Intro by Skip Cohen
If you haven’t taken the time to follow Sarah Petty and her Joy of Marketing blog, you’re missing an outstanding opportunity to grow with a better perspective on your business and marketing efforts. Her archives are especially outstanding because you don’t have to wait for her to share new material. There is no expiration date on great ideas and gaining control over each aspect of your marketing plans.
I love this recent post because the timing couldn’t be better. We all have expectations in our business, and more than likely you may have missed a few goals in 2022. The challenge isn’t in what you missed, but in focusing on getting back on track to achieve your plans for the new year!
Sarah’s post was too long for just one read. So, I’ve broken it into two parts, starting with the 50/50 tool and how to apply it to your business.
————————————
After 25 years in business, I’ve had my fair share of years where I’ve been disappointed in December as the year came to a close.
If you’ve been in business for any amount of time, I’m pretty sure you’ve had a year or maybe more than one where you’ve worked your booty off. You’ve worked so hard in that business, giving it your all, and you feel you have nothing left in your tank to give, yet you’re disappointed in the results.
I’ve been there and I think part of that is what toughens us up as entrepreneurs.
But I want to share with you two tools to help that I learned from Brooke Castillo. You’ve heard me talk about her before, likely. She owns The Life Coach School and a really fantastic podcast.
And I’m always looking for tools from all of the people I learn from that I can share with you so that you can take them and have a perspective shift in how you look at your business and at your life.
Tool #1: The 50/50 Tool
The first tool I want to share with you, Brooke calls the 50/50 tool. The concept is that our lives are not going to be amazing all of the time. They’re not meant to be. They’re literally not designed so that we’re happy all the time and we never ever have problems – because think of what jerks we’d be if everything came to us so easily, money and time and beauty and gifts and perfect children and everything were easy.
It just doesn’t work that way.
50% of your life, and 50% of the time, it’s going to be in the positive in the top half of the spectrum. And 50% of the time, it’s going to be below that baseline where you’re living in the negative.
Either things aren’t going right or you have negative emotions or things in your life are broken, or things happen to you or with you, that make you upset.
So, I want you to see this as a good thing. Because if we’re thinking that all we’re supposed to do is make sure that life is amazing all the time, we’re going to be severely disappointed because it’s not going to be perfect all the time for anybody.
Without the negative, the positive isn’t as great. You want negative things to happen in your life so that when you have the positive experiences, you’re feeling so amazing.
HOW TO APPLY THIS TO YOUR PORTRAIT PHOTOGRAPHY BUSINESS
Unless you started yesterday, you’ve already likely had some hard times in your business. I’m approaching one month away from 25 years in business, and holy cow, I’ve had some challenges. I opened my first studio two weeks before 9/11.
I survived all the shenanigans that happened with the market in 2008 and the dot-com bubble burst, and I messed up client orders and I got hit with an unexpected tax bill, and I had some things that happened that were earth-shattering.
On the years when I’ve made good money and my net profit was up and things went smoothly, I didn’t feel guilt or shame or any of those negative feelings because I felt like, “Oh my gosh, I’ve had some really hard years and this is what it feels like to win.”
Now that you have this 50/50 perspective shift tool, I want you to think about this and apply it to all the different parts of your life, okay?
Because it’s going to make you appreciate and feel like you deserve the success when you have it.
When you’re in one of those places where you’re below the 50% line, it’s okay.
You’re not going to have to stay there.
You don’t have to live there. You don’t have to be there.
You don’t even have to really love it, but you also don’t have to dread it and panic and freak out because the world is coming to an end. Just know that, “Hey, I’m going to get through this, and when I get to the sunny side, it’s going to be amazing.”
