Lessons

Lesson Info

2:15 pm - Boosting Your Energy for Sales

In a shooting situation or even in this in a teaching situation one of the easiest ways to keep your energy up is to simply think about what is everybody else meeting right now and as I'm going around the room and talking like I can see when you guys were in and engage and I could see when you're like wow that was so much content and I need to be able to respond accordingly to that if I just keep drilling down and not stop and stays are you with me what do you think you know I think at one point I did jump into say since they were you but I think the act of doing that khun b really meaningful as it relates to transference of energy you can get a lot of energy if you're open to finding it around you you know in addition here are some ideas of things that aren't related to the physical reasons isn't physical ways you gain energy you know as is in your fitness business can you give her the microphone that statistically speaking and scientifically speaking exercise gives you a ton of energ...

y yes one hundred percent I hear that all the time from people that I trained and teach that they feel so they air skeptical joining a fitness program but once they're in they have more energy than they've ever had so it's the momenta mb of moving that getting started absolutely yes yeah, and it's the same way again, this isn't going to be a food and exercise program I think we're working on that for next time, but it is going to be about this is going to be really focused on the mental energy you need in the mind set in terms of gaining strength there but how you feel yourself makes a huge difference what what you put into your body is going t o help it run one way or the other so let's talk a little bit more about boosting energy from the perspective of how you're living your life and things that you khun dio to find more energy all right let's talk a little bit about building in short term and long term rejuvenation and here's here's an interesting thing in terms of the amount of stress we put on ourselves. I spoke a lot about this in the work life balance course, but we tend to be able to expand to the amount of requirement that seems to be in front of us and unfortunately we just keep doing that and doing that and it takes that precious amounts of our storage of energy it eats into how much we have left. So at the end of the day, after all is said and done, you let's sit on the couch and it's hard sometimes to even like kids were saying read me welcome can you just read me about you got a man building in short term and long term rejuvenation it has to kind of start from there from a scheduling perspective because when the when the question gets asked how do you boost your energy your how do you keep your energy up? I'm going to give an answer that actually will work for you but of course that doesn't mean it will work at four p m today but it will will start to work for you just as an example when we leave here what I won't do and they used to dio is dive right back into all the amount of work that's going on we're going on a couple days vacation we're taking a break and everybody needs to take a break including steve who's good with the kids twenty four seven for the last few days on daz on purpose because I know that I'll crash on everything else that I just keep going mental stress mental stress is far more dangerous than we ever used to know study after study keeps coming out saying this thing is a killer and I mean literally but let's just talk a little bit about the fact that stress seems to be a very acceptable form of mental illness in our society do you know anybody who does it? I feel like they have a lot of stress in their life especially when you're doing this job okay when I said this mental stress you went like this that you've had this experience recently, right? I have you want to share? Well, I'm not sure what you're going to get to so maybe I'll share it after you all right? Well, the impact, the impact it has on all of you and your whole body. So yes so I mean, I had some chronic pain chronic back pain issues and was trying anything and everything to figure out what structurally was wrong and after a long period of time of comes back around tio they're being the mind body connection and there's the real physical pain but our nervous system actually learns pain yeah, and so brain is sending pain to particular part of your body and you can unlearn that pain through a variety of ways so yeah, definitely and you have done that have done that? Yeah, I'm now I'm feeling a lot better so which is a great thing but when you say I mean you're obviously summarizing but it was a lot of pain for a long time and you tried a lot of things. Yes, yeah, I mean, so it's not just like that one day and then the next day we're talking about full year of not being able toe lift up something that's like five pounds right without being in pain and the solution wasn't this and that and that it was simply how do I remove the stress for my body proactively, right? Yeah, and so we're sitting here talking about sales like why is boosting energy have anything to do with it? It's got everything everything to do with it great energy makes for great sales I could sit down with them right here after the experience out in the alley and the mad race is everything and kind of go like what do you want? Just tell me what you want not done because that would be the propensity of my energy had flagged that much, you know? So one of the things about taking breaks and building them in is the bottom line is we're going to do it anyway our minds do it anyway that's the sensation you have when you're driving down the highway and you mix mr exit and you don't know it for another three miles we all done that, right? Whoa, where was I? Or you're in a conversation and you're listening you can see the mouth talking, but you are somewhere very far away because your mind just said I need to take a break or you're watching tv and you didn't realize you watch commercials who watches commercials anymore like I'm watching commercials so your brain's going to take the break anyway, but the problem is that you don't register it you forget to tell yourself that you took a break and you stay you retain can the united rehearses ahead of time but I mean it's spot on you retain the stress even though you took the break because you didn't log that I'm taking a break now mental stress mayo clinic study said that eighty two to eighty, eighty to eighty five percent somewhere in the range of eighty tio eighty I mean just to be accurate of their patients were ill directly or indirectly because of mental stress and the problem with all that I mean think about that all the physical ailments and that's the root of it that's kind of stunning and it leaves you feeling, you know, powerfully overwhelmed and frustrated and drained and exhausted and then you die just to make a little more dramatic. The multiple risk interventional intervention trial found that in frequent vacationers we're fifty percent more likely to die of a heart attack than frequent vacationers that was studying tens of thousands of people that's an alarming statistic another study that was published in the european heart journal was conducted at the university of war work and they followed up on evidence spanning up to twenty five years and found that with over four hundred seventy thousand participants across eight countries that if you slept less than six hours a night you had a forty eight percent greater chance of developing or dying from heart disease and a fifteen percent greater chance of dying from stroke. And guess why most people don't get a lot of sleep because they're busy and they're stressed, and if they do, go to sleep and then keep waking up that that debits across the hours, even if you don't register, register it, your body does so just to freak you out a little bit. These are things to give them because they sound like kerry is scary cold facts, but we are living with it every day, and we know people this happens. Do we keep our blinders on to say, don't be a downer, but let's talk about building in things that give you energy? I talk a lot about the ninety minute intervals, right? Working for ninety minutes at a time if you've ever seen and taking care of business. I went into a lot of detail about it, but basically ninety minutes at a time at a clip is a wonderful amount of time to keep your focus. You can focus on a lot for ninety minutes after that, it gets more difficult under that you wished out, you really could have kept going, so if you're going to focus on something for ninety minutes, which is about the length of a lot of photo shoots or a movie. Or all the other things that we've seen oh gosh that fits in right that's about ninety minutes that game was about ninety minutes we find that we actually have a lot of that time anyway between those things give yourself a fifteen minute mental break here on the show we're taking breaks between there's lunch we'll go for a little while and then there's a break which I believe is fifteen minutes is the optimal mental break time but building this in and taking these actively I do this a lot at work I will get up and walk out I walk about an hour a day while I'm working I went into a lot more detail and talked about that on wednesday but I found that that brings me a tremendous amount of energy and it's not just the walking is not just the exercise it's the completely leaving the space and taking a mental break when we came back from the shoot I mean it went upstairs and kind squirrels myself away so I could at least have not because I will be intensely distracted by the drain of energy of everything going on and I knew I had to hold on to that these airways I build in keeping energy into my business I have this protect my balance of energy policy which is to say that I say I won't do any sessions on weekends I have never with viguerie few exceptions, I'm trying to even think of them maybe maybe when I'm out of town or I'm doing a beach session, but otherwise I don't do portrait sessions on the weekends. What I will do, though, is I'll do a session late on a friday or early out of monday, and those were very popular times for me to have sessions because people, when they ask for the weekend and I don't have it, we do that instead, why do I not want to do a shoot on the weekend family time and everything we talk about in the idea of work life balance translates directly to the idea of retaining energy. I have set dates for shoots those air monday, wednesdays and fridays in the days I shoot, I don't treat tuesdays and thursdays, I will make the concession teo, if there was a rescheduled for a sickness or this a batter there at a town or it's on ly time they khun dio, I'll make those exceptions, but as a rule, those are not the days I shoot and that allows me those pullback days because shooting requires a lot of energy and meeting with clients can require a lot of energy, the sale sessions there's so much that goes into it, so if you break purposely, I can't remember the last time I did back to back sessions on a day it's has to have been eight years now, probably that I've done back to back sessions where I fit in two in the morning and a couple in the evening. I know people who do that, I don't think I'd be able to achieve what I achieved in seemingly impossible situations if I were doing that because I don't think I have what it takes. Do you guys do that? Shoot back to back sessions? Not anymore, but you used tio yeah, firing any impact can you get rid of? I did this past fall? I did one day of seven one hour sessions back to back to fit everybody in on the saturday before the holidays on, and I did it. You and I have to say I was happy with the results, right? Um, but I can't do that anymore. I just can't it's not fair to me or fair to the last clients, esso and after hearing everything you're talking about, I just definitely need to set more limits. Yeah, and what happens if you set those limits? All you're doing is saying, look, I need a little bit more understanding of the value of what I'm presenting on ben that that gets received, and you get that you get that value and respect for your work because you've set some parameters in place. If somebody is like so if you would ask the mandate and they would say any time, any place, any time I'll go anywhere you're like, maybe not seem really available. Um, no short term bookings, I currently with the exception of, like special situations or people we really want to fit in, I'm normally looking anywhere from five months to nine months out, given where we are in the year, sometimes it goes even longer, and if somebody calls in fresh and there's not a reason we're trying to, you know, urgently get in that sheet for that person, they kind of fall in the queue that's that she will be in january we're in february and somebody says, why could only do in two weeks or I can't do it, then we can't do it, you know, if it's not a special circumstance and when I say special circumstance, I mean things like we just adopted this child who is coming to the airport and we didn't know it was going to come through can we make this happen or my husband is getting back from afghanistan this saturday? We would love to do something right away while it's still fresh and exciting or he's about to leave, you know those kind of things we will definitely that's what I mean by make an exception but for the most part, in terms of somebody calling up us up blind, we don't do short term bookings, because it just means the counter counter gets insane, and you're just responding anything that comes in and reacting in a way that you're going to suddenly drop everything for them, or get two hours asleep that day, and that adds up. The other thing is no giveaway of visual files, we never give it away, we don't bargain it or anything, but what we will do is sell it for a price point that is fair, that I would feel really good about selling the digital negatives for, and what we will do is give it as a gift after a certain amount of purchase, which is a very different situation, as opposed to, if I ordered a by tank mascot, the negatives that doesn't reflect any of the value of the work way locked down the schedule around the holidays, it sounds like you had a plan to be able to get some things in, but what way won't do a shoot? I have done shoots on december twenty third and twenty fourth and then said, yes, I'll definitely get you can't holiday card to get out, I have done that, I don't do that anymore, because I realized how much cut into the quality of our life, but now we have a lock schedule, we communicate the cutoff dates via newsletters and things like that. I mean, this is what I say, but we will because I think you need to be really fair about your clients to your clients to this isn't a you know, you better watch out and make sure I get respected sort of thing it's a it's a mutual thing, so even though I don't do this, these are the concessions I do make because the days I'm shooting on the twenty third and the twenty fourth of december, I am not enjoying christmas it's just one more thing to race into and that's the time were you supposed to be rejuvenated and fortified? Um, sickness reschedule I have always talked about this if if a child is sick, we were schedule with barring very few exceptions, it's always rescheduled because what ends up happening is you get sick and then you cancel all your other shoots or you get a bunch of other people second, you didn't even know it, no coupons, no discounts and no negotiations. People have asked me what happens if someone calls in and says, I understand this is your session fee? Will you take this? I I I'm surprised by that question that's not my session, you know we don't negotiate on that we don't work bargains right like that that that's what the cost is if we know your budget is going to be around here at the end and we're going through the invoicing, then we'll work that through but that is not me saying I'm an established photographer who's been around a long time I've always done that right in the very, very beginning I had a priceless I had session fees credit I changed them twelve times in the first year but I didn't bargain off them speaking of that one really good idea when you are starting out especially and you are trying to figure out your pricing for people who it gave you your break that early people that you don't want to drop is to be able to go ahead and communicate your prices now but let them know that later it will be different that later will be different and they may have some sort of special deal that you guys have set up initially because how you started but it's not something that you're going to be cutting a deal all day long everybody else and not to communicate that either I communicate that well they sure are you with me your energy looks to be flagging pick up the mic phone carry share I'm thirteen weeks pregnant, my energy is dead I know you like this okay, I don't have a pregnancy on this list at all, but apparently it drains your energy. I do remember that myself to actually. Mmm. Yes. Ask a quick question about the rescheduling. You reschedule in that week. Do you reschedule that person with somebody's been booked for five months out on the child is sick. We will reschedule immediately for the first available time after they're feeling better. Yeah. That's a big deal. That's that's part of just being fair to them so that you will work around what I will take up and shoot on that tuesday. Yeah, because I have this times built in when when people say and the next shoot isn't for another x amount of months. It's not cause I'm shooting every day. Until then, there is these brakes built it in these spaces built in let's talk a little bit about something that I actually don't hear discussed a lot as it relates to energy. But it's struck me personally as something that I'm really surprised isn't addressed more. And that is the idea of friendship. We touched on this a little bit on work life balance, but not nearly to the extent I wanted teo and one of the trends I see and I'd love to hear your feedback, but one of the trends I see is that the idea of spending time with friends like you guys have got a chance to go out last night, and I didn't. I don't blame me for that, and yet I feel left out. I know, I know you did, but one of the things about friendship is that you don't get a lot of time like that anymore, like you used to and it's something that is considered strongly a strong energy giver and that's not just like it feels good it literally re wires your brain in terms of dopamine and serotonin, and it gives you boost and it gives you lifts and it's an excellent way to find additional energy is to make space in our life for these friendships, I'm often surprised that that doesn't come up on any of the top ten lists about how to boost your energy. I do have it. Do you think about it? In that respect? D'oh kanneh, I know you d'oh! You're a good friend on it's, not just the idea of spending time with old friends it's the almost completely lost art of actively going out and finding new friends it's almost like some people say, well, I have all my friends already collected them, I'm done the rest them will just be friends on facebook it's like well what do you do about going out and spending time with friends? I would advise you if you want to boost your energy is to stop blowing off your friends I have several good friends who I there's no question in my mind that their friendships at the bottom of their priority because it's always the first thing to get cancelled in case anything else comes up simply because they're tied or they're not feeling like it are so and so you know just asked me to stay home or the kids they're not feeling well are you know it's another this or that? You know, we tend to have this sensation where when somebody does it once or twice it's fine, but by the tenth or fifteenth time you're like come on and they're often the people that I know where the most drain and worn out in their life and I think there's a correlation I think there's a strong correlation I don't think they're blowing up all their friendship justcause they're tired, I think they're not getting that energy back and this is for men to I actually think it's very interesting because I don't know a lot of men, especially with families and married who are active in going out and spending a lot of time with their friends to you it seems like, you know and I'm talking thirties, forties and up especially