Some Things Break Your Heart But Fix Your Vision: Brand Clarity

Let me take you on a journey back when digital photography was a storm brewing on the horizon of my career. As the industry clung to the past, I dared to hitch my wagon to the future, stirring up criticism but ultimately revolutionizing my business. This episode is my personal testament to the power of unshakeable confidence and the value of staying true to your vision, no matter the turbulence you face. 

We're unlocking practical wisdom for maintaining laser focus on your goal, upholding your principles and relentlessly chasing your ambition, regardless of the hurdles. I'll speak to the significance of self-evaluation, discovering a common thread in your business, and how going back to your roots can reignite your passion. Brace yourself for an enlightening experience that will arm you with the clarity and confidence you need to conquer your business journey.

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Chapters

• 0:03 Building Unshakable Confidence in Business
• 10:33 Taking Massive Action Towards Your Vision

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:03

Boost your Visibility is for you, the creative entrepreneur who has a product or service-based business that you need to grow while keeping your family and your well-being top priority. I'm your host, brenda Eckhart, photographer and brand strategist. Boost your Visibility empowers you with the latest strategies to help you get more traffic on search and social. But this isn't your typical business podcast. There won't be pressure to do more, more, more or hustle, hustle, hustle. Instead, I'm giving you strategies and systems to help you work smarter so you can avoid burnout and be more present in your everyday life. Here you'll find motivation, inspiration and all that you need to keep your work and your life moving in a positive direction. Let's get started. Some things can break your heart, but fix your vision. That is episode three of Boost your Visibility. Thank you so much for being here Before we get started. I would appreciate it if you subscribe to this podcast and if you leave a rating. That would be amazing. So, a little bit of a story that will help to bring this whole thought together and one that I think that you probably can relate to in some form or fashion.

Speaker 1: 1:25

So, in the last economy downturn that we had in 2010-2011, it was a very unique time for photographers, because not only did we have the uncertainty of the economy, but we also had the digital revolution happening. Yes, I have been a photographer for that long. So when that occurred, photographers were floundering. I was watching pretty much everyone that I learned from close their doors, unless they were out of state and in a different kind of micro economy that was a little more protected. Pretty much everybody was on shaky ground. So the choice to go digital was one that you would think it was just a natural progression. It definitely was not. Photographers are artists and they really as a whole believed that if you got rid of film and all that went with it, that you were no longer an artist, that there was sort of a death of the art by going digital. I'm thinking it's very similar to how AI is going to unveil itself to us, because there is so much good that has come from digital photography that nobody knew about and everybody just really fought it, no matter what age or stage they were in in their photography business.

Speaker 1: 2:55

It was a pretty big uproar and I decided one day well, not one day, but over time that I was going to go digital and I got really clear on my vision of what I wanted for my business. I did not look back. I actually stepped outside of my studio and imagined myself lighting a match and just tossing it back. I can visualize it to this day. I just decided I was going digital and there was no turning back. So that meant that I would photograph the session. I would charge by the time and the value of what I was bringing, rather than prints and packages and if you need to purchase this in order to get that. There was no more of that. I wanted straightforward pricing because it worked for my life. It was how I preferred to purchase and it just made a lot of sense.

Speaker 1: 3:48

I was tired of the game of selling and upselling and trying to get into people's heads a little bit. I'm just not a natural salesperson. I'm a mom who understands the value of photography. I understand the value of my work and all that I've put into it, and that is just a whole different way of selling is getting to know your customer on such a deep level of what the value is that you're bringing into their life. So I was the first one in my county to go digital and I was flooded with a lot of hate messages on Facebook. Facebook was big then and I was told that I was a fake, I was a fraud, I was a phony. I was criticized for my work, saying that it was super inconsistent, and I was in a really good place with my work. It was very consistent, but that is a pain point for someone that had been in the business for at that time.

Speaker 1: 4:50

I was in business for, I want to say, six or seven years, so I really had my legs underneath me. But it still doesn't take much to kind of shake you at that stage in business, because you're always kind of waiting for the other shoe to drop, especially when you work for yourself. So, knowing that the buck stopped with me, I was my only employee. I worked for myself by myself. If word got out that that's what people thought, it really got my head for a period of time and, as a matter of fact, last night I was elbow to elbow photographing with that same photographer that said these things and they're digital, they've been digital for a long, long time. Everybody made the same decision about six months later than I did. It's just that I was the first one and I had the guts to do it.

Speaker 1: 5:45

I got clear on my vision and once I got past sort of the fuzziness and the instability, the wobbly wobbliness of somebody criticizing me and my work, I took massive action and I just never looked back and it's been a full and beautiful photography career for me because I simply just got clear, went forward and at this stage it would really take a lot to shake my vision and it would take a lot to shake my clarity, because I know where I'm going, who I'm looking to reach and I know the value that I bring. I'm not perfect. I make mistakes every single day, but I know my intent, my integrity, my clarity. And that brings me to the fact that some things can break your heart but they also fix your vision. When we get very stuck in the day to day and we're not able to see our business kind of from a drone view for what it is or where we're going, we kind of forget the big picture. That's when it's a little easier to get that shake and confidence and it's a little easier for things to get to us. And I have four tips that can help you to kind of bring it back to center, back to home plate.

Speaker 1: 7:08

Whatever the analogy you want to choose, for it is the first one is to do a self evaluation, to really evaluate where you're at in business. It's awesome to do like a six month or one year evaluation on yourself as yourself. As small business owners, we don't have the benefit of that really honest look at what we're doing and how we're doing it. So sometimes that can involve looking at your reviews and feedback. You can ask questions of your customers, maybe send out a survey, whatever that looks like to you to make a full report basically on yourself as a business owner the pros of what you're doing well, the cons of what you may struggle with or that you're weak in and start to identify. Do I maybe need to offload some of this to someone else? Do I need to learn some things? Maybe take a couple days off and go to a training. Do that self evaluation because there is a confidence in knowing your strengths and weaknesses and it's very easy to forget when you're sucked into the go, go, go business day to day grind.

Speaker 1: 8:25

The next thing is what is the common thread that ties your business together? A lot of speakers, podcasters, mentors, whatever will say find your niche, and I actually disagree with that. I say find the common thread that weaves through all of your business. Or, if you're a multi-passionate entrepreneur, what is that common thread that is weaved through what you bring as a business owner? For me, it's helping other people to be empowered with the skills that they need to overcome challenges and to thrive in business, especially in the digital, online world. However you come up with your one or two sentences, it could be an elevator pitch. If you're looking for a way to pull it together, use chat GPT, type in a lot of facts about yourself and say now, make me a two paragraph elevator pitch based on all of the above. So once you figure that out, you really know who you are as a business owner and where you're going.

Speaker 1: 9:38

Again, we lose that vision over time and it's important to find your North Star. Go back to the place you started. That's tip number three. Where did you start? What is the reason that you began? Maybe you want to go to a physical location of where your first sale occurred or you first created something. Maybe it's just going through your photos and looking at that year and seeing what it was like. What was the match that lit the fire that really made you want to do this? Once you see it, you start to feel it and you come back to your home plate, your home base. So you can see now how we're painting the picture of where that confidence that's unshakable really is built, brick by brick.

Speaker 1: 10:33

The fourth tip is to take massive action. Once you have your vision and your clarity, anything that has broken your heart, shaken your confidence behind you now and you're taking massive, massive action and you are heading toward your vision 100%. People can throw stones, say things, do things that make you question everything. It's important to snap back and get back to center of who you are, where you're heading, and once you do, there's nothing that can really stop you or shake you. You know your integrity, you know where you're heading and what your value is that you bring to your customers. Thank you so much for being here again. Please subscribe and give a review. I would love to hear from you and definitely find me on Instagram. It's at Brenda Eckhart, and I look forward to staying connected.