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 droney podcast. I'm your host, Rebecca rice. And today, we're talking all about what does freedom look like for you? This conversation is one that really stems from an Instagram story that I had posted a while back, I turned it into a real so if you want to go find it, you can say it stemmed from an Instagram story. And I wanted to continue the conversation. So here we are. Now before we get too far, I wanted to let you know about something super exciting happening right now. If you're listening live, if you're not listening live, so sorry, you're probably missed it. But those of you that are listening live, or at least sometime during the week, we have something so exciting happening right now. And that is my profitable mini sessions course 2.0 PMC 2.0. is open right now, the doors opening closed throughout the year. And if you're wanting to level up your spring mini sessions game, maybe for the first time have fully booked spring minis or maybe you've done minis in the past, and you're ready to take them to the next level and really maximize your time and maximize your profit. Now is the time to enroll in this course, it is literally game changing for so many photographers, and I love reading everybody's success stories and everything. It's so amazing. And so when I say this course works, and this framework works not only for me, but for literally hundreds of photographers, I mean it and so if you are not a member of PMC, 2.0, now's your chance to get in the doors are open and it's 50% off. So it's like a double whammy. The doors will close. So make sure to hop in before you do they close on February 12. So get in while you can. And I can't wait to see you inside. Okay, so now let's get into the meat of this episode. The way this idea I guess kind of came about is, as you know, we came into the new year I like to pick a word of the year. And last year, my word of the year was thrive. I wanted to create a life and you know, use my business to create a lifestyle that myself and my family could thrive in and not just survive the day to day I wanted to feel like we were truly thriving in our lives, not just in our business, but our day to day life as you know, a mom and a business owner and things like that. So, throughout all of last year, I put a huge emphasis on creating a life of freedom for myself and for my family and discovering what the best version of myself looked like. And what I found is I really enjoy a slow paced life. And you know, this episode is called What does freedom look like for you? What I found is for me, Freedom looked like getting to homeschool my kids, we do a hybrid homeschool. So three days a week they're at school two days a week they're at home and we get to homeschool. Freedom to me looks like getting to bake and not just like the kind of cookies that you get from the store and pop them in the oven for 15 minutes. But like bake from scratch, I found that I love baking. I love baking cookies and breads and things like that, that take a lot of time. For me freedom looks like reading a lot like having the time and the space to be able to read last year I finished 52 books in the year. And that was while doing basically zero reading for about six months out of the year because I just got over it and sucked at it. It was so funny. So I read 52 books pretty much in half the year. The second half if you're wondering, but you know that's what freedom looked like in my life. And so for this year 2023 I decided that my word for the year is simple. I want to enjoy the simple life that I have come to love. And it's so funny because as I talk to you so my friend
things about it and just others in the industry, I feel like this simple life that I built is really boring that most people from the outside would look at it. And in my opinion, they would be like, Oh my gosh, why do I care that you're sitting, watching your kids play outside while you read a book? Why do I care that you're baking bread, and it takes you hours to make and, you know, you take a nap every day. Like, to me, I feel like that stuff sounds boring. But what I found is actually, you know, in the age of the hustle culture, more and more people in our industry, even women outside of our industry, are finding that simple life to be one that they're like, Man, I wish I could have that. And so I've been sharing more about what my simple life looks like, we have the freedom to travel when we want, we have the freedom to, you know, take things slow and not have anything we have to do urgently, most days out of the week. So we get to, you know, follow our own rhythm. And we don't have like a set schedule, aside from you know, actual school days where I'm not homeschooling, my kids are at school that has a schedule. But you know, for the most part, I that simple life of getting to move slowly and intentionally doing the things that I love. That is, you know, what I'm really hoping to do this year. And so I started talking about that on my Instagram stories, and it's, you know, sparked a conversation with so many people. And the beautiful thing I think about all of this is that you, as a business owner, get to choose what freedom looks like for you. And freedom looks different for everybody. Not everybody wants to sit and read or bake it to them, that sounds terrible. But maybe freedom for you is getting to take a long bath or getting to I don't know, if you'd like to draw or whatever, there are so many things that you could do outside of business to keep yourself healthy. And, you know, I think just this idea of choosing your freedom is so important, because, you know, we as business owners, and maybe I'll speak for myself, I don't want to speak for you or anybody else. But for myself. It I love working. I love my business, I think that it's so fun, it doesn't feel like work. But I was like a chronic, I call myself a recovering workaholic. Because it got to the point that I was working all day, every day on business things because yes, I found it fun. But then it turned into, you know, my husband was like, Hey, can you turn off the business sprain for a little bit, and just like be here as my wife and as a mom. And I found that I wasn't balancing out things very well, because I was just all in on the business. And that's not super healthy. You know, I found that, that just other parts of my life were getting neglected, because I was all in and you know, my business was thriving, but my, my life was not thriving. And so that's when I made that change. And, you know, for you, you started your business, hopefully, you know, for some sort of flexibility. Maybe you started your business to, you know, be able to contribute to your family and all the things but you don't quit a nine to five job to work 24/7 on your own business. Like that doesn't make any sense. And so I did an episode at the end of last year, you can scroll back and find it all about how I was like creating very intentional boundaries throughout last year and what that looked like. But I guess all this to say my question to you is What does freedom look like for you? And, you know, I did a question box on my Instagram stories and reading through some of the responses was so beautiful, because freedom looks different for everybody. But every version of freedom is beautiful. And it was really cool, because I got to see, you know, everybody kind of a glimpse into everybody's version of freedom. And for some it was financial freedom. For some I read one that her version of freedom was being able to walk to the bus stop every day with her kids. And like, it's just so cool to think like what what is it that gives you life that brings you joy that you can do and you can allow yourself to do because, you know, the whole purpose I guess or the perks of running your own business is you get to design the life that you want. And so you get to structure your business in a way that serves you not so that you serve your business and you know do what, whatever it is that gives you life and so one of the things for me that I knew that I wanted when I would you know started working for myself is I wanted to take a nap every day. I love naps and
And I usually like it's hard for me to function without a nap. And so it's funny when I'm away at like conferences and stuff that I'm speaking at, I, people can tell around me when I start to hit the wall. They're like, Rebecca, is it naptime? I'm like, Yes. And so I go on a hunt for sour candy. Because that's literally what keeps me awake during I don't drink coffee. And so for me, it's our candy is what helps keep me awake through the nap time, if I know I'm not going to be able to nap. So if you see me at conferences, eating a sour candy, you know, I'm just trying to survive without my nap.
But the cool thing is, I get to structure my business hours so that I get to take my nap every day. So when I work, I only work a few days a week. But when I work, I were I stopped working at noon. So I work about eight to noon, I'm for sure a morning person. So ADM is like a great start time for me. And I stopped working at lunchtime. Sometimes it's like one, it depends on what we're doing. But I stopped working at lunchtime so that I can eat my lunch. And then I can take my nap. Because I know I will be worthless for the rest of the day, if I don't take the time to take a nap. And so I know I'm at my best when I take a nap. And so for me, that's one version of freedom is to be able to take an app every day. So I want you to ask yourself, What does freedom look like for you? If you know money was no object, if you could do anything you put your heart to? What would you do in your life? To bring joy every day to your life? To you know, bring satisfaction? What does freedom look like for you? And if you've never like really sat and chewed on that question, I encourage you to really sit on it for longer than just the length of this podcast. But really think on it. Maybe it takes you a couple days, or even a couple of weeks to be like, What does freedom look like for me? Once you discover what kind of things give you life and bring you joy? Then you get to look at your business and say how can I structure my business, to allow myself to have the freedom to do the things that bring me joy. And, you know, maybe it looks like setting your work hours so that you can take a nap every day. Or if you know that you want to walk your kids to the bus stop, then maybe you get up an hour before your kids to get some work done. So that you can take a break and go walk your kids to the bus stop. Maybe if you have a full time job and your your version of freedom looks like working for yourself and getting out of that full time job, then take a look at what needs to happen financially to get to that place and then start chipping away at that goal. Because what I can tell you is freedom is achievable. It's going to take some steps to get there, right? Especially if you have that full time job I was there, I had a full time job and photography was my side gig for several years before I eventually went full time in the business when my family moved out of state and all the things but especially if you have your full time job outside of your business, start taking a look at what would be required of you or of your business to be able to step away if that's what freedom looks like for you. And I think you might be pleasantly surprised that you look at the big number, you're like oh my gosh, I could never do that. But when you break it down to say, Okay, how many sessions would I have to book each week or each month to be able to hit that goal, then you know, what you need to work towards, and you can uplevel your marketing and things like that to be able to get in front of more people. So the roadmap to freedom is going to look different for everybody. But the first step is defining what freedom looks like for you to then be able to add in those things. And not everything is going to be as dramatic as you know, leaving your full time job. For some things. It could be just taking, you know, 10 or 15 minutes where you usually scroll through Instagram or Tiktok or whatever it is that you do, and putting your phone down and picking up that book. If you know I've talked to so many people that a lot of them. Their goal is to become a better reader this year that they want to read more books. What I can tell you is if you can commit to reading 15 minutes a day, every day for the whole year, the average person will finish at least 12 books in a whole year. If you've never finished 12 books in a whole year, man imagine just committing that 15 minutes a day and that's not a lot. I bet if you go into your screentime in your phone settings and look to see how long you spend on social media or email or YouTube or whatever consumes the most of your time. I bet you can replace even just a fraction of that time with sitting down to read a book and it'll fill up your tank. It will
Bring you life if you enjoy reading now, if you don't enjoy reading and you're like, No, I will not read. You can take this concept and translate it into whatever it is that you do like but spending 15 minutes on something that brings you joy that will bring you more happiness in your life in the long run. So
I hope this episode is helpful for you that if you've never evaluated what freedom looks like in your life that hopefully you take the time to do so. If you want to chat through things, I would love to have a conversation about, you know this topic so you can find me on Instagram at Rebecca rice photography, shoot me a DM if you have any questions of like, how did we do this? Or what does this look like in my life or whatever? I would love to answer them seriously. I do a lot of you guys know I have a team of employees that do a lot of things in my business to help us run smoothly, but it really is me in my DMs. I'm the person that is replying there. So you never have to wonder like, oh, is this one of Rebecca's team members? No, it's me. I would love to chat through just this concept of freedom with you. So be sure to reach out there. And with that, we're gonna go ahead and close out for today. I am so thankful that you took the time in your day to listen and I'll see you back here in a couple weeks with another great episode. Bye guys.
