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- [00:00]
Anna Mi Tonkin
One of my absolute guilty pleasures every year around this time is the smell and feel of a brand new planner. Man, I love a blank planner. And actually I have started new planners at all stages of the year, not just at the beginning of the year, but, you know, halfway through and everything else, because it actually gives you that sense of a reset, that sense of like, okay, I'm gonna make a plan, I am going to set some goals, and I'm going to work toward those in some sort of reasonably organized fashion. It is the sort of thing that those of us who don't have a boss per se can really lean on to help us stick to our goals, to stick with the plan, and to make small but meaningful strides in that direction, even on the days when maybe we're feeling scattered or we don't have a clear sense of what we need to be doing. My guest today is Brittany Sturm, and she is a longtime family photographer turned coach slash consultant in the planner realm. She built a planner that she is going to tell us all about. And I just found our conversation fascinating. Fascinating, because number one, as I said, I love a good planner. But number two, because as creatives, our needs for planners are somewhat different and our style of organizing our time is almost always different from people who are going to work every day and have a lot of their organization and their routine prescribed for them. So I loved this conversation. I know you will too. And I'm just going to let us dive right into it.
- [01:54]
Brittany Sturm
Welcome to this Can't Be that Hard. My name is Anna Mi Tonkin, and I help photographers run profitable, sustainable businesses that they love. Each week on the podcast, I cover simple, actionable strategies and systems that photographers at every level of experience can use to earn more money in a more sustainable way. Running a photography business doesn't have to be that hard. You can do it, and. And I can show you how.
- [02:23]
Anna Mi Tonkin
Brittany, welcome to this Can't Be that Hard. It's great to have you on the show. How are you today?
- [02:28]
Brittany
Hi. I'm so excited to be here. I am awake and ready to chat.
- [02:33]
Anna Mi Tonkin
I am a morning person. I always feel like this is my best time to have conversations that aren't just sort of droning. And so this is when I schedule my podcast, but I always appreciate it when, or this is when I prefer to schedule a podcast, but I always appreciate it when my guests are willing to do the same. And you're. You're even an hour behind me. So thank you for joining me for this, well, caffeinated conversation. Yeah. Before we dive in. Why don't you sort of give everyone the backstory on who you are and you know why? Why we're here chatting today.
- [03:08]
Brittany
Hello, my name is Brittany. Brittany Renee is my business name. I am a Dallas area photographer. Mostly families and newborns. That's my. My day job at this point pays the bills for me. I've been doing it for close to 15 years at this point. It hasn't always been profitable. People like you have helped. I remember listening to her podcast a couple years ago and I was like, wow, she's a genius with. With all those nuggets. It became a much more profitable business. So I've been doing newborn and family photography and I have three kids. They at this time, they are 10, 7 and 5. And so I'm not in that baby phase anymore, which I never thought I'd be excited to be in this age bracket. It is a very busy time in our lives. We have kids in hockey, two kids in hockey. I have a husband in hockey. We have gymnastics scouts, like all the things. We are running seven nights a week, all the time. And it is busy, but so wonderful. And I'm so blessed that I've created a business that I'm able to work around that schedule. I like to say that I am an introvert with extroverted tendencies. So if you met me, you probably wouldn't know I was an introvert. But I'm going to go home and I'm going to crash. I take daily naps. That is my husband's. Really, how to get used to that. He just knows I'm going to nap every day around 1:00.
- [04:29]
Anna Mi Tonkin
Good for you.
- [04:30]
Brittany
I love that it's my me time. Several years ago, I was in the baby phase. You know, we've all been through it with my kids and I was trying to build this business and it was going really well. I was trying to run a business with two kids under five at home. The other one, he was in school. I think this one day in particular, everyone was off of preschool, off of Mother's Day, out off of elementary school. And I had scheduled a call that was being recorded with my business coach at the time. And I remember breaking down into tears because I couldn't get my kids to occupy themselves. And I was like, I just need 15 minutes of you guys entertaining yourselves outside or something. And I just, I mean, I was. I got onto this live call sobbing because I was like, I just can't do this. What do I do? I have two hours at night after they Go to bed to run, to edit my photos and to schedule emails and write blog posts and do all the things that you're supposed to be doing as a business owner. And I was like, I just can't do that and keep my house clean because they make messes while I'm trying to clean. I'm trying to be a present moment with my kids during the day and take them to do fun things. But it shouldn't leave very much time to run a well oiled business.
- [05:46]
Anna Mi Tonkin
And right.
- [05:46]
Brittany
I. The most. She just told me the most simple thing ever and it literally changed my life. She said, start resetting your kitchen at night before the kids go to bed. Right? That was like mind blowing. I was like, I can do that while they're awake. I can clean the kitchen. And it was just like one tiny thing that started me on this snowball effect of what are routines and how can they help us. Another thing I didn't mention is I have adhd. And so I was very adamantly against routines and schedules and planning and all those things. But once I got this idea in my like, understood. Understood what routines were, it kind of changed my life and I started figuring out more and how I could add routines and make it a gentle, not overwhelming, trying to be perfect kind of experience. And once I kind of figured that out, my life just became so much less stressful and amazing and I was able to run my business and be with my kids and do all the things that I wanted to do with them. And I wanted to share this gift with the world. It started with other photographers and long story short, or long story long, I created a planner for other business owners and it has other. It has how to create these routines. And. And so now not only am I a photographer, a podcaster and a planner creator, or I am all those things as well now and my life is. I wouldn't. I mean, we are still stressed, we're still running 90, 90 miles an hour every single day. But it doesn't feel overwhelming like it used to be. I mean, that was a really long explanation of what I do. I'm a photographer, a podcaster, and a planner creator.
- [07:25]
Anna Mi Tonkin
In short, I love that. Yeah, no, no, but I mean, I think that that context is really helpful and it actually brought up a few things for me. Number one is a story, a memory that I have when my older son, who's now 18, was a newborn. As with many brand new parents, I had lots of ideas about who I was going to be as a mom and how I was going to parent 99% of which have gone out the window. But in that first little bit, I had this very strong, like, we're going to let him dictate the, you know, the sleep patterns and the schedule. I'm not going to be like, this is nap time, this is whatever. And you know how it is with a newborn in particular, there is no nap time. Like they sleep when they sleep and they wake up when they wake up. And you kind of have to. You're along for the ride. But about six months in, I was just at wit's end. It was like I couldn't predict anything at any point. You know, it was like I would get all ready to go to the grocery store and then, you know, he would be like, well, now it's time for a nap. And I would have to, you know, put that on pause. And anyway, things were going really poorly. I was sort of falling apart around this lack of any structure to my day. And I remember, I think I took him into the pediatrician and was sort of. That came up in some sort of way. And the pediatrician was like, oh, you need a schedule. And I was like, no, we don't do that. And he was like, I think you should give it a try. And it was magic in my life and I think it was magic in his life. And. And I think that that sort of is not unlike what I've seen in, let's just say creativity in the world. Sometimes you need a container, sometimes you need some sort of structure in order to allow the, the good stuff to flow. And I love that that worked so dramatically for you in your day to day planning because, yeah, with a business and kids and everything else, it can and does feel chaotic and hard and can be really difficult to get anything done if you don't have a good plan.
- [09:38]
Brittany
I mean, 100%. And it kind of made me think about something like, you wanted him to run his own schedule, right? Well, we as human beings thrive on routines. And I know I really did not believe that before because I was like, I'm adhd, I can't do this kind of thing. Like, that's not what we're made for. But your circadian rhythm, like you sleep when the sun goes down kind of thing, you eat at certain times. It's. Our bodies can't. Our bodies literally can't function without this routine. And if we aren't giving it a routine, not only is your mental health gonna suffer, but your physical health is gonna suffer as well. And so it all kind of Goes in your everything. It all comes together so you'll, you know, you're not taking good care of yourself because you don't have any sort of routine. Your kids thrive on routines as well. This past summer, for the first time in what, 10 years of being a parent, we had a summer routine because you know how chaotic summers in their.
- [10:35]
Anna Mi Tonkin
Home summers are hard.
- [10:37]
Brittany
Go back to school, please. This is the first year that I was like, I mean, I could, I could keep you guys around a little longer until the last week. And then I was like, okay, get out, I'm done. But I was like, we're gonna do it this year. We're gonna put you guys onto. I don't want it to be struck, like super strict. I want it to be something loose. I just wanted them to know what to expect at each point of the day so I could still, you know, run my business. Because in the planner part of my business, I'm gearing up for my sales and I have to start and I have to get everything printed and get everything ready in early summer. And so I was like, I, I can't not, I can't just take, I mean, we did, we go to the pool every day and do some fun stuff. And we had just moved to a new town, so it was like we have to have something, some sort of structure. So we just, we wrote a, we sat down together and we wrote a little routine down. So I was like, after you wake up, this is what's going to happen and then you can do this and then what do you want to do after that? And I let them kind of have. But it was. When I tell you it was the best summer, we've. We had just gone through a huge move, which is a huge transition and it was just an amazing summer. It was. I can't believe I haven't been doing that before.
- [11:45]
Anna Mi Tonkin
Yeah, well, you know, and part of it too, especially with kids, is your kids are now at an age where they can anticipate, they can, you know, reference a schedule and say this is what happens next. Obviously in my story with my six month old, it wasn't like I said to him, okay, well, 2:00pm is nap time and that's when you go down for a nap. He wasn't sort of made conscious of these things. However, my enforcement of that really, it was like his biological systems were able to regulate in that way. And so I think that to your point, it really, we are hardwired to need those kinds of that ability to anticipate. It's Kind of like when I talk about a happy client as a client who knows what's coming next. I mean, education is so important because it gives someone the sense that, like, there is method to the madness, there is order in this. You know, what may feel like a little bit of chaos or an unknown. And that confidence propels us forward and gives us the ability to trust the people who are kind of leading us. I am dying to talk more about the Planner specifically, but before we get there, I'd love you to talk a little bit about how you got from having this conversation with your mentor to the point where you had dialed in your own system so much that you were ready to share them with other people. Like, okay, so now on day one, your plan was, before the kids go to bed after dinner and before the kids go to bed, I'm going to get the kitchen straight. Where did it go from there?
- [13:19]
Brittany
That is a fantastic question. Because it's really hard to just kind of. I think that's kind of the struggle is you think that you can overhaul your entire life, right? Because if you're going to try to overhaul your entire life, it's going to. You're going to be resistance that change. While we like routine, we also don't want to go in and change everything about our lives. And our kids are going to be the same way. They're not going to adapt well to you being like, okay, today this is an entire new world, and we're going to do something completely different. So it was really about adding those baby steps in and teaching them what I needed from them as well. So while I was cleaning the kitchen, the next thing, I kind of stacked on top of that. I was like, you guys need to clean up all of your toys down here. And they were little, and so it didn't. It wasn't a beautiful job. But, you know, they started teaching them kind of to do this pickup on their own and helped me not have to do it. And then we. On top of that, we were able to kind of work in their bedtime routines and get a little bit more of a structure for their bedtime. We've always had one, right, you know, bath book, bed kind of thing, but making it more consistent. And my evening routine then and now is the cornerstone to my entire day. If I don't do my evening routine, the next day is going to be complete chaos as well. So that's where I really started focusing on at the beginning. And, I mean, I couldn't tell you what it looked like then. It's been a while, but, you know, just, oh, making coffee for the morning. So that way, whenever I woke up the next morning, start pushing a button. And it was just kind of these little tiny things that reflected into my morning. And so when I would wake up the next day, I would, you know, whatever I felt kind of resistance in, like, if we were struggling, if I had to make lunches before, you know, I. That. That was pure chaos. Trying to make lunch and feed kids for. For breakfast and getting everyone dressed and whatnot. So whatever the resistance was that I was feeling in the morning, I would fix in the evening. So picking out clothes, packing lunches the night before, getting snacks ready. And so it was these little baby steps. And eventually our mornings would be smoother and I would be able to sit down and drink coffee while they played a little bit before going to school, which was incredible. My coffee wasn't cold anymore.
- [15:30]
Anna Mi Tonkin
Right.
- [15:31]
Brittany
Like, I know how many times you heat your coffee when you. Especially when your kids are little. How many times did you have to.
- [15:36]
Anna Mi Tonkin
Heat up your coffee or find yesterday's coffee in the microwave?
- [15:40]
Brittany
Right. I hate reheated coffee. It does not taste the same as.
- [15:44]
Anna Mi Tonkin
When it was poured fresh.
- [15:45]
Brittany
And so I was like, we can't do this. So every time I just kind of started adding on a little bit more and a little bit more. And I like to call it resistance. Like, whatever is in your daily life that is a resistance. Where can you fix that? And so this is a good, silly example, but my kids really like ice and their water and in the morning, I really. I'm not a morning person. I don't like to get up and hit the. Hit the ground running. I want to lay in bed and drink coffee and just, like, take it easy. But with kids that are in public school, it just wasn't an option for us. So I want to be a good mom. A good mom quote, quote, that makes them, you know, does things that they enjoy, and they like ice in their coffee or ice in their. In their water. And so I started doing that the night before, putting ice in their water and putting in the refrigerator, and there would still be ice in their water the next day. So it was just a silly little resistance that I was having a hard time putting ice in their water in the morning. So I'm like, I'm too tired for this. I have other things to do. So, yeah, just finding these resistances throughout the day and figuring out where I can make it easier on my life was kind of. It really is. It's a journey it's not something that you just wake up one day and you're like, I have a great routine now.
- [16:57]
Anna Mi Tonkin
Yeah.
- [16:58]
Brittany
Several, three, four years later, I'm still working towards a better routine for us. And it changes, especially because their schedules change and what we do changes. And it's just, it's evolving and it's just something that you kind of stack on top of each other throughout time.
- [17:14]
Anna Mi Tonkin
Well, and it sounds like so much of that process and that journey toward, you know, the ever evolving journey toward becoming more aware really has to do with that noticing step where you're paying attention to the resistance that you feel. Because especially with something like ice in your water, something that you intellectually would say to yourself, this is not making a big impact on my day one way or the other. If I do it at night, it's not going to make any difference than, you know, the time that I do it in the morning. However, when you notice, like, actually I am resistant to it in the morning, let's try setting myself up for doing that differently. Doing it, you know, at a time when I do have the energy for it or, you know, however, which of course is different for every individual. But when you notice that and take action on it and then find the things that actually work, eliminating even that little bit of resistance can make such a huge difference over time. And it makes so much of an emotional difference in your day. I love the fact that we sort of grounded this conversation in the context of your life. Right. Routine with kids and all this other stuff, because that's where all of our businesses exist or most of our businesses exist. I guess there are probably people listening out there who go to an office to do their photography stuff or a studio. But I think most of us work from home or at least work part of the time from home. I certainly do. And it, it. So our daily schedules are very much a part of our work schedules. But I would love to kind of transition this into how this process and learning this process then started to work its way into your work life.
- [19:05]
Brittany
I, I like to say that we have a macro routine and also like little micro routine. So every little part of my business, every little part of my has a routine that goes into it, like creating content for your business or scheduling or creating and scheduling blogs. They all have routines or systems is another way. I guess you could think about it. And at first you feel like you're in pure chaos and there's just no normalcy to anything. And when you start to kind of chunk things out a little bit More you start to, like you said, notice. It's really hard to notice the ice in the water, you know, causing resistance for us in the morning. Until I was able to kind of like, you know, pare it down a little bit and get things, get the big stuff more organized. We had a morning routine. We. I have a work block during the day, I have a cleaning block during the day. And so I think the next kind of thing that goes into it is block time blocking, blocking sections of your day. And I'm a big fan of time blocking because when I started realizing what was happening, whenever I would enter a work block or I would enter, you know, family block, when we're working at home and our kids are around us, or we're feeling guilty that we're working instead of being with our kids, or we're feeling guilty that we are spending time with our kids when we have 75 unread emails and so many things.
- [20:31]
Anna Mi Tonkin
Right.
- [20:32]
Brittany
But that guilt started to go away when I said, okay, this hour is time for me to respond to these emails or whatever work that needs to happen is going to happen in this, in this work block. And then I know I don't have to feel guilty about ignoring or I wouldn't really ignore my kids, but, you know, I'd send them off to do something or they'd be napping or whatever. I didn't have to feel guilty about that because later in the day or earlier in the day, I had time specifically dedicated to be with them.
- [21:03]
Anna Mi Tonkin
Yeah.
- [21:04]
Brittany
So I think time blocking would be the macro routine of your day. First my morning routine and then it's kid time and then it's work time and then it's kid time and then it's work. You know, it might look crazy. It's probably. I never do straight eight hour work day. Sometimes it's an hour here, it's an hour there, and it is what it is, but it just feels less overwhelming once you start. You don't even have to have a routine within those blocks when you first get started because you don't know what you need to do because you don't have anything organized. You've just been flying by the seat of your pants. Right, Right.
- [21:38]
Anna Mi Tonkin
Yeah. And this is one of the things that I find. I love your macro micro designation because sometimes people ask me about, you know, well, I don't know if I should take this course, my course, or anybody else's course because it's not exactly, you know, I don't think that that's going to be exactly the right solution for me, or I like to do things my own way, which is, you know, as creatives, we. That tends to be a universal, universal truth, which is great. And it was actually one of my own points of resistance when I was getting into education was like, well, you know, this works for me, but I don't know that it's going to work for everybody. And other things work for people. So, like, maybe I should just keep my mouth shut. What I know to be true, though, and the thing that sort of pulled me through that and you know where I said to myself, I think this could be helpful to some people, is that oftentimes when I take a course or learn someone else's method for time, you know, organizing my time or anything else, I mean, I've bought lots of planners over the years, and not any. None of them, zero of them for me, have ever been like, this is my exact perfect organization tool. However, they have gotten me a whole heck of a lot closer to finding my own organization tool. And I think that what creatives tend to do when it comes to building a business or organizing their time or anything else is they want to start with an empty canvas and say, I'm going to create this from scratch. But there are only so many hours in the day. And if you're trying to run a business or have a family or, you know, take care of your physical health or your emotional health or anything else, you. You run out of time, and then things just are left to chaos. And I think that, you know, I work with photographers all the time who have been in business for five, six, seven years, and I ask about, you know, okay, great, so what's your. What's your fulfillment system? What are the steps, you know, from the time that somebody hires you to the time that you say goodbye to them, like, what. What happens? And it's a real struggle for them to come up with, like, a cohesive. This first step one, step two, step three. And what I see time and again is as soon as they get that out and as soon as it becomes organized into a system, it frees them from this, like, constant chain around their ankle of, like, I don't know, what am I doing next? What is. What is here? So honestly, again, it kind of comes back to that awareness, like, what is going on? How do you like things done? How do you need things done? Now, let's make that a plan.
- [24:17]
Brittany
It truly does. I mean, that's essentially what a routine is. It's a standard operating procedure. And while you don't Necessarily have. I mean, it's. Don't. You don't necessarily have to write it all out. I do find it to be super helpful in having a space. Even now, when I go through and I change up part of my routine, I find myself needing to write it down somewhere in my planner.
- [24:37]
Anna Mi Tonkin
Yeah.
- [24:38]
Brittany
So I can visually see what's happening. And I don't know if I'm the only one. I know I'm not the only one. But if that's a normal thing that people all have to see it to make it make sense. But when you're holding it all in your brain, like you're holding a to do list in your brain and you're holding all the things that you have to do, you become overwhelmed. And that's. Whenever you have that burnout at the end of the day, you're too exhausted to think, and you're like, I just want to go to bed and not think about anything anymore. When it. When those little things, your client process becomes a routine and it's standardized, you take that extra thinking power out of your head, and it just. It's. It literally is a mental weight off of you.
- [25:17]
Anna Mi Tonkin
Yeah. So good. All right, now I want to hear the specifics of your planner. Tell me more.
- [25:26]
Brittany
So it was created with people like me in mind because I, like you, have bought many planners, and they've never, quote, worked for me. And something that I've realized now that I am solidly into this planning journey is that it's not necessarily about the tool, the planner that you're using. It's about setting aside time to actually do it and making it work for you. But when I created this, I knew that it was. Well, originally it was going to be for photographers, and then I was like, this isn't just for photographers. This is for every. All creatives. So it is a very blank canvas because I wanted people to be able to make it their own and make it their own. I don't usually do habit trackers, and I know a lot of people are very passionate about habit trackers. So I left a lot of space for you to create your own habit tracker. I wanted this to be. It is black and white on the inside. There is no color, because if any, if you're like me, you can't have all this noise coming at you when you're trying to, like, get it all out of your head. So it's. It's very simple. There's a lot of white space. And I. I wanted people to make it their own. I want you to white stuff out that you don't need and write over it and just make it work for you at the beginning of it. That's kind of how I wanted to teach people how to create their own systems. And I try not. I'm not a very time specific person. It's not like 9 o'clock I'm going to start working. It's like around 9, that's when I'm going to start whenever my body starts feeling like it after I finish my shower and getting ready and doing all the things. So while there is, you know, this is how you should, or you could do it in there. There's a little workbook section at the beginning that kind of teaches people how to create routines and how to start noticing what you're doing in your life. I have a time audit section where you can really see what you're doing and it's very eye opening when you start writing everything down that you do, you're like, oh my gosh, I do so much. And then from there you're able to start taking those bits and pieces that you do throughout the day and put it into time blocks and create your own time block. And I, I have a course and I have words all throughout the planner that says this is how you can use it to get yourself on track.
- [27:37]
Anna Mi Tonkin
Yeah, no, that sounds amazing. I love the fact that it is a container but also allows for a lot of flexibility. That sounds like exactly the sort of thing that so many of us need. And you know, it's like trying to read a money management book that's really written for people who have a 9 to 5 salary job or you know, an hourly wage that's predictable. As someone whose income fluctuates dramatically from pay pay period to pay period. So I love that you've really created a planner that gives creatives the space to be creative while still sort of giving direction and reining that in. Sounds amazing. I would love to hear more about where I and everyone else listening can find out more, see more and learn.
- [28:28]
Brittany
More from you on my website. Capturethechaos.com that's the planner's name, is Capture the chaos.
- [28:34]
Anna Mi Tonkin
Love it.
- [28:35]
Brittany
It's. You can watch a walkthrough video of it so you can see page by page what's in the planner. You can buy the 2025 planners, which are beautiful. I have four different covers and I added this year I added a second version of layout because our brains all work differently, we need different processes. So I have two different kinds of layouts. For people to choose from. And I also have some time blocking pages. I actually pulled them directly from the planner and created a PDF for you. Teaches you how to do a time audit to create your blocks and start time blocking. You can download the time blocking pages from brittneyrenae.com time blocking pages and brittanyrenae is B R I T T N I E R E N E e and I'm sure you will link that somewhere because that's a mouthful.
- [29:26]
Anna Mi Tonkin
No, I definitely will. I know as someone with a tricky name and a long URL, I know all about links in show notes are.
- [29:33]
Brittany
Important so you can download that. I also have a podcast specifically for creative business owners, photographers, anyone who feels creative, called the Organized Creative where I talk all about routines, time management, productivity and kind of how to gently get yourself into more routines so that way you can be a more organized business owner.
- [29:56]
Anna Mi Tonkin
I love that it's so important and I, you know, I think creatives resist this, you know, these boundaries. They say I, you know, I'm an artist, I want to sort of color outside the lines. And it comes back to me, to my same resistance when I was the parent of a newborn, feeling like I don't want to tell him when to sleep. I want to, you know, let his natural rhythms show themselves. And ultimately sometimes you require those, those kinds of rules, even if you're flexible about them in order to be able to thrive. And I really appreciate you taking the time to come and your own story about this because I think a lot of people listening out there can probably relate. I know I certainly can.
- [30:42]
Brittany
Thanks for having me.
- [30:43]
Anna Mi Tonkin
It was a pleasure. I'll talk to you soon.
- [30:46]
Brittany Sturm
Well, that's it for this week's episode of this Can't Be that Hard. I'll be back same time, same place next week. In the meantime, you can find more information about this episode along with all the relevant links, notes and downloads@thiscantbethard.com if you like the podcast, be sure to hit the subscribe button. Even better, share the love by leaving a review in itunes. And as always, thanks so much for joining me. I hope you have a fantastic week.