Running a small business is no easy task. It's messy and thrilling, and terrifying all at the same time. But no matter what, it's definitely a journey worth taking. As a mom of two littles, I know the daily struggles, and I'm here to walk this journey with you. If you're ready to feel empowered, encouraged and on fire for the things you truly love, then you're in the right place. I'm Rebecca Rice, a pizza loving hot chocolate drinking family photographer and educator. And this is the business Journey podcast.
Hey, friends, welcome back to another episode of the business Journey podcast. I'm your host, Rebecca rice. And I teach family photographers to gain a life of freedom through a thriving photography business. I'm really excited for today's episode, it's one that I wasn't sure if I was going to share about and I feel like I'm in the place now that I can now that you know, it's a new year, which is just wild, I can't believe it's already 2023, I am just coming off of a whole month off with my team, which was wonderful. And so just getting back into the swing of things. And I wanted to share about what happens or like what to do when life happens. And you know, your business seems to get put on hold for something. And so this was something that happened to us last fall, just a few months ago, back in September. And I'll talk a little bit more about what that looked like. But basically, I couldn't work for a whole month. And that was unexpected. And like I said I didn't really share about it. But I want to get into the nitty gritty of like, what that looked like and how we like made it work with, you know, keeping the doors open and all the things. So we'll get to all that in just a second. Before we get too far. I wanted to let you guys know about a free blueprint that I have for you guys. It's called the 3k mini sessions blueprint, basically, if you are wanting to run profitable mini sessions this year, this spring. First of all, it's not too early to start thinking about it. In fact, you should be thinking about your spring minis already, because spring is going to come way faster than you think. And so I created this blueprint for you guys to walk you through the steps that you need to make either your first $3,000 on a single set of minis or maybe you've done these before, but you've never made more than $3,000 in one set of them. And so this blueprint, the three key minis blueprint, we'll walk you through what you need to do. And so now is a really great time to download it again, it's completely free, download it really dive in so that you are ahead of the game for your spring minis. So to download that you can find the link in the show notes or if you want to type it in, it's Rebecca rice photo.com/ 3k Dash minis the number three the letter K dash minis. So go grab that blueprint. I know it's gonna be so helpful for you. Okay, so let me tell you guys a little bit about what September looked like in our lives this past year. For those that don't know, I have a five year old daughter and a almost four year old son, he'll be four here in just a couple weeks. And all of last year literally like starting in January 1 several months, we were on this journey to potty train our son. And our daughter was the kind of person that she potty trained so easy literally like overnight. One day, she just decided she was done with diapers and never had an accident. And of course me and my husband were like, Oh my gosh, we're the best parents ever. And then we had our son who whose journey was not like that. And don't worry, this is not a podcast about potty training or kids. But this is a piece of the story for us. We had a very difficult challenging time potty training him he just the kind of kid that doesn't want to miss anything and doesn't care if he's messy. And it was just very, very challenging for us. And so this was not like you know, those three day potty training methods that did not work for us. Our potty training journey was several months long. So we started in January and went on and off for a very long time. And then in September, it all kind of came to a head because at that point, he needed to be fully potty trained to go to any school. If you wanted to go to school with my daughter or go to a preschool every place required him to be potty trained, which that's normal for like a three year old class. And so I guess I was hopeful that over the summer he would just like get it it would click and then it would be fine and we wouldn't have to worry about it. And that's not what happened and so, come September when schools are starting
If we had the rude awakening that my son now could not go to any sort of childcare at three years old that we could find, because he was not fully potty trained. Now, he was like part of the way there but still not fully potty trained. So all of a sudden, I went into like potty training boot camp with him and went into this very intense process of Listen kid, like, you have to figure it out. And we went to Target, we bought a bunch of like really big toys and put them out, we like displayed them on our kitchen countertop so that he could see them. And like, every time that he went to the potty all by himself, he got a big toy, and you know, all the things, we did everything. And so all that to say, I was basically following my son around for the entire month of September, watching to make sure that he didn't like poop or pee on the floor. And if you've never potty trained a difficult kid like that, it is the most emotionally and physically exhausting thing I've ever done in my life. Like I would take newborn sleepless nights over that any day, it was literally horrible. And I felt like a failure of a mom, because my kid couldn't get it. And I was frustrated with him. But I couldn't be frustrated with him because he couldn't help it. And it was just, it was a very, very challenging time. So basically all of September, I could do very little work because I literally had to watch this kid like a hawk, I couldn't take my eyes off him. Because the minute that I did, of course, he would have an accident or the minute that I put a pull up on him, he would have an accident. And it was really challenging. And so it got to the place where I like kind of accepted that this was what my life was going to look like until he figured it out until it clicked. And so for him, it took literally the entire month of September for it to like fully click. And thankfully, by the end of the month, he was there. Like, I can probably say I now have a fully trained, potty trained kid. But it took us a lot to get there. And so I had really big goals for q4 of 2022. I, like we're wrapping things up, I was supposed to launch a course, of course, it's busy season and my associate team like it was just full on crazy. And it was very hard for me knowing that I could literally only do so much in the business that like I wasn't going to hit those goals. And it was it was a really hard place to be. And so I don't know what life looks like for you. But I wanted to kind of record this episode. And like I said, I almost didn't even share it. Because like, first of all, who wants to hear about our woes of potty training. But also, you know, I did feel like a failure of a mom that like I could not potty train my kid it was taking us forever. And it was just this really long process. And so it was, it was hard for me to like share this. But I think that, you know, the value of the lessons we learned in that season of like what to do when something in life happens and prevents you from going all in in your business. Like we learned so much in that season that I think that's valuable. And I wanted to share with you guys because your season might look different, you know, maybe you're not potty training a kid for an entire month. But maybe like something happens with your health and you're not able to work or maybe there's a family emergency and something's going on. And you need to be present with your family. And you're not able to put 110% into your business. And so when those seasons of life happen, and I say when not if because life just happens and it's often unpredictable. I want you to have something to come fall back on to know like, oh yeah, Rebecca did this. And she gave me a blueprint of what I should do in this season. So even if this is like an episode that you save, and you come back to when that time comes like I'm totally cool with that. But I wanted to share some really practical things of what we did when I couldn't work for a whole month, unexpectedly. So this is what that kind of looks like. I think the first step when life happens is to be realistic with what your time and your energy looks like. And so for me, I knew, because I had to follow this kid around for all day, every day, there was very limited things that I could do. I couldn't sit down at my computer for an extended amount of time because I couldn't take my eyes off of him. So I knew that my time was limited that I could work but also my energy because following him around like that is draining like very draining, because I couldn't like I had to be on 100% of the time while he was awake. There was no time that I could check out there was no time that I could just you know be chill, whatever. And so I knew my energy was very low. So the minute he fell asleep, I was passed out because I was so exhausted.
And, and so I think the first step was recognizing what my time and energy looked like to know, okay, here's what I have leftover, how much of that realistically can go towards the business. And then the next step was that I evaluated what it was that I was doing to find the bare minimum. So for you, I suggest you to write out literally everything that you do in your business on a normal, you know, week or months. And then circle the things that have to be done like, absolutely have to be done. And I want you to think like a bare minimum, obviously, there's a lot of stuff that you're like, oh, yeah, that has to be done. But if you really think about it, what is the short term requirement from you. And so things like blogging will probably go out the window in those seasons, do I believe in blogging? 1,000%. I think blogging is awesome. It is so vital in a business. But it's a long term game. And when you're like in an emergency situation, that is the first thing to go probably, because if you're not blogging, it's not going to be the end of the world, things like delivering your clients galleries, that you cannot throw out the window that has to be done. And so that's one of those like bare minimum things that you have to make sure get done keeping up with your bookkeeping, that is probably not a bare minimum thing. Bookkeeping is the kind of thing that you can update later. I like keeping my books up to date, like squeaky clean, every single week, I have my CPAs are in there. In my book, I have a bookkeeper, that she's in there, like updating everything every single week, because I like to know my most updated numbers, but in the event of like an emergency. And like I said, I don't do my books anymore. But I loved bookkeeping. So I did my books for a long time. In an event of emergency, it's okay to let that slip, because really, it's not absolutely vital until tax season. And so as long as you're not like having an emergency during tax season, then your books can slip a little bit. So you've got to think through what are the things that are absolutely vital to keeping the doors open, like delivering galleries to clients? And what are the things that you can let slip for a short amount of time, depending on how long your season is? That it's going to be okay, if it doesn't happen. And so what that looks like for me, and this one was a hard one, because it affected you guys where I usually like batch record, my podcasts and my YouTube episodes. And there was during that month of September, we ran out of episodes, and that was the month that I was like, Yeah, September, I'm gonna, you know, batch my episodes. And it just couldn't happen. I could not sit down and record a bunch of podcasts, I couldn't even record one podcast, I could not sit down and film one YouTube video. And if you watched last week's YouTube episode, where I talked all about, like planning out your q1 and what that looks like, which I highly suggest doing some quarterly planning. This is like what to do when your plan is not going to, like it's not gonna happen. And so I was really frustrated. And I remember like Vox and cat, who is my integrator, she's like my left hand in the business, she, this business probably would not function without her. And so I was like, in tears, like, so overwhelmed. And I knew that we ran out of podcasts, we ran out of YouTube videos, and like, I was supposed to record more and I was like, God, it's just not gonna happen. I don't have time. I don't have energy. And she will never forget. She was like, Rebecca, do you want to just like take a couple weeks off from you know, content. And I was like, Can
I'm the business owner, and I was asking cat permission if I could just pause putting out new content. And she was like, yeah, yeah, you can. And it was silly. I didn't have to ask her for permission. But it was like one of those things that I was like, Oh, that can't slip. I have to continue to put out podcasts and YouTube's because like that's serving my students that serving you guys. And she gave me permission to just pause because it just was not I didn't have it in me to do that. And so I don't know if you guys remember, but in September, we actually had two weeks where one week we did like a roundup of our like most popular podcast episodes, and then the next week was a roundup of our most popular YouTube videos. So we're still serving you guys, but it looks really different than usual. And that was why was I just did not have the capacity to sit down and record a YouTube video or record a podcast episode and that was really really hard for me to like set that up.
sight and be like, No, that's not a bare minimum. But in that season, something had to give. And so there were some things that I absolutely still had to do. And there were some things that I so wanted to do, but knew that realistically, I could not do it. And so when you're in a season like that a season of emergency, a season of having to really adjust your schedule, and how much energy you put into your business, that is going to be an exercise, that's going to be really hard, but so vital to say, like, what is the absolute bare minimum in my business, and those are the things that I'm going to take care of. So the next thing I have to mark for you, the next thing really practically that you can do in that season is to re evaluate your goals. So I mentioned like, you know, we have our quarterly plan, like last week's up YouTube episode, what like q1 planning looks like, I had a plan for the rest of the year for q4. And September was like the end of q3. So it made a huge impact in what everything was going to look like. And I knew, as we were like two weeks in two September, and the potty training saga, and I knew that this could go I didn't know how long it was gonna go on for Thankfully, it was only two more weeks. But still, I remember, like taking a look at our goals. And I was like, dang, it's not going to happen. Like the big goals that we had set out for this year, our yearly revenue, things, we wanted to put out all the things, it was not going to happen. And that was crushing to me. I was like, Oh my gosh, I worked so hard all year. And q4 was supposed to be like the big quarter. But here I am one month behind, where there was stuff that I was supposed to prep and all the things I was supposed to film an entire course in September, and I wasn't able to. It was supposed to launch in October, and there was just so many things that we're supposed to do. And it like wasn't going to happen. And so I had to come to a place that I decided, you know, what, what are my priorities here? Is it more important to film a course push myself to my absolute limits, because I'd have to film it at night while my son was sleeping, and launch this thing. Or have a kid that poops in the potty, like, what is more important in this season. And I'm really proud of myself because I reevaluated and I said okay, I know we're not going to hit our goals. And I'm an Enneagram three, so I'm all about goals. And I was like you know what, that's not the most important thing right now. And that was a huge, like, personal growth moment for me was to recognize like what was in front of me right now. And I wanted to spend that month instead of wallowing in the goals I wasn't going to hit. I wanted to spend it with intentional time with my son, that it was very long days and very challenging. Just following him around and all the things but there was also good that came out of that season where I got to spend really close one on one time with my son that I probably wouldn't have gotten, you know, any other way. And so, you know, just taking a look at my goals to say like, what, what does this look like and reevaluating and deciding how I needed to pivot. That was like vital in this season. And so we pivoted hard, we changed our plans. And the course that we were gonna launch in October is now a cute one project. So those of you listening, there's something coming
in the next few months, so you can be excited and be on the lookout for that. That yes, it was supposed to launch last year, but it's coming finally, hopefully, in the next few months. As long as life doesn't happen again, you never know. So anyway, like you want to ask yourself in those seasons, how do you need to pivot for your current season? What is that look like? If you were supposed to have this huge like fall? Maybe we're thinking in the fall a huge fall campaign and book out all these minis and stuff and all of a sudden life happens. And you're not able to do that. What does your pivot need to look like? How can you reevaluate your goals, decide what your priorities need to be in that season, and go from there. And I know that can be really hard to take a step back and know that you're not getting to, like I said hit those big, like goals that you were wanting to hit. But it's okay, that leads into the last thing that I wanted to share was in a season when life just happens. I think the most important thing is to give yourself grace to give yourself the permission to step back and to be where you need to be. That's the beauty of owning our own business is that we have the freedom to decide where
We, you know, spend our energy and our time and it was scary in this season because I like my business is the sole it well, not the sole anymore my husband's business is doing great. Now I'm so used to saying it's the sole income provider. It's not, but it's the main income provider for our family. And so that can be like terrifying of like, what happens if this this thing like burns to the ground. But thankfully, I like had already had some things in place, that I had an amazing team that was able to really take the things that we had and continue serving you guys. Well, that most of you probably didn't even notice that I was gone in September, because my team was able to sustain that. And so I was just so grateful that I had that in place. But I know that a lot of you may not have a team in place. And there was a long time in my business when I was the only one I was the solopreneur. And so like I said, in those seasons, like you have to give yourself grace to say like, it's okay to not be thriving and doing all the things and whatever. And it can be so easy to compare it to others on social media. And I was frustrated because you know, in September, I was seeing friends, launching big things and doing exciting stuff. And I was following around a toddler naked while he was you know, making sure he didn't poop on the floor. And so, like, it can be so easy to compare yourself and be frustrated. But just giving yourself grace in that season, to just be where you need to be, is like the most important thing. And so if you take nothing from this episode, take the fact that when life happens, to give yourself the grace, to just put first things first and be with the people that you need to be with, take care of yourself, and everything's gonna be okay, the season won't last forever, it will come to an end. And when it does, then you can pick yourself up off the ground, dust yourself off, and go forward, you know, with confidence that the next season will be better. So yeah, there you have it. I am like, glad I'm really glad. And I'm kind of surprised that I share that season with you guys. But I feel like it's gonna help somebody, whether that's your current season where you're finding yourself in a place where life is just happening, and you're not able to control it, and it's throwing you in a spiral. Or maybe things are great right now. But one day, you're gonna hit a spot where life happens, and you're gonna need a plan for what to do. Hopefully, this episode is one that is helpful for you in that season. And really just encouraging that, like, life happens to everybody. And this season, as hard as it may be will come to an end. Like I never thought I was like as my son ever gonna be fully potty trained. He is He is and life is good right now. And you know, I'm sure we're gonna face our you know, every season of parenting has its own challenges. And when it's not potty training, it's going to be some teenager thing. And like we'll get there but just be encouraged that like every, you know, hard season comes to an end and there will be a better season after that. So there you have it guys, I hope this episode is helpful for you. Be sure to save it like I said for the future one day when you do need it. And yeah, if you have any questions at all or wanting to like chat through stuff, I'm an open book I'm always available so you can find me on Instagram at Rebecca rice photography, feel free to shoot me a DM there. I mentioned that I have a team, but it's really me in my DMs my team does not DM other people. So yeah, if you have any questions or whatever, I'd love to help with that. We'll go ahead and sign off today and we'll see you back in a couple weeks with another great episode. Bye guys.
