How can you get out of a rut and rediscover the passion you have for your business? Today’s episode is for any business owner that feels like they have lost the fire that they once had for their business. I’m sharing three steps towards breaking out of this stage and feeling a renewed energy towards your life and business.
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REVIEW THE SHOW NOTES
Feeling apathy towards my business (1:43)
Get in tune with your senses (4:15)
Lean into your senses (4:52)
Create space (10:41)
MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
Episode 038: Workflow – How to Cut Out the Excess and Simplify Your Business with Sam Hurd
CONNECT WITH DANIEL MOYER
Website: https://danielmoyercoaching.com/
Wedding Instagram: @DANIELMOYERPHOTO
Business Instagram: @GETFOCUSEDPHOTOGRAPHERS
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-Dan
Review the Transcript:
Hey, photographer friends. Welcome to the Focus Photographers Podcast, where photographers gather. I’m your host, Dan Moyer, and this episode has been in my mind for quite a while now. I kind of think of it as an extension of my mental health series, which was episodes 52 through 58. There’s not a single photographer that I’ve talked to or that I know who’s been in the game for a while that has not gone through some stage of their business or life or whatever it is where they just feel like they’ve lost the fire.
And that could manifest itself in a bunch of different ways. It could be that they just feel like they’re going through the motions, or they’re not enjoying the parts of the process that they used to, or they’re wishing that they were somewhere else, or parts of the photo session are just feeling boring or repetitive.
Could be any of these things. The list goes on. And I thought it was so many of us. Going through this or feeling like this at some point, it might be beneficial to take a look at it and talk about some of the things that I’ve done, some of the things that I’ve seen that other photographers do and other business owners do, and just talk about some three of those things that I think if you go through this, that this might help break you out of that and help you find your fire again.
So that’s what we’re going to talk about today. Stay tuned. Let’s do it.
So this feeling of, of fire. Sort of like losing the fire or whatever it, it’s so vast, right? And it’s not just in photography business is it could just be in all parts of your life, but I think it’s just, it’s just this constant feeling that just comes up on you and it’s like feeling overwhelmed or lacking control or lacking focus or lacking passion or fire.
It could be any of those things. For me, it’s a lot of feeling like lukewarm about stuff. Like I just sort of, Float along in the middle of the road and and nothing sort of sways me either way. Nothing feels like really big and fiery and awesome and exciting and nothing feels like super heavy. It just feels like apathy and to me that’s a little bit scary, but I’ve been thinking about this.
analogy. And I think I’ve shared this before. It’s this canoeing analogy. And it goes back to a bachelor party that I was part of. And we get to this two day canoeing trip down a river. You, we got some bros and we got all of our food and tents and all that kind of stuff. And you basically put all your stuff in these canoes and you start paddling down the river.
And And at, you know, you’re paddling for like six hours and then you pull off whenever you see these like big number signs on the trees, you pull off, you pull your stuff up on the shore, you get everything out and then you can’t for the night. And next day you do the same thing. Those six hours felt so long.
It was just like, you don’t realize how like how let’s put it this way. You feel like you’re going really slow. Like you just see trees upon trees and the trees are sort of off on the shoreline. And it just feels like they’re going so slow. It’s like the same thing when you’re driving in a car and you see like a mountain or like a house or something in the distance.
And it just feels like that, that thing is going so slow, right? It’s the same thing when you’re in this canoe. I just remember that first day feeling so. Slow and then we got out on on the shore and we’re pulling our stuff up and getting ready to unpack and I’m watching these other canoes go by and they are flying and I couldn’t believe how fast they were actually going past us and it hit me that you don’t realize how fast you’re actually going, how fast the river is pulling you along until you get out of the boat until you get out of the flow of things.
And I feel like that’s what so many of us do. We’re just caught up in this like everyday social media routine of, if you’re, you know, work or kids or a spouse or house or whatever it is, and you just like do the thing over and over again. And it’s just this spiral. You just get lost in that and life just pulls you along.
And it’s really difficult to break out of that. These things that I’m going to talk about next are really how I think you can start to. move out of that just life pulling you along and just the flow of things and everything feeling sort of lukewarm and vanilla and how you can really start to feel the feels again and find that fire.
And I think the first thing that anybody should do is just start really getting in tune with your senses, get really attuned with them. We live in this TLDR world of, you know, short characters, 144 characters, that’s how many is on Twitter, right? Yeah. Twitter X, something like that. Pretty sure it’s 144. We have these super short attention spans, right?
And it’s just, again, we’re just so lost in this pull of things and these short bites that we’re actually not learning anything. We’re not taking the time to let things sink in. And when you feel something. You have to lean in. This is the second thing. And this is how you get in tune with your senses.
It’s about like leaning in when you feel the feels. These, these times might be few and far between when you’re like just starting this out. But like you just have to start paying attention. Sam Heard said this in this like episode 38. He said if you just pay attention to these little things, these little moments of friction or happiness or joy, you’ll make it.
You really start to be aware of the things that can move you. And I think again, and when you’re just being pulled along, it’s easy to just like, not feel those things. I remember maybe the earliest memory I have of this in my business was, you know, I’ve been in business for maybe four years at this point.
Um, I started my business January 1st, 2010. And it’s like, everything’s new. Everything’s exciting for those first couple of years. Right. But by 2014, my wife and I got married. Um, life was good. You know, I’m like, I’m married. I get to photograph other weddings. Now people getting married and I, I like, I am part of this now.
I’d previously, I’d just taken pictures of weddings. Now I’m actually married. And then my father in law passed away in 2015, right after our wedding. And I remember like seeing how all the photographs from our wedding of him were just so impactful. And it hit me that I was like, like, this is the thing that really hit me was that the couple is just one to 2 percent of the wedding, right?
Like of the people at the wedding. So it’s like, why am I just only focused on like the couple mostly? And why am I only mostly focused on like the details and things like that? And, and like getting a great couple portrait was, was the most amazing thing for me at that time. But yet there’s all this stuff.
And I started getting this feedback from people where they would post photos, you know, cause now I’m five years in. And people are posting photos of, uh, these like little in between moments or, um, they would post photos of somebody who passed away. Maybe it was a grandmother or grandfather and you start to pay attention to these things like, Oh, you know, the year after the wedding, a couple really likes the portrait of them.
They’re there in their wedding outfits and all that stuff. But the further you get along, it’s, it’s about these like real moments when they were lost in their own little world, loving on each other or when they were. laughing, crying, cheering, toasting, drinking, dancing with all the people that are there to support them.
So I saw that, but then it really hit home when my father in law passed away. So I started really leaning into that thing, like leaning into what is this and started asking couples about it, like what’s really important to them. And that’s when I started, um, you know, doing different workshops about how to understand, like how to ask people better questions and things like that.
So I just, I just had this awareness. Of like a need that wasn’t being quite fulfilled or like this itch that needed to be scratched of there’s more here than just like cool couple portraits. There’s more here than just details and ring shots and whatever it is. I mean, even outside of this, this is actually a relatively recent, um, thing that I’m still leaning into.
This can happen outside of the wedding world and in your everyday life. I did this Spartan race a couple, a couple weeks ago now, and it was 14 miles and it was really hard. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. It was way harder than I expected. I did really well, but it took me two hours longer than I expected.
It was just, it was just brutal. And I crossed the finish line and I bawled my eyes out. Like it was just me. I had, you know, I did a wedding day before there was like a marathon long wedding. Then I had a long drive after that. I did this whole long race. And then I crossed the finish line. I still like a two and a half hour drive home.
I remember like crossing the finish line and like getting my metal and like crying in a corner. And then like, I caught myself together, went over, grabbed my bag and like cried grabbing my bag. And not like, not like a little single tear that would have been pretty like full blown. heavy tears, like a distorted face, like for real sobbing.
And it’s just like one of those things like that’s kind of surprising. So it’s like, let’s lean into that. This is just about like these two first things of, you know, attune your senses again. Um, get, get out of like the, with the third one, which is creating space, get out of like the flow of things. And start to lean in on emotional experiences or things that people say to you really listen and just start leaning in when you feel things or when something like pops up and creates an emotional response in you or when you see an emotional response in someone else, like, like why is this moving them?
And it’s just about leaning in and really paying attention and asking yourself questions of like, why is this moving me? What is it about this that like is, is really striking me? And I think the more that you do that, the more that you start to allow yourself to move along this emotional register, right?
Like if, if we’re stuck between like a three and a seven all the time, like what does a nine feel like? What does that like overjoyed being ecstatic feel like? And even sometimes when we feel really sad, like asking, what is it about that sadness? And one of the things that came out of, you know, I tend to think in like this, like spiral of, of like negative thoughts sometimes.
And I was talking about this to my wife actually earlier today, where today was a day where I felt like I was putting out fires more than anything else. And I was like, why am I so upset about this day? Like, I just felt like, Sort of myth the rest of the day and I’m like getting inside my own head like I should feel better I should blow blah and I realized it’s not the day.
That’s that’s bumming me out, right? Like it’s I it’s the fact that I’m like judging myself on the fact that the day was hard That’s making me upset. It’s not that the day was hard It’s that like I’m upset that I’m upset about being upset if that sort of makes any sense, but it’s It’s like just about asking yourself these questions and leaning in when you start to feel something.
And the only way that you can get curious about these things is by this last one. Number three is to create some space, create white noise for yourself or white space for yourself, not white noise. There is a market difference on days where I get up early, I move, I read, I pray, whatever it is before everybody else gets up.
That’s the space that I have realized that that really is the only time that I know I can give myself some space. I think if you’re struggling with this idea of space or you’re saying, I’m just not a person who can wake up early, like that’s not going to happen for me. Um, maybe it’s in the evening. My wife is much better at doing things in the evening.
She is a night owl. There’s no way she’d be a morning person. The structure that I think, um, when I work with clients that I tell them if they’re feeling scattered or, um, if they’ve got too much going on, the four buckets I like to tell them to focus on are these four business, family, your health and relationships.
Anything else that doesn’t fit into those, it doesn’t belong and you can cut it out. If you look at just those four things, if you’re not putting money in any of those buckets, if you’re not putting pebbles or whatever it is, however you’re tracking and trying to keep those buckets full, if it does not go in those buckets, cut it out, taking this one level even further, it’s about.
Looking at your time, look at your, um, what’s it called on the iPhone, your, your screen time, how much screen time are you spending on your phone, on your computer and the apps that you’re using? Do a time audit. This is whenever I work with a new client, I have them go through and do a time audit. This is about going through your week with a notebook or something.
And every time you change tasks, just writing it down, I worked on this for this long. Next I went to, um, editing. I scrolled for 30 minutes while sitting on the toilet and a million different things, right? I played with my kids. I went for a walk with my significant other. And just once you start like doing these things, you just create this awareness.
Of the areas that you’re losing time and you just have to work on cutting out the things that are unnecessary for you. And so you can have the space to start leaning in. When you feel something, you have the space to start attuning your senses to like, when you feel something, I think there’s so much input into our lives right now.
Like I was saying about, we live in this, you know, shortened TLDR world. When you have this So much inputs coming into your life. You’re the only, you cannot control the outputs. You can only control inputs. And if you feel like you have no space, it’s because there’s too much stuff coming into your mind.
And you need to work on creating space, creating white noise and creating white space. You can actually breathe and get curious about the things that you’re going through, the things that you’re feeling. I think as we all go through different stages of our lives, different stages of our businesses, and we feel lukewarm, It’s it’s really easy to feel like you want to give up and that you’re losing the fire or something.
It just means that the way you’re doing things right now is not working. But if you do some of these things, if you attune your senses, if you lean in when you feel something and just pay attention to these little things that pop up. If you just create space and create, um, white space in your life, you’re gonna be able to start to explore some of these things and find out why you’re not feeling as passionate and start to once again, feel like you can feel some fire, you can find a little spark again, and that spark leads to a bonfire.
So if you’re feeling this way, I hope that these little things start to help you feel a little bit better, start to feel a little bit excited. And as always, if you’re in this space where you don’t know how to get started, you just need somebody to bounce ideas off of. That’s what I’m here for. This is literally what I do, especially for parents who are trying to balance kids and their business and their spouse and all that kind of stuff.
Go to Daniel, more coaching. com. Uh, send me a note from the contact form, hit me up. And that’s what I’m here for. Make it a great day. Thanks so much for tuning in today and I’ll see you again next time.
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