An incredible amount of challenge exists for photographers and business owners when it comes to managing their mental health. In this current series, I am opening up the conversation with fellow creatives regarding the correlation between our mental health and our businesses. Today’s guest is Dave Moss, a coach for high-performing creatives who takes a holistic approach to living both our personal and professional lives. 

The Focused Photographers Podcast was created based on the idea that the most incredible tool for learning is a deep dive into any given topic from multiple perspectives. Join us every other week as we explore important topics, with host Daniel Moyer and a variety of guests offering different perspectives! Make sure you’ve hit that follow or subscribe button on your favorite podcast player to get notified each week as we air new episodes!

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REVIEW THE SHOW NOTES: 

Holding your flag high (3:03)

Learning to put yourself first (6:29)

Making time for recreation and re-creation (9:08)

Defining success outside of an income (11:50)

Preventing burnout and getting right in your mind (16:52)

The blending of our personal and professional lives (21:28)

Why we panic when we slow down (29:21)

Taking control of our time to stop the panic (31:02)

Getting out of the burnout phase (41:05)

When you grow yourself, you grow the business (43:55)

Final thoughts and get connected with Dave (47:11)

CONNECT WITH DANIEL MOYER​

Website: WWW.DANIELMOYERPHOTOGRAPHY.COM

Wedding Instagram: @DANIELMOYERPHOTO

Business Instagram: @GETFOCUSEDPHOTOGRAPHERS

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Review the Transcript:

Dan Moyer
Hey friends, I’m Dan Moyer and welcome to the focus photographers podcast where photographers gather. This podcast series is about photographers and mental health and it has some real conversations and tackle some real stuff. We are all going through something and burnout seems to be more conversation now than it ever has been before in our industry. It’s different for each of us. But listening to these episodes may bring up some thoughts and feelings inside of you. And some might call these trigger warnings. So be prepared for that. These podcasts though, are stories of people dealing with some real stuff some real life in their lives. As always, though, I will approach these conversations with light hearted curiosity, spontaneity and levity. And my greatest hope is that these conversations will give you some hope, lift you up and courage you and allow you to feel that you’re not as alone as you think. These podcast episodes though, are not a substitute for therapy. There is no substitute for talking to someone whose only job it is to listen to you with an open heart and open mind and help you get through it. Do you know how I knew I needed help? When I couldn’t shake my negative thoughts. That’s it. I started to feel a cloud regularly and without warning, and it would lead me down this negative thought cycle. therapy has done amazing things for me over the past two years. And it might do you some good too. So if you feel like you need someone to talk to call or text 988 in the United States. Okay, let’s get to the show. My guest today is a coach for high performing creatives who want to improve their lives and businesses and see the correlation between those two things. His holistic approach combines vulnerability, connection, trust, accountability, and a lot of elbow grease and hard work. He says in the past decade, I uncovered my true purpose in life is to better myself as much as possible. Through that unending discovery, I can help as many people as possible with their own journey. And this conversation definitely does that there are so many nuggets and little pieces of wisdom and a couple of quotes that I took and wrote down and have been reading every day since I recorded this podcast with them. So please welcome my friend Dave moss.

Dan Moyer
So Dave Moss, thank you so much for being here. And welcome to the show.

Dave Moss
Yeah, thanks for having me. Excited to talk with you reached out and said what you wanted to talk about. I’m like, I mean, let’s go.

Dan Moyer
Yeah, we were talking kind of pre show that like, like you are somebody who’s been on the periphery of my awareness as you know, a coach and as somebody who really dives into this topic of what we are outside of just wedding photographers and the struggles that entrepreneurs have. And I think I first came into your awareness through Daniel and Davina that you know, they had had a discussion with you on Daniel’s podcast, the journey and you started businesses adventure 2021, which is the same year I started get focused and I just we just kept popping up and and I’m finally glad that like the universe has pulled us together for this like podcast on this very, very special topic. So I’m really, really glad that you’re here. We get to dive into this. Yeah, looking forward to it. I’m gonna start off with this rather than asking like, what’s your story and how you got to where you are today and all that kind of stuff. There’s I was I was digging deep into the archives of Instagram and that kind of stuff. And there’s this beautiful photograph of you and your wife and you’re like sitting at a table and you’ve got your foreheads together and it’s black and white. It’s beautiful, but the caption is even more beautiful. And it says be exactly who you are meant to be in life. If you’re an introvert, that’s okay. If you believe strongly in something then fuck the haters. I love people. I love telling stories. I love helping. I love helping my wife loves animals, the environment and spirituality. And here’s the part that I love that I want to dive into. We fly our flags high and we don’t let anyone take them down. That’s a powerful statement. And I want to know how you got to that point because that’s that’s a point that’s difficult, I think for people to get to, to say I am me, and and here I am. Right this is me, accept me for who I am. So loaded question off the bat. I love it. I love it.

Dave Moss
That that has been that has been my life’s journey is getting there. I am a recovering people pleaser. So I spent a lot of my life putting other people’s needs first. And between that and ADHD and depression and all of these other things that I’ve dealt with. I spent probably a good half of my life without a personality I would define as my own. I was a chameleon, I could fit into any space that I went into. And I saw that as a superpower. But the problem there was a symptom of that that I didn’t realize until later in life, which is by spending so much time performing to fit other people’s needs. I wasn’t fitting my own. I wasn’t identifying what I needed as a person until I met my now wife, who is the exact opposite of that and does not fit into anybody’s designs except for her own. And when she does anything Yeah, whether it’s it’s for a day, a weekend, a month or a year, she does 150% Every single time, she just dives fully in. And so I learned a lot from being with her. And then, you know, my journey into coaching and other things. When I took my coaching program, one of the big tenants of it was you have to live it to give it you have to do the work on yourself, and you have to get the work done in order to to help other people through it, because people have great bullshit detectors. They know if it’s just performative, or if it’s real. And so that’s been part of my journey is just really identifying what is true with myself. And then being fully open with that, as I said, just before we came on that I’m a believer of radical transparency. So the things that I love, I just love them and the things that I don’t, I’m honest with it, and I just people are going to find a reason whether to love you or, or hate you in life anyways. So you may as well just put their the thoughts of them aside, and just focus on what you need and for and focus on the people who love you. And so yeah, that’s, that’s, that’s the concept of holding your flag high and not letting anybody else take it down. Because, you know, we were only on this planet for an indeterminate amount of time. And you may as well be true to yourself, as long as it’s not harming anybody is my caveat to that. Right? Yeah.

Dan Moyer
Yeah. You said you’re, you’re a recovering people pleaser. And I’m definitely in that category right now. And I’m doing the work to sort of get through it now. But did you come to that realization on your own? Or was there like a catalyst for change that you were like, I’m spending way too much energy on other people. And I’ve got nothing left. Like, you can’t pour from an empty cup kind of thing? Was Was it that or? Or was it just a slow gradual change? Like, how did you get to the point where like, This is exhausting, I’m done with it.

Dave Moss
Um, I think it was a blend of both. I think when it whenever my cup gets empty, I’ve had depression my entire life. And the biggest flare ups always happen when my cup is empty between that. And then just when I started my journey into coaching, I dove headfirst, I started looking down the program that I wanted to take, and it started two weeks later, so I just dove straight away, just signed over a huge amount of money and took this nine month program and dove in and one of the things so I took a course through a woman named Martha Beck who’s amazing, prolific Wayfinder Yeah, Wayfinder coach training program. At the time, it was just the Martha Beck Coach Training Institute, but now it’s known as Wayfinder. But one of the things that they wanted us to do before the program began is read her books. And I had two weeks to read her at that point in time six or seven books. So I just turned everything else off and read those books. And one of the things that just kept coming up for me over and over and over again, was this concept of putting yourself first you know, put your mask on first, all of these other things. And I had never done that in my life I had, I would always be the person who would rise to whatever occasion to help somebody else, but never helped myself. And so through that awareness, and then I sort of battle with depression. A couple of years later, I realized that if if I don’t do something about it, it’s just gonna get worse. And it’s it’s been a journey, man, like it was not a switch that you flip. Right? Still definitely struggle with it from from time to time and things, but just the awareness of it now has been has been the biggest thing of I know, when I start to get really tired and burnt out, I can just start I can what have I done for me lately? When was the last time I did something that I enjoyed guilt free, because that’s the people pleaser thing I see often, too, is we’ll do things for ourselves. But we’ll have guilt about it the entire time. And so that awareness was really helpful.

Dan Moyer
What’s the saying? It’s like, you know, you’re never recovered. You’re always in recovery. Yeah. Like, it’s always kind of a process. But I want to go back to what you said sort about, like, you know, whenever your cup is empty, that’s when like things don’t don’t go well. Right. Yeah. And I think a lot of us there’s a thing I heard a while ago, there’s the difference between like recreation and recreation, right? A lot of us will flip through our phones, or we you know, watch a binge, a TV show or whatever. And that’s recreation, right? Sometimes just want to turn your brain off and do the thing. But then there’s recreation, which is the things that like, fill us back up. So how do you like, what are the things that you sort of do for both of those? And do you schedule them? Or is it just like a sort of a barometer that you’re like, I’m running a little bit low now, or is it scheduled? You? I mean,

Dave Moss
yeah, so recreation isn’t scheduled. That’s just sort of as it happens, my wife or I have a bad day and one of us just says, Can we just cuddle and watch some Netflix tonight? And so we do we do that? that the recreation is scheduled. And this is something that I work with my clients on. Because most a lot of people come to me when they’re already burning out, they’re already on the way down, I work with a lot of like high performing businesses. So their financials are usually fine, but they have lost connection with their life and with the reason why they originally started to do these things. And so one of the first things I do is we do block scheduling. And the first thing that goes on their calendars is joy, whether that’s spending time with their kids, or something that they just love, but for me to wave my flag, Hi, I am a huge nerd. I don’t know if you can see the books behind me. But I play a lot of role playing games,

Dan Moyer
that a gaming chair that you’re sitting into. Yeah, and

Dave Moss
so I play Dungeons Dragons, I have for almost 30 years now. That’s awesome. Before it was popular and cool. And there was a movie in theaters about it. But I have it scheduled twice a week where I tell stories with my friends, and we play and, and it’s, you know, it’s therapeutic. For me, that’s not the purpose, the therapy isn’t the purpose, it’s just an added benefit. But it fills my cup up, even if I’m having my worst day, if I can do that I feel better. And then the other thing, something that I had said in a first conference talk that my wife and I ever gave 2014 or 15, we’d give a talk on defining success. And I had to find my success at that point in time that if I have two hours to walk my dogs in the woods every day, then I will be successful if I can do that, and not feel guilty about it. A year and a half ago, we moved across the street from a provincial park here, that is 13,000 acres of forest. And so every day I take my dogs out in the woods. And that is scheduled, like my calls don’t happen until that is done. So those two things are big.

Dan Moyer
I will talk about what you actually just said about defining success, right? Because I think our industry really loves to define success as six figures, six figures.

Dave Moss
I don’t know where that became a number, but

Dan Moyer
there’s a six figure add six figure this six figure that like that is the definition of success. And I feel like this is something that I’ve been trying to it’s it’s so difficult to get people to realize, like the last couple of years since COVID. Like by all accounts, I should have hammered on the gas and 2022. Right, like like I should have there’s there was more weddings in the United States then are like the most weddings in the United States since 1984. Something like that, right? But I just didn’t have it. And I said to my family did not see the best side of me and 2020 and 2021. So I pulled way back. And what’s interesting is that that allowed me to get more creative with our finances because I was What’s that saying? Necessity is the mother of mother of invention or something like that, it felt so good that a tailor was making less, but we’re getting so much more done, I feel such a greater, I’m just off the wheel because I was in I was in the wedding photography wheel for 10 years, January 1 2020 was supposed to be my 10 year business anniversary, there’s gonna be the best year yet right? And then all sudden, the world shuts down. It’s like, okay, here’s this identity that I have as a wedding photographer. And that’s all I know, that’s all my clients know me as, and I have this reckoning with myself. And it’s like, Okay, it’s time to do the deep work. And so defining that redefining that success is like, one might mean not being a wedding photographer, like my wedding, being a wedding photographer is not me, and that I’m not tied and my success is not tied to how much money is in my bank account. That’s so tricky, man. Is that something that you coach your clients on as well that you move away from like, Okay, this dollar figure, is what we need to hit, and then then all sudden, all of your problems are going to be solved?

Dave Moss
Yeah, I mean, I’m not gonna I’m not gonna lie and say the financials don’t matter because they do is the society that we live in. So we set financial goals for their businesses, but that’s like fourth or fifth step down the line, I strip everything back. I have a non formulaic coaching approach. Every business is different, every person is different. But there is some processes that I go through with everybody. We were actually touching on this briefly before we started recording. One of the first things I have all my clients do is define three sets of values, their individual personal values, their business values, and then their creative values. And very rarely do the creative and personal values have anything to do with earning money. And never did the business values have anything to do with making money. It’s almost always around connecting with people being creative, being collaborative, creating great client experience, like no one ever sets a value of I want to make six figures. I want to do this, I want to do that. And then I take that the next step is I have them brainstorm off the cuff dream, the biggest dream they possibly can and then write me a random Tuesday five years in the future. So if everything goes was right between now and then what is your life look like? And I feel like I’m kind of a bad photographer coach, because more often than not, photography isn’t in that future dream. It’s something else, the number of clients that have come to me for help with their photography business, when and then we ended up completely changing what it is that they’re doing and form new businesses, or they go back to school, or they go get another job, or whatever it is, because they discovered that photographer was a costume that they were wearing, because they couldn’t figure out who they wanted to be. And so that is how they identified themselves. And so when we strip it all away, and I say, Who are you, they realize that they’ve just been going through the motions, my wife and I were like, that we shot for, for 13 years. And then we realize that we’re not photographers. And I kept our business going for a long time, because I felt like photographers wouldn’t want me to coach them if I wasn’t in the trenches. Yeah, until they started telling me that that wasn’t the case. That was a thought that I had that wasn’t based on reality. So yeah, we define success. But it starts with understanding who you are and who your family is, like a lot of these exercises, I tell them to do it with their partner, or with their kids. Like that, that ideal Daydream I say you write it, have your husband write it, have your kids write it, and then come together and and see what that life looks like. And that’s an exercise my wife and I do every year, usually around New Year’s, we rewrite it because we changes people. So that goal of that dream changes. And then we reverse engineer it and say what do we have to do between now and then to get there?

Dan Moyer
Is that called like thinking from the end? Or something like Wayne? Oh, yeah, I mean, this

Dave Moss
is there’s there’s multiple, there’s a lot of different ways to think about this. I was just the ideal day exercise came from my coach training. But yeah, it’s really helpful.

Dan Moyer
Yeah, you said that people really come to you, they start coming to you when, when they’re already burnt out. And they’re already hitting that bottom. What do you say to like, I feel like prevention is sort of a big part of this, right? Like, I don’t know if you’ve heard of Peter A to like, okay, so he sort of book called out live, and I’m reading it. Now, one of the things I think is fascinating is when he opens the book talking about, you know, he has this reoccurring dream of like these eggs, like somebody’s throwing eggs off the top of the building, running around trying to catch these eggs. And he’s like, it’s not trying to figure out how to catch more eggs. It’s how to stop the guy on the top of the building from throwing the eggs. Yeah. And he’s like, I, I’m this, I’m going to be the best surgeon in the world, this is who I’m going to be, I’m going to be amazing at it. And then he starts realizing like, I’m fixing the same problems over and over again, that could be fixed with just a little bit of exercise, a little bit of nature, you know, sleeping better. And the final part is mental health. There’s a whole chapter a whole couple, a whole section on mental health. And that’s the missing key to living longer. But I guess that’s what I’m wondering is, is like, how do we get to this point where we are preventing the burnout, where we’re saying photographer’s, like, hey, you know, you don’t have to find a coach, when you’re at the bottom, when you’re ready to like, tear your hair out, and you have no time for your spouse or your kids or you’re knee deep in wedding for 10, you know, 10 weddings and 10 sessions or whatever. How do we prevent that

Dave Moss
you talk about it exactly like this, it’s it has to just come from transparency, because mental health has not been a priority in most of the world for a very, very long period of time. You know, I was talking to you about my business coach that I had hired years ago. And one of the reasons why she said I should get into business coaching instead of mental health coaching was because she says people can write off business coaching. So they’re more more inclined to do that, because it can be a tax write off, we will literally make a decision for a tax reason before we will put our own health in. I gave a talk last year at a conference and I had a slide that a number of people came up to me afterwards and said that was the one that got me in it was you either prioritize your health or your burnout will do it for you. And that’s the thing that people, we don’t make those choices until we’re at rock bottom. We don’t go to therapy until we’re already deep in the trenches. We don’t prioritize our health until we can’t breathe going up a set of stairs. There’s a guy Rich Roll if you’re in a podcast, yeah, didn’t change his life until he almost gave himself a heart attack at 40 Going up the stairs and his health, you know, career was everything. Image was everything. It wasn’t about that. And then he completely changed his life. And when I got that wrong, I was the same way. I didn’t start to prioritize myself until I was breaking or broken. So now it’s why I talk about it so openly. It’s why I need to have that radical transparency and let people know that I struggle. We all struggle. It’s hard. But the work. The work is important. I wish we stopped calling it the work. I wish we could call it something else because work sounds exhausting. And when you’re already burnt out in your exam It’s like I don’t have I can’t do the work. I’m too tired. But yeah, I mean, the the only way we change it is is literally just one person at a time. And just and just talking about it, people don’t see the benefits of therapy, because therapy is expensive. And maybe they don’t know anybody in their life who has gone through it, people don’t see the benefit of the type of coaching that I do, because they would rather go buy a course for $500. Or work with somebody who’s who promises that they can, you know, fill up their booking calendar, but they’re still unhappy. And I’m not trying to like crap on anybody. I think that work is important. You know, marketing is hard. Social media is hard. Getting inquiries is hard. All of that stuff is tough. But that’s where businesses and adventure was born, was I kept coaching photographers on basically the same 12 things over and over and over again. And I knew that there was deeper work that needed to be done, but they also needed that help. So Angie, and I built this course, that is under $1,000, that you can just buy to get the foundations so that we can do this. And so when somebody comes to me, and they’re like, I need help with marketing, or I need help with album design, or whatever, I’m like, great, we’re gonna coach and I’m just gonna give you the course and you’re gonna watch the course. And then we’re gonna coach on stuff that actually is super, super important is going to help you succeed at doing that, because you could take every course in the world. But if you’re not right in your mind, it’s not going to work.

Dan Moyer
Oh, man, big fields right now. About like not being right in your mind, because this is definitely more of a conversation now than ever has been like the amount of I’m in a bunch of small, you know, Facebook groups and things with photographers all over the place. And it’s like, every third or fourth post is, hey, you know, I’m, I’m struggling with this, or I’m really having a difficult time with this kind of stuff. And what’s interesting is, there was one that popped up a little while ago where this guy was talking about like cancellations. Right? How I’m super upset. I’m super frustrated as anybody else seeing all these cancellations. And then there was like another line. While I should say, everybody, I think everybody read the first paragraph was like three lines, the first paragraph two lines, the second paragraph, and then the final line, everybody read that first paragraph and started writing immediately. Oh, I’m seeing a lot of cancellations. tubal blocked, but then that second line was actually it feels like everything is out of control. My whole life is out of control. And I don’t know what to do about it. Let me know about the cancellations boom. And like all these people were just writing about Yeah, I’m not experiencing cancellations. Yes, I am. No, I’m not. And I was like, I was like, Dude cancellations aside, what’s going on your life right now that you feel totally out of control. And it turns out that he was his, his wife are expecting their first child right there. They’re starting a new business and transitioning away from wedding photography. And that’s why I think like, like business and personal stuff is so intertwined. Like you said, before that your What was that really great thing, you either prioritize your health or your burnout, we’ll do it for you. That is masterful, because you know, when we get into photography, businesses, we start and we’re like, this is awesome. I’m going to do all the things and I remember my like, second year in business, I had a wedding every single weekend, from April through July, right, missed all kinds of family picnics missed, you know, time with my wife. And I remember this like moment where I had an engagement session that was canceled. I looked at my soon to be wife and was like, we need to have a date night like awesome, this engagement session is cancelled. And you said this before about how it’s about scheduling Joy first, and I realized that my whole entire business was upside down that family time and time with my wife has to be scheduled first, before we do anything else before anything else happens. When I was having this conversation, going back to what I was saying about this guy in the Facebook group, he was so overwhelmed at the thought of all this stuff. And the personal side of his life was totally clouding the business side that things are not as bad or not as good as they seem. And, and I just wonder if you can speak to that, like, how intertwined and how married our personal lives and business lives are and how we can separate that a little bit?

Dave Moss
Yeah, I mean, I think it’s even harder for creative entrepreneurs, which is the the realm that I mostly work with. I have photographers, graphic designers, fashion designers, magazine editors, like people who work in creative space, and we are our work as much. As much as we want to separate that stuff. It is hard because our creativity is driven by who we are as people and how we see the world. And then that also defines our business and how people interact with us and why they may want to choose us over over somebody else. So if you are not in a good place, how is it ever possible that your business is going to be in a good place, if you are overwhelmed and stressed and freaking out? You are bringing that energy to a consult or to a session or to whatever as performative as you might be able to be, it’s still there. And like I said, at the top humans have really great bullshit detectors so they can they can tell like the number. I’ve had clients who have come to me and they can Keep saying, you know, we get so many inquiries, but we’re just no one’s ever booking. No one’s no one, no one is booking. And so I have them, I asked them, tell your clients that you’re recording your inquiries, and then send me those recordings, and the panic and lack and fear and doubt that is coming through in those meetings. They’re scaring every single person away, and they’re not even aware of it. Yeah, because that’s just its default, you know, and so we have to stop everything, turn off the contact form, restart from the beginning, and then come forward. And then all of a sudden, you know, their 95%, booking rates and all the rest of this, but when when we are our business is we have to treat ourselves like a business system, which means we have to make sure that we are healthy, we are well fed, we are sleeping appropriately, we are taking time off for ourselves, everything else like that, because we become the last priority in our business. But if we break the business breaks, and that’s the thing that like people don’t realize it until they’re broken and their business starts to break the number of times people come to me 10 years in, I’ve had 10 great years increase have been always good. Everything else like that. And then out of nowhere, everything stopped. And then I asked the question what’s going on in your life, and oh, I just got divorced, or I just had a kid or this happened or a parent passed away or whatever. And I’m like, well, that’s why. And they never believe me. Until we do the work on that. And then all of a sudden, things start working well again. Yeah, it’s, it’s tough. Yeah,

Dan Moyer
I call that save the sale mode, where it’s like, all sudden, you’re not getting a booking. It’s like, you know, one bookings. Alright, second booking, you’re like me with a couple? It’s like, ah, you know, that’s a little weird. Usually, I get a couple more. And also by that third one, you’re like, Okay, I need to get this one. Right. And then you go into it saying, like, rather than, okay, let me see these people for where they’re at and, and who they are. And what’s unique about them, too. I need to book this couple, I need to pay my bills, I need to do this. And that. It just seems so like, it seems so simple, right? Like, let’s just, let’s just eat better, like just just get some more sleep, like just say, say no to a couple more things, right. And I feel like it’s not groundbreaking stuff when you say it, but it’s so hard to put yourself first when there’s this tie of like, Okay, how much I work is related to like how successful my businesses. Right? And it’s like you, you have to break that I think it’s getting people to say no more often I think that no needs to just become a bigger part of our business vernacular, right?

Dave Moss
Yeah. And most people suck at saying no.

Dan Moyer
Putting it nicely in that nice Canadian way. Yeah,

Dave Moss
yeah. But it’s, again, I think it comes from showing the alternative. We’ve all been infected by hustle culture over the last decade. And so I like to show people that there’s an alternative. And I say, you know, 2019, which was our last year of really, with that was the last year that weddings were our primary income earner. And I when I tell people that we did, I think just over $200,000 in weddings that year, with 14 weddings, and I worked on average 30 minutes a week. They were like, wait, what? Excuse me? Yeah. And so it’s like, you don’t have to hustle. In order to do that. You have to build good systems, both in your personal life and in your business and everything else like that. But like the amount of the amount of effort you are putting in day in day out, you know, grinding, grinding wears you down. We don’t want to grind we need flow. We need it to be easy. We need it to be smooth. And you know, if you know Peter, a TIA, then you’ve probably heard the, you know, the podcasts with all the Navy SEALs who come on and talk about slow is smooth and smooth is fast, fast. Yeah, that’s I mean, it’s true. And so that’s one of the first things that I make people do is slow down and they panic. Thankfully, I’m there to help them through the panic. But most people, most business owners, most entrepreneurs, whether you’re a solo entrepreneur, or you’re like a husband and wife team or a small team or whatever, we are constantly working in a trauma state. And so when you stop, boy, that does not feel good.

Dan Moyer
Can we talk for a second about like how, when you first do start to slow down and like things are going pretty good. And you’re like, wait a second, I should be doing something right now. Like I should be like on scheduling Instagram posts, like oh, wait, no, I’ve got some of those schedules like oh, I should I should be doing this. And you like you do panic because you’re always supposed to be doing something because it’s not what everybody else is doing. Right? At least that’s what they say they’re

Dave Moss
doing. That’s, that’s that’s the that’s that’s the trigger to is get off Instagram. But it’s why block scheduling is one of the first things that I do with a lot of my clients because then they know what they need to be doing. When I tell them to block schedule in two hours for a dog walk then they know what they need to be doing during that time. If I tell them okay, you know, you need to have two hours a week that you’re just focusing on marketing activities. When that comes up on your calendar, you stare at the wall or you do marketing activities. If you finish it early, great free time, go, go kiss your wife on the cheek and see how she’s doing. Go play with your kids for a little bit. Doom scroll Tic Toc, I don’t care. But like just, you know, if you need to the recreation time, just go and take the recreation time, or bump everything up in your day and finish earlier. And then you know, go sit on a patio or whatever. But a lot of that panic comes from not knowing what you’re supposed to be doing. So you’re just filling time instead of being efficient with what you’re doing. And making choices of this is how much time I spend marketing. This is how much time I spend emailing this is how much time I’m working on my client experience. I’m editing I’m calling I’m doing all of these things. Instead, we’re just we’re just constantly going by the seat of our pants and reacting. Yeah, and reaction is never the place that we want to be running a business from. So block

Dan Moyer
scheduling is like where you say like, okay, in a week’s time, I need to set aside six hours for calling and editing, I need to set aside two hours for Instagram an hour for four hours for running or whatever it is, and then you and then you just look at your day and say, Okay, I’ve got 15 minute increments, I’m gonna block in these things throughout the week. Is that it?

Dave Moss
That’s exactly, yeah, whether you do it through a spreadsheet, like I live in Google Calendar, if it’s not in Google Calendar, it doesn’t happen. I put shopping in my grocery in my Google Calendar, like, if it needs to own them, it is in there. I put like TV time with Abby, and my kale calendar. Because if it’s not there, I won’t do it, I will get into that panic state of what should I be doing with my time right now. And so every Sunday, I fill up the joy first. And then I fill up the tasks. And then if there’s anything left over, then I can ask myself, I can look at my to do list and be like, you know, is there something that I’ve been meaning to do that I haven’t been able to get to for a while I just rebuilt my entire website in December. And I’ve been putting that off for six months. But I had two weeks where I had like nine hours. And so I’m like, okay, great, I can just delete everything and rebuild it in that nine hours of time. And then it’s done. It’s off the list. And then you move on. But by by determining what we do with our time by taking control of our time, it gets rid of a lot of that panic, and a lot of that, like I should be doing something right now. You know what you’re supposed to be doing? It’s no longer should I am doing marketing, or I am going for a run or I am just going to read for the next hour, whatever it is, it’s there, you know, what you need to be doing? Are you

Dan Moyer
are you setting this up? And then sort of re looking at it every week? Or is it pretty much the same every week. I mean,

Dave Moss
I’ve done it so often now that it’s pretty much the same every week with with minor changes. Like at the end of this month, I’m going to to a conference and I’m gone for five days. And so that sort of like pushes things out either side of the calendar. And so I just, you know, I make adjustments as needed around those types of things. But like, Monday for me is every Monday morning is bizdev like I just work on my business what I need to get done that week, I have a mastermind that I run Monday afternoon, you know, like there’s very set things that I do every single week at the same times and things like that. And I’ve had clients push back and be like, but I need spontaneity and I need this and I need that. And I’m like, I’m starting to get the impression that that’s not the case, because you’ve been living in spontaneity and you’re miserable, not working. I mean, I fought it. For the longest time. I was never a structure person until I because I used to think structure wasn’t fun. And so once I started scheduling fun, which seems counterintuitive, but we’re all adults, like you have to because it’s the first thing that goes by the wayside if you don’t do Yeah,

Dan Moyer
that’s an interesting. It’s really funny because literally this morning, so my wife is is very analytical. She is a math nerd. She was a teacher, you know, her her minor in in college was was math. Very different than me, right. And so several years ago, maybe 2018 When I was having my sort of like everything was was falling apart. I didn’t have my business finances in a good place. I didn’t I was just overloaded. I accept too many works. I didn’t say no enough. We also figured out that we were having twins, so I went and like booked way Wait, less than we would have it this way. President Dan was not taking care of future Dan, we’ll put it that way. And she said listen, this whole week, you need to write down everything you’re doing the whole entire week. And you just need to keep track of it like just you know put your timer and then like you know say Oh, I’m working on this for this time. And she did that same exact thing. And she like put together the schedule and excel in like every little every little block was 15 minutes and said now you know you have everything done and it was like it was like I fit almost everything in and I had like a half day on Thursday and like all Friday was all Off. Yep. And I got away from it in the pandemic, because everything just fell apart during that. And literally before this, I was like, I need to get back to that because that was the most freedom that I had because I was so disciplined. Whatever the time said to the minute I was like getting it done if it wasn’t, you know, design albums, it was this if it wasn’t post on Instagram, it was this. And now my schedule looks a lot different because I’ve got get focused, and I’ve got my personal business, and I’ve got some passion projects I’m working on. And, and it all comes back to like, that whole everything needed to reshift. And as I was going before this episode, I was going through and writing out, okay, for writing, I want to do this for the newsletter, it’s two hours for, you know, Dannemora photography, you know, business work, it’s eight hours. I’m like, really excited about and I think it’s funny that that’s what you brought up that that’s the first thing that you have people do is is clear the clutter and say like, No, this is your schedule. Yeah. So that’s the first thing you do. Oh, God,

Dave Moss
no, I was just gonna say like, a lot of people don’t even have any concept. So I haven’t got to like an app like toggle or just use timers or whatever, and just be like, Okay, for the next month, just track it. And then we’ll come back to it. Live in your panic state for the next month, do everything as you normally would do it. And then just because like, I used to think I spent 10 hours a week writing emails, it just felt like my day was just always emails after emails after emails. And once I started tracking it, I realized it took me about 22 minutes a day to do emails if I just sat and did them. So I have 215 minute increments first thing in the morning and last thing at the end of my workday, where I handle emails, and that’s it 30 minutes a day. And that’s I mean, I have for businesses I have the time that I have for businesses because I’ve actually paid attention and tracked all of these things and scheduled them appropriately. Do you know,

Dan Moyer
like Jacob Lund Fisker of Early Retirement Extreme, or like Peter Adney? Who’s Mister Money Mustache? You heard it?

Dave Moss
Yeah, I’ve heard the names, but I haven’t had devoured their content.

Dan Moyer
Yeah, they’re like personal finance people. But Early Retirement Extreme is fascinating. This is a total tangent, but it just made me think of it. Because they are so about tracking everything. And like, their whole thing is about like living like an extremely simple life, right? Like living a simple life. Not spending much money allows me to do things like write this blog, which I do for free and have fun. And I have time to do these things. Because I cut out the BS. And because I scheduled my time, and I don’t I say no more. And all that kind of stuff is fascinating.

Dave Moss
Yeah. I mean, it’s, it’s true. All of that stuff. Like I say all the time to my clients. If you don’t track it, you can’t change it. Like if you don’t know this information, how are we ever supposed to fix it, whether it’s your inquiries, or whether it’s your mental health or whatever, like, I make a post every year in January, I use an app called dealio, where I put in what I did that day, with little icons and my mood. And it literally tracks my mood. Over based upon what I ate, did I exercise that I played d&d with my friends, whatever. And so now I can go back and empirically track this was good for me, this was bad for me, I no longer had to make those choices, like alcohol, negatively affected me for three days, after drinking, I’ll still enjoy a whiskey every now and again, or a glass of wine or whatever, but my alcohol consumption went from probably, you know, five drinks a week to maybe two drinks a month. Because I can see how it would negatively for multiple days afterwards, my sleep would be worse, like all of these things. But if I didn’t track it, I would still be doing it the exact same way I was before and not everybody needs to be as obsessive as me. But right. What’s that app called? They use it daily. Yo, da y li Oh,

Dan Moyer
yeah. Yeah. And that’s just like, is it like a quick, open it up? Tap a few things and move on? Or what’s it like? Yeah,

Dave Moss
I mean, so it can be as quick or as long as you want. So by default, it has five moods that go from like, really bad to really good. It has things like, you know, did you work today? Did you eat restaurant food or home cooked food, whatever. And then you can put in custom activities. So like, I have my work broken down by which businesses that I work on in this day, and so on and so forth. Then there’s sections for notes sections for pictures, my wife, she just goes in and taps, the mood, taps a couple of things. She’s in for about 15 seconds. I probably take about three minutes. It goes off at 8pm every day. And so I just go through and say this is how I this is what my day was like, and then I move on. Interesting. I like that and then it gives you a grid view so I can look back and just be like, was was this good? Was that bad?

Dan Moyer
Huh? Daliah Oh, yeah. All right. checking that one out after we get off here.

Dave Moss
It’s a good one. So hang on, I’ll show it on the camera. But like this is like an average month and so it’s gives me little emojis and color. What are the colors? So mine like negative ad is red and yeah, good is green. And then there’s like a stoplight colors essentially. But I have a scale in there of what it is. And I use different emojis. So like, I have different types of bad days, like I have a bad day, just because I slept like crap. And I’m hanging over or whatever, I have a bad day, because I’m having a bad mental health day, whatever. And so I can track all of those types of things. And it’s really helpful to have a retrospective at the end of the year and go back and be like, that’s why I slow down my drinking, because I went back and I’m like, okay, every time I had alcohol, two or three days afterwards was, you know, a yellow day, instead of like an average green or whatever. Let’s just try it. I’ll try it for a couple of months and see what it’s like. And sure enough, the data proved it. And so I’m just like, Okay, I’ll still socially drink. But I know what’s going to come afterwards now.

Dan Moyer
Yeah, I feel that one, I’ve let go of that as well. And I know a couple other people who just said, like, Man, I just, it just was not serving me and like what I want to do and where I want to go. So yeah, good on you. Okay, so after you have like this, you know, people come to you, they’re, they’re sort of at bottom, you’ve got burnout and all that stuff. First thing, he says, like, you know, clear the clutter on your calendar. Yep. And then what’s like the next two things that you sort of take them through to start bringing them out of that burnout phase and get some clarity,

Dave Moss
we do a lot of limiting belief work. So I have them tell me what sucks, I often open my coaching calls of what sucks right now. And then we really deep dive into it. Like, people who I’ve seen this time and time again, my clients won’t pay enough money for me, I have to charge less money, I have to do this do that. I’m not gonna say 100% of the time because nothing is absolute. But let’s say like 87% of the time, it’s because they have a negative relationship with money and value and personal worth, and all of the rest of that. So we have to do that work. Now, not all my clients come to me with money problems, some other people will come to me with visibility problems, they’re not marketing, because they don’t want to take up space. They don’t want to be seen. They’re not happy with themselves or whatever. And so we do that work. That’s that’s the big stuff intermingled with all of that our business systems and tools that sort of come along with it, right. So like, if you have a problem with visibility and marketing and being seen, how can we create marketing channels that work for you right now, and then will work for the new you in six months time or whatever? If you have a problem with value, how can we restructure your pricing, and increase the overall perceived value of your business, whether it’s through workflows, through emails through touch points, so that you feel like you’re worth more money, so that you’re okay with this new price point. You know, that’s sort of, that’s the next piece. So it’s like, life design is number one. And then then it’s whatever their their main problems are. And I know a lot of this, I have a huge questionnaire that all my new clients have to fill out. Many of them malign the process, because it takes hours to do it. Most of my clients say I know more about them than their spouse does by the time they finish it. But it helps me identify what’s going on with them. Because we often can’t see the forest for the trees and ourselves. So I asked questions that like seem completely innocuous to like a business and life coaching process of like, what was your favorite subject in school? What caused what as a kid? Did you lose hours of time doing? What as an adult? Do you lose hours of time doing things like this? And people are like, I don’t see why this is relevant. What was my favorite movie? What does that have to do with anything, but it shows me where they’re at, and their thought process and their emotional state. And so then, then when I started saying, Sorry, saw this, tell me more about that. They’re like, Oh, God, of course, you know, yeah. And then we do the work. But

Dan Moyer
oh, man, this reminds me of you know, as I was going over your website, and looking through it, there’s like this whole section about, you know, what your clients will achieve when they work with you. And again, you’re a business coach, quote, unquote, you know, I even know you have like life in there. But there’s this one section that, you know, really ties everything that we’ve talked about today. And you know, these three things you just went over. And it’s my favorite one that really stuck out because, you know, I feel like, again, we’re all sort of told that, you know, you got to be business, you got to be professional, you got to be this. And you have this one line that says that your clients will begin opening up to deep vulnerability. So you can be true to yourself, which coming from a business coach, it’s like what like, sounds like a little woowoo. Right? But it’s like, no, you when you work on yourself, or when you grow yourself, you grow the business.

Dave Moss
Yeah, the only the only unique thing about our businesses as ourselves. Like, the average client has been proven time and time again. I’ll use photography as an example. But the average client can’t tell The difference between good and great photos. There’s a spectrum of course, you know, they can tell the difference between someone who picked up a camera yesterday and say to man, Vina Daniel or to man or whatever. Yeah, I mean, there is a spectrum. But for the most part, most, most photographers, I would say, are mid market, and most clients can’t tell the difference between mid market work. So the only thing that you’re really selling is yourself to these people. And if you are performing, they will know if you are hiding, they will know if you are if you have shame, or lack of self confidence, or whatever it comes off. That’s why some photographers just do better than other photographers is because they don’t have that. And so you I’m not telling everybody that they have to go out there and be as charismatic as Ben Hartley. I’m saying you have to go out there and be yourself. Yeah. And that will work. You know, when, when my wife and I started sharing the fact that we love to shoot really intimate mountain portraits. It’s because I really love and cherish intimate moments between couples, it makes me feel better, and my wife never wants to be anywhere but outside. And so that’s why our business came this way. And then clients were knocking down our door saying that is exactly us. You know, one of us is like a hopeless romantic. And the other one is crunchy granola. So we just want to hang out with you guys. So it just by being so radically honest about ourselves, all of the sudden, people started coming after us. And same thing with like, we’re both big environmentalists. And we got to shoot a wedding last year for a woman who’s the head of the climate change department for the United Nations, because we talked about that, right? So it’s like, just lean in Angie, my business partner for for businesses and adventure loves, like old cult, 1980s movies. And so she talks about, like, Back to the Future on her website, and she’ll have people who are filling out her contact form saying, I saw your DeLorean reference, or photographer, like you never know, you have to give people an opportunity to connect with us emotionally. And if we’re not ourselves.

Dan Moyer
We’re gonna grab on to Yep, yeah, I feel that. Man. I just want to keep going. Goodness gracious. Well, alright, so as we sort of wrap up here. Is there any sort of final thoughts or anything that you want to tie together before we wrap up?

Dave Moss
Um, I think I just want to circle back to something that you said earlier, which was, you know, how do we convince people to do this work sooner than later. I just want to sort of, maybe employer, your audience to if you’re not, if you’re not feeling your best self, don’t do it alone. Is entrepreneurial work is lonely enough as it is. Find an accountability group, find a therapist, find a coach, talk to a friend once a week, like, I don’t care how you do it, but just don’t do it alone. And do it. Do it before you hit rock bottom? Because it gets scary down there.

Dan Moyer
Yeah, I feel that. Well, thank you so much for being here before. Before we get going. Can you share a little about how people can find out more about you how they can work with you all that kind of stuff?

Dave Moss
Yeah, so I’m Dave moss coach, basically everywhere. Dave moss coaches, my website, Dave moss coach on Instagram, Dave moss coach on Facebook. I think I have a Tiktok. But I never use it. I think there’s two posts on there. That’s probably the easiest way. I just reach out and message me and I’ll do my best to get back to you. As quickly as possible. There’s no question too big, too small. I tried to go to conferences all the time. If you ever see my shiny bald head, just come over and say hello, I’m not scary. But yeah, um, probably the easiest way would just be to go through my website, because they can just you there’s no contact form, you just book a consult. And that’s sort of done on purpose. Because you just find a time that works for you and me and we just get to talking because that’s, that’s where the good stuff happens

Dan Moyer
when you start shaving your head

Dave Moss
11 years ago, right after my wife and I got no so go longer than that. We’re 14 years married? No, 14 years together. Yeah, 11 years ago, where I was about when I started because I thought I felt more bald with hair than without it, which is strange, but it was just so thin that I’m just like not to hell with it. I’m getting

Dan Moyer
close. Like, I’m just ready. Like it’s patchy, like here and here. I’m sure that all

Dave Moss
of you have. You have a lot more than I did.

Dan Moyer
There’s like there’s a red dot like right here that used to be covered with hair. And that’s my marker. It just keeps going fast. I have friends who keep telling me like just get it going, man. Just you know. Anyway,

Dave Moss
I just say all my hair moves south for the winter.

Dan Moyer
Well, all the pictures of your like icy beard are super awesome.

Dave Moss
Hiking makes me happy.

Dan Moyer
Yeah, man. I feel that I’m gonna I’m going to come up to the Canadian Canadian Rockies. near there.

Dave Moss
Yeah, we’re about 45 minutes from Bath.

Dan Moyer
Yeah, awesome. Well, thank you so much for your thoughts, your vulner We’re ability your, your expertise and just keepin it real very much appreciate it.

Dave Moss
Thanks for having me. It was a joy!