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- [00:00]
A
It's really, really, really important that we don't get sucked into a spiral of fear based. Or anger. Fear or anger. Right. Based on what the media is feeding us and what we're seeing on social media and what, you know, we just need to be able to park that. Hey, hey, hey. And welcome back to the Difference Maker Revolution podcast. And poor old Steve isn't feeling well. So these two podcasts, you just have the three of us. You have Jonathan, Janine, and myself with Steve. We hope you get better soon. You'll be back with us soon. So just. This is one of our favorite subjects, I think, because it's. We see people being affected by it every single day, and we see many of our members being affected by it every single day. Right. And we see ourselves being affected by it every single day. Right. And it's titled Control the Controllables. So what do we mean, Janine, about when we say control the controllables? What does that actually mean? Does it mean that, you know, okay, well, I gone to my car and I've got control of the accelerator and the steering wheel, and now I'm in control. Or like, why don't you talk about.
- [01:24]
B
Or we're talking about your life, Vernon. So I guess if you want to use a car analogy, I know you love your analogies, but we're talking about your life, you know, and so we all, we all have our lives, but we also live in the world around us. And I know we all hit days where we feel out of control because of what's going on in the world, what might be going on with our friends, what could be going on with our family, could be health, it could be economics, it could be public. There's so many things that can make you feel out of control. And so when that happens, it's easy to spiral. It's easy to. It's easy. We tend to follow the negative way more easily than we follow the positive. And so it's easy to spin out of control when things start ticking towards the negative or things start feeling more out of control. But it's up to us to get everything back into control and to control what you can control. We can't control what other people do. We can't control what our government does. We can't control what people put on social media. We can't control what, what our friends might say. But you can control your own mind and your own thoughts and the actions that you take in each and every day.
- [02:34]
A
But, Janine, it's not easy to do that, right? Because if you think about it, like, if you think, what do the media sell? They sell drama, right?
- [02:43]
B
And fear.
- [02:45]
A
Yeah, but they sell fear through drama, right? And everything is always built up to be more than it is, right? Like, like just think about when you woke up this morning and one of our team members who works in the Philippines, you know, and what you saw on the news and the natural thing was, right, oh my gosh, everybody in the Philippines, their water is poisoned, right? And, and, and, and you know, the media make these things out to be often bigger than they actually are, right? Because that's what they're selling. They're selling advertising. They're getting paid in advertising to attract people's eyes and ears and attention, right? And they do that through drama. Because so many humans, well, we're all wired to enjoy a bit of drama, right? Some of us more than others. But, but you're right, you have to work as hard as being aware of rather than letting stuff you cannot control get you down, right? Understand what you can control. And that starts with yourself and what you believe and what you yourself talk to yourself, right? It's really, really, really important that we don't get sucked into a spiral of fear based. Or anger. Fear or anger, right? Based on what the media is feeding us and what we're seeing on social media and what, you know, we just need to be able to park that. So Jean, have you any, have you any strategies that you deploy, enabled to do that? Like, do you, how do you, how do you manage your day, your time to protect yourself from everything you can't control and focus on what you can control?
- [04:41]
B
So I'm a big believer in mindset and task list, so. And visualization, right? So for me, that's one of the reasons why I like having a physical studio outside of my house, because Tim and I differ on this, right? Tim works from home and he finds it really hard sometimes to shut things off because while he goes into an office, it's still at home. And so sometimes it's hard to shut things off because you're inside your house. He's working on that. You know, actually he's looking at putting doors up in the office. So he actually has to physically open a door and shut it. And there's something about that visualization. For me, when I walk through the door doors of the studio, it's studio, you know, and, and so I have that visual representation. I've driven, I've driven myself from home. I've listened to positive podcasts in the car that get Me focused on work, get me focused on the day. Get me focused on thinking like a business owner, thinking creative, whatever it is I'm listening to, right? And so now by the time I get to the studio, I'm walking through the door. I am on task all day for work. The night before. I have made my task list for the day and then I look at it before I get on the call with you guys every morning and I adjust it, like what might need to happen. And then those are the things that I achieve in the day. Do things interrupt? Of course. You know, clients interrupt. You guys have been known to interrupt. You know, you know, I mean, things will, you know, my mother will call me and she'll call me five times even though I ignore it. And I'm like, all right, why is my mother calling me five times? What, what's going on?
- [06:09]
C
Right?
- [06:09]
B
So things are going to interrupt your day. But if you. But I do not. Because it's, it's like, this is why I like having our engine to post our, to schedule our social media posts. I don't have to be on social media during the day to post to social media. I can schedule it and I, and even if I want to post instantly, I can use it with our scheduler to post immediately. I don't have to physically get into Facebook and Instagram to post. Right? Which is huge to keep me out of that, that spiral or that, you know, like, oh, let me see what this is and let me see what this is. And then sooner or later it's 30 minutes have gone by and you've lost your productivity because you've got and sucked into somebody else's world, somebody else's agenda. And that to me is the big thing. You cannot get s. And it doesn't have to be the news. It can be a friend, it could be a family member that sucks you into their agenda for the day and now you've lost yours.
- [07:03]
A
And it happens, it happens so easily even when you're aware of it, like by doing it. So that's a great example, Janine, of, you know, you stay off social media during the day and you know, when you do your social media time, you know, you're working on posts to promote your business and tell your story. You know, you might do a month in one go or weeks in one go because it is so easy just to get caught in that doom scrolling. Jonathan, I've noticed something about you and that is that you don't really seem to pay any attention to the news at all, right? So. So just talk to us about that. Is that a conscious decision to protect yourself from what you can't control and focus on what you can control?
- [07:54]
C
I think it's a conscious decision. It's. It's more a mindset of, like, occasionally I'll log on to a new site and just have a look, scan of the headlines or something. But some people I notice, like, on social media, the news, or celebrities, like, people are obsessed with celebrities and, like, their life and what's going on. And I'm like, I don't care. Like, it's just that not caring about other people in. Okay, I'm gonna reframe that. Because I'm a dove and I care a lot about people in my world. Well, couldn't care less about Taylor Swift getting engaged. Like, it has no impact on me whatsoever. Like, it does not impact my life in any way. No way. Like, nothing. I only care about things that I'm interested in and I enjoy or that impact my life directly or indirectly. So I think it's just a mindset of just being. Understanding that. I think one key mindset is responsibility. I think people love to shirk responsibility when in reality, the only person responsible for your success is you. It's not the government. I don't care who's in the White House. It doesn't matter. I don't care who's on planet Mars. It doesn't matter. I don't care how many times Taylor Swift's gotten engaged. None of that impact your success. The only thing that impacts your success or failure is, is you, your attitude, the inputs that you put to get the outputs that you want. And so many of us want to blame. We want to blame the economy, we want to blame the government, we want to blame that side and this side and our side is better than the other. It's like, it doesn't matter. You matter. You matter. What you do, what you do every single day matters. And that's where the focus needs to be. Because you can't control Facebook ad costs, you can't control the weather. Right. You just got to control the things that you are in direct control of that you can actually influence and actually have inputs into. And that's going to get you your output. Do certain. Can certain things have an indirect impact and make your inputs harder? Yes. That just means you got to work smarter and work harder and work better and just deal with it. You know, if life throws a brick at you, just dodge it and, you know, build a shield or something. Like, I don't Know like you just gotta focus on problem solving and taking responsibility because nothing else defines your success like you being successful or failing other than what you do.
- [10:46]
B
And you do have that shield ability, Jonathan, because your phone actually gives you the ability to set focus parameters, you know, and so you can put a work focus on which doesn't allow anything to come through unless it's an emergency. You can set that so you're even your phone knows that this needs to happen, you know, and sometimes just flipping it over isn't necessarily the only way to do things because obviously if an emergency is happening, like I always need to know if something's going on with my kids, right? If my kids school is going to call, I have to answer it because it could be I need to go pick them up. Something could be going on, right? I don't want to ignore my mother five times. Maybe she's in the hospital, you know what I mean? And then I would feel horribly guilty. So it's. But you can set focus filters up. You can, you can affect what comes through to you when you need to focus and when you need to be in control of your time. And you can control who you communicate with. You know, you can control your friends, you can control your social circle, you can control the business groups that you get into. You can control the, like we mostly talk to photographers. You can control the photographers and the groups and the coaching groups that you want to be in, the ones that move you forward, the ones that speak positivity, the one that give you practical things to do in order to move your business forward, not engage in the drama further. Do you know what I mean? So you can control these things. And if you can't, obviously, you know, if you have a family member, could be your spouse, it could be sibling, it could be a parent, it could be a child that deals in the drama. You don't have to let them control you. You don't have to give them a front seat, you don't have to give them ownership. You don't have to let them control what you do. You know, you can still control you and can still control your tasks and still control your mindset and put them in the box that they need to be put into in order to like Jonathan said, like you, you just, you have to move forward.
- [12:48]
C
I don't think you can sug. Like I don't believe in sugarcoating either. Like sometimes things are get crap, like life sucks sometimes. That's just reality and you just gotta deal with it, right? How you deal with it is important. But like, so I'm not a believer in all this. Oh, everything is great and amazing and everyone's so positive when, like, I don't know, your legs falling off or something, I don't know. You know, it's obviously not right. But I'm not saying that you have to be positive all the time, but you have to be realistic. But how you deal with something negative that happens and how you flip it into a positive is what's key.
- [13:24]
B
Well, it's to not dwell in it, right? I mean, like, we can all have our. And Rona, we've talked about this before. You can have a self moment of self pity, but you, you know, you. But then, you know, you do it, you commiserate and then you move on. You know, you figure out how to then turn it into something that can be constructive or a move forward. And we all face this. I mean, we all do. You know, I was telling Jonathan last week, my cost per booking skyrocketed. You know, so I took my ad costs down, like my daily spend down. Until I can figure out why and I can attack it and I can analyze it. I'm not sitting here complaining. Woe is me, my Facebook ad cost or out of, you know, out of control. It's all right. What can I do to fix it? You know, obviously I need to shift something, I need to change something, something has to modify. What is that going to be? You know, and so it's a, it's a problem solving mindset as opposed to the sky is falling mindset.
- [14:18]
A
Yeah, it's, it's, it really is. It is that. And it's as you said, Jonathan, it's not easy, right? Like, you know, we've all been there, you know, like 2009, when I did business that failed with 45 people losing their jobs, like, that was difficult time, you know, really difficult time. But what choice do you have but to pick yourself up and say, I need to go again? And, you know, what have I learned from that and what has been the learning that that's never going to happen again, Right? So I think when you approach it with that mindset of what can I learn from this setback and what will that allow me do to make sure I don't experience that setback again? And that was the amount of key learnings I got out of that. That's why I'm such a lover of profit first, right? Because I recognize that if I had profit first in play, we would have survived that time, you know, but I didn't I. I had a different set of lenses that I viewed the world through than I do today. So it's, it's, it's, you know, I think the learning for me has always been, you know, that when something goes wrong, yes, you can feel sorry for your. For yourself for 60 seconds, and then you gotta shake it off and say, right, so what did I learn from this? And what do I do to make sure it doesn't happen again? No, it's, it's, it's critical. It's critical because that's what you can control. You can control how you think about things. You can control how you react to things to some, to some degree, you know. And, you know, one of the things that I found really, really useful is, is, is gratitude and, and, and meditation, you know, and, and, and I discovered this during COVID you know, the whole meditation thing. And it does make a big difference, you know, to take some time out and to do some, some meditation, no matter when it is. But if you try and do it once a day. I don't do it every day, but I try and do it every day. If I miss it, though, I do miss it. It's funny, like, when I miss it, I know I'm not the same as when I do it, but part of meditation is being grateful for what you have. You know, being grateful for what you have and, and, and, you know, water. It's concentrate. Do you remember that book we reviewed a couple of years ago, guys? You know, the gap and the gain, you know, so being grateful is celebrating the gain, not the gap of where you're trying to get to, you know what, you know, what, what has been, what has given us joy today, you know, what worked out really, really well because we're all human. Like, we can get dragged into the negative and woe is me, and woe you and my life is, is, is, is worse than yours. And nobody's as bad as I am. You know, it happens us all. It happens us all, you know, and I think it's really, really important to, to figure out, you know, to figure out that and recognize that in yourself and try and stop yourself. And, and, and, and meditation can help with that. Can help a lot.
- [17:38]
C
I was going to say, I think having an open mind is, is a critical component to it too, because, like, I don't discount anything. Like, if I'm, if there is like a piece of news, I'm interested. I'll look at that piece of news on five different websites and have an open mind reading that piece of news from, regardless of where it comes from and analyze it from all perspectives and viewpoints and try not to apply any bias to it, my own personal bias about any. So I think having an open mind about things is critical because if you close yourself in and this can happen, like if, if everyone around you as being negative and you close yourself into that negativity, and yet there is someone over here who's actually, let's say in business doing really well, right. And is making money and doing something good, you tend to not see it because you've closed yourself off to the negativity to that possibility that oh, maybe people are actually doing okay. So it's important to try and remain open minded and say, look at things objectively and say, okay, this is happening to me. Does that mean it's always going to happen to me and it's going to continuously happen to me or are there actually other people who are having success? Why are they having success and what can I learn from that to implement, to have success? So I think the open mind and open mindness is key as well.
- [19:18]
A
It is, it's absolutely critical, Jonathan, you know, just being, being, you know, and I, you see this everywhere. Like I even see it in the investing world where some of the investors I follow, you know, and they're given a label and you can tell that they just can't change their minds or open their minds to anything else. There's a couple of gold bugs that I follow. They're called gold bugs because they believe in nothing else but gold and most of them will just rubbish bitcoin. And then for me, I think gold is a great way to maintain your wealth, you know, But I also think that bitcoin, not all crypto, but bitcoin can be digital gold, right? And I look at these things in the perspective of both to see like, you know, rather than say, no, no, no, no, it can only be gold. It can only be gold. Oh no, no, it can only be bitcoin. It can only be bitcoin. You know, you got to look at both sides of any, any discussion or what's going on in the media and, and just I go out of my way to look at stuff that challenges what I believe. And I don't go in with saying when I'm watching this now just to prove that what I know that what I believe is right. I try and go in with an up mindset, right? So I know I believe this, but I'm going to park that right now and I'm going To read this and consider this and then see, you know, does that change my perspective? Because it's just human nature to attach. You end up attaching your ego and yourself to your beliefs. Right. And we're not saying that's not important. It is important. But it's also important to just not say, not to consider other things as well, you know, And I have to force myself in our industry to do that. Like I constantly, constantly, constantly spend time trying to understand what I call and we call a photographer's photographer why they think the way they think, you know. And I think they're different than how a difference maker photographer who's using photography and wellness, that's what we teach. Right. But they're actually more related than we think, you know. And I like to understand the perspective of the photographer's photographer merely because what photographers photographers believe about photography can help you be a better difference maker photographer.
- [21:48]
C
Yeah.
- [21:48]
A
In many ways. Once you don't believe that it's all about the photography, which unfortunately a lot of photographer photographers do believe. So it's interesting when you try and put yourself into different shoes as to understanding why they think that way and what have they experienced in life that makes them think that way and what inputs are they getting every single day that rewards them for thinking that way, you know, and just understanding those things can just, can just open your own eyes to it, you know. So, so to all those photography photographers out there, I love you guys. Like I love what you guys, it's doing all that, but you're missing out by not thinking about how you can build on that, build on that and use those skills combined with other skills to create work that truly matters to your clients. Not tomorrow, but today and forever. So like just it's, it's, it's, it's a big thing for me and, and, and it's a hard thing to do. Right. Because what I do in Difference Maker Revolution, we're doing Difference Maker Revolution is built on, on, on the reason why Duel is based on my why. Right. And my why can be different than Janine's. But she can do a difference maker because of her why. And Jonathan can do it because of his why. Our whys don't need to align. Right. But, but it doesn't change the vision and the mission of Difference Maker Revolution to, to encourage photographers to at least consider. Right. How you can use your craft to truly impact people today. That's my challenge to you. What can you do today with your work that actually makes a difference to them today? Because there's a lot of talk about the legacy piece. For me, that's important. But when you focus outside of legacy and that in 400 years, it's going to make a difference to somebody because they know who their great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandfather was. I'm exaggerating on purpose, guys, right? But when you start to think about, so what can I do for a client today with a photographic experience that creates work that's going to impact them today, that's going to impact them tomorrow, that's going to impact them and their families forever. That's priceless.
- [24:18]
C
And I think coming back to the. Controlling the controllables a bit because I think as humans, we're programmed. So I learned this from a guy who's a mark, very successful marketer who sold over a billion dollars online. And it's called one sentence, persuasion. I think the original person that created it is called Blair Warren. But the quote is, people will do anything for those who encourage their dreams, justify their failures, allay their fears, confirm their. Confirm their suspicions and help them throw rocks at their enemies. Right. I think it's just human nature that, you know, we fall in line with people who help them throw rocks at their enemies and, you know, who confirm suspicions that they have about things who justify their failures and encourage their dreams. So once you realize that and are aware of that, you can step out of the matrix.
- [25:20]
A
And it's funny, Janine, and this has gone back quite some time now, but I remember actually Jonathan was there too, and Susan was there, and we're coming back from wppi and we got stuck in New York. And not because of snow in New York, but because of snow in Dublin, which you don't get very often. When the snow's in Dublin, everything stops. Including closing the airport, right? Because we're not geared to deal with snow. And we were sitting. They couldn't get us back on a flight for three days, right? So we're sitting in an airport hotel and there was two TVs in the room, right? Two different news channels. I won't mention what they were, right? But let's just say on opposing sides of the political situation in America, right? And the same story was on both. But when you looked at them, you. You didn't think they were the same story because they were so different perspective of what was happening. Even though it was the same story. It was just like that was. That was actually, I think, my moment when I realized that I need to consider different opinions on things, right? Because if I just Expose myself to an opinion that reinforces my beliefs and don't consider it right, well, then I'm just going to get dragged into that and I'm never going to consider something else. And then I'll attach that to me and then the other side becomes my enemy. I don't want that.
- [26:54]
B
And it's interesting and kind of going back to what I said earlier, where I block out social media during the day doesn't mean I block it out. And I don't agree with, I know a lot of people who unfriend anybody that doesn't agree with them. I don't like that because of what you exactly just said. Then you end up in this silo and you think, and you're surprised when other people believe opposite of you. And if, and if you don't, if you don't listen to another side, you never come to a compromise. You never come to, here's how, you know, we might not believe the same, but we can work together in this way, you know, so while during the day I don't entertain the social media and the things like that, I don't, I don't unplug from anybody who disagrees with me or I disagree with because I 1, they're all my friends. And I firmly believe you can disagree and agree. And I always want to understand someone else's point of view. Always. I think it's, it's vital. But I don't do it during my work day because I need to get my work done and I need to control. Otherwise I can get sucked into that. And, you know, you can find yourself in toxic conversations that just suck your energy. And now all you're thinking about is your, your reply and what you're going to say and how you're going to continue this conversation and what you're going to do. And meanwhile, an hour has gone by when you should have been working on, you know, your email nurturing campaign or getting images retouched for your client or preparing a design consultation or picking up the phone to call the leads that you have had come in, you know, and so these are the things that we have to get done in our day, have to get done in order to run our businesses. And it's just with the distraction, if you have distractions, you cannot get them done. And so you have to be able to control that. But don't shut it out. You just have to put it in its box and find the right time to do that, you know, so that you are living and existing in this World.
- [28:42]
C
I'll give you a real life story of that, right? So this is actually related to sport. So when I was younger, I was obsessed with tennis, right? All through 14, 15, 16 teenagers. And I became a qualified coach when I was 18 and then did the next level when I was 21. I was obsessed with tennis, obsessed with getting better. And I used to follow this coach online and stuff and be a member of his website and watch all his videos and teach myself technique and stuff. And I always used to believe that I had to be a certain way right for my own game. And we met a Spanish coach, Ronan actually found him. He was actually a really good friend there. But at the time when he was, I was just completely close minded to Ronan was like, oh, this guy's amazing, he's brilliant. You know, you got to coach them. And I was like completely shut down. I was like, this guy's the enemy. I don't want to talk to this guy. I was like, what's he talking about here? Like that's a lot of horse cods wallop. Like it's not real or whatever. And it took me a long time to. And this is my own fault. I was close minded. It was like the equivalent of the leading someone on Facebook who didn't have share my beliefs. And eventually I said, right, let's, let's, let's do what he says and let's just try it and let's see what happens. Because of him, I've gone on to win singles championships and tennis club that I would not have won without his coaching. He calls me like at least once a week now. Actually the coaching session with him this morning, he changed my game. He let me move to the next level. And if I had stayed close minded and pretended or thought I knew better because I didn't believe how he taught like his methodology of hitting a forehand and backhand and stuff. I would have actually been stuck and worse off. That's a real life story. I remember I was self minded for years. It took me a while to warm up, but I gave it a chance.
- [30:42]
A
So control what you can control, right? And it starts with you controlling how you approach things, controlling how you organize your day to make sure that you. Because we all see the shiny, shiny thing, right? It's just human nature. We see something shiny. Oh, what's that? Oh yeah, let's have a look at that. That could be exciting, you know, so.
- [31:05]
B
And you can control what you put in your mind, Ronan. You know, I don't watch scary movies because I don't want those thoughts in my mind. I just, I, you know, I, I, I, Jonathan. So I love scary movies. I can't watch them.
- [31:18]
C
I don't watch them.
- [31:19]
B
Why would I do that to myself? You know? Like why, why would I, I, I, I can't watch them. So I don't, I can control that, you know and it's the same thing. You can control what you consume. I control positive mindset podcast. That's the type of books I read everything in order to feed that positivity. So you can control what you consume?
- [31:38]
A
Yes you can. That's great Janine. That is the point to end this podcast on. You can control what you consume. I love it. There's a one liner that captures this whole 30 minute podcast. You can control what you consume.
- [31:54]
C
So Ronan, on that note, it's probably wise that people are open minded enough to control their mace and click the link below this video to join the inner circle. Because inside the inner circle, not only will you be joined by a thriving community of like minded difference makers, but you will also. I'm laughing at you new. You will also have access to the best training on the planet for photographers that is going to help you to elevate your clients experience to, you know, help elevate your clients and that's going to bring you your version of success. So click the link below. Give inner circle a shot. We can't wait to see you on the inside.
- [32:33]
A
We'll see you there. Bye everyone.
- [32:35]
B
See you there.