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So it's November, and between American Thanksgiving and the general end of the year holiday season, it's pretty common for people to focus on gratitude around this time of year. But this year, my own gratitude practice looks and feels different than it has in the past in what I feel is a very positive way. And so I wanted to share a bit about how and why that is. But to tell the story, I have to back up to when a lot of things changed for me last February. Not because of something heartwarming or inspiring, unfortunately, but because of a launch that we ran that totally flopped. We had put so much time and effort into this new project. There were weeks and weeks of planning, there were many thousands of dollars invested, and when the final numbers came in, they were nowhere near what we had kind of set our sights on. And I imagine everyone can relate to how it feels when something that you pin a lot to fails to meet your expectations, right? It puts you in a funk. But for me, this time around, it wasn't just kind of a, like, meh, that didn't go well kind of a funk. It really was full on burnout. And to be honest, it wasn't just the business stuff either, right? The world felt heavy then, it feels heavy now, the news is bad again and again, and. And that, combined with difficulty in your business, can be the cocktail of kind of disappointment that makes it easy to spiral into the what's the point, who even cares Mentality. And that's where I was. But then something small happened that ended up shifting everything. And because I was thinking about that today, I wanted to jump on here and share it with you. And fair warning, this is kind of simple. Honestly, it's so simple that I almost hesitate to say anything. But it really did change my year. And right now, in this season of gratitude, it's changing the way that I reflect on progress. So I'm going to cue the music, and then we're going to come back and dive right in. Welcome to this Can't Be that Hard. My name is Annami 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 I can show you how. So let me rewind for just a second before the burnout, before the spiral, and tell you a little bit about a system that has been part of my business for several years now. So back in, I think it was 20, 21 or 22, somebody recommended a book called Traction by Gino Wickman. To me now Traction is a business operations book, so not exactly light reading. And to be honest, I, I wasn't actually a big fan of the book overall. I listened to it, which with business books can be kind of bad. And it's not that the core principles weren't good, but it was one of those business books that was like 10 times longer than it needed to be. It could, it could have been like a detailed blog post and instead it was like a novel sized book. So at the time I was a little bit like, this book is irritating me. But I did have one big takeaway from that book that I put into practice at that time and have had as part of my business ever since. And that is the, the concept. I don't even remember if this is his name for it, but we call it the weekly Accountability meeting or, or Wham for short, where every week Dana and I log our business stats. So things like email growth, podcast downloads, course sales, she's responsible for some of the stats, I'm responsible for some of the other ones. But they all go into a single place. And then we get on Zoom and we go through this structured kind of check in meeting. So first we have a little thing, we give ourselves like a few minutes. Sometimes it turns into a while to just kind of talk about like, how did the week go? How did the weekend go? We talk about personal stuff like it's a, it's kind of a catch up, which is nice. And then we, when we officially start the meeting, we review the numbers that we each added to our table and then we talk about, you know, what's going well, what needs attention. And then we each have like a five minute segment where we talk about, we look back at the week before, at the things that we said we were going to do and we talk about like, did we accomplish them? How did they go? Da, da, da. And then we talk about what we plan to accomplish this week. So it's this living document where we're looking at last week's to dos. Did we accomplish those? Do we need to move them into this week's? And then that gives us a game plan for the week. But because she knows what I'm saying I'm going to do, and I know what she says she's going to do, not only can we make sure that we're all in alignment, but we can also kind of give each other that Extra accountability. So, as you can probably imagine, if you know me, I built this in airtable. And it's been this really great way to see how things are going, not just that week or in that moment, but over time in the business. And of course, when things are going well, when our numbers look good and we're checking everything off on our to do lists, that meeting feels really gratifying, really motivating. But earlier this year, after that flopped launch, those meetings felt honestly, like depressing instead of motivational. Right. And I think that's probably why a lot of us avoid looking at stats or numbers or, you know, money or anything like that. Out of this fear that if you look too closely, you will prove the nagging suspicion that you might have in the back of your head that things aren't going great. Right. So sometimes that is the case when you're looking at numbers. Anyway, it was at some point during this burnout phase that I was chatting with a friend of mine who is also an entrepreneur, but she is totally outside the photography world and she's a good friend of mine and she. She knows all about my business, including how these weekly accountability meetings work. So when I told her about, you know, feeling burnt out and feeling like I had no motivation, she asked a question that at the time felt a little silly, a little woo. I don't know, I mean, she's more that way than I am anyway. But she basically said, look, you track all this data every week anyway. You plan all your to dos in one place. Why not just add a spot to track your wins on a weekly basis? And you know, I remember thinking, I may have even said, like, I don't even have any wins to track right now. Like, there's nothing to write down. But I took her advice and before our next weekly meeting, I went ahead and added this column, right? It was just one extra field in airtable, right? No big deal. And I sent a slack to Dana, explaining that each week when she was adding her stats and her to dos, I wanted her to also write down at least one win in the win field. I was going to do the same. So we were each responsible for at least one win. And it could be anything. It could be a business win, it could be a life win, whatever. It just had to be something that felt positive and good. And of course, I didn't know it at the time, but that tiny action really was a turning point. And that was when things started to shift. So pretty quickly after adding the wins field, I began to see that we had Plenty of wins to celebrate, right? They just weren't the obvious ones related to the data that we were tracking. It may not have been that our podcast numbers were up or our email list was growing or our revenue in the bank was, you know, hit hitting all kinds of records or anything like that, but there were wins. And when you're in a rough season, right, whether you're burned out or just feeling kind of discouraged or world weary or whatever, it can be so easy to fixate on everything that's not working. Your brain just filters out the good stuff. And, you know, I'm sure there's some. Some kind of survival mechanism that comes pre wired in our brains that makes us do that, but it doesn't help, right? It just drains you further. But the moment that I started looking for wins, I really started finding them. So every week I would sit down and go, okay, what actually felt good? And the answers surprised me. Some weeks it was just a lovely DM that we got or an email that I got from a student. Other times it was something like, you know, I finished a to do that had been on my list, and I kept bumping it week after week after week, and I finally was able to check it off or, you know, finally making a decision I had been avoiding. Sometimes it was a personal win. Maybe I held a boundary. Maybe I said no to something that I didn't have capacity for. Maybe I just closed my computer at 5 like I said I was going to. But what I found, you know, which is not really a big surprise after I, like when I think about it, is that tracking those moments made me feel more grounded, more capable. It reminded me that things were still moving, even if they weren't moving fast and loud. And of course, you know, there's actual science behind this which demonstrates that when we recognize progress, even small kinds of progress, it boosts our motivation. It combats that sort of sense of burnout. It creates a feedback loop in our brains that says, hey, what you are doing is working. Keep going. It also helps you reframe challenges. The disappointing launch that we had, obviously, yeah, the numbers didn't land where we had hoped, but it still pushed us to clarify our messaging, create new assets, and test systems that nowadays we're using across the business. So without looking for the wins, all I saw was we didn't meet our goals. But when I started looking a bit more closely, I saw that there was growth there, right? Like maybe the plant didn't bloom this time, but the root system grew deeper and stronger. And noticing that Just the act of noticing it really made all the difference. Because when you start celebrating what is working, even in seasons that feel hard, you're more likely to keep going, to keep showing up to, you know, make decisions from a place of groundedness instead of a place of desperation. And maybe most importantly, that practice will help you figure out what is worth repeating. Wins aren't just a feel good exercise. They are signals. They point you toward what's working so that you can do more of that on purpose. The big shift for me this year wasn't just about noticing wins, it really was about documenting them. Because now here at the end of the year, I'm not relying on, you know, the mood I'm in today or my often spotty memory to tell me how things went. I can actually see the progress week by week, not just in the numbers, but also in the wins. And they're all right there in Airtable. It's not just a list of good things. It's this living reminder that this business is working even when it's evolving, even when it's in a slower season, and even when it's hard. And the reason it works so well is because it is baked into a system that I already use. Right? That's the real takeaway here. Reflecting on our wins and practicing gratitude shouldn't be a November thing. It should show up, if not every day, at least every week in our lives. And the easiest way to do that is to make it part of something that you're already doing. Right? Add it to your calendar, add it to your planner. If you have access to the photographer's business dashboard, that is the perfect spot for it. And because as I was thinking about this, I was like, yeah, we need to add this into the, the business dashboard. So good news, if you are a student of that program, keep an eye out for an invitation. Probably happening in January. In thinking about my own weekly data and wind tracking practice, I know it doesn't perfectly translate into photography, but as I've been thinking about it, I'm like, oh, I can totally see how I would run this as a photographer, how I would build it into my photography business. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to run like a very hands on, live workshop type thing where all the students in the photography business dashboard are invited. I will walk you through not just sort of the strategy behind that weekly process, but also the tech so that you can set one up that's custom designed for you and your stats. And, and by the end of that workshop, you'll have a brand new weekly tracking table that you can use in your own business. And of course, if you can't make it live, I'll give all of the students access to the recording so that you can go back and do that later. But this practice, you know, this system is really one of the most valuable things that I've added to my business in the last year. And I would love to help you do the same. At the beginning of this episode, I told you that my gratitude practice looks different this year. And now you know why? It's not just about being thankful in some sort of like, vague seasonal kind of a way. It's really about seeing what worked and feeling gratitude for that, right? When you capture those small wins and create a living record of what you've built, especially in the weeks that feel slow or messy or hard, having that will give you a much deeper, truer sense of gratitude. Because now, as I sit down to reflect on the year or anytime when I need a pick me up to get me out of a funk, I know exactly where to go to see all the good stuff. Every success, every breakthrough, every little note that reminded me that, you know, I'm doing something that matters. That's what this kind of practice has become for me. It's a kind of gratitude. But it's also a kind of evidence, right? Evidence based gratitude that I showed up, that I built something and that I grew. And I want to encourage you to create some version of this for yourself, something tangible, something visible. Because this work that we do is hard and it can feel lonely. And you deserve to see just how far you've come. 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. If you like the show, be sure to check out this can'tbethathard.com to explore. Explore all the resources we have for photographers. And of course, it would mean the world to me if you would leave a review of the show on itunes or Spotify. As always, thanks so much for joining me. I hope you have a fantastic week.