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. Before we get in today's episode, actually, hold on. Let's talk for a quick second about the title of today's episode, because it hits a little bit harder than anything else that we've maybe talked about before. And the title of today's episode is when the bank account is bordering on.
[00:01:00] Broke, and I don't mean the cute girl's version. I don't mean bro. Okay. I mean anxiety provoking freak out moments. Should I just. Throw in the towels. Should I wave the white flag? Broke. Broke. Okay. But before we get into today's episode, I have something big to share. Now, I've said this several times before, but it was just a few short years ago that I found myself a single mom with a business that was.
Barely hanging on. And you know this, I was not even breaking $50,000 a year whenever my divorce happened and I had three little boys that I needed to turn into men all by myself. Now in the beginning of my business, and I'm not talking about the beginning, like year one, I'm talking about like year 5, 6, 7 [00:02:00] into their, whenever.
You're really looking at educators to. Help you start to build and scale. And I remember looking at the educators in our industry, and really this is, this makes me vulnerable to say it out loud, but really being jealous and that jealousy eating me from the inside, knowing that everyone on the stages of these conferences or running you know, really profitable blogs at that time, this.
Again, let me date myself. This is coming from several years ago whenever blogs were still, blogs are still a really big thing, but back then they were popping. It was what everybody was doing. Okay. So there was this jealousy that was eating at me from the inside, knowing that everyone, seemingly was a husband and wife team, or that they didn't have any kids, or that they had the safety net of their spouse's paycheck.
And sure, I hadn't gone through [00:03:00] the divorce yet. I was still married, but mind you, I was in, I. A very unhealthy, very toxic marriage where my ex-husband hated my business. He did not support what I was doing. He hated me being gone on the weekends to shoot weddings. And even though I was married, I felt very much so that I was a single married mom.
During that time period of my life also, so it really frustrated me to not see myself represented when I needed it the most. So it was just a few short years ago that I was only making $50,000 a year, and fast forward, not even 50,000, I said I wasn't even breaking $50,000 a year. But fast forward. Just a few years out of that, and I had scaled my business to $330,000 with.
No outside help, no partner for a safety net. Just my own [00:04:00] grit, my own strategy, and a willingness to rebuild everything without a roadmap in front of me. And now I am really excited that I am ready to show you exactly how I did it as a single mom with almost full custody of three young boys and without a man in.
Sight. Can you hear me? Can you preach it? God. This August. I'm launching an eight week mastermind and it begins August 5th, and it's for the photographer who is ready to fucking go and completely rewrite the rules of her business, and I'm teaching. Everything. I'm teaching the transition from shoot and burn to being a product based photographer, the strategy behind booking out my sessions six months in advance, my full pricing model, my sales scripts, how I handle objections.
It's the behind the [00:05:00] scenes blueprint that I have never shared in full before, anywhere. In fact, I've never shared. Any of this anywhere because the only education that I have out there is my posing method. So there are two weeks out of the eight that you're going to get one-on-one time with me where my eyes are directly on your business.
Now, this is the beta round, which means that you will get this at the lowest price that it will ever be, and then I'm going to ask you for. Full feedback while we are going through the Mastermind so that you are helping shape the experience of any woman who comes after you. And I'm also gonna ask you for an honest testimonial.
And I preach honesty. I preach authenticity. I preach transparency. All the time. And so I want an honest testimonial of how it changed your business. So the first [00:06:00] spots are $2,500 with a super relaxed, super generous, $500 a month payment plan, four or five months. There's no higher fees for the payment plan.
There is no higher price tag. It's literally just like the same layaway that our moms used to have at Walmart during the holidays. I'm giving you a layaway plan. Okay? Now that is just for the first five spots. Once the first five spots are filled, the price jumps to 3,500, and there will only be 10 spots total because I really wanna make sure that I give everyone my eyes and my brain on the inside of their business.
Okay? Now, if you are interested in this. I want you to hop into the show notes, like hit pause right now, hop into the show notes. There is a link there that you can sign up. Be one of those first five so that you can get a thousand dollars off or [00:07:00] you can hop into your weekly podcast email that you probably got right before you started listening to this episode.
Both spots have a link for you to secure your spot. Okay. Alright. With that housekeeping kind of wrapped up, let's get into talking about being broke. Okay, we're not actually gonna talk about being broke, but today's episode is a little bit different and it's written specifically for you. Because I think that everyone at some time during their business, they have.
Felt some of this that I'm about to talk about, so it is specifically written for you. Whether you are in this season right now or not, I can promise you that you have been in it before and I can also promise you that you will be in it again because even though I am maybe years beyond you in the building process.
I know [00:08:00] that I'm feeling this a little bit right now, and I know that there's going to come a time in the future of my business where I'm feeling it again, right? So what I've noticed in my monitoring of the socials of the internet world, and really this is what I love to do, I really like to watch how people behave on the internet and in life.
But there's this common thread that people love to talk about failure. Only once they've made it, which I get it. It's the hero's journey, right? It is a super powerful sales pitch. Psychologically, it works because we connect with stories of transformation stronger than we connect with success as a standalone outcome, right?
So we don't just want to see success, we want to feel the struggle, and then. Cheer for the rise, and then imagine [00:09:00] ourselves in that journey. You know, kind of like how I told you just a little bit ago that I'm a single mom, that my divorce shattered me, that I had to completely rebuild it on my own and that I made it.
That's the hero's journey. When someone shares how they overcame failure, it gives our brains proof that change is possible and hope that since we're walking the same path, we can have the same ending to our story, but. No one talks about what it's like to be in failure, to be in the middle of it, to be failing right now.
We all say to not compare yourself to someone else's highlight reel on the internet, or don't compare your beginning to someone's middle. But it's so fucking hard to know if someone's in a place of failure or struggle inside of their business because [00:10:00] all we ever see is the business front, not the human insides, but the business front.
And so. Whenever you're struggling, you feel so alone, you feel broken. You feel like you must be the only one who's not cut out for this, but you're not broken and you are cut out for this. And. Since I always show up in a place of really deep authenticity, really clear transparency, I will let my vulnerable, vulnerable flag fly and tell you that right now, right here as I'm recording this podcast for this spring 2025 season, my business feels.
A little scary, a little crazy scary, and it hasn't felt this scary in years. This is what it actually looks like in real time. Right now I'm running two businesses. One is this here, right here. Me [00:11:00] teaching on a podcast. This is new for me. I decided to take the plunge into being an educator only six months ago.
It's really exciting. It has momentum. I'm building it carefully and slowly with intention, with everything that I have learned over almost two decades in this industry. And the other business that I'm running, obviously is the photography business, the one that I spent growing in those decades, and my photography business.
Is being a little bit neglected right now because I just don't have enough hours in the day to keep watering both and also. I'm showing up so hard for the podcast, for my newsletter list for creating content and for curating really powerful and crazy impactful education for you. So my messaging on my social media is 180 [00:12:00] degrees different than it used to be, and I'm not speaking to my pho, my photography clients online really very much anymore.
And. It. I feel like it's this weird emotional like middle ground where I'm letting go of something that once defined me while trying to trust that what's next will be worth it. From the outside though, I still look like I'm winning you and my clients. See a thriving brand, a luxury photo studio, gorgeous photos, this podcast, the course launches, but you don't see the backend.
You don't see that building in this new way takes a team of people. You don't see that I'm not shooting as much because I can't be running that business the way that I used to, and still have time for all of this too. You're hearing me talk about. My highlights, but not my Stripe dashboard that's blinking red [00:13:00] at me because right now my year to date revenue is down 3.2% from what it was this time last year, which honestly, I'm going to say is actually really great.
That I'm only down 3.2%. That means that I'm shooting less, but I'm still making. Almost just about the same amount of money. But it feels scary because I know that my business needs about $15,000 a month to feel as though I'm like, it's the equivalent of living paycheck to paycheck. In order for me to pay all of my bills, have everything that I need covered to pay my team to pay the thing, the overhead inside of my business, it's about $15,000.
Right? But whenever I'm used to booking. Yeah, $20,000 months, $30,000 months and having excess, and now I'm seeing that I'm making a little bit [00:14:00] less and a lot more is going out. That feels really scary for me, and I'm not gonna necessarily say that it's a place of failure for me because there's nothing that's failing, but.
There are things that are happening in my business where I'm like, oh, oh, hold on. Wait a minute. That's not working as well as it did, because I'm not showing up in the same way. And so I'm having to sort of pivot and test some new things, do some different marketing strategies, and see what I need to do in order to keep my photography business afloat as much as I can while I'm also starting to build this other side of the business.
And the things that you don't see is, you don't see the nights that I lay awake, wondering if I've made the right move. But it's okay because I know that I'm gonna test some strategies and work on some of these new, like, marketing avenues with an incredible woman actually that I'm hiring that I hope to tell you about [00:15:00] soon.
And then. As I am pivoting and as I am making these new decisions, and as I am testing things inside of the photography side of my business, then that's just more wisdom for me to be able to share here on the education side, especially as the mastermind happens in August, I'll be able to say, look here when you're hitting a roadblock, when you're hitting a pause, whenever you're trying to build something different, here's something else that you can do, because.
This isn't the first time that I've been here. The last time that I felt like this was in 2022, whenever I decided to open a studio, I was I was dating Brian for a few years by then. Actually, no, no, no, no. We got engaged. I should know these dates. Don't tell Brian that I didn't know the date that we.
Got engaged, but I was engaged to Brian at this point, so he had every right to say this, but he was like you're doing what? I wanted to walk away from the wedding business that I [00:16:00] had built where I was booking $20,000 weddings, and I wanted to open a studio, mainly just for the boudoir side. Of my business and Brian was freaked out.
He was like, you're gonna walk away from what in order to just, you know, throw it all on the table over here and see whether or not that works, but. Me constantly running with a really healthy dose of delusion. I thought I could just jump. I thought I could just find a space, make it cute, and book some boudoir and everything would be fine.
Draining my savings and my bank accounts down to. Almost $200 wasn't on my Bingo card for that year, I guarantee you that, but that's exactly what happened. But from the outside though. My business looked like it was booming. I was shooting in Europe. I was showing up on social media [00:17:00] with, you know, construction updates and design choices.
As I built this luxury photo studio, I was engaged and I was planning a beautiful Italian wedding, but behind the curtain. I was an anxious mess. I wasn't just stretched financially thin. My bank account was a metaphor for the purge. I was betting everything on something that had no proof of success yet.
And during that same time, I found myself on the receiving end of a really painful. Maybe a friendship breakup, but I don't necessarily that I would consider it like a really great friend, but maybe just an eyeopener of an experience. So there was this circle of women at my son's school. again, I wouldn't say they were friends.
I would say that they were women that I was allowing to literally just audition for a place in my life. Like they had not secured [00:18:00] that yet. I say that with a side of snark and like a cute little smile, but it's true because I don't really let people in very easily. And. What I've also learned is to be aware of the women who run in big, huge packs because those women will often bite.
I look for the women who are building covens, not cliques. I like small groups of intensely intimate women around me, so. One of these pack women through a 40th birthday party, and when I say she invited basically the entire city of moms that I live in, I am not exaggerating. It was a who's fucking who of a pool party, and there was at least.
50 women packed into this gorgeous backyard floating in the pool on Swans and letting their nannies know to pick the kids up from school that day. 'cause mama was having a cocktail. All right? So [00:19:00] not only was I excluded from the invite list, but the host and the birthday girl herself told everyone not to tell me.
So it wasn't an oversight, it was intentional silence. Now. These weren't strangers. Some of them were my clients, some were on the way to being friends of mine. Others discussed my life in detail because they were watching me build on social media. Some were women that I had poured love into during boudoir sessions, and so they weren't strangers.
This very much felt like. A betrayal of sorts, right? And I got to see every single bit of it posted like a goddamn play by play on social media. So a few days went by and I called this woman, and of course, like with my voice shaking and these [00:20:00] tears of literal, bolder tears of embarrassment falling on my cheeks and.
I asked her why, like, why was I excluded? Why was I not invited? Because in my mind, nothing had happened between us. I was just living my life, building my business. I would see everybody at pick up. I would you know, interact here and there, whatever. But I didn't think that I had done anything to offend somebody.
So. What she said kind of punched me in the face because I was not expecting it, but she said with this condescending like tone of, I dunno, a mean girl. She said, well, Jodi, she talks like that too. So, well Jodi, in order to have a friend, you have to be a friend first. She said that I hadn't been showing up lately.
That I had fallen off of showing up for like wine nights [00:21:00] or park hangouts after school, or these like casual gatherings that they would all just like pick up and be at, and that I hadn't done anything to earn her friendship. So being the bigger person that I wanted to be, I apologized and I was self-aware.
And I said, yeah, you are. You're right. I'm so sorry I haven't been showing up because I've been draining every single resource that I have with both like my time and my finances, building the studio. And her response to that was, well, I have friends who are running Fortune 500 companies and they can still manage to show up socially.
But you are not showing up because you're just. Making like a little photo studio. Oh my God. I wanna like, she literally said this to me and. That's whenever it hit me [00:22:00] that she wasn't seeing me as a human, as a person, as her friend. She was seeing the Instagram version of me. She was seeing the woman who was flying to Europe to do photo shoots.
She was seeing the building and the urging of my bank account going crazy. She was seeing me build the studio. She was seeing me posting content she was seeing. The highlight reel, and assuming that because I wasn't around, I didn't care, but what she didn't see was that, obviously, I've already told you I was drowning, that I was building something for me.
Granted, it was not some Fortune 500 company, but it doesn't freaking have to be. I was building something for me that was literally out of thin air, and I was parenting three boys completely by myself, and I didn't have any family here, and I couldn't afford a nanny or a housekeeper. So [00:23:00] I told her that I was being mom and dad for my boys, and that my bank account was plummeting and that I just didn't have.
The capacity for much more, and she told me that she couldn't square that in her mind with what my life looked like from the outside and that I don't get to pull the single mom card. So she punished me for not being a good enough friend to her because according to her perception, which honestly is kind of fantastic because it tells you that I was managing my perceived value like a fucking boss during those really, really, really hard times.
But. This is what failure looks like in real time from the outside. It doesn't come with flashing lights and nobody's posting about it. I remember saying that to her like, what do you want me to do post about how my bank account is just like dripping dry and then think that [00:24:00] I'm going to be book booking luxury clients with that kind of messaging, but.
She didn't understand what I was saying, so it was kind of like I was just wasting words at the, at some point. But nobody's posting about when they are in. A season of failure or when they are getting no after, no after, no after no. Or when their begging account is plummeting because they are trying so hard to build something new.
Sometimes it literally can look as though you are building a gorgeous studio and quietly checking your bank account just to see if you can make rent. Sometimes it looks like you're posting a smiling story after you've been crying on the floor of that. Beautiful. New studio and the sick part about all of this is that people don't believe you're struggling.
She didn't believe I was struggling because as creatives, of course, also [00:25:00] we are so. Good at curating so they don't see the struggle because our feed is beautiful because we're still showing up because the failure hasn't landed yet, and the hero's journey doesn't let us talk about it until we've survived it.
But what if we started talking about failure in. The present tense like I'm doing right here, right now. What if we stopped wrapping it in bows and silver linings and just said, I am in it right now. It's not so fun. It's scary, but I'm still going. I'm not saying that I want you posting about this. We are always, always, always controlling.
Our perceived value, but inside of your masterminds that you're in, inside of your friend groups, inside with your family, what if we stopped talking about failure as if it's just something that [00:26:00] happened in the past? Okay. Because the truth is it's going to take years. For me to build this education side of my business to the point that it can take over for my photography business.
And frankly, I'm not even sure that I want that because it's going to take years for me to even have that option, and it's gonna be really hard. But also, what the fuck else am I gonna do instead? Like. Your girl can only watch so much. Bravo. What el I mean, maybe I would hang out at more soul sucking 40th birthday pool parties with women that I don't wanna be hanging out with.
I don't know. The point is, is that this is the life that I want. The one where. My business funds, my freedom and my images get to change people's lives, and that is not any kind of [00:27:00] like, I don't know, one click Amazon Prime delivery. That can happen. It is a build. It is a battle. It is a bootcamp for the version of you who can handle the dream.
Once it lands, So if you are looking around right now and thinking, why does it feel like I'm the only one failing? You're not, it's a season of failures, but I want you to think of it this way. If you knew that you only had 25 failures left until you got to the good stuff, how quickly would you sprint towards those failures?
How fast would you want to get them over with? You'd embrace them, you would move through them easily. You would count them down one by one knowing that they were your last failures. So I want you to move with that kind of energy because the failures [00:28:00] and the nos and the struggles and the hard times, they aren't endless.
The slow seasons don't last. You'll find new ways. You'll find new methods and you will figure it the fuck out because you weren't made for anything but this. And that is it. That is all I have for you. Signing off of these podcasts gets a little bit weird sometimes because I want it to end like a phone call where I'm just like, okay, love you, bye.
But it never really works out like that. And I can't really like Irish exit this thing either. Just like, what if you're driving in your car and it's just like, boop. End a podcast. No, if you happen to be in a season of failure right now. I want you to embrace it, knowing that it will end and you will continue to build and things will turn around because you trust yourself and because you're a bad bitch and you know [00:29:00] that you'll figure it out.
Okay, so like I said at the top of this episode, we are masterminding and I am so. Incredibly excited to welcome in to Let's just call it the Posers Mastermind. I hadn't even come up with a title yet, but let's just call it that. I am just so excited to find out who the 10 of you are going to be.
Also that's it for today. Until next time. 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 time, stapled, stay messy and don't let the bullshit win. Tits up. Ears open and go build something. [00:30:00] Incredible. Bye for now, friends.
