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.
Well, hello, hello, hello, my beautiful posers and welcome back for another episode of The Posers Podcast. Now I need your tits up and your ears open. Big for today because I mean, you have heard about the knuckle sandwich that can land a brutal [00:01:00] punch, but today I'm going to teach you about the shit sandwich that your business needs you to eat.
Okay? Today is a little messy. It is giving the same kind of energy as a therapy session that kind of arranges your insides, if you know what I mean. We're talking about the same exact shit sandwich that I just asked every single one of the women in my mastermind to eat as well. And in fact, talking about that mastermind.
Let me talk for a quick second about my girl, Elizabeth. So Elizabeth Dugan is in my mastermind, and if you are not following her, you need to be because obviously she is fun and entertaining and a great photographer, but even more importantly, she's probably just like you. She's a mom to two gorgeous babies.
She is happily married to her wife. She is a [00:02:00] lover of community, I mean a lover of community, and she obviously has a photography business. She just opened a studio and her goal inside of the Mastermind was to take the foundation that she had already built and scale it. Into multiple six figures. And did we do that?
Fuck rights? We did. Okay. But so Elizabeth unknowingly posted about the shit sandwich without even knowing obviously that I was going to be recording this episode today. Uh, this post that she put up on Instagram, it is a fiery and gorgeous image of herself. And you know what? I love nothing more, guys, prepare yourselves.
I love this word and I use it a lot. This might be the first time that I'm dropping it here but. I love nothing more than a cunty [00:03:00] powerhouse image. I said, what? I said, there's no other word to describe powerhouse images like this. And that is exactly what she posted. And the caption that she paired it with is just as powerful, and it opens with a quote that I said to her during a one-on-one call.
I said to her, you are so talented, but your website and your messaging are giving cutesy mommy hobby vibes. Okay? Now I promise you that sentence was said with love and that our conversation was nothing but constructive, even though it might sound like I was calling her out pretty aggressively. But hold on, pause.
You know what? I am not against the idea of calling out my Mastermind students aggressively, so I don't know why I'm sounding like I'm apologizing for it here. I truly [00:04:00] believe that it is my job to cut through the fluff and hold up a mirror and get real results for people. Especially when they are paying me money to come in and change their business.
Okay, so let me reread that sentence again without apologizing for it. I said to Elizabeth during one of our one-on-one calls, I told her that she is so talented, but that her website and her messaging were giving cutesy mommy hobby vibes. Okay? So that's how she opened her caption on this. Cty powerful posts that she did today and her caption went on to say.
It's a little bit long, but I'm gonna read through it because it is so worth it. Her cap, her caption goes on to say, these past few months have been filled with a quiet hustle, hard conversations, and bold decisions, and a major studio transformation. Every [00:05:00] ounce of my energy has been poured into creating something bigger, stronger, and more aligned.
And what's unfolding. Is not a hobby. It's refined, empowering, and it's full service. It's a luxury brand growing into a multi-six figure business with intention and edge. She said. I've been in the trenches doing the work, all caps, the work, okay, but I've gotta give Jodi her flowers. She didn't just guide me in business.
She completely shifted the way that I move in every part of my life. That kind of transformation doesn't just change your strategy, it changes your energy, and because of it, this next chapter, it's lux, it's powerful, and it's giving unstoppable, batty. Mm. I feel like I need to give like snaps and claps there.
Okay. Now the work, like those trenches that Elizabeth talks [00:06:00] about I kind of did my mastermind group dirty in the sense that I put them through an eight week ringer of a mastermind that probably should have been, in fact, it is going to be 12 weeks. Whenever I do it on this next round. Okay. But I put them through.
An eight week ringer that completely ripped their businesses to shreds and then built in its place the framework that they needed to move into multi-six figure brands. So I'm not saying it lightly whenever I promise you that this episode will change the way that you look at your photography business forever.
I'm gonna pull back the curtain on what this looks like inside of my business. The shit sandwiches I've had to choke down over the years, the moments I wanted to throw the whole thing in the trash, and why at the end of the day I keep coming back for seconds. So. Grab your [00:07:00] headphones, grab a crisp diet Coke if you want.
Uh, and then honestly, hold on to your labia ladies, because this is where we really build together. Okay? So back in 2018, I sat in my living room, the living room that you've heard me talk about before, that only held a desk in the corner as I rebuilt my life. So as I sat in my living room. With construction swirling around me in my downsized divorce house.
I allowed myself to daydream. I mean, I figured if my husband was going to leave and go live, the dream life that he was wanting to live then. I should get to have mine too, right? So I envisioned the home that I wanted to build. I envisioned the life that I wanted to have. I imagined [00:08:00] the vacations that I wanted to take the boys on, and more than anything, I would daydream and lust over the business that I wanted to build, and I would write out.
What my days would look like with an intense level of detail I imagined. Funny enough, I imagined a very tall, very handsome man standing in my kitchen with me in my dream kitchen with me as we cooked dinner together. Funny enough to. I swear to God, like I am not very much of a woowoo person, but the man who I imagined in my dream life looks so, or looked so similar to what my husband looks like now.
But I digress. Uh, I would imagine the European weddings that I wanted to photograph because I was still a wedding photographer [00:09:00] back then. I basically, I imagined the dream life, my dream life in finite detail, and I would write it down as if I was living that life inside of a journal. Okay. And I'm sure as I tell you this, you can remember doing this same exact thing or maybe even you remember like doing the same exact thing last week, right?
Maybe it was at the beginning whenever you were dreaming about opening a photography business and what that would bring in for your family and what kind of a life that would give you. But you might also be in the position where you're working inside of that photography business, but it is not the photography business that you have dreamed of quite.
Yet, and you might sit and you might imagine what it would look like if you were doing what you wanted to be doing in your business right now. You would imagine the Fun shoots, right? The pretty website. The time that you'd have to be the [00:10:00] present mother that you want to be while also running the business.
You would imagine the financial contribution that you'd make into your home, you'd imagine maybe the design, this is what I do. You'd imagine the design projects. That you could afford to do inside of that beautiful home, right? You're maybe even dreaming of all of the places that you'd get published and the clout that you would get to post along with those publishings.
Okay. Basically, your vision board coming to life. Look, I love a manifestation moment just as much as every other basic millennial out there, okay? But. What our brains don't necessarily want to pay attention to during those daydreams is the shit sandwich that you have to eat before you can get there.
Manifestation is obviously a wonderful tool that guides us clearly. I manifested [00:11:00] the hell out of my husband, okay? It's our compass that gets us to actualize. That vision, but it's not a magic tool that goes poof and makes the part of entrepreneur, uh, entrepreneurism. Is that a word? Entrepreneur. Uh, entrepreneur life.
Okay. It's not the magic tool that just completely takes away the, the unpredictable income, the all of the admin work, right? All of the endless hours that we didn't imagine us doing. It does not make all of that disappear. Okay? Our brains actually work against us here because humans naturally visualize our future only in regards to the [00:12:00] reward.
Without accounting for the cost, okay. Dopamine surges us towards that shiny outcome, and it blinds us to the boring grind. We daydream about that outcome, but in order to fall in love with our future life, we have to fall in love with the process of getting there too, because it's on that road, on that process of getting there that we're gonna have to.
Literally pull over and eat a lot of shit. Okay. You see, every dream comes with the unglamorous. The often annoying, the sometimes soul sucking price of having the dream. And it's important to note that this isn't just about our businesses. If you want a marriage that is truly loving and really full of respect and [00:13:00] fulfilling in the way that marriage can be, you have to deal with a lot of arguing.
A lot of emotional and hard conversations and a lot of showing up whenever you don't actually want to, if you wanna, if you wanna raise incredible humans who you get to have a wonderful relationship with, you've gotta wa you gotta wipe a lot of asses, right? You've gotta dry a bunch of soggy tears.
You've gotta cook endless meals and deal with disgusting teenage attitudes that I'm dealing with right now before you ever even get to see a glimpse of the Christmases that they come home with, like your grand babies, right? I mean, granted, with raising your babies, you have perks of amazing times in between all of the shit's sandwiches, but it's not something that just gets.
Handed to you easily with the dream that [00:14:00] you thought it was going to look like whenever you imagined becoming a mother. Right? Let's bring in Mark Manson here. Because he's the actual source of this concept, and we don't have to dive into it really deep because the idea is really simple, and you've probably already wrapped your brain around it just by what I've already talked about here.
But the idea is, is that if you want something badly enough, you better be willing to eat the shit sandwiches that come with it, because even whenever you've made it to the dream, there is more shit to eat and. I, I'm, I'm proof of that. I mean, I'm living the dream that I dreamt. I'm living the multi-six figure tall, adoring husband, three amazing boys that I get to show the world the dream life that I used to imagine, right?
I'm living all of that, but I still have to eat shit. I still spend. More hours in the studio than I want [00:15:00] to. I still work weekends. I still miss baseball games. I still read business books until my eyes bleed. In fact, right now, in this moment, I am sitting in New Jersey. Recording this episode inside of my Airbnb after traveling all day long and I'm, I'm exhausted, but I'm having to record this right now because I'm supposed to record on Thursdays.
I had to schedule a shoot yesterday, which I don't normally do. I normally have a really hard boundary on not booking a shoot on Thursdays, but it was a special situation. There was travel involved for the client. There was no other day that I was going to be able to do it because I was leaving for New Jersey and I'm gonna be here for four days shooting.
So it had to happen, right? These frustrations aren't interruptions in my business. They are part of my business. And [00:16:00] here's, here's the real, like nuts and bolts that I wanna get to today. Is that. Yeah, everybody says that they want a $6,000 sale or that they want $4,000 sales or that they want, I don't know, even $2,000 sales, right?
Everybody says that they want this goal of having bigger sales in their business than they currently have, and I get it because it sounds sexy, right? But are you willing. To do what it actually takes in order to make those bigger sales. It, it literally looks like reading about the psychology of sales until your brain can't hold any more information.
It looks like taking what you read and creating a sales script that you will memorize, that will convert inside of your studio like a mother. Okay. It looks like researching and understanding how to roll [00:17:00] objections. It looks like hearing no eight times during a sales meeting and still coming out with the sale.
It takes owning your frame, leading meetings, and honing your sales strategy until you are unshakeable at that table. That's full of sample albums. That's the shit sandwich that you have to eat in order to say that you dream of having $6,000 sales. And whenever I talk to photographers who tell me that this is their goal, and then I ask them what they've done in order to get to that goal, and I ask them, what have you learned about sales?
Have you, have you dived into the world of sales? Like, what is it that you're doing? And they look at me like, deer in a headlights. I have to wonder, do you actually want it at all or is it just a thing that you wanna say? If you, if you want a fully booked out fall season, then the shit sandwich that you have to eat is the daily [00:18:00] grind of showing up online yet.
Anytime I talk to a photographer asking them, are you showing up online? Are you running this? Are you running that? What are you doing with your MiniChat in your funnels and what does this look like? I get eye rolls. Okay, so. Even whenever you feel like you've said the same thing a thousand times, even whenever no one is liking your post, it's understanding and writing welcome and nurture and sales sequences that run your business behind the scenes.
It's being cringey whenever you're terrified to even show up and it's spending your day. Typing until your finger, until literally your fingers are at the bones, and then recording the content that you just wrote. That's the shit sandwich that you have to eat. If you actually want to say that you want a fully booked fall season.
Everybody wants to say that they want that dreamy luxury [00:19:00] brand with high-end clients who seemingly fall into their lap. And you might even think on this one, you're like, oh, but Jody, that is gonna be a fun shit sandwich to eat, because that's whenever I get to run off and photograph a styled shoot or take a workshop thinking that.
The images will all of a sudden get me seen or all of a sudden get me high-end bookings. But no, because your images are not what drives sales. They are only the proof behind the real sandwich. The real shit sandwich here is doing the never ending work of understanding branding. And marketing and the endless cycle of refining your message and rewriting copy and captions and enduring the uncomfortable process of putting yourself out there with a personal brand that attracts those clients that you say that you want.
The truth is success isn't measured by how [00:20:00] much you drool over the golden vision on your manifestation board. It is measured by how many times you're willing to choke down the parts that taste gross. That tastes bitter. The parts that no one claps for. The parts that feel relentless, because those are the bites of the shit sandwich that get you to your dream.
Now, I understand that this sounds like a lot, and that's why you need someone who has already built it all for you. Somebody who can hand over the pre-written sales funnel that already taps into buying psychology. Somebody who can give you the exact framework that you just get to copy and paste, but more importantly, someone who will hold up the mirror to show you.
Where there is shit that you have to eat, because if you're here, [00:21:00] then you're already choosing that this is worth it. You are not the girl who wants to run back to that corporate job and work for the man. You already know that you're destined for this life. And I get you because I know that I'm destined for it too.
I had the option I, I could have gone back to being a school psychologist after my divorce. I had the degrees, I had the training, I had the knowledge, I had the know-how I had it all. It would have been an easy life with summers off and a pension waiting for me. After I did my 20 years what that literally after I did my 20 years.
'cause that sounds like a prison sentence. Right. But the real prison sentence would've been that I would spend years. Of my life, knowing that I lied to myself about what I was capable of and [00:22:00] what I actually wanted. I would have lived on a $55,000 per year salary that didn't let me do any of the things that I dreamed of doing with my boys.
And here's the thing about the shit sandwich. You don't get to avoid it. It. You either make a choice or the sandwich rots on the plate right in front of you while you sit there looking at it. Okay? You choose your hard. The easiest way to figure out if you're choosing to not eat the shit sandwich that is sitting right in front of you, inside of your business is to listen to how you speak to yourself in your head.
Or even out loud to people like me. Whenever you're talking about, whenever you're in my dms and we're having these conversations, let's actually look at the things that you say. Like if you are saying, editing takes up so much of my time, but I [00:23:00] can't afford to outsource it, that's bullshit. It costs 35 cents per image to outsource so.
What you are really saying is that this tedious and mind numbing task of editing keeps me really safe and I'm acting like it's a shit sandwich that I have to eat when the real shit sandwich is actually being a CEO inside of your business instead of an employee. To your business, if you say maybe some line that you hate IPS or that you don't wanna be greasy or salesy, uh, what you're really saying is that you don't wanna learn how to do it because the method that you're doing now with shoot and burn, it keeps you really comfortable and it keeps you really safe.
And it also keeps you really small and it allows you to just kind of keep whining from the [00:24:00] sidelines about how or why your business isn't scaling, because you don't wanna learn IPS and you don't wanna be salesy. Right? I could go on and on with sentences like this. Uh, whenever I talk about being on social media and I get sentences saying like, I'm not the type.
To be on social media. I just, I can't do it. I'm not good at it. Right? Any of these lines that you lie to yourself about inside of your head, that's what keeps you stuck. Nibbling at the crust, complaining endlessly while never actually deciding to either eat the shit sandwich, outsource the shit sandwich, or.
Walk away from it altogether. And that's the very first rule of everything inside of your business is to make a [00:25:00] choice. You're either gonna do it, you're gonna outsource it, or you're gonna pivot altogether, but you're gonna stop. As of today, you're gonna stop sitting there crying about how unfair it is that this sandwich even exists.
Okay. The second rule, don't judge yourself if you decide that you don't want to eat it. Not everybody is an entrepreneur, and that doesn't make you lazy. It doesn't make you weak. It doesn't mean you're not cut out for business. It just means that you don't want that particular dream badly enough, and that is completely allowed.
Okay. But also inside of your business with the pivoting, you are allowed to say like you're allowed to decide that weddings aren't worth the shit sandwich. And whenever you don't want to eat that shit sandwich, you can pivot into portraits if you [00:26:00] decide that newborns are not worth the shit sandwich, not newborns in real life, but.
Photographing newborns, obviously you can pivot to some other niche of photography. If you decide owning a studio isn't worth the shit sandwich, you can stay home based. That's not failure. That's just self-awareness. That's you. Refusing to choke down something that you hate just because somebody else told you that it was their path to success.
Because here's the truth, you only need to find one dream that tastes so damn good on the other side, that you are willing to chew through all of the shit in order to get there. For me, that's this life. Building the JN studio, creating the posing method, running this podcast right here and coaching women to build [00:27:00] multi-six figure businesses.
That's it for me. I am close to hitting half a million in revenue this year, but I want more. I want seven figures so bad that I'm willing to eat every shit sandwich that it takes in order for me to get there. Every single facet of my business has sandwiches baked into it. I have grueling launches. I have massive systems.
I have exhausting busy seasons. I have long nights and sometimes. Tears that last through those long nights. But when I ask myself, is eating this still worth it? The answer is always yes. And that's the question I want you to sit with right now. What's the sandwich in your business? Because the sandwiches will always be there.
The question isn't whether they exist. The [00:28:00] question is whether you're willing to eat them. So before we wrap this up for today, I'm gonna circle back to Elizabeth because her post this morning wasn't an accident. It was a receipt whenever she came into the Mastermind. She had talent for days. She had a brand that looked cute, right?
And a heart that was bigger than the whole entire state of Florida that she lives in. But. Cute and heart wasn't going to carry her to multiple six figures. She didn't need some other set of presets. She didn't need another styled shoot. She needed a guide who would look her dead in the eye and say, you are so talented, but your website and your messaging are giving cutesy mommy hobby vibes, and then refuse to let her stay there.
What [00:29:00] happened? Uh, during the Mastermind was not luck. It was structure, it was frameworks. It was the right container with the right pressure, the right sales scripts, the right funnels, the right accountability, and also the right kind of love, the kind that tells you the truth and then stands beside you while you become the woman who can handle that truth.
That's why her caption reads like a rebirth. That's why her studio looks as though it can cash checks. Now. That's why her energy hits different. She didn't just work harder. She worked inside of a system that makes her hard work compound. She had a guide. She had me, she had the room that we created with the mastermind.
If you felt something in your chest during this episode, if you saw yourself [00:30:00] anywhere in the before that Elizabeth was painting, if you know your brand is still playing small, if you can hear your those if excuses, if you can hear them rattling in your head while your dream is standing there waiting, I want you to be brutally honest for one second.
Because you've had the talent, you've had the time. You've had the Pinterest boards and the styled shoot, and the cute captions and all the workshops. If it was going to click, it would've clicked by now. What you need next is not. Some other I don't. Inspirational podcast. Okay. You need the room. You need the mirror.
You need the plan. You need someone who will pry your fingers off of the crust of that same old sandwich [00:31:00] and walk you bite by bite into a business that actually pays you like the artist and the CEO that you are. Okay. That's what the Mastermind is. It's not a vibe. It's not a fun group of women. It's not a kumbaya.
It's not, let's get on a call and talk about our dreams and cry about our, uh, vulnerabilities. It's just not, it's a vehicle. It's where you stop pretending that busy is the same as booked, where you learn to sell. Where your messaging grows teeth, that actually sinks into your potential clients, where your funnels run while you sleep, where your pricing finally has a backbone to match the kind of work that you're putting out and where your calendar fills up because your authority is undeniable.[00:32:00]
It is the only room where I will rip it all down with you. And rebuild it so that it holds your dream. If Elizabeth had tried to white knuckle this alone, she'd still be standing at the edge of Nice and the edge of cute and the edge of heart and tr she'd be trying to call that luxury. She didn't become unstoppable because she hoped harder.
She became unstoppable because. She stepped into a room that demanded it and she said yes. So this is your line in the sand. If your stomach dropped even once today, that was your invitation to get on the wait list. Not tomorrow. Not whenever things slow down right now. Go to the show notes, tap the link, throw your name in the hat.[00:33:00]
And decide that next year is the year that you stop nibbling and that you start eating the entire sandwich that buys you freedom. I will teach you how to do this. I will not let you hide. And whenever you get to post your own before and after caption, just like Elizabeth, I am going to love the day. That you get to tag me so that I can read it out loud and I can hand you your flowers the way that Elizabeth handed me mine.
Okay? You say that you want the dream, prove it. Put your name on the list and I'll see you in the room. Until next week, 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 [00:34:00] 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. Incredible. Bye for now, friends.
