23. My Biggest Lesson in 2023

2023 was a really strange year for me and to be honest with you, it felt like I was riding a roller coaster at times. It was really hard at times. It was really beautiful and easy at times, and it all stemmed from the pivot that I've been making in my business while really starting a 2nd business. It's funny because so many people told me throughout the year, wow, you're crushing it. You are doing so well. So I wanted to give you an inside perspective on exactly what was happening on the inside. Even when on the outside, it looked like everything was incredible.

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Transcript

2023 was a really strange year for me and to be honest with you, it felt like I was riding a roller coaster at times. It was really hard at times. It was really beautiful and easy at times, and it all stemmed from the pivot that I've been making in my business while really starting a 2nd business. It's funny because so many people told me throughout the year, wow, you're crushing it. You are doing so well. So I wanted to give you an inside perspective on exactly what was happening on the inside. Even when on the outside, it looked like everything was incredible. 

Let's face it, most of us would rather be creating art than running a successful business, but we can 100% do both. My name is Erica Ewing. I'm a wedding photographer in sales and marketing expert for creative entrepreneurs. I'm here to help you define the life of your dreams and create a business that supports just that. Welcome to the Successful Creatives podcast.

I am so grateful for everything that 2023 brought me. It was a year where we, Ben and I really decided to kind of slow down. We love travel, we love adventure. We love taking our kids places. If you know us, we went to Hawaii for a month. We've got Paris on the agenda for this fall with our boys. A lot of it’s driven by the big dreams of our 10 year old, which I think I'll do a whole podcast on that  because it's a pretty cool story. So we love to do a lot. In addition to the travel, we really had a pretty full wedding schedule in 2022. We were serving a ton of clients and it felt amazing. But it was also a little draining. So we felt like we needed a year to sort of pause and be homebodies. We kept talking about doing stay-cations because we were traveling to all these places.

In 2022 we went to the Azores and where else did I go? I feel like I've been all over the place lately. Palm Springs was this year and Nashville. And where else? Orange County, Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, like all over the place, right? So we just needed a year to just come back to ourselves and relax. Actually, a lot of those travel things I just mentioned were this year, that was my relaxing year. But we decided to take less weddings so that we could be home with our boys more on the weekends. They’re both very active baseball players and they play well now. Both of them will play on travel teams this coming year. Which means they play essentially 3 quarters of the year, spring, summer, fall is their baseball season.

It honestly feels like it never ends at some points. So we wanted to be around for more of that, and we wanted to just simmer and enjoy our home and enjoy our friends and our family and explore New England, because New England has so much to offer. So we did this year. We did Santa's Village and Clark's Trading post and some of these cute little places that I grew up going. We wanted to really give our kids those memories as well. Not just like the big grand places. So that was all beautiful. We had a really lovely work life balance this year. We worked with really amazing clients. We limited our weddings to just 10 this year. It's the fewest we've ever done. To be honest with you, I would love to do just a little bit more than that. So our 2023 schedule already has, what do we have? 11 weddings. I might accept 1 more, but we were basically saying like anywhere between 10 to 12 would be awesome. 

Our studio business was really wonderful. A lot of our past couples were having babies, and I was getting to celebrate new milestones with them. Most of my sessions are always with repeat clients. I love that because I get to watch their family grow and really be a part of it. I always call myself the crazy Aunt Erica with the camera. Who comes around every year or even a couple of times a year, depending on the milestones they're having, if there's a new baby in the family, that sort of thing. All of that was really, really lovely. The reduced work schedule at the studio also gave me more time to work on my new business, which is my coaching business. Now I say new, I've been coaching for several years, serving clients 1 on 1, but I was really called during the pandemic, during 2021, to step up and serve more creatives in a way that I could just reach more people. Help more people, really create programs that are more easily attainable, that are just going to really give incredible, incredible, life changing results too. That's been my mission over the last couple of years. It got delayed because of the swell of postponed weddings from the pandemic. So I really started to build my programs in 2022, and I created an incredible program. I joined a coaching program that helped me create this. I had incredible results from my first few beta clients who went through my program. At that point, it was all marketing and sales combined, incredible results. What I found is that the program was so big that they were struggling to get through it all. They got through the sales piece, and then the marketing piece sort of went by the wayside.

The two most important pieces to really creating a magnetic business is, filling a pipeline with high quality inquiries and then having an easy sales system that does the selling for you, that really showcases your value and up levels everything. So it's two pieces, right? Like the high quality inquiries, getting good inquiries who are interested in you, not just your price list is the first piece to it. Then the second piece is the sales piece, which just honestly books the right clients really, really easily. People were having so much success with the booking system that they weren't actually even doing the marketing piece. So I wanted to get really intentional about creating programs that serve my clients in very, very specific ways. 

So 2022 or the beginning of 2023, actually, I split these 2 programs apart. I started teaching the booking system last year. That's my Super Attractor Academy, and I had several really incredible rounds of photographers who went through this program, had tremendous results. Like 100% of my students have tremendous life changing results. Immediately. They're seeing near 100% consultation bookings. They’re getting ghosted less. Their prices are increasing and they're still booking the weddings that they want. They're up leveling their clientele. All of these beautiful things were happening from this Super Attractor Academy that I created.

That was amazing. That’s the most fulfilling thing to me, seeing my clients on the photography side, seeing just how beautiful their lives are when they look at their life through my lens, through the pictures that I create for them. Through the videos that we create for them, that is everything to me. Then on the coaching side, seeing someone be fully skeptical that this is going to work for them, implementing it, putting it into place and then realizing like, holy smokes, business just got really easy. My weddings, my clientele just up leveled to exactly who I've always dreamed of working with and. I'm charging higher prices and people are booking way easier than they did when my prices were significantly lower. These moments are what fill me up, right? I love serving my clients. The roller coaster comes into the building piece, of building an entirely new business. This year I got really intentional in building a coaching business that felt really authentic to me. I had gone through a couple of different programs last year that taught me how to create coaching programs that were going to be really effective and how to sell them, and it didn't feel good to me. And so I felt stalled. I felt delayed, um, I like, revamped my program through yet another coaching program that was all about creating the most irresistible offer. My programs keep getting better and better, but I struggled to sell them because I wasn't aligned with the way that the coaches I was learning from were selling. I felt like I fell behind yet again. 

So fast forward to Spring 2023. I felt like I was trying to push a boulder up a hill. I feel like I didn't have the answers and I was looking for the answers before I was really doing the work right. This is how people become serial course creators. They want the end result, but they don't put the work in yet. That's exactly where I was, where I felt like I was doing so much work, which I was, I was doing so much work, but it wasn't the right work. It wasn't aligned with the results that I wanted. So I got into this really yucky place this spring where I was in a little bit of a business depression, kind of a business funk. And that's when people kept telling me, wow, you're really killing it. I would say like, it's amazing you think that, but that's definitely not how it's looking on the inside. Okay, so I don't want to diminish what I've created because that's part of really the struggle of being an entrepreneur and the struggle of being a creative, is you're never fully satisfied.

Right. At surface level for my clients. Yes, I was killing it. They were getting results. My photography clients were getting results with their wedding pictures that they've always dreamed of celebrating their family more beautifully than they could’ve imagined. Taking that and creating art for their homes. My coaching clients were having their best years ever. I just had someone post in my newest program, the Magnetic Marketing Mastery, that he had his best November ever. And this is just for my beta, the program isn't even fully built out yet. So in terms of client success, yes, I'm killing it. In terms of profitability. Oh hell no. No, for a couple of reasons and I'm going to get into why that is the case.

# 1, finding a sales process that really felt aligned to me. I teach sales, but if you asked me if I liked sales, the answer is no, because I never want to feel salesy. Right? My whole entire booking system, it's the anti-sales. So I don't love the feeling of selling. I love the feeling of serving. I love the feeling of attracting the right people who are attracted to me like a magnet, which is all with my mastery, helping people do that in their own business and then providing them with the thing that will solve their problem, the thing that will light them up, the thing that will add so much value to their life.

That is what I love doing. Now that is technically sales, right? On the studio side of things, that’s felt very easy to me since 2019 when I implemented my booking system. Sales has felt very, very easy. It's because of exactly that, creating a steady stream of high quality inquiries, which is what I teach in my Magnetic Marketing Mastery, and it’s having a booking system that basically holds my right fit clients hands, walks them through the process and helps them realize this is for me, right? But online marketing, a coaching business, it's felt so different. It's felt like I had to do all of these things in my business that are very opposite from how I've grown my studio. My studio was built all through like basically collaborations, right? So this is what I teach again in the mastery, how to create referral relationships. I talk about really creating an exchange of value. It's how I've gotten on preferred vendor lists. It's how I have other photographers, my peers, referring me. It's how I have other industry partners like planners and florists and bands referring me and then providing a really beautiful client experience, which is how our clients refer us.

So my studio business, like 80-90% of our weddings are based on referrals. I say 80, but it's probably closer to 90%. This way of building your business feels really easy to me. It feels really intuitive. I was struggling to see how to incorporate that into my coaching business. The coaches that I was buying into were all about social media, and if you know me, you know I'm not totally a social media person. All right. That's like putting it lightly. I would totally not be on social media if I didn't have a business. If you're a friend of mine on Facebook, on my personal page, you know that I never post anything personal. It's just, I don't know, it's just never been my thing. So having to show up on social media and really 2023 has stretched me a lot. I've learned some things from that. I've learned that the greatest learnings come from doing. I've learned that the biggest breakthroughs you're going to have in any limiting beliefs comes from the doing that. Confidence comes from doing. I remember for a while I was running a Facebook group, and I was doing lives every week. I remember sweating before I would do my 1st 1 and I feel like I prepped for hours, and then I did it, and it felt like once I was done, that was it. That's what I've been stressed about doing. That's what I haven't shown up for, for like years. That was way too easy. Showing up on video, teaching a lesson, seeing people's feedback, getting people's questions. It was easy. It felt really great, actually. Connecting directly with my ideal clients. 

Now, the piece that didn't feel good was taking these people onto a sales call with a very fixed script on what I was supposed to be saying. This was all part of one of the programs that I was a part of. It felt so yucky. I didn't want to be selling to people. I didn't want to be, you know, what was like hooking people in with a false pretense, even though it wasn't a false pretense. I just didn't like the feeling of the sales calls. It felt like high pressure. That's not me. That's not how I like to buy. I remember I bought a $3,000 program a few years ago. Actually, this was probably like 10 years ago when I was really starting my business, and I did it on a sales call, not because the sales call was effective, but because I felt tremendous pressure and I was like, I didn't finish the program. I regretted signing up for it. This wasn't how I wanted to sell. Okay. So social media has felt like a big struggle. Sales calls were something I ruled out and didn't want to do. So then I was sort of left with, well, what do I do? Like, if I'm not on social media, how am I going to sell my coaching course? Right. Like, this is how people sell their programs and so the thing that has worked for me has been ads, Facebook ads and Instagram ads to a freebie. Then people get into my world. They listen to the podcast, they get my emails, which adds a ton of value. Hopefully you're getting value from these things and then people will move into my program, right? That feels good to me. It's like giving something free, giving lots of value. Helping them see how I could serve them, even on a deeper level where they are like, yeah, sign me up, I want this. Okay, so I started to get there, but I didn't know how to fill the pipeline without ads. And ads get really expensive, right? I've never used ads for my studio business. I never needed to. I tell my master clients all the time, if you're running ads and they are working for you, don't stop doing that. But I want to get you to the place where you don't need them, right? So with my coaching business, it felt backwards. It felt like I was working in reverse, like starting fresh, not knowing what to do.

You know, it's probably really a good way to sort of put me in the shoes of my ideal clients, of creatives who have no idea what they're supposed to be doing to market their business. Iit feels like social media is the place to go. Right. I totally fell into that trap with coaching, and I just saw them as 2 very separate things like, well, yes, it makes sense that you don't need social media to grow your photography studio, but I really needed to grow my coaching business. Right? And so I was beating myself up. I was constantly stressed, like every single Monday, I was stressed about how far behind I was. I was so far behind that I couldn't make forward movement. It was like this feeling of shame and guilt and overwhelm of how am I going to get myself out of this? How will I ever be able to catch up? Somewhere along the line, I started to give myself a little bit of grace. Okay, I'm like a self-development addict. These are the things that I love to fill my time with. I love journaling, I love reading self-improvement books. I love reading business books. That's what I read. I don't read fiction. I don't read stories. I mean, once in a great while, like if I'm at the beach or something, but I just keep buying books and reading books about how I can get better and be better.

At 1 point this year, I just decided to give myself some grace. I think I just got tired of the self beat up and I decided to really start enjoying the process of building the business, start enjoying and celebrating all of the little wins that I was doing. Every little action that I take, I celebrate now. I created the path that feels like a really beautiful client journey with me for my creatives, for my photographers and wedding creatives who are interested in help with marketing in sales. So I created these 2 separate programs. The booking system again was already created. I created the Magnetic Marketing Mastery this year, and they are 2 beautiful programs that I am so proud of. Now I feel like I have these programs created, now I can get excited about building up my audience, attracting more right fit people, testing, testing offers, testing the messaging, all of these things that light me up when I can help people do it in their own business. Just getting really excited about doing it in my own business. So the shift was I stopped beating myself up. I stopped feeling like I was behind. I started appreciating every single little move that I was making in my business. I'm not going to say that this has been an easy transition, it's something I still have to remind myself of regularly.

I surround myself with energy that is going to support this shift. So the friends that really know what I'm all about and they know my struggles, they check in with me and they tell me that they think I'm doing great. Aall of these things that are just really supportive. My husband, I know he for a while was having a hard time supporting me because he didn't know what to do. Now we know that there are certain times where I get stuck and I can just say like, hey, I'm stuck between these 2 ways to continue A or B, can you help me figure this out? And he literally does. He just has this analytical. It's his engineering brain-way of looking at things that helps me as a creative, as someone who's just generally disorganized in her life, really get to the meat of things and choose A or B to move forward. So having someone like that. Enjoying all these little wins, having someone close to me that I can bounce things off of when I get stuck. 

1 thing that I realized towards the end of this year, because I had attended a beautiful in person event with a whole bunch of coaches; was when I was building my photography studio, I was surrounded by other photographers who were doing the same. I had a tribe. I was blessed to be in a group, a tribe of 8 people, beautiful women. We were all building our businesses together. We were sharing referrals. We were serving as each other's coworkers. We were talking about the hard stuff, any client challenges. We were celebrating the wins. If someone had a really beautiful booking venue, they were excited about their biggest package ever. I had people who were going through the exact same thing that I was going through, who were there to support me, who were there to. Help answer any questions. Help work through roadblocks. I helped them in return. We chatted on a daily basis. Like I said, we shared referrals. We really helped lift each other's businesses up. It's why rising tide is a thing. All rising tides lift all boats right in. This is the world in which I built my photography studio. This is why I preach finding your network to my Magnetic Marketing Mastery clients. Because it’s life changing on so many levels to be in a room, even if it's just virtually with people who know what you're going through, who can relate on the deepest level is really different. So I’m blessed to work with my husband. He's full time. He's been full time with me since 2014, this is year # 10. We've been together as a husband and wife team for a decade. That's going to need to be celebrated big this year.

He can get it to a point, but he doesn't really get it right. Like he understands that his wife is going through something. His wife is a business owner because we do have very different roles. I am for sure the CEO. He is for sure a beautiful support person. He sort of takes over more of the household work and I take over more of the work, work so he doesn't fully get it. He can be there for me to bounce things off of, like a sounding board, but he's not fully understanding my challenges even when I describe them. He's not living it on a day to day basis. He's not dealing with the mindset issues. He doesn't know, like the implementation, the execution stuff. I can't ask him a question about any of the software that I'm using and he knows. Then the same thing with my friends and my family, like they can be sympathetic, and they can try to help in very general ways. They can try to just be a support. They can try to be there to listen to me vent, but they can't fully relate. It really came down to this event that I went to in basically LA, where I met these beautiful, beautiful coaches. Some of them are photographers and some of them are not. Being in that space and being able to talk to people who are going through the exact same thing that I am going through, is everything.

I felt so seen, I felt so supported, I felt like I was supporting and helping others because I found my peers again. This is something that was a really big eye opener for me. It’s that 2023 felt like a ton of struggle and a lot of it was because I wasn't doing the thing in my coaching business that I teach in my photography business. That’s exactly how I built my photography business, and that was finding my tribe and leaning in to peer support, collaborations, support like the rising tide so we can lift all boats. And now, as I enter 2024, this is going to definitely be my # 1. Pursuit of this year is maintaining the connections that I made, building up collaborations, working with people who are my peers, who are working towards the same thing that I'm working towards finding out. Finding ways that I can support them, inviting them in to support me, really leaning on each other because we're the ones who get it. We're the ones who know what we're both going through more than anybody else can relate, as much as other people want to relate. So I say all of this and again I want to say I am so grateful for 2023. I think one of the things that I learned this year is that everything you go through, whether it be big and beautiful, whether it be a full blessing, whether it be something that you had on your vision board and has finally come to fruition.

Those things and the stuff that's tough, like personal struggles, mindset issues, limiting beliefs. You know, like setbacks in your business, setbacks in your personal life. It’s actually all a blessing. So many learnings come in through the struggles. When you keep pushing through, when you resolve yourself to finding out why this is happening and what the fix is. That's where the blessings really are. So I look at 2023 as an incredible success. We did beautiful business in our photography studio. Even with the reduced volume that we accepted. We served so many incredible clients that I feel so blessed to have in my world. We were able to support our family again this year, as well as my sister who is our studio assistant. t's amazing. In addition to that, I was able to create a brand new program on the coaching side of things that is going to really change how people like attract in their ideal clients. It's really going to give the members just a steady stream of high quality inquiries who are excited to learn more, and they're excited to book. This is all what was accomplished in 2023. I made more revenue in my coaching business than I had any other year, which is amazing.

It's still not much, but I know that I have set up the foundation for 2024 to be big, where I can really lean in. I've got my systems set right, which you know that I'm a systems person. I talk a lot about this booking system I have that basically does the selling for me. In 2023, it was all about setting up the systems for my coaching programs so that I can show up in an even bigger, more visible, more supportive way to the creatives who need me. My mission. What I like, what my founding mission really is, that successful creatives make the world brighter.

I am here to help creatives really lean into their version of success, and then to create a plan and go and get it right. So having the systems and the programs that will get them there now leaves me to the fun stuff. Now I'm going to have fun finding my audience, testing my messaging, testing the offers that I provide to people showing up for collaborations this year. Helping others who are coaching and teaching and who can serve my audience. Inviting others onto the podcast. We're going to have so many guest experts featured on the podcast in the next coming months, and I am here for all of it. 2024 is going to be a big, beautiful year with big, beautiful growth because it's this or something better.

Hey, are you a wedding pro? Who wants to stop wondering where your next ideal wedding is coming from? If you crave a stress free way to attract the wedding inquiries that you really want without needing to be on social media constantly, and you're ready to step into the sought after, fully booked wedding business you know that you're capable of, then I would love to invite you to the Magnetic Marketing Mastery. This is a unique experience that gives wedding pros the marketing systems and strategies that I've used in my own business, and taught 1 on 1 to help you create a business that is irresistible to your ideal clients. So that you can attract more of the clients that you want and ultimately increase your profits. I'm all about making dreams come true over here. If this is something that you are interested in learning more about, head to magneticweddingpro.com.