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.
Lisa DiGeso: Welcome back to the show today. I am so excited to dive into today's conversation with Jody Hendrix. And first I wanna preface this with, there may be a little spicy language in this episode, so if you have tiny little ears, it might not be the right time to listen or watch this show.
So just to let you guys know and that out of the way, this may be a little explicit and we're okay [00:01:00] with that. So Jody Hendricks is the powerhouse behind posers, the posing method and a portrait studio built from the ground up through grit, psychology, and audacity. Jodi blends emotional intelligence with photography in a way that is rare in our industry.
Today we get to go deep into the psychology behind unforgettable portraits. Confident leadership and the authority photographers often forget they already have. And I cannot wait for this one. I've been waiting for months for this conversation. So welcome, really.
Jodi Hendricks: Oh my God. That makes, that, makes me feel really good and also puts a lot of pressure
Lisa DiGeso: no
Jodi Hendricks: on me right now.
I'm like, oh my God, I better deliver.
Lisa DiGeso: Oh, like seriously, your, your response went after I sent you an email. I was like, we are now friends. Yeah. I cannot Wait, wait,
Jodi Hendricks: what did I,
Lisa DiGeso: it was like
Jodi Hendricks: within
Lisa DiGeso: 30 seconds.
Jodi Hendricks: It was amazing. My responses. That, that doesn't surprise me. 'cause I am connected to my phone, but I also fire off email responses the same way [00:02:00] that I talk, the same way that I live.
Very much so just off the cuff and whatever I said is what I said, and honestly, it's kind of none of my business after the fact, which is so not true because everything that comes outta my mouth is fully my business. But for some reason I act as if like I just can. Whatever I wanna say, I'm gonna say yeah.
And then I don't remember half of it later. So who knows what I said in that response to you?
Lisa DiGeso: Seriously. I think I, I'm like that, but I think it's because of perimenopause. Possibly
Jodi Hendricks: Same.
Lisa DiGeso: No brain.
Jodi Hendricks: Same. It, it, no, it's, it's not even no brain, it's, you get into the world. If I don't give a fuck, I, no fucks are left, no fucks are given.
I'm gonna say what I say and I said what I said. Period.
Lisa DiGeso: I love it. I love it. So for those that are meeting you for the first time, who is Jody and what are you that most as I know, right? You're like, I'm here, obviously.
Jodi Hendricks: I'm like, I think I just [00:03:00] introduced myself.
Lisa DiGeso: So what are you most passionate in this season of work in your life?
Jodi Hendricks: Ooh. Ooh. You come out of the gate swinging. I'm
Lisa DiGeso: not hard. I like swinging.
Jodi Hendricks: Yeah. For anybody who actually doesn't know, I mean this, that, oh my God. That made me sound like, oh my God, don't you know who I am? No, I don't mean it like that, but for like anybody who's listening, I don't live inside of the newborn world, so a lot of your listeners might not know who I am.
So for those of you who don't know me, let me introduce myself. I am the owner of JM Photography Studio, and I am a burnout of the wedding photography world and a transplant into the portrait world. I switched over from weddings to. Portraits. God, it's been a while now. It feels brand new still, but I switched over, I think in like 2022.
So I'm really like, I'm my own newborn baby inside of the portrait world. If you wanna [00:04:00] swaddle me, wrap me in a cloth. Photograph me in a bowl. That's fine. I actually looked at your, your Instagram earlier, and I was like, oh my God, that's a gorgeous photo of this baby in a bowl. Like, who would've thought no, but so I switched over into portraits.
I'm a newborn baby over here. But immediately I opened a studio in 2022 and I just, to the races like up and running, I loved it. And I tripled my income in that first year that I opened a studio. And honestly, I was like, what is this world? And I just, I fell into it. I loved it. It took me a minute to sort of like adapt to the idea of studio posing and things like that.
Mm-hmm. But the minute I got it, I was like, oh my God. I'm obsessed, but really on a selfish side, I was so obsessed with the idea of working at 10 o'clock in the morning instead of sunset hours and dinnertime hours [00:05:00] and weekends. And then also still being able to make more money than I was as a wedding photographer.
So that's who I am in sort of like the portrait sense. In the photographer sense. I also just started the Posers podcast. I sort of birthed a new baby, which yeah, my sort of foundation inside of the educational side of the world is my posing method that is completely founded on principles that are based inside psychology.
And so whenever I was like really thinking about education and stepping into that world, I was like, what kind of like a title of a podcast works for me? And I was like, it has to be posers.
Lisa DiGeso: Yeah.
Jodi Hendricks: And I'm. Absolutely in love with it. I started the Posers podcast. I now have the Posers Mastermind, and then obviously my like flagship being the posing method, which is completely founded in that.
But the question of being what am I most passionate about right now, uh, it is 100%, a little bit [00:06:00] more on like my personal side is really teaching women how to create businesses that they are actually running like real legitimate businesses and unapologetically stepping into a world of saying, I want more and I.
Deserve more and I can call in more and I'm worth more. And really teaching that like business side of how to create photography businesses that are not only encroaching six figures, but toppling over into multi six figures. I get really, really passionate about the idea of women having the freedom to do whatever the fuck they want.
Lisa DiGeso: Yeah,
Jodi Hendricks: I
Lisa DiGeso: love that.
Jodi Hendricks: Financial freedom, emotional freedom, like just confidence, freedom, I guess even to say, I don't know if that's a word for that, but that, that's where my passion would lie. For sure.
Lisa DiGeso: I love, I love that, love [00:07:00] that. So you've been open about rebuilding after a marriage that dismissed your work and your worth, which sucks.
So what did the proclaiming your voice, your authority, your confidence actually involve and what shifted first for you? Yeah.
Jodi Hendricks: Well for one it did suck. Yeah, it sucked really bad. And you know, the thing with my marriage was that like it didn't suck for a really long time and then all of a sudden it sucked and it really sucked.
And I was married to a man who really liked to dismiss everything that I wanted in my life. Not really liked to really abused that and abused me. Yeah. And abused who I was as a person. So getting out of that marriage was the most difficult thing I've ever done. Absolutely. In my life. But it's, it's funny [00:08:00] because before, whenever I was just being Jodi, like me growing up, me like as like a younger person, I was.
Always overly confident. I always had this idea that like I was a straight A student. I was a division one athlete. I was an overachiever. I was gonna be good at anything that I wanted to be good at. Right. And I, I never had this problem with self-worth. I never had a problem with confidence. I never had a problem with anxiety or depression or anything like that.
And then going through the divorce, it cracked all of that. And really, it, it, it was the first time in my life that I ever struggled with any of those sort of things. And it was almost that it wasn't almost, it was the most humbling time of my life of thinking, oh my God, this is what people are talking about.
Yeah. This imposter syndrome is what people are talking about, this lack of confidence, this lack of [00:09:00] self-esteem, this like inability to make decisions on your own or. Stand on your own two feet. Like that sort of, I was like, oh God. Like this is it. And I think that maybe because I hadn't had a big enough dose of that in my life, the universe was like, wha bam, bam.
And it, it crushed everything. And so coming out of that, it very much so looked on the outside as like a rebuilding, obviously. Yeah. And I mean, Instagram has this way of everything being a highlight reel, right? Yeah. Everything looking, oh look, she's divorced, but she's rebuilding. Oh look, her husband left, but you know, she's being such a great mom.
Or, oh look, she's got this business that she's building and she's doing so great. So there was no montage, there was no highlight reel, there was no any of that. Like in the real world behind the scenes, [00:10:00] it was like. It was like a million micro moments. Had to stack one on top of each other to sort of mold me back into the person that I was
Lisa DiGeso: Yeah.
Jodi Hendricks: Prior to divorce stuff. So there wasn't like this one thing of, oh, well fuck him. Yeah, I'm gonna, you know, do all this. No. It was like, I'm gonna cry in my bed for weeks on end and then maybe I'm gonna get up for a day.
Lisa DiGeso: Yeah.
Jodi Hendricks: And then maybe I'm gonna go back to my bed for another week and then maybe I'll get up for a day.
And it was, it was hard. It was, it was the single-handedly the most hardest thing I've ever gone through in my whole entire life. And I would be lying to say that I don't still struggle with it at times, you know? But I would, I would say that it was my business, 100%. And my boys, of course, I have three at, at the time they were three little boys that I was raising.
[00:11:00] But now. I have three almost men, which is crazy. But it was them and, and my business that got me through all of it because it really gave me a place that I could focus somewhere else. I could focus outside of me. Yeah. I was in years and years in therapy, like rehabbing all of that, rebuilding all of that and getting myself back into a place inside of myself that I could function again.
But my boys and my business really gave my, it really gave me this place where I could build outside of myself too, and I could focus on something else. That, and redecorating a new house, so, and
Lisa DiGeso: redecorate
Jodi Hendricks: that
Lisa DiGeso: redecorate new house.
Jodi Hendricks: Yeah. That was my therapy. Well, because like I love to gut and renovate a house.
Lisa DiGeso: Yeah.
Jodi Hendricks: And so whenever the divorce happened. We obviously split. Everything had to get split, the house had to get sold, like all of that. And my ex-husband made decent very good money. So we had this [00:12:00] like bigger home, bigger life. Everything looked perfect from the outside sort of vibes. And then the divorce came along and I had to downsize that purchase another house.
So I gutted and remodeled this smaller home for me and my boys and it really became this safe haven kind of place. It's also where I realized I'm so much more of an introvert than people think that I am.
Lisa DiGeso: Yeah,
Jodi Hendricks: because I built this house and it was like I never wanted to leave it. I never wanted to go outside the walls of it.
Like it was just the one place in my life that felt so incredibly safe at that time. So yeah, my boys, my business, and I love that. Redesigning a new house. That was my therapy.
Lisa DiGeso: I love it. Well, number one, I'm so sorry that you went through the abuse and that's just. Horrible and
Jodi Hendricks: thank you.
Lisa DiGeso: You should be so fucking proud of yourself for what you have come out the other side from, you know?
Jodi Hendricks: Yeah.
Lisa DiGeso: Like, it's [00:13:00] not easy.
Jodi Hendricks: I am, I am really proud of all of that. I think that like people talk about, you know, the glow up? Mm-hmm. The glow up that happens post-divorce is like everybody loses weight. Everybody is, oh shit, I gotta go back into the dating world. I gotta do all of that. But I think that what really is like noticeable to me is not just like that.
I've sort of stepped back into being who I was prior to the divorce and all of that, but an expanded sense of that. Yeah. That I've really shown myself like that I'm capable of way more than I ever gave myself credit for back then, and that's still something that I'm really getting used to right now because.
Especially stepping into the education side of things, like that's all brand new to me. Yeah. So it's still just, oh shit, I can do that. Yeah. Oh shit, I can do that. Oh God, I made that much money this year. Like,
Lisa DiGeso: yeah.
Jodi Hendricks: It still feels very new to me and I'm still [00:14:00] very like proud. Even as I keep on the glow up continues is basically what I like mean by that.
So
Lisa DiGeso: I love that. I love that. You know, you really touched to a lot of things because the person that you described that you were not growing up was the person I was growing up with, the low self-esteem, with the anxiety, all the things. And so when I came into photography and teaching, holy crap, it was terrifying.
That was,
Jodi Hendricks: oh, I,
Lisa DiGeso: yeah, like, and just, I've been teaching online for, oh gosh, 14 years now. And watching yourself, age on camera, gain weight and lose weight on camera and not get in your own head about it. Like, it's probably been my biggest obstacle is like how mean I am to me. Yeah. So I wanna talk about shrinking and how, you know, even as women and as a society, like we shrink, we dull or sparkle, we don't show up.
Jodi Hendricks: Well, we're, we're conditioned to shrink.
Lisa DiGeso: Yeah.
Jodi Hendricks: We're told to shrink. We are [00:15:00] taught to shrink,
Lisa DiGeso: to make others comfortable, to make other people comfortable,
Jodi Hendricks: to make, to make others comfortable, to make everybody feel okay. To make sure that you're warm and you're kind, and you're caring and that you have empathy.
Like that's, that's what we're taught. Yeah. Completely as little girls. And so then by the time we get into this space of being mothers and being business owners and or even like in a corporate world, you know, like making partner or. Like going in and getting a higher degree somewhere, something like that.
It's like then we get to that point and we question ourselves and we freak out and we self-sabotage. Yeah. And we like do all of those things. Things that men don't ever even have to think about. They don't ever even have to face it.
Lisa DiGeso: Yeah.
Jodi Hendricks: Because they're conditioned a certain way as boys, and then we're conditioned a certain way as girls and it's just shitty.
Lisa DiGeso: Yeah. It was even funnier. It's like the more [00:16:00] competent I get, the less confident I am about it. Which is so silly. Right? That doesn't make any sense
Jodi Hendricks: that it, hold on, let's say that again. The more competent you get, the less confident you get about it
Lisa DiGeso: in sharing it. Meaning it could be my photography, it could be on camera, it could be.
Anything really is just, I get in my head and I'm like, oh, like this is stupid. This is stupid.
Jodi Hendricks: You wanna know why? Yes. You wanna know why is because you, well, I, this isn't the psychological answer. I'm, I don't know that answer from a psychological standpoint, but what it sounds like is like the closer you get to knowing things or being great at something, that's the minute that we're sort of taught.
Don't brag.
Lisa DiGeso: Yes. And I'm Canadian.
Jodi Hendricks: Yeah. Oh, that's even worse. Even worse. You're Canadian. Sorry. Like that. Yeah, exactly. That idea of, oh, I have to apologize 'cause I'm so good at this, or Oh yeah. I need to make [00:17:00] sure that all of the photographers who are around me feel as though I'm not better than them. Yeah.
When really you're in the education space, you are set there to teach them that is your purpose. And so I, I get it that the thing that you are really good at, you then try to diminish. You almost dim your own light.
Lisa DiGeso: Yeah. Yeah. Let,
Jodi Hendricks: yeah, let's not do that anymore.
Lisa DiGeso: Oh, I don't think so. And it's been funny 'cause I was talking to my business partner about this recently, about how I really struggle with showing up online because I feel like there's me, that's the polished.
And I enjoy it. I enjoy being prepared. I enjoy going online as an educator and as a teacher and as a mentor. But going online as just Lisa. Mom from Camloops in Canada. It just feels like my brain just hits a wall. Like I can't be two people.
Jodi Hendricks: Interesting.
Lisa DiGeso: Right.
Jodi Hendricks: Yeah, no, that's, that's really interesting. I think that I sort of struggle in the same way on my side of my business too, [00:18:00] because I don't do all of my social media anymore like I do, I run my stories and I show up anytime that it's actually like really personal, but the actual posting and things like that, that's run by like a social media team.
And I think that I've been more self-conscious.
Lisa DiGeso: Mm-hmm.
Jodi Hendricks: Seeing how somebody else represents my business for me. Then I am to just like hop on an Instagram story and be like, Hey, how, how, what are you guys doing? This is the stupid shit I'm up to today. I can do that.
Lisa DiGeso: I love that
Jodi Hendricks: a hundred times over.
Lisa DiGeso: I cannot,
Jodi Hendricks: but then like my social media team will post a video of me, like a behind the scenes of me out on the shoot somewhere and I'm like, honestly, I'm about to, I think their offices are over on the east coast somewhere.
I'm like, I'm about to go get on a flight and jump over there and fight them. Yeah. For putting up a video where my belly is hanging out.
Lisa DiGeso: What the,
Jodi Hendricks: how are you doing?
Lisa DiGeso: Yes. Oh girl. Yeah. [00:19:00] Been there, been there. Took it back.
Jodi Hendricks: I'm like, honestly it did nobody notice that I look 40 pounds heavier than I actually am in that video.
But the thing that I've actually been talking to my husband and my team, and like everybody who's in my life about is this shift that I have going in my head right now that. We have to balance both sides of the sense of, I'm a photographer and I have my clients watching me, and I am creating images for people.
And I'm sort of like, I don't know, showing my talent and my business over there on that side. But then there's this whole other side of my business now that it's, it's sales focused. Yeah. It's more of a business. It actually has to take care of people. It actually has employees. It actually has, you know, things that I have to generate enough income.
Yeah. That I'm paying the team. And so then I think in my head I'm like, if that post that my belly [00:20:00] is hanging out a little bit, or I look a little pier than I am, or my self-confidence is low, if that's feeding the people on my team, so be it. So be it. Like I will fall on whatever sword is needed to fall on in order to make sure that the sales are happening on that side of the business.
So it's just this, you know what it is, Lisa, I'm just gonna, this is my psychological assessment. It's a mind fuck.
Lisa DiGeso: It's a mind fuck. Yes. It really is.
Jodi Hendricks: And if you literally cannot get yourself out of the head space of tearing yourself down through all of that, if you can't get out of that, then I question like how far you can really go with your business.
Totally. Because the whole entire, I mean our whole entire industry runs off of social media and video and creating content and being out there and being seen and being visible. And I think that being visible is one of, if not the biggest fear that women have [00:21:00] because we've been conditioned to shrink as much as we have.
Lisa DiGeso: Yeah. So I think so too. And you know, it's funny 'cause I was doing a lot of journal line and I'm like, why is this like what? Like I really wanna figure this out and get this nailed this year because I don't wanna be that. I wanna be able to show up and be me and just be happy and do whatever. Right. And I came to the conclusion is that I.
Sometimes No, I feel that when I'm not providing value, I'm not worth watching. I'm wasting people's time.
Jodi Hendricks: If you're not providing value, then you're not valuable.
Lisa DiGeso: Exactly. And I was like, Ooh, Misa, that's not good. We gotta figure that one out.
Jodi Hendricks: Yeah. It's always stemmed to our childhood. Right? It always is.
There is al like my childhood was so much more of, I grew up very poor.
Lisa DiGeso: Mm-hmm.
Jodi Hendricks: And I grew up very, without this word, feeling as gross as it feels like I, I grew up very dirty. Yeah. If that makes sense. Like I was a dirty, feral child, so I literally, we lived in a [00:22:00] trailer house. The, our place was dirty. Not because my parents weren't like great parents, but because they were working three jobs.
Lisa DiGeso: Right.
Jodi Hendricks: And they had, and they were 17, 18, 19 years old when they were having kids.
Lisa DiGeso: Wow.
Jodi Hendricks: And. They're working three jobs and a trailer park house with little tiny children gets so messy all the time. Right. And that didn't stop in my life. Like my parents didn't really get their feet underneath them financially until I was like starting high school.
Lisa DiGeso: Mm-hmm.
Jodi Hendricks: And so my whole biggest insecurity comes in regards to, am I worthy? Can I change the narrative of what I was whenever I was growing up, this little, dirty, filthy child that was like in a house of neglect and can I then change my world? Mm-hmm. And can I then ask people to give me [00:23:00] money and can I then provide for my boys?
The way that I wanted to be provided for whenever I was a little girl. Yeah, right. So like no matter what, anything that you're struggling with in regards to being valuable, being worthy, showing up and just showing different parts of you, like it's all gonna be rooted in your childhood no matter what.
Lisa DiGeso: Completely. Completely. That's from really good insight.
Jodi Hendricks: I'm not that kind of psychologist, so I don't know that side of like therapy and like things like that. But I do love a ton of self-help. I do love everything, especially self-help whenever it's mixed with business. I am a, a consumer of books all the time.
Yeah. So that's what I take from my therapist and from everything that I read and from everything that I like, consume, is basically we're, we're all, especially us women, we're all screwed from childhood.
Lisa DiGeso: Totally. Totally. Like I came from, my dad was a dentist, like we were fine. [00:24:00] Money was not an issue. It was like.
Being perfect was the issue
Jodi Hendricks: there. Yeah. Yeah. There it is. It's if you don't show up perfect and polished. And if you're not like saying the right thing and doing the right thing, and I struggle with this too also sometimes in the education space. 'cause there's always this thought of what do I need to figure out in order to help other people?
Yeah. Right. And that's my job now. My job, but that actually isn't my job. Right. And it isn't your job either. My job is to run my business and to do a such a good job at running my business that then I can tell other women how I ran my business. My job isn't to go out and know everything in the world in order to be able to solve everybody's problems.
Lisa DiGeso: Yeah.
Jodi Hendricks: But. For some reason, that's the pressure we put on ourselves, right? That's what we think is that we need to be everything for everybody.
Lisa DiGeso: Yeah.
Jodi Hendricks: Instead of just stepping into ourselves and saying, no, I've proven that [00:25:00] I've built a multi-six figure business. I've proven that I know how to run a photo shoot incredibly well based on the psychology that I know.
All that I have to do is now teach other women that.
Lisa DiGeso: Yeah.
Jodi Hendricks: And for some reason we can't, we, we don't do it.
Lisa DiGeso: We glitch. What the heck? Right?
Jodi Hendricks: Yeah. It's all like the, the brain is so fascinating and it's so powerful that it blows me away. Even some of the stuff that I'm reading sometimes, especially like neuroplasticity and like the fact that like, oh, it's so
Lisa DiGeso: interesting.
Oh,
Jodi Hendricks: I got it. It's so interesting the power that our brains have and like these studies that I read about, you're like happiness and things like that. Like it's just wild how incredibly powerful it really is. But. It's probably more powerful on the negative side than mm-hmm. It is until you can control it.
Lisa DiGeso: Yeah.
Jodi Hendricks: Positive on, or more powerful on the positive side because obviously those negative emotions are [00:26:00] always going to be so much greater than the positive ones.
Lisa DiGeso: This past summer, I actually went on anti-anxiety medication for the first time in my life and I was like, oh my gosh, this is how normal people feel.
Like,
Jodi Hendricks: yeah.
Lisa DiGeso: What y'all, y'all weren't stressed with everything. Thinking about the worst thing that's gonna happen right now. Oh,
Jodi Hendricks: I was, I was talking to a friend about this the other day and she was like, well, you take an antidepressant, don't you? And I was like, no, I actually don't. Should I? Yes, probably 100%.
But I told her I didn't, and then she was like, okay, well what do you take for anxiety? And I was like, I don't. And she was like, you're telling me that you're just out here, raw dog, this shit? And then I was like. Yeah. It's like I run on diet Dr. Pepper and anxiety. That's how I function. I don't know, but I've thought that before too.
Yeah. I'm like, is what I go through on a daily basis? Is it normal? Yeah. If I took an [00:27:00] antidepressant, am I all the sudden gonna see this other side and I'm gonna be like, oh wow, people are actually happy. You're
Lisa DiGeso: pretty happy
Jodi Hendricks: to, girl. I'm joking. I'm
Lisa DiGeso: pretty happy.
Jodi Hendricks: I'm, I am a pretty happy person, but I really, I mean, this is a female podcast.
I feel like we can say these sort of things, but I really ride the wave of my cycle.
Lisa DiGeso: Yeah.
Jodi Hendricks: And I think that, why did I just say my cycle? Like as if we're grandmas? No, my, my period. Like when my, when, when out flow comes, God, that's embarrassing. No. Like I really ride that cycle really heavy and I'm 44, so am I jumping into perimenopause?
Probably. But I, I think that I have. What is it called? It's called like PDD or P oh PMD dd. Something like a
Lisa DiGeso: hundred percent.
Jodi Hendricks: Yeah. That
Lisa DiGeso: burning the house down at the end of your cycle.
Jodi Hendricks: Oh, it's not, it's not the end. For me it's, it's like the three days before. Yeah. I'm gonna start my period. I literally, and I [00:28:00] cannot convince my brain otherwise.
Yeah. I think my world is collapsing. I think that my. That my business is collapsing. I think that I'm never gonna make money again. I think that everything that I built was just a complete farce and that what the fuck, what the, what word is farce? Also, why do I get on a podcast and then all of a sudden I have some other like language I had been
Lisa DiGeso: reading at my toilet paper words.
Jodi Hendricks: Exactly. Who am I? No, but I really, really go through depression in that kind of way.
Lisa DiGeso: Yeah.
Jodi Hendricks: To where I feel like I can't get out of bed for the three days prior to my period. And then literally every single freaking time my period hits and I'm like, oh, surprise. And I'm 44 years old. I've had 44 years. Well, I didn't start my period when I was bored, but like.
I've had so many years to get used to this, and you still, you cannot convince me on that third day before my period that my world is not ending.
Lisa DiGeso: Yeah,
Jodi Hendricks: you can't. So [00:29:00] I need medication, I need help, I need hormonal balance. I need all of that. And I don't know where this podcast got off the rails.
Lisa DiGeso: It's all right.
It's how it usually goes.
Jodi Hendricks: Okay, great.
Lisa DiGeso: We're on a
Jodi Hendricks: side. We're
Lisa DiGeso: totally fine.
Jodi Hendricks: We have a list of 20 questions we're supposed to be going. We
Lisa DiGeso: haven't answered none. I'm just,
Jodi Hendricks: we've answered zero. And also your questions are really good. Even in like answer. I mean, we have, we've answered like four.
Lisa DiGeso: Yeah.
Jodi Hendricks: But even in going through them, I was like, my God, I don't dunno if I know that answer.
Lisa DiGeso: You're like, is this a test?
Jodi Hendricks: I literally, I was like, oh, okay. So she studied me and literally I studied, studied everything about my business is fake and
Lisa DiGeso: I people, I just wanna know everything. I am nosy. I am nosy. As
Jodi Hendricks: you're the Oprah, you're the Oprah of photo. You're the, you're the bar. Barb Walters. Barbara Walters.
I wanna know photography space. I, I love it. I just told you all about my period. You can know everything you want.
Lisa DiGeso: I love it. Besties now. [00:30:00] Okay, well,
Jodi Hendricks: I'm gonna
Lisa DiGeso: turn our car around and see if we can get,
Jodi Hendricks: I know we need contract. We need a full segue away from my period. Right.
Lisa DiGeso: Speaking of humanness, you're no blending human behavior with psychology.
What patterns do you see in CL that most photographers miss, and how does that change the way you shoot
Jodi Hendricks: God, if, if there is a Pulitzer for a segue, Lisa, you just got it. I don't think that other photographers miss these things at all. I think we all can see red flags. I think we can all see awkwardness. I think we can all see, you know, kids who are going crazy, toddlers who are running rampant.
I think we can all see moms who are too stressed out. I think we can all see the red flags of, you know, dad being cranky, not wanting to be there. I think we can all see that. Yeah, there's no question. I think the only thing that I've done different [00:31:00] is that I've studied it and that I have paid attention to it so hard and wanted to actually solve the problem.
Lisa DiGeso: Yeah,
Jodi Hendricks: I think that's the difference, right, is like those red flags are apparent for everybody, but I think that every, every photo shoot sort of feels like it's a thumbprint or like a snowflake. Like every single photo shoot, not a single one of them is. Same. Right. Not a single one of them has the same exact behaviors that are going on.
So I think that the thing that I do is I really take a minute, like even whenever people are getting out of their car for the photo shoot, even the text messages or the phone calls I'm having with mom being stressed out 'cause they're late getting there, or like things like that I really analyze and then really wanna make sure that the way that I'm handling the situation is based on what they need from me.
Lisa DiGeso: Yeah.
Jodi Hendricks: Right. So like in even the [00:32:00] example of them getting out of the car, like I feel like I'm clocking them. Mm-hmm. I'm clocking where they're at, I'm clocking where their behaviors are. I'm clocking how relaxed or how not relaxed they are. And especially like with dads. I, I'm clocking all of that to see what it is that they need from me and how I can step in to make sure that I'm making everything like smooth.
Lisa DiGeso: Yeah.
Jodi Hendricks: And I think that's the difference. It's not so much, oh, I'm some magician and I see behaviors differently. It's just that I see them and then I'm like, okay, now I know that I need to do this and this and this in order to fix that.
Lisa DiGeso: Yeah.
Jodi Hendricks: Right. If that, if that makes sense.
Lisa DiGeso: Yeah. It really, it's the art of noticing.
It's just noticing like all the little, well, even the micro expressions, the little looks, like all the little things.
Jodi Hendricks: Yeah. I think that the thing, everybody uses the word like influence and persuasion.
Lisa DiGeso: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Jodi Hendricks: Like in the world of psychology, or even about like social media or [00:33:00] even about like our businesses or making, having people like.
Make decisions that you want them to make. That's influence, right? That's persuasion. So I think that really at the nuts and bolts of influence is just listening. It's just listening and making sure that the person knows that you listen to them. And then taking into account how they're feeling and how they're thinking, and then still asking for the behavior that you want from them.
But making sure that you heard them first. Mm-hmm. And then asking for it.
Lisa DiGeso: Yeah.
Jodi Hendricks: Right. That's a huge difference. I have a whole entire download about like a free guide about understanding men's behavior and how to influence that behavior, especially like in relation to being on a photo shoot. 'cause we would all have to influence that behavior at all times in the world.
But on a photo shoot, that's what the download's about. Mm-hmm. But like with men. We have this idea in our head, especially as women, as wives, we [00:34:00] think if a guy shows up on a photo shoot and he's a dick, then you're like, Ew, stop being a dick. Right? Like automatically, as women, our brains go to, can't you just be nice 'cause your wife wants this?
Or can't you just be nice because you wanna create these memories with your kids too? Can't you just, Ew, can't you just,
Lisa DiGeso: yeah.
Jodi Hendricks: But it really takes just what, a little bit of stepping back and opening yourself up to what he's thinking.
Lisa DiGeso: Mm.
Jodi Hendricks: And opening yourself up to what he's feeling. And once you do that and you think if, if any man wanted me to go and watch a football game for four hours on a Saturday, I'd tell him to fuck off.
Lisa DiGeso: Yeah.
Jodi Hendricks: I'd be like, no, I don't want to. That's not how I wanna spend my Saturday. Like, I don't wanna do that. I'd be cranky about it. I'd be just as cranky as probably a husband is. For him having to come and do a photo shoot for a couple hours on his Saturday. Right. So once you see that and then you [00:35:00] clock it and then you walk up to dad and give him a little squeeze on the arm and, and just ask him, be like, Hey, how much do you hate this?
Lisa DiGeso: Yeah.
Jodi Hendricks: How much do you hate this scale of one to 10, how much do you hate this? And for the, especially if it's like a new client and it's not somebody that you have a relationship built with already, but like to walk up and ask him that question directly, I think automatically disarms him because he is not expecting you to allow him to hate it.
Lisa DiGeso: Mm.
Jodi Hendricks: Right. He's expecting that he has to show up, he has to be fake, he has to put on a smile, he has to play the super dad sort of role. Yeah. And the minute you would just walk up and say, dude, I get it. All of my dads hate this.
Lisa DiGeso: Yeah.
Jodi Hendricks: But we're gonna make like really great photos afterwards.
Lisa DiGeso: Mm-hmm.
Jodi Hendricks: So if you can just give me a little bit, I'll get you outta here as fast as I can.
Lisa DiGeso: Yeah.
Jodi Hendricks: Something like that. Automatically within 10 seconds of starting that photo shoot. You've already got dad on your side.
Lisa DiGeso: Yeah.
Jodi Hendricks: Right. You've already got dad understanding that like, I'm, at least I'm gonna come at [00:36:00] this with some sort of empathy for what you're actually feeling. And I just literally gave him a scenario where like I, I'm like, Hey, I see you, I feel you.
Mm-hmm. And I'm gonna hear you and I'm gonna do everything that I can to make sure this doesn't suck for you.
Lisa DiGeso: Yeah.
Jodi Hendricks: And usually that's all they need to know in order to be like, yeah, I'll do that thing with you. Yeah. Yeah. I'll pick up that kid. Yeah, I'll like, you know, whatever. And then I screw around a lot and have a ton of fun with them.
Yeah. And then it changes their perception of what a photo shoot is and all of that. But that noticing of behaviors is automatically the first thing that I'm doing on a photo shoot so that I know where I need to step in and like temper things down.
Lisa DiGeso: Yeah.
Jodi Hendricks: A little bit.
Lisa DiGeso: What has really surprised me about, 'cause I love this.
I love it 'cause I've been reading a lot more on. Brains psychology over the past few years, and it's interesting because I didn't realize or even put two and two together, men are also worried about how they look. [00:37:00]
Jodi Hendricks: They're so insecure, they're
Lisa DiGeso: so insecure
Jodi Hendricks: men.
Lisa DiGeso: Right.
Jodi Hendricks: That's, I actually wrote that on my notes to say at some point in this that like that understanding of, a lot of times dads coming on a shoot and being cranky and being like.
Jerkish or Dickish or whatever, it actually stems from so much insecurity that they don't know what they're doing.
Lisa DiGeso: Yeah.
Jodi Hendricks: They don't like how they look. A lot of times, because we style them inside of a collared shirt and a sweater,
Lisa DiGeso: you don't wear
Jodi Hendricks: that. And they're hot and they're sweaty and they hate it and all of that, but there's a huge amount of insecurity that they are operating inside of a world that they don't feel like they're the expert.
And for a man that's really, really, really hard to do.
Lisa DiGeso: Yeah.
Jodi Hendricks: And it's just, it's so imperative that we understand that most of those cranky behaviors, even inside of our marriages, yes. Even inside of our friendships, inside of [00:38:00] any relationship, anytime you come upon a person who's prickly or defensive, nine times outta 10, it's because you've touched on an insecurity.
Lisa DiGeso: Yeah.
Jodi Hendricks: And a photo shoot for a man is a full blown. Masterclass in a man's level of incur,
Lisa DiGeso: like seriously, like the amount of times that I heard, oh, can you take care of the bald spot? Or you can, don't worry. Like, whatever you need, I will take care of. Right?
Jodi Hendricks: Yeah. They talk about Photoshopping, their tummies, they talk about all of that just as much as women do.
Lisa DiGeso: When I do the dad holding, holding the newborn in their, they're shirtless. They're like always, they go down and they do their like pushups and then they come back. Oh my, my
Jodi Hendricks: God. Really?
Lisa DiGeso: Seriously? Yeah. Okay. And then I put them in this pose like this and I'm like, they're like, oh, do you think you can make my muscles a little bigger?
I'm like, I can do whatever you want. I can definitely do that. I can pose you to make 'em bigger.
Jodi Hendricks: Yeah. Oh my God. Yes. Okay. See, I'm not, I'm not a newborn photographer, so I've never had a dad literally break down into pushups on a photo shoot. Yep. That's the first I've ever heard of that.
Lisa DiGeso: Yep. [00:39:00] And actually it's usually firefighters, oddly enough.
Jodi Hendricks: Oh, interesting. God so much bro energy. Right? Yeah. But it's the same, right? If you think about it, it's the exact same way that we suck in our stomach.
Lisa DiGeso: Absolutely.
Jodi Hendricks: It's the exact same way that every
Lisa DiGeso: Right.
Jodi Hendricks: Every mom wants to put out the little bat wing. Mm-hmm. Because it makes their her arm look skinnier.
That's the biggest thing in understanding all of this, is like whenever we put people in front of our cameras, they're like a fish inside of a fishbowl. Yeah. Right. They feel like it's a magnifying glass on every single one of their insecurities, and really our job is to just come in and make the photo shoot as comfortable as you can make it and make it feel as effortless and make it look as true to life as you can, which is exactly the reason why.
Mm-hmm. I study everything that I study because it makes the photo shoot experience so much better.
Lisa DiGeso: [00:40:00] Yeah,
Jodi Hendricks: because I was saying this on a, on a bonus call thing that I had the other day that like. I know that as photographers, we really understand the importance of posing, that we really understand, okay, the photo shoot in and of it.
That's the definition of being a photographer is can I take people out on a photo shoot, pose them and make photos? I get that. Everybody understands that, but I don't know that everybody really grasp how powerful the posing is and how much that changes your business, because it's the one thing that you are supposed to be able to do as an expert inside of your business.
So if you go in and you flub the posing and you make people feel uncomfortable, then it has ripple effects. It's the butterfly effect inside of your business. And I can't really pinpoint, maybe you can, Lisa. I can't really pinpoint any other thing inside of our businesses that impacts. So much. Mm. Like [00:41:00] marketing, you can market with Google ads, you can market with, you know, SEO.
You can market with social media, you can market through your email newsletter. There's tons of different ways we can market. If we flub one, we can pick up another, right?
Lisa DiGeso: Yeah.
Jodi Hendricks: There's so much different, like sales psychology and buying psychology and all of that, that works through like our sales rooms and that whole entire process.
If you suck at one thing, you can pick up another. If you don't love IPS you, I won't even say that. If you don't love IPS fall in love with it because that's the way that you're gonna make money. I don't even wanna give you an out there, but there's, uh, over here, there's all these other things we can like, okay, we suck at this.
We can pick it up this way. Or even on social media. Okay, I suck at doing reels, but I can do a carousel post like a boss, right? But posing there's no, there's, there's no ins or outs. You're either gonna really get it and you're gonna understand how much of. Snowball effect that has in your business.
Because if you can pose people really freaking well, and if you can make them [00:42:00] feel so incredibly comfortable on a photo shoot, then it impacts how much money you can make. It impacts how many more people you're gonna book. It impacts what people say about you. It impacts your word of mouth marketing. It impacts everything.
So if you mess up the posing in the middle of your client experience, you fuck up the back end and you fuck up the front end.
Lisa DiGeso: Yeah.
Jodi Hendricks: Right. And understanding that is the through line to your whole entire business as a photographer.
Lisa DiGeso: Yeah. I love it.
Jodi Hendricks: Which is wild. It's wild that we have this, it's like a hairdresser sucking at doing hair.
Lisa DiGeso: Yeah.
Jodi Hendricks: But that's what it is. We have this one thing. That. It's like if I'm not, if I can't make this one thing happen, if I can't get people to feel comfortable in front of my camera, then I'm probably not gonna run a successful business. You could probably still make 40 grand a year. You could probably still run a cute little like side check of a business.
You could probably do all of those things, or you can [00:43:00] slowly, slowly, slowly work for 10 plus years or so until you finally get the hang of it, and then you can run something a little bit more successful. But if you are stuck in your posing, it is 100% having an impact on your whole entire business. Yeah,
Lisa DiGeso: I love that.
What came to mind too was like, people don't forget what you said or what you did. They remember how you made them feel. And yeah.
Jodi Hendricks: Who is, who is it that said that? Is that
Lisa DiGeso: Maya or Lina? I really don't know.
Jodi Hendricks: Yeah, it's Maya. I think it's Maya. It's a Maya or a Gandhi. It's, it's one of of them that people, people can remem, people can forget all of the other things, but they're never gonna forget the way that you made them feel, which is huge.
And one of the biggest things that I notice, and this is the whole entire reason why I built the posing method, is because before I really stepped into education, before I really was like, okay, I am gonna name it, it's posers, it's the podcast, it's [00:44:00] the mastermind, it's the posing method, all of that. I was probably just doing what other people do prior to education.
Just sort of like doing some style shoots here and there, running a workshop, right? Like I ran a couple of those little five person workshops like out of my house and you know, things like that. And whenever I would get into any sort of situation that I would be watching other photographers. Through their direction, work through, because that's what we're doing.
We're directing a photo shoot, we're choreographing a photo shoot. Anybody who thinks that you're doing pose, pose, pose, pose, pose, you're automatically stiff. You're automatically awkward. That's not how it goes. You should be directing and choreographing a whole entire experience. Yeah. So what I would see is that, I don't wanna use the word most photographers, 'cause again, I don't know how other photographers do, but for mostly for what I was seeing and from what I hear of other people telling me, and I had talked to other photographers a lot, is that they skip the two most important steps [00:45:00] before you get to the part of actually posing your clients.
So inside of the posing method, there's an actual like formula. There's a posing formula that you work through and it's so simple. It is so easy, it can relax your clients literally within two minutes flat. And it's the first two things that are happening that people are forgetting. So. The first part of the formula is called capitalization.
The second part is called brain syn, and then the third part is called Initiate, initiate, initiate, initialize. I don't even remember. It's my own formula. I'm, it's initiate. But so capitalization is, I, I talk about it is you're getting a little glimpse inside of the posing method. I love that. We're so
Lisa DiGeso: lucky,
Jodi Hendricks: but, okay.
So capitalization is basically this idea that humans are capable of reliving shared experiences to the full capacity emotionally, as we did whenever we first lived [00:46:00] them.
Lisa DiGeso: Mm-hmm.
Jodi Hendricks: Right?
Lisa DiGeso: Yeah.
Jodi Hendricks: So that's like whenever you've just come home from a really incredible vacation, what's, what's the best vacation you've ever been on in your life, Lisa?
Lisa DiGeso: Oh, probably Hawaii.
Jodi Hendricks: Okay, so you went to Hawaii. Okay, now. Say you're five years out of going to Hawaii, but one of your friends is going to Hawaii. And they say to you like, tell me everything that you did the way your face just changed. I hope people can see that on the video because that's it. The way your face just changed.
Yeah. Was you automatically triggered into a shared experience that you've had. You probably went there with your family, I'm assuming, but so for your friend to come and say, tell me everything that you did. Tell me all the best things I need to make sure that I have for best vacation. You are automatically flooded with all of those same emotions that you've already shared with your family.
Okay, so now imagine if you're on a photo shoot and your photographer isn't, stand here, stand here, stand here. Put your hand in your pocket, move your head this way, like twist this way. [00:47:00] Even if you're trying to be interactive and kid goes on dad's shoulders and whatever, and then they just stand back and be like, okay, laugh.
Okay. Smile, right? Yeah. But imagine that they were to put you into that sort of scenario and they first talked to you about, Hey. Your mom told me that you guys had gone to Hawaii before. What was your favorite thing to do in Hawaii?
Lisa DiGeso: Mm-hmm.
Jodi Hendricks: And the way your kids would light up and the way that you would light up and the way that your family would sink into that shared memory.
Yeah, right. That capitalization, humans have the capability of literally being able to take those shared experiences, relive them to the same capacity that they felt them the very first time. And it is magnified when you are around those same people who you share those experiences with. So then we're going into step two of the formula, which is brain syn.
So then I am saying, especially to your kids or to you or to whoever, okay, we're in Hawaii. We're talking about Hawaii, we're talking about your vacation. We're not talking about being on the photo shoot, we're not talking about posing, but [00:48:00] I'm then saying, oh my God, you guys went surfing. What did that feel like?
And then your kids are like, oh, it was so much fun. It was this, it was that. And I was like, do you think that you had the biggest smile on your face ever during that? And they're like, oh my God. Couldn't stop. Like I wa I ran up to my mom. I was like telling her all about it, blah, blah kid. Like especially kids.
And this is influence too. If you want people to like you, if you want people to do the things you want them to do, all you have to do is ask them questions.
Lisa DiGeso: Yes.
Jodi Hendricks: All you have to do is show interest in who they are and what they like.
Lisa DiGeso: Yeah.
Jodi Hendricks: And get you to tell them those things. And you'll have a whole entire different person in front of you then if you go in there and try to tell them where to put their hands and how to move and how to do things right.
So those are the first two steps that photographers actually skip is that controlling of their emotions. It's literally, this is my biggest like. Piece of marketing for the posing method is it drops dopamine and oxytocin within the first [00:49:00] literal two minutes of your shoot. And people forget they're on a photo shoot.
Yeah. They forget that they're even like in a situation where they feel insecure like we were talking about before. Because you've basically just brought their life to them.
Lisa DiGeso: Yeah.
Jodi Hendricks: You've brought their experiences to them. So now they don't have to act. They don't have to force it. Mm-hmm. They don't have to stand here and smile and say cheese and do all this.
They simply get to actually interact with their family, and this is why I have reviews inside of my business of people saying not just, oh, it was a great time, or, oh, she created beautiful photos. Oh she did this, she did that. Whatever. My reviews from clients are literally like. I've, I don't understand what we just did.
Yeah. That was an experience I've never felt before. One of my, I remember one of my couples said on a review that was on my website for years saying, I don't understand how she did it, but it was an experience like I've never felt before.
Lisa DiGeso: Yeah.
Jodi Hendricks: And 'cause, [00:50:00] 'cause then whenever you're doing that for an hour straight and you're literally just creating this environment of almost euphoria.
Yeah. For the family, because you're running through all of their favorite things, talking about all the amazing things they do, then it changes the whole entire vibe. The shoot. And then the third step of the formula is simply initiate. And you're going through and you're just saying, okay, let's pretend we're doing that.
Let's do this. Let's, okay. Like you love a Disneyland parade, get up on your dad's shoulders, then let's do that. So it just, and inside of the posing med, that obviously goes so much more into this, there's 14 other pieces that you have to know that all tie into it in working together in order to really be directing and choreographing versus posing.
And then it gives you like all of these other shortcuts, they're called brain heuristics that are in there. But like it gives you so much more, obviously. But that's a big piece of it. And that's the part that most photographers miss.
Lisa DiGeso: Yeah.
Jodi Hendricks: Is really regulating and controlling emotions [00:51:00] first before you're asking anybody how to move their body.
And that's the biggest key of, literally, it erases insecurity. Yeah. It erases awkward. It erases everything. That usually comes along with a photo shoot. And then whenever your clients are talking about that to their friends, that's like marketing on crack, right? That's like whenever people are saying she's amazing.
Lisa DiGeso: Yeah, yeah,
Jodi Hendricks: yeah. Whenever people are saying those things about you, then you just automatically create this, you, you create what I created. You create this like cult-like following inside of your city where people will pay you.
Lisa DiGeso: Yeah.
Jodi Hendricks: Thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars to have their photo taken by you because of that experience.
Lisa DiGeso: What I think I love the most is, the way that you're explaining this is it's not about manipulating people to make more sales. It's about no creating that experience that they love. And so of course they're gonna tell their friends, of [00:52:00] course they're gonna come back. It's like reciprocity, right? It's, and it's not sales psychology, which kind of sometimes feels manipulative.
Jodi Hendricks: It. It does a little bit, but I also do know how powerful it is.
Lisa DiGeso: Yeah.
Jodi Hendricks: I know that like whenever I'm on a, on a photo shoot, I know that I have this much sort of control, I don't wanna call it control, but influence, yeah. Over how they're going to interact. And I know the gamut of emotions that I can get, especially from children because there's so many things also inside of the posing method that there's a developmental guide.
The developmental guide goes through every single age grouping of kids and the magic phrases that you can use with every single one of them that will automatically have them like eating out of the palm of your hand.
Lisa DiGeso: Yeah.
Jodi Hendricks: And so I know that there's so much power there. That, and I warn people about it too.
If somebody is coming into [00:53:00] my studio and they think that they're coming in to like just grab a family photo or to just, you know, they're coming in on, I do these little promos sometimes. Like whenever I don't wanna do a fundraiser for my kids' school, I'll tell my clients like, Hey, send money to my kid's school.
And I'll do a little mini shoot of sorts, but it's never a mini shoot. I hate a mini shoot. So I'm not even wanting to call it a mini shoot. But if they come in, I'll warn them of the power that I have. Like I'll warn them like, Hey, I want to respect your bank account because you're in here on this promo.
You're in here because you donated my kids' school, and I have so much gratitude for that. So if you want me to just take one photo, I will. And it'll be great and it'll be amazing. And you'll get your one photo that you think you're coming in to have. But if I do more with your family. You're going to spend thousands of dollars.
Lisa DiGeso: Yeah.
Jodi Hendricks: And I don't say this whenever it's a normal client. I don't say this whenever it's a normal shoot. Right. But I do understand the power that this has because then even whenever I am out on a photo shoot [00:54:00] and I know that I'm rolling through all of the combinations that I need to get on the shoot, I know how powerful it is gonna be.
I know how much the parents are gonna love the photos. I know the difference between, okay, this is gonna be a $2,000 shoot, this is gonna be a $10,000 shoot.
Lisa DiGeso: Yeah.
Jodi Hendricks: Like just based on how much like persuasion and like control I have over it and what I'm creating, because I know that they're gonna be so good on the backend mm-hmm.
That people aren't gonna be able to say no to those photos. So there is that level of like control around it that I will always have in my back pocket. That, that it's that through line that I was talking about before that. Knowing that you can be that good on a photo shoot, that you can control things to that extent.
You also know that you're gonna be able to have a ton of control over your sales room and how much money you're making and what you can [00:55:00] demand and what you know you can set your worth at. Because then it's something that you're completely studying yourself outside of what anybody else in your market is doing.
Lisa DiGeso: Yeah.
Jodi Hendricks: So, so there is that level of manipulation to it. There is that level of control of Yeah, I, I know exactly what I'm doing. I know that I'm gonna come and I'm gonna pull this lever and I'm gonna be this good on the shoot, so then I know I'm gonna make a lot of money from it.
Lisa DiGeso: Yeah, I love that. You know what's funny is I do something in my newborn sessions that I didn't realize.
'cause I always, right before I do the parents with their newborn and I tell 'em, ask them to tell me how they met and they tell me their love story.
Jodi Hendricks: Yeah.
Lisa DiGeso: And they just get like sparkly and then I get them holding their baby. And that's the shot.
Jodi Hendricks: I literally just said the same exact thing the other day.
Somebody asked me like, if I have, you know, a new family and, 'cause we were, it was a bonus call inside of the posing method. So it was all my students who had already taken it, they know what we're talking about. And she [00:56:00] asked if I have a brand new family, so it's mom, dad, or dad and dad, mom and mom, whatever.
And like one baby child. So there's not a lot of shared experiences yet, right, because the baby is so young. Yeah. And I was like, oh no, no, no, no. You still have so much. All you have to do is ask them about their wedding day. All you have to do is ask them, Hey, look at this baby that you have right now. Is this the dream?
Is this what you thought this was gonna feel like? And it's so powerful that I've had, yeah. I've had other students of mine saying, Jodi, you've gotta harness this a bit because. Especially whenever you're coming in with newborns and things like that, you get moms coming in who are just, don't ruin all their makeup.
Yeah. And they'll cry these big buckets of tears. And so it's really powerful the way that it works and the way that you can control the mind and how you can get people to relax on your photo shoots. So
Lisa DiGeso: I love it.
Jodi Hendricks: I like that you like naturally keyed into that too.
Lisa DiGeso: I think it's also about being curious, be curious [00:57:00] about your clients and, yeah.
'cause it doesn't come from, it's like I just really honestly do wanna know, but I also know the result and the sparkle in the eye when someone's talking about something they love and something that's so meaningful to them. Yeah, it's so
Jodi Hendricks: great. Yeah. But Lisa, that comes with experience that you have because you're confident and because you're comfortable as a photographer, right?
Yeah. When we have, like for my students, whenever they're photographers who like don't have as much confidence or they don't have their systems sort of nailed down of how they run a photo shoot or they're really struggling buying opposing guide here, an opposing guide there and trying to memorize poses and their value and their worth is really wrapped up in, oh my God, I have to go on this shoot and I have to know this and this and this and this, and I have to make sure that I can do, and, and they get so like,
Lisa DiGeso: yeah,
Jodi Hendricks: sort of pent up and anxious and nervous and, yeah.
So like the, the funny thing is, is that the posing method, we talk so much about, you know, the, the moms, the dads, them having their [00:58:00] insecurities and how that always sort of like manifests on the shoot. But learning to pose this way also manages the photographer's insecurities. Yep. Because then once you're getting into that scenario, you're not having to memorize poses.
You're not having to memorize, what am I gonna do next? You're not having to go in thinking like, oh my God, are they gonna judge me because I go blank in the middle of a photo shoot? And inside the posing method, there's a whole entire method that you can use to keep you from ever going blank ever again on a shoot.
But like whenever you're managing your own insecurities as the photographer, that's whenever magic can happen because you are managing yours. You are managing theirs, then you know that that experience can happen. But you are able to sit in that curiosity inside of the shoot. You're able to relax and just be like, I wanna know what you guys are thinking and feeling right now, because you're not trying to prove anything, right?
Mm-hmm. [00:59:00] Like you're established, you've got all this experience behind your or under your belt, and your clients come to you knowing that you're gonna be as good as you are. But that doesn't come. Naturally that comes with time and with practice. And luckily there's education out there that you do and that I do and things like that that can take photographers from starting out at like step A and getting them to step Z literally within my course can be done.
It can be done in four hours. Like you can literally be shooting differently tomorrow if you wanted to jump in and take this kind of education. But there's, there's this great, how long have you been shooting, Lisa?
Lisa DiGeso: Oh, 15 years.
Jodi Hendricks: Yeah, exactly. So whenever we started, like I started 18 years ago, right?
Whenever we started their. There had to be this gap in the in, in, in, like your talent, right? It was like we really had that [01:00:00] artist gap of here's the thing that we think we can create, and here's the thing we're actually creating. And there's this huge gap of, oh my God, my work has gotta suck for a really long period of time.
Right? So that was the dynamic whenever we were first starting out, and then the internet really happened. And the internet put the social comparison theory on crack, right? Yeah. Because it automatically takes a brand new photographer who is still in that space, where they're not creating the way that clients are.
Clients can go on Pinterest, put together a mood board, walk up to a brand new photographer and be like, here, create this. Right. And that Bfit Harover has no idea how to do any of that stuff. And for us, it would've taken us, you know, 10 years to get to the place that we're actually creating in that way.
That's, you know, Pinterest worthy, magazine worthy, get it [01:01:00] published, like understanding like how to actually do that. But nowadays, there's all this education that can literally take a photographer from, you know, its infancy to all the way being of mastery within three years. Yeah. Five years. If you invest and if you do the right education and if you do the things that you know, you know that you need inside of your business.
That's the part that's wild to me, is that photographers now have it so much easier than we did whenever we were first starting because there's this speed train. That you can get on and you can just learn it all like right away and be making six figures, multiple six figures in such a short period of time.
As long as you know that the education that you're getting into is like really legit and really great. Yeah. So
Lisa DiGeso: I love that. So good. I love this conversation. So
Jodi Hendricks: good. We went from, we went from talking period to period speed [01:02:00] Trains of education.
Lisa DiGeso: I love it. Shoot.
Jodi Hendricks: Can we title, can we, can we title the podcast that like
Lisa DiGeso: called the
Jodi Hendricks: Period Menopause
Lisa DiGeso: Brain?
No, the Perimenopause Train. How about that?
Jodi Hendricks: I love, I love that. Throw that into your chat. GBT tell it to give you something witty. 'cause like we've really run the, the gamut here, haven't
Lisa DiGeso: we? I love it. I love it. I honestly could spend like the next four hours just continuing this conversation. I love it, but I don't I
Jodi Hendricks: think so too.
I, it's just. It's just so deep. It can go for
Lisa DiGeso: so deep. So many directions. It's so deep. But there's so like, I'm gonna have to have you back on obviously, 'cause this is been so, I
Jodi Hendricks: love that. I would love to
Lisa DiGeso: come back.
Jodi Hendricks: Well, I think that maybe now you, you have to come over and be on posers is what I'll be on, on
Lisa DiGeso: posers.
You can ask me whatever you want.
Jodi Hendricks: I, I love it. I love it. I'll, I'll dig down into your, the depths of your brain instead of you
Lisa DiGeso: enjoying mine. Oh, analyzing. Yeah, because there's, it's interesting in there. You never [01:03:00] know what you're gonna get.
Jodi Hendricks: You never know. Same here. Same here. I love that.
Lisa DiGeso: Okay, so we're gonna do a lightning round 'cause I love to do these.
What was your most unhinged era that you're now proud of?
Jodi Hendricks: We've said a lot of cuss words here and I feel, I feel like people at least know that I'm a little bit unhinged myself most of the time. So whenever I say the next words know that it comes from a very loving place. A loving place for women. And there's no, there's no, you're like, where are you taking this, Jody?
My favorite, most unhinged. Era of my life is what I call my slut spree. Ah, and the year af that is said with love everybody who is out there living their best lives and doing, yeah, no
Lisa DiGeso: slut shame.
Jodi Hendricks: All of the wonderful things. And there is not a slut shamer in any of this. No, I call it my slut spree. I love it because after, okay, so whenever I first met my ex-husband, I was 19 years old.
I married him whenever I was 22, so I never had that. [01:04:00] So your wilder sort of thing. But, so the year after my divorce, I was like, you know what? We're gonna have a little bit of fun. We're gonna figure out who we are, right? Mm-hmm. We're gonna figure out who she is.
Lisa DiGeso: Yeah.
Jodi Hendricks: So I took a year, uh, it actually got cut short because I met my now husband and he, I get mad at him all the time.
I'm like, you stopped my sluts, Brie, how dare you? But now that I look back on it, it wasn't just like me. Like wanting to, you know, just have some fun and yeah, like date and do whatever I wanted to do. Because also I had my boys 90% of the time, I had Wednesdays, I had one day a week. So my definition of flooding around is probably not everybody else's definition, not universal.
But yeah, I took this year and I like had this like year of, yes, basically in regards to dating, putting myself out there, like seeing what that felt like again. But really what [01:05:00] I was doing is I was like self like validating, right? I was like, am I still attractive? Are mens gonna still think that I'm attractive?
Like I'm divorced, I've got three kids. Is the whole like, oh she's got baggage thing. Is that a deal? Is that gonna be part of the deal? So it was a lot of that. But my whole point in all of this is that while I was on my sled spree. I Instagram storied, the whole entire thing. And I would go on these dates.
I would never talk about the sledding. I would never talk about the actual sleeping with people. But I would go on all of these dates and I would come out of the dates and then basically be like raiding the dates, raiding the men, talking about all the like horrible men that are out there to date talking about the horrible things they would wear.
I had this whole entire rant on cargo shorts for the longest time. 'cause this guy showed up on a date with cargo shorts. And then I literally, I said I had to go to the bathroom and I walked out. 'cause I was like, I [01:06:00] will not go on a date with a man who can't even put on a pair of pants for me. No. So if you can imagine as unhinged as I am, just as a normal human.
Now imagine that running through dating and that whole world and it being literally a play-by-play on my Instagram stories. If you talk to any of my OG followers, that was their absolute favorite time of my life.
Lisa DiGeso: I love it.
Jodi Hendricks: Yeah. And then I met my husband and he put a stop to all of it,
Lisa DiGeso: so that's awesome.
How long have you been married?
Jodi Hendricks: I've been remarried now two years.
Lisa DiGeso: Congratulations. We're hitting our thank you. Oh gosh. I got married at 23 and I'm 48 when we're still married.
Jodi Hendricks: So that in and of itself is a feat.
Lisa DiGeso: Yeah, it's a feat.
Jodi Hendricks: But also, you know what, once you've got one man trained, don't go try to do another one.
Lisa DiGeso: Seriously. It's funny 'cause I've had so many friends go through divorces and I'm, and I love to go on Tinder and, 'cause I'm married and I'm like, oh
Jodi Hendricks: my God, I
Lisa DiGeso: couldn't download this. And [01:07:00] I'm like, it's like Amazon shopping for a human. How come there's no reviews? There should be reviews on there.
Jodi Hendricks: There should be reviews.
And actually there are now there's, there's some sort of, is it, I don't remember what it's called, but I remember hearing about it that women have created these forums that they can go into, especially in their cities, and talk about the men who are on these dating sites. Yes. I don't remember what it's called, but I, I do know that it exists.
Lisa DiGeso: It's like on Facebook groups, I think it's called. Are We Dating the Same Guy? And
Jodi Hendricks: there
Lisa DiGeso: is some Chaos.
Jodi Hendricks: Chaos, chaos in there. Yeah. So thank God women, women are so smart. We are so smart. We, we'll share stories for survival. I love it. Yeah. And you know what, if there, if there was an Amazon in regards to dating, I was Amazon Prime.
I was getting men in and out deliver that by tomorrow. Okay. Ham it on my doorstep and now I now you're probably a piece of trash and I wanna return you.
Lisa DiGeso: I love it. I love it. You're hilarious. I love it. Okay. If your personality was an ice cream flavor, what would yours be? [01:08:00]
Jodi Hendricks: I think I would be Rocky Road. I think it would be like everybody kind of loves the chocolate surrounding, but every once in a while you're gonna get a little bit of nuttiness.
Lisa DiGeso: I love it.
Jodi Hendricks: I think I'm Rocky Road. Yeah.
Lisa DiGeso: I'm Moonbeam Ice Cream because no one knows what the hell's in it. Oh,
Jodi Hendricks: I literally, my thought right there was, what the hell is, that's the Benon Boone
Lisa DiGeso: song. He's got Moon that
Jodi Hendricks: is so,
Lisa DiGeso: yeah. So I'm like, I
Jodi Hendricks: What
Lisa DiGeso: is movie Be Mike
Jodi Hendricks: Scream? That's country. That's country.
Country,
Lisa DiGeso: right? No, he's, oh gosh. I'll send you a song called Ghost Town. I'm obsessed with him. I'm obsessed with him.
Jodi Hendricks: I love him. No, I know who he is. I just thought he was more like country based and I was just gonna say that. That's maybe why I don't know that song.
Lisa DiGeso: Maybe,
Jodi Hendricks: but I know that I listen to Chill Hits and I'm pretty sure he's on Chill Hits all the time.
So
Lisa DiGeso: probably
Jodi Hendricks: God tell me I'm 40 without telling me I'm 40.
Lisa DiGeso: Oh, seriously. Okay, well then that is my next song. I mean, the next question is, what's a song that makes you feel instantly untouchable?
Jodi Hendricks: It is hands down, uh, glorious by Macklemore [01:09:00] because. It was my theme song during my divorce. It's actually the theme song that's running with my, with the Posers podcast.
I've run it through my business. It's been literally, I branded a piano version of it inside of my business for the last eight years at least. But when I was going through my divorce, glorious With by Macklemore was like really popular. And there's like a line in it that says something along the lines of, and now I'm back.
But I never left that basically, this is what I was made for. This is what I'm supposed to be doing. So like it's 100% that.
Lisa DiGeso: I love it. I love it. Okay, so yeah, what's
Jodi Hendricks: yours?
Lisa DiGeso: Honestly? Enter Sandman by Metallica.
Jodi Hendricks: I love that. If, if we were going along that route, mine's the thong song by Cisco. Like just the ultimate like song that gets me out of my chair and that I will dance to is thong song by Cisco for sure.
Lisa DiGeso: I have a playlist called I'm In a Fucking Mood and it has all like. [01:10:00] Heavy rock, like heavy metal rock, like things. You would not looking at me, you would be like, what? Like I am the deepest guns and roses fan. I'm so, I'm going to Guns and Roses with my sister in August, and I'm so excited.
Jodi Hendricks: No, I love that.
I'm not much of a music person, but whenever I go into meeting feel good, pick me up. I'm like a Nina Simone. I'm like, oh
Lisa DiGeso: yeah.
Jodi Hendricks: Yeah. Like I, I love all that little Tina Turner. Yeah. I'll, I'll go down that road for sure. I
Lisa DiGeso: love it.
And I'd love to end my interviews just with this last question, and it is, what are you currently curious about or artistically curious about?
Jodi Hendricks: Oh, this doesn't match the question, but what I am artistically curious about right now is kind of getting yourself out of a slump.
Lisa DiGeso: Mm.
Jodi Hendricks: Like I feel kind of creatively bored.
Lisa DiGeso: Yeah.
Jodi Hendricks: Right now. But also like, I love the way that I shoot. I love the work that I do. I love my clients, I love all of that. [01:11:00] But inside of a studio, I feel like I do a lot of like really like, you know, different compositions and like the way that I set people up and the way that I pose.
I love it. But I also feel like, okay, what's next? Okay. Like, where can I push this boundary? Mm-hmm. Where can I go in this next spot? And like, I always like to be looking for inspiration outside of the photo world and more in the design world, and more in like fashion world and like things like that. So right now I'm really curious about.
What is like my next look, what's my next move? What's my next like thing that I'm gonna be doing inside of the studio? And where's that gonna be defined and where am I gonna find that inspiration?
Lisa DiGeso: Yeah.
Jodi Hendricks: For it, because I know it'll come. It just, you know, I trust myself that it'll come at some point, but I'm just getting a little bit stagnant.
Yeah. In my own work, and I wanna push myself. So that's where I'm at. I'm curious of myself.
Lisa DiGeso: I love it. I love it. Well, Jovi, thank you so much for hanging out with me today. This has been [01:12:00] so fun and delightful and silly, and I just love conversations like this.
Jodi Hendricks: I love it too. I feel like we were immediate best friends.
The minute you put on the screen, I was like, oh my God, I like you. I love you.
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.
