't building fast enough. I have known for a very, very long time that I wanted. For there to be an education side to my business. And I started to try to implement that education side to my business many, many, many years ago. in fact, I think the earliest I can remember is like 2011.
So that's over a decade, over a decade of me feeling like I'm beating myself up on the inside because. I'm not moving at the pace that I wanna be moving at. And having those thoughts swirling in your head day in and day out, they can tear you down a little bit, right? So I am 43 years [00:09:00] old if you are listening and you are younger than me or you are earlier in your business than me.
I just want this to be a moment where I say to you that. You can stop obsessing over the thoughts that you're having in your head that you aren't doing enough or building enough or being fast enough. You are not behind at all. Right? You are on your own time clock. Okay. So back in 2011, I was trying to break out and have a little bit of like an education side of my business.
I was at a photo conference and I signed up to do like a breakout class. I think if I remember there was I. Maybe 10, 20 photographers who signed up for my little breakout. And it was the first rendering of my posing method way back then in 2011. And it wasn't formulated to what it is today, and it wasn't as powerful as what it is today, but it was my [00:10:00] first tinkering at it.
Right? So. I remember being at that conference. I remember teaching what I was thinking about posing for the very first time, and I had such big dreams. I, in the years following that, I was hosting teeny, tiny little, small workshops where I was selling out maybe. Three to five or six seats at like $150 a pop.
And I poured my whole heart into those rooms that I was trying to create, but nothing really took off. And at the time, I internalized it as a failure that maybe I wasn't good enough. Maybe it wasn't, maybe I wasn't cut out to educate, but the truth. Was that I was in a really deeply unhappy marriage at the time.
I had three boys under the age of four. I had two babies that were born back to back in the years 2011 and 2012, 2011 and 2012. Those are the same exact years [00:11:00] that I was trying to implement all of these other things in my business when I wasn't even surviving. I wasn't even breathing. I damn sure wasn't building an empire.
I was surviving a war zone of toddlers and a marriage filled with emotional neglect, right? And as much as I wanted growth and momentum, there was a part of everything that I can see now that I just wasn't ready and the universe was not ready for me to be there. Okay. So then the boys got a little bit older and when I probably could have had a little bit of bandwidth to add more into my business, my marriage got worse and I entered what I now see as a season of.
Protection, right? I wasn't hustling, I wasn't scaling, I was just surviving. And then my divorce [00:12:00] hit. So then after the divorce, the rebuild had to happen and somewhere in that slow, messy, sacred process. The dreams that I had started to come back to me and started to really feel possible again. Okay, so my divorce happened in 2018, but backtrack back from that a little tiny bit and I completely forget that this happened, that prior to the divorce ever even happening, I actually moved out.
Of my shared home with my then husband. So the divorce happened whenever I always can clock it by how old my littlest boy was, and he was five whenever the divorce happened. But whenever he was two, I moved out to an apartment and I went back to work as a school psychologist for a very small period of time [00:13:00] because.
2015. I thought then that I was gonna be a single mom, so I took a huge detour. And I was being a single mom in an apartment, a two bedroom apartment with three teeny tiny boys.
And we bought a puppy. We bought Cooper in the middle of all of that. What was I thinking? Okay, so we get this dog. We're in this teeny tiny apartment. It's just me and the boys, and I'm working. Full-time as a school psychologist and I'm also still running my business. Also clearly potty training or house training, a new dog, potty training, probably Brody and living in an apartment completely by myself, but yet still in my head, I was beating myself up that.
I wasn't doing enough that I wasn't building enough that I was behind everyone else. And now I look back at it and I was like, oh my God, how were you [00:14:00] even surviving? Okay. So anyways, fast forward 2018, the divorce happened and I downsized my whole entire life. And I moved into a house. We named it Tanglewood 'cause that was the street that it's on.
I always named my houses by the street that they're on. so we moved into Tanglewood. I gutted and renovated Tanglewood and it brought me back to life. I purged my ex-husband clearly, and I started to become like myself again. Right. So that was 2018. And unbeknownst to me in 2018, late in 2018, because what was it?
Okay, so the, the divorce was finalized in January. I met Brian, my now husband in September of 2018, and I was not intending to meet a husband. I was just. Enjoying being single. Right. I was enjoying being single a lot. That's a whole different [00:15:00] story for a whole different day. We will get into it maybe at some point.
It has no business being on a business podcast, but I met my then husband so clearly like I was coming back to life. There was this rebirth, and in 2020 I really started tinkering with the idea of expansion again. Of course, also because covid hit and it gave me a little tiny break from my business and I was at home just like the rest of the world.
And that's whenever I really started to formulate again. My posing method in 2021, I launched the posing method for the first time in 2022, I gutted and renovated and opened my dream photo studio and 2022 to 2025, which is now obviously I was really working on just the posing method and getting the studio up and running and learning how to run a portrait based business instead of a wedding based business.
Okay, [00:16:00] so. Not that you needed all of that timeline, but I stepped into my role a little bit more as the universe started to see that I had the bandwidth for it and I had the capacity for it. The burnt toast theory kind of protected me all along that way, right? It kept me from burning out. It kept me. From building before I had the emotional scaffolding to hold it, it slowed me down whenever my nervous system clearly was already fried.
Okay? I didn't miss my moment. I just had to wait for the right one. Okay, so. Maybe you are in that slow season right now, or maybe you are still in the toddler trenches, or you're navigating a hard relationship, or you're rebuilding yourself after something fell apart. Maybe you're looking around thinking, I should be further.
I'm so behind, or everyone else is doing it better and [00:17:00] faster. But I wanna tell you my friend. If the burnt toast is simply protecting you, okay? There is divine pacing happening for you, and it's a delay with a purpose. Because whenever your real moment arrives, you're going to be strong enough to hold it.
You'll be clear enough to enjoy it. You'll be powerful enough to lead from it. Okay? So whatever you're building, your business, your brand, a new version of yourself, I just want you to be easy with yourself and trust the timing if your toast is burnt. Right now know that there is going to be a time, and it doesn't have to matter when that is, but there will be a time whenever you can scrape it off and you can start again and you are still going to eat.
And I will tell you, you are going to leave no crumbs. No matter when that [00:18:00] time comes. Okay, this is a little bit of a shorter episode. I just wanted to let you know what I was thinking and what I was feeling as I am in this same exact place of. Expanding my business, building this empire that I want to build.
So I just wanted to let you know that no matter what level you are at, these feelings never stop. These feelings never go away. And whenever the timing is right, it will happen. Bye for now, friends.
OUTRO: Okay, so that is a wrap on this episode of the Posers Podcast. If you loved it, please subscribe, rate, and review because honestly, algorithms are needier than all of our ex-boyfriends combined. And ladies, I need all the help I can get. If you've got thoughts, questions, love letters, even hate mail, please send them my way.
I actually read every single one of them. So until next [00:19:00] time, stapled, stay messy and don't let the bullshit win. Tits up. Ears open and go build something. Incredible. Bye for now, friends.
