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Are you ready to redefine success and embrace the business growth you’ve always dreamed of, but with joy and sustainability at the core? That’s exactly what we’re unpacking today. Join me as I delve into the transformative power of integrating ease, flow,  and play into our entrepreneurial journey — steering clear of the dreaded burnout that often comes with the hustle.

I’m honestly so excited for you to dive into today’s episode because I really feel like it will ignite a ((healthy)) fire inside your heart and will help you dive into what it looks like for you to build a business that you LOVE.

Don’t forget to share your favorite quotes & takeaways with me on IG @heykristamarie! 🔥

IN THIS EPISODE, WE’RE TALKING THROUGH:

• Identifying (and more importantly, DEFINING) your words for the year & what they mean to you
• How your words ^ can help you stay aligned in your daily strategy
• Getting to the core of what it means to grow with more ease & flow
• Creating SUSTAINABLE growth and ditching the HUSTLE mentality
• Letting ourselves not be wrong and embracing WHO WE ARE and WHAT WE WANT — and letting that be our guiding light

Join my FREE 30 day challenge!

I’m so excited to announce my newest 30 day challenge, the Confident Creative! In this challenge I will be helping you implement the strategies that will not only help you feel more confident as a creative business owner, but I’m also giving you access to the exact tools that I use to bring in more joy and money to my growing business every day. And as soon as you join, you’ll get immediate access to:

• The challenge information
• The guided PDF workbook 
• The daily journal prompts
• A beautiful daily checklist to help you track your results

There’s honestly no better time to join me than right now. So if you’re ready to gain massive clarity, unleash your inner confidence to create that life and business that you’re proud of, I’d love to have you join me!

Other episodes you’ll enjoy

Ep. 082: When you’re struggling to attract new clients

Ep. 100: (PEP TALK) Let’s reframe our money beliefs

Ways we can work together:

• <<Coaching>> Ready to create a solid brand strategy & business?
• <<Enneagram>>Want to learn more about your Enneagram type?
• <<Brand Photos>> Is it time for you to get branded, gorgeous photos?

I’d love to connect with you!

• Say hello to Krista on Instagram 👋
• Watch the podcast episodes on Youtube 📺
• Join the email community & make business building feel fun again 🥳

READ THE FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Hey there and welcome to the she Calls Her Shots podcast. Every week, we chat through different business building topics that will help you gain clarity around your goals, find inspiration in your journey and also help you create a life and a business that you love. My name is Krista and I’m a wedding and brand photographer and you’re a go-to, no fluff business coach. In these episodes, we talk through both the tactical strategies, habits and the mindset work that will help you take those really big leaps, and we always focus on the real talk and the behind the scenes of what it takes to create a sustainable and a thriving business, because, let’s be honest, the work isn’t always glamorous, but it’s always worth it. So, girlfriend, let’s make some moves and start calling our own shots. Hello, hello, my friend, welcome back to this week’s episode of the she Calls Her Shots podcast.

In this episode today, I am really going to get down into how I am focusing on ease and flow when thinking about growing my business this year. This is something that’s really important to me and this is something that I am seeing over and over again with my clients is that we are collectively, I believe, as a group of women business owners we are tired. We are tired of feeling like there has to be a hustle and grind, but often if you’re anything like me, sometimes we fluctuate between either subscribing to the hustle and grind or completely pulling back the reins and kind of pushing pause on our goals. So what I want to talk about today is how we can find this happy median and how we can feel like we are growing in a way that feels really sustainable. If you’ve listened to the podcast for a while, you know the sustainability is something that I will just preach on the rooftops, on the mountain sides and cliff sides. This is something that I believe is truly so important because it’s how we grow long term. Right, there could be some ways of growing your business where you might see 5x 10x growth in a short amount of time, but the reality is that’s not sustainable. You’re not going to find joy from it. You’re likely not going to enjoy a lot of the things that you have to do and, at the end of the day, we’re in this business for the long run. We’re in this for the lifestyle. We’re in this to create change and impact for ourselves, for our clients and for our families and for those that we care about and that are around us. So this topic today, I think, is really important and I just want to have a really honest conversation about this. If you’ve listened to the podcast, you know this is.

My favorite type of conversation is let’s pull back the curtain and let’s talk about the real deep work that has to happen in order for us to grow businesses that we love and that are fulfilling to us and that feel really exciting to us. Let’s peel back the onion layers and really get down into the details of how we can make that possible. So I’m going to talk about a few things today, and this first thing that I want to talk about is my words for the year. This is something that is kind of still feels a little bit new for me. I’ve only really done it last year and this year, but this year is the first time that I actually feel like I have a grasp on what these words mean to me, and I’ll explain that in a minute.

I think prior years I used to hold back a refrain from picking a word or something to define the whole year, because we are multi-dimensional human beings and just because a word fits right now in my life doesn’t mean it’s the one word I want to focus on for the year, and so I think for a lot of us, we don’t choose words, or we do choose words. Some of you might be on the other end of that and be like Chris, I already have my word and amazing, and we’re going to get into how you can embody that word even more and make this word mean even more to you. But, speaking directly to my people who are like I don’t create words because I feel like they haven’t worked for me, I want to pose a new angle or a reframe or a way of looking at these words that I think might help you feel more excited about it. So I picked four words. I don’t think there’s any rhyme or reason to why I picked four. It’s just that these four really felt pertinent. They felt kind of on my heart and I knew okay, these are the ones I want to focus on, and I’ll share with you my four words that I picked. They are bold, ease, shine and play, and I’m gonna get into what those mean for me in just a moment.

But as I was choosing these words, it was really important for me to feel like I could define what these words look like Like, how are these words gonna show up in my life? How am I going to know if I’m living into these words that I’ve set aside for myself Because I don’t know about you? Right, but bold can mean a bunch of different things. Right, bold in one situation could be speaking your truth in times when it feels really uncomfortable. Bold could be in the clothing that you wear. Right, like making a statement with your outfits. Bold could be skydiving. Right and like accomplishing things that are your biggest fears. Like, these words can really mean a multitude of different things to people, and so I wanted to get really clear on okay, what does it gonna look like for me to live out these words in my life? And I’m not gonna read all of these to you, but I have my journal here. I’m actually gonna pull it out over here, but I wanna read. Which one do I want to read? I am going to read. I’ll read bold, actually.

So, in defining what bold means to me, I wrote out bold means trusting in abundance, always finding safety in myself and allowing myself to take risks and put myself out there, taking ideas through all the way to implementation, sharing my truths, rejoicing in me, my beliefs, my goals and my dreams, practicing rituals every day that helped me remember that I matter always, and so you’ll see in here, right, it will be really easy for me to know. How am I feeling bold today? Have I trusted in abundance? Have I found safety in myself? Am I putting myself out there and feeling little uncomfortable and taking risks? Am I sharing my truths and rejoicing in my beliefs and my goals and my dreams? This makes it so clear for me to know. Am I doing this?

And one of the beautiful things I think about this exercise is that you can choose as many words as you want. I think it’s just really important that you define what each of those words mean to you. But then, once you have them all written out, I am over time, as I’ve done the deep work. I am a really big fan of letting yourself lean into the things that feel good to you in the moment. I don’t know about you, but I’m really over trying to over structure and over complicate and have too much constraint on myself.

There was a period in time in growing my business where I felt like everything needed to be planned out. I almost found safety in the plan. I think is what it was. I didn’t feel safe, trusting in myself in each moment. So I felt like if I had a pre-planned strategy for the month, there was safety in that, and when I actually found, time and time again as I continued to lean into that belief, there isn’t safety in structure. There is no safety because there’s no guarantee you can create a whole structured, strategized marketing plan but there’s no safety or guarantee that it’s gonna work out the way that you want. There’s also no guarantee that you’re gonna be able to follow through on your plans. As a matter of fact, it’s probably unlikely that you’ll be able to follow through with your structure in the exact way that you planned out that you would.

But I found this false sense of safety and security in the structure and it was such a beautiful revelation for me and I really think, if I had to find one thing that encapsulates my coaching and what I want to help other women do, that’s a big part of that puzzle, because I think for a lot of us we are searching for safety, because being a business owner feels unsafe a lot of the times, right, we don’t know when the money’s coming in, we aren’t guaranteed that things are gonna work out, and I think a lot of us are searching for that safety in these external things that we don’t have control over. And one of the things that I love working with my clients with is the journey that I also went through of how can we let go of needing to feel that safety in these things that we can’t control and instead finding safety in ourselves, in our daily lives, in our intuition, in how were our beliefs and the things that we’re saying to ourselves? How can we find safety in us in each moment so that we can let go of searching for that safety outside? And so I think, when we can coming back to these words, when you can truly identify this is what it will look like for me to embody this word, to embody this belief you get to lean into again, finding safety in this moment and letting it ebb and flow. Which word do I wanna lean into today? Like you can even do it down to the day.

I think Like what word do I wanna focus on today? It could be what word do I wanna focus on this week? It could be what word do I wanna focus on this month, this quarter? Like whatever feels good for you, but it can be as small as today, which one feels right for me today, and then you can start your day, you can read what that word means to you and you can think about what do I have in my schedule today that I can practice this word or practice this belief? Right, this word play that I have on here.

I love this word play. I’m not going to read the whole thing, but but actually the first word I have written down for play, or the first sentence that I have in my definition for what play means. The first sentence says finding safety within my dreams. Right, how can I play, how can I find safety in my dreams and let go of this false sense of security that I feel like I’m constantly searching for, knowing that these external things that I think are going to give me safety don’t actually provide safety? I Provide my own safety. So how can I play in each moment? How can I let my work, the things I focus on, feel like play and Create and find safety in that? And this is just such a beautiful practice and I really highly recommend, whether you have your words identified or not.

I think this is such a great practice for all of us and it also introduces a really great morning ritual for you To figure out. Which word do I want to focus on today, what feels relevant for me, what do I feel like I want to have more of in my life? And who doesn’t love a good morning routine? Right while you’re sipping your coffee, before you Get in the car to drop off the kids or head to work or go to a meeting or meet with a client? Right, how great is it to be able to pause and Start the day with yourself, and this can be a really, really easy Thing that you can do kind of on repeat every single morning.

And knowing that shifting gears, thinking about growing with ease and flow, this is really something that feels so potent for me, and I’m also recognizing that this is coming up a lot, and I don’t know if it’s just because it’s this time of year I think January. We’re really in our goal, setting feelings and we have really high expectations for ourselves, and so if we start to feel like we’re behind or Not accomplishing the amount of things we thought we were going to accomplish, all of a sudden these stories start getting told in our head about how we’re not good enough and the cycles repeating itself and like this year is not gonna. Maybe this year won’t be any different, maybe I haven’t changed, maybe it’s all blah, blah, blah, right. So I don’t know if it’s just this time of year or if it’s just this season in our business, but I think it’s so important to figure out how can we grow with more ease and flow, and I actually had an Instagram post about this that I shared recently, and I want to read directly what I wrote. It’s a little carousel post and it basically the front square. It’s just a white, the little white notes app with the black text on it, and it basically talks about how Subscribing to hustle culture and how our success isn’t guaranteed.

But something that I want to pull from that carousel post that seemed I got some messages and I saw some shares Seemed to really resonate with a lot of you, so I wanted to read it here is we have to stop making ourselves wrong as we’re chasing after success so often. We believe that there is some path that we can follow in our business. It’s the right way, the right way to do marketing, the right way to show up online, the right way to Build your website, the right way to communicate with clients, the right way to send emails, right Like we, we believe that there’s these right ways because the people that we have seen paved paths have done it a certain way, and we subconsciously, because we are filled with so much self-doubt in ourselves, we subconsciously start to think this person must know what they’re doing. This person must have you know what I mean the, the skills, the, the, the magic sauce right, like they must have the thing. And If we want to grow with more ease and more flow, we have to stop making ourselves wrong. We have to stop believing that there is something wrong with us. We have to stop believing that what we want or the way that we want to grow our business is not right. And so that’s kind of the context of the post and what I wanted to share.

What I wrote Simply was you are not wrong. The way you want to grow your business and spend your time is not wrong. What’s right? Letting yourself get curious about how this path forward might look for you and what else is right, waking up every single day with passion in your heart and Figuring out what it is that you truly want. Because when we can believe this and truly access this internal truth, we allow ourselves to ditch the hustle narrative that we’ve all subconsciously subscribed to and we can allow ourselves to ease into our own process and feel more comfortable paving our own path. Our success isn’t guaranteed, but the way that we experience life along the way is that’s the one thing that we have control over, and I just truly think this is so profound. If you can let that sink in, if you can truly recognize I am not wrong for the way that I run a, grow my business, it might look different from those around me.

Some people might question how I’m going about it or what I’m doing, and I know we know this in our heads. Right, like that, don’t listen to other people. You know I can do my own thing. But it’s really hard for us to actually embody that. Like we know it in our heads, we don’t know it in our hearts. We’re constantly still thinking we’re missing something. And so, even though we’re paving our own path, we’re doing it on shaky ground. Right, we’re doing it with our hands shaking and our feet shaking and our and our heads are kind of filled with this Disbelief of am I doing this right? Am I doing the wrong thing? And because there’s all of this doubt and like just unsuranness.

When people start to question things or tell us we need to do something different, it starts to change the way that we’re showing up. It alters our path. We start to take different paths. But when we can truly understand that our path is the right path, it doesn’t matter how many twists it has on any turns, if we go backwards sometimes, like all of that is okay and the only way that we are going to grow our business with more ease and more flow is when we can truly access that and embody that belief. I 100% believe that with my entire heart and I know for you. I want for you to build your business with ease. I want for you to wake up every single day with the knowing and just like full body, knowing that the things that you work on today, whatever it is that produces itself, wherever you feel led and called to do, is the right thing.

And my job as a coach is to help my clients work through all of the beliefs that start to trickle in as we are paving our path, as we are going our own route. My job is to help a gain clarity when things feel a little jumbled right Sometimes, when we’re what is that saying? You can’t see the forest for the trees right Like you can’t sometimes we’re so. Or my coach said you can’t read the label if you’re in the jar right Like sometimes in our business it just does feel a little overwhelming and we get a little jumbled. And so part of my job as a coach right is to help unjumble you, to help get your thoughts out in a way where you can start to process them and think about them.

But, more importantly, my job as a coach is to help you come back to yourself time and time again when you start to feel pulled in that other direction, questioning Is this the right thing for me to do? Should I be doing this or doing this right? We’re constantly searching for external validation for the way that we’re growing, and my job is to help you bring you back to yourself in the strongest way possible, in the way where you show up every single day, knowing the things that I’m working on today are my path. These are the things that are moving me forward. There is no right, there is no wrong. Everything just is right, and I know that if I keep showing up and if I keep staying consistent and if I’m growing in a way that’s aligned and sustainable. If I keep doing this, I will get there Right. So that’s the kind of the third pillar of my job as a coach is to help you remember the consistency of you showing up as you, of who you are, all of your uniqueness, everything that makes you you. When you can be bold enough to show up like that consistently over time, the things that you desire, and even the things that you don’t even believe are possible, are possible, and you make those possible by showing up.

And so, if you can’t tell, this is something I am very passionate about because I want for all of my clients, you included. I want all of us to be able to grow this year with more ease and flow. I want us to grow businesses that feel truly so aligned that we aren’t caught in the comparison, we’re not caught in the doubt and the questioning and am I doing this right and should I be doing this differently? Some amount of questioning is okay, but let’s figure out where is that questioning coming from? Is it coming from I think I’m wrong in some way or is it coming from? Can I do this even more aligned Right? Because there’s a big difference between those two perspectives, right? Am I wrong for doing it this way versus is this the way I really want to do it or is there a way I can do it in a way that feels even more aligned Like there is, the difference between those, and the trajectory that you have when you go the way of how can I do this in a more aligned way is ginormous, right?

So, in the spirit of how I’m growing my business in 2024, how I am focusing on more ease and flow, I have four ways that I’m working with clients this year, and I’m sharing this with you because I want you to hear how my offers are rooted. I also want you to hear how there is a silver thread or a gold thread that goes, kind of weaves its way all throughout my offers, and I think this is something that’s so important and we often forget this that we start to think about our business based on the offers themselves, right, like your packages, how you work with clients. We kind of put that when we’re brainstorming who we are in, our business, our packages, our offers, the things that we offer are at the top of the page, and I want to encourage you the way that I’m going to describe the way that I’m working with clients. This year. I’m sharing this because I’m flipping it around. At the top is me, krista me, who I am, my brand. Right, me as a person, the brand that I represent online. This is what people are buying.

My packages and the way that I work with clients and my offers are just the way that people get to me. And that might sound like a really nuanced distinction, but it’s important. When we think that our offers are packages, the way that people work with me are what they are buying. That that’s all they care about. It’s really easy for us to get lost in a sea of comparison with other people, because your packages and offers might look very similar to other people and all of a sudden, we get lost in the sea of confusion of how am I different? What makes me unique? Right, like, is this packaged or priced correctly, or did I price it wrong? But when you can look at it from the lens of like, I am the personal brand, it is me that people are purchasing, not in a weird way I know that sounds kind of strange but like, I am the brand. The offers are just how people are getting to me they’re how people are working with me. It’s a way for money to flow through my business, but that one small perspective shift can really change the way that you’re thinking about yourself in your offers and how you work with clients. And so the four areas that I’m focusing on, the golden thread, that kind of ties through all of these right. That kind of connects all of this back to me.

As a brand, I have my Amplify Group Coaching, which is for women, creative business owners. We spend Two hot seed coaching calls per month, me pouring into them, helping them work through their blocks, helping them see a different perspective. You can kind of almost think of this podcast, right, how I show up on this podcast, except it’s live, one-on-one, interactive and amplify. Members get to bring their challenges, bring their blocks, bring the things that are holding them up. So you’re really getting real time, one-on-one coaching in a group setting. And the thing I love about it, our group is so in tune with each other that when one person brings up something they’re struggling with, so many of us inside of the group can relate. Right, this isn’t just a you’re the only person going through this. It really is a shared experience, which is why I love it so much. So I have my group coaching, which is just me being able to show up, like I show up on the podcast, but in real time, live with my clients, get in the weeds with them in their business. So I love that so, so much.

I have my one-on-one business coaching, right, so you can think of it as kind of like how I show up in the podcast, but with my one-on-one I’m doing a lot less talking, right? This is really space for you to kind of take, not take the lead. I will help you take the lead. We will co-create the next steps that you have in your business. But it is like time for me to pour one-to-one into you, right, but it’s the same energy, it’s this same energy that you’re hearing right now, right, this is the passion that I bring to my one-on-one coaching sessions.

And then I have brand photography, right, and brand clarity. So kind of a separate creative part of my business is I’m a brand photographer. I’ve been doing photography for 14 years and in the process I get to also help my photo clients build out their brand. Right, asking the questions in a questionnaire, I have a whole process of who is your ideal client. How can we bridge the gap between where they are now, where they want to go, and how you’re going to be the solution to help them get there? How can we convey that in photos? What is the bread and butter of your business? What are the things that you can’t live without? What are your daily routines? What are the things that make you you right? I get to take all of my business coaching experience and brand building experience and pour it into my brand photography clients and, of course, I have the Enneagram right. So whether you want to book a typing session, figure out what your Enneagram type is, whether you know your type, and you want to go on a deep dive, call to really kind of just learn more and dig deep into your type and how you can think about that moving forward. We have some coaching that we can do there, but it feels so good because, if you can kind of hear again, I thought I’d been talking about this golden thread. This thread connects through all of them.

The core thing is the energy and how I’m showing up for all of these clients. I am taking my knowledge, my strengths, and I’m also recognizing the ways in which I like to show up and I have structured my offers in a way that allow me to do that with ease and flow. I get to for my brand photography. Clients go into those sessions with ease and flow because I’m using my brand knowledge to help set us up by doing the brand clarity work I get to with my group coaching clients come in with this passion and energy that I have, just like I do on this podcast, help them shift their perspectives, help them kind of build that fire inside of themselves To then inspire them and help them get one-on-one help for the things that are blocking them, and the same with one-on-one and any of Graham coaching right. I get to show up with this energy and hold space for you to do the deep work and I’ve done it in a way that allows me to grow with ease and flow and I’ve also allowed myself to just talk about these things.

Naturally, I don’t actually feel weird selling anymore because I don’t feel like I’m just selling a thing I mentioned earlier about how everyone right your offers and packages are just ways to get people to work with you. The best way to sell is to get really clear on who you are as a person, right, like, how do you thrive? What are things that make you feel really good? What are the things that you are skilled at? And I know you have things that you’re skilled at and I know that you’re downplaying them, right. I know that because I’ve been there and my clients are also sometimes there. Right, we doubt that we actually have skills, talents, knowledge, things to offer. But when you can get so bold and confident in who you are and you just show up with that energy that does the selling, you don’t have to stress about how do I say this to people and what do I write like, selling becomes a whole lot easier because it becomes so much more natural. And so all of this to say.

I hope that this helps you bring some clarity. I hope that there was something in this episode that you were like, oh, I hadn’t thought about it that way, or oh, that’s an interesting perspective shift, or oh, that’s something that I would like to incorporate, that I maybe haven’t experimented with or haven’t tried in the past. Because, at the end of the day, the thing that I don’t want for me, for you, for any of us I don’t want us to sacrifice who we are in our personal lives, how we spend our time feeling guilty about taking days off for free time. Right, I don’t want us to sacrifice that In order to keep striving and reaching these metrics of success that aren’t actually guaranteed to make us feel fulfilled. Hitting that number of income or getting that amount of clients isn’t guaranteed to make us feel fulfilled or happy or bring about a certain result that we think it might. The thing that’s going to bring about that big change, that fulfillment, is who we are right now, the perspectives that we have right now and the way that we’re thinking about how we’re showing up like. Really, at the end of the day, this is the thing that matters, and so I just I hope that this was helpful for you.

I would love to hear any shifts or aha moments or anything that came up for you. You can screenshot listening to this On your phone, shared on Instagram and your stories. Tag me at hey, christa Marie, I would love to reshare to my followers, to shout you out and to just say hey, thank you for showing up for you today. Thank you for investing this time for you, for your long term sustainable growth, because, at the end of the day, that is the best investment that we can make for ourselves. So, as always, I just I so appreciate your time. I appreciate your being here and I look forward to chatting over in the next episode. One last thing before you go I’d absolutely love it if you left a review on Apple podcasts, or if you’ve already left a review, I’d love for you to share this episode with your business bestie. I love getting to shout out my listeners on the show, and the more listeners that we have, the more that I can help others create a thriving and sustainable business too. Thank you so much again for being a part of this community, and I can’t wait to hear your takeaways from today’s episode.