Episode 372 - When Life Happens... Or Does It?

In this heartfelt and unscripted episode, Heather Lahtinen shares powerful insights about managing your photography business when life throws unexpected challenges your way. Inspired by a real coaching conversation with an Elevate member, Heather breaks down how your mindset—not just your systems—determines your success.

She challenges the phrase “life happens” and offers a new way to think about circumstances, decisions, and staying in control. If you've ever felt overwhelmed by competing priorities, this episode is for you.

Show Notes:

• Join the Book 4 Clients in 4 Weeks challenge starting the week of August 18th. Learn how to book clients without relying on social media! 👉 https://flourishacademy.mykajabi.com/4-clients-in-4-weeks-challenge
• Heather coaches an Elevate member struggling with client delivery consistency amid life’s curveballs.
• Why this phrase creates a victim mindset and how to reframe it.
•  How to create margin in your business workflow and communicate with clients during disruptions.
• How your thoughts shape your results, and why expecting obstacles invites them into your day.
• Heather shares how her husband's emergency heart surgery challenged her thinking—and how she stayed empowered.

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Join our next free coaching workshop: www.getcoachedbyheather.com

Connect:

Heather Lahtinen: Website, Facebook, Instagram

TRANSCRIPT

You're listening to the Flourish Academy podcast and today I'm talking about how to

run a business when life happens. My name is Heather Lahtinen and I'm a photographer,

educator and entrepreneur and I founded the Flourish Academy as a resource for

photographers of all levels. We want to help you pursue your passion on your own

terms because we believe there is room for everyone. In this podcast we focus on

creating breakthroughs with your mindset to discover the things that are really

holding you back in business and life. Before I share what's on my mind today,

I wanted to let you know that beginning the week of August 18th, I'm hosting a

free challenge for photographers. It's called book for clients in four weeks.

And I'm going to allow you to guess the premise. I want to show you how to book

clients without relying on social media or how many inquiries are coming into your

inbox. I just want to empower you to go get clients when you want to get clients.

You'll find the link in the show notes. But for today, I wanted to share something

that happened yesterday and I actually do not have any notes for this episode, which

might be a little bit dangerous, but I really just wanted to share from my heart

what my thoughts are. And I think that you'll, I hope that you find it valuable. I

was speaking with one of my elevate members and friends on a strategy and alignment

call yesterday. She's been in elevate for at least a few years and we've become

friends. And I just want to say

She is so coachable. She is open to hearing things differently and looking at it

from different perspectives. And I'm always so impressed with her ability to receive

any coaching that I give her even when it's challenging. And I really believe that

what I was helping her with yesterday could feel very confronting.

And I'm putting myself and her shoes, if I were getting coached like that, I

probably maybe could end up getting a little bit defensive because I would find it

confronting. So I just want you to know that what I'm going to tell you, I

recognize could feel confronting to you. And that's okay. Her question was around how

to maintain consistency in her deliverables with her clients in terms of galleries,

images and products when, you know, as an entrepreneur, you're also just managing a

life. She's a busy person like many of us are and things happen and you have to

shift priorities, change your schedule, make decisions. And these decisions aren't

always easy. So for instance, if this is not her case, but if you had a sick

child and you had sessions scheduled, you might have to reschedule.

If you get sick yourself, but you have five sessions to edit, that may put you a

little bit behind on your editing in terms of when you told the client to expect

their images. So again, she was asking, "How do I maintain consistency when things

just seem to happen occasionally and at first I thought well okay let's talk about

some strategies everybody wants tangible action steps do this this and this and that

will take care of the problem and certainly one of those strategies is to share

with your clients when they can expect their photos and give yourself enough time

flexibility margin with that time frame so that if something does happen,

you'll be fine. For example, I would tell my wedding clients, they could expect

their images within four to six weeks after their wedding. And I always, always had

those weddings completely finished in one week. So that gave me a lot of margin to

deal with life. I always, in 17 years, always delivered those images at the four

week mark because I wanted to surprise them. I wanted their package to arrive on

their one month anniversary. Of course we all want to over deliver but I did give

myself that extra room just in case. So there wasn't ever a point where something

would happen and I would have to send an email or make a phone call and say,

"Hey, your images are going to be late because this event occurred." It's important

a note here. I don't have a problem with that. If you tell your clients to expect

their images within two weeks and you have a death in the family, I think it's

perfectly acceptable to reach out to that client and say, "We've had an unexpected

death and it's going to take me a little bit longer to get your images to you." I

would assume that most human beings would be understanding in that regard. I just

want to say that because I think some people Well, Yumi is being a perfectionist,

meaning if I say I'm going to deliver those images within four to six weeks, I

always did. There was never an incident and that's because I approached it this way,

whatever. And I just want to leave room for being a human. If something had

happened in my life that caused me to go beyond six weeks with my deliverables, I

wouldn't beat myself up over it. So that's another thing is we judge ourselves or

we feel badly because something happens. And then at that point, we are just

multiplying our suffering. So what I suggested to her is first of all, let's develop

a protocol. A protocol is a, is a plan on how you will execute.

So actions plus your thinking. So this is what I'm going to do. And this is how

I'm going to think. And with that thought plan, I just want to encourage you to

never ever, ever have judgment in that thought plan or beat yourself up or feel

ashamed because you didn't hit a deadline because that just makes it worse.

So there you go. There are the tangible strategies, but those are only,

I don't know, I'm making this up 5 % of the equation because the other 95 % is how

you think about it. So let's look at this phrase when life happens or life just

happens and it's something we say all of the time and I just, I don't appreciate

that phrase because life does not happen to me. That just,

that is not something that occurs in my world. I recognize how that sounds. It's

like, well, Heather, don't things just happen circumstances out of the blue for you?

Yes, they do, But I would never, ever use that phrase and I would never classify

it as like, oh, well, you know, when life happens, because I think that that puts

you in the victim mindset. Like there's nothing you can do about it. It just

happened. And now here you are. And what are we going to do? So when she said,

when life happens, I chuckled, we have a good relationship. Okay. So everybody lets

relax. She said, you know, when life happens, and I said, "That's funny, life

doesn't happen to me." And thankfully she took that in the spirit with which it was

intended. In other words, that's just not how I view it. I would phrase it this

way. I would say, events occur, circumstances happen,

and then I make choices. And because I'm the boss of me, I can make decisions

about how I move forward in light of these events and feel really good about it.

Own those choices and empower myself so that I maintain some semblance of control.

But it's like if life just happens and we're the victim and we're totally out of

control and we totally completely disempower ourselves. And I would like to think I

have some authority on this subject because, and I quote, "Life just happened to me

or to us, I should say, when my husband required emergency, open heart surgery to

save his life two months ago, one might say, well, oh my gosh,

life just happened, right? That was not within your control and you had to manage

it. So, you know, somebody would say, that's what, that's what I'm talking about,

Heather. That's what I mean when I say life happens. And again, I would, I would

just offer that that's not how I think about it. A circumstance occurred. I made

choices on how to approach that. I did have to reschedule a few calls. I did not

beat myself up over it. I rarely reschedule calls. Everybody was understanding.

So there's actually no problem. I just want you to think of it this way. When you

say life happens, the way you're phrasing that is that it's a problem. Life happens.

It's a problem. I have no control. I'm the victim. Life is the villain. And what

am I going to do? It is so, so disempowering circumstances occur.

And then you as an adult or an entrepreneur, a CEO of your business, you make

decisions and choices on how to manage that. And usually when you're coming at it

from this angle, you make better decisions again from a place of empowerment.

I just don't want anyone hearing this thinking to themselves, Oh yeah, right Heather,

as if life doesn't happen to you, you're some special unicorn, I just want you to

know that that is not at all what I am saying. I am just looking at it from a

completely different angle, one that serves me and it might be true. Things in life

might happen, but how you process that, how you think about it leads to how you

feel and then what you do. And I just want to have more agency in those

situations. And so I do, but I just give it to myself by how I think about it.

So she was also explaining in that same conversation, she was saying, well, I just,

you know, I wake up every day expecting that there are going to be some obstacles,

there will be challenges and then I'll deal with them and you know, whatever that

looks like. And before she continued, I said, wait, hold on, I just, that sounds

really negative. And I just don't know that I would look at it that way. And she

said, no, no, it's actually, it doesn't feel negative to me. It feels like this is

the reality. I'm just being realistic. Things are going to happen obstacles and I'm

going to manage them. And she had it very clean in her mind. But I said to her,

I just, I just want to show you how dangerous that can be that you're making the

assumption that obstacles are going to happen because I just don't think that way.

Even if it's true, even if things happen, I don't think I don't wake up every day

thinking, well, obstacles are going to happen. And you know, I'm going to have to

deal with them. And who knows if I'm going to get done what I wanted to get done

because of these challenges that just arise. I do not think that way.

My thoughts are everything is always working in my favor. It works out in perfect

timing. Everything is easier than I think. And as a result, that's what my brain

offers me and shows me. So in her case, we went on to coach some more and I

said, I just want again to demonstrate to you that when you think there will be

obstacles, you are telling your brain to scan your environment for obstacles. Your

brain always wants to prove you right. So it's going to serve up obstacles to you

on a silver platter repeatedly. And it's going to say, "Here you go. Here you go.

Here's a challenge. Here's an issue. Here's a situation because you're expecting them,

they happen. Your brain wants to prove you right, which is good news because you

can use it in your favor. If I walk around thinking everything works out for me,

everything is easier than I think. I get so many things done so much faster than I

expected. Good things come my way because I think that my brain scans my environment

and looks for evidence to support that thinking. So her approach was if I believe

there will be obstacles, I'm just being realistic and I'll handle them. And I just

wanted to give her a different way to look at it. So we went through some examples

and she started to realize that that was true. Again, she's very open and very

coachable. And I saw her face a few times where she was like reflecting like, oh

my gosh, what I had never thought of it that way. So for example, her refrigerator

had stopped working the day prior. She explained that sometimes if she doesn't

defrost it, it forms this clump of ice and then it stops working. So she has to

defrost it and take care of it. And that was one of her examples of life just

happening because she also needed to edit some client photos, but obviously she had

to prioritize the refrigerator. And so see, this is what I'm saying, life just

happens and then I get behind on my work. And My thought would be, okay,

bummer, the refrigerator stopped working. This is not ideal, but I have to fix it.

So I'm going to make a choice. This is my decision because you could choose to

ignore it. You could. That's an option, but I'm going to make the decision to fix

the refrigerator and then come back to the client photos either later in the day or

the next day. And then I'm not going to feel guilty about it. There's no shame.

It's not a problem. It's like, okay, this is what we're doing. I shared with her,

it somewhat reminds me of my husband's reaction to his heart surgery.

There was no point in time where this guy made any of this a problem.

I would ask him periodically, how are you feeling? Are you nervous? Are you scared?

And he was like, no, why would I be? It's like, so simple to him.

He was like, I have to go get this taken care of. We'll get it taken care of.

And on the day of his surgery, you know, they're about to open up his chest,

break his sternum. And I said, how are you feeling? And he's like, what do you

mean? I'm fine. And I'm like, come on, major surgery. You have to be nervous. And

he was like, I just guess this is what we're doing today. Okay, I love that

attitude. No, I'm not as calm maybe as he is, but this is our approach,

which is if I have to fix the refrigerator, I will choose that. So I'm not at the

effect of the refrigerator. I am in control of my decisions. Frigerator gets fixed,

I work on the client images. And again, if I have a good workflow in place for

delivery. Then I know that I have margin in my schedule to get sick or deal with

a refrigerator or take care of a husband. Therefore, you can safely ask yourself,

I do this often when I'm getting, but when I start feeling anxious about something,

I'm like, Heather, what is the actual problem here? Oh, there's not a problem here.

Everything is always working out. But the reason I can do this and then move on

and take...

So I left her with this, let's drop the phrase life happens. Oh,

well, life just happened. Do you even hear the tone in that? It's just displeasing

to me. And let's not expect obstacles. I'm not saying they're not going to happen.

Of course they are. I'm not an idiot, but I'm not going to expect them. I'm going

to expect that everything works out for me. So when an obstacle or a challenge does

arise. I'm like, huh, well, that's interesting. I guess that's what we're doing

today. And I address it and then I move on, but in no way, shape or form in any

of this, does it need to become a problem or do I need to judge myself on how I

approach it? And because of this, I grow faster. I move forward faster.

And that's how I want to encourage you today to just think about things differently.

The next time something happens that seems outside of your control, I want you to

just kind of shrug your shoulders and say, "Oh, that's interesting. I guess that's

what we're doing today. I'm going to make the choice to do that thing today and

then I'll get back to this other thing later and it's not a problem." I hope that

you found this useful. I'll see you in the next episode.