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. Welcome back. Welcome back to another episode of the Posers podcast. I can't believe that we're saying this, but. Happy one year anniversary to us all. We launched the podcast March 1st, 2025. [00:01:00] So this here is the anniversary episode,
I don't know if I've ever said this out loud. I say it in my head a lot, but I don't know if I've ever said it out loud that I was absolutely terrified to start this podcast. So in January, 2025, I hired the posers team, which was. My God, if I could put into words what 2025 looked like that they would be words like gobsmacked and holy shitballs and things like that, because I hired the posers team in January and I had no idea what was going.
To come. I had no idea what they had in store for me, but [00:02:00] I hired the posers team more so because I really wanted to expand the posing method. I really wanted to build an online business with the education side of everything. Preemptively my thoughts were that I was hiring the team to build a bunch of funnels and to help me through that process of getting the posing method, more visibility.
And they did that and they've done that and they continue to do that. And that in and of itself has blown me away, but. Whenever I like took the leap with them, Aaron, who is the like business operations manager on the posers team, she started to talk to me about the fact that I didn't have any sort of long form content in my business [00:03:00] and I knew that.
Already. I knew that it was something that I needed to have and should have and was supposed to have, but I had always sort of thought about it in the sense of like a blog. And I notoriously, I know myself, I had been like, okay, sure. I've been trying to get myself to do long form content for the last like 20 years or so, Aaron not gonna happen, but.
She brought up the idea of the podcast and I really pushed back from it for a couple of months. It absolutely scared the begey out of me for two different reasons. One. If you have, if you can't tell by now, I am a little bit like unfiltered. I'm a little bit raw around the edges. I am a little hard to manage in that [00:04:00] way and I've got a mouth on me, and this mouth gets me into trouble quite a bit, and it always has, it probably always will.
So giving that mouth. A microphone felt absolutely terrifying just in regards to the safety of my business. But also there was this huge other thing that showing up weekly, it felt like. Really scary. It felt really heavy. Not in the sense of like a heavy burden, but a really heavy task. Because whenever, whenever we were talking about doing this, I thought I was busy.
I laugh about that now because. I was running the photography business, which obviously I'm still running that today and now also running posers, so I'm laughing at myself because I thought back then that I was too busy and that adding this weekly [00:05:00] task that I was not just going to be accountable to inside of my business, but also being accountable now to a team.
To show up on time with a completed assignment and that if I failed, I was not only going to look ridiculous online in front of an audience, but also if I failed, I would've been letting them down. So that's what I mean by it felt heavy, not in a burden way, but in like a task kind of way. And yeah, I had a lot of fear surrounding all of that, but I don't even remember what it was that , made me decide , okay, yeah, I'm jumping, I'm gonna do this thing. Maybe it was Erin literally saying over and over again, being like, Jodi, like, have you not met yourself? You were built for a podcast. You are made for a [00:06:00] podcast.
So. Maybe it was a lot of that, a lot of them like really like filling up my tank and hyping me up and gassing me up and like letting me know that I wouldn't fail this. And honestly, the fact that I had them as a safety net was like a huge part of it too. But it was very public. It was a public idea of possibly failing and that was still really scary.
But I'm so glad that I did it because. Consistency it built like a new identity for me. It's a learned skill. It's not like a personality trait. It's not something that you're born with. This idea of being consistent, it's a learned skill and. Creating that with the podcast also created like a lot of trust that I had with myself that I had never had before, and a lot of trust came with that from the team, I think too.
And it started this idea of consistency started showing [00:07:00] up in other parts of my business too. And then also other parts of my personal life. I was far more consistent at things that I had never been consistent with. And it's all because of this learned skill now. Sort of like taking over in other parts of my world also.
But that consistency also has built a great platform of authority inside of my business too. So I was, I was in my car the other day and I had just gone through the Chick-fil-A drive through, which is not a surprise to anybody that that's like part of my day. But I was coming out of the drive through line in Chick-fil-A.
And I had sort of pulled over because I get a yogurt at Chick-fil-A. That's the weirdest thing ever. Like, name a weird, fun fact about you, Jody. I go to Chick-fil-A because I get yogurt and I get the yogurt with yogurt, granola, and no fruit because I just simply love their plain yogurt.
[00:08:00] So I'm gonna like, obviously every single time I go through the drive-thru, I'm gonna pull over 'cause I have to like stir my yogurt. I have to, whatever. So I'm pulled over and I'm stirring my yogurt and I open my phone and there's a new Slack message on my phone and I open it up and it's just this gif of David from Schitt's Creek.
And it says, are you sitting down on the gif? Like David is basically asking me like, are you sitting down? And I like giggle at it because first of all, it's Erin sending me this message and I'm just like, she just loves me. She just gets me. You know? So underneath that GIF, there was a little message that said I have some podcast news for you.
And then it said, we landed in the top 10% of all podcasts globally. Globe, I'm joking on that word a little bit globally, like breathe that in a little bit. Just [00:09:00] like you're taking a sip of wine and you're tasting it for the first time. Let it roll around in your mouth a little bit.
Okay. The top 10% of all podcasts globally, but my response to that was. is this real? I literally wrote something along the lines of is this fake news? Is this, is this legitimate? Or is this just some stat that like kind of every podcaster sort of gets sort of thing. so Erin sent me back and she's like, no, this is the listen notes ranking.
And I checked a couple weeks ago, but we didn't have it yet because we hadn't hit the one year mark. And so then she had checked it and it had come in and listen notes is basically like the Google of Podcasts is what she's telling me, that it's a legitimate like third party search engine with an assigned listen score that ranks.
Podcasts globally. Like obviously like across the world. I'm gonna say globally a lot. I'm just gonna be like, [00:10:00] guys, we're like Mrs. Worldwide here.
But Anyways so I got this message and I'm like, oh my God, is this for real? Like, is this fake news? Is this whatever? Aaron's like, no. Jody. Like here's what it is, here's this. I just barely got the score. 'cause we just hit one year and I think my response back was. Holy fuck, Erin, like holy fuck is what I said to her because this demonstrates what one year of really uncomfortable consistency and it shows what one year of uncomfortable consistency can do for a business Now.
here's a segue I wasn't planning on. Another thing that I am very crazy consistent about is staying incredibly loyal to watching this little show. I don't know if you guys heard me [00:11:00] mention it or not before, once or twice maybe traders. Okay. Traders season finale happened last week on Thursday.
Now if you've jumped on this addiction with me, I should literally, like instead of a book club, we should have like a Bravo Club. We should have a show club. Okay. But if you've decided to jump on this addiction with me, then you know that this finale happened last week, so it's now Tuesday. I'm not worrying about any spoilers at this point.
If you haven't watched it, then I'm going to need you to simply I don't know, hit pause, come back next week. I actually don't come back next week 'cause I have something to tell you, but, anyways, I'm not gonna worry about spoilers. Rob won traders. Okay, now he won traders because he had brilliant gameplay, brilliant strategy, but it really pissed me off.
Okay? The reason why it really pissed me off is [00:12:00] because. He did this incredibly brilliant thing that he got rid of all of the loud mouth pieces, which means that he got rid of all of the big personalities. He got rid of all of my housewives, and that meant that the last few episodes were actually pretty boring and.
That's so off-brand for me of all people to say that traitors was a little bit boring, but it was the last few episodes before the finale. But so he intentionally removed these biggest threats, which left him. In the finale with people who were much easier to influence, people who were much easier to persuade, people who were much easier to full out control.
Now also, he's gorgeous, so like he basically had the whole entire capsule like wrapped around his finger the whole entire time they were [00:13:00] in Scotland. I digress. But the end result was that he had really sort of like engineered the environment around him in a genius level way. So knowing that you're opposer expert at this point, you know that I'm about to pivot this into a conversation about business.
So. Instead of jumping on my typical soapbox that I normally do with every episode, I want to actually just kind of like pose a question. Ooh, look at that. We're gonna pose a question to the posers. I wanna dive into a question that I'm wondering anybody has really been thinking about lately.
So it's no question that. Entrepreneurship is hard, right? Like there's blood, there's sweat, there's tears, there's late nights, there's endless hours. There's literally me every week wondering whether or not I should [00:14:00] go out and get a real job so I can just have like a steady paycheck, right? We all feel that.
That entrepreneurship is really hard. It also gets really romanticized the idea of being your own boss and making your own hours and you know, kind of like living the life that you wanna live and working from anywhere and all of that. But historically, everyone kind of understands and knows that entrepreneurship is brutal, but.
I've been asking myself this question a lot lately, and I've also been having this conversation with a lot of people lately, a lot of other photographers lately. Not necessarily that I've been like teaching it anywhere or talking about it anywhere in any sort of like recording or within the mastermind or within my like membership group or anything like that.
I haven't been teaching it broadly, but I've been having a lot of conversations surrounding this lately, and I've been asking like, if you were [00:15:00] building this exact business that you're building right now. But if we're stripping away the convenience of the internet and what that does for our businesses. So if we're building something in like the 1980s or 1990s where there's no internet. No social media, no Instagram, no reels, no Canva, no email automation, no.
Like post three times a week sort of metrics, right? I'm really questioning would your business survive? And if your business was surviving, what would your marketing. Look like, okay, if we're in the eighties, if we're in the nineties, marketing looked a lot like cold calls. It looked like the yellow pages.
It looked like networking events. It looked like being a member of the Chamber of Commerce. Remember that? Remember that? It's a lot of like flyers and referrals and face-to-face conversations and actual real [00:16:00] life rejection to your face. Okay? So take away the idea of like the work that you do inside of your business with editing and shooting and client work and all that technical skills sort of stuff.
'cause I'm not saying like, oh, are you actually working inside of your business? I'm not saying that at all. I know you guys are working your asses off, and I know that those sort of technical tasks, that stuff matters, but. Those tasks keep you as an employee inside of your business. Those tasks keep you as a technician inside of your business.
If you haven't read the E-Myth, go read the E-Myth because that is where you learn all about working in your business, not on your business, right? Or is it the opposite? I always get that mixed up actually to work. In your business or on your business. Both of them sound really great, so I get them mixed up, but one of them being in your [00:17:00] business is the bad one.
Not bad, but just as you're growing, as you're scaling, you have to get yourself out of working in your business as an employee, as a technician. Get yourself as the CEO, as the boss, as the owner working on your business. Okay? Okay, so take away all of the working in your business stuff, the editing, the shooting, the client work, all of that sort of stuff.
Okay? That stuff matters. But if we're following the 80 20 rule that we talked about on previous podcasts, are you spending 80%. Of your working time, generating demand. So are you spending 80% consuming, tweaking, hiding like being, I don't know, busy inside of your business and calling it productivity? Or are you spending the 80% where you're supposed to be spending it?
That's the question that I'm asking, and I really just want this to like just be inside of [00:18:00] your head. I just, I want this to be able to be uncomfortable. Without you feeling like there's shame around it at all. Like there's nobody in your car listening with you right now. There's nobody in your earbuds.
There's nobody living inside of your head who's gonna hear this answer. So really asking yourself there's like just this mirror up because there's no homework coming, there's none of that, right? But we're really just asking ourself, where are you spending that time and. If you were spending the same amount of time that you're spending now on marketing, would your business be able to survive if you had to run it in the eighties and the nineties?
So basically, I'm also asking like, are you manufacturing the room to set yourself up for the win the way that Rob did on traitors, or are you kind [00:19:00] of. posting twice a week and wondering why. It looks like a bunch of crickets are like playing hop scratch across your calendar. Hold on. That's really funny.
Like the grid, right? You've got a bunch of crickets like hopping around there. The point of all of this is that even though the landscape has changed from the eighties and the nineties, the fundamentals of building a business hasn't. Yet because of the instant gratification of the internet, there's an epidemic of entrepreneurs that sort of toss up a few social media posts and then like fame, confusion about why their business isn't succeeding.
Or even worse, wanna claim like, oh, the market is too saturated, or my pricing is too high, or that somebody else is like. Getting really booked. 'cause they're undercutting everybody else with pricing. Like there's a lot [00:20:00] of that going around. So on March 30th, I'm gonna teach a live masterclass about this, not about trends, not about hacks, but about the business fundamentals that are being forgotten about today.
Because for each form of marketing that I was mentioning above, you know, like. Cold calling the Yellow Pages, networking events, chamber of Commerce, like all of that. There's something equivalent to it in today's landscape that you have to be doing in order to grow your business. And most photographers think that the whole, you know, marketing strategy of posting twice a week is what they're supposed to be doing.
Now, I don't have the details or even a link or anything like that for this class yet. There's nothing that's gonna be in the show notes, but I'm just letting you know to block off your calendar for March 30th because it's going to happen and your tits are gonna be blown off with some [00:21:00] information that you've never even heard or maybe even never thought about before.
So. If your strategy that you're employing right now only works because Instagram exists, then that means that it's really fragile. And if your strategy isn't even working, then it's not just fragile, it's probably already a little bit broken, but I am here to help you fix it. So one year ago I was absolutely terrified to start this podcast and now.
We're in the top 10% globally because I chose consistency over comfort. So the real question is what would happen in your business one year from now if you choose to build your business as hard as you would've had to work in the 1980s or the 1990s to have the same exact business that you say you want today?
So, seriously, block off your calendar for March 30th. You are not going to want to miss this [00:22:00] at all. That's it. That's all I've got for you. 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.
