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 actually, hold on. I feel like, I feel like I've missed you. I've missed the podcast. Because what happened with the timeline was that I. Had the podcast with Shannon Griffin and that was all done in a day and we split it up into two different [00:01:00] podcasts because it was so long and so great.
And so that was done a while back and then I prerecorded because I knew that I was going to be in The Bahamas all of last week. So I actually feel like I haven't spoken to you in a very long time, even though I know that it feels as though you just heard from me last week. But. So I have to say welcome back to myself.
Here's a fun fact that probably like almost nobody knows about me. I don't even remember how long it's been since I said these words out loud to somebody, but because they're meaningless and it's silly. And whenever I was in. High school and also part of college too. I actually worked as a waitress at Applebee's.
You know, your favorite neighborhood grill at what is wrong with me sometimes? At Applebee's, they have a drink called the Bahama Mama, and I am slightly, if not. Just a little bit embarrassed by how many [00:02:00] times I referenced myself as the Bahama mama or the Mama of The Bahamas last week. I spent the week literally getting demolished on jet skis and trying to keep five teenagers fed and hydrated and not actively trying to kill each other while also trying to make sure that I was drinking enough.
Bahama Mamas to keep myself sufficiently buzzed just so that I could make it through without losing my mind on one of those said teenagers. But I think I did lose my mind on my husband maybe even more than once, but that's kind of par for the course with a blended family and a beach vacation. Now, my knight, however, were actually.
Spend detoxing from all of the detoxing my liver from the Bahama Mamas that were being consumed, but also really relaxing on the porch outside of my bedroom as waves crashed and I. I would either read a book or quietly sort of [00:03:00] scroll on my phone. Here's the thing about having teenagers. If you have little kids right now in your life, just know that there is light on the horizon for you because when you go on vacation and your kids are getting older, for one, I got all of my boys a massage the first day that we got there because.
I wanted a massage. So for one, they start to enjoy doing the things that you want to be doing on vacations too. But for two, they mostly want to be left alone, especially at night, like at night after dinner, everybody wants to go to their rooms. Everybody wants to scroll, everybody wants to relax and just.
Sort of like zombie out. So what used to be very difficult whenever the boys were little and you still had to kind of entertain throughout the night and then try to get little ones down to sleep and nothing ever felt like a vacation for you it does start to feel a little bit more relaxing as [00:04:00] they're older because you get your nighttime routines back.
But as I was scrolling. On my phone later in the evenings and sitting there literally recovering from the idea of wading through poop water on Pig beach and still trying to get the sand out of places that it should never be. No matter how many times I showered, I swear I just kept finding sand everywhere.
But as I was scrolling, I started to notice a pattern. That, and maybe because it's summer and maybe because it's like we're all going on vacations. We're all living slower days while our kids are at home for summer or having just like later mornings and like getting into work a little bit later. But post, after post and like photographer, after photographer they were all.
Talking about balance, like work life balance, right? And the mom guilt that comes along with running a business. And the struggle to do both. And to do both well. And the endless like [00:05:00] push and pull of building a business while still being present for your kids and for your family. And it felt a little bit like, it was like there's a coordinated attack.
Against me. And you're like, Jody, why? You're literally sitting on a porch scrolling through your phone and relaxing at the moment that you're reading all of this. But it literally felt like the algorithm itself had this like, agenda to push against me. And hold on a little sidebar. So there were these.
Two girls in my EL Elementary school, their names were Rena and Heather. They actually ended up being some of my best friends like a couple years later than what I'm gonna talk to you about. And honestly, really great friends through high school and everything too, but. In third grade, I had just transferred to a new school and I wore nothing but these like huge poofy church dresses to school, and I had these Coke bottle glasses that made my left eye really big because I actually have the [00:06:00] worst vision in my left eye and almost perfect vision in my right eye.
So during that year, I even had to wear these glasses and a patch over my right eye to try to make my left eye work better. So. Needless to say, I did not have a lot of friends. I was the new girl at school. I dressed like some sort of Victorian doll and I would sit on the swings by myself and I would cry these huge tears into my eye patch.
And it wasn't, it wasn't like a pirate eye patch like you might be thinking. It was literally just like. Bandaid material, and it was flesh colored. It just looked like this big roundish kind of bandaid that's made for an eye. And as I would cry into this patch, it would lose the sticky stuff that would like make it stay on all day.
So I would have this like. Flapping eye badge. You know what? I just did a really good [00:07:00] job of painting a picture of who I was in the third grade. I don't know how I became the person that I am today, but that is who I was. And Heather and Reyna were like the IT girls of the playground, right? They were two of the coolest girls in third grade, and they would make their moms take them back to school shopping together just so that they could plan matching out.
Outfits and they would match their outfits every single day. And this let the rest of us know that they were the cool girls. They were the IT girls. We were never ever going to sit with them. And granted, I don't think this is the message that Heather and Reno were trying to send. I think they were just best friends and they wanted to match their outfits now that I'm older.
But whenever I was a little girl, swinging on the swings, crying into my flapping eye patch. That is what I thought. And sitting out on the porch getting these messages of like balance, balance, balance, mom guilt, mom [00:08:00] guilt and I don't know, all of this rhetoric that was being pushed, that's what this felt like.
A little bit like everybody else was kind of like scribbling in the burn book about work life balance and that I was kind of. Left outta the club. I say that I feel left outta the club because I don't really do balance all that well, and it's something I've never really subscribed to.
And I'm gonna explain all of that. But here's the thing about being really deep into your business like I am now and probably also really deep into your forties like I am now, is that. I know that I don't wanna be in that club and not in the way that like you come home crying with your flapping eye patch and your mom has to sit on your bed and tell you that, you know, you can make your own club or like, not in that like stomp my feet kind of way.
Like, eh, I don't wanna be in your club anyways. It's not like that, but in a real life. [00:09:00] Like that's just not how I roll. And I know myself so well now that it's okay for me to pick up advice from others only when it fits me in that kind of a way, because I don't do balance very well. And I did spend a lot of years wondering what was.
Wrong with me that motherhood didn't fulfill me enough that I didn't, and I don't ache to be home with my boys and I don't feel the need that I have to preface that statement with this disclaimer about how much I love my boys in order to just say that I don't wanna be around them all the time. I want to talk about the idea on this podcast today about questioning the rhetoric that is being pushed out about.
Soaking in the information that is made for you and really like repelling what isn't, because there's a lot of education that's being thrown around out there, and the educators who are sharing what works for [00:10:00] them, they can only teach from the well. That they know. So I wanna put it out there that if you are not in the Work Life Balance Club and you feel like you're sitting on the wings all alone, having thoughts that make you question what's wrong with you, I'm here to tell you that there are other clubs that you can join where you get to find out.
That there's actually nothing wrong with you at all. There's this book that I have read and I love, and it's called Think Again by Adam Grant. And it's all about unlearning. It's about rethinking the stories that we've been told about rewriting the truths that we just accept because they get passed around as if they're like these.
Statutes that we're required to live by. He tells this story about a myth or I don't know, just a story that's been circulating for years. The, it's about a frog, right? A frog in the boiling pot. You've probably heard it. It's the idea that if you put a frog in a pot of water, or I've heard it with a crab [00:11:00] before too, but if you put a frog in a pot of water and.
Slowly raise the temperature. The frog won't notice and he'll never jump out of the pot. And instead he'll just boil to death. Right? But here's the thing, it is not true. The frog, the frogs have gas lit us all. It's actually total crap. The frogs do in fact jump out of the pot whenever the water gets too hot for them.
And clearly they know that their legs are a French delicacy and they're not out here trying to be like the next course on the plate in France, but. People repeat this story all the time because it sounds true. And that's what I want you to do with the advice that you're consuming on your feed and in newsletters and on podcasts, except for this podcast, because everything that I say is Bible obviously.
I'm just kidding. But I just want you to run it through a filter, like, just like [00:12:00] the, the natural and the clean and the subtle filters on Instagram. You know, you've gotta flip through each one to see what works for you. Same idea here. I want you to run. Like, run everything through this like quick rinse cycle in your brain and ask yourself, is this true for you?
Does it sound like it's truthful in general, or is it based on like an idealistic version of life that is maybe smoking a little bit too much of like the d Lulu Dream? But I want you to think most importantly, does it fit your life and does it work for your business? So whenever I was. In The Bahamas last week, I simply could not shut my brain off.
I couldn't sleep some nights because even as, as exhausted as I was from getting raked over sand all day the moment that I would close my eyes, there was just like these business thoughts that went racing behind my eyelids. And there was this idea after idea and it just flooding my brain and I was.
[00:13:00] Constantly like grabbing from my phone to voice note something to myself, just to try to get it out of my brain so that I could sleep. And that didn't mean that I was failing at vacation. It didn't mean that I was failing to find balance. It didn't mean that I was failing to relax. It didn't mean that I wasn't.
Present with my kids, it meant that I was actively choosing to obsess over the life that fuels me. I am right now in a season of creativity, a season of growth, a season where my brain is on fire, and I didn't, and I don't feel guilty about that because I've also had seasons where I was empty. And burnt where, you know, building felt like swimming through wet concrete and I had to force myself to keep working.
So when the fire is there, I follow it. But here's the truth. You don't have to choose between being a good mother or living your life. And being a driven business [00:14:00] owner, your ambition is not a distraction. It's part of you being a whole person, and your children are not in competition with your ambition.
They're witnessing your ambition and they're learning from it. And one day they're gonna benefit from having a mother who showed them that it was there. Alex hormo her, is that how you say his last name? Hor. Anyways, Alex Hor, whether you love him or not. He said something the other day, which is maybe a little too harsh, but it still hit me, and he said.
People who obsess about work-life balance are typically mediocre at both. I'm gonna say that again. People who obsess about work-life balance are typically mediocre at both. So breathe that in for a second. Think about that. Sort of sift that around. Mediocre is a harsh word that I don't necessarily agree with in that statement, but the [00:15:00] gist of what he's saying seems to track a little bit.
And I think that what he meant was you don't have to constantly split yourself down the middle, especially as women, we don't have to constantly split ourselves down the middle and just be decent at motherhood. And decent at running a business. You could simply be obsessed by each part of your life and enjoy them for exactly what they bring you, and then just call it life.
You could just stop overanalyzing your guilt and just choose to allow yourself to be a whole person. And also sometimes the most balanced thing that we can do for. Long term is to let yourself be really unbalanced right now in the short term to build like hell now so that you can coast later and it might work better for you to be obsessed for a season [00:16:00] so that you can have more freedom for a lifetime.
I'm not building. My business just so that I can be busy and I'm not building my business just so that I can make money. I'm building it simply because I love to build it, and I do it with obsession sometimes because I love it and it makes me happy. There is no end goal. I'll stop or I'll pivot. When my obsession lands somewhere else, and then I'll go hard at that.
And I simply want my business to provide a life where I can be obsessed with whatever I want and whatever season that I'm in. And I'm gonna get even more honest with you here because when my business really started to get some traction behind it. I had a newborn, a one and a half year old, and a 4-year-old, three boys under four.
There was no balance. There was no balance for years, [00:17:00] but I knew myself. I knew especially that that stage of motherhood. Did not fulfill me. I was depressed during the day, but I came alive at night when my boys were asleep and I could work. Building the business kept me sane, but my then husband kept demanding.
That I give my business up because he didn't wanna take care of the boys while I was photographing weddings on Saturdays, and I refused to give it up. For years. We fought because he wanted a stay at home mom and wife and I wasn't her. He wanted to be able to go golfing all day and drink with his buddies at night.
So he wanted his wife home with the kids. And those years. Honestly broke my marriage. Some of you might argue here that if I had chosen balance then that maybe my marriage wouldn't have ended, [00:18:00] but I can promise you. That that's not true. What would've happened was if I would've chosen him, I would've broken myself, and then he still would've left years later because no matter what, I wasn't who he wanted.
I especially wouldn't have been who he wanted if I was a broken shell of myself just trying to choose the like quote unquote, normal way of life. So that he could live his dream. And there I was during that time feeling, especially during that time, feeling like there must be something wrong with me because what woman wouldn't choose a big house?
What woman wouldn't choose? A husband who makes a lot of money and an easy life. With three beautiful boys. Right? And I'll tell you, it's a woman who knows that she would've had to choose all of that [00:19:00] at the expense of having herself, because I also knew. That if I had forced myself to stay home more or work less all in the name of mom guilt and balance, then I would've started to resent my boys, not because I was a bad mom, but because I would've been denying myself who I am in order to choose them.
And the craziest thing happened. And the craziest turn of events that I never expected was that in choosing myself, my husband left me for a life that he thought was better and in return, I got a life filled with so much amazing time with my boys during the day and then evenings that I got to work and build my business.
Guilt free because there wasn't a man there telling me that there was something wrong with me. So [00:20:00] that year also, my youngest started kindergarten. The year of the divorce, my youngest went into court, kindergarten, and my world opened up even more because then I got to work and build while they were at school and I got every afternoon and evening with them.
So it, I don't know, it just kind of came full circle in that I was struggling. For so long during those years, feeling all of this guilt about the fact that my marriage was crumbling and I continued to say no, I continued to choose myself. I continued to say that I wasn't going to give my business up when really like what came out of the whole thing was that I got exactly the life that felt.
Right for me. So choosing your business doesn't mean that you're abandoning your family. It means that you're refusing to abandon yourself. So I'm, I'm not over here being all like dump [00:21:00] all of your husbands, but also maybe I am. I am kidding. You know what, me getting remarried is so off brand and I can't honestly believe that I did.
No, but for reals hopefully the world that you are living, you have a partner who supports your dreams and supports your mental health and chooses every version of you so that whenever you decide to choose whichever kind of balance or obsession works for you in that. Season you'll have a safety net that can catch all of the other things in life that you can't.
So in this new phase of my life that doesn't involve any really dramatic choices of like my business or my marriage. I'm not trying to juggle motherhood and my business anymore. I am designing both of them to be exactly what I love. So that's what I [00:22:00] mean whenever I say I don't do balance. I don't subscribe to the idea that I have.
To spend a set amount of time wi at home with my boys or that I have to spend a set amount of time inside of my business, I simply let myself live and I feel zero guilt about whatever feels right for me in that day. On some days, I am all in on the baseball games and the golf tournaments. And the violin concerts, teenage meltdowns, the endless Costco, the, you know, hearing details.
This actually is fun, but hearing the juicy details of like their first kisses and like middle school gossip and all that. Some days I am all in on that motherhood stuff, but I know that every day. I know that I'm going to be deep in funnel strategy and launch emails, and honestly seeing how much money I can make, [00:23:00] and that's not balance.
That's simply being a multifaceted woman. I. With a brain and a heart and ambition that doesn't need to be apologized for. We are sold. This idea that a good mom sacrifices everything, but maybe a great mom shows her kids how to build something extraordinary while also making it home with Chinese takeout and sitting around a really loud kitchen table with her three boys who.
Endlessly call each other's penises, tic-tacs, and this is my life. And they spew like brain rot words that I don't even understand. That's what dinners look like at home with me. So the next time that you see a post that says that you need more balance, I want you to ask yourself, is that true for them?
Or is that true for you? [00:24:00] Because maybe you're not built like them. Maybe you're built a little bit more like me, and you love the obsession behind it and you love the business side of it, and that motherhood just isn't enough for you. Or even if it's not motherhood, if. If even other parts of your life are not enough to fulfill you and you love the business side, maybe the guilt that you think you're supposed to feel isn't even yours.
Maybe it's somebody else's. So I want you to rethink and relearn what works for you and take wisdom, be a sponge, soak up information from other people who have. Traveled paths in front of you, but be a sponge from the people who think like you and design your [00:25:00] life, obsess over your business, and obsess over your kids and just call it life, .Okay. God damn. That was a good episode. I hope that this hits you in the way that it hits. For me because it hits in a really personal way because it's something that I have always felt makes me feel different than others around me. It makes me feel harder than other people that I don't have this like softer side of me, and for the longest time is.
Especially inside of my old marriage. It's a part of me that I always felt a little bit ashamed about. So it's taken a lot of years of work and a lot of years of therapy for me to sit here and even have this podcast with you. So if any of that [00:26:00] resonated. Then that makes me beyond happy to make you just feel like if you don't, if you don't feel like you belong in the other club, then there's people out here who are thinking the same way as you.
Now I need a little bit of help from you. I need for you to go immediately. From this podcast and I need you to go write a review for the podcast so that I can justify continuing to put this kind of love into it. Without reviews, without shares, this thing dies. So, please don't let me die. With that, I will literally leave you with the guilt of my podcast, death on your hands.
Go write a review. Love you and 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 [00:27:00] 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. Incredible. Bye for now, friends.
