Get out of a rut, in business and life: do a MOVE month
While I was profitable in 2018 and photographed great clients, the year was very difficult for me personally and health-wise.
My tough year translated into a rut. I had to drop a lot of things, but in my downtime (physically), I also read a lot and had plenty of ideas churning. Sadly I couldn’t act on many of them. So how does one get back on track, when you feel things have gotten away from you? Or that you haven’t invested time as you should have and things are disorganized? Or you suffer from many ideas but no clue how to harness them all into something cohesive? The secret lies in building habits and routines, and most importantly, taking action.
We act every day. But I’m not just referring to daily tasks. I’m talking about the type of action that moves us to fulfill our hopes and dreams. Brings us closer to our WHY, what we are here for, our life purpose. There is stuff to do every day: respond to emails, post on social media, shoot, edit, send out contracts and invoices, cook dinner, clean the dishes, take the car in for repair. And that’s captured on our to-do list. But take a step above all that - where are you going? With each signed contract, what dream are you moving towards? I realized I compartmentalized and it wasn’t truly serving me. Business was good but my health and relationship were fragile. Little pictures here and there were ok, but big picture was a bit lost.
About 2 years ago, on a sleepless night whilst tossing and turning, I pondered why I’m truly here. I often found myself asking the question, and never received full clarity. Until that night. The words “radiate pure joy” (RPJ) literally just planted themselves in my mind, like an actual voice casually responding to my question. It was so startling that it pulled me straight out of my sleepy haze. I knew these words were a guidance for me. They are what I’m meant to do but not just in business, in life too. Slogging through my to-do lists, it didn’t really feel like I was radiating anything, much less joy. I was caught up in busyness, trying to cope and keep it all together and not forwarding my life’s work.
At the height of illness and my personal troubles, I started to journal daily to help clear my head and became very obsessive and protective of that time. This is where my aha came, as before I knew it I had filled 3 thick journals with my thoughts. Hundreds of pages! If If I embodied that ethic in other areas, I would accomplish a ton! On a rational level I already understood these concepts, but sometimes an old message delivered at the right time wakes you up!
Read More: Best Gifts for Photographers
A MOVE month
I decided that enough was enough. I’m in treatment and feeling more energetic. So much stuff was swirling in my head, in my journal, my business journal, and on my calendars. It was time to MOVE instead of chasing and catching up. I decided that February was my MOVE month. Do you need to get out of a rut? Plan your own MOVE:
Do a SWOT
A SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) is important because the first step is to know where you sit in space and where you need improvement.
Choose a Word of the Year
Follow this exercise to select a word. I love having a guiding word for all I do. My word this year, surprise, surprise, is TRANSFORMATION. When something comes across my field of vision, I ask - will this be a transformative experience for me? Will it lift me or will it drag me down? Powerful stuff to help me pare away what I don’t want and make room for what I do want. On all fronts. No matter your word, it creates a point of reference that you’ve decided on, to help you say yes or no to approaching opportunities. That’s a gift, especially as photographers where we are often asked to do work we may not want, or deal with client exceptions. If whatever is in front of you doesn’t meet your word criteria, you know what you have to do.
Do a Vision Board
Sometimes we know exactly where we need to make changes, and sometimes we lack clarity. I did my “Present” Vision board exercise not long ago and it revealed some surprises. Use my tool or something similar to discover some aspects of your personal or business life that maybe you’ve buried.
Start your holistic life plan
Living a life of design is what I’m truly lacking. I have grocery lists, house chore lists, home and work calendars. But how does it all come together? What do I want my life to look like in 5, 10, 15 years? Where do I imagine myself living? What travels and experiences will shape who I want to be? Where do I see my photography career carrying me? As organized as I am with by business and marketing plans for my business, I haven’t applied these principles holistically. I’m not living separate lives - I’m living one life with several dimensions. Every dimension supports the other. You want to be great in business? Your family and personal goals should align so that you can move forward in harmony. We can’t exclusively focus on one area to the detriment of others, because imbalance will usually get you into the rut that it got me.
Designing my life is no different that designing my communications materials or my website. I look at every element and put together all the pieces from my photography, my style and my brand, to achieve my goal of attracting my client. I’ve realized that designing my life will attract the life I want to design! Oomph, that’s deep! This is the article I’m following, as a launch point. Once you’ve identified some areas that need attention, jot down a few action steps for each. Here are a few of mine:
Travel: I have so many dreams of travelling to amazing places, and I also want to show my daughter the world. But I haven’t created a plan for moving towards those goals, I just keep them in my head. We spent a month in Europe a few years ago and it was only on the continued urging of my in-laws to visit family there that we finally started planning. There was never a good time, and then of course it was amazing. Why had I put it off so long?
Mentorship: My parents were a generation removed from me, more like my grandparents, as my brother is 15 years older than I am. I felt like I’ve lacked a mentoring feminine energy in my life, especially as I manage my own photography business.
Self-care: I love massage, and NEED it especially during high shoot season. And yet, months go by and then when I’m stiff and sore beyond belief, I finally message my therapist. With my recently diagnosed chronic illness, I’ve realized how much I’ve managed to dismiss my own care, even while thinking I don’t! In his great book The Sell, Fredrik Eklund had this awakening. After certain negative things manifested in his life, he realized his health had come second to his career, when it had to come first because it’s what supported him in having the stamina to be a real- estate selling mogul. Protect my health. Make time for relaxation, meditation, exercise, holistic treatments, retreats. Were they scheduled? Not with any regularity!
Wealth Building: While I have savings and conservatively invest, I don’t have a master plan that brings it all together - especially to support the points above - allocating appropriately for my wanderlust or self-care as well as my future and that of my daughter.
A dream business: I am blessed with the know-how to have created a business I love. But, after RPJ came to me, I knew there was more to it, and I was frustrated that it hasn’t all revealed itself. I have snippets of the dream and they are sitting, untouched.
Schedule your daily actions
This is where theory becomes practice. Schedule EVERYTHING, not just your bookings and appointments. I’m placing on my calendar my journal time, my recreation and business reading time. My creative vision work, my house-cleaning. My bill-sorting. My financial planning. My down-time with family and our new pup, my trip-planning. My Netflix-watching! The things that I’ve put off like blogging. It may seem tedious but I’m building habits and routines. If I write it, I have to do it, that’s my rule. After a month, I imagine many of the things will cement themselves into my daily life, just as my morning journal did. And once I see success in moving forward on things that have stagnated for me, it will help me find the motivation to have an even better month after that, and so on!
If you’re in to do a MOVE month, comment below. I would love to hear about the areas that need attention in your life, and the word of the year that you’ve chosen. At the end of this . month, I will create a post that lists all of my MOVE month accomplishments. But February is almost half in! Don’t try to rush. Plan for another month to MOVE!
Are you struggling with marketing and need a plan, and find my content valuable? I have a ready-made marketing action plan available on my products page. It's actually my own plan that I'm making available to you! Find details here.
Follow this blog for more of my thoughts on marketing and business for photographers, and join the Facebook Group here to chat with others on this topic, and more!