Podcast Ep 371 - The Marketing Formula and Why You Will Never Go Wrong Meeting People

In this episode of the Flourish Academy Podcast, Heather shares a live coaching conversation with a photographer who's been struggling with how to talk about her business without feeling like she's “selling.” Together, they uncover how projecting personal fears and beliefs onto others can block growth and prevent action.

Heather offers powerful mindset shifts that can help you confidently share your work, see networking in a new light, and remember that service—not selling—is the secret to business success. If you've ever felt weird about promoting your work, this episode is for you.

Show Notes:

• Why projecting your thoughts onto others keeps you stuck
• The difference between service energy and sales energy
• How to reframe networking discomfort and build confidence
• Why human connection is never a waste of time
• A simple mindset shift that makes marketing feel easier

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

Connect:

Heather Lahtinen: Website, Facebook, Instagram

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TRANSCRIPT

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

project our own thoughts onto others and the significant impact it can have on your

business. 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

today. I'm sharing a conversation with one of my photographer friends from a recent

fast track coaching call. I periodically host these free coaching calls so that I

can help as many photographers by exposing them to the powerful transformation of

coaching. Elevate is our business program for photographers where we have extensive

training on pricing and marketing strategies and everything you need to build a

successful business. But what makes us different is we go far deeper than just

pricing and marketing strategies. It's about creating lasting transformative results

through mindset coaching combined with proven business tools. And I think that many

programs stop at strategies. And the reason we stand out is because we answer the

critical question, what do you do when those strategies don't work?

My job, my mission in life is to help you uncover the hidden blocks that keep you

stuck even when you have all of the tactics in hand. The truth is most

photographers think they need strategies alone, but what they truly need is a shift

in their thinking to confidently implement those strategies, figure out the obstacles

and keep moving forward because roadblocks are going to happen and we show you how

to overcome them and stay on track. So by addressing mindset alongside of business

tools, we can help you get faster results. You should definitely head over to www

.getcoachedbyheather .com to register for our next free coaching workshop.

Even if you don't have a specific question, it's super helpful to learn from others

like you will today that are getting coach because essentially you benefit from

coaching by proxy. One more thing before we dive into this conversation. At the

beginning of this particular call, I had shared that one of our elevate members just

had her first $1 ,000 sale. So I was telling everyone,

"If you knew that you could make $1 ,000 and all you had to do was talk to me?

Why wouldn't you do it? We do work with photographers all levels because so in that

same week, we had a photographer that had their first thousand dollar sale and then

we had another photographer that had her second highest sale and it was close to

$12 ,000 and I thought to myself, I mean first of all,

can you imagine $12 ,000 sales? So if you knew that you could make a thousand

dollars or or have two five thousand dollar sales or even twelve thousand dollar

sales and all you had to do was join us and elevate or again just have a

conversation with me what would prevent you from doing that in other words if you

knew that you had certainty that that could happen. That was in your future. Would

you be willing to talk to me to get there faster? I would hope the answer is yes.

I hope you enjoy this conversation. Hello Heather. It's nice to see you.

What's going on? Good to see you. So last week I had a contractor,

a friend of ours come and do some work on our house. We needed some painting done.

And at one point realized that the color of the door was not what I was expecting.

And because he's a friend, I had this moment of like, oh, this is why I have a

hard time hiring friends. because I'm like I need to say something I don't like it

but there's that hey I know this person and anyway very uncomfortable I ended up

telling him turned out fine he you know turned out he was like well I should have

asked you and I said I should have asked you as well etc so anyway that incident

and everything turned out fine But that incident made me kind of reflect on when

I'm doing networking things and you know, when you're putting yourself out there and

trying to get people to know I can trust you and realizing that I have this

underlying sense of

people that I know, like, can I really trust them to,

well, if I'm hiring them, like, what if something happens, like with this last

incident? And I think that is an underlying fear of,

and then when I'm trying to share my business, try, I don't know,

it's just very I just realized like I have this kind of longstanding distrust of

like I would rather in one sense just go to Google for whatever it is that I'm

service that I'm looking for look at all the reviews or you know and then just not

having to deal with that interpersonal relationship of having to already knowing that

person But that's not good for and I know that's not good for my business. Like

why am I even going to networking events if this is my my

presumption and it's what is the what is the presumption? What is the fear I?

Think I think it goes both ways from if I'm looking for a service or even not

really looking for a service, like insurance, you know,

of course all these, there's a lot of insurance people out there. Like when I go

to this one networking event and I met one -on -one and you're kind of like, hey,

get to know this person. And specifically like, hey, we're not there to sell each

other. Like we're trying to learn about your business. I shared, he shared, and I

felt sold to. - Okay, okay, this is good. What does it mean to feel sold to?

What's the emotion or the thought that comes up for you when you feel sold to?

- I don't like it. - Because? - I don't like feeling that pressure of,

oh, well, we're in the same networking group. And it wasn't like we, you know,

we had to make a deal or anything like that. But I was going in,

going, just sharing up about my business. That's what he was supposed to be doing

as well. But I felt at the end, like, well, do you want to schedule an appointment

to do when I hadn't really said I specifically needed somebody, you know,

so. So did you feel like you're being sold to and you should do something about

that?

Um, like either way, like it kind of puts you in a position to either say,

hey, tell me more or no, I'm not interested like you like it almost there's almost

- I don't, but I'm like. - But there was something about that that you didn't sit

right with you. - Yeah.

- What was it?

- It's felt like he was pressuring me to schedule something.

- And you certainly are not the type of person that would ever want anyone else

feeling that way about you. Probably, yeah. So because,

of course, that's not who you are. So of course, because you had that feeling,

you're then going to turn around and project that onto everyone you know. So what

your brain is telling you is that if I tell someone, I'm a photographer, and would

you like to schedule a call or book a session that you are selling to them and

you're putting them in an uncomfortable pressure position.

Probably. If that's what your brain is telling you, does it surprise you that you

would hesitate to share your business? No. Of course not.

Your brain is like, don't do it. It's not safe. That's because of your experience

and how you viewed it. So then we just tend to assume, well, everybody thinks like

us. We project that on everyone else. So I'm not going to be that way because I'm

not going to put that type of pressure on people. Yeah. But is there a different

way to look at that exchange that gives it a different feeling or meaning.

Like if he's not selling to you, let's say he's not selling or pressuring you. What

is he doing?

Well, I would say that he is trying to See if I want to go to the next step of

meeting like my husband or what you know and and actually talking Talking through

what we might need Please chat so okay, but be careful here because there's a

really fine line between he's trying to get me as a client Which feels very sold

to verse He really wants to help and he wants me to be aware of his service.

He's serving. I don't know if you've ever heard me talk about this on the podcast,

but there's a big difference between I need to get a client, I need to get money,

I need to convince everyone that's the get energy that we tend to get in. It feels

awful salesy, so we don't do it. And if we think someone else is doing it, well,

here we are. But if we are in service energy where I'm always just trying to tell

people what I do. So they just know, you know, hey, I just want you to know I

have this type of insurance if you're ever looking for it. Just like, just like

service, which he might be trying to sell you. I mean, I don't know what his

energy is, but I just, because I view what I do as serving you as I'm always in

service energy. I assume in that same scenario? I assume he's just,

he's just let me know what he does.

It's just like service.

Yeah.

At the time, that did not feel like that was what he was. No, I understand. It's

because our brain is trying to like write this, you know, narrative of what's

happening. And if that's okay, it's like, oh, I have this great,

I mean, this is what, This is why it's so brilliant that the painting thing

happened to the door because it just illuminated for you. Wait a minute.

I think I have some thoughts here that maybe you're serving me and this awareness

is good. This is how I view this. I view an exchange between friends or businesses

as

How would you classify it, how you view it, just in general?

- Whiskey, maybe. - Yeah, like until it's scary. - It could turn out well, it could

turn out badly.

- And so what?

You know what I was saying to myself the other day, I am so hilarious in my own

head. It is like, welcome to the party. I was like, Heather, either it's gonna work

or it's not.

No kidding. Either it's gonna work out or it's gonna end well or I wouldn't even

say badly, it's just not gonna work out. It's either gonna work out or not work

out. And then so what?

Like take me through the whole scenario. Let's say it doesn't go well. Like

something is icky or or we just we don't hit it off offer, whatever, then what?

- In the sense that I'm trying to share. - Yes. - Share something? - Yes.

- Ideally just move on to the next person, but.

- You might be, so you're trying, me you know you know my three steps is is to

meet people tell me a photographer make an offer. Let's say you do that with me

you meet me you tell me your photographer and you make an offer and I'm like nope

I don't I don't even like your work I think what you do is terrible like okay

nobody's gonna say that but I'm giving you the worst case scenario then it's like

oh okay okay Okay, next.

Why would we spend any of our time trying to convince our worst client? Why would

we not harness all of our energy to talking to our best clients? So I promise you

that insurance guy, I promise you, oh my gosh, I'm stereotyping insurance people,

forgive me. I have a great insurance person. I promise you, he's just like,

okay, I talked to her, maybe she'll call me, maybe she won't. Next, that's talking

to everybody because he's not making it mean anything about his character. It's like,

I have a service and I want you to know I exist.

And okay,

so with that in mind, is your brain offering you any other type of fear about

working with a friend, telling them what you do, making an offer.

Okay, so there's in this particular networking group, I have had a few people reach

out. It's like, hey, this person needs, and that's a business networking group. A

lot of times it's with headshots and that kind of thing. And a couple of times

people have said, oh yeah, I put you in contact with this one person. They need

headshots, but I would say of those two scenarios,

they Both wanted basically me to do a networking like business owners can get their

headshot done for basically nothing.

And I'm like, I mean, and I say no, I mean,

I don't, I don't do that, but I think that's another feeling of

why, why am I, I'm really not finding my ideal client here.

Maybe this isn't even the place to be looking for family photography clients.

- Okay, so that thought is what's holding you back. You're hesitating because you're

questioning. There's doubt, right? Should I even be here? Is this worth my time? And

that's valid. I mean, I don't want you to waste your time, but my thought is I

will never go wrong meeting people and telling them what I do. Never.

Because I will make an impression, I will share what I do. And if they don't hire

me, their cousin will,

or their aunt's sisters, brothers, uncle, twice removed, might call me five years

from now, by the way, five years. So in my brain,

this is like, this is like big, just stay here with me. My brain is like I'm

never wasting time. I never view anything as wasting time. It's like not even a

concept.

Whatever I'm working on in my business or meeting people, I just truly believe that

what I'm doing is for the greater good of my business always.

Now, I'm not suggesting you don't question your time. Like, yes, of course, you

know, if it's not making sense, but I just think that wherever I'm at,

whoever I'm talking to, that there will be a return on that. It's just what happens

for most of us as we go to these things and we don't get a client immediately or

even this year and we're like, my people aren't even here. This is a waste of my

time, but what if three years from now, five people hire you because of some

connection or maybe them even directly or because of some connection. So I always

believe that I'm throwing a rock in the pond that's rippling and I just don't

believe that's a waste. So I mean, you get to decide how you think about that.

Your people might not be there, but I used to photograph the March of Dimes, Walk

for Babies for like premature babies or babies born with issues because I love the

babies, you know, but I was a wedding photographer. Do you think my ideal client

was at the March of Dimes, Walk for Babies? Okay. No, not even close. Big signs

said weddings by Heather. So funny. It was families. A family photographer would fit

in really well there, right? I cannot tell you the amount of business that came

from those relationships.

People telling me, "Oh, you have to hire Heather. She shoots for the March of

Dimes. You have to hire Heather." And it was something I enjoyed doing. Now, listen,

if you hate it, if you hate it, and you're like, "I'm wasting my time on my

people," well, I mean, you get to decide that. But in my brain, I'm just,

everything's always working. And I'm always meeting the right people. And if it's not

the person...

always about elevate and 10 people will join. Okay, do you know how many are then

saying no? Who cares? You know, I'm gonna help people as much as I can and then I

just believe in the three -year bicycle I've talked about that where like people will

buy. Okay, I don't want to get hung up on that. You get to choose the way you

think about it and how and where you're winning and just question the question the

self doubt and follow the scenario out like if I have an awkward interaction or

somebody says no or it doesn't work out then what

so what I met a person you will never go wrong meeting people never ever ever even

if it doesn't work out. Because what you believe about insurance guy talking to you

is either going to propel you into action or cause you to hesitate.

How's that landing for you?

I think I had a lot of I need to change like how I'm thinking about it.

Just question your thoughts. It is true like human interaction is never wasted.

Never.

But sometimes I think I think it is. I mean I know like that's true but I do

feel like hey this isn't going anywhere. But I do think just reframe me in the

sense of you just never know how it's gonna land or,

you know, the person that I meet, etc. down the road.

So and take that one step further. That's a that's a better thought. You're creating

these latter beliefs, which are really good, which is you never know. If we take

that one step further, it's like, I know this is working.

I know this will lead to a client.

Every time I show up for people, for people who are intrinsically valuable, every

time I show up for people, I am doing good in the world.

So focused on service, you focused on service. I tell everybody what I do. I don't

even know, I don't care if they're photographers. I'm like, I help people make more

money. I help people clean up their their minds. I just want to share it because

I'm excited. If somebody feels like they're being sold to, that's because of how

they're thinking about it because I know my heart

and I know that I'm just trying to help and serve. If somebody thinks I'm being,

they're being sold to, I'm like, oh, they have thoughts about selling. And then I'm

like, well, do you want me to help you with that?

So just just catch the thoughts and believe that everything is working. And I know

this is this is a stretch for a lot of people and it was for me, but I promise

you if I can get there you can because I still struggle with it, but I just don't

believe I'm ever wasting my time.

Like whatever I'm working on is what I'm supposed to be working on in the moment.

And I just, my self -concept is just rooted in trust.

So trust yourself to be able to work with friends, to be able to have conversations

that might be difficult or uncomfortable. You talked to your friend about the door

and it all worked out perfectly. Because everything could be,

I think everything is easier than you think it might be. - That's true.

- Helpful, I hope? - Yes, that's very helpful, thank you. - It is my pleasure, thank

you, thank you. I loved that conversation, and I hope that you found it useful as

well, or maybe you were able to draw some parallels in how your thinking impacts

your business. The easiest most straightforward example of this is if you don't

believe that anyone will pay your pricing because you wouldn't pay your pricing, then

that's obviously because you are projecting your money, thoughts and beliefs onto your

potential clients and it just doesn't work. It certainly doesn't serve you. If this

conversation resonated with you, you would love Elevate. We take this work and we

put it into practice to help you grow your photography business and have fun in the

meantime. It doesn't have to be a painful process. I hope you enjoyed this

conversation. I'll see you in the next episode.