Lessons

Lesson Info

Shameless Self Promotion

What I talked about on day one when I first started this workshop, and it is quite unique cause last week I got sick, so it's not, we haven't been recording for two to three days in a row. Last week you remember that I hit first with it's really hard to teach business because there are so many variables and that's why we have to lock it down to keep it really simple. For all those little questions, for all the but what size, but what price, but what ink? For all those, go to In Bed With Sue Facebook group, join it and ask the mentors, or get in the chat, ask the mentors, cause they're in there now, cause they're not here with anymore other thank Nikki. Obviously, jump online and ask those little questions cause I'm just going to keep going because the reason I'm talking about selling yourself, selling products, selling you is because we found out that when we looked at the nine levels of mastery around shooting and photoshop and design, and marketing and connection and social media, an...

d money management, that the two things people were struggling with the most was pricing a product and selling. Pricing a product we did day one, and now we're talking about selling and selling you. I feel like this is a huge, has to be a huge personal shift in people. You know, I can keep teaching scripts and I can keep teaching you, showing you to emulate prices, but if you don't believe in them, nothing shifts. Probably about 12 years ago I heard the term SSP. It was pre-social media, so I would say the term SSP now has a lot more clout than it did 12, 15 years ago. SSP stands for shameless self-promotion. Now, I heard that saying in New Zealand 12, 15 years ago. Basically, anybody who wanted to plug themselves or sell themselves would say SSP, shameless self promotion. Any time you saw somebody plugging themselves or really putting themselves out there, we would go SSP, shameless self promotion. A lot of that stayed with me for a long time, the whole shameless self promotion because I would see it in two different ways. Do it Sue, it's shameless self promotion, and also, I would do it in a negative way when I was talking about somebody trying to get too much press for themselves. I'd be like, shameless self promotion. Judge, judge, judgy judgerson. Ultimately, what it came down to for me is the fact that I am using the word shame. So, I kind of called out on Thursday, with no voice, I called out Shawna, who is not contacting her current database. Shawn's one of the mentors. She's not contacting her current database because she feels shame in receiving money. Now, I heard a long time ago when I started educating myself around this thing called money, I found out that people have actually written hundreds of books around money, if not thousands. A lot of people talk about accumulating and investing, but nobody really teaches you how to get from a victim, or survival level of money, into a management and proficiency level of money. That's why I've been studying it, so I can teach you how to get out of it, cause I got out of it. I certainly look back and think, how did I get out being in so much debt and so much trouble? I have no credit card. I have no debt. I pay my taxes, my business is profitable. I've learned how to accept and receive money. Now I'm saving for my first home. That doesn't sound like much. A lot of people might have experienced that when they were 17, 18 years old. I'm 44. The reason it's a big deal for me is because I was in debt up until about 33. I had to learn how to shift my money and be in business. It was business that actually taught me how to shift receiving money. Also, I'm not just saving for a little beach house or a little suburban house, I want a warehouse. I'm saving and working really hard so one day I might be able to own a warehouse that I can live in, that I can shoot in. In my mind, I have a dream for what that looks like. I'm prepared to do the work to make that dream come to fruition. Now, I read, long time ago when I was learning about money, was that the two things that stop people from earning money is guilt and shame. I remember thinking back then, okay, I feel guilty about having money. I didn't come from money. I judge rich people. I definitely have a money block there, but I don't feel shame. What is shame anyway? I thought a lot about it, and then I found shameless self promotion. Then, I called out Shawna for being shameful around receiving money and it occurred to me what shame was around money, and I was absolutely floored this weekend. I sat there and I just looked at it and I thought, wow, shame around asking for money. Now, here's the interesting thing. I love it how my world clicks. When you said, "How do you always have more," Kenna, I'll tell you why. I am an open vortex of learning. I learn from everything people say, every story people tell me. I have a photographic memory. I remember it. I apply it to my learning. I can think of every lesson I've ever learned as a photographer and a human being. I can apply it to photography so I can teach it. I am a learning vortex. I read, I read, I read, and I do not read, do not read fiction. I only read non-fiction. I just want to learn. I want to learn more. Last week, I picked up a book by Mario Martinez called The MindBody Code. It's a very high brow book on metaphysics. I don't recommend it unless you have an interest in metaphysics, because it's going to maybe, struggle, you're gonna struggle with a lot of the concept in there. One of the first thing Mario teaches is that there are three social wounds. One of them is shame. One of them is betrayal. The other one is abandonment. Let's just abandonment and betrayal aside for the moment, and just focus on shame. The opposite to shame, so the healing energy of shame, is honor. I thought about being shamed about receiving money, being shamed about growing in your career, being shamed about getting richer, getting shamed about putting yourself out there, feeling shame around growing as a business owner and a photographer, and slowly letting yourself get better and better and better. I thought if the opposite to shame is to honor it, then what is the best way to honor yourself? It's to ask for money. The best way to honor yourself is to live the dream that you want to live. The best way to honor yourself is a daily practice which counters shame, is to wake up every day and honor what you want. It's about waking up every day and honoring the ownership of what you're stating to be your truth. If honor is what heals shame, then it stands to reason that there are a million ways you can honor yourself, and by not asking for money, you are dishonoring yourself on every single level. I can't even begin to tell you what sort of mind, I had epiphany after epiphany, and I always joke that when I have an epiphany, because an actual epiphany is to see Jesus, I always joke that I didn't see Jesus but Jesus saw me. I always joke about it. I was always like, oh my gosh, I think about every moment that I've felt shame in receiving money and becoming better. I felt shame when I lost weight, even though it took two and 1/2 years to lose weight, I felt shame that I would put a selfie up with myself losing weight. If anybody said, "Oh my gosh, "look how much weight you've lost," I felt shame that people would notice that I'd lost weight. I felt shame winning awards because I would fight so hard to win them, and then I would actually win, and then I would feel shameful that I won, cause I'm a fraud and I'm not that good, and I can't believe I won. Then somebody would say something like, "Oh, I would've beaten you but I got disqualified." I'd be like, "Of course, because I didn't deserve that." I would feel shame about earning my first $9,000 sale, shame about my new studio, shame about oh my gosh, I could tie in shame to every part of my business, my income, my money, and I will not be ashamed any more. I will not feel shame for being in business. I will not look at other people and think, she thinks too much of herself, clearly. I will look at other people and say she believes in herself and owns her path. If honoring myself, if honoring what I want, if honoring my father by countering what he couldn't do at 21 years old, if honoring my true path, what my heart wants, if honoring my voice and being able to speak, if honoring my family and being able to contribute to my family, if honoring my future by buying a home which is gonna give me financial security when I'm older, if honoring that is shameful, then I need to turn it every single day. What is the daily practice to shame? It is honor. Now, I don't think there could be a more incredible lesson than that. It will significantly change how I go forward from now, and I wish I had understood that 10 years ago, because the guilt and the shame around becoming better and receiving money is palpable and it will stop you from going further. When you say I can't sell myself to these people, I can't put myself out there, what you're saying is those people are better than me. What you're saying to yourself is I am lesser than those people. I can't speak up for myself. I am lesser of a human being. What part of that is anything other than bullying? You're bullying yourself. You're living in shame and you are not honoring yourself by going and putting yourself out there. The only way to heal that shame is to honor it. The only way to honor it is to step forward and say I honor this path. Here's a couple of helpful ways for you to be able to do that confidently. I am not selling anything to these people, I am offering an incredible service. If they choose to pay for it, it will be an equal value exchange of what I'm giving, versus what I'm receiving, thank you so much with gratitude, wholeheartedly. You are not trying to steal from people. You are not ripping people off. Unless you are ripping people off, in which case, don't. You are not doing a swift one, or pulling a fast one on someone. You're a photographer that creates beautiful work. Offer it as a service and do it with pride and honor, instead of guilt and shame. Stand in front of people with pride and honor, not validation and permission. If they're validating you and permitting you to speak up, you'll feel good about yourself. If they're putting limits on you and knocking you down, you're gonna feel bad about yourself. It is not about you. What you're seeing in those people is your need to contrast and compare and ask yourself where am I right now? How am I doing? I've gotta see myself reflected back by these people, so I know where I am. The only place you ever need to sell from when you're selling a portrait, selling yourself, giving your business card, having a conversation, is from pride and honor. I'm proud of what I do. I honor it every day. I step towards it with pride and honor. I'm proud of who I am. I'm proud of my integrity as a business owner. I am proud of the product that I offer, the service I offer, and I am very proud to receive, and am very honorable. I honor the money you're paying me for the service. Turn guilt and shame into pride and honor. If you can right that and you can confront that, you will sell on an entirely different level. You really will. Once you tie in a good price list with a good product that you really love and believe in, tie that in with a confident, proud, and honorable consultation that shows people how excited are you, that you are to give service, then you follow it through with a great connection in your shoot, how can they not pay you? They will be falling over themselves to give you money, cause you've removed every road block that is stopping you from getting paid. Yes, contracts are important and yes, we'll do those. Yes, what number and what size, and what product and what cost, and what cost of doing business, but you know what? All that aside, once you've done those numbers, once you've run those logistics, we need to empower you from blocking money coming at you. I feel like that is the way round. That is the way forward. That is how I managed to move forward. The shame with which you hold, the guilt with which you are speaking, becomes a palpable language that is so obvious to people, that it actually drives people away from you. That shame on you is actually shame on you. It can stop if you honor you. Tomorrow, I want you to wake up and say, "I've been struggling. "My evolution is now moving. "I will wake up every day "and honor my true path, "and honor something. "I'm gonna own something and honor it today. "I'm gonna own want I want and every day, "I'm gonna honor one piece of it, "whether it's to speak honorably about my business, "whether it's to speak with pride about my business, "whether it's to infuse my own," Mario says what you do is you bank a library of honor, instead of a library of shame. Then you find it easy to speak with honor, and you speak with pride. You speak with honor instead of speaking with guilt and shame, because the guilt and shame is a language. It's just gonna constantly wear you down. The thing is, you don't even know you're speaking guilt and shame. You're blaming everybody else. You actually blame everybody around you, or the economy, or the industry, and you're blaming everybody else for your own guilt and shame, and you're the one not perpetuating. All right. I don't want people to think I'm a snob came up on In Bed with Sue the other day. I don't want people to think I'm full of myself. I don't want people to think I'm hoity toity. Wow, okay. All I can say right now is we can tell our blocks by how we judge people. If you think wealthy people are snobs, hoity toity, and above and full of themselves, then that is a block that exists inside you. Until you smash through that idea that you've programmed and I found money conditioning comes down to poor programming and poor education around money. You were just barely programmed at an early stage, usually by a parent. You can forgive that parent. They were doing the best with their programming, and they just passed it on to you. You can learn differently, just like you can learn a new language, just like you can change your body, just like you can change your entire financial circumstance, just like you can heal a life of abuse. Okay, because my mother is probably the closest thing you'll ever meet to an angel mother. She's the sort of mother everybody dreams of, yet her mother wasn't. Her mother was a nightmare and abusive and horrible, and my mother chose, instead of being like her mother, to heal that and be a mother that she wanted to be. I watched my mother, growing up, how her mother treated her as an adult, and I was shocked that my mother was treating me this way, but had grown up this way. You can heal a lifetime of abuse and pain with love. You can change your money situation. You can educate yourself in business. You can educated yourself in sales. You can shift the way you are constantly speaking about yourself. You can shift guilt and shame with honor and pride. Every single day, daily practice, walk towards it. You can choose what to put into your mind. You can choose who to surround yourself with. You can choose what to put into your mouth. You can choose what comes out of your mouth on a daily basis. Now, you're not always gonna get it right. Okay, there's some days you're gonna suck at it. You're gonna say terrible things. You're not gonna act with honor. You're going to act with shame. You're not gonna act with pride. You're gonna act with guilt. You're not gonna be a good person, and it's gonna be reflected back at you. That's where you need to have compassion for yourself. That's where you need to lie down, meditate, go to a quiet place, walk on the beach, take a walk with the dogs, sit down and say to yourself, don't fill your head with mind numbing television. Go and have a conversation with yourself that involves compassion and love, and just say you did good today. You might have gone backwards a couple of steps, but what is it showing you? You acted, knee jerk reaction out of guilt and shame, instead of love and honor, and that's okay. I'm gonna forgive you today and I want you to move on and try better tomorrow. This one came in. This really blew me away, and I have to read it to you cause there's no way you're gonna be able to read that. It's so full on. Lisa wrote I'm having trouble finding women who want to invest anything in themselves. They tend to feel it's a luxury that they can't afford. That they don't deserve and the only reward that they only ever allow themselves is a gym membership or a trip to Starbucks. Certainly, not an expensive photo shoot. Lisa, are you writing about yourself here? Cause these are not the women I meet. And, I feel like everything we put out there as an excuse is our own I'm saying this and I'm believing this. How do I teach you to shift this, because this feels real. I remember feeling like this. My town is small. My town is a country town. My town is a farming town. Those farmer's wives have cash to burn because they don't buy fancy dresses. They've got it sitting there and they would spend money on portraits like that. But, I told myself that. I believed that. That's what I was seeing. What you're seeing is, unfortunately, always through this sort of, just really this magnifying glass of tunnel vision that you're being. When it comes to marketing, people who market confidently and see opportunity everywhere don't have limits like this. This limit does not exist. It does not exist in your state. It doesn't. You aren't the only town in the whole world that has people with no money that don't value photographs. You believe this. I can't hit home how much this is just a tunnel vision idea of what you're seeing, but there's more. And, my prices are really low. So, you're cheap as well. You're seeing cheap people, you're being cheap. There's a whole lot of cheap there, and there's not a lot of value or honor going on anywhere in your language or what you're doing, but there will be. As I'm still portfolio building and have just moved to a new area. Again, so you've just moved to a new area and already you believe there's no money there. You said you're portfolio building, which means you're not even selling. You're portfolio building, so you're not seeing any money cause you're not selling anything. You're answering your own question over and over again with the way you write it. If you need to know what's stopping you and what's blocking you, write it out like this. Write it as a complaint to me, so you can see your own limits. It's the only way you can unearth them. It's the only way you can see why you're not moving forward. Oh, wait a minute. I've always been lower on the income scale. Okay, belief system right there. I place value on spending time with family and friends. Good, then you'll placed value on the fact that family and friends can come to you, have an amazing experience together while you photograph them, and then the value of that experience of having those people spend time together can be captured for all time and paid for. But, not on expensive things like designer shoes. Are you selling designer shoes? I think people who buy designer shoes either have a lot of money or they're spending all their money on designer shoes, which means they won't buy portraits anyway, cause they're wearing their money. Truth. Oh, here's a truth, okay, even though I've heard five truths already. Most of my clothes are from Wal-Mart, Target, or Goody's. Good, I'm wearing a $12 dress. 12 bucks. This dress cost me $12 and it's not vintage. I bought it from one of those Chinese fashion websites. $12 and it was free delivery on Amazon Prime, but then I'm quite hoity toity and full of myself with my $12 dress on, right? Own it. I don't care where you buy your clothes. My clients don't care how I'm dressed. In fact, I never dressed up for a photo shoot until I got filmed on Creative Live, and then I realized that two things happened. One of them was I'm usually got no makeup on, bare feet, and I'm sweatin' in tights cause I'm doing all the work. My client's looking all glamorous with their hair blowing. I'm not. The only reason I even do my hair and makeup now is cause the camera is on me, cause they're always filming me shooting now. Prior to be filmed, I didn't dress up for a single day as a photographer. I wore my hair in a bun cause I don't want it in my face in front of my camera, and I wear black tights so I can lie down and put my legs in the air. I generally wear bare feet and a tee shirt, and it doesn't change the single fact that I can create an amazing service for you without being dressed up. That is your block. I'm not a country club member. Neither am I. I don't move in circles like that. Neither do I. I never have had disposable income. Neither have I until now, because I've learned how to make money. I can't imagine going to a spa or an expensive salon. I blew out my own hair twice this week. Takes me 20 minutes. I don't need to go to an expensive salon. I haven't had my hair cut for over a year cause I'm growing it. Remember these little weird bangs that I cut? They aren't bangs. I was making a headpiece on my own head and I cut a wedge out of the top of my hair. I do my own makeup. I do my own mani and pedi. It doesn't matter how wealthy I become, I'll still clean my own toilet. How does any of that contribute to you being able to give service as a photographer? Because, okay wait, there's more. You're not a country club member. You don't roll in those circles. I can't imagine going to a spa or an expensive salon. I'm pretty sure I'm never going to fit in with what type of women's circles, with those type of women's circles. I'm at a loss as to how I can market myself. I don't know if you're a mum, but I'm probably guessing you could be, and I know that you're a woman cause your name's Lisa. I'm pretty much guessing that you, on any given moment, have six girlfriends that also have six other girlfriends each in a circle, or you drop your kids off at school with 30 other parents that there are people everywhere, they're all around you. The business network has nothing to do with expensive spas or looking fancy, or owning anything. You own the energy in your body. Me and my $12 dress. This is me in my $12 dress owning my stuff, all of it. It doesn't make me a nicer person. If I was wearing Prada right now, I wouldn't be more approachable. If I was wearing Chanel, other people wouldn't be more inclined to come and talk to me. It's how I hold myself. It's the way I stand. It's the way I make eye contact. It's the way I introduce myself. It's the way I listen to people. When somebody says what do you do, Sue Bryce, I say I'm a portrait photographer. Here's the best thing about your elevator pitch. I went along to a luxury lingerie representative group, and I had to lecture them on elevator pitch. I asked three girls to stand up, three senior executives, in this luxury lingerie company who earned a lot of money, to stand up and tell me their elevator pitch. All of them stood up and did this. My name is Margaret and I am a multi-marketing level blah, presentator, eh, dah, dah, retail luxury. I was like (moaning) yawn. They're like, "What would you say?" Really, to get people's attention in under 10 seconds? I'd say this. What do you do Sue? Oh, my name's Sue Bryce and I sell lingerie. They're all like, "But that's it?" I was like, "Um yeah, "cause what's the next question?" The next question somebody asks is tell me more about that. So, I realize that here I am teaching these people, this is five years ago, to do the elevator pitch on lingerie, and I walked out and I tried a couple things. When people said what do you do, I'd say, "Oh, I'm a photographer." What's the first thing everybody'd say to me is what sort of photography do you do? I'm a portrait photographer and I specialize in glamour and beauty. Straight away, people are like, "Oh, do you have a card? "Do you have a website? Yes, I do and of course I have my Cantilever fold out. How fancy do I have to look to deliver that with a beautiful smile, to deliver that with enthusiasm, to deliver that with pride and honor? There's not guilt and shame when I say what I do. I'm very proud of who I am now and what I do. There was so much, so much guilt and shame around all of it, but when I read stuff like this, I want you to write out your hard truth as if you're complaining to me about it. Then, I want you to read it back and listen to yourself. I do not have to be fancy or slim, or young or beautiful or educated, to offer people great service. I went to a very expensive restaurant with friends in Los Angeles. Dinner was about, there were three of us, and dinner was about $400. Really, like the sort of money that you pay for a meal, where it's like that's going straight through and it was 400 bucks, but the wine was like, every sip seemed like gold and every mouthful of food seemed like some magical angel had blessed it. We were having this experience of this incredible wine and I happened to be with two very successful women who I adore. Powerhouse business builders that I love from Australia, so the experience of being there with them, and you know, they're wealthy. They didn't bat an eyelash at being at this very expensive establishment, and we're having this beautiful dinner. We're having the best time. We're laughing. We're drinking this wine. Paying that bill, I was like whoa, that was rough. That's a lot of money for three people to eat and drink a bottle of wine. It just occurred to me afterwards that the waiter that had come and served us was out of this world. He made the experience of what we were getting extraordinary. The tip for him, for $380, was $75. He was obviously getting whatever he gets an hour plus we just tipped him $75, plus he's obviously serving a lot of other tables there. This guy's on a pretty good wicket, you know? $75 for two hours, for tips. He's definitely at the higher end of being a waiter, right? It occurred to me in that moment, it wouldn't have mattered if he'd had an education. It wouldn't have mattered if he was wearing just a plain white shirt that he bought from Target. It wouldn't have mattered to me the way he spoke. What is was was his connection to the way we were being served. He served every dish like it was the most beautiful dish that had ever come out of the kitchen, and he was honored to serve it to us. We would wait for him to come back. He would walk past us with other people's food, and he would stop and say, "This is the Gorgonzola gnocchi." We would be like (gasping), and everything was an experience. It had nothing to do with how fat he was, or how old he was, or how educated it was. It had everything to do with service. I feel like when I experienced that, I wrote that check and yes, I did say how expensive, but the next time somebody said, "We're looking for a place to go in L.A., "somewhere nice and somewhere fancy," I would say, "Well, you've got to check out Cecconi's. "It's not only a beautiful restaurant, "it's incredible service." I've recommended it 15 times. I don't think twice about it, so I need you to confront this bad stuff so you can move forward. Lisa, I don't know who you are. I didn't save your surname. I didn't save it cause I didn't want to. I want you to re-read this. I want you to watch this talk, and I want you to come back with this and counter every negative in this post with pride and honor, instead of guilt and shame. You are enough to earn money. You are good enough to market yourself. You are good enough to talk in your circles about what you do, no matter where your circles are. I don't know if you think that I cruise around in Chanel and go to country clubs, but that's not where I'm doing my marketing. I'm doing my marketing with real women, every day real women just like me. The hardest part that you're faced with in selling anything is that, because I feel like you're getting lost in product design. I feel like you're getting lost in logo design. I feel like you're getting lost in packaging design. I feel like there's a failure to launch based on the idea that selling yourself is one of the hardest things you will have to do. You know, one of the most interesting things you can do at a party is ask people questions and listen to what they say. And yet, you can go into a party, leave a party and say, oh, so and so didn't want to have a bar of me, or so and so didn't even want to talk to me, or so and so didn't say anything to me. I'm like, did you ask them questions? Are you open? Are you standing with open body language? Are you allowing people to come and talk to you? Are you proud of what you do? Are you speaking with pride about what you do? Are you asking them questions? What do you do Nikki? Tell me. I love this top you're wearing. Whatever it is, whether it's a compliment, whether it's openers, it just has to be a conversation. There's no sell. There's only connection. You know, lately I've been looking on Facebook and to the people that are saying it's not working, it's not working, it's not working. The first thing I do, I said this last week in the broadcast, is I link to their page and I have a look at their page. Then, I link to their business page. I have a look at their work. I have a look at the energy with which they're speaking. Bethany, I know you're in the chat, Bethany. Bethany said it to me as well. You go to their page and all of their posts are just negative, negative, negative, negative, negative. I get it, you get stuck in being negative. I've been there. I've been negative myself. I know what it feels like. Unless you write it down, read it, and read it back to yourself, you're really not going to shift it. Now, what's it going to take to get you to a level where you are selling yourself and your service with confidence? I would love to say take action. I would love to say daily practice. I would love to say every day work towards it. Here's the weird thing that I have to confront. Here's the thing I have to ask you, because Kenna has no problem getting a wage, but she had a problem charging for her photography. That means, if I apply that to selling yourself and confidence, you have confidence maybe playing a sport? You have confidence maybe working in a store, but you have no confidence selling yourself. So, it's not a general confidence thing that you're lacking. You maybe have confidence with your family, confidence with your friends, but when you're in a big room full of people, you have zero confidence cause you're an introvert. That just tells me you need to sell yourself on a more one on one level. If you're at a party, forget everybody else in the room, and focus on the one person you're talking to. I'm the sort of person at a party that hates being tied down into long, boring conversation, cause I can spot that little introvert a mile away that needs to hide behind one person and one intense conversation. At parties, I'd rather just flit around and have a little bit of everybody. When I see that lockdown, that quiet person sitting in the corner having that one conversation, I kind of stay away and let all the other introverts be drawn down to that corner, because that's more my style. My style is to be more up here and just have a general conversation with everybody. You'll see it. Those people will be attracted to those people. The quiet ones will sit in the corner with the quiet ones. The loud ones will be up on the dance floor with the loud ones, like me. We're all different, but we're all communicating. In fact, the ones having the intense conversation are probably more likely to actually get anywhere than the one that's up on the dance floor being everywhere. The introvert always tells me, poor introvert, whatever. All right, if you were to ask for permission for anything there it is right there. You're allowed to be successful, okay? I'm telling you right now. I give you permission. I give you permission to earn money. I give you permission to receive it. I give you permission to advance yourself as a professional photographer. I give you permission to own it. I give you permission to tell your family that you're really good at it. You don't have to prove yourself to your own family. You just need to stop talking to them about limits and just start showing them you can do it. You know, Nikki asked me two years ago, how does she get Dan to believe she can quit a job and do this full time? I said, "Do it. "Show Dan you can do it. "You don't need to ask Dan if you can do it, "you need to show Dan you can do it." You will do what it takes to do it, because the whole point is that you actually start doing it, not that you talk about it. You can't talk about it forever.