Is Your Mind Gunk Holding Your Photography or Creative Business Back From Growing?
Is Your Mind Gunk Holding Your Photography or Creative Business Back From Growing?
- Success Coach and Sales Expert for Photographers and Creatives.
Does it ever feel like you're running full force in your photography or creative business with this huge bungee cord attached to you?
Does it feel like it’s just not making much forward motion?
If your answer is yes, you're probably stuck in the gunk my friend! But what gunk I hear you say? Put simply, it's the thoughts constantly happening in your brain and the mindset of what to do about them. The gunk I’m talking about here is very sticky and very sneaky and might very well have your feet firmly planted in it, without even realizing it, just as I had when I was starting out a couple with my podcast a couple of years ago. I actually changed the title four times in those two years! I had a bunch of episodes written but I just never followed through. Why? Because I was stuck in the gunk! One of the most important reasons why I wanted to actually do the podcast was to share my journey in real-time as it was all happening, not once I'm through the gunk to the other side, to give you the highlights and the clean steps.
Even as a Master Certified Success Coach and Sales Expert, I still get caught out by this gunk. But then why wouldn’t I? I'm only human, there’s no avoiding it. We all get it right?
It’s helpful to know that the journey of growing your business is always kind of a bit messy! It's never clean! And I don't think enough people share in real time what they are doing or thinking for their business goals and how they're going about doing them, achieving them, and working at them. What we tend to see is this super polished, really clean framework that people talk about afterward, but they don't seem to ever talk about all of the things that they went through in order to actually figure out what those steps were. Hence my wanting to delve a little bit more into the gunk that we get stuck in.
It’s vital to spend time going over your mindset gunk! Gunk that is stopping you from raising your prices, getting better at your sales skills, and other things involved that have been holding your photography or creative business back from growing.
How I always think of it is, it’s kind of like the greasy old gunk that is sticky, like quicksand, right? It's gross and it can hold you stuck. It's hard to move through and is kind of like this little secret, shitty pond that you've found yourself planted solid in. My journey through the gunk to finally get the podcast out there has been basically two years of me trying to sort it out. Even though I'm certified with hundreds of coaching hours under my belt, and 17 years of business experience, I still had thoughts like, ‘‘oh, maybe I don't have anything meaningful to say’’.
That was the gunk holding me back!
I knew that I was one of the top earners in my entire industry niche who had built my business model totally different than anyone else at the time. I knew that I was someone who specialized in high-end services and experiences, but I still felt like I didn’t have enough to say.
My customer experience-focused brand offers high-end and exclusive experiences at a value price point that is reflective of that. It’s totally unique in the industry. It is not like the commodity or the conveyor belt-type model that a lot of people do, ie booking as many clients as possible, whilst offering them the same generic service model, which is fine and what a lot of people do ( and it actually works for them ). It just doesn't light my fire!
I love exclusive high-end services for my own photography business, and I've created this brand to do just that.
For the longest time, I wanted to share my story and why I moved to Iceland but felt like I didn't know what to talk about. My gunk was in thoughts like, “Well, maybe people don't really care” OR “ But I'm not living in this vacation, Instagram, fantasy escapist video’’. I live in an apartment downtown in Reykjavík- I don’t live in a volcano or inside a glacier like Instagram and TikTok might make you believe. It's not the other content you see, so I was like, ‘‘Oh, people probably don't want to see it.’’ And that right there was my gunk. It’s how I let the fear of being misunderstood ( as somebody with ADHD ) keep me in hiding and not getting the podcast out there.
We creatives with ADHD ( or other neuro divergencies ) are often misunderstood because of our tone, our directness or our mind wandering and rambles, we come up against people who take what we are saying as a slight, which can result in them coming back offensive or mean, or unwelcoming. And then we feel like what the fuck just happened? I know without a shadow of a doubt that if you have ADHD, that has happened to you countless times. It literally happened to me just a few days ago, in fact, it's always happening.
So, long story short, the gunk of that, that fear of being misunderstood held me back from doing my podcast. I let the gunk of the fear of being made fun of as somebody who was bullied and made to feel ashamed of my interests, my hobbies and my sense of humor hold me right back. I let the gunk of perfectionism do the same, basically for my entire adolescent and early adult life!
If you're a perfectionist, you know that it just holds you in this ‘‘perfectionist purgatory’’ in your business growth.
It's like, you're waiting in this perfectionist fantasy world and you're not taking any actual forward action. That is gunk.
Don’t let the gunk of the fear of showing people who you really are, what you have to say and how you can help your clients hold you back because the way that I help my clients, both in my photography business and in my coaching business is not very typical. It is a very Steph thing. You must do your thing!
I've even had thoughts like, ‘‘do people actually want to hear about how I help people, namely creatives and photographers in building their businesses, as it’s a very different process than what most people see in the industry?’’
It seems to me like most use the same frameworks and tactics! Things that I really don't do which made me question if my Steph way was too simplistic? But, it's not! People need that. I had to get rid of the gunk to move forward!
So. Here I am. I've junked the gunk. I'm finally starting to podcast. I've decided I'm no longer allowing that sticky residue to hold my feet any longer because really, we all have a choice and choice is what we allow to dictate our actions.
So my question to you is where are you still being held back from? Where is your gunk?
What things do you want to do in your life and photography or creative business that you aren't doing because of the gunk?
Really reflect on that and see, what do you need to think and believe in order to get your feet unstuck out of the gunk? And moving forward.
