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- [00:00]
A
I see this all the time. I see people looking for shortcuts and I see people looking for silver bullets. And I see people looking for someone to come save me. No one is coming to save you. No one is coming to solve your problems. No one is coming to make your life work. No one is coming. You've got a choice to make if you really want to turn your love for photography into an actual business. First, you got to know the numbers. And second, you got to have the work ethic and the mindset and the belief and the drive to work your effing ass off. You gotta work your ass off. Hey, difference makers. Welcome back to the Difference Maker Revolution podcast. And again, we're joined by the Four Amigos. We have Janine McLeod in Tampa, Florida. We have Steve Zaporino in Melbourne, Australia with the Sharks. And we have Ronan Riles, Clayne, Ireland. And then myself, Jono. The last call. Sorry. Last podcast, we were talking about knowing your numbers in business. And I think another fundamental thing is. And mindset covers so many things, right? It covers a lot of things, but a fundamental thing that's close to my heart is I see this all the time. I see people looking for shortcuts and I see people looking for silver bullets, and I see people looking for someone to come save me. And I'm going to open this podcast with a quote. So I didn't actually know who this quote was from until I used AI to help me find it. But apparently it's from a psychologist called Nathaniel Brandon, who. Who is known for his work on self esteem. And I saw this quote several months ago and it just resonated with me. And the quote is, no one is coming to save you. No one is coming to solve your problems. No one is coming to make your life work. No one is coming. And it couldn't be further from the truth. And I think we would be doing people an injustice if we didn't help them see that. You've got a choice to make if you really want to turn your love for photography into an actual business. First, you got to know the numbers. And second, you got to have the work ethic and the mindset and the belief and the drive to work your effing ass off. That doesn't count as the first word, does it? No, you got to work your ass off. And that's true for any business. And, like, there's no. Like, people would dress up. Oh, it's so easy. You can do it in three simple steps and it takes you two hours a day. Yeah. Effing, right? I've been on the other end of that shit. Oops. I did curse there.
- [02:25]
B
That is a curse word.
- [02:27]
A
That's the curse word. Okay, no, I'll be nice to the podcast name, but like, it's reality. Like I, I've experienced it. Like, you have to either choose to have a job where you get paid, you still got to work hard in the job, right? Or you work even harder and you own a business, right? And even when you have. Ronan will tell you, Ronan has how many staff? Like 35 staff or something. Even when you have staff, you still have to work your ass off.
- [02:55]
C
You still have to do it, you work harder, right?
- [02:57]
A
So whether you're on your own or you have staff, you got to work your ass off. Anyway, that's my me. I'm going to get off my soapbox now. But this is for your benefit, right? This is for your benefit.
- [03:06]
B
End the podcast right here. Go work.
- [03:09]
A
That's not a curse word. That's an Irish word. Fecking. Listen to us, right? This is for your benefit. Go for it. Take over someone quick.
- [03:16]
D
We've got to save him from himself. Well, you see it all the time. When people hire someone, they pretty much abdicate whatever they think that person is now responsible for. And the reality is, is that you have to work harder now because not only do you have to do the job, you still have to continue. Like, you see a lot of people, they want to hire somebody for the calls and so they'll, you know, put an ad up, bring somebody in and then think that person's just going to take over the calls. And it just does not work like that. You've still got to make phone calls yourself and in the meantime train that person to do it better than you. And that's now double the work because you still gotta meet your quota in bookings. You now have an additional salary to pay, so now you need more bookings to compensate for that. And so you've still got to work and you can never give up that skill of booking people in. So it doesn't matter how many you know, if you've got got that person, you know, booking. Putting that responsibility of every single booking coming into your studio onto one person is not fair. It's too heavy a burden.
- [04:24]
C
I think there's too a subtle difference between managing and training, right? Because you can go to difference maker Revolution and send that person for training on how to do a discovery call and all that, right? Unless you truly understand the discovery call and how to do it yourself. You can't manage that person when they come back, Right? So you have to. You have to at least have. In my experience in business, even though I may not, as Steve said, be the expert in it, right. I understand what's required for it to work, and I understand the why behind it. Right? So at the very least, to manage it, you need to know that. And I think that's a really important.
- [05:08]
D
To find the right person, too, right? To be able to find the right person to start with and then to manage them, you need to understand it.
- [05:15]
C
And then the other thing is, you know, often when you're deciding, like, if you're hiring your first employee, what are you hiring for? Like, Janine, you told us in the last podcast, right, you're a photography business, but you chose for one of your staff members to hire to be a photographer. I think you should tell people that story. And why?
- [05:34]
B
Well, yeah, no, so for me, well, the first position I hired out was a retoucher. That was 15 years ago. 16. Oh, my God, 17 years ago. Now the clock keeps ticking.
- [05:48]
D
And then you're only 30. How did that happen? Janine, you're only 30.
- [05:51]
B
I was like five.
- [05:53]
C
Janine, more importantly, congratulations. Very few businesses make it to 17 years, so well done.
- [05:58]
B
Thank you. Yeah, well, it's 20. This is our 20th anniversary year, so. I know. I started when I was five. It's fantastic. So thank you, Vernon. Uh, but yeah, no, the first. The first position I hired, I knew right away, I'm like, this is ridiculous. I could spend hours in Photoshop retouching my clients orders, and this is a waste of my time. Uh, waste of my time. So first thing I hired was someone to do my retouching and the artwork. And so. But even then, like, when I hired my digital artist, same. It's been the same one this whole time. So for 17 years, he's worked with me. And, you know, it was in the beginning, it was. I retouched. And then he retouched, and we made sure it matched. And, like, we had this whole process of getting him to be inside my brain, and now he has, I mean, far exceeded my capabilities. You know, I mean, I could still retouch if I had to. And occasionally, you know, like, he's sick and I gotta get something done. And, you know, we'll get it done. But no, it's. It's amazing, right? So anyway, so, yeah, no, he was first. But I did, I. I hired a photographer because I knew one that I can't always be here in the studio. Especially with my obligations with. Not the obligations is a bad word. My. My love of being a difference maker mentor. I rephrase it before Steve slaps my wrist. My love of being a difference maker mentor. I am with you guys a lot. And so, and this is something I wanted to bring up. I think a lot of people use their other commitments as an excuse of why not to work. And it drives me insane. And it is one of my pet peeves. And Ronan got John o' Go got on his soapbox and this is mine. Especially when I hear parents of young children. I can't work because I have young kids. I can't do this because I'm like, that is baloney. It's an excuse. You just don't want to work. You know, I mean, I fudder after session when both of my kids were like two weeks old, brought them to the studio and I got it done because I had a session and I wasn't going to cancel because I wanted, you know, and so it's. You can, you just have to find a way to make it work and you have to know what your priorities are. And for me, teaching my kids work ethic was very important, you know, and so excuses are. They're the bane of my existence. I cannot stand when people have excuses. So I could very easily be like, ah, you know what, I'm just going to cut my business back, way back. Because I'm a mentor now with a difference maker and I have to put all this time in there so I don't have time to shoot, I don't have time to do this, I don't have time to do that. No, that's baloney. So I hired a photographer, you know, and even if it wasn't for being a mentor in this group, for me, that's not the core of the business. Honestly, the core of the business in my mind for is marketing and business development. And so. Don't you laugh at me, Jonathan. I know, I'm playing, right?
- [08:39]
A
No, because I was going to say the exact same thing right after you, but continue because I want to make a point on that too.
- [08:44]
B
Yeah. So for me, I want this business to run when I'm not here. Right. I want to go on vacation with my family and my kids and I'm not going to use the excuse of I went on vacation so I didn't have business for two weeks. No, no, no. That's not the way it works. Right. So I am going to make money even when I'm not here. Otherwise it's Not a business. It is just a glorified hobby. And so, yeah, no, for me, hiring a photographer was right up there in a priority. You know, again, the last thing I would hire out ever would be the marketing and the business. I wouldn't hire that out. I wouldn't hire out the business management. That's something I feel like I need to run. I need to run the numbers. We talked about this in the last podcast, but no. Oh, my God. Excuses drive me insane, you know, and it's. This goes to the, the. This goes to the state of mind and your. We've. What is it that I'm looking for? Your mindset, Right, because we've had members in the past who have broken a leg, right? And they still manage their business, they still ran their business, they still made money, they found someone to come in and photograph. They worked around it. And then we've seen other people who had something like that, like, oh, well, I guess I'm not going to do business for the next three months.
- [09:50]
D
And that then turns to six months.
- [09:52]
B
It turns to six months because they didn't do anything to market while they were down and out. You know, and so we, like, this is the thing, right? Everybody has. And Jonathan stole the one curse word we're allowed, so I can't say it, but everybody has stuff happen. Everybody. Like, there is no life that's perfect. There is no life that is on cloud nine. Even though, you know, I'm on cloud nine all the time. There is no perfect life. Weeks go sideways. Life happens. We all have family, we have death, we have sickness. We have your kids in school projects they didn't tell you about until the night before. I mean, it just, it's endless. And so you can either let that provide excuses for you not to run your business, or you can run your business knowing that these things are going to happen and make it work. I don't know. This is my soapbox.
- [10:38]
A
It's like that hard times, easy life quote you just reminded me of. So, like, AI is just pulling it up for me now. But basically it's, yeah. Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create easy times. Easy times create weak men. Weak men create hard times. That's by G. Michael Hopp, but basically. Or Hoff. Or whatever. But basically, like, you have a choice. It's a choice. Right? Excuses are just choices. You can choose what's the hard path now and have an easy life later, or you can choose the easy path and have a hard life. Choice is yours. But Just what you were saying, I think was key about marketing and business development, because marketing, making offers, sales drives everything after the numbers. Like, once you know your numbers, you have to have marketing, you have to have sales. And like, I. I read somewhere recently about, there's an article or something saying, oh, you know, Tesla don't have sales people, and Tesla don't need salespeople because the product is so good. Elon Musk is marketing and selling all the time on stage. It's just a different form of marketing and selling. He's like the ultimate salesperson ever, right? Oh, but Tesla don't market because their product is so good.
- [11:47]
B
Bs.
- [11:48]
A
He's like the ultimate salesman. He's everywhere. He's like, advertising on steroids. Like, he puts himself everywhere. Don't give me that BS that products will sell themselves and your work will sell itself. No, it won't. Stop living in fairyland.
- [12:03]
B
This is a fun podcast. I love it.
- [12:07]
D
He's on a roll.
- [12:08]
A
I'm just a. I'm just a photographer. I just want to click the shutter. Good. Go get a job working as a photographer for someone.
- [12:13]
B
I'll hire you.
- [12:15]
A
Come on. Yeah, Janine will hire you. There you go. Come on. Like, we gotta be realistic here. And we're doing this. We're not saying this to be mean. We're not mean people. We're here to help you. We wouldn't do this at all if we didn't want to see you succeed. That's one of the drivers. We want to see you succeed. You know, your success has brought me to tears. Live on zoom before. So we want you to succeed, but sometimes I feel like we can be a bit too nice and we just need to give you a kick up the arse. Right? And you need to hear what you need to hear sometimes.
- [12:47]
D
Oh, my God, Jono. So, Janine, if you could think about, you know, photography, because that's a good point Jonathan made. Like, we hear a lot of people say, I just want to take photos. I just want to click, click the camera. You know, what percentage of time do you think, you know, in your business is actually spent clicking, clicking the camera?
- [13:06]
B
It is not very much, Steve. I mean, even if you look. Let's look at a 15 session week. That's 15 hours. I mean, that's. It's not that much time for one person.
- [13:19]
D
And you have multiple people. I did the math with all the sessions that we had, and I worked out, it was only 10% of the total time. When you take into consideration, you know, the team that I had and the time I took to market, the time I took to. We were going to expos as well, networking with people, all that sort of stuff. It's 10%, because there's the discovery calls, there's the selling, there's all the rest of it that goes with it. And so, you know, you do hear a lot of people say, all I want to do is click the camera. And, you know, to take the camera away would crush my soul. But you've got to be really good at all the other stuff.
- [13:55]
B
Good. Then photograph one session a week to fill your soul and have somebody else. I don't. I haven't put my camera down, you know, like, I have my. My legacy clients that I still photograph. But Elizabeth photographs and my, you know, like, she photographs everything else.
- [14:12]
D
But you're doing it because you want to and you love it. Not. Not because you have to.
- [14:18]
B
Correct.
- [14:18]
D
And not because you desperately. You need to be the one doing it, which then frees you up to do the other stuff that, you know that is important.
- [14:28]
B
Right. Well. Oh, sorry, Ronan. I can see you.
- [14:31]
C
You guys have talked about mindset a lot. You know, and for some reason, there's a mindset in most photographers I talk to where they think the value is the person pressing the shutter.
- [14:42]
B
Yeah. And I can say wholeheartedly that it is not. And it's interesting, and we've talked about this, but I'm gonna bring it up again. And if anybody's needing that mindset shift, that no one will come to your photography studio if you're not the one clicking the camera, the shutter, if you're not the one pressing the button, it is the difference. And I love using John Williams. Jonathan, at least I know Jonathan, knows John Williams because he loves Star Wars. But I use the example of John Williams, who was a musician first. Right. He was a musician first before he ever became a composer or a conductor. Right. So when you're in the musician, it's like being the photographer and you're the one creating the music. When you're the conductor, it's like you're the business owner and you're conducting the entire orchestra. Right. When John Williams led the Boston Pops, when he's the one who leads the orchestra, is playing the Star wars music, that's the one that Jonathan knows, but he has done, you know, the entire soundtrack of our entire lives. But when he conducts that, who bows to the audience? It is him. He turns around and he bows for the entire orchestra that has performed that music. Not the one violinist, not the one flautist, not the one trumpeter, not the one, you know, musician. It is him. He is the one who has made that all happen. And that's for. So if you need to think of it in an art stand, if you need to have that same art mindset in order to get past this point, that's what I would say. Is anyone going to say, John Williams is not an artist? Dear God Almighty, he is. He is one of. He's the talent of a generation. So if you. And so, like, for me now in the studio, it gives me great joy when my clients come in and tell me how amazing the team was that took care of them, right? And I get to bow and I get to say, I did that, you know, like, I trained this team and this is, you know, and. And I have brought this life to them to be able to love on the clients, right? And so you still get that as the business owner, even if you're not the one clicking the camera, because you are now leading an entire team to bring joy and happiness and transformational experiences to your clients. It's not just you. And it's. I believe it's so much more powerful. I believe it's so much more powerful. But you're. It doesn't take away any art in you. It didn't take it away from John Williams. You know, it made it even more.
- [17:14]
D
So you're amplifying your talent really, aren't you, by empowering other people. And so not only are you lifting other people, empowering other people, you're amplifying your own talents.
- [17:24]
A
I think there's an important point too that we. We have to make. So. And this is like, sometimes people hear what they want to hear, but. And it goes back to this work ethic and mindset. So a couple of weeks ago, a month ago, maybe, we had one of our members, the most amazing person, Katinka. Trump on, right? Heart and soul. And Katinka shared the story about how she went from, you know, she needed help and guidance to doing over a million euro in revenue in 2025. Right. And I think we didn't highlight how humble Katinka is because Katinka said, oh, you know, you guys save me. We didn't save Katinka. Katinka saved Katinka because Katinka worked her butt off 12 hours a day, seven days a week from February. And she had a call with Ronan last week, and she's still working 12 hours a day, seven days a week, working her butt off. Katinka. We didn't save Katinka. Katinka saved Katinka. Katinka just took our guidance. We were just a compass. But Katinka did the work, and she.
- [18:28]
D
Reached out and asked for help. She's working and paid for it. Yeah.
- [18:36]
C
Steve didn't go all the way to Katinka's studio to help her for three days, you know, just because she. He loves Katinka and she's a friend, which she is. Right. Because Katinka wouldn't even expect that because she knows she's in business. We're in business, you know, and. And. And we have to. We have to pay the bills of this business, you know, so while love to help people, there's. There's a limit to what we can do, you know, just like there's a limit to what you can do. Like, if somebody came into you and said, oh, yeah, I love that Saprito collection there and that one there and that one there and that one there, you know, here, Here's a hundred bucks, you know, what would you say? You know, it's. It's just not possible for you to do that, even while you might want to do that. So, you know, you've got to. You know, there's. I agree with you, Jonathan. Sometimes I think people hear what they want to hear, but also, maybe we weren't clear enough on what Katinka did. Katinka made an investment in her business not only by herself and our time and our effort, but paying for the expertise to guide her to get there.
- [19:36]
A
Yeah, because it's not like we have a magic. If we had a magic pill, I'd be on a golf course all day, every day, flying from, like, Dubai in the winter to Spain and the autumn to Ireland in the summer. Like, I'd just be golfing. If we had a magic pill to just make things work for people. Easy life. Hello, God. I'd be. Maybe they could call me God then, or the creator of the universe. But no, that doesn't exist. So I'm not that person. So nobody is that person. So you got to do the work. We do not have magic pills. Steve does not have magic pills. He doesn't have holy water, anything that he can splash on you to make it magically go away. You got to put in the work.
- [20:12]
B
So I got another pet peeve on that, too, with putting in the work. So I know we're. We're. We're in this mode. On the podcast, there's another thing that I hear a lot, and it also drives me insane. If you want to be a full time business owner, right? If you want to do part time, this is not for you. But for those who are running quote unquote, full time businesses and say that they only have time to do, or they only want to do one session a week, or one to four sessions a month. Again, if you. Steve pointed out right there that how long does it actually take to photograph one session, right? Like how much time are you behind the camera? You cannot tell me if you're running a full business that one session a week is your capacity. You just can't. And here's the thing, and it has nothing to do with you want to provide an amazing client experience, client journey, everything for that client. It's a momentum piece, I believe. And if you're only doing this for one client a week, you lose the momentum that you get. When you're doing it for multiple clients a week. There's the momentum involved in the, the business that you're generating, the referrals that you're generating, the systems that you're putting together, it's the same thing. Like, you're way more efficient. You know, we find here in our busy season, which is Christmas and ducks, we are way busier. I mean, we're way more efficient than when we're in our slower seasons. Right now my goal is to never have a slow season. I would love every season to be Christmas. Uh, but you're more efficient with your time when you have more business and momentum breeds momentum. So if you resign yourself to I can only do one session a week. That's the only creativity I can put forth. I can only take one care of one client a week. You're not doing your clients a service, you're not doing your community a service. You're not doing yourself a service because you're losing all the momentum of being able to provide that transformational experience for multiple clients in a week. I don't know, it's another one of my pet peeves. It drives me nuts. Again, it's different if you are part time and you have another full time job or you have other obligations. But you can't cry that you can't run a sustainable full time business and just do one a week.
- [22:18]
C
Well, one of anything is not a strategy, it's a hope. Because if you're relying on one client a week, well, what happens if that client for some reason can't come in? And then what if the same thing happens next week? And then what happens next week? Well, if you are serving five clients a week and one can't come in. You still have a business and you still have an income for that week.
- [22:39]
B
Absolutely.
- [22:39]
D
It's where we get the distress calls when that one person doesn't turn up. And then the next week, that person doesn't come up and then you get the distress call because a lot of the times they're running with no cash reserve and you're relying on that income.
- [22:53]
A
Tyler, one more thing. You just reminded me there, the one more thing, right, while we're on this row is stop reinventing the system. Holy moly. If I had like a cent or a penny for every time we say, here's the system, do this, and then they come back. What do you think of this?
- [23:14]
B
It's completely different than what we just.
- [23:16]
A
Told it to do. What do you mean, what do I think it is? I think it's crap.
- [23:19]
D
It doesn't work for me. It doesn't work for me, Jono.
- [23:23]
A
But we're too nice. We're too nice.
- [23:25]
B
We are too nice. It is one of our. Our things. Yeah, we're working nice.
- [23:29]
A
And then you go around in circles, like, save you the time, save us the headaches. You get success, we get success, right? So just follow what we teach. Here's the system, right? We teach you something, you do it without reinventing it, you get success. We get success, everybody happy. Instead of we teach you something, you take it, you try and adapt it and change it and tweak it and you come back and then we have to tell you, no, this is not right. But you don't listen to us and you do it anyway. And then it fails. And then you say it didn't work and then the cycle repeats. Holy moly. Just follow the system, people.
- [24:05]
D
It's part of being creative, Jono. You gotta. It's a creative expression.
- [24:09]
A
Leave your creativity for, like, the weekend when you want to photograph your friend or whatever. Like, just. This is business. Come on.
- [24:18]
C
Happens all the time, Jono. Happens all the time.
- [24:21]
A
I was just reminded of it because, like, you know, we want you to succeed. We're not here for the good of our health to be. Where are we not the place to be. We're here to help you get success. We want to see you succeed.
- [24:32]
C
And you can do it.
- [24:33]
A
You can do it. You just got to have the right mindset and put in the work and follow the system.
- [24:39]
C
Just do it. So how do I follow the system, Jono? I'm all in.
- [24:42]
A
All right, so all you need to do is click on the link below, apply to Join the inner circle. Join the inner circle, where you'll not only get access to this incredible mentor team, incredible community, incredible training, but also to our accelerator AI coach, Casey B. Who's available to you 247 to help you build that foundation we've spoken about before. Your numbers, your camera, business success plan, make numbers fun again. Or brand foundation, your ideal client avatar, then your Facebook ad copy, all this fun stuff. And just don't try and get her to not follow the system. Just follow the system and you'll have tremendous success. And if you're already in inner circle and you're listening to this call, follow the system. Bye for now. Bye bye, everyone.