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. So what we are talking about today, honestly, I wish somebody had told me this years ago, but before we get into it, I need you to know that this one shift in what I actually track in my business, and also I use it in my life, now in [00:01:00] my personal life now, too, is honestly the difference between panicking every single quarter and feeling completely calm about where my business is actually headed.
And it actually has nothing to do with having to work harder. In fact, I had this conversation with one of my mastermind students the other day, and it helped to kind of ward off a full-blown panic spiral, so I'm hoping that I can help someone here, too. Uh, here's something that's going to surprise you whenever I say it.
I am painfully type B about my business. Do not roll your eyes at me because this is surprising. I am so type A about so many parts of my business. I'm so type A about the creative and the aesthetic and the way that things look, but I'm painfully type B about the business side of the business and the [00:02:00] financial side of the business.
So I despise spreadsheets. I rarely track my profit and loss statements. I am trying hard to get better at this, but I also do at least know that this is a huge, like, Achilles heel of mine. So I do have a great bookkeeper and a financial team that keeps their eyes on things for me. But really, the only thing that I look at when I'm seeing how the business is running in regards to my revenue is the year-to-date tab in my Stripe account.
If it's in the green, I'm like, "You know what? We're good to go. I'm on track." If it's in the red, then I know I have to tighten my shit up a little bit, right? But this tells me very little about what the finances actually look like. But I also know myself really well. I know that I'm probably not ever going to sit down with spreadsheets the way that I should.
So [00:03:00] what do I do instead? I started tracking the things that I actually control instead. So I was listening to a podcast episode that I love a while back. It was a, a long time ago, so I can't even remember who it was or who said it. But there was something that was said, something that stuck with me so hard that my Type B self could actually, like, grab a hold of this because it felt like something that I could kind of wrap my head around easier than a spreadsheet.
So if you're like me and you hit every quarter only to see a number that surprises you, this might be the missing piece for you too. But also, I think that it could really help anyone who feels like they're kind of like white-knuckling their way through all of it. So here's the idea if you're trying to lose weight, you have two ways that you could basically track it, right? You [00:04:00] can weigh yourself once a week and hope that the number moved, or you can keep track of something controllable every single day, like your calories or your grams of protein or your you know, the grams of sugar that you shouldn't be eating, or minutes in your gym, or whatever.
Something trackable, something controllable. So think about what happens with the first approach. You eat however you eat for, like, seven days, knowing, obviously, and this is the method I use. Not surprising. Type B, again. Uh, you eat however you eat for seven days, knowing that you're trying to eat healthy, but you sneak in a brownie every once in a while.
You go have brunch and you're like, "Oh my God, I love seeing my girlfriends. Like, brunch doesn't really count." You have a couple mimosas. Then Sunday morning, you step on the scale, and it either moved in the right direction or it didn't. And if it didn't, then you kinda know [00:05:00] why, but you can't really...
Like, you gotta think back to your week and you're like, "Eh, was it this? Was it that? Like, was it the takeout on Tuesday, the wine on Friday, those mimosas I had? Is it water retention?" My thing that I always say, I'm like, "Oh, well, I started my period. Of course I'm heavier." But you genuinely, like, cannot tell, right?
Because you weren't tracking anything that would give you an answer. now I want you to compare that. I know that this is surprising, but, like, you can compare this same exact strategy inside of your business. Just like you could look back at if you were tracking during the week, you could see how much sugar you took in every day.
Or you could see, like, okay, how much protein am I eating every day? Or how many, like, minutes did I clock in the gym? It's controllable and easier, right? I'm not saying, like, that you're tracking every single calorie like the Type A girlies would. [00:06:00] But it is something that you can look at each day and know, like, "Okay, am I on track?
Am I not on track?" You're not waiting the whole entire week or waiting the whole entire month to find out if you did a good job. Like me, you're not waiting until you try to put on a pair of jeans in your closet and you can't button them anymore because you've been wearing leggings for a whole month straight, right?
But- You already know, if you're keeping track of something controllable, then you already know what you've, like, been doing, and you can keep up with it a little bit easier. Now, this translates surprisingly straight over to your business, too, because that correlation is the same. If you get to the end of a quarter and then you look at your revenue and it's down 30% from where you expected it to be and you panic, that's just like the scale method at the end of the week or at the end of your month, because you have no [00:07:00] idea why.
Especially whenever you're doing it only once a quarter, right? Like, you can't look back over the quarter and think, "Was it my content? Is it my messaging? Is it my pricing? Is it just a really slow season? Is it that the economy is bad?" You genuinely can't tell, because revenue is just like the number on the scale.
It's just the outcome. It's the number at the very end of a very long chain of a ton of different behaviors. And by the time you're looking at it, it's already too late to fix whatever was actually causing it. So- Here's what tracking behavior can look like instead. You can know how many DMs did you send this week as part of your DM outreach strategy?
How many reels did you actually publish toward your lead magnets and towards your funnels? How many new lead magnets did you create this month? How many [00:08:00] collaborations did you do? These are all the things that you can control completely each day with zero dependency on the economy, or the algorithm, or luck, or Hail Marys, or anything.
They are trackable behaviors. And whenever you track those instead of revenue, then obviously something huge happens because you stop panicking at every quarter. Because instead of waiting until the end of the quarter to find out if you did a good job, you already know every single day whether you're doing the things that lead to the outcome that you actually want.
So if revenue is soft this month, but you can look back, then it's easier to see it, right? You can go back and you can see if you sent your DMs, if you published your reels, if you did your collaborations. You know the issue is somewhere else if you know that you did all [00:09:00] those, right? It's something else in your system, something you can actually go in and figure out.
But if revenue is low and you also know that you skipped your DM strategy for three weeks straight, well, then you know exactly why, and you didn't need to wait until the end of the quarter, and you can see the damage as it's happening, and you can fix it. That reminds me of an ad that I see on Instagram all the time and then people change it into like a reel for their business, where it's that like sticky tape stuff that the guy slams on the water tank and it like fixes the leak that's like coming out of the water tank before it all like shatters and erupts or whatever.
That's the same idea, is that you can see where your leak is, and you can slap that tape on it and be like, "Whoop. Nope. Let me get that back into shape right now." It's not- Just that behavior tracking is more [00:10:00] useful or that it's calmer, it's that it's entirely in your hands. You either sent the DMs or you didn't.
You either published the reels or you didn't. You either did your email marketing or you didn't, right? When you're anchored to something that you feel is, like, fully controllable, then you stop white-knuckling your way through every single week waiting to see if, like, I don't know, if the business gods are just gonna bless you with a good month.
They're just gonna bless you with some bookings. You start actually trusting that consistency because you can see it daily. Like, it's black and white. Instead of guessing at it every time that you finally decide to look at your books. Okay? So, shorter episode for today, but here's your homework. Stop waiting for the quarterly number to tell you how you're doing.[00:11:00]
Pick three or four behaviors that will actually move your business, whether or not that's DMs sent, or reels that are published, or lead magnets that are built, or collaborations that are pitched. Track those daily and weekly instead. That's also how you can really keep track. You know how I talk all the time about how, like, 80% of your day should be spent on marketing
Well, marketing and sales, and the other 20% should be spent on actually running your business? This is how you can track it, right? Because you can see these controllable behaviors, whether or not you're sitting your butt in your chair and you're doing your DM strategy, you're doing your outreach strategy, you're doing trial reel strategies.
You're, you know that you're building lead magnets. You know that you're building funnels. You know that you are, like, creating collaborations, and they've got the underbelly built to sustain what you want those collaborations to do. When your butt [00:12:00] is in your chair and you are doing those trackable, controllable behaviors, then you can know that you are running your business in that 80/20, what's the right word? Uh, not probability. I don't know. That 80/20 Why can't I think of the word?
I don't know. It starts with a P. Anyways, 80% of your time on marketing, 20% of your time on the rest of your business. This is how you can measure it. This is how you, you know you can stay in that ratio. All right? So also, disclaimer, do not stop tracking your revenue because the IRS will literally jail you.
All right? But let revenue be the result that you check on later as the result of your other behaviors, not the thing that you are sort of like white-knuckling and just peeking at around the corner because you're too scared to look at your numbers until [00:13:00] every quarter or every time you're having to do your taxes.
That would be really, that would be really... That's not even type B, that's type C, D, and F if you look at things once a year. But if the things that I talked about in this episode feel like I am speaking Pig Latin to you, that is okay. Is Pig Latin still a thing? We used to talk about Pig Latin. We used to speak in Pig Latin whenever I was a little girl.
I don't know if that's still a thing 'cause I haven't heard about it in forever. And if it's not still a thing, all of you are thinking like, "Wow, Jody, you're really old." No, but if this episode feels like I am speaking Latin to you, that is okay. I, I didn't use to know this stuff either, and learning them is how I have scaled from $40,000 a year to now over half a million a year.
And you can learn all of it with me inside of the Posers Mastermind. That is going to kick off again for [00:14:00] 2027. So check the show notes and your newsletter for a link to that wait list, where you'll have also an amazing community of such badass women that I absolutely love, and they will be around you, building with you as well.
So, all right. That's kind of it for today's episode. I will see you back here next week. Bye for now, Posers.
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.
