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- [00:00]
Anna Mi Tonkin
I don't know about you, but I don't know too many photographers who love marketing themselves, right? I think we all know it's necessary. Certainly some of us kind of like the game of marketing or like to learn about marketing. Maybe you like writing, or maybe you like playing around with graphic design or interacting on social media. Those elements are one thing. But when it comes right down to it, I think most of us, even the ones who do like those things, would prefer not to constantly be using those tools or channels or skills to promote ourselves over and over again. Right? Telling people how great we are and why they should spend money with us tends to get old kind of fast. And that's on a normal day. But what even is a normal day these days, right? You open the news and it's all bad war and hate crimes and rising prices and political unrest and all the other big overwhelming things that make offering spots in your mini sessions or sharing a new testimonial feel ridiculous, shallow, or even inappropriate.
- [01:04]
Dana
Right?
- [01:06]
Anna Mi Tonkin
I recorded the episode that I'm sharing today back in 2022, and when I re listened to it, I was honestly struck by how relevant it still felt. If anything, the atmosphere today feels heavier than it did then, and I won't belabor that point.
- [01:23]
Dana
You know what I mean? But what I will say is that
- [01:26]
Anna Mi Tonkin
the principles in this episode apply just as much in 2026 as they did
- [01:31]
Dana
when I first recorded it.
- [01:32]
Anna Mi Tonkin
Some of the specific references I make might feel a little dated, but the underlying question of how you can keep showing up for your business when the world is on fire is very, unfortunately, still important to consider. The only thing I want to add before we hit play is one of the things I talk about in this episode is the importance of showing up consistently. How consistency is actually what helps you earn the right to keep marketing even when the timing feels off. Six months after this episode originally aired, that message inspired Dana and me to create the Consistency Club, which is still going strong three and a half years later. So if you listen to this episode and think I need to be showing up more for my business, but I don't have time or I don't know what to say, I would encourage you to join us. It's low cost and it makes the consistency part of marketing so much easier. So you can find out more about that@thiscantbethard.com club and with that, let's dive in.
- [02:36]
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 I can show you how.
- [03:06]
Dana
On the one hand, you have a business to run and you probably have mouths to feed, at least your own. But on the other, you're a human being. And even more, you are an artist with probably an artist's soft, vulnerable, overdeveloped sense of empathy. Even if we are still willing to show up and share our business in these tricky times, most of us have pretty significant fears about what others might think of us or think about our brand if we say the wrong thing or we show up at the wrong time. You post a happy photo on a sad day or you drop a silly lip sync reel when there's a world of suffering right on the other side. I get this 100%. I run not one, but two businesses. And it's freaking hard. Some days it is so hard you just kind of want to start, stop marketing altogether and hope that people show up and hire you. But for those of us who can't
- [04:11]
Anna Mi Tonkin
disappear, right, because this is our livelihood.
- [04:14]
Dana
Or for those people who don't want to disappear but also don't want to be the insensitive jerk who says the wrong thing at the wrong time, today's episode is for you. So the first thing that I want to talk about when it comes to this topic is how important it is to remember your why. Why do you do what you do? I have several whys. There are my two kids, for sure. I now, as an both a photographer and as a educator, have employees, I have students, I have families that I serve as a photographer. And then I have my community. The people both online and in person that I interact with and for whom my identity as a photographer and as an educator, you know, come into play. And when I think about those people, those communities, I think about the repercussions if my business stops. If I stop making money, my kids and my employees will suffer directly. It will impact their economic well being, their safety. And there are days when that feels like a lot of pressure. But it is a reality of the responsibility that I carry as someone who is working. If I were to stop making money,
- [05:33]
Anna Mi Tonkin
I also wouldn't be able to serve
- [05:35]
Dana
my students, my education, business, or the families that I photograph. Because if I wasn't making money, I would have to go find another way to make money. And then I wouldn't have the time to serve those people. And although I wouldn't say that would make them suffer necessarily like it would for my kids and my employees, it would certainly be some kind of a blow. And if I were to stop making money and I had to give up doing what I know I do best, the way that I can serve my circle of the world best, I believe that it would ultimately impact my community, both again, my in person community and my online community. Because I think that when we're able to show up and serve as our best selves, we really do enrich the people and the communities around us. So those are the things that I tell myself. That's the calculus that runs through my head when someone gets unjustly murdered by the police. That is the thought process that I go through when, for instance, and this is a real example, my photo editor has to escape her hometown of Mariupol in the Ukraine because she and her family are in grave physical danger. I choose to continue showing up to sell my work as a photographer and as an educator, even when it feels insignificant. Because when I make money, I can use that money in support of causes that are important to me. I can continue to pay my editor even when she can't work. I am able to stay engaged with the bigger world around me instead of having to turn my attention to focus on where I'm going to find enough money to pay for food or shelter or whatever else it is that I need to pay for. And when I lay it all out like that in a rational way, when I tell myself these things, it makes perfect sense to me. Imagine that it makes perfect sense to you as well, in this sort of logical way. But that doesn't change the fact that I still cringe every time I see an ad pop up for one of my courses on Instagram right after listening to some kind of devastating story in the news, it doesn't change how jarring it feels to have a phone call with a prospective client and, you know, talk about their collection options when in the back of my mind, I'm worried that they may be really hurting from these high inflation rates that are happening. At best, those kinds of things feel awkward, or I'm a little embarrassed, but sometimes they feel truly awful. Even though, again, logically, all day long I can tell myself, I have to make this money. I have to show up. So it's complicated. I just want to kind of get that out on the table and say that if you find yourself having a hard time running a business when the world feels hard when the news feels dark. I want to validate those feelings. It's not wrong to have them. I think some people feel them more acutely than others, but I imagine all of us feel them to some degree. In fact, I think it's probably part of what makes you an amazing artist. But it's also not wrong to step back and take a breather every now and then. I'm not here to say, like, no matter how you're feeling, you have to show up and market your business and do all that. Your business is not going to fall apart if you don't, you know, post for a day or two, or if you miss a week on your newsletter that you send. But I also want to give you permission for the opposite to keep showing up for your business, to take a couple of days off and then to come back even. Even before it feels a hundred percent like the coast is clear. You are not a bad person if the launch for your new membership happens to coincide with a rough week in the news. In fact, these days, congratulations. If it doesn't coincide with a rough week in the news. But I do have a couple of secrets that I want to share with you about how you can prepare both yourself and your audience to not judge you for. For what may feel like bad timing that you may not have any control over whatsoever. So first, my best advice is to put your marketing on a schedule and then stick to that schedule. Consistency in marketing is really one of the most important things that you can do for your marketing anyway. But when you are showing up consistently in somebody's inbox or in their social media feed or, or if you have a podcast or like a vlog or anything like that, if you show up
- [10:08]
Anna Mi Tonkin
week in and week out, to the
- [10:10]
Dana
point that people may notice if you don't show up, then it's not gonna seem weird when you show up on a day that you know people are talking about something else. And if, when you do show up consistently like that, you're not always showing up talking about like, sell, sell, sell. This is what I have for you to buy. If you're doing that, if you're showing up regularly and you're having real conversations with people, then you are doing what good marketing is all about, which is creating relationships with the people out there who may end up spending money with you. When you show up in good times and in bad, over time, the people who want to hear from you won't think it's weird when you show up, no matter what is going on in the greater world. In fact, for your true fans, they may even come to find comfort in the normalcy of you showing up when things feel crazy. One of the hardest things, after my photo editor was able to get relocated, I had these overwhelming feelings of guilt. Now, I wasn't trying to sell to her, but I felt guilty sending her photos of happy families, being normal, living normal lives, when I knew that her life had become anything but normal. And I emailed her about that. And this is not someone. I've never met her in person. We've worked together for several years. But I reached out to her and I said, I want to continue paying you, and I'm happy to do that, But I feel. And I'm happy to send you work, but I feel bad about doing that in this time in your life, and I need you to be really honest with me about what you need right now. And she wrote back and said, to be perfectly honest, I would rather have the work to fill my time and my head and look at these pictures of what life can be than I want to sit around doing whatever for her. Doing the editing work was a bit of normalcy and a bit of stability that helped her through her process. Hopefully she was being honest with me. I have to take her at her word. And that, I guess, is a good way to segue into the other secret that I want to share, which is that when you're showing up, when you're showing up regularly, you don't have to be afraid to acknowledge the difficulty and the awkwardness. That email that I wrote to her, not only is English not her first language, so there's a bit of a. Like, a language barrier there. So I was trying to write it simply, but I was also trying to convey, you know, that I authentically felt this way and these feelings. And I, in fact, just talking about it right now, like, I can feel myself breaking up in a little bit of a sweat thinking about trying to sort of hold space for her in that and feeling like what I was asking of her seemed so big. So I just came out and said, like, I feel ridiculous even contemplating sending you family photos to edit when you're going through what you're going through. And that opened the conversation in a way that I hope made her feel like she really could come to me if there was an issue. I have certainly said to a new potential client on a phone call that was scheduled several times, unfortunately, recently, where, you know, we were scheduled to have a phone call, something crazy happened, and I get on the phone with these people, and I don't know them, they don't know me. So it's like, it's a little bit of a weird spot to, you know, they're coming to talk to me about photos, but there's whatever's going on in the world. So oftentimes when I find myself in those situations, I'll say something like, hey, I'm so glad that you were willing to take the time to talk today. I know that we had this on the schedule, but honestly, I applaud you for even making it to this call. I know the news is so dark, and when that happens, it can be really hard to focus on something so seemingly trivial as family photos. But I have to say, celebrating the joy in your family is one of the only things that we can control in this world. And I would love to help you do that. And that's kind of the way that I open the conversation in a very genuine way. I'm not trying to take advantage of that. I'm just acknowledging that elephant in the room. You know, that can also happen when you take the time to write the more nuanced caption for your Instagram post. And sometimes that's hard. It feels like too much information. And there is a bit of a fine line. Right. But your true fans will appreciate hearing from the multi dimensions of your multidimensional person. Right. You are not just a photographer, you are not just a salesperson. You are all of these things. And when you show up to hold space for someone else's multidimensional self, showing that you are also multi dimensional, I think can actually help bridge that. So our work as photographers, it's inherently intimate. And part of cultivating the trust that's required for us to succeed in our businesses is being willing to share the more complicated parts of ourselves. But I do want to acknowledge that I have seen people do that poorly. I have seen people do it in a way that feels exploitative, taking advantage of a situation to kind of pontificate about it. It's a delicate kind of a position. One of my favorite passages from Brene Brown is where she's talking about vulnerability minus boundaries, not being vulnerability. She says, if you're sharing your emotions and your experience to move work forward to form a connection or a relationship with someone, that is different from just working your, you know, she says, working your shit out with somebody, and then she's very clear to say that working your shit out with somebody. And I'm sure she means whether in person or over the phone or on social media is not meant for the workplace. Your business is not the place to do that. So you have to kind of find the line that is comfortable for you. I tend to be a little bit more like, here's business over here and here's personal life over here. I know some artists who blur that line way better than I do. It's just not my comfort zone. And I need to, especially in these times of heightened sensitivity and the importance of nuance, you really need to be true to yourself on that. So in these moments, I always take a second look at what I'm reading, what I'm writing rather. It's not the time to like, dash off a caption and just toss it out there. You want to make sure that you're being genuine. One of the people out there in the world who I think manages this like some sort of wizard is true. Trevor Noah, the comedian who does the news. So I've always been a Trevor Noah fan, and in the last several years, if you follow him, you know that he has really evolved as a comedian. He's always done satire, and so, you know, it's always been semi political. But in the past four or five, six years, I have watched him show up time and time again through all kinds of terrible events in the news and events that are sort of like writ large, big world geopolitical events, but also smaller events. And I have watched him consistently navigate that, like, tragedy comedy line with just incredible deafness. And that boggles the mind. I cannot even imagine what it would be like. It's hard enough being a photographer during some of these events. Like, trying to be a comedian would be a whole different thing. However, it has also occurred to me before that, like, if I didn't know who Trevor Noah was and he showed up not on his own show or on, you know, a comedy focused show, and instead showed up on the news. I didn't know who he was and he made some sort of like, joke on the news about George Floyd's murder. That would not be funny, right? There would be no relationship there. There would be no trust there. It wouldn't have been okay at all. I would think he was a horrible person. So the reason he has millions of fans around the world is that he is a comedian all the time and he shows up all the time with this sort of nuanced conversation about hard things into which he weaves comedy. And sometimes what people need most in these situations is a laugh, is a smile, is a way to release. Sometimes they want to be reminded that There is something in the world to smile about. The world does keep turning and that is not all that far off from what we as photographers can provide. We do provide beauty. We show people the beauty in their lives. You know, obviously I know that not everybody who listens to this show is a family photographer. There are wedding photographers, there's brand photography. But no matter what kind of photography you are providing, even if you're doing, let's say, brand photography, which may not be the most emotion driven work out there, you are helping someone with their business. You are helping them anchor to what is sane and normal in their lives, what they can control. Ideally, you are showing them beauty. If you're doing some kind of headshot or something like that. If you are on my email list, first of all, bless you. I know I email a lot, but if you have been around for a while, you know that you can always expect to hear from me week in and week out. And hopefully you know that I am always going to try to share something of value. Now sometimes I'm selling stuff or talking about the stuff that I sell, but most of the time I try and show up just to chat, to add value, to invite responses, conversations. I appreciate those of you who write me back. I take a lot of time on my newsletter. It is one of the biggest chunks of my week. I take my time choosing what I hope is the perfect gif that will bring a smile or kind of drive a point home. I take the time, most of the time, I think all of the time, to respond to the people who write me back. And there have been days when I am sending out a newsletter that I am like, I shouldn't even be sending this newsletter. I can't believe that I'm going to tell people to go listen to my podcast episode. And on those days when it is hardest, I will take a minute to acknowledge in the newsletter that writing that particular week feels silly. But if it is of any consolation to you, if it gives you any, if it empowers you to keep showing up for your audience, I will tell you that in that newsletter I continue to have what I think is a pretty high open rate. I don't get a lot of unsubscribes and there are people out there still buying my courses. I'm able to have both a rich, true, honest conversation with people that maintains work boundaries and I'm able to continue existing as a business owner. I'm able to serve those people who are on my list of my whys and that is my kids my employees, every single one of you in my community and the families that I serve as a photographer. So if you show up to serve, you show up on a schedule regularly, and you're not afraid to be a human being. If you're doing those things, there is no reason in the world that you need to feel bad for marketing your services and taking money for the work that you do. Hope you guys have a great week.
- [22:25]
Anna Mi Tonkin
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 I can show you how.