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Scaling Your Business - Do you Always Have to Scale Your Business Up? Episode 45
55 Plays1 year ago
If you're in the business world, whether you're a photographer, shop owner, or work in the corporate world, you know about scaling a business. Scaling your business is the act of looking forward, deciding where you want your business to be, and taking the necessary steps to get there. Oftentimes, the idea among most entrepreneurs, is to scale their business UP, by growing and expanding, usually for the purpose of a higher income. While we LOVE talking about growth, hustle, and encourage you to expand your business and life, today we explored what it can look like to actually scale your business DOWN, or even maintain where your business is right now. We explore how it can be a bad idea to scale up before your business is ready, or how scaling your business down in some areas, actually scales it UP in other areas! And yes, we cover all of this in a breezy 30 minute episode.
We hope today's episode encourages you to chase what's best for your business, and reminds you that you get out of life what you put into it!
See you next week!
XO, Beth and Ayla
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Transcript
Scaling Up vs. Scaling Down
00:00:00
Speaker
Okay. Business owners, you are probably very familiar with the phrase or concept of scaling your business up. If you're not so sure what that is or what it looks like, basically scaling your business is the process of looking forward at where you want your business to be and taking the necessary steps to accomplish it. It's growing your business. Do you want to make six figures? Yes. Okay. Well then what needs to happen to accomplish that goal? You'll likely devise how to increase sales, maybe grow into a larger workspace, hire employees, et cetera.
00:00:28
Speaker
We can make episode after episode about how to scale your business up, but today we're actually going to be talking about scaling down. Did you know that contrary to popular belief, your business does not always have to grow upwards. That's right. While we love talking about hustle growth and dreaming big over here, we think it's extremely important to dive into the concept of how to scale your business, whether that's up or down or something in between your business that you're running is completely unique to you.
00:00:55
Speaker
Yes. Okay. Honestly, I'm fired up for this. So let's just play the song and get into it. Woo.
Podcast Introduction
00:01:01
Speaker
Welcome to the Art of Intention podcast with Beth and Ayla. Two best friends turn creative entrepreneurs. This is a place for us to discuss everything business friendships and faith and occasionally more. We're so excited for today's episode. We think you're going to love it. Stay tuned.
Small Business Perspective
00:01:20
Speaker
Okay, so scaling a business. Truthfully, this is still a concept I'm learning about and growing into. This may sound sort of surprising since I'm currently a small business owner and I aspire to own more businesses. I hate big business culture. Like, does that make sense? I get it. I get it. I really do.
00:01:41
Speaker
Yeah, so I used to think I wasn't very good at topics like scaling your business, projecting your numbers, getting investors, like big business talk. And there's topics I'll probably never enjoy. You cannot pay me to care about investors, investments.
00:01:55
Speaker
corporate sales stuff like that it's like just not about it but i've been thinking about scaling a lot this year and i'm really really excited to talk about that it's not always scaling up but actually pausing or sometimes scaling down because that's not usually the goal for business
00:02:13
Speaker
but it should be sometimes, so.
Daily Scaling Decisions
00:02:15
Speaker
Yeah, because I think people have to realize from scaling down in one area means your scaling is so that you can scale up in another area. But anyways, absolutely. I really think this is something that applies to every single business owner out there, at least at one point. Grocery stores, tech companies, food service, photography, literally every entrepreneur out there has decided like every single day how they want to scale their business. They make decisions that apply to that.
00:02:40
Speaker
Yeah. Like we sort of covered in the intro, scaling your business is taking tangible and purposeful steps to push your business in a certain direction. Usually it's for growth and usually it's for the purpose of growing your income. Let's be real. Yeah.
00:02:54
Speaker
No one's trying to be busier for free. It's trying to grow your income or setting your own hours in the best way possible. Is your goal as an entrepreneur to only work 20-hour work weeks? That's a good goal. You'd probably be spending a few years scaling your business to be self-sufficient through investors, employees, et cetera. If you do a couple of years of scaling for that goal of a 20-hour work week.
00:03:17
Speaker
Yeah, and sometimes scaling your business happens organically. Take photography. One day you're a one person show running everything from shooting events to editing to your finances, everything. And after your first year, you may hire a bookkeeper to kind of focus on that or you may hire an editor or
00:03:33
Speaker
Maybe you realize you're starting to get inquiries for the same date and you need to hire an associate.
Organic Scaling Strategies
00:03:39
Speaker
Then you've assembled a solid team of second shooters so you can book even more and offer even more packages and you hire a social media manager. The list goes on and a couple of years down the road, you look nothing like you did a few years before. You've scaled your small photography business into a high volume professional team and now you can provide your clients with a luxury service. Maybe you didn't plan for this, but it happened naturally.
00:04:02
Speaker
I listened to a handful of photography and entrepreneurship, like podcasts. And when I initially listened to episodes like how to know when to scale up your business or 10 ways to scale up your business, I truly didn't think that applied to me as a photo editor. Like what I do is pretty cut and dry and simple, if you keep it simple. Because oh, was I so, so wrong. There's so much that I could be doing to grow my business if I wanted to. And so much I'm kind of starting to do as of this year. When you start looking, you get out of your business what you put into it.
00:04:31
Speaker
It can stay wherever you want or it can go wherever you want depending on
00:04:35
Speaker
how much you want to sow into it, and sometimes how much money you want to throw back into it. When you start looking at corporate businesses such as big tech or big retail, scaling those kinds of businesses, I would guess, is a lot more structured and a lot less Wild West than solar entrepreneurship can be. Apple, do you think Apple's like, gee, I wonder where we want to go next year? They know. Absolutely. Jeff Bezos, do you think he
00:05:02
Speaker
He knows what things are going to look like next year. He knows how he wants to scale. There's more of a structure there, I guess, where being you yourself in your home office can be crazy. I love that more personally, and really deciding how you want to scale up, down, or in between.
00:05:20
Speaker
I can't speak much for every single business, but I get so inspired by talking about how photographers, coffee shop owners, even hair makeup artists, anybody can scale their businesses up or down. Because I think part of the freedom of being a small single entrepreneur is like you could just there's so many directions you can go.
00:05:37
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. That's been my experience largely. Scaling up and down, I'm usually always trying to scale up for me. That's just how it's happened to work out for me. That's the direction I've just been going. But yeah, I've just had to experiment over the years. Sometimes I'll try something and it hasn't worked out. I've been through a couple different social media coordinators and they haven't always worked out. So I've scaled up in that way, but then scaled back down.
00:06:01
Speaker
I'll sometimes see what other people are doing and I'll see if I can apply it to myself or do
Dangers of Rapid Scaling
00:06:06
Speaker
it in a certain way. So like you said, in contrast to how like a big corporate company would do it or a restaurant or something maybe, there's a lot of freedom and experimentation in something that's more entrepreneurial like this.
00:06:20
Speaker
And I think having the grace to be able to push boundaries and be flexible and go either way is important. Because you also don't want to get yourself in trouble by scaling and going, if I take this step and it doesn't work out, I can't go back. No, you can. You can come back, take a step back to the square behind you, reorient yourself, and go in a different direction. Maybe you try it again or maybe you go to the left or to the right or something different.
00:06:41
Speaker
Yeah, so that's kind of our crash course on scaling. I recommend checking out so many podcasts that also talk about it. My favorites are the Heart and Hustle podcast. That should be a secret. They're amazing. Make Your Break with Jai Long and Passion Filled Purpose with Nathan Chansky. These are all kind of photography and small entrepreneurship based podcasts.
00:07:00
Speaker
that we'll talk about scaling more, probably better than I can. Incredibly intelligent and successful people. So are we, but I'm just saying they also talk about scaling. So if you're in that kind of zone, go check those out. But with that, the meat and the take for this episode is you do not always have to scale your business up.
00:07:21
Speaker
In fact, you can really hurt yourself if you try to scale up too quickly before you're ready.
Redefining Success
00:07:26
Speaker
Absolutely. And we know it seems contradictory as entrepreneurs to even consider that your business doesn't have to become like a big multi-million dollar business. It seems like every podcast or business speaker out there has all the tips for growing your business or making six, seven figures and how that's what makes you successful. And you know what? Guess what? Success in your business is up to you. That's just the end of it.
00:07:50
Speaker
Yep, I will scream this from the rooftops. Making six figures does not automatically make you a successful person. It just doesn't. I've worked for a six-figure company before in the past, and not to seem dramatic, but I don't think I would consider that company successful. Sure, they were successful financially. They had customers. They had clients. We'll probably continue to run for a very long time, so that might sound contradictory.
00:08:14
Speaker
I could have been successful financially had I continued working there, but unfortunately, there were many factors behind the scenes that made me deem it an unsuccessful company to me. Poor employee care, poor work environment. Actually, one of the company's biggest downfalls in my not so humble opinion was trying to scale up too fast. I didn't know what this was at the time because I was editing, but I just really didn't know much about business growing and growth and stuff like that.
00:08:41
Speaker
But that looking back, I think that was a huge fault going on there. In fact, out of the many jobs I've had, the ones where the owners are doing very, very well financially have been my least favorite companies to work for. And through that, I would consider them successful. That's so interesting. And it's hard because there are, you know, of course, everyone has their own definition of success. And for some people might purely just be money. But in reality, success does include happiness, quality of life,
00:09:07
Speaker
And just, it's just a more well-rounded than just money. And of course there's the age old saying that money doesn't buy you happiness, stuff like that. But that's really interesting that you had that experience with a company that was like really big and then.
00:09:22
Speaker
Yeah. Well, and it may be a hot take, but would I consider somebody like Jeff Bezos successful? Okay. Like, sure. One of the richest men in the world, but it's really unfortunate when you learn about what those employees, like what, um, Amazon employees go through. It's like, sure. He's a successful individual, but I wouldn't call it a very.
00:09:38
Speaker
It's guess it's touchy feely, and I use Amazon, so I'm not pretending like I don't, but I'm just saying I would find it more successful if there was good quality of life for the employees too, you know? Right. And we should clarify. We're not telling you that making money is bad, because I know this could very quickly look like we're saying, oh, if you make a lot of money really fast, you are not successful. You must have been neglecting another part of your life. Right.
Internal Processes Before Scaling
00:10:02
Speaker
Oh, absolutely not. That's not all we're saying. Absolutely not.
00:10:05
Speaker
Yeah, so I hope that's clear. Oh, yeah. And we'll get into money goals and what those will be. But one other quick story I wanted to tell about the company I did work for, I want to explain a bit more about why I thought they were scaling up too quickly. Because part of it was, for a brief bit there, it was me and the owner of this company working together. We were the only people who worked for this company.
00:10:28
Speaker
And I was pretty open about how the responsibilities I was taking on were new to me. Like I didn't have a lot of experience in it, but willing to grow, learn, all that good stuff. And I was getting trained by the owner and things would sometimes go well, but then something I heard a lot was the owner taking off saying, you know, I have meetings, I have to go. And I would quite literally be, which is fair. Like, you know, you're busy.
00:10:50
Speaker
This person was incredibly talented at business, like to a level that I don't even want to be because it scares me, incredibly, incredibly talented entrepreneur and business owner. But I was sat down and told quite literally in this wording many times, I can't sit here and worry about you because I need to be going and growing the company.
00:11:09
Speaker
Geez. And I didn't know much about business at the time. And I get that, you know, usually entrepreneurs aren't the most detail oriented. They have got these like big dreams that they want to go out and get and generally the ideas to hire like others to pick up the other work. I was fine with doing that, but something didn't sit right with me of you're in word processes aren't done. Like I'm struggling.
00:11:29
Speaker
in this position that probably should have three people on it. And other people did come and go. It was a little bit of a high turnover situation, but it was so interesting to me that it was, I can't worry about what's going on here because I need to go grow the company.
00:11:44
Speaker
It's like, well, why are you growing the company if what's working right here right now isn't working? What's here right now? You've got an employee that's struggling. You've got work that's too much for this one employee. Product isn't going out well the way that you want it to. Things aren't happening inward well enough. So why are you trying? And it was big ways to try to grow the company. It was big clients trying to be brought on. It was big investments trying to be made. It was big things.
00:12:09
Speaker
to go grow the company that will guarantee its success, but why are we doing that if the small processes aren't working? Yes. I think that's, and that's the main point right there. Because I think some people can kind of panic when you say like, oh, they were trying to, you know, give responsibility and go off and do their own thing. Like, yeah, that's a good, that's fine. It's that they had not yet taken care of stuff before moving on that needed to be taken care of the in-house stuff before trying to expand.
00:12:36
Speaker
Yeah, like it's all good to delegate and go hands off in a lot of areas of your business. But when it's an appropriate time, when it's a good time to scale. And yeah, I think those are just some of the dangers of trying to scale up too quickly.
00:12:49
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. So like you've been saying that scaling up too quickly can actually hurt you. It's a real thing. I'm going back to my photography analogy. Say you want to hire someone to edit your photos as a photographer. You want to scale your business up, hire an editor and book more shoots with time you save editing.
00:13:08
Speaker
Great, great goal, right? That's very good. So you find the perfect editor, hire them, boom, everything's great. But you didn't change your prices to compensate and reflect that you elevated your business to include an editor. Now you can't, you either can't pay your editor or you don't profit very much from the shoot you do.
00:13:27
Speaker
and that they edit it. Uh, properly scaling your business means you take care of those things and you kind of take those things into account. Also, I would say you shouldn't get an editor until you make sure your editing style is pretty solid. You know, you don't want to just be experimenting and kind of like to be unsure. There's lots of things you want to take care of before you're just like, Oh, I'm going to scale right away. I know eventually I need to do an editor, so I'm just going to hire everyone right now. Like that's not, obviously they should go without saying, but you know, that's not how that works.
00:13:54
Speaker
so maybe you're not ready to hire an
Scaling Down to Preserve Values
00:13:56
Speaker
editor because you want to raise your you want to first raise your prices in order to accommodate that service raising your prices shifts your business in a new direction with potentially new clientele and now maybe you're making what you wanted to make originally with when you thought you had to book more shoots and turns out you didn't even need to hire an editor you just needed to raise your prices
00:14:16
Speaker
So, it's all like you just have to kind of make sure stuff is taken care of because you don't know what direction it needs to go. And it'd be better to do stuff in the right order rather than kind of throwing things out there and then having to scale back or start over, lose money or panic. Yeah. Well, and like what you said, Beth, too, about how sometimes
00:14:34
Speaker
you may look at it as scaling down, but it's actually scaling up in another area. So say you decide to not hire an editor and you might feel defeated like, oh, this is backwards. But you raised your prices and now it turns out you don't even need that because you're making more of what you want to make without the extra work. And I love what you said earlier too about scaling your business organically. That's so good. For the first two years that I was editing, I focused on getting clients, just getting clients. And I was scaling that way. I wanted to build my client list.
00:15:03
Speaker
So kind of a lot of growth, but it was like the same thing. Like I just needed to do like the same thing a couple times to get a good client list. For a lot of 2023, I decided to kick it up a notch and really round up my client list so much to where I can actually hire an associate editor. I'm still playing around with what that'll look like. It hasn't happened yet, but I waited a good while before that was a possibility.
00:15:24
Speaker
And I went through many a busy season where, oh, another set of hands would have been oh, so good. It probably could have made past busy seasons a lot less stressful, but it didn't align with other goals I had for my business at the time. Uh, it wouldn't have lined with what I wanted to make. I wasn't ready to outsource in that way. Like I am now after another year of business. So.
00:15:43
Speaker
It's just taking time and really thinking through the decisions you're going to be making. Well, yeah, exactly. And with that, sometimes you may come to a point where you have been scaling your business up and up and up. And then when a new year in business rolls around, you set some new goals for it. And you realize that the best move for your business is actually to scale down. This could sometimes mean taking a pay cut, but gaining more time away from your desk. So maybe your quality of life is going up.
00:16:08
Speaker
It could also mean not pushing out so many products and deadlines because maybe you just feel like you're overworked. So there's so many ways that scaling down is a good thing. Yeah. Like I'll give an example that's actually not photography, but take coffee. For instance, I say this because my dream is to own a coffee shop and roastery. Awesome. Yeah.
00:16:26
Speaker
A great way to find success in that field, especially not just cafe owning, but coffee roasting, is to get your product into as many places as possible. Other coffee shops, boutiques, gift shops, that's kind of small businesses. The big boy would be chain grocery stores, like Safeway, or for my Canadians, Sobies. Just the Canadian. We also have Safeway, but then there's also Sobies.
00:16:50
Speaker
That would be a great way to scale your business up, getting your product into big chain stores. But let's think of those implications. So you've got your little setup. Now you have to produce and package a certain amount of product, maybe a lot of product. Do you have the space to be able to do that, to be able to make and package that amount of product? Do you need to hire a roaster or packager to be able to meet that demand because you can't do it all yourself?
00:17:13
Speaker
Do you have the supply chain that you want to be supplying those stores, the green coffee coming in that you're roasting? Do you even have that set up? Do you even want to be doing that at all? Do you even want to be selling to big chain at all? Do you even want your business to be going in that way? I've worked in some places where they do not sell their product to big chains because they can't meet the demand of larger businesses and they don't want to meet the demand.
00:17:36
Speaker
They know it can shift their small business into a large direction that they don't want it to take. And that's okay, even if it means a pay cut, in my opinion. Beth, I know you said usually.
00:17:47
Speaker
go for scaling and growing. And again, usually for growing income, I do too, but I also think it is really cool. Would businesses say like, I'm actually not going to go that direction because I'd lose other values in my business, even if it means a pay cut and still looking to increase income in other ways. But anyway, I always, that's just really inspiring whenever I see that. Um, cause you don't see that in big business a lot. Usually it's just.
00:18:09
Speaker
how can I be making the most at all times and how can I benefit the
Defining Business Goals
00:18:12
Speaker
most? Yeah, exactly. So in order to preserve what you love about your business, it might mean scaling down and making some sacrifices, but I think it's important to talk about. I agree. I think that it is inspiring and also wise to be able to do both and not have any specific judgment towards one way or the other. I think that scaling down means a bad thing.
00:18:36
Speaker
Everything you just said was perfect. And yes, I think it all just boils down to what you want from your business, what your main priorities are. You get as much out of your business as you put into it. I think another great way to make a point with scaling, especially when talking about your income, is to decide what you want to make and why. Do you want to make six figures? Okay, amazing. Why? Why do you want to do that?
00:19:00
Speaker
Is it because another photographer you know makes six figures or is it because that's the number of that society tells you is successful nowadays? Or is it because you have really done the math and calculated that that's the amount you need to meet your cost of living quality of life or that you have some big goals that you want that money for and you think you can handle that and you have a clear plan to have you make that amount of money without it overwhelming you or crashing your business?
00:19:27
Speaker
you would be so surprised by the number of entrepreneurs who jump into business ready to make their 100K, burn out, take a step back to consider what they really want. And that's just the reality for a lot of people. And ask yourself this, what's the minimum amount of money you want to make in order to cover yourself and your household? Let's say you need to make 40K to cover your base expenses. Please don't quote us on these numbers. This is just for the sake of examples, of course.
00:19:53
Speaker
I don't know everything, okay? We picked numbers, guys. Just examples, okay, yeah. Let's see. Exactly. Let's say you want to add on 50K for retirement or to buy a house one day, add in a little more income for fun things like travel, whatever, and you decide that actually 80K would give you an amazing quality of life financially.
00:20:14
Speaker
perfect, good goal and amazing quality of life because that number allows you more time away from your computer and with family or friends. It's not like so big that you would have to throw your whole life at it. Some women out there take a pay cut from 90 to a hundred K down to 30 or 40 because they've decided to focus on motherhood or you know, just their family in the home more than work. So scaling up or down is all up to you and it's based on what you want from your business.
00:20:40
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely.
Finding Core Business Motivations
00:20:41
Speaker
And that takes us perfectly into what I really wanted to pass along to all of you listening. Find your why. Like Beth said, if you want to make 100k, okay, why? Is that because, like she said, you've calculated out or because somebody else is making 100k?
00:20:55
Speaker
that sounds nice. What is your why? Now this isn't actually a very original thought. Most business podcasts out there will talk about your why, but I really wanted to put it in my own words today and make sure you guys got to hear it and that you guys just got to hear us hear it from us too, that it's so important. What is the why behind your business? Go back to the basics. What gets you out of bed to do it? Why do you want to make a certain amount yearly for it?
00:21:19
Speaker
Why do you want to work 20 or 80 hours a week? Find your why and then plaster it freaking everywhere. Like for me and your why changes all the time. Your why should change every year in business, maybe every month in business. Keep reflecting on why you're doing what you're doing and why you want to take it in a certain direction.
00:21:39
Speaker
For me, when I first started photo editing, my why was to make a little extra money. That was it. That's a good why, I'm saying. It was just a side hustle for me to make a little bit of money alongside a day job. All good. That is a perfectly good why. As I pursued it and grew my business, my why turned into actually helping photographers gain free time, especially time to spend with their children and families.
00:22:02
Speaker
I work for a lot of mothers and I realized I had such a soft spot when I heard that like, oh, I can go shoot. I could do the creative part that I love, but then I'm not locked away in my office editing. I can hang out with my kids. That was like, I'll actually, not like favor, but I'll continue to seek out.
00:22:19
Speaker
mothers who are, I mean, fathers too, but usually women are the ones who approach me, but like mothers, cause I have such a soft spot. So that was a why, why I kept doing it. And I love what I'm working on a wedding shot by someone who's a mom or going to be a mom. Cause it just, that's gets me fired up. And that's what I really like now in 2024, that's still a big part of my wife, but going into this year,
00:22:41
Speaker
talking about financial goals, I've decided I'm going to get super open here. I've decided I want to try to make 40K this year. I still don't know what I made in 2023, so we'll see what that was and see, but I'm like 40K. That's my why. I'll also say I do work a date job, like a part-time job alongside editing. There's other numbers, but for my business, that's what I want to do. Why do I want to make that?
00:23:04
Speaker
to help sustain my household, to bring an elevated experience to my photographers, to establish a reliable editing team that provides quality service to my photographers while maintaining adequate time with friends and family. That's my goal. That's why. And so it's totally good to have my goals. If you're like one million, baby, this is the year my company makes a million. Awesome. Why? Always have a why beyond just like, because that would be cool. Cause it would be super cool, but you know,
00:23:32
Speaker
When you're working 24 hours a day and you want to give it all up, your why should be right there for you to refer back to. Absolutely. Oh my gosh. I love that. And I love how you laid that out and you made that very clear. That was perfect. I would say that one of the things that I love when Ayla was sharing that she knows other people talk about this, other podcasts talk about find your why, but she wanted to make sure that we talk about it today and that she shares her view on it.
00:23:58
Speaker
And I agree, I think that's so important because there's no shortcuts for this. And I think that's something I made the mistake on for a long time in my business. I was kind of like, oh, well, I can just do everything my own way. And that's true. But it's really important to listen to people who are wiser and more experienced than you. And I think knowing that other people, because I didn't want to find my why, like, I had a why, but I didn't really focus on it. And it was kind of just like, it doesn't really matter though. Like, my why doesn't matter.
00:24:26
Speaker
But it does matter a lot more when you want to keep yourself organized and growing in a steady direction and when you have big decisions to make with your business. So anyways, um, my why for me, if people are interested for me, my why started as, um, also I always would say I always have a money. Why? Like I definitely want to always be making money. I want to be, I want to have financial freedom. I want to, um, make more money than my family made. Just, you know, I just,
00:24:55
Speaker
To me, I would like to be very financially free and I want to also provide financial freedom for other people as well. That's always a why behind what I do. It's so funny how entrepreneurs feel like they have to explain that they want to make money. It's like, I don't want to do this for free just because I love what I do. Exactly.
00:25:12
Speaker
And kind of with that, I want to continue to do what I love to do. So I want financial freedom, which leads to time freedom. And I want to be able to do what I love and have just freedom to pursue ideas. I've always been such an idea person. I have a thousand ideas. I have ideas for inventions and for businesses and companies, and I want to be able to pursue them.
00:25:33
Speaker
And so just kind of have, I just want freedom. Like for me, this job and money is about freedom. Um, and then along with that, a little side, like why for specifically photography, um, this was very much an influence where I first started was because an Ayla and I talked about this in an earlier episode about self confidence. Um, I gained a lot of self confidence through photos being taken of me and like just kind of seeing myself in a new light. And I've always been passionate about helping other people with that same thing.
00:26:03
Speaker
I love people being able to, one, it preserves memories, and I think that's endlessly precious. Being able to have photos of your loved ones, I think that's going to be important forever. It's something you can pass around for generations, and when you're gone, photos are going to be the only thing left of you. Left of you yourself. You may have your possessions here, but you, that's all that's left of you and what you still look like. I told Chris that a couple weeks ago, I'll make him take pictures with me, just selfies, and he's never really about it. I told him because I thought of you.
00:26:31
Speaker
because you are so passionate about this. It is on your page about like that preservation of memory, but I wanted to take a picture with him and he was like huffing about it. And I was like, Chris, if you die tomorrow, uh, I only have like our wedding pictures and our engagement ones. I don't have any, like, I was like, I don't have any recent ones of you. I'll remember what you looked like when we got married, but not right now this day. And he was like, geez, that's a nice thought to have. And I was like, listen, you know, so anyway, I love that. Well, and it's, yeah, and it's about preserving memories. If you're happy, I believe if you're happy,
00:27:01
Speaker
There's kind of a conflicting thing, but I believe if you're happy in a moment, you should take a picture because later it can bring back that same joy. Don't have your phone out that whole time. You have to live in the moment, but you know, it brings back the joy of that. Okay. Sorry. So that's a big, all of that is a big Y for me. Um, yeah, anyways, but all right guys.
00:27:19
Speaker
Finding and searching for your why for your business is beyond crucial. It's the catalyst for figuring out how you want to scale your business and if scaling your business up is the right thing for you. Or maybe your why will push you to actually scale down and your why may change over time. Like Ayla said, this is why it's important to reflect on your business's monthly, quarterly, yearly, and to continue to know why you decided to be an entrepreneur and why you decided to start your business. It also can help re rekindle that passion you have for what you do.
00:27:49
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Like when the burnout inevitably comes, there's some times during busy season, I'm like, I do say like, why did I do this? Like, and when taxes come around, I'm like, I could have just been an employee. I could have just, my taxes could have just taken five minutes and that would have been it. Sometimes that's when your Y comes in handy. Then you remember, Oh, but I get to do this, this, and this, this part's not so bad. Oh, all of that actually got me so fired up. I love this stuff. I love small business. Like I said, I just love the creativity.
00:28:19
Speaker
the kind of wildness of it and just like all the directions people can go and like Beth here and you get so excited about just different ideas and stuff. I just I love the freedom the small business has and love it. I want to hear everybody else's why. So listeners hear me out. I think I can speak for Beth here too when I say we want to know your why too.
00:28:37
Speaker
I know we have got some entrepreneurs, small business owners, photographers on here. We know you're here and we know you're following our socials. So right now I want you to head to our Instagram at Art of Intention podcast. Go to today's episode post and tell us your why in the comments for your business. Or if you're not a business owner yet or aspiring, what's your why every day for when you wake up? If you're a mother, what's your why that gets you through the day? We just want to hear about it. Why do you do it? Why do you love it? Everything. We want to really chat with you guys about this one.
00:29:07
Speaker
Absolutely. And after that, you can leave us your five star rating on Spotify or Apple podcasts and a review on why you love Art of Intention Podcasts so much. If you have something in your life you're passionate about and want to talk about it on the podcast with us, you can submit a guest request via email at art of intention podcast at gmail.com or submit a topic request as well the same way. And then you can check back next week for another episode because we'll be here every single week, every Tuesday. Love it.
00:30:00
Speaker
See you then! Bye! Bye!