With Laura Esmond

Welcome back to the podcast here with Laura Esmond. So I'm gonna do a little time warp here. It is February 5th, and, but I have to be super prepared for this podcast, which is going live on February 17th, which happens to also be my 50th. Birthday. And so I am going to be in New York City with, uh, my three kids and my husband just hanging out together.

It's hopefully not freezing 40 degrees there in New York City feels colder to me than like 12 degrees in Colorado 'cause it's so dry here. we are hopefully surviving whatever cold is going on there right now. it is funny to turn.

50. I don't know why, but there is something that just feels really big about it, but at the same time, in the back of your head you're kinda like, I mean, it's just another birthday, right? It why is this doesn't need to be a big deal. But my husband. Who is such a sweetheart and so adorable. He really loves to do birthdays the right way.

And so he's like, this is your 50th. in fact, we're doing New York and he's still asking me like, well, what's a trip that just he and I can go on? I'm like, I love you. I love the fact that you wanna do that. So, because of him, we are doing this wonderful trip and, I would love to hear from anyone who wants to wish me happy birthday.

I would love it.

Okay. I'm gonna head back now into February 5th, we're gonna talk today about three lessons. kind of a reflections that, that I have about owning a big studio. You know, there was a time when I believed that scaling was. Just that natural next step in a business. It was sort of a mark of maturity of making It was to grow bigger and to have a team and to open a big space.

And so I did that. I just felt like that's the next step. That's what I'm supposed to do. So I built a studio and it was. Absolutely beautiful. It was really elegant. It was really welcoming and warm. In fact, people would walk in the door and just kinda stand there and gawk at it and go, wow, this is really nice.

Which made me feel so good about what I had created. And you know, I'd hired these women to work for me. Just felt like the entire thing was just really amazing. I had magazines coming to, to me, you know, like the Scout Guide and Colorado Parent to do features because they knew that if I had a space like that, I must have an ad budget.

And that also felt kind of cool. I remember Boss Babe, remember how that was like a thing and we chased that whole. I don't know what you'd call it. that whole vibe of being a boss, babe, I felt like I was doing that. In fact, it probably fueled part of my desire now that I'm thinking about it to even scale to this size.

It felt like the answer to a lot of late nights, kind of wondering how I could create more time for myself and more income. I, I felt like to get more of those things, I needed to go bigger, right? I needed to scale because that's what businesses do. You start to scale your business and you hire people to do some of the things you're doing so that you free up your time as the owner.

But what I didn't see coming was what it would actually cost, because sometimes more revenue also means more responsibility and. Scaling can actually mean that you're sacrificing some other parts of your life. A dream business built for the wrong version of you becomes a daily reminder of misalignment.

For a long time I tried to push past that feeling. I told myself this was just the season of building. This was just sort of this like weird, messy, middle I was in. And I would work my way out of it that someday it would feel lighter and easier. And there were days actually that it did feel that way because honestly, after being open.

I would say about two years in, it did get easier. People were booking easier sessions were booking. Our team felt really solid. We all knew our roles. I was over this like pretty awkward. Learning curve that I had when I first opened and first learned how to manage people. So I definitely had days of feeling like, okay, this is getting easier.

Maybe we're gonna push past this feeling of of misalignment. That was always kind of right there, but there was always something trying to come forward in my mind that I was out of place. This isn't for me, and I had to learn how to slow down enough to listen to that. I had to put aside my ego and stop asking, how do I make this work better?

How do I make this grow more and start asking, what is this actually teaching me and do I belong here? It's really hard to. Stop your ego from pushing you towards something when you're already on that rollercoaster and you're moving so fast and you're like, how do I stop the rollercoaster for, so for just a second, I can get everything in check and actually turn and pivot and create a business that works for me that maybe doesn't serve my ego as much.

Right? Magazine's coming to me for ads, having this big retail space. Everybody gawing at it when they walked in. Those things all fed my ego and kept me. In this business that I really didn't feel aligned with. So because that season of my life, that studio era, it, I mean, it wasn't a mistake. It was, I'll call it a teacher, and it taught me three.

Main lessons that I wanna share with you today. I, it taught me a lot, but we're going to go with these three. So lesson number one, sometimes bigger is just bigger. I really believed opening the studio would free up my time. I told myself that this was a smart move. I was hiring other photographers the studio could earn even when I wasn't actively working.

That was the goal, and on paper it made. All the sense it made total sense. I reviewed it, my husband reviewed it. I even had, uh, an accountant review it. It felt like the moment I was doing business the right way in air quotes, okay, the right way, I was finally building a business that didn't require me to be behind the camera all the time to earn money.

And, you know, I could choose when I was going to shoot, but otherwise my business could earn money out, you know, outside of me. And as a photographer, as, as you well know, we're very tied to us physically being behind the camera and feeling like this is really the only way for me to earn money. I have to shoot a session.

I have to physically be present to it for me to be able to earn money. Always looking for other ways that we can diversify. In fact, I'm going to have somebody on the podcast next week and we are going to be talking about diversifying income as photographers, so be sure to join that next week. What I didn't really understand though or yet, was that when you build something that runs without you, you don't just disappear.

It's not like I could just go home. My role just shifted in the business. So instead of holding a camera, I was creating schedules and preparing for staff meetings. I was maintaining the space, which had its own set of issues. I was planning studio events and networking. All over town, I was answering all the questions, solving problems.

I was managing people and their feelings and their financial needs, and the responsibility for, for their financial needs. That depended on this business. I was no longer just responsible for my own energy, but for everyone else's too, and then that, that responsibility followed me home. It lived in my head.

I'm just trying to spend time with family or spend a few days resting and just, I just wanna tune out. But it was always there in my head. So even when I wasn't working, I was carrying it around like a backpack. What I thought would create more space and give me a bit more time freedom for my family actually pulled me further away from them.

Not always physically I could get home to them, not in the first year. We were really building that business and I wasn't even present at that point. But emotionally and mentally, if you are a parent, you know that we need emotional and mental space to be a parent, to be able to show up and be fully present for them and for their needs.

Time isn't always just about hours in the day, It's about how much of yourself is still available when the work is done. So if my brain was always occupied with this business, or answering other people's questions and solving problems and, and getting phone calls.

Uh, that's where my head was all the time. For some people running a large studio with a team might be the dream, and they might be living it right now and listening to this and going, I, I don't, I don't understand what this girl's talking about. I loved it 100%. I respect that and I will cheer you on from the sidelines, but.

I had to learn firsthand that even though I loved the people so much, both the people that I uh, hired and also all the families that were coming to the studio, that business didn't solve the problem I had, which was craving more time. So I eventually, when I finally wrapped my head around all of this years later, I scaled down to a business model that fit me better, really who I am at my core.

Lesson number two, overhead or in over your head. I like that title. I wrote that myself. That was not Chat. GPTI wrote that title. So as I said before, I really did love the people I worked with. I loved teaching. I loved guiding, I loved mentoring and watching others grow into themselves and. That part of the studio honestly felt really good to me.

But managing a team is a really expensive thing for a business. The more we grew, the more help we needed and the more help we needed, the higher payroll got, and that overhead every single month was always there in the background of my mind, The thing no business owner ever really wants to talk about, especially when you have employees in a brick and mortar store, is that revenue isn't guaranteed.

And carrying that reality month after month is really heavy. I, and I wasn't the only person who has felt that way as a business owner. While running that studio, I met a lot of small business. Owners, shop owners, restaurant owners, boutiques. And when we eventually got into real conversations about business, you know, like when all the guards came down and, and we were really talking about what it was like to own the business, even though everybody loved it and was grateful with every person, there was an underlying fear of, what if I can't make payroll?

What if I can't make rent next month? And I felt that too. Instead of feeling excited or motivated by growth, I felt worried a lot of the time. I was constantly thinking, what if next month we don't make enough? What if booking slow down? What if something shifts? And I'm still responsible for all of this, and I know for some people that kind of pressure is really motivating and it pushes them.

But for me, it. It times, not all the time, but at times did the opposite. It created this low level stress that never really turned off. That stress was always there, just sort of humming in the background

I did have to, you know, light a fire under me and get to work every day to make sure my business was strong and that my employees were covered. So the fire was there. It also existed with a stress I could never shake. For years. For years, it felt that way, and what I didn't realize at first was how much that stress was stealing from something I value really deeply, which is peace.

I need to earn money in my business. Of course I do. And so do you, but not in a way that keeps me in a constant state of worry because when my peace is gone, I can feel it everywhere. I'm tense, I'm not, I'm impatient and I don't show up as, as the calm. Loving presence that I wanna be for my kids. That's when I started to understand how important it is to know what enough actually looks like to really know your numbers, not just in a business sense, but in a life sense, also, also, and to build something that works for your whole life.

Not just your bank account. The kind of business I was running needed to grow every year to stay healthy and to be able to give these amazing people who worked for me a pay raise. But honestly, with every year it grew, that fear grew right alongside it. For someone like me who values quiet and calm and peace, a big business can feel overstimulating even when it's working.

When I eventually shifted into slower paced business with lower overhead, I made that shift. It kind, it all changed. I didn't need constant growth anymore. I could stay steady at a revenue level that supports my family and still protects my peace, and that felt like such a relief.

It's not to say that I'm not motivated in my business. I think any of you who have worked with me know that I am highly motivated and I want to provide a lot for my family, but now there's more balance.

We can be rich in a lot of ways. Rich in money. Yes. But also in time and freedom and relationships and love When I stopped running a business that was mostly about money and so focused on money on a weekly basis, pulling reports, worrying about revenue, worrying about making payroll,

I was finally able to create one that balanced earning with family and freedom in a way that actually felt sustainable. If you are feeling this pressure to build a business that looks like someone else's, I'm, I'm sure most people, listening to this podcast are because social media exists in this world for all of us, and we can't help but to get drawn into that comparison.

I just want to remind you that you don't know. That person's nervous system. If you're looking at someone else's business and think, I want it, I want it to look like that. You don't know their nervous system or their values, what they're driven by and what it takes for them to sustain that business day after day.

There were so many people that came to me wanting to be mentored while I was running that studio, and I actually. Didn't do it. I, I didn't mentor a lot of people during those years because I didn't feel an alignment with what I was doing, so how could I possibly teach it? Now I can look back and teach from a perspective of here's what I would do different.

And here's what I'm doing now that is different, and here's what I learned from that. Here are the, the things that, that I actually pull from and pull into my business that help it grow in a sustainable way. But I never would have handed that business over to anybody. So instead of growing what you think you want based on this perception of what someone else has, build something that's sustainable in all areas of your life.

Because success that cost you peace is just expensive, right? If it's costing you peace, if it's costing you all of your time. That's a pretty expensive business to run. Okay, lesson number three. I love the business, but also creating, one of the things that I did not expect was how far I would actually drift from the work that I loved so much when I started the business.

Or right before I was start, started the business, I was shooting all the time, so this is before I opened the retail space. I was shooting, editing, dreaming up sessions and, and getting inspiration. And that was the part that made me feel really connected to this business. That was, you know, I was a photographer and it felt really good.

That was the reason I said yes in the first place to even running this business. But then when I opened the retail space and it got bigger, I had to slowly stop doing that work. It was kind of gradual. I handed things off because that's what you're supposed to do when you grow, right? At least that's what I thought.

And so suddenly my days were not about creating and shooting and, and creating vision boards and all these things that really fueled me. They were about solving problems and making decisions and answering questions and putting out fire and being the buffer between everyone and everything else. And there was a part of that that I actually really did love.

I, I do love running the business, but it wasn't allowing me to also find balance for doing the other thing,

Instead of spending time sourcing inspiration for my next session, I was walking in every day asking What are, who needs my attention right now? Either what fire needs to get put out, or who has a question or what can I help somebody with?

That business needed me to play a different role that I didn't fully expect. And the deeper I got into that role, the harder and harder it got to stay in like a creative space as a photographer.

And I had watched some other women run these bigger studios before I opened mine. These were women who had been in business since the nineties, and it appeared as though they had it all. And I wanted some of that, but now I know, I don't know what their days were like or the stress they carried or the goals they had or what drove them.

But I do know now that I've lived it that I need balance. I learned that about me. I love running a business, but not one with overhead. That scares me. I love mentoring obviously, but in a way I know I can fulfill and I love shooting and being with client and creating that balance is why I love my small business and appreciate it so deeply.

I know what it means to scale, and I'm so grateful I had the opportunity to scale it back so I can balance all of the parts of this business that I love so much. If you are in a season of chasing more, looking outside your window

And dreaming of having something someone else has, just go slowly, pause for a minute and I want you to ask yourself, what do I actually want? What is my business providing that I already love and I don't want to have to give up? What kind of life am I building behind the business and is it moving towards something that I really want?

It's not just about what your business can do. Right, like how I started out with the retail business. I wanted to see what it could do and how big it could grow. But it's not just about what your business can do because it can do a lot. It really can. what it's really about is how it makes you feel and the life you live out day in and day out because of it.

Growth really is beautiful, but sometimes choosing less is the most powerful decision that we can make. That is all I have for you today. Wish me luck in New York in the cold, and I will see you next week.