Montana Diaries Creative Business Blog

MEET AMANDA M. DIEHL

Amanda is a lover of experiences, people, the wild outdoors and spicy pad thai.. She grew up between Montana and the Aleutian Islands of Alaska, where she learned to value an adventurous life, and thrive in relatively unpredictable circumstances. Many of her childhood summers were spent on her grandparent’s farm in Townsend, MT, moving pipe (begrudgingly), playing in the fields with too many cousins to count and watching her grandparents offer their home as a welcome and safe haven for anyone passing through needing rest and a hot meal.
Fast forward, she holds a masters degree in public health, spent 5 years working as a consultant for a public health informatics company, loves being mama to a few wild children, opened and sustained her first business despite a pandemic and is fully aware that she is living her purpose on a daily basis.
Amanda believes wholeheartedly in the transformative power of human connection, and knows that when she is putting her energy there, the world is a better place for each of us.

AMANDA DIEHL

Behind the scenes of co-founding and running a successful coworking space for women

Amanda started her career in the public health sphere — during her first career, she was always surrounded by colleagues and collaboration and really thrived in that environment. When she moved back to Helena, MT, Amanda realized that people in her field were uninspired at work, and wondered how she could foster a more creative and collaborative culture in her workplace. When her contract with her government job expired, she knew she was moving to Bozeman, and so she started pitching creative coworking spaces to everyone who would listen. As she did so, she realized there were many more people with the exact need for a beautiful and inspiring workspace and a community to lean on.
Amanda soon got connected with a like-minded partner, Christina, and together they hit the ground running with starting what is now Sky Oro, a creative coworking space for women in the Cannery district of Bozeman, MT.
Amanda and Christina made a goal of crowd funding $200,000 to start the coworking space — they met their goal and some within 6 weeks, and created a tight-knit community from those initial members who committed before the space even opened.

“I know now that I can do nothing on my own — I need to be surrounded by minds that are much more intelligent than I am, who have other zones of genius, who can help you think bigger and lean into the discomfort of staying outside my comfort zone.”

— Amanda Diehl

The next phase of Sky Oro is all about facilitating community — Amanda recognized in herself that she struggles to lean on community and her network, and she leads a community coworking space, so others must feel the same. A huge part of this intitiative is bringing the value of the community online — Sky Oro now offers virtual memberships beyond the in-person experience that also includes a platform for communication and events.
After Amanda explained her heart and vision for the future of Sky Oro beautifully, she spent ten minutes being ridiculously candid in response to my super nosy logistical/integrator questions about how Sky Oro is ran! You’ll have to listen to the episode to get exact dollar amounts and processes — huge thanks to Amanda for being such a good sport, ha!

hey, photog friend!

If you’ve been wanting to learn videography with the gear you already own, I have a free guide just for you!

Resources

Sky Oro’s Website

Sky Oro’s Instagram

Shay's Instagram

SIGN UP FOR MY FREE MASTERCLASS: How to integrate video into your existing photography business without buying new equipment!

FREE Starter Guide for Photographers Ready to Learn Videography

FREE Online Video Starter Guide!

Join the Montana Diaries Podcast Community on Facebook!

Shayna Lloyd 8/16/22 Shayna Lloyd 8/16/22

33: Whole-heartedness and diving in head first w/ Devin from Backcountry Bohemians

DEVIN LARSON: Diving in head first in EVERYTHING she does, money mindset and business growth, launching an incredible FIELD GUIDE, and much more!!

WHAT YOU’LL LEARN…

1. Why video is KING online, AKA why YOU should incorporate video into your business strategy

2. The leg up that hybrid shooters have in the photo + video industries and why it IS possible to learn with your existing equipment

3. Action steps you can take RIGHT NOW toward incorporating video content!

DEVIN LARSON: Diving in head first in EVERYTHING she does, money mindset and business growth, launching an incredible FIELD GUIDE, and much more!!

psssttt…

join us in the Facebook group, your space for talking all things creativity + business!

Backcountry Bohemians Website

MEET DEVIN FROM BACKCOUNTRY BOHEMIANS

“Hiii, I’m Devin (she/her)!
I'm a creative soul with a love for life and adventure.
I’ve always been creatively minded and had a deep love for true connection between humans, the ones that give you butterflies and make you giddy. I believe at the end of the day, these connections, even the smallest ones, are what mean the most. Life is filled with these tiny moments and the fact that I get to capture them, stop time, and hand them onto you to be remembered forever means more than you may ever know.”

DEVIN LARSON

Helloooo and welcome back to the Montana Diaries Podcast, I’m Shayna and I’m so freaking stoked you’re here because today we have one of the most incredible creatives I know on the podcast, Devin from Backcountry Bohemians. Devin’s work speaks for itself, so if you aren’t driving, be sure to go check out Backcountry Bohemians to give a little context to Devin’s business and talent as she takes you through her business/life/creativity journey… if you are driving, just trust me that Devin is a true artist with a huge heart for her clients, and spoiler alert, it’s all rooted in reverence for the outdoors and adventure. Alsoooo she fills my “words of affirmation” cup in this episode by being way too kind about my course, Videography for Photographers, and I’m just bringing that up to say I didn’t ask her to do that or pay her hahaha! She is just that kind. 99% of this pod is not that, though, I promise. This is a must listen, creative friends!

DEVIN FROM BACKCOUNTRY BOHEMIANS AT A GLANCE:

Hollyyyy hell, Devin is so effing candid about her creative business journey — this is a truly juicy episode that you don’t want to miss.
Devin is the queennnn of calling her shot — she won a contest to go to a photography workshop for free, bought a camera off craiglist, and told everyone from that point on that she was a full time photographer. We talked all about confidence and the concept of self-permission.
We both believe in the power of knowledge and continuing education — as Devin detailed her early journey of taking on every shoot imaginable and consuming every resource imaginable, I couldn’t help but comment on the power of hunger and directing one’s energy and focus toward where you want to go. Devin is a perfect example of how fast you can grow with drive and focus.
Devin tells everyone to read/listen to Get Rich, Lucky Bitch lol — we chat about our money mindsets and how we’ve come to think about money over the past few years.
We talk about making business align with lifestyle — Devin talks through getting clients on board with shooting the types of things she wants to shoot, which means outside activity-based shoots that show people actually DOING something.
Devin is always thinking about how to serve her clients + provide add ons that make their experience with her even better — she bought my course, Videography for Photographers, to provide personal films along with her photo galleries, and she has multiple rentals like backdrops, props, and picnics to add on to her sessions. I love that her business ideas are smart but also rooted in service.

“So, you’re like hanging out of your boyfriend’s car and it’s like, kinda getting dusky blue hour, and the lights of the city are on, and your favorite band is playing, and it’s a warm summer night...that, to me, is Super 8. If I imagine myself in that moment, it’s in Super 8.”

— Devin

I love the way Devin talks about Super 8 — it makes me think of how I want my elopement films to feel. I want that shaky, hanging-out-of-the-window footage and shots of the groom getting the same view with his iPhone and then cuts to him squeezing his partner’s hand while staring out at the mountains. I want to watch a film and remember how the day felt.
Devin knows the outdoors, makes incredible art with her photography and videography, serves the shit out of her clients — she’s who you want to learn from if you’re trying to break into the outdoor adventure space. She is launching a huuuggeeee, affordable guide that she’s calling Field Notes. RUN, do not walk, and snag the guide HERE.

Resources

Devin's Instagram

GET THE FIELD GUIDE!!

Get Rich, Lucky Bitch

Shay's Instagram

FREE Starter Guide for Photographers Ready to Learn Videography

Join the Montana Diaries Podcast Community on Facebook!

Shayna Lloyd 8/11/22 Shayna Lloyd 8/11/22

32: Experimenting and taking creative risks in 2022

Experimenting and taking creative risks in 2022

WHAT YOU’LL LEARN…

1. Why video is KING online, AKA why YOU should incorporate video into your business strategy

2. The leg up that hybrid shooters have in the photo + video industries and why it IS possible to learn with your existing equipment

3. Action steps you can take RIGHT NOW toward incorporating video content!

Experimenting and taking creative risks in 2022

psssttt…

join us in the Facebook group, your space for talking all things creativity + business!

Experimenting and taking creative risks in 2022

Hellloooo and welcome back to the Montana Diaries Podcast, on today’s episode I’m going to be talking about experimenting and taking creative risks — I freaking knowww that creative business can slowly turn into factory work, especially with portfolio consistency and client expectations, so let’s talk about the who, what, when, where, and how of staying creative when you make money from your creativity. This episode is dedicated to Morgannnn, the owner of Elizabeth Samuel Photography, who suggested the topic on Instagram — she asked specifically about double exposures and creative edits. Remember, you can alwayssss let me know what topics you want covered on the pod!

When you make money from your creativity you need a different creative outlet lol

Okeyyy, let’s get into this — I’m obsessed with creativity and business and what it is to make money from creativity, so this topic gets me pretty fired up. Let me start by saying this: When you make money from your creativity, you either need a different creative outlet or you need to figure out how to continue nurturing your creativity that you’ve monetized — honestly, I think you need to do both things because I don’t think the second thing is 100% possible all the time. Let me explain.

I’m an avid reader. My real life, no bullshit, no irony involved dream is to be a novelist — I have stick figure self portraits from early elementary school with speech bubbles saying that when I grow up, I want to be a writer. Except I spelled “writer” wrong, with two t’s.

Soooo I went to college, and I studied english literature and creative writing alongside my more practical communication studies major which yes obviously that’s a joke of a major but don’t tell that to 17 year old me making life decisions, but oh my god did I do anything possible to avoid reading and writing once those things became obligations.

It became obvious to me that it wasn’t good for my brain to make reading and writing a job. Everyone gets so hung up on doing work that you’re passionate about because we’ve made what we do for a living such a huge part of our identity and personality — we’ve made what we do synonymous with who we ARE. Butttt here’s what I realized is true for me: I do like editing video and photos, I love aesthetics and I’m good at planning things while staying flexible because it makes me feel in control, which it’s always good when your occupation is well suited to your pathologies. I like business. It feels good to MAKE SOMETHING for someone that has an impact and makes them feel good and to be able to make money doing that.

But I can’t say my ego or sense of self or concept of myself as a creative or worth in general is tied to, like, wedding films. Thank God.

I have to be honest in saying that I think it’s a mistake to tie your finances to your creativity and, like, artistic ego. And I think that’s what we’re talking about here, when a creative turns their real hobby and their actual creative outlet into something that makes money…and then they lose the joy of play and experimentation and all of that good stuff because now there’s pressure and expectation and, yes, fear attached to doing the thing that they once did for fun. Because it’s a job.

Read big magic

Here’s where I tell you to read Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert. And, listen, I’m not the type to gatekeep books — if you’re not a reader or you don’t have time, then please consider buying the audiobook and LISTENING to Big Magic — Liz reads it herself and it’s beautiful.

I spoke on this in a recent episode about money, which I’ll link in the shownotes, but Big Magic made me realize that as long as I was supporting myself then I didn’t actually care how I made money. My number one obligation, for my entire life, is to the pursuit of creativity. To being interested and interesting, to creating more than I consume, to keeping my heart open to magic and ideas — to not being beholden to money and obligation and others’ expectations.

But, like, it’s nice to make money with creative business. Welcome to this entire Podcast.

Consume content that makes you want to create

On the back of that book recommendation, let me also encourage you to consume content that makes you feel the urge to create something. Start being critical of the state of mind you get in when you’re consuming — are you watching Netflix to shut your brain off and mindlessly consume? Are you scrolling TikTok to do the same thing? Or do you seek out media that inspires you, that lights a fire under you, that spurs you to action? If you’re feeling a lull in your creativity, if you’re tending toward burnout, all I’m saying is that part of the problem might be the way you’re consuming — not necessarily your creative process in general.

Systemizing your creative business

Speaking of the creative process — you should have one.

I’m sorry, I’m that guy that systemizes creativity. I know, I know — you want freedom and whimsy and inspiration, you’re an arteest.

But actually, I’m sorry, you’re the one who has made your creativity your job. You have a responsibility, for the sake of the health of your business and your own sanity, to come up with systems and frameworks to exist within so that the WORK part of your work can get done and then your creativity can flourish. Structure breeds creativity, I promise.

Here’s another writing example: Have you ever tried writing long form content, like an easy or a blog post, and the blinking cursor on the blank page was just way too overwhelming and you couldn’t write anything at all? Have you tried outlining instead? Have you tried setting a timer and brain dumping? Having something, ANYTHING on the page helps you write faster, spoiler alert. Take this podcast, for example — if I didn’t have a framework… it would never get done. Ever. I have an intro and outro format that provides structure. I usually have a topic, and then I set a timer for five minutes to brain dump points. I then bold those points and consider them mini topics. The one we’re on right now is “systemizing your creative business.” Then, I set ten minute timers to write without judgement under every bolded point. Just throwing up words on the page, everything I think about the bolded point. The timer puts the pressure on for work, but it takes it off for the words sounding good — I’m literally just typing how I talk.

Afterward, I edit and then when I’m recording I’m likely to riff a bit and expand on some things, but the process and structure BREEDS the creativity. The freedom of a blank page just causes paralyzation and overthinking and procrastination. This applies to all creative work, I really believe that.

We like to romanticize creativity, and trust me, I believe there’s plenty of room for the romantic side of creation…but it isn’t all that. It’s work. It’s process.

Experimenting when you make money from your creativity

Now, back to the main point of this episode, experimenting when you make money from your creativity. Is it possible to stay creative, to experiment, to grow, to innovate when you have paying customers and clients that expect a certain thing from you?

Sure. But with caveats.

You do need to deliver work that’s consistent with your portfolio but idk there’s nothing wrong with putting weird experimental artsy shit alongside that other work — this is honestly where being a human comes in and curating your personal branding to make people expect that out of you. During sessions when I’m trying something new I’m literally like “k imma get a lil weird now” and then I lay on the ground usually for some dope ass sick ass angles idk, also the original question that made me think of this topic in the first place was about double exposures and creative edits for video and how I use fractals… you guys, I’m not techy or particularly talented or anything, I try weird shit and have fun and figure out how to stay sane in my job — I don’t ask for permission to try things out or over research or over think, if I want to do something and I don’t know how to do it then I Google it and then just freaking do it, creativity is NOT THAT SERIOUS — if you feel anxious about a client complaining about the experimental stuff you delivered alongside the regular stuff, here’s a fun blanket response, this is for photographers but feel free to shift it to whatever creative service you do: Oh my goodness, I’m so thrilled you loved some of the photos in your gallery more than others! It’s such a huge brand value of mine to deliver content that is consistent with the rest of my portfolio and I’m over the moon you found a few in your gallery that suit you — I also understand you noticed the experimental stuff I included! How fun are those!? Thanks so much for letting me get weird during our session, it keeps me creative! You’ll prolly see the fun ones on my social media, and I’m so pumped to see what you do with the others! Message me when you print them so I can see!

See how I’m coming from a place of positivity, of service, and reminding my client that they don’t have to love every photo in the gallery and I’m fulfilling my contractual obligation by delivering the amount of photos promised in my signature style? There’s no need to be defensive because you didn’t do anything wrong.

If you absolutely do not want to get weird with clients, then you need to style your own shoots and get creative on your own time. The only thing I’ll say to this is I do have a friend who does this often and then shoots and edits super clean with her real clients but thennnnn sometimes feels frustrated that she doesn’t book more creative clients. See the disconnect there?

In conclusion, you guys, creativity isn’t serious idk why we make it life or death, I don’t mean to be blase about your insecurities but maybe that’s something you need — like idk, nobody needs what we do and we aren’t performing surgery or anything and I don’t think you need to overthink this just create create create and put pretty things into the world and weird things and things maybe only you will like because we’re going to die eventually, maybe soon, and your legacy shouldn’t be cookie cutter generic bullshit. Was that helpful?

I’ve been talking about Liz Gilbert too much, I sound like a fangirl and I’m sorry, but there was this great moment in her podcast she used to do where she and her guest, I’m so sorry I don’t remember the exact context — but they were talking about a musician they loved that put out this batshit album that sounded nothing like his previous work, and the guest hated it but then came to admire it because it was experimental and weird and he acknowledged that he wasn’t put on this earth to be a song writer monkey. A modern day example would be Ed Sheeran — I know he’s kinda considered white bread as far as singer song writers go but I do find him brilliant, and he put out that collaboration album where every song was a collab and nothing fit together and it was experimental and odd, and truly I think I skip every song when it comes up on shuffle because it’s just not my thing but — goddamn, good for you Ed Sheeran. You aren’t my song writer monkey.

And to you, my dear listener — you aren’t a factory. You aren’t a photography monkey or a jewelry designer monkey or a painter monkey or a graphic design monkey or any kind of monkey at all besides the bit of genetic makeup we share with monkeys, you’re a creative being. You make money from your creativity so you have contractual obligations and an obligation to your clients to produce work they hired you to do with the expectation that it will look similar to your other work, but other than that? It’s not that serious. You WON capitalism, you’re making money out of nothing, out of things you make. You make a living with creativity. You survive and feed yourself by playingggg — you have to nurture that bit of you that needs to create, to play, to be free so you can avoid burnout and keep winning. Hooray, you’re doing the thing, friend, now don’t ruin it by getting too serious. You’re not a monkeyyyy.

I’m dying, that whole metaphor didn’t really work but ya know? I’m trusting that the spirit behind it might. Leave it to me to mix creativity with competition, you’ve unlocked the exact reason I’m exhausting to everyone who loves me.

Resources

FREE Starter Guide for Photographers Ready to Learn Videography

Join the Montana Diaries Podcast Community on Facebook!

Shayna Lloyd 8/4/22 Shayna Lloyd 8/4/22

31: Online marketing for creative business in 2022

Online marketing for creative business in 2022

WHAT YOU’LL LEARN…

1. Why video is KING online, AKA why YOU should incorporate video into your business strategy

2. The leg up that hybrid shooters have in the photo + video industries and why it IS possible to learn with your existing equipment

3. Action steps you can take RIGHT NOW toward incorporating video content!

Online marketing for creative business in 2022

psssttt…

join us in the Facebook group, your space for talking all things creativity + business!

Online marketing for creative business in 2022

Hellloooo and welcome back to the Montana Diaries Podcast, on today’s episode I’m going to be talking allll about online marketing for creative entrepreneurs in 2022. I get asked about this topic allll the freaking time, but this episode is a special shout out to Whitney Jones, who suggested this topic in the Montana Diaries Podcast Facebook Group! Soooo here’s your reminder to join the group — you can post about anything related to business or creativity, and also ask questions that will be turned into episodes.

WHY I THINK SEO AND MARKETING ARE IMPORTANT/A CONSTANT CONVERSATION IN THE CREATIVE BUSINESS SPACE

Ahhhh, marketing for creative business. Listen, I know it’s easily the sexiest and most fun thing about creative business — everyone wants to try allll of the tips and tricks when it comes to marketing because it’s fun and it feels like a needle mover, but let me encourage you right at the top of this episode to dedicate yourself to figuring out what it would take to be SUCCESSFUL with marketing.

Becauseeeee I feel like a lot of creative business owners make marketing their jobs. Like, every day. And let the actual business things fall to the side.

I also know that social media strategy dominates the marketing conversation but here’s one hard truth: likes and followers and comments don’t move the needle forward in your business. Followers are not clients.

PEOPLE LOVE TALKING ABOUT MARKETING BUT NOT ABOUT SELLING LOL

People love talking about marketing, but not so much about selling. I’ve heard it all — that selling feels icky, that you don’t want to bug people, that it’s rude.

Can we please just act like a business and make money a simpleeeee math equation for a second? How much is your main offer? How much money do you need to make in a year? How many sales is it to reach that amount? Perf, that’s how many people you need to convert into clients or buyers. Everyone wants 10,000 followers but you don’t freaking need 10,000 clients — hopefully just being armed with the knowledge of what your real number is can empower you to serve those people. Now let’s get into my marketing suggestions for you to implement in 2022.

Now, to the actual selling bit: We have to get it out of our heads that selling is icky — you have a produce or service with value. Presenting your offer is valuable to the buyers who need or want your product. Good marketing will get your product or service in front of the people who want to buy it.

Here’s an example: When I was looking for a lifestyle photographer to photograph my newborn in our home, I could not freaking find one. I was searching hashtags like #missoulanewbornlifestyle #missoulalifestylephotographer and #missoulanewbornphotographer and nobodyyyyy was blatantly advertising what I was looking for. I feel like in-home lifestyle photographers have to exist, but they weren’t selling to me. It wouldn’t have been icky or salesy for them to figure out how to get in front of me — it would have been HELPFUL to me.

So what the heck are these lifestyle photographers doing? Slapping up random IG or Facebook posts every day without ever taking the time to talk about their offers? Where is the strategy to get in front of me? Maybe they’re marketing every day, but are they strategizing? Are they selling?

HERE ARE MY SUGGESTIONS FOR OTHER CREATIVE BUSINESS OWNERS IN 2022

Define your offers really well so that you know exactly the types of buyers you’re trying to get in front of.
Don’t make your social strategy the be-all-end-all of your business — being active on social media is great, but you don’t own social media platforms and they can go away at any time. Instead, I suggest implementing a content marketing strategy that can be repurposed across platforms. I talk about this a tonnnn in the episode we just did on batching, so be sure to go check it out — the link is in the shownotes
SEO — Search engine optimization, bb. Soooo taking the steps to figure out how to make your offer as searchable as humanly possible — I do this with weekly blog posts packed with key words I’d like to rank for on Google. The most helpful way to this I’ve found involves video, so if you’d like a more in-depth explanation on that then pleaseeee feel free to snag my free resource at montanadiaries.com/learnvideo ! I can also do an episode on this strategy in the future if you want that, so let me know.
Referrals — Past clients + customers can be a huuugggeee asset, so serve the heck out of them and ASK for their reviews and for them to tell their friends about you. Sometimes an email or a text can get you leads right away — people want to support you, especially if you serve them well. On the other side of this, there could be other businesses that work well with your product or service. Do strategic collaborations or ask them how YOU CAN SERVE THEM in exchange for their referral.
Paid ads — I’ve always been a huge believer in Facebook ads, but I’m diving a bit deeper into TikTok and Pinterest in 2022. My thing with ads is that if they’re converting, then there really isn’t any amount of money that I wouldn’t spend on them.
Other — Other ideas I’ve heard of include getting your brochures or magazines into other businesses that make sense, a photographer in the Facebook group said she’s trying out putting her canvases in businesses in hospitals as displayed artwork, it’s always a good idea to show your face in your community so trade shows and pop ups are always a great idea. But I’m including this “other” category because I’d loovveee to hear from YOU about out of the box marketing strategies you’ve tried or you want to try, so go to the Facebook community and let us know what you’re cooking up and how it’s going!

WHAT I’M FOCUSING ON IN MY BUSINESS FOR MARKETING

Soooo, I thought it might be helpful and maybe a lil fun to take my business through the six steps I just covered so you can see what I’m focusing on marketing wise in 2022.

So, if number 1 is defining my offers — my main offer is elopement videography and photography, with my secondary offers being smaller multimedia sessions like couples and engagements and some branding work. I know how many elopements I need to reach my financial goals, so everything I do for content marketing is focused on serving my elopement audience and reaching that amount of sales. Butttt for my smaller offers, I’ll mostly engage on stories or ask friends in the areas I’m targeting to help me spread the word about specials. I’ll talk a bit more about this in a future episode because I have some segmented financial goals this year making me take on more random sessions. On the education side of the business, my main offer is my course Videography for Photographers and the mentorship calls for creative entrepreneurs.
Point two is where I said don’t make social media the entirety of your strategy, and so what I do is I make sure to have one piece of original content per week on my website that I then repurpose for social media — you can hear all about my content batching strategy in the last episode of the pod. I’ll link it in the show notes — buttt, basically, for the elopement side this might be a blog post about how to pick a destination location for your adventure elopement — soooo, then, I would make IG posts and TiKToks/Reels that steal points from the blog post that week. I might have a YouTube video that goes along with it that gets posted to YouTube, maybe I cut up that video for the other socials. I’ll have pinterest graphics that lead back to the blog post. See what I mean? Make one piece of original content that serves the overarching goal, which is serving potential buyers of your main offering. Strategy driven doesn’t have to mean complicated.
SEO — my SEO plan relies pretty heavily on my blog content and putting in words and phrases that I want to rank in search for. Northwest Montana, elopement videography, video education, Glacier National Park, photography course — these are all example. My biggest SEO tip that serves me well is integrating YouTube videos on my website that contain titles that I want to rank in search for, like Glacier National Park Elopement Videographer. Learn more about this strategy in a free class I host at montanadiaries.com/learnvideo!
4 is referrals and I’m lucky to have incredible couples on the service side of my business who do tend to tag me and talk me up to their friends. Honestly, though, it’s really my vendor relationships that do the most as far as referrals go and I take my vendor relationships really really seriously — I always always always come from a place of service with other vendors. I send them content from our shoots, I offer head shots when I see them on location, I try to gas them up on social media. On the education side of the business, I’m diligent about collecting reviews and using the heck out of those reviews in everything educational I do, like this podcast! I also run affiliate launches where affiliates get a commission for referring people to my paid offerings.
Paid ads — I would love to do a follow up on this point in a couple of months when I have some data to share, so let me know if that’s something you want! I’m going to be running TikTok ads and Pinterest ads for the education side of my business, but I can absolutely do the same thing for the photo/video side to test out some methods for you guys.
Number 6 was the “other” category, and while I don’t really do in-person markets as much anymore, I am testing out the “OPP” strategy with other people’s platforms — this basically just means pitching to get on other people’s podcasts as much as possible to expand our reach.

Resources

FREE Starter Guide for Photographers Ready to Learn Videography

Join the Montana Diaries Podcast Community on Facebook!

Shayna Lloyd 7/28/22 Shayna Lloyd 7/28/22

30: ALL about how I handle MONEY in my business!

ALL about how I handle MONEY in my business!

WHAT YOU’LL LEARN…

1. Why video is KING online, AKA why YOU should incorporate video into your business strategy

2. The leg up that hybrid shooters have in the photo + video industries and why it IS possible to learn with your existing equipment

3. Action steps you can take RIGHT NOW toward incorporating video content!

ALL about how I handle MONEY in my business!

psssttt…

join us in the Facebook group, your space for talking all things creativity + business!

ALL about how I handle MONEY in my business!

Hellloooo and welcome back to the Montana Diaries Podcast, on today’s episode we’re talking moneyyyy, baby. I’ll take you through why I make it such a big point to be open about money, my personal money values, why I was so conservative at the beginning of my business, how money flows through my business, my money distribution system, and how I handle goal setting with money. Be sure to stick with me until the end because I’ll give you a free resource to help you create a system for handling money in your creative business AND will take you through the goal setting process I use with students in my mentorship calls to figure out how the heck to reverse engineer your financial goals and figure out EXACTLY how much you should be making each month and how to make that happen.

WHY I MAKE IT SUCH A POINT TO BE OPEN ABOUT MONEY AND TALK ABOUT IT A LOT

First, I want to talk for a second about whyyyy I make it such a point to talk about money and be open about it. Something you should know about me is that I don’t feel particularly emotionally attached to money —

The shame attached to money + the taboo of talking about money keeps class lines intact, it keeps people poor and proud, it keeps women in the dark about gender pay gaps in their industries. I believe so strongly in the proximity principle, too, the idea that surrounding yourself with people and ideas that align with where you want to be makes those dreams possible — I remember going to New York for the first time and going to readings and sitting down with real working writers and that industry become less…mystical and far away and whatever else, and finally feeling like 1. My dreams were possible and 2. Not being sure if I wanted the BUSINESS of story and writing to be how I made money. I remember the power of networking and finding a strong support system of women in the photography industry and leaning on each other to blowwww up our businesses and travel the world together, I remember how finding community and being transparent about business and money changed everything for me. I grew up in a household with a lottttt of financial trauma and weirdness around business and money and debt and it made me run the otherrrr way from that mindset when I came into adulthood — I was head in the sand about my bank account, I spent like crazy and gave without a passing thought and paid for everything and spent what I made because I didn’t freaking want to be the person always asking how much something cost or looking for a deal instead of having a nice experience and enjoying nice things. Whichhhhh I would way rather be that version of myself than the alternative I grew up with, but still. There was a happy middle ground. Mostly I just didn’t want to have anyyyy emotional attachments to money whatsoever, which isn’t…I don’t know, sustainable or realistic in a capitalist society. And I don’t HATE capitalism, I kind of nothing it, which I recognize is privileged. But I own a business and money these days is just… gamified, I guess.

The media I consumed while coming of age that informed how I feel about money: The Minimalists, Rent; La Vi Boheme + Big Magic — Elizabeth Gilbert saying she didn’t want to ask writing to finance her life, that she also wanted to stand on her own two feet financially and to have someone else support her was infantilizing and to infantilize oneself is demeaning to the soul. I got it into my head that I wouldn’t have any ego about how I made money, that I just needed to be able to support myself, and that’s served me well. Nothing realllyyyyy feels like life or death in my business, I’m going to figure out how to make money. I’m scrappy.

MY PERSONAL MONEY VALUES

Soooo…all of this brings me to my personal money values that I hold today. My twenties are almost over, I feel like I have enoughish perspective to quantify this for you. If I’m being totally 100% honest — I still feel a lot of, just…dissociation still, when I think about money. I don’t feel any particularly strong attachment to it, but it isn’t all la vi boheme like I romanticized when I was younger. There are things I want — I want to be financially free, which to me means debt free and to own the things that I have. If you know me in real life, you know that my husband and I don’t own nice cars or many frivolous things. I want to own a piece of Montana, I want to cultivate a home. I want to earn those things with our own money, that is very very very important to me and to be honest there are people in our lives that don’t understand how important it is and don’t really respect it. I don’t want..excess in my life, I don’t want to hoard money — I want to FEEL abundant but I want to do whatever I can to not become a person that chases the feeling of abundance by buying things. I want to travel the world.

Buttt I still have this thing where I don’t want to feel fear of losing money, I don’t want to feel fear of losing nice things. I pretty much refuse to. If I ever start feeling that way, I tell myself to stop. And it shouldn’t be as simple as that probably but ya girl has some brain chemistry things going on — there isn’t a better way to describe it then I choose to feel nothing about money things most of the time. If that sounds completely foreign to you then please know that I get it — if you can relate and you’ve done better at putting words to this than I can, then please reach out, I’d love to talk about it.

WHY I WAS SO CONSERVATIVE AT THE BEGINNING OF MY BUSINESS + DAVE RAMSEY

Soooo let’s talk about why I was soooo freaking conservative in my business, especially in the beginning, and our boi Dave Ramsey.

I don’t subscribe to Dave Ramsey’s values in general and I don’t think those are are good with money need to be as extreme as he is, but finding Dave Ramsey straight out of college was a freaking blessingggg — I was in debt and I needed a roadmap and for someone to say it was possible to live debt free. So that’s the plan Brandon and I followed in our personal life in the beginning of our marriage, but the ideals also bled over into Montana Diaries — thank goodness!! Becausseeeee I was so against debt and I was being so conservative with my money, I didn’t go crazy with equipment or tech or subscriptions or anything frivolous. We were barebones in the business for years — I only upgraded equipment when I had the money, I slept in my car after travel weddings, I was the definition of bootstrapped.

Thank goodnesssss — I’m so freaking grateful to have a business today that isn’t built off of stress and debit and credit and I grew alongside my business. I think being frugal and debt free keeps you creative, too. You aren’t beholden to anything and also people are hiring based off of your existing portfolio and you get to blow them away every year with your improved equipment.

CHANGING HOW I REQUEST + RECEIVE MONEY — HONEYBOOK

Sooo now that I’ve painted a picture of how conservative I’ve been in my business, I do want to talk about systems that have really served me and helped me grow, and the first way I systemized how money is handled in my business happened when I changed our process for requesting and receiving money.

In the beginning, my clients paid with check, cash, or through PayPal and everything was a bit scattered and messy. I never really knew when I was getting paid, which resulted in me making the majority of our money during the three months of peak wedding season and being pretty dry the rest of the year. There was a huge cash flow problem in the business and no actual system.

This sounds like a freaking ad, I swear — but for real, everything changed in the business when I FINALLY bit the bullet and got a CRM. I honestly chose Honeybook because literally every podcast I listened to advertised it, and now I’m one of them, I’m such a cliche. But Honeybook is amazing and I love it and I understand now. Here’s a simplified version of how the workflow works: I created an inquiry form in Honeybook that I then embedded in the contact page on my website, so when people fill it out, a project is automatically created on Honeybook. Honeybook is connected to my email inbox, so the filled out form also goes to my inbox.

I have PDFs related to all of my services that I’ve uploaded to my library on Honeybook, so depending on their requests or questions, I just attach the PDF that serves my client best from my library and it gets sent to their email. If they chose a date on the form, the project that was automatically created also gets added to my calendar as a “tentative project.” Which is soooo nice, it makes it so quick to see if I’m available, because I’ll also get a warning about date conflicts.

I alsoooo add all of my meetings and calls and personal time to my calendar, so that warning comes up if projects conflict with those too.

So, when a client agrees to book, I create a proposal which is where their invoice and contract can live all in one place. I’m able to create their payment plan with dates that also get added to my calendar so I know when payments are being made, and then they sign their contract and make the payment online from the same link. Once they pay their retainer and sign the contract, they’re booked officially in my calendar aanndddd honeybook is connected to my bank account, so the payment goes in their automatically.

It’s now SO MUCH EASIER to keep track of the cash flowing through my business, and having a system for requesting and receiving money now has made everything so much more efficient, and I’m able to visually see where the money is coming from and how much more I need to focus on making each month.

Honeybook is dope — you know I have to get my affiliate link in here, it’s montanadiaries.com/honeybook — just get it if you haven’t. Seriously. It does so much more than I’ve even outlined here.

CREATING A SYSTEM FOR MONEY — HOW PROFIT FIRST HELPED ME

Now I want to talk more about the actual system we have for distributing our money once it’s in the account — we’ve modeled our system after the method in the book Profit First, which I highly recommend. Anddddd it’s largely due to how my monkey brain works, let me explain:

When I was in college, I had a lot of jobs, but my most consistent job was waitressing. I would come home with a consistent 80-100 in ones and fives. I think my portion of the rent in college was $375 per month, and I used an envelope system to make sure I was saving the correct amount. I had a January envelope under my bed, so I’d get home from work and stuff my stack of cash in the envelope. Once the envelope reached $375, it would get sealed, and then I would start my February envelope. I was always 6 months ahead on rent because of this envelope method — I knew that my brain needed a physical container to understand what my money was for, and that I would respect it and even forget about it once it was in that physical container. It served me well.

I’m big on working with my brain, not against it.

Aannddd when I found out about Profit First, I realized it was a really similar concept to the envelope method.

A super watered down version, here we go: Basically, I have five bank accounts — Income, Operating Expenses, Owners Comp, Profit, and Taxes. Money flows into the income account, and then I distribute it as follows: 35% to OpEx, 35% to Owner’s Comp, 5% to Profit, 25% to taxes. I distribute it whenever, but I make sure it’s caught up on the 10th and the 25th of each month because I pay myself on those days and I make sure my P&L excel sheet is caught up — would Quickbooks be better? Probably, but this is what I do.

I truly believe that having a plan for your money will enable you to reach whatever goals you want to reach, and this system removes every bit of emotion I might have with how my money is allocated — I know my brain, I do my best to be kind to it. I work with my mind, not against it. Here’s the thing: The operating expenses account is for business spending — there’s no debate about whether or not to use that money because it’s in that account to be used. The percentage that goes to the owner’s pay account is there TO PAY ME, so I’m never able to make excuses not to pay myself. Systems work, they eliminate emotional decision making — defer to the system.

HOW I WORK THROUGH MONEY GOALS WITH STUDENTS + MY METHOD — REVERSE ENGINEERING HOW MUCH MONEY I NEED, GAMIFYING, MONEY ISN’T SCARY IT’S JUST MATH LOL

Nowwww let’s talk about how I work through money goals with students during mentorship calls and my method for reverse engineering how much money you need — I like to make it a game. Money is just points. Money is just math. It isn’t scary, I promise.

You know I’m bigggg into reverse engineering goals, so financial goals are no different. I do a super super super simplified version of the bucket method on mentor calls — the amounts are shifted and the amount of buckets is smaller so I don’t freak people out, but it’s the same concept. I’ll take you through it now:

What is the ideal amount of money you would like to make in a year? A lot of people have noooo idea how to answer this question, so here’s how I frame it: how much money does it take to live comfortably? If your business is a side job, if your partner is the main bread winner — pretend worst case scenario happens and you lose your main job or your partner loses their main job and you have to upkeep your lifestyle. Mortgage, car maintenance, bills, groceries, lifestyle expenses, fun money, everything. How much money would that realistically take? Okay, you have a number to work with now. I think it’s always a great goal to make your business profitable enough that it could finance your life, at least.

Let’s be conservative here and pretend the amount you came up with is $50,000. That’s $50,000 paid out to YOU and not $50,000 that you make in your business. I like to make the numbers easy and make the goals feel superrrr achievable, even if they’re going to be hard work, so I tell my students to plan on paying themselves 50%, put 25% in a tax account, and 25% in the business account for operating expenses.

That means, in our hypothetical scenario — if you want to make 50,000 with your business, then the business needs to make $100,000. Are you still with me?

Now, that total amount for a goal might still seem abstract and a bit far away if you’re at the beginning stages of business. This is where reverse engineering comes in, or working backwards from our main goal. If you’re a service based business, what is the average cost of a client or what is the cost of your main offer? For me, the average client pays around 5,000 — sooo 100,000 divided by 5,000 is 20. I need 20 weddings and elopements if I want my business to reach six figures,that goal feels really doable to me and so then I’d focus my marketing efforts on achieving that goal. But if you don’t have a high ticket offer, it’s still doable! Let’s go even further on the math. Sticking with a photography example — what is a portrait session worth? $500, to low ball it? 100,000 divided by 500 is 200 clients in the calendar year — that seems like a lot. But 200 divided by 12 months is 16 clients. 16 sessions in 1 month still feels like a lot to me, but maybe it doesn’t to you. But these are numbers that are starting to feel possible, they’re starting to make the overarching goal feel realistic. If I was in this position I would think: How can I increase the spend of these clients? Can I make these sessions worth more? Can I upsell prints and albums? Can I add an offer to my suite? Can I run mini sessions or specials every month at that price point that can help me meet these quantity goals without me running around like a chicken with my head cut off? How can I make this possible?

If you’re a product based business, what is your highest selling offer? Maybe you sell hand made earrings or you make skincare products — yes, maybe I’m calling out some of my fave creatives who I know listen to the pod, ha! But let’s say your highest selling product is around $15 — $100,000 might seem so far away. Let’s do the math. $100,000 divided by 15 is 6,666 sales — divide that by 12, it’s around 555 sales per month. Don’t let the math be scary — know the numbers, even the estimates like we’re doing now.

KNOWING what your sales goal per month is will EMPOWER you to make marketing decisions. You’ll pay attention to what marketing channels are bringing people over to your website, what is actually causing people to inquire with you for your services and then how many of those people turn into leads. For product based businesses, you’ll see who is clicking to the website and then what percentage of your traffic turns into paid customers. Once you know that percentage, you’ll have a goal for how many people need to click on your website in the first place, which helps you make decisions for running paid ads if you go that route. It’s not scary, it’s MATH.

And even more than math… money almost turns into a point system with you know your numbers, it turns into a game. You know how in video games you get rewarded with points and if you get enough points you get to the next level? Just think of your money goals like that.

One last thing: Make yourself a visual indicator for tracking your money. A thermometer to color in as you make sales is my favorite one. Do what you can to make your finances fun, because why the heck not. Goal setting in this way doesn’t have to be a scary weird thing — you can’t achieve your big goals unless you define them clearly, you need to know where you’re going.

Resources

FREE Starter Guide for Photographers Ready to Learn Videography

Join the Montana Diaries Podcast Community on Facebook!

Shayna Lloyd 7/26/22 Shayna Lloyd 7/26/22

29: Creating a personal brand that grows with you w/ Rachel Traxler

RACHEL TRAXLER: On her business journey, developing a personal brand that grew with her business + life, bringing her husband on board, and much more!

WHAT YOU’LL LEARN…

1. Why video is KING online, AKA why YOU should incorporate video into your business strategy

2. The leg up that hybrid shooters have in the photo + video industries and why it IS possible to learn with your existing equipment

3. Action steps you can take RIGHT NOW toward incorporating video content!

RACHEL TRAXLER: On her business journey, developing a personal brand that grew with her business + life, bringing her husband on board, and much more!

psssttt…

join us in the Facebook group, your space for talking all things creativity + business!

Rachel's FREE Resources for Photogs

MEET RACHEL

“Hey, I'm Rach! I’m a photographer turned business coach helping photographers scale their business with strategy and purpose.
Having almost a decade of experience in the field, my heart has grown to serving and helping other photographers to grow through the struggles I went through myself.

Growing my business to an in-demand, successful,
6-figure, sought after traveling elopement business, I want to teach other photographers to do the same.”

RACHEL TRAXLER AT A GLANCE:

-We get right into chatting about modifying family life based on our businesses + defining what success really looks/feels like to us

-Rachel booked her first wedding over a decade ago, back when online education was notttt a big thing; she made the leap into full time photography in 2017

-She opens up about what was missing in her client experience at the beginning, and how overcoming her client experience gaps made her love + appreciate client experience even more and it’s now one of her fave things to teach.

-Fast forward four years, Rachel became an industry leader and expanded her business to include an associate team and is not focusing on education.

-We talk branding — voice, tone, aesthetics, and how Rachel made both sides of her brand truly reflect HER.

“When I dug into my personality — I found that I aligned my shooting + editing style with my personality and that’s when my branding clicked.”

— Rachel Traxler

Rachel has recently shifted to a coaching business education model, and she knows her stuff — she offers manyyyy free + paid resources for photographers, so check them out at the links below!

Resources

Rachel's Instagram

Shay's Instagram

FREE Starter Guide for Photographers Ready to Learn Videography

Join the Montana Diaries Podcast Community on Facebook!

Shayna Lloyd 7/21/22 Shayna Lloyd 7/21/22

28: Making Montana Diaries: My photo/video business story!

Making Montana Diaires: My photo/video business story!

WHAT YOU’LL LEARN…

1. Why video is KING online, AKA why YOU should incorporate video into your business strategy

2. The leg up that hybrid shooters have in the photo + video industries and why it IS possible to learn with your existing equipment

3. Action steps you can take RIGHT NOW toward incorporating video content!

Making Montana Diaires: My photo/video business story!

psssttt…

join us in the Facebook group, your space for talking all things creativity + business!

Making Montana Diaires: My photo/video business story!

Hellloooo and welcome back to the Montana Diaries Podcast, on today’s episode I’ll be telling you my business storyyyy — so freaking exciting, right!? Well, I do get asked a lot about how the frick I started by business with both photo and video and what that process was like for me, so hopefully I can demystify the industry a bit for you with my experience and this episode will also help you get to know me a bit better. You all know I’m an open book about alllll things business and creativity, so if you have any questions after this episode then by all means just ask!

COLLEGE YOUTUBE CHANNEL LOL

When I was in college, I had a hobby YouTube channel where my roommates and I would make just about the dumbest videos you can imagine — I really didn’t know what I was doing or know the concept of personal branding or niching or funneling to a paid offer. It was just dumb fun.

During the years I had this personal YouTube channel, though, travel diaries were blowing upppp on YouTube and I was obsessed. My husband, welp boyfriend at the time, Brandon and I are from NW Montana and we spent our summers there hiking and fishing in the most picturesque place you can imagine. Think Glacier National Park if it wasn’t infested with people — that’s where we grew up. So I started a mini-series on my channel called Montana Diaries — play on travel diaries, super original, I know — but I would just vlog our adventures. I even bought a drone for that sick ass dope ass drone footage, I was one of those. Think any basic blonde influencer from the 2010s and that’s who I loved, but nobody more than Hailey Devine — I was obsesseddd with Hailey Devine and I still freaking check up on this woman every once and a while — she had a legit chokehold on me. But she was a videographer who actually got paid to do this fun thing that I just did for fun — companies and brands and tourism boards would pay her to take videos and photos in the most beautiful places I could only dream of visiting. She wasn’t an ~influencer~ in the traditional sense — she was a master of her craft, a real talented filmmaker and business woman but she was cool and chill and funny. She turned more to family and lifestyle content later, which I’m not really into, but mannnn — all of this is just to say that the YouTube thing was just a silly goofy thing that I did until it wasn’t. I finally had something modeling a career that I actually kind of wanted — the Devines even started posting weddings that they filmed, and my wheels were really turning toward the end of my college career. I don’t think I thought that this would be my career, but the idea of having such a fun side job was starting to seem really cool.

WHAT THE BEGINNING OF MY BUSINESS WAS LIKE

Soooo that brings us to the beginning of the business, I guess. I know educators in the photography and videography space are always preaching “you’ll shoot what you share” and it’s kinda annoying, and I’m so sorry, but it’s true. I had no business sense or any idea what I was doing, but I started getting inquiries from real clients just from the YouTube stuff I was sharing. Some students from my college had me take their graduation photos, the owner of the volleyball club that I coached for hired me for her WEDDING which I’m so grateful for but I really had no business shooting, and then by the time I graduated college in 2017 I really started to think about what a real business could be. Bran and I were engaged by this point — we went to colleges four hours apart and he had a year left when I graduated, so I moved to his college town. I remember we were dreaming up this side business — we thought we’d work for tourism boards mostly and make content for the parks, which is funny because we ended up becoming friends with a dude that literally has the job we ideated back then and thought was so impossible — I’ll have to get him on the pod to get his perspective on what it’s like, but he was a TUMBLR boi back then and I literally followed him. It’s just so funny to think about now.

That summer of 2017 we did five free weddings, mostly for friends, and we took on a ton of outdoor branding work — it was very Montana, think lodges and fly fishing outfitters. So it was a lot of portfolio building mixed with paid work — I think we made something like $25,000 that first summer and I didn’t save a freaking penny, it was all going to equipment and traveling costs and I paid our rent that year because Bran had to finish up school and then student teach. But that $25,000 blew our mindssss — we couldn’t believe we could get paid to do what we were doing, it was just so fun. Our work was atrocious, but that’s just retrospect. I think people literally hired us because we owned a drone — I don’t want to be dramatic either but I think we might have been one of like three videographers in the state. It’s so funny to look back on — I was never not working, I was a waitress and I freelanced for an online certification company that taught HVACR education so I was freaking making slideshows about commercial boiler systems and I took on every singleeeee photography project that came up. Brandon’s college was in a small town and there was this weird boudoir boom in that town — I swear I did like 45 boudoir shoots in the spring of 2018 for like $50 each, and it wasn’t like the creative weirdo artsy tasteful female gaze boudoir that I do now, it was like — porn poses and white women holding guns with fish lips. I’m not kidding.

I was so run down and burned out by the time Bran graduated — I was so grateful to get the hellll out of there, for the fresh start. But I was also a little lost — I was still in the mindset that videography and photography was a side business for me, I still didn’t know that it could be a full time career for me or that full time was something I even wanted. On top of that, we moved to a realllyyyyy small town for his first teaching job and it honestly just felt really lonely trying to integrate into yet another close knit Montana community.

I think what’s always a little weird timeline-wise in my business story is trying to explain why and how the traveling got so crazy every summer — buttt it makes more sense if you think about the wedding market: weddings book out about a year in advance, so my 2018 couples had booked when people mostly knew me in central Montana in 2017 and then my 2019 couples were a mix of central Montana and Southwest Montana…soooo while I had moved to different regions of Montana every single year of my business, I ended up traveling hoursss to my weddings every week because my clientele were so spread out and I said yes to EVERYTHING. There was no rhyme or reason, it was crazy — and Montana is huge, if you didn’t know that. At the end of the 2019 wedding season I knew a few things: I knew I wanted to niche (mostly) to adventurous couples and let go of a lot of the branding and family work. I knew I wanted to be more high end, so I needed to raise the quality of my portfolio to the price point I needed to reach. I knew as the years passed without me getting a real adult corporate job I was getting more and more unemployable…so I needed to start acting more like an entrepreneur and less like a hobbyist.

Aannnddd then I found out I was pregnant at the end of 2019, so it was time to get realllyyyy focused. Oh, and I was due in August of 2020 soooo… yes, right in the middle of wedding season. We quit booking weddings right when we found out we were pregnant, so we were at about half capacity for the next season which…hurt, I guess, the realization that I couldn’t make the amount of money I wanted to make. That I wasn’t contributing toward our financial goals. I remember New Year’s Eve, I told Brandon “2020…will not be my year, but ya know what? 2021 will be.” That was our joke, that I would make 2020 about setting us up for success in 2021.

Ohhhhh my gosh, what an omen. Did I cause COVID? Am I the drama?

Obviously, it turned out to be a blessinnngggg that we had prepared for a slow year in 2020. In March, I made the quick decision to make everything as easy as possible for our clients — to reach out and offer help and let anyone reschedule that wanted to and to put up zeroooo fuss for cancellations, and just going into the pandemic with that mindset helped a lot. I used face to camera video, talking heads, to talk people through getting married in the pandemic the best that I could and this weirdly established me more as something who did talking head videos to educate, which is kinda funny. I worked so hard, SO hard. I was scared…I don’t know how to even put words to this time. We were pre-vaccine, I had to honor my contracts and work weddings but I was also very aware that if I tested positive before labor then I would be giving birth alone, without Brandon, and they warned me that they would take my baby from me and dispose of my breast milk immediately after birth. I’ve never talked about this — I just honestly didn’t know how to handle it, I didn’t know how to live the two lives we were living where I was pretty much in constant isolation in our remote town and taking walks alone every day but then once a week I was traveling and covering the weddings that didn’t cancel. And the political climate wasn’t great — the protests and the fighting and the businesses getting called out. So I was taking notes on how I wanted to show my ideals in the business better in the future but also kinda shoving those feelings under the rug to deal with at a later time. SO I basically felt like a hypocrite in every aspect of my life, and I felt extra sensitive to any judgement because obviously I was judging myself too. Ya know, cute 2020 things. I should say that I never did get COVID when I was pregnant, and Bran was able to be there during the birth, thank goodness.

But I was thinking a lot about BUSINESS. I was consuming a crazy amount of business content — I learned about SEO, branding, educational content, passive income, client experience, systems, money, I was consuming, consuming, consuming business content like crazy. It’s hard to condense all of this into a quick, easy story but the month or two before Lucy was born was…insane, I guess. I got burned realllyyyyy badly with a collaborative project and it left a really bad taste in my mouth, and I was really hurt and hysterical about it. This experience changed the business in ways I’ve never come out and said — I became hyper focused on what having a personal brand actually meant, I knew I would neverrrr speak negatively about this experience online even though this person deserved it, and I became obsessed with contracts and having clearly defined communication boundaries. I’ve never given my phone number out again and I’m better for it. I also jumped on everyyyy opportunity to shoot in NW Montana because we were pivoting our marketing to that area — we were finallyyyyy laying the groundwork to live and grow where we’ve always wanted to be. And Brandon’s family lives right outside of Glacier National Park, so that also kinda solved my “where do I put the baby while I’m shooting” dilemma.

The new niche of adventurous couples and the focus on branding made one thing that we suspected suppperrrr clear: the most attractive thing about us, besides being connected to the mountains and Montana lifestyle and laid back weddings, is that we could offer both video AND photo with one team. What also became clear, is that other photographers were starting to want to do the same thing.

WHEN I STARTED TO GET QUESTIONS FROM PHOTOGS…

It might be obvious by this point — with all of the business education and planning I was doing during my pregnancy and crazy pivoting in 2020, that I was becoming interested in selling a digital product — what not a lot of people know is that at the time, I thoughtttt I wanted to make a HUGE high ticket course teaching wedding videography business. My “thing” has always been that I over-deliver video and that I’m faster than the market average at editing and I deliver way more than others are delivering— I would deliver the full ceremony, speeches, reception cut, AND highlight film at a high ticket price without charging hourly packages. I was a full service videographer booking out every year WITHOUT a big social media following. I didn’t follow industry standards with how I ran by business and I was doing well with that — all of that is still true, but nobody really cares about any of that — and that’s an important thing to know before creating a product.

In September of 2020, I took Digital Course Academy taught by one of my favorite female entrepreneurs Amy Porterfield and thank goodness; that course requires a tonnnnn of market research and messaging work. I’m so grateful every day that I was throwing up polls on my Instagram stories, teasing that I was creating something cool, and getting creatives on calls. My ideas were a wedding videography business course, a creative business systems course, a marketing course for creatives with low social media numbers like me. None of these are BAD ideas, but they weren’t things my peers wanted from me.

Instead, I started getting DMs from photographers asking questions about video. Like, a lot of DMs. My sweet friend Laurin Kluver even DMed me saying “pleasseee tell me you’re doing videography education!” I think it was that DM where I was like “...yes, yes I am.”

So, I wasn’t giving up on my other course and education and digital product dreams — I started this Podcast as a general creative business podcast, after all. Butttt it became so clear to me that something I thought was easy and took for granted, which was my ability to do videography and photography in the same session using one camera setup, was something photographers REALLY wanted to learn how to do but felt overwhelmed by, scared to do, they thought it would cost a ton of money in new equipment, and they thought the learning curve for editing was too much.

I hired my friend Maddie, an incredible branding photographer, to come crash on my couch for a week in October of 2020 and we curated shoots in almost every niche of photography so I could showcase how I captured photos AND videos within those same shoots. And that was going to be it…butttt, well, let me tell ya about Clubhouse.

CLUBHOUSE IS WHEN I REALIZED HOW MANY PHOTOGRAPHERS WANTED TO LEARN VIDEO BUT HAD BLOCKS

I know Clubhouse was a bit of a fever dream, but it’s where I finalllyyyyy realized two things: the importance of meeting people where they’re at and serving them from that place, and the power of networking and finding community.

I met my dear friend Chris Mai being know-it-alls together in photography rooms, and it’s where I started talking to people like Jaci, Dawn Jarvis, and Dawn Charles. These are all big hitters in the industry that I never really bothered to network with, and it’s such a shame because they’re cool as shit. I started filling up my podcast roster with these creatives and educators that I really respected, and it was a huge game changer, one that I’m ridiculously grateful for. I alsoooo started hosting rooms in clubhouse where I was testing out videography education for photographers, and the questions photographers had about video were making my head spin. So at the beginning of 2021, I outlined talking head videos for the course I was launching that reflected what photographers were ACTUALLY asking about video — thanks, Clubhouse.

The first launch of Videography for Photographers was in March of 2021 — I hired Nicola Dixon to help me with that launch, and we also became friends. So freaking fun getting to know that woman — we’re actually really similar, both creative writers who want to be authors but also find a lot of creativity in business. She helped me figure out how to warm up my audience and get over the last bit of fear about selling to a small audience, and she also made me make a financial goal for the launch. I met the financial goal, which I immediately used allllll of that money to hire a brand and web designer which made me look legitimate, which I guess is important. Thankssss Nikki Fanshaw, let me know if you want the best brand and web designer ever and I’ll send you her way.

Soooo just like that, we’re at the point where my business pretty much formed into what it is today.

WHAT MY BUSINESS IS LIKE NOW

I’ve spent the last year refining how I teach and figuring out where photographers get stuck, and I’m so proud of the system we have for teaching photographers video in the most simple freaking way possible — and it’s not about making you a VIDEOGRAPHER if that’s not what you want, it’s about utilizing video in your photography business. I’ve split up the course into three sections — mechanics, where I teach the HOW of hybrid shooting and editing photos and videos using super simple language, storytelling is the next module where I teach my thought process behind shooting and editing for story and how each niche can benefit from thinking about story, and then the implementation module is all about strategy and figuring out how to make video work for your unique business.

As for the service side of my business, I’m obsessed with figuring out how to make my client experience the best it can possibly be and delivering the best possible content and highest possible quantity — I’m still doing my own thing with structuring my packages and making my business work for me.

FREE VIDEO CLASS!!

Nowwww I have to tell you about an awesome free resource that I really think you’ll benefit from if you’ve made it this far in the podcast! It’s a free class for photographers, HOW TO UPLEVEL YOUR PHOTOGRAPHY BUSINESS USING VIDEO — this free class teaches you everything you need to know about integrating video into your photography biz without buying new equipment, getting super techy, or wasting your precious time! So pleaseeeee head over to montanadiaries.com/learnvideo to take the free class — that’s montanadiaries.com/learnvideo and there are other free resources at the bottom of that page as well.

Resources

FREE Starter Guide for Photographers Ready to Learn Videography

Join the Montana Diaries Podcast Community on Facebook!

Shayna Lloyd 5/6/22 Shayna Lloyd 5/6/22

27: Deep dive with destination wedding photographer Grace Troutman!

Meet Grace Troutman:

"My name is Grace Troutman and I'm a Midwest based destination wedding photographer and business educator. I started my business about 6.5 years ago and have traveled to places including Iceland, Ireland, Hawaii, Colorado, California, and Washington to shoot sessions and weddings. I lived in California when I was first starting my business, but Iowa called us home and I was determined to live a life of travel while still being close to family and friends. If I'm not out shooting with my team or teaching other creatives, you can find me hanging out with my husband or playing with my two year old daughter, Pfeiffer. I'm an enneagram 2w3 so that says a lot about me!"

WHAT YOU’LL LEARN…

1. Why video is KING online, AKA why YOU should incorporate video into your business strategy

2. The leg up that hybrid shooters have in the photo + video industries and why it IS possible to learn with your existing equipment

3. Action steps you can take RIGHT NOW toward incorporating video content!

GRACE TROUTMAN: Building a destination wedding brand from the Midwest of the United States, Growing an associate team, Showing up consistently and effectively on social media, Education for photographers

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join us in the Facebook group, your space for talking all things creativity + business!

Grace Troutman’s Education for Photogs

GRACE TROUTMAN

Ohhhh man, this has to be one of my favorite interviews I’ve EVER had on the podcast — Grace Troutman is such an aspirational business woman and we covered everythingggg from building a traveling elopement brand from the Midwest of the United States, to growing her associate photography team, to offering business education for other photographers, to finding her voice on different social media platforms like TIKTOK. Grace is completely candid about the progression of her life and business, and I know you’re all going to get a ton out of what she has to say.

LISTEN UP TO HEAR GRACE CHAT ABOUT:

Building a destination wedding brand from the Midwest of the United States
Growing an associate team
Showing up consistently and effectively on social media
Education for photographers

Resources

Grace Troutman’s Associate Course

Grace Troutman’s Instagram

FREE Starter Guide for Photographers Ready to Learn Videography

Join the Montana Diaries Podcast Community on Facebook!

Shayna Lloyd 4/28/22 Shayna Lloyd 4/28/22

26: 5 steps to systemizing your content strategy!

5 steps to systemizing your content strategy! We’re talking alllll about batching, friend.

“Instagram is no longer a photo sharing app.”

When head of Instagram Adam Mosseri said that via an IGTV video this summer, I watched as photographers freaked the eff out on photography Facebook groups, on their stories, and yepppp my DMs.

Sooo… I wrote a free guide for YOU, photog friend. This guide is a DEEP DIVE into video marketing for photographers — not only do I provide tangible, actionable strategy for batching video content for YouTube, IGTV, Facebook, TikTok, and Reels, but I take the time to discuss the WHY of it all. Aannndddd this isn’t one of those guides where I throw up information on you that you have no hope of implementing during your busy photo season — I’m a working videographer and photographer, so I freaking get the struggle to implement a content creation strategy. As always, I’m here to meet you where you’re at with what you have

5 steps to systemizing your content strategy!

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join us in the Facebook group, your space for talking all things creativity + business!

Let’s talk batching.

When I batch content, that means I’m aware of what I’m trying to DO with my content during the time period I’m batching for. I know exactly when I’m posting it and why I’m posting it. It’s brainless and emotionless by the time I actually post — soooo this helps me be process oriented rather than product oriented. When you’re process oriented, you’re carrying out the system without worrying about the result. If I were to create and post in real time every day, I might get discouraged by video views or other vanity metrics and not post the next day because my brain would say, what’s the point? Butttt since everything is done, I’m removed from emotions about the product and I’ll instead just focus on the process of carrying out the system. The content is batched and done — I just need to finish the process by posting.

WHY I BELIEVE IN BATCH CREATING CONTENT

So, to begin this episode on batch creating content I want to start by explaining a bit about WHY I believe so strongly in batching. I’ve tried it both ways, friend — I’ve flown by the seed of my pants with my business and I’ve batched and planned like a crazy person, and the second method is how things freaking get done.

I lack focus, I get really emotionally attached to results, and my mental health goes in wavessss and all of these things are a freaking recipe for disaster if there aren’t systems in place. Sooo what does it mean to have batching a part of your system? Batching is the process of grouping like tasks together and just getting them all done at once — so when it comes to batching content, this means producing a tonnnn of content all at once and having a plan for when it gets put out and what the purpose of the content is.

When I batch content, that means I’m aware of what I’m trying to DO with my content during the time period I’m batching for. I know exactly when I’m posting it and why I’m posting it. It’s brainless and emotionless by the time I actually post — soooo this helps me be process oriented rather than product oriented. When you’re process oriented, you’re carrying out the system without worrying about the result. If I were to create and post in real time every day, I might get discouraged by video views or other vanity metrics and not post the next day because my brain would say, what’s the point? Butttt since everything is done, I’m removed from emotions about the product and I’ll instead just focus on the process of carrying out the system. The content is batched and done — I just need to finish the process by posting.

So, productivity and systems and efficiency wise, batching is great because it’s a better use of my time. Mental health wise, batching is great because it removes emotion from the result and doesn’t require much energy when it comes time to actually post.

Next, we’ll get into the actual steps to batching content, and that’s also where we’ll talk about another benefit of batching — which is being super focused and strategy driven with the actual content you’re batching.

STEPS TO BATCHING CONTENT

I’m adopting a strategy that I’m adapting from one of my mentors in business, Amy Porterfield — she teaches to make 1 piece of original content per week, and I’ve found this serves me really well when it comes to serving my audience.

Define the time period you’re batching for — start monthly, it’ll feel more manageable — you can work up to quarterly later if monthly batching feels easy. So, basically, if you’re sitting down to write a month of content — that’s one per week, so about four pieces of amazing original content. That’s not too bad, right!?
Reverse engineering what we’re trying to sell — so basically defining our money makers and promotions that will be going on during the time period we’re batching for. Like, in July, I don’t think I’ll be trying to push my course much for wedding photographers because they’ll be in the middle of their busy season — it wouldn’t make much sense to target them, they’re too busy for a course. Instead, I might write content aimed at branding photographers.
Brain dumping ways to serve customers and potential customers — this goes hand in hand with the above point, obviously, but goes a little deeper into brainstorming ways you can SERVE the people you ARE talking to. If we go with the first example, I want to create content that serves brand photographers? Well, I could talk about ways brand photographers could be upselling video, how video helps their clients and would be attractive, ways to do it that won’t be much extra work, how they can position themselves as the expert for THEIR clients, etc. I would make a big list like that and you know what? A lot of the ideas won’t be good, but my page won’t be empty anymore and the rest of the process will be much easier.
Big piece of content > aim for 1 per week
1. Brain dump what goes into that piece of content — I’m working on having frameworks for mine, which I’ll get into later
2. Set a timer and write poorly!
3. Set another timer to edit
Have a system for repurposing those big, juicy pieces of content across platforms. That’s right — noooo more content made just for social media. Your piece of original content for that week can easilllyyyy be made into social media posts for the week that will work everywhere, with a little bit of tuning up.

Resources

FREE Starter Guide for Photographers Ready to Learn Videography

Join the Montana Diaries Podcast Community on Facebook!

Shayna Lloyd 1/17/22 Shayna Lloyd 1/17/22

25: What does it REALLY take to run multiple businesses? w/ Zoelle Devlin

On today’s episode we have the lovely Zoelle Devlin, the Missoula, Montana entrepreneur behind Love Dot and Love Zoelle. Zoelle has a beautiful eye for design, mind for business, and heart for serving — all of which serve her in her two businesses that she’s sharing about on this episode. Everyyyy purpose-driven creative entrepreneur will have something to gain from this conversation.

ZOELLE DEVLIN: Jewelry design, sustainable fashion, and running two businesses

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Montana Diaries Instagram

ZOELLE DEVLIN

Helloooo and welcome back to the Montana Diaries Podcast, HOLYYYYY frick it’s Season 2 — we took a little bit of a break for the holidays but I’m beyond stoked for the lineup of guests coming up here in 2022. We’re alsooooo going to be adding in solo shows this year, so pleaseeeee let me know what topics you’d love to hear covered! You know I’m an open book when it comes to my business, so ask away — aannddd for those who don’t know me: I’m Shayna and I’m so freaking stoked you’re here because on today’s episode we have the lovely Zoelle Devlin, the Missoula, Montana entrepreneur behind Love Dot and Love Zoelle. Zoelle has a beautiful eye for design, mind for business, and heart for serving — all of which serve her in her two businesses that she’s sharing about on this episode. Everyyyy purpose-driven creative entrepreneur will have something to gain from this conversation.

Love Zoelle: Fine Jewelry

Zoelle started Love Zoelle 6 years ago — she was still in college and working multiple jobs when she started making and selling bracelets on the side. When she sold a couple hundred on Instagram, Love Zoelle was born. Within seven months, Love Zoelle was in 42 stores across the country.

Eventually, Love Zoelle transferred out of wholesale and into fine jewelry — today, you can find their private showroom in Missoula, Montana to shop their collection.

Growing a team

Zoelle’s first team member was a sub-contractor who created the jewelery she designed, and today she’s grown that production team to four members. Zoelle knew right away that delegating was key in her business — she is adamant that she surrounds herself with “people that are smarter than her.”

As for advice to other entrepreneurs to figure out what to delegate? Zoelle is big on writing down systems and processes to make delegation easier when it becomes obvious that you’re spread too thin.

Crafting a vision

When asked if she had a vision for where the company would go or if she took it in stride as she went, Zoelle was quick to say that she knew where she wanted the company to go. When family and friends would make suggestions, Zoelle was able to maintain focus because of her vision — no shiny object syndrome for her!

The vision? A personalized 1-1 experience where Zoelle was able to educate her consumer, and she acknowledges that she couldn’t provide that service if she chased the big wholesale goals.

Love Dot: The Sustainable Closet

Love Dot was born of Zoelle’s desire to give back by donating proceeds to charities that connect with her values, to highlight female entrepreneurs with interviews on the website, and to serve the types of women she interviews by filling a gap in the fashion industry that Zoelle has felt the effects of in the work force and in her entrepreneurial life. Zoelle’s vision for the product side of the brand includes curating 12-15 versatile, “seasonless” pieces for the woman on the go.

Educating consumers and messaging

One of the big challenges of building this new brand is educating consumers on the importance of sustainability. We chatted about content marketing and messaging, knowing the optics of a business, and understanding the price point weeding out certain demographics and offering alternative options for being sustainable.

Routines that serve life & business

Zoelle is bigggg on following routines that serve her life and businesses. She strives to get 8 hours of sleep, consistently meditate, and fuel her body with nutritious foods. Zoelle calls her morning routine “sacred,” and she takes time to do NOTHING.

All of this is made possible by her ability to delegate work items to her team — we’re both on business enabling our ideal lifestyles, and Zoelle is in alignment with that goal. Outsourcing allows Zoelle to honor her routines.

Resources

FREE Starter Guide for Photographers Ready to Learn Videography

Join the Montana Diaries Podcast Community on Facebook!

Shayna Lloyd 12/13/21 Shayna Lloyd 12/13/21

24 Personal Branding for Creative Business w/ Salima Omwenga

Salima Omwenga is a personal brand strategist and the founder of UFlourish, a platform where driven workforce professionals and entrepreneurs can learn how to develop a strong personal brand that will unlock new career and business opportunities all while living a life they love. She believes anyone that has a gift, talent, skill, or area of expertise can benefit from being intentional about developing a personal brand.

SALIMA OMWENGA: The founder of UFlourish on Personal Branding for Creative Entrepreneurs

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Montana Diaries Instagram

SALIMA OMWENGA

What is personal branding?

Personal branding is a new term to some — it’s how you package what you offer, and how you deliver the offer to your audience. In episode 24 of the Montana Diaries Podcast, Salima Omwenga takes us through her 4 step method of helping creative business owners develop their personal brands.

Salima’s 4 Step Method to Personal Branding

Step 1: Discovery

The discovery phase is all about defining what you love, what you’re good at, and what you flourish in.

Step 2: Development

In the development phase, you’ll brain dump everything that has to do with the voice and messaging of your personal brand. Salima encourages creatives to test their content whenever possible in this phase.

“I practiced how to speak in a cohesive way — I asked myself how I could speak in a way that would help people understand me, and play off their attention spans. On social media, attention spans are extremely short, so I had to think: ‘How can I say this in the least amount of words?’”

— Salima Omwenga

Step 3: Design

Many creatives think of “design” as being the most important part of personal branding, but Salima is sure to implement this step later in the personal branding process than might seem intuitive. She explains that in order for a personal brand design to LOOK like the creative, the messaging and voice of the brand has to be on point so that the style can reflect that work.

Step 4: Delivery

None of these steps matter much unless creatives implement a strategy to utilize the personal branding work they’ve done — Salima is sure to offboard clients with batching and messaging tips that will help them succeed with their personal brand.

If you’re interested in learning more about Salima, or working with UFlourish for your personal brand strategy, be sure to check out the UFlourish website.

Resources

Salima’s Instagram

Uflourish’s Instagram

FREE Starter Guide for Photographers Ready to Learn Videography

Join the Montana Diaries Podcast Community on Facebook!

Shayna Lloyd 12/8/21 Shayna Lloyd 12/8/21

23 Nicola Dixon on failure and hiding out to pivoting and abundance

On episode 23, I’m joined by my dear friend Nicola Dixon. Nicola is an INCREDIBLE photographer — like, how of this world talented. She’s also a launch strategist and coach who helps photographers enter the digital product space. She gets so freaking vulnerable on this episode of the Montana Diaries Podcast — we go wayyyy back in her business journey and she is so kind to open up about failure, financial trauma, mindset, and her eventual successful pivot into the photo world. This episode is a must listen.

NICOLA DIXON: How she designed her life and overcame financial trauma

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NICOLA DIXON

Nicola Dixon is a UK and Mallorca based destination photographer, podcaster, and launch strategist. She’s traveled the world, hosted workshops and worked with some of the most talented individuals from our industry. But as her business grew, the first thing to disappear was her time. She was increasingly exhausted from spending weekends and round-the-clock hours working on her photography business. That’s when she launched her first digital product, and ever since, she’s found her passion in helping other creatives do the same.

Nicola’s first business

Nicola began her entrepreneurial journey by opening a coffee shop at the age of 26 — she cites her love for visuals and aesthetics for the inspiration behind curating a space for people to gather, although she admits she didn’t have any hospitality experience and jokes that her love of aesthetics probably pointed to photography more than a physical shop. She is candid about the eventual failure of the coffee shop, even going as far as saying that it financially “ruined” her at the time and caused a years-long break from entrepreneurship and “burying her head in the sand.”

Coming back from failure

We’ve all gone through the collective trauma of the pandemic, and Nicola and I both point to the last couple of years as being incredibly difficult. Nicola talks her way through the transformation that comes from working through failure and the mindset blocks that come from it — the idea that if you lose your money you’ll never get it back, the shame of trying something that doesn’t work out, and what it is to rely on oneself.

Finding her way to photography

Nicola’s idea of having her “head in the sand” actually manifested itself into her trying out multiple types of entrepreneurial pursuits, even if she didn’t see it that way at the time — she took the name of her closed cafe and turned it into a different business where she hosted pop-up dinners with guest chefs, she began nannying, and she eventually started dabbling into photography by taking family photos.

She began working extremely hard in the photography world, undercharging at first but saying she was “desperate” for the work in the way that the volume and businesses felt like success. When the business started making more money and she found her niche in destination weddings, Nicola dug deep into possibility and money mindset work and realized that everything was available to her.

Increasing value by developing portfolio

Nicola quickly realized the value of portfolio development and began traveling to desirable destinations to shoot the kinds of the things she wanted to book. She credits this period of traveling and volume shooting to expanding her money mindset in her business — the work she was putting out and the experience she could provide was worth top dollar, and she quickly raised her prices to be in the top tier of her market.

Her business developed organically into the education space because Nicola began hosting her own workshops and teaching based on her own experience.

Expanding with digital products

“I saw what was happening around me — people moving into the education space, digital products becoming a thing and I fell in love with the act of creating and launching. I asked myself how I could teach this to people, and how to teach other photographers how to scale with digital products. I love coaching and teaching and I have no ceiling on myself — everyone can have an exceptional life. Money brings freedom and choices and when you get a taste of that, you want more. I’m passionate about DECIDING how life should look. What do I want my days to look like? I want to walk my own dog, I want to swim in the sea — I wrote that down for myself. What do you want YOUR days to look like?”

— Nicola Dixon

Design your life

Nicola and I both believe in DESIGNING your life — defining what it is you actually want, not what you’re “supposed to have,” and working toward those things you design. What do you WANT!? Like, REALLY. What do you want your life to look like? If you know what that is, you can work toward that and figure out how to sustain that lifestyle, instead of getting lost working to pay for upkeep of things that might not even be important to you.

What’s next for Nicola?

As for Nicola, she is moving to the island of Mallorca, where the workshop and 1x1 in person coaching portion of her business will be based going forward. She continues to be passionate about getting creative service providers off the “hamster wheel” of booking high volume and filling their calendars without thinking about the “why” of doing so.

If you’re curious about launching a digital product to diversify your business, be sure to check out Nicola Dixon’s website.

Resources

Nicola’s Website

Nicola’s Instagram

FREE Starter Guide for Photographers Ready to Learn Videography

Join the Montana Diaries Podcast Community on Facebook!

Shayna Lloyd 11/29/21 Shayna Lloyd 11/29/21

22: Selling a hand made creative product w/ Hannah Lorenzen

On episode 22 of the Montana Diaries Podcast, I’m chatting with Hannah Lorenzen, the Missoula-based owner of Han-MadeWithLove — she makes stunning clay jewelry and it’s so freaking unique, you guys, unlike anything I’ve ever seen. I hired Hannah to design pieces to go in my welcome boxes for my wedding and elopement clients and I am absolutely blown away by the care she put into each design. I knew I had to get her on the pod to tell you about her process. If you’ve been wanting to sell a creative product but you’re not sure where to start, this is a great episode with a heart-centered approach from Hannah...but, yeah, I mostly just want to hype this woman up so that you go freaking check her out. Make your dollars mean something this holiday season — shop local, shop small.

The+Montana+Diaries+Podcast+-+Creative+Podcast+for+Photographers+and+Videographers.jpg — “Instagram is no longer a photo sharing app.”

When head of Instagram Adam Mosseri said that via an IGTV video this summer, I watched as photographers freaked the eff out on photography Facebook groups, on their stories, and yepppp my DMs.

HANNAH LORENZEN: Creating a handmade product, finding her style, and learning to sell

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meet han

montana girl with big dreams | “Han-madewithlove began in Missoula, MT in June of 2020. I have loved all things crafty since the age of seven where I made soap and sold it outside my house from a little stand. It's only fitting that I now (han)d-make and sell clay items. The selection of handmade clay items and fashion items include; stunning trendy pieces, quality items that are made to last, pieces that fit any budget, and most importantly inclusive pieces for all sizes and shapes. I take the process of finding and creating pieces that inspire and uplift my customers very seriously. My goal is to make everyone feel loved when they wear han-madewithlove. Our customer service team will make sure that your expectations are not just met, but exceeded.”

HANNAH LORENZEN

hand made in missoula

Hannah’s hand-made clay earrings are inspired by a mixture of western and bohemian style — they reflect Missoula itself.

Hannah is multi-passionate and extremely creative — she has a heart-centered approach to business that relies heavily on word of mouth in the Montana communities she serves. We chatted about her design process and what it is to create for clients vs.creating for oneself.

Hannah opened up about finding confidence with both her style and with clients’ feedback. She has a distinct style that attracts wholesale and custom orders, and those projects can cause anxiety because she is so focused on making the products beautiful and in the clients’ vision. She emphasizes the importance of communication and providing a timeline.

Resources

Hannah’s Instagram

FREE Starter Guide for Photographers Ready to Learn Videography

Join the Montana Diaries Podcast Community on Facebook!

Shayna Lloyd 11/22/21 Shayna Lloyd 11/22/21

21: Pinterest Strategy for Creative Business w/ MY Pinterest manager Teresa Dietrich!

In episode 21, I’m talking with MY pinterest manager Teresa Dietrich about her journey to becoming a Virtual Assistant-turned Pinterest Strategist, her client workflow, and tips for creative entrepreneurs like you to create your own Pinterest workflows. We dive DEEP into the WHY behind Pinterest as well as the how, so be sure to listen alllll the way to the end so you can implement all of this goodness into your own business.

Teresa Dietrich: All about outsourcing Pinterest, the process of working with a VA, and creating a strategy that drives tangible results

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TERESA DIETRICH

Starting a VA Practice

Teresa and I chatted all about the inception of her VA business — she took us through early client acquisition, to working with those first clients, to finally niching down to Pinterest. Teresa’s personal experience will be helpful to those who want to become a VA as well as business owners looking to work with one for the first time.

The Process of Outsourcing Pinterest

Soooo many creative business owners want to outsource things like Pinterest, but the thought is intimidating for them. Part of that intimidation is that they don’t know how the process works. Here is how it works with Teresa:

Fill out an inquiry form. You’ll talk back and forth about how everything works, and ask any questions you might have.
Schedule a call to make sure you vibe with the person you’re outsourcing tasks to!
Agree on services rendered, payment, and get a contract in place.

Creating a strategy for Pinterest

After the agreement is made, it’s time to create a Pinterest strategy that aligns with your goals for your business. This isn’t about pinning pretty things and increasing vanity metrics that make you feel good — it’s about driving real, tangible results like email list building. Remember: You OWN your email list, but you don’t own social media platforms. Your marketing strategy should really focus on driving the needle forward with things you own.

Pinterest isn’t a social media platform in the way that Instagram and Facebook are — Pinterest is a search engine that people use in order to find inspiration, tools, and things to buy.

When I’m looking at our analytics every month, I’m looking at the email list to see if it’s growing. What Teresa is looking at are analytics related to Pinterest itself like impressions, pins, and clicks to see what is resonating with people so we can make more of that.

5 Steps to DIYing Pinterest if you Aren’t Ready to Outsource

Clearly outline your goals: figure out who you want to find your pins, how you can help them, and where you want them to go.
Keyword Research: Keywords are specific words that show Pinterest what your content is about. Collect keywords based on existing pins that people are searching for.
Creating Pins: Create graphics that encourage people to click!
Schedule out pins: We use Tailwind to schedule out pins in advance so that you’re consistently posting on Pinterest without having to think about it every single day.
Create systems for batching Pinterest-related tasks: Take specific days to block out time to look at your analytics for the last month, create content, and schedule pins.

Work with Teresa

If you’re interested in outsourcing your Pinterest, be sure to check out Teresa on Instagram!

Get a shout out on the pod!

Be sure to rate and review the Montana Diaries podcast on Apple Podcasts to get a shout out on the pod! Just be sure to include your Instagram handle in your review so we can say thank you on a future episode — your reviews help us so much to get more amazing guests, climb in the charts, and continue to serve you!

Resources

Teresa’s Website

Teresa’s Instagram

FREE Starter Guide for Photographers Ready to Learn Videography

Join the Montana Diaries Podcast Community on Facebook!

Shayna Lloyd 11/15/21 Shayna Lloyd 11/15/21

20: Your most productive and profitable schedule w/ Hannah Murphy

We have an incredibleeee business owner and productivity coach on episode 20 of the Montana Diaries Podcast here to give alllll the guidance and tangible tips — it’s one of my favorite voices in this online business world, the lovely Hannah Murphy! As a business owner who 9xed her client load in just six months, she knows how overwhelming the role of CEO can be - even when your business is thriving on the outside. Hannah helps creative business owners develop PROFIT focused schedules that allow them to outsource the tasks that don’t bring them joy, skip work on the weekends and say yes to more mid-week lunches with your friends, and intentionally dream and plan for the next few years. This is a must-listen episode, friends.

crafting your profitable schedule

As you take in this conversation with Hannah Murphy, remember: Assess all of the tasks you do, plan your schedule around the season of business and life you’re in, create systems that support your goals, and figure out what you can do to sustain those systems. You’ve got this, friend.

HANNAH MURPHY: YOUR MOST PRODUCTIVE AND PROFITABLE SCHEDULE

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crafting your profitable schedule

HANNAH MURPHY

Beginning as a Virtual Assistant

Hannah answered a job posting for a virtual assistant position without truly knowing what being a VA entailed — she researched her way through that first freelance job and called it her “bride between seasons” in business.

Niching Down

The way Hannah figured out what she liked and didn’t like in the VA world!? Giving it aalllll a go. Hannah developed a variety of skills before her client paid her to take a Pinterest course and Hannah ended up developing a strong preference for that work. She loved Pinterest because it was helping people grow their businesses and it is a very strategy-based platform, which is where Hannah thrives. Pinterest is extremely visual and she saw the potential in it for wedding pros, photographers specifically, so that’s the audience she decided to target for her newfound Pinterest strategy niche.

Growing a clientele through pitching

Soooo, Hannah had a niche — Pinterest, and a specific audience — Wedding photographers. But how the heck did she find those wedding photogs and turn them into clients!?

Pitching.

Instead of marketing into the abyss, Hannah took matters into her own hands by finding potential clients on social media and making sure they were a good fit before pitching them her services and getting them on sales calls. Eventually, Hannah scaled her service based business to over 25 clients at a time…and she kept pitching.

Creating a schedule + putting systems in place

“I worked a lot more with 3 clients than I did with 25 clients.”

Whatttt?

Hannah explained that in the early stages of her business, she was doing every task in her business every single day. As she progressed, she created systems in her business that called for batching similar tasks on specific days. Later, after the systems were created and working well, she had a clear idea of what could be outsourced.

Sharing her system

Hannah’s own clients started asking her how the frick she kept up with all of her clients and tasks, so her podcast became the natural next step in her business. Her episodes focused on answering questions she was getting often.

“That’s kinda the pivot to education, right? You get good at your craft, people ask how you do it, and then you teach them.”

Hannah on Productivity

“If I could sum up my approach to productivity — it’s not so much about finishing my ‘to-do’ list as quickly as I can, it’s more about looking at what is actually ON the ‘to-do’ list. The business world preaches productivity in terms of getting things done, but it’s actually about effectiveness and WHAT you are getting done. ”

— Hannah Murphy

4 Steps to Creating Your Most Productive Schedule

Assessing: Do a brain dump and go through all of the tasks you do in your business and analyze them. Are these tasks actually moving the needle forward?
Plan your schedule: Cater your schedule to the season you’re in. Plan around your life, your business goals, and commit time to the tasks that need to get done.
Develop: This is where you create those systems. You have to look at what needs to be eliminated, automated, and streamlined. What can be done easier and better? What can be batched?
Sustain: What are things you can put in place to help you know when the work day should end? What will help you reduce task switching? It’s one thing to have a schedule, another thing to sustain it.

Reverse engineering your goals

Hannah says, “If I don’t know where I’m going, then how can I create a schedule that pushes me toward where I want to go? Your schedule needs to reflect your personality, priorities, and your plans for the future.”

So:

Identify how much you want to make each month. How many packages is that? How many clients?
Refine your offer — how can you best serve your clients?
Orient your schedule to serve the above two things.

Look at your answers to those three things — is it all aligned? Does it all feel good? Is it realistic?

Work with Hannah

Hannah has a free training that goes deeper into everythingggg we talked about here, so click here to chat that out. You can also check her out on Instagram.

Want a shout out on the pod!?

Be sure to rate + review the Montana Diaries Podcast on the Apple Podcast app — put your Instagram handle in your review and I’ll give you a shout out in a future episode!

Resources

Hannah’s Website

Hannah’s Instagram

FREE Starter Guide for Photographers Ready to Learn Videography

Join the Montana Diaries Podcast Community on Facebook!

Shayna Lloyd 11/8/21 Shayna Lloyd 11/8/21

19 Lindsey Roman on stewarding each season in family & business

Lindsey Roman is a business educator, social media marketing guru, and photographer based out of Lawrence, Kansas. She’s one of the founders of The Heart University and she co-hosts The Heart & Hustle Podcast, a business podcast for creative entrepreneurs. Lindsey’s mission is to help women know their worth, value, and identity in who they are and boldly do what they were created to do. When she’s not speaking, teaching, or dancing on Instagram, you can find her spending quality time traveling and adventuring with her daughter, Eloise, and husband, Andrew.

20 Lindsey Roman on stewarding each season in family & business

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join us in the Facebook group, your space for talking all things creativity + business!

The Heart University Website

Image from iOS (1).jpg — Meet Lindsey

Lindsey Roman is a business educator, social media marketing guru, and photographer based out of Lawrence, Kansas. She’s one of the founders of The Heart University and she co-hosts The Heart & Hustle Podcast, a business podcast for creative entrepreneurs. Lindsey’s mission is to help women know their worth, value, and identity in who they are and boldly do what they were created to do. When she’s not speaking, teaching, or dancing on Instagram, you can find her spending quality time traveling and adventuring with her daughter, Eloise, and husband, Andrew.

LINDSEY ROMAN

From acting to photography

As a child, Lindsey’s dream was to be an actor like the girls she saw on Disney Channel — Lizzie McGuire, where ya at!? She went to school for theater and business, but during her time in college she eased into photography as she learned how to use her camera in manual mode and slowly found her passion for photography and business.

“It didn’t feel like letting go of a dream, which I think is so beautiful, because it was truly leaning into the Lord and asking him what he had for me in that season of life.”

— Lindsey Roman

Lindsey feels strongly about stewarding what she has in the present well, so I had to pick her brain about that mindset because contentedness and patience are the two things I have to be the most mindful of — they do not come naturally for me!

Being content in the present

Part of finding contentedness in the present is realizing that there will always be new goals — there is always an element of wanting “more.” One of the ways Lindsey finds her gratitude is to recognize how proud the “five years ago” version of herself would be of what she has accomplished today.

Different seasons in business

Lindsey’s found herself in quite a few diverse seasons of business — her husband’s stint in the coast guard brought her and her photography business to Hawaii, which cemented her as a destination elopement photographer. She kept getting requests for mentorships, but felt hesitant. It wasn’t until her friend and fellow photographer Evie Rupp pitched the idea of a partnership putting on in-person workshops that she reluctantly agreed to step into the education space.

“I think it’s the curse of knowledge — that we forget that we know things that others don’t. There’s always people who want to learn from us even if we don’t know everything.”

— Lindsey Roman

Lindsey and Evie’s first Heart Workshop sold out, and she said that experience clued them in that they had knowledge that people wanted. As they kept putting on workshops, their email list grew thanks to the waitlists, and they knew the model wasn’t sustainable with the demand. They wondered how they could steward what they had been given, and their online business education platform was born. The Heart University launched with an online photography course and a podcast. Today, the podcast and course are still going strong, but they’ve expanded their offerings to include a shop with many tools to help others succeed in business, and apparel.

Motherhood and business

Lindsey and I are similar in that neither of us saw ourselves as mothers — we both had internalized beliefs that motherhood meant being “stuck,” and that you couldn’t be successful or have ambitions and have kids. When I first heard Lindsey’s perspective on motherhood on another podcast, it completely changed me and made me feel more empowered to step into motherhood myself.

She explains that she felt stubborn about having kids until she befriended a mother who embodied a lifestyle that Lindsey didn’t realize could exist — she saw that motherhood didn’t have to mean completely changing her lifestyle, plastic toys, a destroyed house, or a lack of sleep. You guys…when I tell you I found Lindsey at the perfect season of my own life, I mean it.

“I always believed the lie that children were dream suckers — if I could say anything to anybody listening that resonates with that, from this side, that’s straight up bull-crap. You have a limited mindset. And I say that because it was me. You can raise your children to grow up and do what they want to do by being an example. ”

— Lindsey Roman

Lindsey and I both feel strongly that fitting your children into your life rather than changing your entire life for your children is key. She says that many people make the mistake of making their children “the God of their lives,” and instead she advocates for bringing children into the adventure you’re already on.

Resisting the urge to multitask

Lindsey opened up about the reality of motherhood and business — she is clear that “work time” and “family” time can not be multitasked, especially when her daughter became mobile and more aware of what quality time was.

“If you’re taking my sound-byte from back when I was saying ‘you can do both, you can do it all,’ and when I’m saying ‘you can do it all’ I’m not saying ‘at the same time.’ You CAN be a business owner, you CAN be a mom — but there is a balance.”

— Lindsey Roman

Learn more from Lindsey

This freaking woman is absolutely full of amazing, tangible life + business advice like what she dropped in this episode, so please go check her out on Instagram @mrslindseyroman — the links to her website and the Heart University are below! If you loved this episode, then please rate and review the Montana Diaries Podcast on Apple Podcasts! It helps so much when it comes to getting amazing guests like Lindsey.

Resources

Lindsey’s Website

Lindsey’s Instagram

The Heart University Instagram

FREE Starter Guide for Photographers Ready to Learn Videography

Join the Montana Diaries Podcast Community on Facebook!

Shayna Lloyd 11/1/21 Shayna Lloyd 11/1/21

18 Rocky Mountain Bride Editor Mackenzie Stevens on Allll Things Magazines and Submitting

Mackenzie turned her internship at RMB into a career as one of their incredible editors — she brought insight into the magazine industry as well as those juicy tangible submission tips!

19 Rocky Mountain Bride Editor Mackenzie Stevens on Allll Things Magazines and Submitting

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Rocky Mountain Bride’s Instagram

MACKENZIE STEVENS

Mackenzie Stevens is the Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho editor for Rocky Mountain Bride. It isn’t a secret that I absolutely love Rocky Mountain Bride and hollyyy heck guys, Mackenzie demystifies her job as an editor so beautifully and gives such an amazing look into the magazine and printing world as well as a ton of tangible tips on submitting, specifically what Rocky Mountain Bride looks for in submissions.

Finding the right path

Mackenzie grew up right outside the small town of Red Lodge, Montana. Both of her parents are entrepreneurs, so she went into adulthood knowing that she wasn’t interested in working in a cubicle. After suffering a bad leg break while studying at Montana State University, Mackenzie went home for six months to heal and reflect on what she wanted to do with her life. Next came cosmetology school and a job working in that field, where she learned that cosmetology wasn’t forever but creative business was. She moved on to Denver to attend the Art Institute of Colorado where she found her “happy medium” between business and tangibles, and creativity. She took graphic design classes as electives, not realizing that they would serve her in her future career laying out magazines. When Rocky Mountain Bride posted an internship opportunity, Mackenzie applied and got it, and worked her way up in the company from there.

It struck me how Mackenzie followed her intuition in every phase of her journey and didn’t put too much pressure on any specific decision — she simply tried things until she found what fit.

Rocky Mountain Bride Submission Tips

Don’t worry, I grilled Mackenzie for the juice on submitting to Rocky Mountain Bride! Her biggest piece of advice for those wanting to submit to magazines is to prioritize story.

“I really like seeing the small details that are important to the couple like the signature cocktails named after the dog at home, the fun of the day, the personal aspects of the wedding day that are true to the couple are what I prioritize when looking at galleries. I love authentic and candid — weddings are a celebration and being able to showcase celebrations that show the people, the family, the space, and the vendors’ hard work is really important. ”

— Mackenzie Stevens

Remember, the magazine is meant to serve couples through the planning process and to provide inspiration! Attractive couples on mountain tops are great, but 40 images like that in a row aren’t going to be interesting to readers. Think feelings, details, personality — how would you describe the wedding to a friend?

Submit, Submit, Submit!

When asked what her advice is for those who are intimidated by the submission process, Mackenzie said: Submit, Submit, Submit! The worst thing that can happen is that the gallery you submitted isn’t the right fit for that time — whether the venue has been featured recently or the style has been shown a lot or the season isn’t matching up with the content they need at that time.

Resources

Rocky Mountain Bride

FREE Starter Guide for Photographers Ready to Learn Videography

Join the Montana Diaries Podcast Community on Facebook!

Shayna Lloyd 10/26/21 Shayna Lloyd 10/26/21

17 Marketing Expert Micah Larsen on Vulnerability for Women in Business

Micah Larsen helps women creatives build audiences of engaged ideal customers so they can make a consistent income doing work they love. She is the Missoula-based marketing expert behind the 10 week program “How To Hustle.” She teaches everything from how to create a first impression to nurturing loyal customers.

MICAH LARSEN: Being vulnerable as a woman in business

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MICAH LARSEN

Fumbling in Business

I effed up a lotttt while trying to make this interview happen — we’re talking calendar mess ups, communication failure, and overall looking foolish while trying to connect. We talked through the feeling of fumbling in business and the “why” behind the easy grace that Micah gave to me. Micah shared her own anecdotes of times she needed grace in her business and we talk through vulnerability in business and women’s tendency toward shame.

The Invisible Backpack

One of Micah’s core values in her business is to tell women business owners the things she wish she had seen as she was coming up — she calls this practice “opening up her backpack.”

“My thought is that we, as women, are carrying invisible backpacks of our experiences and heavy things that we keep silent. I always want to set an example and hold myself to the standard of opening up my backpack and sharing those stories.”

— Micah Larsen

Prioritizing + Focused Time

Parenthood has accentuated the need for separation between business and personal time for both Micah and me — we talked about the shame surrounding ambition for mothers, and the impossibility of trying to do both at the same time. Micah explains this beautifully by explaining the different parts of our brains that each practice requires.

Feminism and Partnership

The shape of Micah’s ambition has changed throughout her life — she explains that she “fell out of love” with academia, and then she directed her attention to entrepreneurship. Micah also acknowledged that her life path took a turn largely because of her now-husband, so we dove deep into the tension that can come from partnership and our feminist beliefs.

Head Trash —

You can’t talk about feminism, partnership, and business without diving into money and the mindset around it. Micah sums it all up perfectly with the phrase “head trash.” Micah quips that she’s in business because of this head trash — she helps women close the gap between the thing they make and how to sell it.

Stepping into Motherhood

Micah’s journey into motherhood included donating her eggs, loss, and an accident causing hospitalization and an early delivery with her child. Her time in the hospital forced meditation on her life and what she wants. Micah came out of this experience knowing her why and her message for other women and mothers in business.

Uterus in a Jar

Micah said, “Shayna — I never thought I’d be the person whose most significant moments of my life had to do with reproduction.” She needed a hysterectomy this year, which brought out complicated feelings related to womanhood and ownership over her reproductive organs. She kept her uterus in a jar and even showed it to me during the podcast episode. Micah explained, “I grew our child in it… I can’t just throw it away.”

Resources

Micah Larsen’s Website

Micah Larsen’s Instagram

FREE Starter Guide for Photographers Ready to Learn Videography

Join the Montana Diaries Podcast Community on Facebook!

Shayna Lloyd 10/11/21 Shayna Lloyd 10/11/21

16 Can you be a good artist AND sane!? Mental health, addiction, and authentic expression w/ John Piacquadio

John Piacquadio is a Montana-based artist and fly fisherman, often drawing inspiration from fly tying and fishing in his work. In this episode of the Montana Diaries Podcast, John shared his rich life story from growing up as the child of an Italian immigrant, to the tension between his religious upbringing and his education, to being an art student and drug addict obsessed with originality, to settling into himself as a sober maker and fly fisherman. John was incredibly vulnerable about creativity, mental health, and everything in between.

16 Can you be a good artist AND sane!? Mental health, addiction, and authentic expression w/ John Piacquadio

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John Piacquadio’s Website

finding a meditative state through fly tying

John and I chatted about meditation, and what it is to be “good” at it. He speaks to the meditation he finds through tying flies, saying it’s “like a little surgery” in that you can’t be doing or thinking of other things while tying. The process made him curious — he knew what the inside of the fly looked like, so could he convey that in his art?

“So then I thought: ‘I wonder if, in some sort of way, or in a magic way almost, or in some spiritual way, have I imbued the nature of the fly or the essence of the fly in some way where I can just like spit it out in a painting?’”

— John Piacquadio

JOHN PIACQUADIO

The story of John’s life is fascinating, but so is his creative process. He explains finding flow state through fly tying and connecting with nature, and how he connected with his art more when he started depicting those things rather than only focusing on subjects that would be considered “groundbreaking.” Letting go of pretension in his art and embracing sincerity ironically lead to the success he craved as a younger artist, and it helped him come back to himself as a sober minded person.

John’s work is incredible, so do yourself a favor and go check it out at the links below! If this episode resonated with you, then please go review it on Apple Podcasts — reviews help us get more guests like John!

Resources

John Piacquadio’s Instagram

FREE Starter Guide for Photographers Ready to Learn Videography

Join the Montana Diaries Podcast Community on Facebook!

Shayna Lloyd 10/4/21 Shayna Lloyd 10/4/21

15 Hillary Folkvord on owning multiple businesses and the "family bottom line"

Hillary Folkvord is a force to reckon with — she is a mother, an amazing curator and social media presence, and a fourth generation Montanan who, along with her amazing family, runs multiple successful businesses, including The RSVP Motel, The Farmer’s Daughter Cafe, and The Sacajawea Hotel. Hillary held nothingggg back when it came to business advice, her lifestyle, or balancing motherhood with her ambition.

15 Hillary Folkvord on owning multiple businesses and the "family bottom line"

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The Farmer’s Daughter Cafe

RSVP Hotel and the Farmer’s Daughter Cafe in Bozeman, MT

HILLARY FOLKVORD

Changing the vision

Hillary went to undergrad and played golf at MSU before continuing her education in Denver — she originally wanted to be a lawyer, but entrepreneurship soon called her back home to help her family take on the beautiful, but run down, Sacajawea Hotel in Three Forks, MT. Hillary explains that she did every job within the hotel, and went on to do the same in her subsequent businesses. She is business partners with her sister and her family is deeply involved in all business decisions — today, the Sacajawea is thriving along with its attached restaurant and watering hole and is a staple of the community, and the Folkvord sisters have migrated to Bozeman with their businesses.

Reverse engineering her life

Before Hillary married her husband, they thought about their death bed. Yeppp…you read that right! They thought about who they wanted around them, where their lives would be like, and how they would feel…and they figured out how to work toward that life.

The “family bottom line”

The Folkvords are incredibly intentional about their family time, spending, and how they think about outsourcing. They have figured out what their “hourly rate” is — how much their time is worth to clients and their businesses, and if personal tasks like cleaning or yard work would cost less than that amount, they outsource it.

Motherhood and business

Hillary and I talked about motherhood and business, and how motherhood enables you to prioritize deep, focused work. Hillary opens up about getting help with childcare and how outsourcing is crucial when it comes to making business time about business and mother/child time intentional and meaningful.

Personal Branding

For Montana, Hillary was an early adapter to the “personal branding” side of social media and blogging. While it was intimidating at first, she shares about the value that personal connection has brought to her businesses.

Community Over Competition

Hillary stressed how crucial collaboration with other businesses has been to her brand — she explained that Montana has more entrepreneurs per capita than any other state, and she’s proud to be part of that statistic and seeks to support other women in the space.

Resources

Hillary’s Instagram

The Sacajawea Hotel

The RSVP Hotel

FREE Starter Guide for Photographers Ready to Learn Videography