The Power of Nonconformity and Being Uncommon in Your Photography or Creative Business
The Power of Nonconformity and Being Uncommon in Your Photography or Creative Business
- High-End Sales Expert for Unconventional Photographers and Creative Entrepreneurs.
Embracing Non-Conformist Approaches in Marketing and Sales
I love and live to help those not made to fit in embrace their unique energy makeup.
Those who are ready to break through and ignite their next level of success by learning how to master their electric meatball (aka grey matter) and I find that getting straight into the personal and vulnerable side of my aligned clients speeds things up incredibly. This very personal journey of breaking free from traditional business norms and learning how to embrace my own uniqueness has not been an easy one but after struggling with overwhelming feelings of failure and burnout, in a business world where I never felt made to fit in, has lead me to where I am today.
I think of myself as a high-end business mindset wizard and breakthrough coach for creative business owners and high-profile professionals who all want to zig away from the masses to amplify their magic.
During my journey, I have been forced to question widely accepted marketing and sales tactics and I hope to share some insights and experiences, that might ignite a spark in you or make you feel a little less alone. When I say alone, I mean like anyone who’s felt or still feels like there is nobody else out there feeling this way or feeling like the odd one out because literally, I have felt this my entire life, especially being a creative myself, with ADHD.
As a psychology and neuroscience geek, my mission is to simply emphasize the importance of listening to your intuition and finding unconventional solutions that align with your own individual energy makeup.
This last year has been a year of great alignment for myself, and seeing how my life in the greater context has led me to this point in my journey. I've spent coming up to 5 years already, experimenting and learning a lot about myself as an entrepreneur in ways I hadn't previously. I hit a new phase in my journey in entrepreneurship, and that has taken me quite a while to experiment and find my seat again.
So a little bit before the pandemic hit, I was starting my new path as a mentor in the photography business space, not really knowing where that would take me. I always knew I had leadership qualities as I've always found myself in leadership roles within whatever my job was at the time, even before entrepreneurship. I would end up as leads in departments or managers at service industry jobs or helping implement a whole new system and taking it on at a bar or, track leader in roller derby and often the captain's right-hand person. I would be leading projects at publishing houses. Whatever it was, I found myself in leadership roles, not on purpose, but by simply being chosen.
The times when I wasn't in leadership roles, like when I worked in really gross and awful factories in Ohio were when I felt the most unaligned, the most unhappy, and the most uninspired, which makes sense. I'm a creative. I'm an artist.
I always knew I was one of those not made to fit into that kind of environment, so I tried to steer away from anything like that.
So how I found myself mentoring other photographers and creatives, was not by me creating a whole new business and marketing myself as such. I found I was being asked by people to help them, much like I was always asked to be in those leadership roles.
I will say that when I started mentoring photographers, I was already in a space where I'd been in the photography industry for well over 10 years. So I didn't go straight from the factory in Ohio to mentoring photographers. There was a decade in between.
So when these photographers would reach out to me for help, it was because they saw that I was proof of the power of nonconformity and they wanted to know what I did and what I was still doing in my own photography business to book higher paying clients. They saw something in what I was doing and felt inspired and/or felt a pull to reach out and ask me if I could help them do the same.
They were most interested in how I had built my photography business to be a high-end service, but clearly without branding myself as luxury or the stereotypical, high-end branding.
My aligned clients are all hilarious and down to earth. They want to get muddy. They want to go on a good adventure, and they all prioritize experience over things.
So as I say, it became apparent that other creatives saw I was doing this, saw I was intuitively sharp with helping create unique brands, and was able to build my photography business to focus on high-end experiences, and they really wanted that too.
During this time, I came to realize that the people coming to me for help were all people like me. They too felt like they didn't fit into the mainstream.
They didn't want to have to be this polished person showing up to weddings wearing a suit jacket and dress pants.
They didn't want to rebrand into one of those, black-and-white minimalistic luxury brands where they felt like they had to really minimize themselves in order to do that.
They wanted aligned clients who they felt really comfortable with.
So you see, the power of nonconformity and embracing your unique energy makeup in your photography or creative business is key!
Being around people who get you is so very important because we miss-fits generally are misunderstood with most things. So that's just been my life, and I've known that. But through mentoring creatives for about 5 years and then eventually becoming a proper coach in the most traditional sense of the word, I had to start truly analyzing myself in how and why I did the things that I did because my clients wanted to know.
I had intuitively built my business the way that I built it. For the most part, throughout my life, I have just intuitively found the path that works for me, as a person with ADHD. I did it through a lot of experimentation, which I'll get into later, but I've just always intuitively done things and haven't really had to sit and analyze it because why would I? So to be able to help others, some of the questions I had to ask myself in becoming a coach were:
What are the thoughts that I had that drove me to make specific decisions?
How did I actually build my business back end?
How did I actually build my CRM?
As someone with ADHD, I also felt the need to build in a lot of automation and back-end things for myself so I could deliver such a high-end client experience. I knew that I couldn't afford to forget things and drop the ball and things like that, so I naturally implemented this stuff, without really questioning how and why I came to do those things and how did I decide to build the system this way, etc.
I had to sit down and get really analytical and introspective with myself and how I’d built my own photography business in order to help others do that with themselves so they could figure out what marketing strategy really worked for them.
So by analyzing how I do things, I was able to become a better coach, knowing what questions to ask them for their own introspection.
Through all of this, I started helping people create truly authentic, nonconformist, amazing, and successful photography businesses and high-end creative services.
They saw my bookings were all 5 figures and they wanted help to get there, but in a way that was authentic to them.
That is the most important part, and I would say the string that connects me and them and connects them to the wider world as being authentic. They also then naturally wanted to learn how to sell at 5 figures because that is very different than selling commodity-price products or low-end services.
So I was able to break down ‘my process’ step by step, and ‘my business model’ step by step in order to understand what is uniquely mine and how to help them find what is uniquely them so that the high-end experience they offer within their service is not only creative, fun and freeing, but also centered around their own magic for their own aligned client.
I've always been really big on trying to figure out how I did things, figure out my system for doing things, and figure out what is uniquely Steph that they absolutely should not do because that is me and it won't work for them. And then working out how to help them figure this out for themselves. My point in all of this is that it took taking a really hard look at what I do and how I do it to really see how I am not made to fit into this regular world. haha! The way most photography businesses run, I just do not do. The mainstream way to market, I do not do nor do I like. The way other educators teach people to do things, I just have a whole other perspective and way of doing it, which looks nothing like the big-name gurus in the space at all.
“I'm gonna be honest with you, going from being a photographer to being a high-end sales expert was a really rough ride for me!”
It was a completely different business from the ground up. Obviously, the service is different, but I mean, from the way to package it and offer it, to the way of marketing it, to the sales cycles, all of it. The only thing the same is the actual act of selling because selling is selling. So I spent a few years really experimenting with growing this new, completely different business. I felt like I was hitting a brick wall at every turn. Not only was I dealing with an extreme nervous system reaction to the pandemic, completely destroying my safety because of how it impacted my photography business, but I was also trying to find my way in this completely new space that was completely foreign to me.
The moral of the story is I felt like a failure for a long time in the coaching business. I now know, however, that I wasn't failing at all. I've been making more in my coaching business than most coaching businesses make, especially during their first few years. Still, all of the learning and growing with marketing and offers and launching an online business, and online sales was such a doozy for me because I kept trying to implement what the popular voices in the space were saying. They were staying things like, how to market, how to build funnels, this, that, and the other, and none of it worked or felt right for me, which now makes sense and I know why, I'll get into that in a second.
I kept leaning into the fact that not only was I a good coach and sales expert, but I absolutely loved every second of it and my aligned clients ( the ones who committed to coaching and committed to the process ) were all seeing amazing results in their own photography and creative businesses too.
So I just kept leaning into that and using that as my north star, if you will, as I continued experimenting and bumping into things. For those who know the dark forest in the Ted Lasso series, that’s how it felt for me trying to figure out all these new things. Trying on a lot of new stuff, figuring out my way through this dark forest, bumping into all the trees, not knowing where my feet were going to land, not knowing where there was a dip or where there was a hill or anything like that. And it really did feel so very tiring.
It was the leaning into my love of coaching, and how I could help my clients that kept me going on this path of possibilities and uncertainties with all of the other parts of building an online business.
I just loved seeing their transformation. I loved seeing their self-confidence skyrocket and helping them spark this flame into their next level.
So come to this year and everything now is making sense in a way I never would have guessed would help me so much. Here's the thing. I am not a woo-woo person. I call myself Practical Woo! Any of the woo that I deal with is actually just neuroscience, psychology, and mindset that feels like woo magic, but it's really just helping your nervous system and brain work with you to get the success that you want. It feels woo-woo, but it's really not, haha!
Your brain is the most magical organ that has ways to heal itself, rewire itself, and shift how you view the world. It's really that awesome.
So is it woo? No.
Does it feel like woo sometimes? When I'm helping my clients with hypnosis or brain rewiring exercises? Hell Yeah!
When I talk about manifesting and helping people with mindset, can that sound like woo? Yes. But it's not. Because the way that I help people with manifesting is literal neuroscience. It's not a case of ‘think about this really, really hard and $1,000,000 will come to you’! It's a case of ‘let's figure out what you want’, ‘let's focus your unconscious mind to always be searching for it, and then take smart aligned actions that will actually bring this thing into your reality’.
I don't do thought work in a gaslight way. It's more about assisting you and guiding you so that you have more helpful thoughts yourself that help you find new solutions to circumstances and situations, all very much science-backed. So any woo I get into is very practical. I would say that the most woo thing I get into is reading tarot cards and witchcraft but when you break that down, it's actually all the same brain, unconscious mind mechanisms, and neuroscience at play. So it's not that woo!
My intuition is very, very strong. I use it in coaching to guide my clients but this last year, it just felt off, which I really want to point out isn't a bad thing. If you have been or are feeling like something is off and your photography or creative business growth is not what you want it to be, that doesn't necessarily mean it's a bad thing.
It could actually be a really good thing because your intuition could be trying to really point you in the direction that you want and need to be, which I always think is a good thing. Personally, I have found that all of the experimentation that I have to go through and working out all the things that aren’t working makes me stronger and more confident in myself in knowing what does and will work. So as I say, it's not a bad thing if it just feels a little off, it just means that you need to seek out ‘why’ it isn’t working. I will always eventually find the solution when I am seeking out that ‘why’. For me, it feels more like a case of ‘there needs to be a change here’.
After getting into the online business world, coaching and mentoring others, and getting more introspective with my own photography business, I came to realize that every which way society says how you do things is just not how I am.
This really highlighted to me that there is plenty of room in the photography or creative business world for those not made to fit in, offering high-end services and experiences and I was a classic example.
I came to the conclusion that:
The way I needed to market was not the normal way to market.
The way I intuitively sold my services was not the conventional sales approach.
The way I booked my photography clients and created my packages, and the high-end experiences I offer are just not the industry standard way.
And the way I want and need to work does not coincide with what society says. Period!
I knew and felt a lot of these things to be true deep down, but I didn't do much about some of them. I knew a lot of the stuff just wasn't working, but I didn't have a solution for a lot of it. For example, I knew I've always had this pull to figure out another way to do things because I naturally and eventually always do that. But there were things that just felt off and I didn't know what they really were or how to communicate it. And so, here's where the ‘woo’ comes in.
I figured out my human design and have been in a rabbit hole ever since. Everything in my life now makes sense. If you don't know anything about human design, that's totally okay. What I want you to take from this is to really just learn to feel into what you're doing and how you're doing it and if it doesn't feel good, know that there is another way to do it. Especially for people in my orbit, in my world, because like attracts like.
If you are reading this right now and the way you've set up your own marketing strategy or the way that you sell your offers or your packages feels off, Or the way that you show up to work (as in the hours that you have set for yourself and the days that you have for yourself) in your own photography or creative business feels off, just know, you’re not alone!
If any of this just feels off because you've been following what society has said, if you've been following the recommended corporate structure, inside your own business, and it feels like you're constantly hitting walls everywhere you turn, this is what I want you to take from this, it's okay to go another way!
It's okay to zig. It’s okay to zag.
It's okay to do something that somebody else might think is weird and who even questions ‘why you would do it that way’.
I want to give you a bunch of examples here, of how I've been doing this, where I found my success, whether you’re a similar human design as me or not because I want to talk about how it has helped me align myself throughout 2023 in how I've been helping others actually do it for themselves as well.
Once I figured out my human design chart, everything made so much sense.
My life made sense and it was also validating because throughout my entire life with everything that I've ever done, I’ve always felt like one of those not made to fit in.
Like, I'm kind of a lone wolf. I mean I have friends, but I don't have good friends that I hang out with all the time. I'm highly introverted. I find that I’m someone who loves and thrives on helping people but when done, I need to get out and recover with my own time. I've felt like that was weird for so long, and truly believed that something was wrong with me. Growing up, I would be that kid who ate her lunches at school by herself and stuff like that. My point is, all my whole life, I didn't fit in. I’ve always preferred to do things differently. When people said you need to do stuff this way or that way, it just never made sense to me.
Now that I'm an entrepreneur with two different business types, it really has hit home to me how I completely go off the rails and do my own thing all the time and how when I move, I move really fast and I make decisions really fast, so long as I’m not in a weird, paralysis thought loop about things, which can and does happen if I don’t catch myself, haha!
It's just been so eye-opening for me to see that according to my human design chart, these feelings of never fitting in are just my unique energy makeup, and the point I’m trying to raise here ( depending on what your human design makeup is ) that if you're feeling like the work you put into your business feels harder than it should, that you always feel out of energy and that every time you try mainstream advice, it never actually works for you, it’s probably because you've set your photography or creative business up in a way that is not congruent with what works for you.
So ever since figuring this out and seeing how every single aspect of my human design profile was on point, everything aligned and made me see why this past year has felt so off. Okay, so my ( I'm a splenic manifestor ) energy makeup is the same as 8% of the population, and most business advice given suits the designs that make up the 70%+ of the population, which are ‘generators’ and ‘manifesting generators’. If you're wondering what the actual fuck I’m talking about here, don't worry, just know that 70% of the population has a makeup that has a little motor of energy that they can tap into at any point when they want to, and I, being a splenic manifestor do not.
This was groundbreaking for me as I realized that I had set up my coaching business, my marketing, my offers, and everything to fit the design of the 70% and not my own type ( which is like this little battery that always needs a recharge, and it's not a little motor that I can tap into whenever I need. If my energy is gone, it's gone. Like, I can't do anything about it.)
And so I found myself constantly working myself into burnout and wondering why because sometimes I was like, well, I didn't actually do that much (since I am overly ambitious, my normal production is more like 3 times that of somebody else ) but I would find myself constantly just feeling like I was on the back foot and catching up all the time.
What I now know is that it's because I don't have a little motor. I’m a little battery!
I'm a little battery! I need to give myself the spaciousness within my schedule, within my activities, within my day-to-day to let myself completely recover and recharge my tiny little battery. Another part of my human design make up is all about experimentation. It's all about trying things, failing at them in order to learn, trying everything, and being a giant well of wisdom to help others because of all of this experimentation. I felt like the last 5 years have been full of experimentation after experimentation, and I'm finally at the point of the cycle to see it all as a whole and can now see what doesn't work for me and what never will. I can also see what is really good for the other 70% of the population, but I also see and have tried everything I could possibly find within the marketing world like funnels and systems and strategies and all this stuff.
So even though a lot of it didn't work for me, through that experimentation, I can see who it would work for. I’ve learned that it’s all about embracing your unique energy makeup.
This has helped and continues to help me in my own photography business and coaching as well.
Even before I figured out any of this human design stuff, I have and still always take my giant wealth of knowledge ( from almost 40 years of my life, experimenting with anything I can get my hands on ) everywhere, though it has been really affirming for me since discovering what my energy makeup actually is, as it explains exactly why I cannot work like other people.
So, to all you amazing and talented creatives out there looking to promote your high-end creative service. If you too have always felt like you’re not made to fit in, there’s a very good reason for this. Over this past year, I've been playing with what I’ve learned about human design and my own unique energy makeup in both my photography and coaching business, as well as in my personal life, and have settled on a new schedule that has worked wonders for me.
If you're reading this and you find yourself feeling exhausted every time you sit down to work, maybe you want to try a new work schedule, like I did. I now start work between 6 and 7 in the morning, and finish about 11 am, sometimes without a break when I’m hyper-focused. I'm so productive during this time. My creativity is off the charts. I'm in a quiet, dark room. My partner is still sleeping, and I can just really go at it. Between these hours, I do not get on social media. I do not do anything that would take my focus away. As a result, I've been getting more done with these 4/5 hours than what I used to do in a month.
I’ve honestly been so productive in all areas, without myself, which has been amazing.
I have a lot of clients that live all over the world. Canada, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, United States, and since I’m in Iceland, more often than not, we’re in different time zones. And so when I have scheduled client calls or anything like that in the afternoon ( anytime from say noon to 4 PM my time ), I plan my days a little differently so I have the energy and can still give them my whole self. In this instance, what has worked great for me is splitting my day up by taking a 3 or 4-hour break in between my morning work and scheduled calls later in the day so as to prevent my working really long hours. If you can bake in a really long rest in the middle of the day and then knock out another 2 or 3 hours afterward. That's also been super good for me and might suit you too!
I have also rearranged my schedule to work only Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday with a little bit of Wednesday or Friday if I feel inspired or super creative and excited to do so. This doesn’t include taking calls and It's not doing consults. It's not doing coaching either. It's not doing anything like that. It's just something that I feel creatively inspired to do in the moment. It’s If I feel that intuition happening inside me, which is also a part of human design, then I'll do it.
Once I figured out that doing business differently in my photo brand was what I was supposed to be doing all along ( because that's literally what I’m meant to do - disrupt and teach another way ), absolutely everything started to make sense to me as well, and it has really helped me lean into all of the ways that I do things differently and how I could teach that to people instead of thinking, okay, well, this is different, and this is weird, and people probably won't like it.
I've always felt like the way I market was too simple in comparison to what is being taught to the masses, hence it must be wrong. Turns out there's just a whole other way to do something!
So if there's something inside you where you’ve ever felt like ‘this is uniquely me, but I'm kind of scared, or I feel like nobody would care if I told them that or put this into my business or put it into my experience or whatever it is’, I'm here to tell you that embracing your unique energy makeup is the key to how you will really help your aligned clients. I'm positive of it!
Since falling into this obsession of further researching human design, I've been integrating this into coaching those clients who are also into human design.
I've been using their chart to help them with their own photography or creative business and help them better align their business and marketing strategy to their own unique energy makeup.
I start off by offering a chart plus business audit, so I can see what they're currently doing in their business, audit it, read their chart, and figure out where the changes need to be made with their marketing, brand, client sales, and work schedules. Not only has this been incredibly beneficial to their business, it's been a lot of fun too.
So the moral of this for you is this.
If you feel like there is something not working how you want it to work in your life or in your business. It might be because you do not fit into the way that society is set up. You might want to look for another way to do your marketing. You might want to look into a completely different and what most would consider maybe wacky work schedule. I know somebody that starts work at 4 AM, and I know people that start work at 11 PM. If your human design energy makeup is a splenic manifestor like me, please believe me when I say, you are meant to spark ideas, to spark change.
We are an ignition point. We spark motivation and movement in people. We ignite their ideas and empower them just with our voices. We are the exact moment that a campfire catches flame. We aren't the wood, and we aren't the flame. We are the point of ignition.
Other types are the wood, and other types are the flame, and then they go do something with the fire. That was huge for me and how I was setting up, and how I work with clients. I hope this is a big idea, a big shift maybe for you too.
The last year for me has been me digging into every single nook and cranny and the way I am showing up, my energy, my schedule, my business, every detail, and realigning myself to what makes me feel good. Realigning what I am doing to my human design strategy as it's called, which is for me to inform people before I move. Otherwise, I leave them in this aftershock of my movements, which I feel that so deeply.
So if this is a year of alignment for you because you are feeling that nudge, I just wanted to say, listen to it knowing that embracing your unique energy makeup in your photography or creative business or indeed personal life is where it’s all at! These insights and clarity have been so helpful for me this year.
I'm working and not feeling exhausted afterward. I have the space, the time, and the energy to include sports back into my life. I'm not worrying at all about what other people are doing, and I'm just sticking completely in my own lane, and it feels really great.
I so want that for you too! So go take stock of your business and life and see if there is anywhere or anything you are feeling off about.
This is your permission to literally go a different way than society says if you are like me and are not made for the way that this world is set up.
I hope this was insightful for you. I know It’s a little different than what I usually do, but I just felt called to do it because it's been very eye-opening, and it feels SO good and I want you to feel good too!
