Hey guys. How's it going? Here's a little Pro tip. If you feel like you have not progressed in your business and possibly in your life, just hold on.
There's a pyramid of growth when your entrepreneur.
The first level is the “hobbyist” that you're learning.
You're educating yourself.
Pour yourself into your craft. Do every kind of Workshop that you need to do any kind. e-class you need to do education and knowledge is power.
The second level is the “amateur.”
You're getting some experience.
You have some people that already can sing your Praises you know some Basics- awesome!
You keep learning you keep growing. You keep striving.
If you're in that “professional” stage where you are full-time.
Making your income and making your livelihood from your craft. Congratulations. Your biggest fear is being overwhelmed because now people love your stuff and they want to talk to you -and you have to start thinking That's not the end. That's not the goal is to be a “professional.”
The goal is to duplicate yourself. The goal is to clone yourself by making systems and processes to train up someone else to take your business.
Automate it so that you don't have to be the person.
Because you will get burned out really quick.
Okay, if you're getting to that stage, there's another stage actually two more stages after this, after the “professional” stage.
Once you get some systems and processes that you can still be seen, you can still hang out. You can say "Hey," You can pass on your wisdom a little bit, and you become the “master”.
The “master” is the person that is seen occasionally. You do your thing- you occasionally shoot, and you do the workshops, but your business is on autopilot.
At this point, you have little streams of income everywhere. You have little e-courses floating everywhere, and you have, merchandise stores floating everywhere. You have Consulting, you have freelance, and you have a little passive income.
You have little things everywhere.
And so I know this personally when I was shooting 25 or 35 weddings a year, I was making money.
I was winning Awards. I was getting featured and all these different things, but it was killing my health.
It was killing my family, and I had to figure out and think outside the box and how I could still be creative.
How I could still make a living doing what I love? This is where my home studio came into play. There is where all these passive income streams and e- courses, and classes were birthed from.
I was so overwhelmed and people loved my stuff. I had to learn how to get out of that mentality or mindset that I had to do all the work. I have to do this all and I'm going to run myself into burnout mode. That's not good.
So I had to figure out a way that could still do what I love. I still do weddings on occasion for mentoring purposes and for coaching. And I'm still there. I'm still Consulting people in that way. I have people come over to the house and we do many of these mock weddings.
So I'm still doing the thing that I love to do and I'm very creative. But I have it on my own terms so that I'm not overwhelmed. I'm not sacrificing my family, every single weekend.
I'm not working 80 hours a week to do, all the stuff.
I had to learn how to go to the next level.
After the “master” level is the “icon” level.
And this is all from a talk that I saw on Facebook. So this is not original to me, but I think it's some great truths in here.
the icon level is the person that has a legacy already.
They already have 25 years in the “master” category. They've already done the “professional” category. They've already done “amateur” level. They have already done the “hobbyist” category.
They have worked through the years - 25 years, 30 years, or 40 Years of time.
They have put into the craft everything.
If you're two years in, you keep pushing.
If you're five years in, you keep pushing.
If you're ten years in 12 years in like me, 15 years, 20 years.
There are always levels. There are always levels to this.
There's always growth to be had and there's always knowledge to be gained.
So don't feel like, "Oh, man, I'm swamped." Well, then figure out a way to get out of that slump.
Go to the next level. That means you're leveling up if you get into a slump.
If you feel like you're hitting a wall and your feel overwhelmed, that's good.
That means you're leveling up.
So as an entrepreneur and as a business mom, for the last over a decade, I can tell you to learn to replicate yourself.
Learn to automate your business practices.
Learn to create people under you.
Pass on your skill sets so you can start delegating them, and you can start training.
That is where the master and the icon level come from.
So if you're still thinking "I have reached it." When are being booked 25-35 weddings a year- you're going to have burnout real quick.
Unless you have no kids, no family, and you can just sacrifice everything and pour into it-Awesome!
But if you have a family and you have a spouse, you have a partner- and you're trying to do that family thing.
You're going to have to figure out something else.
Because working every single week, 25-35 weddings a year- plus all the editing and the hours of editing till 4:00 or 5:00 in the morning is not practical for those that want a family.
So you have to learn how to have different levels and come in and out of these different levels.
Maybe you're in a season where you have to go back and learn some more skills.
You got to go all the way back to the beginning and go back to the "amateur", go back to the "hobbyist," I had to do that for my photo booth- I had to do that for graphic design.
I did do that for basic web design. I had to do that for being a successful social media manager.
I had to do that for video.
I had to go back to the Hobby level.
The last decade I had to just go back, learning more skills, learning more things, and then because of that, I've added all these skills sets to my palette.
Just because - it seems like I'm hitting a stone wall. I'm hitting a slump right now. Let me go back to the hobbyist. Let me learn. Let me grow in another area because I'm hitting a wall here.
But people are asking me to do this, but I don't know anything about this. So let me go learn that so I can go make money on that.
And so that's where all of these skill sets, come from.
And if you are hitting a slump on a skill, set, go back to the hobbyist level.
Go back to the learning level. And start practicing adding more skillsets.
That way you can be an unstoppable force that you are literally asked to do, whatever.
You have People- in the training levels, just like me right now. I'm literally doing workshops and I'm telling people, "This is what you need to do for this...". "I've learned all of this."
So I'm duplicating myself so that I can have people doing the work and that I can just train and Coach.
So here's a little training tip Pro-tip for you!
I would love to see what you guys are doing this week.
Comment below your Instagram, your TikTok or whatever you are watching this love to connect with you.
Peace out guys.