The next thing you need to learn in your photography business

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Education for Photographers

As business owners and creatives we are always curious and constantly learning. There is always something that we could do better, more efficiently, more creatively, etc. There is such a great range of education for photographers. In this episode, I’m sharing how the person you learn from and the type of education you choose can greatly affect your success. Listen in for  5 questions to ask yourself before choosing your next course, workshop, coaching, or mastermind. 

1.  Is this something that I need in depth information and knowledge on? And will I need to ask questions?
2. What is my time commitment to learning this thing?
3. Is this new knowledge something that I will continue to use in my business, or would it be smarter at this point to hire out this task or skill?
4. What free resources are available from the educator so that I can learn what their teaching style is?
5. Does the educator have the same philosophies on business and life as I do?  Do we have the same type of goals in mind?

About Kate Hejde

Kate Hejde is the host and creator of How You Pictured It Podcast and Dear Kate Brand Strategy. She helps photographers create a profitable business that fits into their lives. With over 10 years of experience running her own photography business, while raising three kids, Kate believes that business is not one size fits all and that you define your own success.  Kate teaches through her podcast as well as through courses, group coaching, and 1:1 mentoring. 

Check out Kate Online: Website | Instagram | Tiktok | Pinterest

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FULL TRANSCRIPT

When I was in eighth grade, I was in a science class on earth science and I struggled so hard in that class.

To the point where after every class I would go up to the teacher and have her go over the notes that I had taken individually with me and answer questions. I remember standing up there and just feeling totally embarrassed. And like, I was horrible at science. And would never understand or learn this subject.

I was in this honors program in an all-girls Catholic school. And I just felt so singled out by myself basically. And just. Like I was really bad at science and that I would never understand it and I would never get it. And in that same year, I was in the science Olympiad club for my school.

Super nerd alert, but I participated in a regional competition. And then I think a state competition

for science and there were different tasks and, uh, categories that you could compete in. And I, the one that I won metals in was called don’t bug me, and it was bug identification, which is so weird, but It just. It’s something that I look back now as an adult and can see. I wasn’t bad at science. I was not good at learning from that teacher.

That was something that kind of followed me through my school career was that if there was a teacher that was not a good fit for me, I really struggled to learn from them. I F they didn’t understand me and I didn’t understand them. Uh, the information was not going to get into my brain.

And that kind of leads into what I want to talk about today, which is finding that right. Teacher for you

and finding the right learning system.

In my 10 plus years as a photographer. Now I’ve taken a ton of different workshops, mentoring. I’ve been in mastermind groups, I’ve done so many different things. To learn. ? ? ? And I’ve found that not every teacher is the right teacher for me. Not every class is the right class for me.

As business owners, we always will have something new to learn.

If you are an artist, you’re a curious person and

curiosity leads us in creation.

Curiosity also helps us grow our business and learn more about how to do things, new topics, new ideas of how to make things work. What trends are happening in the world.

New techniques and tools that are out there. And so we will always be learners.

What I really wanted to get into today though, is finding the right person to teach you at the right fit for what you want to learn and also finding the right. Type of education for yourself.

First, I want to start off by talking about the person.

For me, I’ve learned that the people that I learn best from are people who are similar to me.

Similar to me, not in the fact that there. A 38 year old mom. Who has their own business doing photography but more similar to me in. They’re basic goals and priorities in life.

I once had a teacher who was a mom. Very similar age to me.

But we just had different priorities. She was very much about making the biggest sale possible. She was about making the biggest name for herself

and while she prioritized her child. She had a spouse at home who was there if she wasn’t. And so. She worked a lot of hours.

When I went to that workshop with her, every time that I felt resistance about something that she was teaching such as I was concerned about the time it would take for in-person sales, ordering appointments, and she was insistent that that was the only way to do it. Because that’s what worked for her and that’s understandable that it worked for her. And I was there to learn from her, but.

, There was no flexibility in what she was teaching.

And she wasn’t able to see. My life and my priorities. As a student of hers. To help me find ways to make her methods work for my business.

And I think a lot of that had to do with the fact that we just had different priorities and we were at different places in our life and we wanted our lives to look different from each other. So learning business things from her was not a good fit for me.

I did learn a lot from her though in other areas of photography. And I think that if I had set my own expectations, To be more adequate to what she was teaching and who she was that the whole experience would have been overall better.

On the other side, I’ve taken a copywriting class. Where the teacher. Was much more. Open and flexible to making what she was teaching fit with each person’s business.

And creating more of an adaptable system versus a hard and fast set of rules that you had to follow.

She even gave us a mapped out calendar where you could choose if you wanted to finish the work in 30 days, 60 days or 90 days, so that you could fit it to your life, to your business and to what your needs were.

Honestly, I will forever. Follow that copywriter Ashlyn, from Ashlyn writes and I will always recommend her. And I base a lot of how I teach off of the teaching methods that she used. In her course, copywriting for creatives.

I also find that the teachers and podcast hosts, especially that I learned the most from are the ones that are talking about. Cutting out all of the hustle in their life.

some of my favorites are biz chicks podcast. I love how in the beginning of every episode, Natalie talks about hiring as much help as you can at home and in your business and making sure that your VIP’s you’re very important. People are always front and center and that you have time to spend with them. And her VIP’s are her family, her kids, and her pets.

Jim a bottom Carter is another coach that I’ve used, and she is very much into building a business that is .As passive as possible and helps you create income so that you can live. Exactly the life that you want to live so that you have time for all of the travel and spending time with your kids and your family.

And then thirdly is Jessica Tutton, who is a Facebook ad specialist. And she is actually traveling with her family this year and working from the road like they’re living in their RV and. That is something that I always will aspire to is just travel with my kids. I absolutely love that we’ve spent three weeks traveling in 2020, and it was some of the best time of our life,

even when it was some of the roughest circumstances in the world and in time we really enjoyed our time together getting to travel like that.

So I love learning from Jessica because we do mesh on that. Philosophy of what we want our lives to look like in her episode on goal planning this year. I really just felt seen and heard listening to her talk because. We definitely are on the same track of. Building in white space and only scheduling what needs to be scheduled in order to make the money that we want to make.

So that kind of gives you a brief overview on length, figuring out the who of who you want to learn from. The next part I want to talk about is figuring out what kind of education you want to get. There are mastermind classes, there’s mentoring, there’s group coaching there’s one-on-one there’s just online courses. There’s so many different ways that you can learn and figuring out what works best for you, uh, is going to give you the biggest return on your investment and the biggest return on your time to.

I honestly think there is a time and a place for each of these things . And I also think there’s a time and a place to just hire something out and let somebody else do it and not learn it because it is. Not something that you really need to learn and would be a better investment to pay someone, to do the work versus spending the time to learn it.

If you listen to the audio summit that I released a couple of weeks ago. It was all about finding the right person to do some of that work for you versus finding the right teacher. Though a lot of the experts that I interviewed , also, our teachers. They offer a done for you services to. And that is something I don’t want you to discount and take off of your list. Hire out help if you can. And when you can and. Build that into your budget.

Next time you’re figuring out pricing. Add that into your cost of doing business.

But when it comes to wanting to learn something, let’s talk about the different types of education that are out there and how you can decide what is the best choice for the topic that you want to learn on.

First there’s just the basic online course. It’s typically something where you get all of the course information, either in a drip fashion where you get some lessons each day or however, the teacher has worked that out where you get everything all at once and you can work at your own pace. There’s no one giving you input on anything. It’s just basically.

Either reading information or watching videos on it. And putting it into practice on your own.

This is definitely something I’ve done. A lot of I’ve learned from photographers. I’ve learned from people in other industries. People that specifically teach. A certain topic to small business owners. And I find that depending on the topic, if it’s not too far outside of my current knowledge, it’s pretty easy for me to understand it and obtain things from.

Those online courses.

I will say though, a lot of the time I find that I start a course. And get really into it right when I purchase it and don’t finish it. That’s something I’m very guilty of and hate. ’cause I feel like I’m just wasting money. But then I also will maybe sometimes go back to something. That I purchased a while ago and go back and look over it.

Later on when I really need that information.

These types of online courses tend to be the least expensive of all the education options, because it’s something that the teacher can create once and share with many people without them having to involve more of their own personal time. The other options all have more of the teacher or mentor, coach, whoever, whatever you want to call them, input and time involved.

And more personalized attention. I also feel like these types of online courses can maybe not quite go as deep as something with more teacher involvement. And they may be either cover a broad subject. More generally, or they cover one small topic. Very in-depth.

There are also online classes that have a group coaching or accountability portion. This is typically my favorite kind of course, or education to take part of.

I like having someone to ask questions to, I like having a set. Deadline for things. It makes it so that I do get things done. In that timeframe.

I also really like group coaching or where I can see what other people’s questions are to the instructor, because I feel like I learn a lot from what other people ask. And how the instructor will answer those questions. Sometimes it just gets my wheels spinning and makes me think about it in a different way than what the instructor had originally intended.

Or maybe I wasn’t reading things. Or listening to things quite the way that they were intended, but when someone else asks a question about it, it makes my brain work differently and I learn a lot more.

I will Go

for this type of education for most things. If there’s something that I really have no clue about, and I know that I need tailored specifically to my business. I will probably find someone that is either a one-on-one coach or mentor. Or I’ll hire it out.

So let’s talk about that. One-on-one I used a one-on-one well, a two. Actually mentor to learn more about newborn photography and posing.

I found that this was super helpful to really be like a super in-depth. Learn a lot in a short amount of time. Versus something that I needed. More time to process and more time to put little steps into action.

I loved being able to ask questions. As I learned. Versus learning. Saving up my questions, working on something and asking in that group. Coaching call or whatever. Additional coaching calls are included in a course or a program. With the two on one Mentoring. That I did. Uh, we were basically together for a full day and a half. As things came up, we asked questions.

It was really well organized. And I came away with a lot of information from that time and really like, felt like I made huge growth in that to one-on-one mentoring.

And then the last type of education that I want to talk about is a mastermind group. With a mastermind group. There’s not necessarily a curriculum that you’re following or something that you’re learning.

It’s more like a group to help you have kind of a board of directors in your business. I am currently doing a mastermind with one of my friends. It’s just the two of us.

We take turns, talking about our business and give each other ideas of what things we should try, what things we should do, and just having the opportunity to talk out loud about what’s going on in our business. And focus that time on it has been super valuable for both of us.

I’ve been in other mastermind groups before with more people. That there’s a facilitator. And then each person has their like 15 minutes or whatever that they talk about their business and what’s going on, what goals they’re working on. And it, it just holds you accountable for the things that you said you want to do.

As small business owners, it can be so hard to reach our goals because we don’t have anyone looking over our shoulder.

Sometimes we don’t even say our goals out loud because there’s no one to say them to. So having that kind of sounding board, that person, that group of people that know what you’re working on and are there to cheer for you when you get it done. And kind of hold you to the fire when you’re not, can be such a great place.

To grow.

Like I said, though, this doesn’t typically come with any kind of curriculum. It’s more of just a group of people who are working together with a facilitator

To set goals and to make growth. Sometimes the facilitator might be someone who is a mentor or coach and can help you through those things and can be the professional that you’re asking questions to. This is something that I include in my profitable photographer sales system course.

Where my students do get a course, but they also get these biweekly mastermind group coaching calls, where I will talk with them about anything that they’re working on in their business and help them work through any problems.

So to wrap up this episode, I want to give you a list of five questions to ask when you are ready to learn something.

Number one:

Is this something that I need in depth information and knowledge on? And will I need to ask questions?

Number two:

What is my time commitment to learning this thing.

Number three:

Is this new knowledge, something that I will continue to use in my business, or would it be smarter at this point to hire out this task or skill?

Number four:

What free resources are available from the educator so that I can learn what their teaching style is.

And number five:

Does the educator have the same philosophies on business and life as I do? Do we have the same type of goals in mind?

All right. I hope that helps you to look at the education that’s out there and narrow in on exactly what is right for you. What you need to learn how you need to learn it and who you need to learn it from. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave me a review on apple podcasts or a five star review on Spotify.

By reviewing the podcast, you make it so that those platforms will share it to more people. And I would truly appreciate it. I will talk to you next week. If you have any questions for me or want to chat message me at dear Kate brand strategy on Instagram or Tik TOK. Have a great day.