Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome to Tried and True with the Dash of Woo, where we blend rock-solid tips with a little bit of magic. I'm Renee Bowen, your host, life and business coach and professional photographer at your service. We are all about getting creative, diving into your business and playing with manifestation over here. So are you ready to get inspired and have some fun? Let's dive in. Hey, hey, welcome back to another episode of Tried and True with a dash of woo. I am your host, renee Bowen, and today we're diving into something that I think a lot of you guys are going to relate to, especially if you are a creative, a photographer or just a human who has ever felt uncomfortable with the idea of promoting yourself. So, yeah, I'm talking to you. People pleasers out there. This one's for you Now. I'm talking to you people pleasers out there. This one's for you Now. I'm going to tell you really quickly that I have tried to record this episode once and my mic would not connect. So I'm going to try and do this rapid fire all the way through without any cuts, because now I'm down to the wire on getting the podcast out. So hopefully this is going to work this time. I want to keep this episode short anyway, and super actionable. We're going to explore the connection between people-pleasing behavior, the unconscious programming that lies beneath it, and how this impacts our ability or inability to market ourselves authentically and confidently. And by the end of this episode, I want you to walk away with both the mindset shifts and some practical strategies to start flipping this script, because this is really one of the biggest barriers holding you back from thriving in your creative business, and you are going to want to stick around, because I am not just talking about mindset here. You know that I like to talk about both sides of this coin, right the mindset, the woo and also the strategy. So I'm going to be walking you through some email strategies that you can use and also some AI strategies, so AI prompts to help you with your email game. And this is all going to make sense in just a few minutes.

Speaker 1: 2:01

But let's dive in to people pleasing right off the bat. We all know what it looks like. It's bending over backwards to make everybody happy, feeling uncomfortable with setting boundaries, avoiding anything that might make you seem too much. It's being overly polite. It's being available to your clients at all times of the day and night, underpricing yourself or worrying that if you market your services, somebody might think that you are pushy and slimy, but the truth is is that people pleasing is rooted in deep, unconscious programming.

Speaker 1: 2:34

So somewhere along the way, a lot of us, especially women, picked up the belief that our value is determined by how much that we can do for other people, how agreeable we can be. And here's where it impacts you as a creative. When we prioritize pleasing other people over our own growth, our own voice, our own needs, we fall into this cycle of under-marketing ourselves and just sweeping that under the rug. And then we wonder why we don't have any clients. We hesitate to talk about what we do, to showcase our value and to sell, because it all feels just really icky, because, deep down, we don't want to make anybody uncomfortable.

Speaker 1: 3:14

Okay, but let me ask you this How's that working for you? So the first step is really awareness and I want you to ask yourself where do you notice the people-pleasing tendencies coming up when it comes to your marketing specifically? Is it in your pricing as well? Is it in hesitating to send an email to your list? Is it hesitating marketing in general? Maybe it's avoiding creating a sales post because you worry about what people are going to say, or if they're going to roll your eyes or think that you're just being really weird. Whatever, understanding where these beliefs come from is really the first step to dismantling them, because that discomfort, that's the ceiling, that's what's keeping you from you being your highest self, from your fullest potential, reaching your fullest potential. So let's break free from all that.

Speaker 1: 4:04

Okay, I want you to do a quick little mindset exercise with me here and just imagine for a second that marketing your photography business isn't about pushing something onto others. What if, instead, it was just an invitation? What if the work that you put out there, your emails, your social posts, what if the work that you put out there, your emails, your social posts, were all opportunities for somebody who really needs what you do, your art, your services, to find you right? Because, let me tell you, there's people out there who are really looking for actively looking for what you have to offer, and they need you to tell them that you exist. Because, chances are, you don't have a PR team, you don't have a marketing team. Chances are, you are a solopreneur, like most of us, so you do need to be the one saying it. It's not sleazy, it's service, and here's a strategy that you can use right away.

Speaker 1: 5:00

I want you to practice reframing self-promotion into sharing. Just share, okay, you aren't selling. You're sharing your passion. You're sharing your talent, sharing your ability to serve other people with your creative gifts that only you can do. It's not about begging for attention, it's about connecting. That's it. And yes, digging deep into this is important. This is one of the main things that I do inside of my coaching, one-on-one and groups. We talk about this a lot. Okay, it comes up. It shows up in a lot of different things, so I do encourage you to dig deeper.

Speaker 1: 5:35

If you are dealing with people-pleasing stuff like if you see the signs of some of the things that I just talked about if you are doing those things and you feel bad for charging people, you feel bad for sending an invoice, you feel bad for raising your prices for past clients who you shot years ago and now you have to raise your prices, and you feel bad for doing it. If any of those things arise for you as well. As, are you letting your clients run the show? Are they texting you at all hours of the night? Are they running the session? Are they running the sales session? That's all rooted in people pleasing and there's a reason why it's happening. It's really just your unconscious mind running a program. That's it. It was just running a program that it was installed years ago, probably as a child, against your will, wasn't your fault, you just sucked in information and that's how it got in there and it's now stuck. So it's up to you to look at it and decide whether you want to continue running that script or not, because you definitely have the power to reprogram it. Okay, just like a computer, you can go in there and rewrite that code. So that's what I talk about here on this podcast a lot. There's many different ways to do that. Lots and lots of different ways to do it, and you got to find what works for you.

Speaker 1: 6:52

But today I really want to cover some practical marketing moves for you guys, because I feel like that's the other side of this that a lot of you guys aren't really doing, and so when you are actively coming from operating from this place of people pleasing, one of the main things that drops off your marketing game is your emails. Right, you feel really bad for sending a lot of emails to your list, or any emails, because you don't want to put people off or, you know, bother them Okay, but we need to have a come to Jesus moment about that. I hear from a lot of photographers who are stuck because they feel like marketing is just like this overwhelming beast, especially with social media. Right, you're inundated with it and having to be all the places all the time. But if you have a really good email game going and you're consistently emailing your list, that's going to take a lot of the lifting off of the social media game. You don't have to do as much social media marketing. Yes, you do need to do it. It has to be supportive of it but your emails really should be doing a lot of this work for you and it's not that hard.

Speaker 1: 8:03

So let's break it down and talk about the ins and outs of this. And before you groan and tell me things like nobody reads emails anymore, I'm going to just stop you right there, because it's not true. You can pull up tons and tons of stats to the contrary. Okay, so that's not the case. Sending regular emails to your list is the best way to warm up your target clients, but how do you even get people on your list in the first place? Okay, so that's what I want to talk about first.

Speaker 1: 8:34

I want to talk about creating something of value. Maybe it's a short PDF or a video we're going to talk about some specifics in a second but ideally you want to pick a lead magnet that is something that speaks to the people you want to attract. You got to give them a reason to hand over that email because it's valuable. You're exchanging something valuable their email for something valuable from you, and you don't want it to just be something basic like what to wear for your photo shoot, like everybody does that. So today we're going to be talking about something a little bit more interesting, and here's the other part that's crucial. Okay, you can't disappear after you send that initial email when they join your list. You have to then nurture them and you have to show up regularly, and it doesn't have to be groundbreaking stuff every time. Right, we're going to talk about some out of the box ideas for lead magnets that you can draw people in and then also are going to help you with your SEO.

Speaker 1: 9:33

But before we go into that, really quickly, I just want to mention to you this whole email nurturing and workflows and having emails sent to your list regularly. You don't have to physically do it. You can use something like Flowdesk. Whatever system you use, there's so many automated systems now. I personally love Flowdesk. I used MailChimp in the past. I didn't love it. It was expensive. Flowdesk is awesome just across the board, so I'm going to link a blog post below where I talk all about Flowdesk and you can use my affiliate link as well to try it out and you can get 50% off. Okay, here are some cool ideas for lead magnets for photographers that I believe are going to help you draw people in and help you with your SEO. Now we know that SEO is important. We're not going to have an SEO conversation today. I've had them before, so go back and listen to those episodes.

Speaker 1: 10:29

But the first thing that I'm going to talk about on this list is going to help you a lot with your local SEO, and it's one of my my. I'm not going to say a secret tip, because I have definitely spoken about this with coaching students, but I don't think I've ever publicly talked about this little trick and it's a good one, and unfortunately, a lot of photographers don't want to do it because they're not operating from an abundance mindset. They're operating from scarcity, where they feel like if they share things about what they do, and especially locations, then it's going to be giving their competition a leg up. But we don't do that here. We don't gatekeep. We understand that when we operate from an abundance mindset meaning we know that there is more than enough work for all of us we all win.

Speaker 1: 11:24

So the first thing on this list is creating a customized location guide for your photo shoots, so you can create this guide to your favorite, best local spots for your photo sessions, complete with examples of your own work. Obviously, not only is this going to attract your local clients who are looking for sessions and a photographer and you're going to help them out by giving them value but it also boosts your SEO with those local keywords. So you can do this as a lead magnet as a PDF. You can do it as a short video, which I think is even better. I really am a big believer and proponent in video lead magnets because, more and more especially if you're a high school senior photographer side note your teen clients are going to probably be more willing to watch something than read. But a PDF is always good, so don't let that stop you.

Speaker 1: 12:09

Go into Canva and create one. It doesn't have to be anything crazy, but again, you just wanting to give value. Then you can also do a blog post about it and link it in the blog posts. You can do that for all of these that I'm going to give you. Okay, that's even better for your SEO. You always want to start with your blog, but this is a great lead magnet because you're helping a lot of different people and, yes, you might have some photographers who find it and download it. Oh, my gosh, big deal. They're not you. Okay, we're not going to worry about that. We're going to worry about talking to our target clients when staying our lane of what those people want, speaking to their pain points and solving their problems. Okay, you're going to be a lot happier, trust me.

Speaker 1: 12:50

The second lead magnet you can do is a photography style quiz, or a location quiz or a vibe quiz, offering a quiz to help your potential clients identify their ideal photography style, whether it's romantic or candid or editorial. Any kind of quiz, honestly, is going to work. People love quizzes, so think about what your target client would appreciate in terms of a quiz, and if you're looking for a good program or software to use for this, I highly highly recommend Interact I'm going to link that below as well for you. That's what I use for mine. It is so easy to set up and you can also integrate your flow desk with it so that you can set up this entire workflow to be sent out once someone does the quiz. Okay, so like you can have up this entire workflow to be sent out once someone does the quiz.

Speaker 1: 13:37

Okay, so like you can have three different answers. They go to three different places. You can have them on different segments of your list. I know this all sounds complicated, but it's really not. It's super easy. An interactive flow desk walks you through the whole thing, right. Their help desk is really really good, so you can have it all automated. You don't have to do this physically all the time. There's nothing better than seeing people pop on your list just randomly throughout the day. I have to say it's just such a dopamine hit. So I highly recommend looking into the systems and automations of this. Okay, because you don't have to hold people's hands physically doing this. You can set up a great quiz with Interact and then you can have it all segmented from within Flowdesk, leading people to obviously book a session with you. That's the goal.

Speaker 1: 14:24

All right, your next idea for a lead magnet is pose like a pro, a guide. Maybe you do a downloadable PDF or you do even better a video. You can see these online a lot. There's a lot of photographers doing posing videos out there now, which I think is great. Personally, I send out a video to my clients who have booked with me my teen clients. I send them a video of posing ideas and lots of different pre-frames on that, so that by the time they are in front of my camera, they are already at ease because they've kind of had a little inside view of how I work. Okay, I definitely recommend doing this, by the way, but you can also do this as this lead magnet, so that you are priming people to want to shoot with you in the first place and then giving them something super valuable, like how to look better in pictures, even if you're not a senior photographer. You can do this for branding oh my gosh, like headshots branding how to look better in your headshot in three simple steps, right, really really easy to put together. Again, pop open your Zoom, do a quick little video. Don't overthink this, just get it done, okay.

Speaker 1: 15:32

Number four is a seasonal shoot checklist. Everybody loves a checklist, I know I do. So. Create a checklist for prepping for a photo shoot during different seasons maybe 10 must-haves for your winter wonderland photo shoot, or whatever. Something that people can download it, they can share it, they can revisit Again. You can do a blog post about this and get really into the nitty-gritty of it and you can promote whatever you're promoting at that time of year.

Speaker 1: 15:59

Number five is client success stories. You can turn those past client experiences into case studies that are really valuable and educational for potential new clients, and you can do this in a lot of different ways, right, but not only is that going to show your expertise, it also demonstrates that social proof. There's a lot of different ways, right, but not only is that going to show your expertise, it also demonstrates that social proof. There's a lot of different ways you can do this, obviously, but the idea is that it's a case study. It's something cool. It's something like oh, I want to see what that person's you know client journey was. This is a great opportunity for you to show a client's potential entire journey with you, from start to finish. Again, you're prepping them. It's so cool.

Speaker 1: 16:37

And then the last one I'm going to mention is an interactive mood board template. Okay, so offer a template on Canva or another platform that you love where potential clients can create their own mood boards for an upcoming session with you. So this not only can be interactive but serve as, like this, bridge between the initial inquiry and the booking. You can set this up, you know, elaborately or very simply, which I suggest like keep things simple, but the idea is that you want to come up with a lead magnet that is not going to be like what everybody else is doing. It should be SEO friendly, okay, and it should be valuable to your audience and, above all else, it needs to convert them into your client. So, ideally, after all of this, you've got a workflow set up in Flowdesk so that it can just automate. You can send them however many other emails you want in that sequence. You can set that to however many you want, and it does the work for you. Okay.

Speaker 1: 17:37

The idea, too, is when you're showing up in additional emails whether it's just, you know, a newsletter or a workflow you are authentically sharing pieces of your life, your business, behind the scenes, storytelling featuring recent sessions, like you want to get real with these people. You want to build up the no, like and trust. So you're not asking for a sale in every email. You are offering value and, more than anything, you're connecting with these potential clients, all right. So I want to go into another strategy with you guys, this time using ChatGPT or any other AI writing program that you use to help you write the emails. So these are going to be some prompts that you can use to help you figure out what to say, because I know that that's the hardest part for a lot of us and, honestly, if you're not using tools like ChatGPT or Cloud AI, you really really should be. I mean, I'm not saying you should just copy paste, but you definitely can use these programs enough to where they start sounding a lot like you, and I don't know about you, but I would much rather pay $20 a month for this system, like potentially thousands, to an assistant Sorry, I just would.

Speaker 1: 18:52

So I have six different prompts. Two of them are for senior photographers, two of them are for headshot and branding photographers and then two are just for creative businesses in general and could be for coaches and things like that. You're going to want to come back to this. So, whether you're watching this on YouTube or Apple podcasts listening there. There's an option for you to go into the transcript, and so you can just kind of copy paste instead of just having to take notes as you listen to me talk, but you're going to want to save these, okay.

Speaker 1: 19:20

So the first prompt for high school senior photographers is create an email series titled five secrets to an amazing senior year photo shoot experience. Break it down into multiple emails you can tell it exactly how many where each email covers one aspect, like choosing the perfect location, wardrobe tips, how to feel comfortable in front of the camera, involving friends or pets, and getting those true to you candid shots. Give actionable steps and examples from past shoots that I have done, and you can also link past blog posts as well, which is always great, because you always want people to get to your site. Okay, the second one is write a guide to celebrating your unique style email. This email should help potential senior clients think through how they want to express themselves, focusing on personal passions, hobbies or even sentimental items that they could incorporate into their session, encourage them to visualize how they wanna be remembered, and include links to inspiration boards to get them excited. So, again, you can do that in one email. You can do it in a series of emails, it doesn't matter.

Speaker 1: 20:25

The next two are for branding and headshot photographers. The first one is craft an email or an email sequence on how to capture your brand's personality in a photo. Walk through these different styles of branding sessions and how each one communicates something unique about a business, such as warm and friendly, sleek and professional, or creative and bold. Include examples of past clients in a mini exercise where they write down three adjectives that describe their brand to help you create their ideal branding story. You can have them email that back to you. So that's a good way to get people to respond to your email, which is always really good, because when people respond to your mass emails that come from a system like Flowdesk, it whitelists it for them. It whitelists your email address, so they're much more likely to see and open and then read your emails, so you always want to think about ways to get them to respond to you. The next one for branding and headshot photographers is create an engaging email with a checklist called top 10 must have shots for every headshot session. Go beyond just head and shoulder shots, include environmental portraits, creative angles and even a lifestyle shot that captures a day in the life moment. This email should help clients understand the value of variety in their headshot package, giving them ideas that go beyond the basics.

Speaker 1: 21:43

So here's the thing you can upload a lot of your information to ChatGPT. If you haven't figured that out yet, you can upload your writing, your blogs, your emails that you've written in the past. You can upload images all kinds of different things to ChatGPT so that it gets to know you more. And the new Canvas option. They're always coming out with new versions of ChatGPT and ChatGPT Plus. The new one is Canvas, and it's really awesome because it will basically open it in what looks like a doc, like a document, like a Google Doc, and then you can go in and you can make adjustments to the text that it gives you so you can highlight things and ask it to refine it, so you can really really get these prompts dialed in Super, super technical. So I encourage you to play with it if you have not.

Speaker 1: 22:34

So the last two are a little bit more general, right? So probably good for coaches, creatives in general. The first one is generate a content strategy for creatives email series, okay, help your audience understand how they can create a content calendar for their work, whether it's photography, design or something else entirely. Obviously, you want to put in those specifics. This series should include a downloadable calendar template, prompts for types of content to create and a guide on how to batch content so my clients can work more efficiently. Each email in the series can provide a different part of the content planning puzzle building anticipation and engagement. So this is good if you're selling that kind of service, obviously, but you can also use that prompt for yourself if you are having a hard time with content strategy.

Speaker 1: 23:22

Just as a side note, just kind of revise it. You know the way that you word it. And then the last one is write an in-depth email on transforming your creative block into breakthroughs. So dive deep into the common causes of creative block, how unconscious programming can lead to fear of judgment or imposter syndrome. And then actionable exercises to get unstuck, including journaling prompt and a visualization exercise, and you can even like have a downloadable thing there, right? So like if you have a different kind of lead magnet or if you're like me and you can do a downloadable hypnosis or activation, so you can really go even a little bit further with that kind of prompt.

Speaker 1: 24:03

But the idea with these is I just kind of want you to get your juices flowing right. It's all about building connection with your audience. It's not about being perfect and you just got to just jump in the deep water and get it done. If you have not started an email list, you need to start. You just need to start. You need to put something up on your website that is enticing for people to want to download, and you got to get them into a sequence. You got to get them into your universe so that you can nurture them, so that they can find out how awesome you are.

Speaker 1: 24:33

Once you get into the groove of doing this sort of stuff emails and then blogs it really does take a lot of pressure off of the social media game. It really does. Yes, I do think that social media does work in tandem. I think it's a really big part of it, depending on what you do specifically, right, but you really don't need to spend 24 seven on social media if you've got all this other awesome stuff working for you and your SEO game does extend to social media. So once you have like an SEO strategy I've talked about this on other podcasts, but I can't reiterate it enough. Once you have an SEO strategy in place, you can be using it across the board on your social platforms as well. So, again, it's not about making more work for yourself, it's about making it easier on yourself. That's why I wanted to include these AI prompts. Okay, that's it. I wanted to keep it really, really short for you guys today. Hopefully, I was able to give you a little bit of a kick in the pants. If you've got some people pleasing going on, okay, and if, look, if you've got it going on, don't beat yourself up. Everybody does it's, especially if you're a woman. We have more than our male counterparts, unfortunately, I mean.

Speaker 1: 25:48

I just saw this study online. They were speaking directly about how autism in women is much harder to screen for, even as like young as five and six years old, because even at that age, we, as females, are taught to be more socially appropriate. We pick up more on like not hurting other people's feelings and just being nice. And the study in particular was they took a group of five-year-old girls and a five-year-old boys and they gave them this jam that was super salty, and the woman was like I made this jam and I want to offer it to people. Would you taste it and let me know what you think? The entire group of five-year-old girls did not like it, but they didn't tell her. They were like it's good. It's good, it's a little salty, but I like it. And they kept eating it. And then the little boys right off the bat. Why is this so salty, like right off the bat?

Speaker 1: 26:37

So again, this was a study on like autism, but I really feel like it's because we are taught as women to just not be disagreeable, to just be agreeable, to just say you know, we like things when we really don't don't muddy the water, don't make waves, don't be too big, don't be too much. All for the attention of men usually and I don't know about you just primed way more for people pleasing. And if you are done with it, then I applaud you for just noticing it. Okay, just like anything else, noticing is the biggest, hardest step, but it also is like the fast track to get through it, because the more you brush all of this under the rug, the bigger it's going to get and it's going to show up in different ways. So if you feel triggered by any of this, it's kind of probably a sign that it's time. It's time for you to look at it and decide. You know, okay, I want to change this or not. It's up to you. Choice is always yours.

Speaker 1: 27:47

If you do want help with that, I help people with that all the time, so please reach out. I have links for you below. You can reach out for coaching. I am signing up coaching for 2025 now and, just as a little side note, I do have some pretty awesome Black Friday deals coming. It's going to be a whole week of Black Friday deals, so you are going to want to make sure you're on my email list. That link is below as well. Make sure you are on there so you can get first dibs, because they're going to be time-based, so, like, every day is going to have a different deal and at the end of the day, it's gone. So you're going to want to make sure that you're opening my emails that week.

Speaker 1: 28:22

And if you liked this episode, share it with a photographer friend or a creative friend. Let them know, um, that they don't have to people, please, either. And if you want to share it on social, definitely please tag me so I can see it and then reshare it as well. I'm at Renee Bowen. Again, all those links are below. Thank you, guys, so much for being here again and I hope this provided a lot of value to you. I'll see you next time. Love you, bye.