CEO PHOTOG CLUB

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To that one person who asked me what my go-to apps are for my business, I’m sorry. Because you probably didn’t realize what a loaded question that was! I love love love being efficient and anything that allows me to streamline my workflow! So I may be a little too excited about today’s episode, but I sat down and identified 14 apps and programs that I just can’t live without. You’ll probably notice a common theme through all of them, that they all allow me to automate my workflow and allow me to be efficient with my time. I am all about working smarter, not harder, and all my programs allow me to be in all the places I need to be without spending 15 minutes on emails or 30 minutes on Instagram captions. It is important to me to show up daily, and I can still do that without working all the time. Everything is on autopilot and I can let my business run on its own with all these scheduling apps. I will leave links below for all the complex ones. * Honeybook COUPON: http://share.honeybook.com/kyleeann >>>> FREE CLASS: https://kyleeanneducation.com/p/honeybook * Canva COUPON: https://www.canva.com/join/chilly-cozy-cutie * Planoly COUPON: Planoly.com/referral/kyleeannstudios  * FloDesk 50% OFF COUPON:flodesk.com/c/KYLEEANN  * Quickbooks - 50% off: https://www.referquickbooks.com/s/Kylee22 * PASS - One month FREE: US6UZZ * Tailwind  https://www.tailwindapp.com/i/kyleeannphotos

You are a business owner first. Unfortunately, you will have to deal with problem clients or unhappy customers at some point in your business. Sometimes the problem is their insecurities. Sometimes the problem is miscommunication. Sometimes the problem is just a freak accident. Regardless, there are simple ways to handle problem clients without letting it escalate further. How to deal with hard clients: 1. KEEP YOUR COOL 2. BE KIND 3. KNOW THAT ITS OKAY TO BE SAD 4. ACKNOWLEDGE THEIR PROBLEM 5. QUICKLY RESOLVE THEIR PROBLEM 6. REALIZE THAT SOME PEOPLE WILL NEVER BE HAPPY 7. LEARN HOW TO AVOID PROBLEMS

We are back after a crazy week! My sister had her baby, I hired two new members for the team - a nanny and a photographer - I was training, babysitting and updating websites and it was all crazy. We are a little late this week, but better late than never. Especially for what we have planned today. I feel like we’ve talked about the many struggles of the mom life/work life balance - like the mom guilt, self care, being okay with hiring extra help and getting on top of our busy schedules. But there is one, super important, part of this mom life/work life balance that I haven’t even mentioned, and that’s getting on the same page as your spouse. Luke and I are going on 10 years of marriage and I haven’t been crazy busy with my business our whole marriage. But in the last few years, we have both taken on busy schedules as our jobs have expanded and as our kids have grown up. Luke will now be in Orem twice a week for his work and when we go back to pre-COVID times he will be traveling 40% of the month. Then I have this great business, running our Kylee Ann Team, the podcast, speaking, photographing brands and between the two of us, someone is always working. Luke and I really want to dive into this and how we’re navigating this in our lives - he is not here today and he will join us in future episodes, but we are at least scratching the surface because this is a pretty important topic, and I know it's something many of you are struggling with right now. Today we're talking about what Luke and I are using every single day, to balance life and marriage.

Morning routines are crucial, it's something that has been a longtime coming for me and I finally feel confident enough to share my journey. There is power in a morning routine and I learned this from the book Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod. It goes through six different areas that are key to building an effective morning routine. 1. Silence - meditation or prayer, reflection 2. Affirmations - think about what do you really want in your life 3. Visualization - visualize your day or future 4. Exercise - move your body 5. Reading 6. Scribing - journaling, getting thoughts out of your head I’m a night owl so I was staying up too late, hanging out with the hubby or watching TV or working, and sleeping in later than I probably should have. So when the alarm went off in the morning or when a child woke me up, it was panic mode as soon as I left my bed to hurry and get the kids shoes on, get everyone out the door and off to school. Mornings were chaos because I had no preparation to focus on me or my day ahead. It's been on my list to start this morning routine so I finally made it happen in the fall! Having a morning routine has changed my life drastically and I just feel like a level headed, mom boss that is ready for anything. Because I am taking time to focus on myself, I feel invincible. And it's all because of a simple morning routine! I’m taking the principles I’ve learned in the miracle morning and building it into my own routine that works for me. That’s important to remember, that even though we have studies proven how doing these things can benefit your life, you still need to bend and shape them to fit where you’re at. I know that if I do these things, I’m doing everything I can to help me prepare for my chaotic day of being a business owner and a mom.

A few weeks ago I was looking through my DMs and realized that I’ve been getting too many messages from photographers saying “yeah, what you’re doing works for you but not for me, because you’re well-known and I’m not….yeah, I hear you saying there’s plenty work out there for photographers, but that’s just for successful people like you and what about nobody’s like me.” What I’ve been hearing in my DMs are all negative beliefs, and it breaks my heart to hear photographers play the comparison game and pull themselves down! It's a dangerous road we go down when we give into our negative beliefs. We smother our own growth, success and confidence when we start telling ourselves, “I can’t make it because nobody knows who I am” or “I’m just not as good as that person.” These are all lies that we just keep telling ourselves, and we cannot get stuck in those places! A lot of people look at my account or my business and think that it must be so easy to be where I am. But they don’t see the 10 years that it took to get where I am. Remember that we all start at zero! If you’re finding yourself thinking any of these negative beliefs, stop looking around at everyone else and thinking that it must be so easy for them. Success does not mean that things come easy for people. Everyone attracts different opportunities and the opportunities YOU are attracting are the ones that you are needing in your life right now. Instead of fixating on how we can be successful like others, we need to focus on our own journeys, our own advantages and our own strengths.

I am all about marketing organically. It doesn’t cost you money (it just costs time), it lets you focus on connections rather than the numbers and I find that it gives me more joy in running my business. I’ve done a few episodes on marketing and on growing organically on Instagram, but today’s episode is all about marketing on a budget. I’m going to share with you the best way to market during a slow season, during a busy season, when you’re just starting or when you’ve been in business for 20 years. These techniques never go out of style! They don’t change with a pandemic. They don’t change with what platform using. They don’t change with shifts in social media algorithms or with a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic. Marketing your business on a budget comes down to three words: Consistency. Authenticity. Believe. We really like to overthink marketing and we have it in our minds that we need complex strategies and expensive tools. But that's it! The magic formula to success. Marketing is just educating people, connecting your services to their needs. Don’t overthink it.

In the beginning of my business, I was looking at everyone around me and what they were doing in their own businesses (we've all been there). I was constantly changing my edits, my lenses, my marketing techniques, my style, my posts - all of it, to what everyone else was doing. My whole business strategy was just to do what other people were doing. And you know what? I just found myself fixating on my own insecurities, what I was lacking and my failures as a business owner. Eventually I stopped caring what other people were doing because I found my own path. I came to terms with my path, learned to stop comparing myself to others because their path was not my path. I always knew what my next step would be and that led me to feel confident in my business. I slowly stopped feeling threatened by others and their big things because I knew my path and where my lane was. Its important to remember that most people don’t start out being super confident, we all start at the beginning with zero confidence, zero followers, zero income and zero clients. Everyone starts at zero. If you’re at zero right now or just feeling like you’re at a low point, stay in your lane and stop comparing yourself to others, because if you don’t have confidence in yourself, how will anybody else?

“I’m feeling unmotivated.” “I’m feeling discouraged.” “I’m doing the same old thing and I’m bored of it.” We’ve all been there before, and It's okay to be there. It’s okay to be in a rut. I have been in business for 10 years and I find myself in a rut almost every month! We let the expectations of others, and ourselves, drive us further down an unmotivated hole. A lot of us here are women, and us women tend to put all of our emotion and energy into what we do. We feel that, maybe because we quit our jobs to focus on our business or told everyone we have a big project on the way or have our husbands and family working so hard to support our dreams that we have to keep going and cannot stop. Even when we’ve lost our spark. It's not normal to feel super motivated, high energy 100% of the time. Let’s normalize that. We have ups and downs, ebbs and flows, and we can plan our work around those ebbs and flows. Everyone goes through phases of unmotivation. The key is to not stay there. In today's episode, we're talking about four things you can do to get yourself out of a rut.

I have had A TON of questions about bookkeeping, finances, tax prep, etc. so I talked with Katie Maher of Rocket Books to dive into all these topics and help answer some questions. Katie spent the first seven years of her career working behind a desk as an in-house bookkeeper for more than 30 different companies, clients, and investors. When she found that her joy revolved around helping her smaller businesses understand their financials, budgets, and work-flow processes, it was a very natural leap to start her own virtual bookkeeping business. Katie started Rocket Books at the beginning of 2020, and could not wait to use her experience to add value to any and every small business owner out there. She never expected to find herself, almost a year later, working with a fantastic group of all-female entrepreneurs as her clients. Over this last year she found that her true passion is working with fellow boss babes who are running creative service and product-based businesses. Katie covers everything from automation and bookkeeping programs, to budgets and even outsourcing in today's episode to help your business STEP UP and become the professional already. FIND KATIE HERE: rocketbooks.co instagram.com/rocket_books

WHEEEW. Things got CRAZY there for a lot of us last year. Between coming back (kinda) from the pandemic, fall, the holidays, etc…it was BUSY! Things typically slow down for a lot of businesses after the holidays. Which is what I DREAM of when I’m in the grind. But now I find myself wondering: "Now what?" What do you do when you have NOTHING to do? Maybe your job is seasonal. Maybe you are just getting started and don’t have a huge clientele. Maybe it’s just slow this time of year. 10 THINGS TO DO WHEN YOU HAVE NOTHING TO DO 1. Take a break. 2. Set Goals 3. Create Content Schedule 4. Improve your client experience 5. Improve your skills 6. Set boundaries 7. Diversify your income 8. Bookkeeping 9. Organize the closets and drawers in your home 10. Read a Book