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 to the very first episode of 2026. I had an incredible Christmas, actually, my husband and I mentioned several times that it was probably one of our best mostly because. Putting [00:01:00] on a Christmas for five teenagers, that is a blended family that doesn't live together.
Throughout the entire year, that is a feat in and of itself. And the fact that we not only did Christmas, but also spent, uh, the good part of a week together and traveled together, skied together, stayed in a cabin. Together. Had to manage the idea of getting teenagers to clean up an Airbnb pack for themselves.
Get them in the car, load them, travel five hours back to Las Vegas. Spend another evening together, another night together. Bring my parents into the mix and then also still pull off Christmas morning without a hitch and not even without a hitch, but with it being absolutely [00:02:00] fantastic. That is, that's an award.
That's an Oscar. That's a lifetime achievement award. Like give me the Pulitzer in parenting. Okay.
No, really it was. An incredible Christmas. If you follow my stories at all, then you got to see the way that we put together kind of more of an experience at the end of opening all of the gifts that were underneath the tree. It was so fun to sort of look around the room and I started dropping little hints to the kids.
I was like, Hey, are we done? Like do you think we, do you think, do you guys think that we're done opening presents? And all of them started looking around at each other like, wait, what? Wait, what? There's more, because it was already an incredible Christmas. They all actually said like, holy crap, we really got.
Like the things that we were wanting from our Christmas lists and things like that. Because I [00:03:00] also tease all of them leading up to Christmas that it's gonna be a small Christmas that I haven't like bought much, that I've been so busy with work that I haven't really done much shopping. Like I always play that card.
And then the Christmas morning is always this like big extravaganza because I love it. I don't know if I mentioned this before, but I actually wrote. Into the divorce decree that I always have my boys Christmas morning. So even though the divorce exists, and even though I do have to share them on Christmas day, I don't share them until 6:00 PM Christmas night.
So I always get to have Christmas morning. So I always make a huge. Deal out of it, I think overcompensating a little bit because the divorce stuff does exist and I do get to control Christmas, so I really make sure that I go a above and beyond. But, so anyways getting back to what I was saying, I started kind of looking around the room.
I sat in a chair in the corner and I just gave them little, like sassy [00:04:00] looks and little like, I don't know, halfway aside smiles. You guys think I'm actually done. You think this is it? You think this is over with? And they all just started to be like, oh my God. Oh my God. And then Brian brought out a stack of five presents that were all identical, all looked exactly the same.
All wrapped exactly the same. And they had blindfolds around the present. And so. I had put my dad in charge of this 'cause my dad is so good at, I don't know, being so hysterically funny and like, I don't know, setting a stage and telling a story and giving directions and all of that. So I put my dad in charge of it and, uh, we handed out the presents to each one of them and he gave them the rules about like, you've gotta put the blindfold on.
Like, you cannot peak, you've gotta open the present, you've gotta figure out what it is. Figure out what to do with it. And so then the kids were all like geeking out and they opened the presents. They figured out that there was a T-shirt inside of the box. [00:05:00] And I had told my dad the night before, I was like, Hey, it's gonna be way better if we let them put the T-shirts on.
But then they have to turn them around backwards. And so, we've got five kids, and the letters to Italy are five letters, obviously. So we put the letter that each kid was assigned to on their shirt, and then whenever they put it on Christmas morning, we were like, oh, you need to turn it around. Yours is backwards.
And so then we put them in this circle and we had them open their eyes and take their blindfolds off. And we were like, okay, figure it out. And so they started to look at the backs of each other's shirts, and I think they all kind of suspected that it was gonna be something big, but. Ava figured it out first and she started like, she's so funny because she was like ripping at her brother's shoulders, like forcing them to turn around backwards.
And as she was putting all the letters together, she was like, oh my God. Oh my God. We're gonna Italy. And so then Griffin got really excited and they [00:06:00] all started looking at each other's backs. And I'm yelling in the background. I'm like, turn your shirts around. Turn your shirts around. And so they all turned their shirts around and like I put them in order and snapped a photo of them.
And I purposely planned it to wear, like Brody is our littlest one and he's so much smaller than everybody else. And so I gave him the A to where he was like directly in the middle to where, evan and Griffin were on each side of them. They had to like pick him up to get his a, to go across all of the other letters.
'cause all the other kids are kind of in the same like height range right now. So I got this really cute photo of them all having like a huge smile on their face and getting excited that we get to go back to Italy together as a family of seven, which was the last time that we went to Italy together was for mine and Brian's wedding in 2023, we got married in.
Amalfi and then we took a sailboat [00:07:00] for a sunset cruise around to Positano and we had dinner overlooking like the cliffs in Positano. So that like if you ask any of my kids, they geek out about Italy. We always say like, what's your favorite vacation? And we always have to like qualify it and. Besides Italy, because we all know that Italy was their absolute favorite, and in fact, we did Paris during that trip too, and Paris is actually their favorite, but.
The whole entire trip for the wedding was hands down our favorite memory as a family. So the fact that we're going back to Italy this coming summer is huge for all of them because they're all like, by that time, Evan will be. In college already. He already is. And then Hudson and Ava are, this is our last summer with them as high school seniors.
And so as emotional as it sounds, it might very well be the last time that we take a family [00:08:00] vacation just as a seven. 'cause future years it might be that they are. Off and doing something else for their summer or that they start getting into really serious relationships and like girlfriends or fiances or boyfriends or fiances, like they might start coming along with us on trips.
So it just, this is really special that we get to do this and. I'm telling you all this mostly because we had talked about it in previous episodes about the $200,000 challenge from last fall and what that meant and what I like kind of got to purchase as a reward for all of that. But that was my Christmas, and I hope that all of you guys were able to spend time with family and were able to celebrate whichever part of the holiday you choose to celebrate.
And now here we are going into the beginning of a new year, and obviously January. And [00:09:00] obviously like it's expected that we're gonna talk about resolutions and expected that we're gonna talk about goals. It's expected that we're gonna talk about all that sort of stuff. And I'm just gonna say this. As lovingly and as respectfully as I possibly can.
I fucking hate New Year's resolutions. I hate it. I don't know why. I just, there's something about it that feels like cheesy to me. I am, I'm 100%. Like the girl who loves a fresh planner, love to stroll the aisles of any sort of stationary store. Love to get a new planner. Love to get a new journal. Love like new pins and all of that sort of stuff.
I, I also kind of love the energy of the new year. I was already talking on my Instagram stories the other day. About a huge shift that I'm making in my business for, uh, this [00:10:00] year being that I am hiring a real flesh and blood assistant in the studio, and I've only ever had virtual assistants before.
And hiring somebody, not just to come in to do the admin work, but also knowing that I'm going to expand that position and that I'm going to teach her to become another photographer inside of the JN photography brand. And that's scary. That's. Terrifying. But if you watch my Instagram stories again, like you heard me saying a few days ago like, let's freaking go like lock in for 2026.
'cause this is big and it's scary. But are we doing it anyways? Yes, we fucking are. So let's. Go 2026, like I'm 1% still that girl [00:11:00] that loves a fresh start, loves the new year, loves all of that, but resolutions. Are stupid. They are actually like structurally flawed. Not in like a stupid sort of haha silly tradition kind of way, but stupid in a way that it's like it sets you up for like shame and self-doubt.
And I hate that idea because honestly I have never met a goal that I didn't fail at like ever. I am not a good. Goal setter. I have failed fitness goals. I've failed money goals. I've failed scheduling goals, like I've failed organization goals, which is actually hilarious. If you know me personally and you've been in my house, then you have seen the three junk drawers that I have in [00:12:00] my kitchen, A stack of them, a whole entire drawers.
Stack is just like junk drawer for me. So I don't know. Here's. Like what's interesting about all this? Well, I've failed at goals over and over and over and over again. What I haven't ever failed at is chasing ideas that were bigger than me and every single time that I set out to chase those ideas, I've done exactly that and I've moved closer to the life that I actually want and.
That really matters because goals can seem kind of finite, but whenever you look at the bigger picture or you look at dreams, those, those dreams demand that you look at things with a wider lens. So. Goals live in these like stupid little checklists while dreams require your [00:13:00] actual nervous system to hold something that it's never held before.
And that's why I don't do the whole resolution thing. If anything, I wouldn't, I wouldn't say that I'm always like steadfast on, I choose this. I choose a word every single year, but. If I, if you had to put me in two categories between resolutions and choosing a word, then I would be like, okay. Yeah. Like I, I'm more of a choose a word kind of girl.
I've done that for the last couple of years. Not to say that I'm gonna always do it in the future, who fucking knows what kind of a mood I'm gonna be in, but that feels a little bit more aligned for me than anything else. So just like Pantone wants to choose a color every year, which is usually a horrible color.
This wor this year, I can get on board with it because it's white. I think all of us kinda love that it's white. But [00:14:00] I do like to sort of marinate on one idea and I choose one place to really like Perseverate. Last year I remember choosing my word. Or like the idea that I wanted to go after for the year was scale.
I wanted to scale inside of my business and it was either the year before that or two, or like it would've been three years ago now or whatever. But I remember one year I was really working on trust because. My business was at a place where I had moved from weddings and into the studio and I had had the best year I had ever had in my life.
I tripled my income the first year that I moved from shooting weddings, and so then I really got into this head space of like trusting myself that I could replicate that, that I could duplicate it the years following. So. And then last year with my word being scale, I think I nailed that. I [00:15:00] think I 100% took on the year, and I took huge scary risks with hiring an operations team, with starting the Posers podcast with even defining posers.
In regards to what this is going to be as a brand, as a lifestyle, as a whole entire educational unit inside of the photography industry, that was huge this year. Creating, or last year creating the Posers Mastermind, the word scale for 2025, 1000% hit. So. This year, what I'm choosing to really focus on is the word and the idea of expansion, but not just expansion of my business, but expansion of my life and my thoughts and what I can kind of hold inside of my chest and my beliefs and my capacity to [00:16:00] also receive all of that expansion.
Really expansion, just kind of all around. And the irony of this is, is that 2025 already really felt like a year of expansion for me too, because I stretched financially, I stretched my level of discipline. I expanded. Not only emotionally, but creativity. Creativity, creatively mentally, like I, I really did expand in 2025 along with the scaling that was happening, and I held things in 2025 that I didn't think that I could hold.
And I think. That maybe the reason why I am choosing expansion, even though it's something that already feels like so prevalent right now, is because last year showed me something really important, and I think it's something that I want you guys [00:17:00] to sort of learn about yourselves this year too, is that. I am capable of so much more than I thought, and I know you are capable of so much more than you're giving yourself credit for right now.
And I know that with learning that last year that I'm so much more capable than I thought I was. I want more of that. I don't want comfort. I don't want to hit 2025 being like. Holy crap. I achieved more than I ever thought that I could do, and then just be like, let's have a year of coasting. Now let's have a year of just sitting in it and enjoying it and being like, little pat on the back.
Look at what I did. Look at me. No, I don't want that at all. I want to keep this momentum. And I wanna push myself even further. I heard something recently on a podcast that like kind of rearranged my brain a little [00:18:00] bit. It was said by Peter Crone and he said that we imagine our lives as if it's this like 400 square foot apartment.
And honestly, like this metaphor, it, it's so accurate that it almost feels like offensive, but. It also feels like really accurate because it's a metaphor for me that's inside of like interior design, which if every mentor or every podcast or every person that I listen to in business, if they could just keep these metaphors like marble related in some kind of way or wallpaper related I could really get behind all of that and I would probably build my business so much faster.
But anyways, he said that if we imagine our lives like a 400 square foot apartment, that like somebody has just given us or that we kind of like, came upon it somehow. And even if this was like a really dingy, a really drab, like [00:19:00] messy or like, god forbid it's painted orange or something like that. Even if we sort of inherit this space, then.
Like most of us, especially us, especially photographers, especially people who are as like visually creative as we are, most of us would come in and we would make it so beautiful like me, especially you guys. Especially like we would slide in and we would start dreaming and designing, and we would pull samples and we would create mood boards.
We'd select finishes, we'd like. I don't know. We would find custom hand painted wall murals. We'd turn it into something gorgeous with like maybe some herringbone hardwood floors, maybe a little parquet. I don't know if we're feeling extra fancy. We would lime wash. We would sandblast the fuck outta that place.
All right. And we would fit her with the most beautiful furnishings and the most beautiful textures, [00:20:00] and some soft lighting and like. You get my point, I, I would throw a marble fireplace into the mix. This, this space is only 400 square feet and I would be finding a marble fireplace that I could throw in there.
But my point being is that we would take this space and we would make it exquisite, and then we'd sit in it and we'd take photos of it and we'd have these like dreamy, rainy days, like reading in like beautiful little corners of our space. And we would call it success. And our friends would drool and we would feel like, fuck yeah, look at what I did.
Look at what I built, what? Look at what I created. When the truth is, and this is the part that really hits you in the chest, is that we were never meant to be caged inside of a 400 square foot box to begin with. Like why? Why would we think that we only needed to make that space beautiful. [00:21:00] Right, and no matter how exquisite we would make it, no matter if we're professional box decorators or not, then like we would, why would we never think, Hey, let me open the door and step outside of this box because I can do more than this.
Okay, and this is what we do inside of our businesses, is we make so many pretty things for our business. The same way that we decorate our space inside of that box. We tweak our websites, we rearrange a portfolio, we obsess over fonts and colors and brand photos and whatever, and we really stay inside of the lines and we keep redecorating.
That same small container, instead of asking, is this container even big enough for the life that I say I want? Because here's [00:22:00] an actual hard truth. You can have a gorgeous business that actually still suffocates you. Not suffocates you like, oh my God, you're dead. And that your business didn't give you something to love and create and like breathe life into, but suffocates you just enough that it keeps you from stepping outside of the box and seeing if you can breathe a little bit better, doing something bigger.
You can have beautiful work. That still leaves you feeling creatively bored. I feel that right now. So I know that that's true. You can especially feel like. You built a business that is financially contributing to your household, but you've still built a business that financially caps you so you can feel successful while [00:23:00] also feeling.
Trapped or while also feeling exhausted. And that's not a business issue, that's a capacity issue. So then that's where I come in with the word expansion and expanding the business that I have right now to actually meet my capacity. So here's a question I wanna pose to you, and I like it, pun intended. I like it that I just said.
Here's a question that I need to pose to you and we're on the Poser podcast. Okay. That was a fun little, little quip, but here's the question that I want to. Present. Imagine that it's December 20, 26 already and you just did your Instagram wrapped, or you just posted your business post, like in review. I actually love those posts.
I [00:24:00] like devour them every single year. But you've just done that. You're, you're sitting back, you are sipping a glass of Prosecco. You are reflecting on the year in order for 2026 to be considered a success. What would have to happen in order for you to be able to say that sentence? What would need to happen in order for you to be able to be like, yes, I did it.
2026 was exactly the year that I wanted it to be. Now I am, I'm coming at this question, assuming of course, that. You're already waking up and you are being like an incredible human right. I wake up and I try really hard to be an incredible human. So like we're all being better mothers, we're all being better partners, we're all being better friends, like we're all being better in whatever way.
Like this is not, I'm not talking to the anybody who is like waking up and laying on the couch all day. [00:25:00] Clearly this isn't even a podcast for people who are doing nothing. We're a bunch of. High achieving bitches. All right, so this is even likely a podcast for women who are already doing too much, but that's not my point.
But whenever we're talking about this next thing that I'm going to talk about, I want you to imagine that like if we're already waking up, if our days are already packed, if we already have every hour, that's sort of allocated in how we're building and how we're growing. And in fact, like whenever I'm doing any sort of mentoring, uh, with you, I, I hear this a lot like.
When do I create that content? When do I create this? When do I have the time to work on my messaging? Because I, I hear it all the time. I'm busy already, like I don't have the time, and I always believe you because there is not more time in the day to add. So the only way that expansion happens [00:26:00] is if you are willing.
To put something down, and this is where things kind of get uncomfortable, because expansion by definition of the word literally means adding meaning to get bigger. We're expanding, but we can't start adding until we start subtracting first, which I already touched on a little bit. We talked about this a few episodes ago, but.
In that episode, I was talking a little bit more about like the energy, and today I'm talking a lot more about actual time constraints, so we can't set goals in 2026, obviously to like. Buy a new house and lose 20 pounds and get engaged and remodel your bedroom and journal more and eat healthy and put in a pool, new pool, and like you get it.
Like if you're going to pick up one thing in 2026, you have to put something down. So [00:27:00] if you wanna commit to sending out a newsletter every week, then you need to carve out an hour of your week. So what do you have to give up in order to get that hour that you need? You have to put down an extra hour of sleep.
Maybe instead of waking up at 5:00 AM you've gotta wake up at 4:00 AM Or instead of waking up at six, you've gotta wake up at five. Right? Or if you are going to like, I don't know, pick up an hour somewhere else, like you're gonna have to say like, okay, I'm gonna have to put down control of cuing my photos.
If I'm gonna outsource culling my photos, then the thing you have to put down is. Or like you have to say, all right, I'm going to put down an hour of scrolling on my phone. Right? I'm gonna put down that hour of feeling like I have, quote unquote me, time to just doom scroll or veg out, or like for my brain to go to some other [00:28:00] place.
I have to put that down in order to put in an hour of writing that newsletter. Every week because you can't say that you're going to start doing something without recognizing that something else has to go away. And for me, I struggle with this so much yet. It's painfully obvious for me that after, like after work I get home, I cook dinner, I do all the things with my kids that I'm supposed to do.
I cook dinner with the boys and then they all do chores and we get everything cleaned up from dinner, walk the dogs, do all of that. And then. I collapse into the couch for a couple of hours, and who knows if it's going to be a night of Traitors or Summer House or Grey's Anatomy reruns, who knows at all?
But no matter what, I'm going to spend a couple hours on the couch with TV being an escape, and I actually hate it. I mean, no, I love [00:29:00] it, but. I hate that I do that. I hate that. That's my go-to. I hate it because I also know that that's my biggest waste of time. Not, not in, not coming from the sense of like, oh, I should be working.
I should always be working. 'cause that's not the flex. I'm trying to flex here, but. Like I love tv, I love Bravo, I love trash television. That literally requires zero emotional effort. And can I even fathom the idea that I'm about to say what I'm about to say? Knowing that traitors is coming back this week, like I can't even handle how fully I un unwell I am about traitors coming back because this show has had me in a choke hold from.
From the jump, from the time it aired. I mean, it's a show where everyone is dressed like they're attending a haunted funeral. Uh, Alan Cumming is judging all of [00:30:00] this. He's the host, and it's not so much just like hosting a reality TV show. He's performing this gothic winter camp basically in outfits himself that.
Drip. Okay. So I love every second of it, which is exactly why it's uncomfortable for me to admit that those two hours a night on the couch watching people unravel around the castle in uh, Scotland, those are the same two hours that I keep claiming that I don't have, and that's the problem. You see, expansion for me means I wanna be reading more, I wanna be learning more.
I wanna be building my business from a place of deeper work. So I'm not saying like, oh, the minute that dinner's over, I need to be like back in front of my computer, back [00:31:00] in front of my phone back in front of any sort of actual work project, but. If I'm gonna get to a place where I want to be reading more and learning more and working from a deeper place, then those two hours is where I should be prepping myself for that.
I need to be reading in that time span. I need to be stretching. Moving my body. I need to go for a walk and let my brain breathe. I need to be taking long showers because in a long shower, that's actually where I think the best. I need that self-care in order to do the expansive work during my day-to-day hours, and those two hours that I spend on the couch rotting.
Is not what's going to get me there. That's when I have to step in and I have to ask [00:32:00] myself like, am I being a traitor or a faithful to myself? Right. And I try to lie to myself most of the time and tell myself that this time that I spend watching TV is my like quote unquote me time. I literally joke with my husband telling him that watching Bravo is me actually spending time with my friends.
Okay. But it's really not. It leaves me groggy. I fall asleep on the couch and then my neck hurts the next day. 'cause I'm in my mid forties. It makes me feel sluggish. And then I get upstairs and I can't really fall asleep easily because my brain is still like, actively like, I don't know, in whatever show I was watching.
And of course I watch things that are like filled with like stupid reality tv, crap, trash, drama. So it takes me a minute to like decompress again whenever I finally do [00:33:00] drag myself upstairs. And because I want that like alone time with myself at night. I tend to not go to bed at the same time as my husband.
And so then, you know, not to get too personal, but we're not spending as much time horizontal with each other as we should be because. I'm spending so much time literally making love to Andy Cohen downstairs.
So, okay, so this brings me to my next question is like. If my, if my first question was, what needs to happen in order to call 2026 a success for you? Then this next question is, what I just said is like this obvious, glaring thing in my life. But like this next question being, if people were watching a TV show of you, if they were watching you on the big screen and you're trying to [00:34:00] figure out your life.
What would the audience be screaming at you? Just like we watch like a scary movie, we watch a horror movie and we're screaming at the at the screen saying like, the murderer is in the basement. Right? As the stupid blonde starts to like make her way down the steps. What would your audience be yelling?
That is so obvious and it's. So like obviously the thing that's holding you back from hitting your goals, what would they be yelling to you? Would they be yelling, like, raise your prices? Would they be yelling, you don't have to book those horrible shoots that you hate? Would they scream at you to stop consuming content?
Start making it, would they shake you by the shoulders and tell you to do the Poser Mastermind because you're worth way more than you're charging? That was a shameless plug that I was not planning to do, but this is my podcast and [00:35:00] I can shameless plug all I want, especially because I think that there's only like four spots left for the Mastermind.
And that you're really gonna shoot yourself if you don't do it this round, because it's probably gonna be 10 grand by the next time that I run it, instead of the six grand that it is right now. And you'll kick yourself because you know that if you give me six grand, I'll turn it into six figures for you.
But,
but what would they be screaming at the screen for you to change? Because it's. So dang obvious to everyone else except for you. And here's something that should absolutely free you from all of the constraints that you're putting on yourself for you to not be having a year of expansion. And it's this thought life is literally just a game.
And as [00:36:00] cryptic and as morbid as it is, but you know, I love me a murder podcast. You know I love me, a serial killer story like nobody is getting out of this game alive. Okay? You have a set amount of time to do the fucking thing, and honestly, three generations from now. No one will even remember your name.
And if that doesn't loosen the grip of other people's opinions of what you are doing and what you're building inside of your business, if that doesn't kick you into action, I don't know what will. So stop taking your life so seriously that it prevents you from expanding the way that you wanna expand.
An expansion for me is not just about doing more, it's really about making [00:37:00] space for more so this year. I'm not resolving to lose weight or, although I already just told you before, that I do have to get my shit together there, but it's not something that I'm putting a number on. It's not something I'm putting a goal to.
It's not something that I'm like, oh, here's my New Year's resolution to do this. I want to expand into a place of feeling like I am living the life that I see myself living, not in a like. Constraining sort of way is constraining a word, I don't know. But I'm not resolving to just like lose weight or learn how to like crochet a blanket.
I am choosing to expand. I'm choosing to do better with the time that I'm given. And I want you to ask yourself, honestly, what do you wanna do this year? What are you going to do in order to get it? [00:38:00] What do you need to put down so that you can finally pick up the life that you keep saying that you want?
That's the work, and that's where everything changes. So with this being January and with us being anti New Year's resolution, I still want to. Like see this as we have a brand new start, we have a clean slate, like our stripe accounts are, I was gonna say my stripe, our stripe accounts are at zero, but actually I booked two shoots yesterday, so I'm already my first thousand dollars into the year, but I still have lot of expanding to do.
If I wanna reach the goals that I have in place for my 2026, and I am guessing that you do too. So let's take this clean slate and this brand new start and let's throw punch 2026 together. [00:39:00] Okay? That's all I've got for you today. 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. Incredible. Bye for now, friends.
