Intro: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the Posers podcast, the place where we skip the fluff. Say the quiet parts out loud and dig into what really matters. This is where photography, psychology, and business collide. I'm Jody, your host, and I'm bringing you my raw takes, hard wins, and a whole lot of unfiltered honesty about what it takes to build a photography business that actually connects and makes money.
So ladies, grab your headphones and get your tits up and your ears open because we are going to build something really incredible together.
Well, hello, hello, hello my beautiful posers and welcome back to another episode of the Posers podcast. If you have been around the block with me a time or 20, 'cause I know you have, then you know that I am not here to say the things. That are going to keep you comfortable. I am here to say the things that actually change something for you, and also [00:01:00] hopefully change things for our industry too, because today we're talking about this phrase that gets thrown around quite a bit, a phrase that is seemingly a badge of honor.
And honestly, it's a phrase that I used to align with and still do in some regards if I'm being honest, because to say that I am a quote unquote. Girl's, girl in the sense that I am very much so going to gas up my girlfriends, be a hype woman. I'm going to support the women in my life with a very fierce loyalty.
Is 100% true, but. The saying itself has become a little bit toxic when it doesn't include the idea of also showing the women around you that they possibly deserve more or they deserve better, or they maybe aren't acting in a way that's going to attract the things that they are saying that they want in their life.
So with that being said, I am not a [00:02:00] girl's girl and I don't wanna be. Yeah. Now before you spiral and think, oh my God, she said she's not a girl's girl. I don't wanna listen to her. stick with me for a little bit because I think that I am going to say some things that align with you also, and might even pull you over here to my dark side because.
What I've seen, especially inside of this industry, is that being a girl's girl has turned into this expectation that we're all just supposed to blindly support each other no matter what. And. If that was the case, then me inside of my world and inside of the circle of women that I have around me, I would be saying to them like, Hmm, don't challenge me.
Don't call me out. Don't make me feel uncomfortable. Just clap for me. Clap for me. Even if I just keep on doing the same things over and over again, clap for me. Even if the things that I'm [00:03:00] doing in my life aren't actually working. Clap for me. Even if I'm saying that my dreams are X, Y, and Z, but you see me doing things that actually would never get me to X, Y, and Z.
So if I was saying those things inside of the circle of women that I am in, then. I would realize that's not support, that would be just keeping me stuck exactly where I am because I'm surrounding myself with a bunch of yes women. So. Back whenever I was just starting out in the photography space, there weren't these small curated retreats or like intimate rooms where you could really connect with people.
And that's something that I love so much about our industry now because back whenever I was starting, the industry just felt really big because. There was these massive conferences with hundreds of photographers with everyone trying to be someone [00:04:00] who really fit into the cliques and matched the cliche.
There was. This one conference, it was called United and I think it turned into being called Spark at one point. this was a really long time ago, so I'm guessing that it doesn't exist anymore. But if you were anyone in the wedding and portrait world, you were there. And I remember walking into that space and immediately feeling like, Ooh, I do not belong here.
Because there was a very clear type, there was this cool girl group and it seemed as if the cool girl group was actually like the whole entire conference because. There was a lot of women there , and these women, they all looked the same. They all talked the same. They all created the same, they had the same website, they had the same style.
They were all also very nice, like super nice, super bubbly. They were sweet on the surface. [00:05:00] And if it wasn't like this group of women, then. It was another group that usually consisted of like a husband and wife, wedding photographer teams. And they also came off as being like very put together, seemingly perfect, most of them very young.
Didn't have kids yet. And they were just brimming with smiles and cheer that just radiated off of them. But it also really felt like everyone in the room was moving around just trying to see who was connected the most, especially who was connected the most to the speakers at the conference and who they could talk to in order to get ahead.
Like it was a social climbing version of like corporate America, but with everybody wearing a floral print. This was like 2013. There was a lot of florals happening, But then there was me and I was in a brutally unhappy [00:06:00] marriage. I had a husband who for sure was not gonna be a husband and wife photography team with me because he didn't even support my business at all.
I had three very young boys. I was. Wildly opinionated, still am. Had a foul mouth on me. Still do. I wasn't quiet, I wasn't sweet. I wasn't brimming with smiles and cheer that radiated off of me, and I definitely wasn't interested in becoming that or being part of that clique Seemingly too. There was also this keynote that was meant to inspire and it was meant to make you cry.
And usually it's given by an industry leader that everyone coveted, right? The room would be all like sobbing and. I'd be looking around wondering when we were gonna talk about business and when we were gonna talk about strategy and there was also a lot of talk back then. It's not seemingly so much of a conversation now, but [00:07:00] there was a lot of like rising tide mentality, which Honestly, I am completely against the idea of rising tide. there I said it. I'm not a girl's girl, and I'm not a rising tide kind of girl either. Oh my God. This episode's gonna get me canceled. Okay, but. What really rubbed me the wrong way is not about the rising tide at all, because I love being in an industry where everybody can think in their own way.
Everybody can sort of beat to their own drum. Everyone can do their own thing in the way that they wanna do it, and we can all succeed. Okay? So it's not about whether you're rising tide or not rising tide, but. There was a whole lot of talk about being rising tide, but with a whole lot of like mean girl energy that kind of bubbled underneath the surface.
Now, am I also willing to admit that my insecurities were probably very heightened during that time because [00:08:00] my life didn't look like theirs? For sure. Absolutely, and I can own that, but. I actually shouldn't own that because even though were my insecurities huge back then, yes. But even now, today when I'm very secure with who I am, and if I walked into a space like that, I probably would have the same kind of reaction to it as I had back then because.
There's simply this really huge part of me that is simply attracted to authenticity, and I had a really hard time seeing any of that on the stages or inside of the rooms that were around me during these conferences. So. I did the only thing that felt authentic to me at the time, which was to go completely in the opposite direction.
And I stopped trying to fit into those circles and I literally, this is so Jodi coded, [00:09:00] I just started hanging out at the hotel bar instead, like literally in the middle of the day. I went the opposite route and I was the two cool for school sort of mentality. And funny enough, I found some other people doing the exact same thing and I sat there with other women who also felt like they were kind of on the outside looking in.
And those conversations were so real. And I gained more from those hours at the bar talking business and talking strategy. What was working for them? What was working for me? Sharing like secrets and sharing stories and there was no pretending and there were no weird social rules about any of it. There was no trying to prove anything.
It was just women. Talking about their lives, exactly who they were, exactly what kind [00:10:00] of businesses they were wanting to build, and what kind of businesses they actually wanted. Because I wasn't there to cry and have a motivational retreat. I was there because I wanted to build something. Now, not to say that there's no crying in business.
I just, this last week, I literally cried for like the first 20 minutes of the mastermind this last week because I had let myself get stretched too thin and I wasn't sleeping enough. And also just business is fucking hard. Right. So crying together and using that as like a determining factor of success for a conference keynote is one thing, but crying because you genuinely like hit a wall and it's okay to say that you crack.
It's okay to show that you're human. It's okay to connect. That kind of way. Those are two very different things. So I'm not coming for the crying at all. I love means some crying. In fact, right after I cried [00:11:00] during the Mastermind from being too exhausted, I felt like I kind of like released something and I felt very rejuvenated.
I had a day full of recording content and making some branding videos after the Mastermind, and by the end of the day I felt unstoppable again. So the crying isn't the thing that, uh, wasn't right for me because also, I think about it this way. I think that crying in business feels like a privilege. Like what a privilege it is to feel this kind of pressure, to know that I'm pushing towards something bigger.
So pressure in and of itself is a privilege and to crack into tears because you're driving towards that pressure. Is simply a byproduct of what you're building. So it's not that crying has any shame to it, but it was the intention behind it all that the intent of the conference was to show the softer [00:12:00] parts and that those emotional parts were supposed to be the takeaways rather than the parts that actually focused on business and how I could make more money, but.
Anyways, I eventually stopped going to those conferences altogether because if I'm being honest, they didn't make me better. They actually made me feel a little bit smaller. And I would come home from those events and I would pick myself apart and I would be like, why can't you just be more like that?
Why aren't you softer? Why don't you fit in? at the same time, I had a husband at home saying the same kind of things to me. So it wasn't just those rooms, it felt like it was everywhere. But here's what's interesting, and I can only really see this now looking back, was that that season of my life really gave me some of the best people in this industry that I know, and every single one of them is still out there, still doing their thing, still building really incredible businesses.
By owning exactly who [00:13:00] they are and without pretending and not trying to fit into some version of what they think that they should be. And what I love the most is that I could reach out to any one of them today. And there is still so much deep respect there and there's so much depth there, and there's no weird competitive energy at all.
And also. They'll probably never hear this podcast e except for my girl, Christina Bell. She'll hear this because she was in that crew back then, and she's still in our industry now. But for the most part, we're not watching each other, we're not keeping tabs on each other. We're not sitting around talking about each other.
we're minding our business to build our business. Okay, so. Whenever I switched from the wedding world into the portrait space, I stopped looking for validation inside of my own industry, and I started paying attention to women who were [00:14:00] actually doing something, women who had really incredible standards for their business.
Women who weren't afraid to be themselves, even if it didn't make everyone like them. And I stepped completely outside of photography and learned from people who moved very differently. Not because I needed to become more like them, but because I needed to become more like me. And that's where this shift happened.
And I realized I don't want to be a girl's girl. I want to be a woman's woman. A woman's woman is not sitting around talking about other people. She's too busy building something. A woman's woman is not in your dms, picking apart someone else's pricing, someone else's work, someone else's life. She's not gossiping about other photographers.
She's focused. She has direction. She knows what she's working toward. And if we bring that into our industry [00:15:00] for a second, there is a little bit of this girls, girls mentality, right? That we're all just gonna hype each other up. That we're all just going to keep gassing each other up, even when there might be some hard conversations that we need to have with the women who are around us because.
A woman's woman is going to have hard conversations with you in a way that plays to your strengths, gasses you up, and pats you on the butt and sends you back out there with a little bit of a bruised ego, but a lot of clear direction. And a woman's woman will hear someone in our industry say something new or say something that challenges the narrative and she'll be like, heck yeah.
Let me sit down. Let me listen. Let me learn. Okay. A girl's girl would not necessarily do that, but a woman's [00:16:00] woman would. A woman's woman will tell you. If you're undercharging, she'll tell you If you're hiding, she'll tell you if you're posting, but you're not actually marketing. She'll tell you that you're waiting for people to find you instead of actually creating demand inside of your business.
And that might feel like it's stings, but you know what hurts even more is another year going by and nothing changing in your business because you've chosen to surround yourself with yes girls. Girls. Girls who won't actually hold up a mirror. And I'll tell you right now, my mastermind is a really hard room to be in.
It is not a room full of women sitting around clapping for each other, doing the bare minimum. It is a room full of women who are like, holy fuck, this is a lot of work. Holy fuck. But it makes a lot of sense They might even be saying about me [00:17:00] that I'm really tough on them, but they also know that I'm really tough because I care so much.
My mastermind is a room full of women who aren't. Whining about having balance or complaining that something is too much, and then a room around them saying like, yeah, I totally understand you. Yeah, you're right. This is too much. They're in a room full of women who are each saying, yeah, but look at the work that you're doing.
Are every single one of them overwhelmed and mind blown? Yes, absolutely. Every single day. But right now, we're also at that turning point in the group that they're all coming out of the build and they're all seeing bookings happening. They're all seeing their audience starting to grow. They're feeling a sense of confidence in themselves as.
Business women, not just as photographers, and it's all starting to pay off. Christina, inside of my group, she's [00:18:00] already made the money back from what she invested in the Mastermind, and she actually made it back within the first like four or five weeks and. Tate, who has already booked out 27 photo shoots in one launch that I taught her.
Three of them have signed leases on new studios that they weren't necessarily planning on signing, but they got into the Mastermind and they got surrounded by a bunch of women's. Women. I have a girl in our group, her name's Hillary, and she's in her first year of business and she is literally crushing it.
She had no idea coming in. She literally said to me, you are my boat. You are the thing that is going to teach me everything that I need to know right now in order to not. Create any bad habits and just start off this business floating from the get go and she's crushing it. And now she's on the path to making six figures in her very first year.
She literally just DMed me this morning that her current [00:19:00] clients are already wanting more of what she's starting to talk about. 'cause she's starting to talk about her transition plan into IPS and selling more products and, serving her clients in such a bigger way. And she just DMed me this morning saying like, my clients are already saying that they're gonna want more, that they're gonna wanna purchase more.
And I was like, hell freaking yeah. This is happening because I've restructured every single one of their businesses from how they show up online to how they price themselves and even down to how they're selling. And there has not been. One ounce of negativity or gossip or cancer inside of the group.
And that's because it is a group of women's women because they're not being protected from the truth because they're being pushed into their next level and they are being women who support women because the part that really matters the most is that a woman's woman is [00:20:00] also really safe. She's not gossiping about you behind your back.
She's not fake supporting you. She's not competing with you in some kind of weird way. She's consistent. She's grounded. She is secure enough in herself that she doesn't need to tear anyone else down in order to feel powerful. She's also the woman who's going to check you whenever you start talking crazy about yourself, whenever you say things out loud in front of your girlfriends clock.
What you're saying for one, but also clock how they respond to it. Whenever you say things like, oh my God, I'm so bad at this, or, oh, why did I do that? That's so stupid of me. Check and see whether or not they're going to say, no, you're not, and stop talking about yourself like that. Because a woman's woman is going to tell you, sure, you made a mistake, or, yeah, you haven't learned this yet.
Or that, yeah, this is something that you need to [00:21:00] move into more, but. A woman's woman will not let the toxic behavior exist even when that toxic behavior is inside of your own head. Because at the end of the day, this isn't just about how you treat other women. It's about the standard that you hold yourself to.
And a woman's woman has standards in her work, in her relationships, in her time, in her energy. She's not available for nonsense, so. If you've been sitting in any sort of spaces that are surrounded by girls, girls, but nothing in your life is actually changing, I want you to ask yourself whether or not you're being supported or if you're being kept comfortable, because those two things are not the same.
I am not a girl's girl. I am a woman's woman and I've built a table that seats other women who are ready to build something. If you love the chitchat and you love the version of the [00:22:00] conference that I painted before, that is a little bit more like emotional and it gears towards the softness and it has this vibe of making sure that emotionally we're taking care of people, then please.
Don't apply for the Mastermind because it will crush you. The work is really intense and the build will make you question every part of yourself and your business. But if you're ready to step into the next version of yourself and you're ready to build the business that you keep telling yourself that you're ready to build, then I'm going to need you to shed that girl side of you.
And I want you to become the woman who's ready, because as of today, the Mastermind is officially open for applications, and you can find the link in the show notes of this episode. But please, honestly, only if you're ready because I'm also not here to waste my time. that's it for [00:23:00] today. Bye for now, friends.
Outro: Okay, so that is a wrap on this episode of the Posers Podcast. If you loved it, please subscribe, rate, and review because honestly, algorithms are needier than all of our ex-boyfriends combined. And ladies, I need all the help I can get. If you've got thoughts, questions, love letters, even hate mail, please send them my way.
I actually read every single one of them. So until next time, stapled, stay messy and don't let the bullshit win. Tits up. Ears open and go build something. Incredible. Bye for now, friends.
