7 Books I love for photography business growth and inspiration
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Photography Business Books
In this episode, I’m sharing 7 of my favorite book for business growth and inspiration. I also share my favorite platform for listening to audio books, Scribd. Scribd is a subscription service that has a huge library of audiobooks, ebook, poddcasts, magazines and more. You get unlimited access to the content for a monthly fee of $9.99. Get a free month at: https://www.scribd.com/gi/1p2uky
Books mentioned in this episode:
Building a StoryBrand by Donald Miller
Made to Stick by Dan and Chip Heath
Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert
What Do You Do With an Idea? by Kobi Yamada
Everything is Figureoutable by Marie Forleo
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 course, group coaching, and 1:1 mentoring.
Check out Kate Online: Website | Instagram | Tiktok | Pinterest
Full Transcript
Today, I want to talk about a few books that have absolutely loved and would 100% recommend if you’re looking for information on growing your business or just looking for some inspiration.
Some of these even helped me with personal growth as well.
Building a Story Brand
The first one is one you’ve probably heard of before it’s called Building a StoryBrand by Donald Miller. This book teaches you how to clarify your message so customers will listen. Actually, that’s the tagline for the book. But it’s about using storytelling to grow your business and using stories to reach your audience more.
I read this book a few years ago after attending the photo native conference and it being recommended by one of the speakers.
I will add that I’m an audio book listener more than an actual paper and text book reader so I listened to all of these books that I’m recommending on audio.
This one was a little bit hard to follow as an audio book and honestly, I felt like it left me wanting more information.
The author does sell his program and mentions it in the book several times, so I almost felt like I was buying an ad pitch basically. With that said, though it did have a really great message and some really good insights into using story to help drive your business and speak to your customers and explain things.
Made to Stick
Book number two, had a similar topic it’s called Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip Heath and Dan Heath.
Again, this one talks about using story in your marketing and in your copy to connect with your clients and your audience. This one though, I felt went further and gave better information than Building a StoryBrand. I would recommend reading both though, because they do have similar but different information. And I feel like it’s always good to take in multiple points of view on a topic.
I read Made to Stick shortly after reading, building a StoryBrand. And I do recommend reading both , because, while Building a StoryBrand went into using story and the hero’s journey, I felt like Made to Stick, had more actionable ideas and helped you put those things into practice and showed you how to use them in your marketing.
Big Magic
Book number three is a totally the opposite direction of one and two. This is more of an inspiration and creativity book. You probably have read it or heard of it. It’s called Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert. It’s all about creativity and inspiration and learning how to be creative, even when you’re scared, especially when you’re scared.
This is a really quick listen and I’ve actually listened to it multiple times.
It really does help me push beyond the boundaries that I’ve created for myself.
If you end up loving this book, I highly recommend checking out the podcast Magic Lessons. It digs further into the ideas in the book and some of the episodes,
I believe in the second season of Magic Lessons, have guests speakers as well.
One area of this book that really stuck out to me was that Elizabeth Gilbert talks about the idea of inspiration and
inspiration being more of a living thing that floats from person to person and ideas being a living thing that moved from person to person.
What do you do with and idea?
Along the lines of Big Magic, there’s another book that’s actually a children’s book that I would highly recommend. If you have kids read this with them as well. The story is beautiful and inspiring. It’s called, What Do You Do With an Idea?
The author of this one is Kobi Yamada. It’s a children’s book. It’s a picture book, but it’s so beautiful and talks about how, when you have an idea, you have to nurture it and care for it and turn it into the thing that you thought it would be.
It’s really a beautiful story and wonderful to read with your kids and goes along with the themes of Big Magic as well.
They Ask, You Answer
Swinging back to more business-related books. Number five is They Ask You Answer by Marcus Sheridan.
This is a book about content marketing and sales and using content to answer your client’s questions. It’s a lot about SEO and reaching your clients where they’re at.
This book will teach you how to know what to write about and create content around that attracts ideal customers and turns them into buyers.
This book is a little long for what it is. Honestly,
a good skim of it will get you the information that you need.
Everything is Figureoutable
Book number six also falls into that kind of self-help category. This one’s called Everything Is Figureoutable by Marie Forleo.
If you don’t know Marie Forleo, she is a multi-passionate business owner and coach. She has a YouTube channel called Marie TV, and a podcast, The Marie Forleo podcast. She is a really motivational person; a great speaker. She also teaches a pretty famous course called B-School.
Her book, Everything is Figureoutable is a self-help self-improvement and motivational book. I love that it’s broken down into short chapters. Where you can pick it up and put it down wherever you want to.
In this book, she talks about how no matter what it is that you want to do, there is a way to do it. It’s just something that you have to figure out. You have to put in the time and the research and figure out how to make things work the way that you want them to.
She talks about overcoming a lack of time and money. She talks about criticism and imposter syndrome,
and she talks about habits that help you achieve your goals.
Marie is also the narrator of this book. If you do the audio book and she has a great voice and a great way of storytelling so it is a quick listen if you dive into it.
Let it Be Easy
And then book number seven is one that I recently discovered. It’s called Let It Be Easy, Simple Ways to Stop Stressing and Start Living. This definitely falls more on the self-help side of things but I absolutely adore this book and the whole message behind it.
This is another book that has really short, quick chapters. The total listening length on this book is only five hours in nine minutes, but it’s got over a hundred chapters in it. So they’re quick stories that help you to see how you can make things easier in your own life and how to get past some of the things that we bog ourselves down with.
This book resonated so much with me, that it even inspired my word of the year, this year, which is ease.
I strongly believe in the idea of letting things be easy, taking things the easy way and finding ways to create the life that we love and want without stressing ourselves out.
This book gives you permission to take the easy way as often as possible.
Scribd
So that wraps up the seven books that I wanted to recommend today. But I do want to tell you about Scribd, which is the service that I use to listen to most books on.
It’s S C R I B D. I’ll put a link in the show notes for you.
We previously used audible and paid $15 a month for one book. And now we use Scribd, which is $10 a month. And gives you unlimited access to audio books. There’s also eBooks there and other documents and things that you can download. It’s a huge library
and I love that it has most of these business books included. A lot of the time I will start a business book and just not jive with it and it makes me feel okay to put it down and move onto something else because I’m not paying for the individual book.
I also use Libby and Hoopla from our local library to save money, but Scribd usually has what I’m looking for
and there’s no waiting time or hold time to get those books.
Alright that wraps it up for today. I appreciate you listening. If you read one of these books or have other suggestions for me, let me know.
I’m always open to learning more. I am such a researcher and I dig deep into learning things all the time.
And can easily go down a rabbit hole with audio books. So tell me what you’re reading and let me know what you think of these suggestions.
If you haven’t already, please make sure to subscribe to How You Pictured It on whatever podcast player you’re listening to and leave us a rating or review.
That helps other people find the podcast too. I’ll talk to you next week, have a great one. Bye.
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