Finding the Faith to Persevere

Emily Thompson 0:02
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Emily Thompson 1:27
Hello, and welcome to being boss. This minisode is all about how to find faith to persevere, as well as how to get great photos

Kathleen Shannon 1:43
two interesting topics. These come from Janell who is a clubhouse member. And you can learn more about our clubhouse by going to beingboss.club/clubhouse. And I'll let you hear it from her.

Janelle Hardy 1:57
Hi, my name is Janelle Hardy. And I'm an artist, a writer a guide. So I have a couple questions for you. My first is around money and mindset, especially in the starting stages of developing new programs or just building your work to be present in the world and sustain you finding faith to persevere, I'm really interested in the tools and tricks you have. And just your approach around that the faith to play the long game and know that it's gonna work out, or that you've got the resources and skills to deal with the disappointments or changes in direction. So that's my first question. And my second question is a little more fun. I'm a terrible photos subject. And it's always been excruciating to get good pictures of myself done. And I noticed you two have gorgeous, beautifully styled fun, playful images of yourself, yourselves. And I'm just wondering, how does that happen? For someone that has no problem taking pictures, but gets really awkward as the subject? What are your tips and tricks for getting getting great pictures of yourself? But you feel reflect to you online?

Kathleen Shannon 3:30
Okay, so it sounds like what janelle is really asking is, how do we trust that it's all going to work out whenever it comes to being a creative entrepreneur and or how to deal with the disappointments? And should you change direction? What do you think about that, Emily?

Emily Thompson 3:46
I think first of all, you just expect disappointments. And like, whenever you go into this expecting all of your the things you do to be a win, you're going to be absolutely disappointed. But if you go into it, knowing that you're going to win maybe like 50 to 75% of the time, then that 25% where you totally have a miss is not going to hurt that bad. It's just going to be part of the process. And I think that the moment that I realize that I'm not going to have a win every time I put myself out there every time I create a product or launch a service, not all of them are going to be totally stunners. It was the moment that I stopped caring so much and just put things out there to see what worked and then put more energy behind the things that did work. So I think getting to a place where you just expect the failures will put you in a place where trusting the process is a whole lot easier. And now I don't even question it. My experiences have shown me that if I do the work, I'm gonna have a payoff. And that keeps me going

Kathleen Shannon 4:47
Amen. and that's exactly how I feel about it too. It does take a lot of faith to be a creative entrepreneur. And I'm constantly reminding myself of what you just said Emily that every time I've put work into it, it has paid off. And just trusting that process is huge,

Emily Thompson 5:05
right. And I think something I want to throw out here too is that the payoff isn't always in the way that you expect to. So even the failures that you have, like you did the work, and there will be a payoff. And maybe the payoff is just that you learned that this thing that you did isn't going to work. But maybe in the process, you meet someone cool, who's going to be a great collaborator down the road. So there will be a payoff, but it may not be in the way that you expect.

Kathleen Shannon 5:30
Yeah. And that payoff sometimes isn't on the timeline that you expect. So for example, we've told this story before. But Emily, and I tried launching a workshop, what, four years ago, at least. And it was again, it was before you had launched indie shopography, and the workshop itself was going to be called indie shopography. And so it was a total flop, nobody signed up or one person signed up, we had to give them a refund. But one, you got your branding out of it, you were able to create an entire business around that brand indie shopography. So that was a win that came out of a disappointment. And four years later, we started this podcast, and it's bigger and better than anything we could have ever expected. And I don't know that we would have tried it if we had not tried that first project together. So I think that it's very important to know how to deal with disappointments. For me, I recently had a disappointing launch. And it was successful by all current standards, right. But I'm ready to level up. So I just launched the braid ecourse, or I had launched it earlier this year. And it wasn't quite like I was like six figure launch this time. So whenever I didn't meet that goal, I was totally disappointed. But then what I did was I step back, and I looked at everything that went into that launch and where I had missed opportunities. So I was looking at my positioning on my website and seeing and asking myself, is it clear why this is important and why you need it. I sent a follow up survey, you guys asking for feedback is so hard. But with the advice of my friends like Emily, saying, you need a feedback survey, I knew I needed to do it. So what I needed to do is put in work that I wasn't willing to do the first time around to make it a success the next time so that's how I deal disappointments is I act like a boss I put on my boss undies. I don't have a boss. I bet you don't put on my boss. I'm nice. And I do the work. So I do not change direction though. And that is one thing that I wanted to point out with you is that it's not about changing direction. It's about changing positioning, changing direction and pivoting every time you have a failure is not going to set you up for success at all. You got to stay on that bus. Let's move on to the next question, which is all about being a terrible photo subject and being it's excruciating. Now I love having my photo taken. Okay,

Emily Thompson 8:05
so let me tell you guys why Kathleen is so great at this and I'm pretty sure it's her part time job to make faces at herself in the mirror. One I've seen it happen in two I've seen her in a photo shoot and she's practiced that shit. A lot. A whole lot. It's Kathleen's like, like, wish deep seated wish to be a model.

Kathleen Shannon 8:28
I audition. I audition for America's Next Top Model. What episode is that story on? It's our life from New Orleans. Yeah, it tells the story about you guys, I don't look like a model by any means.

Emily Thompson 8:40
But she'll work it does not even matter. So that's why Kathleen is so great at it because she's put in all of the work to get her there. Um, and like also say like the photoshoots, though, anyone has the couple of photos that you see are out of hundreds of photos. So maybe it's finding maybe it's finding a photographer with a larger memory stick.

Kathleen Shannon 9:06
Well, okay, so that is actually my biggest tip and trick for getting really good photos is getting a photographer who is amazing at what they do. So the photos that Janelle is referring to were taken by Sarah Becker Lillard who is an amazing photographer in New Orleans. And I've also had photos taken by my friends at Choate house and my friend Greer ins. And that's the tip and trick there is that my photographers are my friends, so I feel incredibly comfortable around them. I can express to them what I feel insecure about. I can tell them what angles give me a double chin and please don't shoot from that direction. So I think it's really important to be comfortable with a photographer and to work with a photographer who makes you feel most like yourself.

Emily Thompson 9:53
Yeah, and if that doesn't work, put on some Beyonce and have a cocktail and you will be ready to go.

Kathleen Shannon 10:00
I will also say something that really helped our photoshoot in New Orleans was having my brother and his girlfriend on set to help us with art direction and styling. That was definitely something the less you have to worry about on your own photoshoot, the more comfortable you're going to feel. So get your outfit and makeup figured out in advance, hire a stylist if you need to hire a stylist, and have someone on set who's going to help you take care of logistics and errands and your photographer might have an assistant that can take care of those things as well. But the less you have to do, the more comfortable you're going to be. Oh, take a shot of something like alcohol is always pretty good for loosening up. Yeah, when it comes to photos. I'm kind of not kidding. Um, what's another good trick? Oh, friends on set I

Emily Thompson 10:49
was about to say I think one of the things that made that photoshoot turned out so well was because it was the two of us and we were just kind of having fun. And like, and again, Sarah, I start getting bitchface like it just it starts setting in. And so Sarah was really good about like, you know, Emily, just let your face rest for a second because God bless it. Um, but yeah, so like having a having a solid photographer that you can be super comfortable with who's not going to be afraid to like give you direction I think is really helpful if you have problems like envisioning it and doing it yourself. But yeah, having friends on set, great shot of tequila, perhaps.

Kathleen Shannon 11:29
And the more you do it, the easier it gets. So one thing that you might actually practice, I know that you're laughing I mean, making faces in the mirror, it makes

Emily Thompson 11:36
you good at it. I

Kathleen Shannon 11:38
laugh taking selfies, figuring out what your good angles are is a really great thing to do before you go into a professional photo shoot, and kind of like just the hiring really great photographers. It really does make all the difference. Alright, thank you so much jenelle for your questions. We love getting to chat with you today. You know, we made magic in New Orleans and we soaked up some sunshine in Miami and now we are ready to cross the border and explore the six. That's right, Emily and I will be making our international debut in Toronto, Canada on October 1 2016 fresh books is bringing us to their headquarters for a live podcast recording and some mini sessions around super important topics every creative entrepreneur needs to learn more about Be sure to join us there go to beingboss.club/Toronto for this totally free event. Thanks to fresh books cloud accounting. We hope to see you there.

Emily Thompson 12:38
Did you like this minisode Be sure to check us out on our website at being boss dot club. There you can find more from being boss including our full episodes minisodes and blog posts. And while you're there, be sure to sign up for our mailing list so that you can get access to behind the scenes and exclusive content from Kathleen and myself to help you be more boss in your work and life. Do the work be boss