The Emotional Power Behind Your Camera Lens with Marnie Clagett

Pat Miller: 00:00

I'm Pat Miller, and this is the professional photographer podcast. You are not making widgets. As a photographer, you're creating art. Art, oh, what a word. Some photographers, they make great looking masterpiece images and others do high volume great-looking images. Everyone has their own style of photography. But no matter your style, you're still an artist. And that means you're surrounded by others that create their art. And so many of them are just so dang good. You look at one of your heroes and think, I could never be that good. Or you look at one of your leading competitors and think, I could never charge that much. And sometimes you look at your upcoming client list and think, Where are all my sales coming from? Things can just be slow. When those types of things happen, you may think, maybe I'm just not good enough. That can hurt, and it can be lonely. But here's the thing. Imposter syndrome visits us all from time to time. And on today's episode, we're going to have a real conversation about what to do when it gets a hold of you. Where are you holding yourself back, both personally and professionally? What about pricing? How do you look at your heroes and compare your work to them in a healthy way? And we're gonna talk specifically about some things you can do to get rid of imposter syndrome and get back on track. If you are in need of a recharge and you're ready to get back on track, this episode is for you. Our guest, Marnie Clagett. She's raring to go, and she's next on The Professional Photographer Podcast. Marnie, welcome to The Professional Photographer Podcast. How are you today?

Marnie Clagett: 02:05

I am great, Pat. How are you?

Pat Miller: 02:08

I'm good. I'm glad you're here. Technology is biting me for some reason this morning, and the coffee needs to be extra strength. So we're getting caffeinated. We're talking about photography, and I'm really glad that you're on the show.

Marnie Clagett: 02:20

I'm excited to be here.

Pat Miller: 02:21

So, we get to talk about building a photography business. And it seems hard because you're selling art. And when you sell art, the price of art is relatively subjective. In theory, we could charge a fortune for all the work that we do. How come we don't?

Marnie Clagett: 02:39

Oh, absolutely. The first thing that pops in my head is we're afraid. Fear gets us every single time. We're afraid that our, clients are gonna reject us or reject our pricing. We are really afraid of the words, you want how much for that? And it offends us. You know? We get very personally involved with these things that we, we start to feel like, you know, oh, they're rejecting me. When actuality, they just can't afford what you're offering. Right? So, we get afraid of, you know, people rejecting us. We get afraid of the phone not ringing anymore. We were either we're gonna go out of business. We spiral. That's what we do.

Pat Miller: 03:22

It's hard to do because we're taking pictures. The photos that you're making are pieces of art that didn't exist until you were inspired to capture how they looked. This loop of being afraid seems like it would be a downward spiral on your creativity and your ability to sell photos that has to be crushing.

Marnie Clagett

Absolutely. It can be. I mean, if we don't watch ourselves and keep an eye on it, it could absolutely be paralyzing. You're right.

Pat Miller: 03:42

So pricing is a way that imposter syndrome and fear pops up. And just to make sure we're defining things, Imposter syndrome, basically feeling that you're not good enough and you're not worthy and you really shouldn't do this anymore. Is that the right way to think about it?

Marnie Clagett: 04:04

That's exactly it. Yeah. We just kind of decide that, oh, there's something about me that is not as good as everybody else out there.

Pat Miller: 04:12

And so much of what photographers do to improve is to look at other photographers. Is comparison one of the ways that fear and impostor syndrome, in addition to pricing, shows up in the photography business?

Marnie Clagett: 04:27

Oh, yeah. Absolutely. I mean, we look at other people's work, and we think, wow. I'm not there. Like, I've never, you know, I've never taken a photo that beautiful or, you know, we're involved in, in print competition or in merit image review and we're not, you know, where we think we should be or, you know, a judge looks at our image and is like, that's, you know, you need to do this, this and this. And we start to just like spiral because other people are doing great. Right. So, therefore, it must be me. And so, we start to get down on ourselves and again, the spiral, right. And just keep going with it.

Pat Miller: 05:00

When you're watching other photographers and you're comparing your work to them, part of the game is to experiment and almost do things that are bad on purpose to try new techniques. Does that also feed into one of those spirals of, oh, I wanna be like this person, and I need to try these things. And we're all terrible at stuff the first time we do it. Is that not helping?

Marnie Clagett: 05:20

No. That doesn't help at all, does it? I mean, when we try things and we fail, if our first reaction is, oh, I suck at this, and this is not gonna work. Right? If that's our reaction, we're done. If we look at it and go, okay, well that didn't work. What about it didn't work? And we come at it from another angle. That's the positive way to tackle that. Right? We look at it and say, what can I learn from this failure and move forward? And I think it's that way in business too. Right? When we try, you know, a marketing technique and it doesn't work, well, we say, oh, well, obviously, that doesn't work for me. It works for everybody else, but not for me. Or do we say, what about that could I tweak and get better and then move forward? Or when we're working with a client and, you know, I something is followed through the cracks and the client's not satisfied at the end the way we want them to be satisfied or they don't make the purchase we want them to make. We can look at that and say, okay. Well, the client didn't read the material. The client didn't do this. The client didn't do that. So and those clients all do, you know, what they need to do and they're spending plenty. Mine aren't doing this. Or we can stop, and we can look at it and say, okay, where in the process did, I go wrong? And what can I tweak so that next time this doesn't happen? Right? So there are definitely positive and negative ways we could react to that kind of comparison.

Pat Miller: 06:30

I mean, that objectivity sounds great on paper, but that's not really how life goes. How do you stay objective in that situation? Because if you think of it objectively, you know these things to be true. But in our squishy little self, it's like, oh, you know, we're wounded when it comes to thinking these things through.

Marnie Clagett: 06:48

Yeah. Absolutely. So, one of the things that I have found to be most helpful is to base things like pricing and to like base what I'm doing with my clients on facts. Pricing if we're based on numbers, if a client says, well, I can't pay that for this, you know, this product or whatever. That's okay. I can say, you know, awesome. So and so down the street can probably do it for you for cheaper. But for me, I cannot absolutely cannot lower my price for you because based on the numbers, if I do that, I'm gonna go out of business. And, you know, that's not something we would ever really say to a client.

Pat Miller: 07:24

Yeah. Right.

Marnie Clagett: 07:25

But to ourselves, we can say, you know what? I'm not gonna discount here because if I do, it's bad for my bottom line. I'm not gonna be able to make what I need to make so that I could feed my family. Right Yeah That's where I am there.

Pat Miller: 07:37

And sometimes our reward system gets kind of screwed up because there is an objectivity to selling or creating an image You create an image you put it in front of the judges and either merits or it doesn't That's an objective result. And then you shoot an image, you try and sell it to a family, either they buy it or they don't. But those two results aren't the same thing. When you take an image and put it in front of a family, they're not trying to buy a merit winning image. What are they trying to buy?

Marnie Clagett: 08:10

They're buying, they're buying so many things. They're buying an emotion. Right? They're buying, that's how they feel about that person. Right? That child, you know, even that senior in high school, even though sometimes we have, you know, the seniors that were like, I'm I'm gonna strangle you and just talk to you off the house. Right? We need that reminder of why we love them. They're buying a moment in time when their kids were, you know, 3 and 5 and they were so funny and cute and little and hadn't gotten to that rebellious stage yet. Right? Who we were at this point in time before baby number 4 joined us. Right? They're buying a legacy. This is there's this connection we have. I know you got this in your house, Pat. There's a connection that we have to people who are no longer with us because we have their photograph. And it gives us a sense of, identity, and it helps us feel like we belong. I had, I have, my grandmother's house. On her wall, she had photos. All of these old photos of family members that some of them I'd never met before. And we were looking at them and my, great uncle was standing next to me. And all my life, I'd always kind of felt like a little bit of the odd man out because I don't really look like anybody in my family. I mean, you could kind of see, yeah, I've got dark hair like some people and that kind of thing, but I just never really felt like I looked like anybody. And he said, oh my gosh, Marnie, you have granny's profile. And sure enough, I looked at a photo. There's a photograph on the wall of my great-grandmother and I have her exact profile. So now when I think about my family, I have this little tiny extra sense of belonging, which crazy as maybe that may sound. I have this extra sense of belonging because I have this connection to this woman who is no longer with us, but we have this photograph of her. And it's so funny how those little things that can mean that much to a person. Right? They're not buying a merit image. Clients don't know what a good photograph is. Right? They don't know what a good photograph looks like. We put a lot of pressure on ourselves that our clients are not putting on us. I'm not saying we shouldn't try our very best for all of our clients, but they don't know for the most part what a good image is. You can look, you know, go on social media today, scroll through, find the photograph that someone has just posted of their, you know, session that they just had. And, you know, everybody's got green skin. The highlights are all blown out. The opposition is bad. Right? Maybe it's even a little bit out of focus and not on purpose. Right? But everybody commenting is, oh my gosh. Your babies are so beautiful. They don't care and may not even be aware that the photo isn't great. What they care about are the people in that photo. That's what matters. What matters is the emotion, the people that we love. That's what our clients care about way, way, way more than some kind of technical excellence. Now go ahead and be as technically excellent as you can be. Right? That's a great thing. But we have to keep in mind that that's not why our clients are purchasing something and that's, why we can't wait to charge what we need to charge to earn a living.

Pat Miller: 11:27

Yeah.

Marnie Clagett: 11:28

Right? Because we wait until we think we're good enough. It's never gonna happen.

And our clients truly don't have the same emphasis on that kind of technical excellence that we put on ourselves.

Pat Miller: 11:36

No. We're at a fork in the road because we could talk about, okay, let's hold our price and how do we stay confident to charge what we're worth. We're gonna leave that for another episode. I wanna stay in our heads and in our hearts when we're in the studio. What you just said is that clients are buying the emotion of the photos that you're capturing. I wanna go into the studio with you. Can you think of a time when you were taking pictures of something that wasn't a formalized set or wasn't a pose that ended up being the image of the entire session when you tried to capture that emotion not to try and make something that might go on the cover of the magazine and it ended up being the one that they love the most. Can you think of a time that that happened?

Marnie Clagett: 12:16

Yeah. Absolutely. There is a photo on the wall, that I have back in a bathroom because it's not the right photo to show my clients all the time. But it's a little girl and she her back is to the camera. Most of the frame, she's in the frame, and she's looking up this path at her older brother who is way far away. Talk about blown-out highlights. Her brother's way far away. There's no way to photograph him. She's running. There is so much stuff going on. It's a mess. Right? Technically, it is not a great photo. But mom saw that and it took her breath away and she started to cry and she's like, oh my gosh. She said her little girl, she looks up to her big brother like he wouldn't believe. And this photo captures their relationship perfectly. It was not a great shot. It was kind of just an accident, but she left it, with all her heart. And so now we have it printed really big to remind myself that sometimes you just go with your gut and, and do the thing that, you know, kinda makes you happy in the moment. And sometimes it means the most to our clients.

Pat Miller: 13:24

It's a great reminder that it's not just about manipulating the light. It's about capturing the emotion in the room. Do you do any tips or tricks like, oh, I tell them I'm not rolling, but I'm rolling, or I do this, or I do that. Like, can you think of anything that you do in a session purposefully that we might be able to borrow so we can capture some more emotion from a family or a subject?

Marnie Clagett: 13:45

Absolutely. So one of the things that we do, in our studio is we start talking to our clients from the very first phone call about these people that they love. And we are asking them, you know, what is it that you, you know, you love most about little Johnny? And then we take the things that they say, and we speak it back to them during the session. So we take a photo of Johnny, we target mom, and we say, oh my gosh. There is that sweet boy you were telling me about that you love so much. There is the confidence that you were telling me about that you were so proud of. Like, I see it right there. And being able to speak that stuff back into our clients' lives, those things that they've just said to us, and we just mirror it back to them. It brings so much more to that photograph because when they come into the studio and they see that on the wall, when we're showing them there's slideshow, they're like, there's that confident kid that I love. There's that sweet kid that I love. It's right there. It's the same image. Does that child, you know, look really confident in that photo? Maybe, maybe not. But because we've talked about it during this session and because we're saying these things back to them and speaking it over these kids, that photo becomes a reminder to that mom of how sweet this little boy is at this point in his life. And it just imbues it with that much more, meaning.

Pat Miller: 15:00

And if you ever need a reminder of your superpower, you can't even talk about that without getting chipped up. Like it, means so much to you as the person that's capturing that emotion and the image in that order that you're barely describing it without feeling the feels of being in that moment.

Marnie Clagett: 15:16

Absolutely. Yep.

Pat Miller: 15:18

Very powerful. Alright. Let's talk about imposter syndrome and where else it might come from. We talked about comparison with other photographers. We talked about the fear often almost always unfounded with pricing. Are there any other ways that we are accidentally walking ourselves into imposter syndrome that we could stop?

Marnie Clagett: 15:37

Oh, yeah. I think there are yeah. There are lots and lots of ways. And I think we just we get into our own heads a lot. And I think we pull on stuff from, from earlier in our lives. There's the concept of having, an open mindset and a not a closed mindset. I'll give the right word will come to me in a minute, but basically having a closed mindset.

Pat Miller: 15:59

Sure.

Marnie Clagett: 16:00

And all of that stuff comes from the things that we heard as a kid. Right? Those messages that we received over and over again, they take root in our brains, physically take root in our brains, and they influence the things that we think today. So, getting up this morning, I'm like, who in the world am I to go get ready to go, record a podcast? Like, who in the world am I? Some, you know, girl from Kentucky in the middle of nowhere, who do I think I am? And I have to immediately stop myself and say, okay. Why? Why is that popping into my head right now? I think this is what we have to do. We have to say, why is that coming up? And I can say, okay. Logically, I know why. Right? This comes from, you know, x, y, and z from when I was a kid and I wasn't I was, you know, told not to celebrate my own wins and those kinds of things. And so, I've learned to dampen that side of myself. And so I have to stop and say, okay. Because of that, what I need to do right now is remind myself of all the reasons for why. Yes. I can talk about these things confidently. Right? Why are we, you know, why I am where I am to understand that, you know, I've worked hard to get where I am. And, you know, to remind myself that list of things, to do to kinda help just reset myself.

Pat Miller: 17:14

Let's dig in on one other thing because there's a nuance here of comparison. If you see the aspirational photographer, someone on the cover of the magazine or with the spread or someone you met once at imaging that, like, oh, that person is just a god among us. Like, we have those people. Yeah. But then the more day-to-day imposter syndrome is gonna pop up with in-market competitors. That person's doing this. This person's doing that. I thought you were my friend. Why did you book your headshot with them? That.

Marnie Clagett: 17:46

Yeah.

Pat Miller: 17:47

How do you go about navigating the day-to-day competitor thing? Because that's real.

Marnie Clagett: 17:51

Yeah. It's very, very real. I think that part of it is remembering that I'm not alone if that makes any sense at all.

Pat Miller: 17:59

Sure. Of course.

Marnie Clagett: 18:00

Make it make sense too. There was a really neat story, that Neil Gaiman told. So Neil Gaiman is, if you're not familiar, he's an author. He's maybe a certified genius. The man's amazing. And Neil Gartner Gaiman is talking about being in this room full of all of these people who have done all of these amazing things, some kind of a cocktail party or fundraiser or something. And he said, he walked up and he he was part of a conversation where Neil Armstrong was there. And Neil Armstrong says, I'm looking around this room and I'm wondering why in the world am I here? Like, what in the world am I doing here with all of these amazing people? And Neil Gaiman said that this light went off for him and he's like, okay. If Neil Armstrong can feel like he's in this room with all these people and he doesn't know why he's here, then it's okay that I feel the same way that it's this is common. Everybody does this. And, you know, for me, I'm like, well, if Neil Gaiman feels that way and Neil Armstrong feels that way, then it's totally normal that I feel this way when I see something happen around me. And I think kind of acknowledging that, helps me to settle with it a little bit more and go, okay. We all feel this way. And if we all feel this way and it's this common, then maybe it's not really as big a deal as I think it is. I think the other thing too is remembering our own value and our own worth and knowing that sometimes when someone goes to somebody else for the headshot or, you know, the family that looks at you all the time books a Christmas mini session with somebody that maybe the reason that this time they're not with me, is because, you know, they just wanted to get something quick for Christmas and they knew that we've got a process. And when they come to me, it's special. And I think that that's, you know, reminding ourselves of those kinds of things, letting ourselves look at the positive or the reality of it, and not letting ourselves get stuck in that blowing things out of proportion and think, oh my gosh. They've gone to another photographer. They must think I'm horrible. They're never coming back to me. You know? Because that's where our brains go. We have to stop ourselves, recognize that we're having those kinds of thoughts, recognize that that's a common thing that we all do it, and then shut it down. And I know that sounds like, well, that's not always easy to do. But sometimes it's kind of that easy. Like, we have to let it be a habit because the first time we shut it down, it's gonna creep back in and we'll have to shut it down again. And so, knowing that with time and with practicing this as a habit, right, that it suddenly becomes a little easier, as we move through life and learn and grow and all those good things.

Pat Miller: 20:36

You shared some great ideas on how to stay away from imposter syndrome, using reminders, reminding ourselves of our own value and worth, being real about the situation, not letting our mind run away with us. What about goal setting? So, you have a real clear benchmark of this month, I'm gonna make x, or this month or this year, I'm gonna merit twice, or whatever it might be. How do you set goals, so you have a concrete objective way to measure your performance rather than, boy, I'm not good enough? Who am I?

Marnie Clagett: 21:06

That was the best question Pat, that's a good question if we're happy So, yes. I start at the beginning of the year, and I say, okay, this is where I need to be at the end of the year. This is what I know that I need to earn in order to support my family because this is it. The studio tanks, the family tanks. Right? So, I say this is what we need to earn in order to sustain our family. So, this is what I have to earn by the end of the year sales-wise because I know x amount is gonna go to my cost of sales, x amount’s gonna go to my general expenses, x amount’s go into taxes. Right? So, I know all those logical things. I know what the goal is and then I go and say, okay. How many sessions does it take to make me to get me to that goal? Then I say, okay. When is that gonna happen over the course of the year? Because January is a very different month in Kentucky than say October. And so we kind of balance out the year and say where it is that we're gonna do, you know, the number of sessions. We plan and then we check constantly. I am checking my numbers every week, at the least. Right. To make sure that, okay, we're on target. This is what we need to make up because we didn't do it last week. And that's how we do it. We track it. We look at the goals. We make sure we get there because the last thing we want is to get to October and realize holy moly. I was supposed to have made this much by this point in the year, and I'm nowhere near that. Right? That is a horrible feeling. And if you wanna talk about sinking into some impostor syndrome at that point, all of a sudden, I'm a failure. You know? All those things start to creep in, which does not help, when you need to move ahead, toward the goal.

Pat Miller: 22:47

And ebbing goals in the studio was a thermometer. Boy, I didn't get the merit, or boy, the mom didn't buy the big package, but I'm on budget for the month. I'm on budget for the quarter. I'm on budget for the year. So, it must be doing something right.

Marnie Clagett: 23:00

Exactly. Exactly. You take the wins and you focus on the wins. You know, you say, okay, that didn't go so well. It's fine. We'll make it up because I know that I can't. I've done it in the past. I'll do it again.

Pat Miller: 23:10

I'm a big believer in celebration. The small business community that I run, we have every Friday is the Friday finish line. We celebrate our wins of the week. And I know that celebration and recognition of your own achievement is the antidote to imposter syndrome. So if you're not taking time every week to recognize your success, I highly recommend it. Let's talk about your daily actions. Are you a journaler? Do you exercise with purpose? Do you practice mindfulness? What do you do to put yourself in the right spot every day when you walk into the studio?

Marnie Clagett: 23:41

So, I have, I have a gratitude journal that I've been doing for about 5 and a half years now. And so every day I write down 3 things, that I'm grateful for. And sometimes when it's been a bad day, it's, I have a bed to sleep in and a roof over my head. You know, Sometimes it's a little harder to find those things you gotta dig a little, but it's amazing how that rewires your brain. It's amazing how that helps. You know, at the end of the day, if you're looking back over the day to say, oh, yeah. This was kind of hard, but there are a lot of things that are good. And I can see this, you know, this entire book filled with things, that are good and, have brought me joy. So today is just one little day and there are still things that bring me joy in that day. I love, love, love to start my day, with, I read, I have a little, scripture, thing that I read every day that just kinda gets me into a mindset, again, of gratitude. And to approach my day from that kind of mentality, just helps me to focus on something other than myself Yeah. Which I have to do, you know, in my business every day. We all have to. So, yeah, those are things that really do help me to keep, keep my mind and my heart in a better place.

Pat Miller: 24:58

Appreciate you sharing that because those are the types of daily actions that can really set us in the right place to go take on the business world. I don't wanna end this episode without spending one more minute on the relationship with comparison inside the industry. There are so many photographers worth emulating and admiring relationship with comparison as our work ascends as well.

Marnie Clagett: 25:59

That's such a gap. That's a good question. You're on it this morning, Pat.

Pat Miller: 25:35

Thank you.

Marnie Clagett: 25:26

I think that a big piece of it is saying reminding ourselves, I might not be there yet, but these are the steps I can take to get me there. One of the problems with comparison is that it can lead us to, you know, making destructive kind of choices, things that actually work against us or can put us into that state of of envy. So we have to kind of flip it and we have to look at it and say, okay, what can I learn from this situation? What can I learn from this photographer, and what they are doing? What steps can I take, to try to move that way today? And some days it's gonna work, and we have to recognize that some days it's gonna work or we're gonna go, yay. Wow. Alright. And some days it's not gonna work. We're not gonna do as well. But I guarantee you, and this is something that I remind myself of all the time, guarantee you that those folks who are, you know, winning GIA Awards and, meriting every single time they put an image, into, merit image review. Right? Those folks have days when they are not a 100% fantastic amazing. Right? Everybody, everybody as images that don't merit. Everybody has sales that go bad. Everybody, everybody has, something that they've tried to do. It just hasn't worked. Right? It's fallen flat or something that they've thought is amazing and other people look at it and just don't get it. It doesn't mean that any of that stuff is not worth doing or worth trying because every single mistake we make, just shows that we tried to do something, and we learn from it. If we let ourselves learn from it, we have to remember we can't just get stuck on the I failed I failed I failed I failed. That means I'm a failure. We can't get stuck in that. We have to look at that setback or that, one mistake. Right? We have to look at that as an opportunity to grow, an opportunity to learn and be better tomorrow. And I think if we can switch the flip the switch, there we go, flip the switch to make that mindset shift. It makes all of that comparison; it makes it more positive if that's makes sense at all. That makes it positive. We can compare in a way that pushes us to be better. Katie, is it Switek? I'm so sorry. I don't know how to say her name right? She's a tennis player. And last year, she got this number one ranking, and she was, like, the first person from her country to ever get this number one ranking. Right? And all of a sudden, she started feeling like, I can't lose this spot. And so instead of saying, you know, I wanna win, she kept saying I don't wanna lose. And all of a sudden, she started doing really, really badly. Like, she was losing matches left and right, and she lost her ranking. And so she looked at that and she was like, well, what did I do wrong? She said it's the way I was thinking. And so, she went back. She got her mind right and reminded herself that it's not that she doesn't wanna lose. It's that she wants to win. And she started climbing her way back to the top, and she got that number one ranking again. And she knew at that point what the failure part looked like. Right? When she had her mindset wrong, things were going badly. So she knew then that she needed to keep her mindset in that right frame of mind in order to keep succeeding, and to use that comparison with the other people around her in a different way. And that's what leads, to her success. And anything else at least our success.

Pat Miller: 29:04

There's one other thing I want to add because I see myself doing this. And when I thought about it this way, I felt a whole lot better. For some reason, when we look at people in our business, we think, how come I can't be like them? It is instantly a comparison. Whereas in every other facet of our life, it's perfectly fine to be a fan. I'm a fan of that person. I love when they do that thing. That doesn't mean I have to become who they are. I can just be inspired by them and love them and respect them and follow their work. Sometimes in business, it feels weird to be a fan of someone that does what you do. Does that make sense?

Marnie Clagett: 29:40

It does. It makes perfect sense, but it's such a beautiful way to look at it, to be able to say, I can look at someone else's achievements and I can celebrate those. And I can say, holy moly, look at what you are doing. And it doesn't hurt me at all. Right?

Pat Miller: 29:56

Right.

Marnie Clagett: 29:27

It doesn't hurt me to support other people. It doesn't hurt me to support the other photographers in my community. Like, the people who you would say are my competitors.

Right? The only thing that does is help all of us. If I can look at somebody else's success and celebrate that, I don't know. I feel like that just makes me feel better.

Pat Miller: 30:16

Yeah.

Marnie Clagett: 30:17

I love that. That's a beautiful point.

Pat Miller: 30:18

Well, thank you for that. So the person that's watching this show hello, by the way. But the person that's watching this show clicked on this show because they saw we were gonna talk about impostor syndrome. So, they may be feeling like they're scuffling a little bit like they're not good enough. So if they sat down and said, Marnie, help me. Give me a podcast to listen to. Give me a book to listen to. Give me something to get me out of this funk.

Pat Miller: 30:44

What would you tell them to do?

Marnie Clagett: 30:47

Read the war of art by Steven Pressfield. Oh, that is it. That book does my heart so much good. I I well, actually, we just we my whole family. We're like, this is we've got our little family book plug going this month, and this is a book we're all reading. We were all a bunch of artists, all a bunch of people who are, you know, we get in our own heads all the time. It is, it kinda doesn't even matter where you are on your journey if you're just starting out of your way. We all have things that we get stuck in. We all have those negative things that we tell ourselves. And that is one book that I feel like lays it out for you. It's an easy read. Like, it's a couple of hours and you're done. But it helps you see like the climb out, and to see what it takes for us to actually, move forward. And, Yeah, mentally and, and just in life in general. It's a good one.

Pat Miller: 31:19

That book is going on the to-do list. And this episode is gonna help a lot of people as well. Imposter syndrome is not easy, and it's tough to get out if you're all by yourself. So hopefully today's conversation helped you. Marnie Clagett, thank you for joining us in the professional photographer podcast. I appreciate it.

Marnie Clagett: 31:55

Thanks, Pat, for having me. It was great.

Pat Miller: 31:57

Thank you for tuning into this week's episode of the professional photographer podcast. I'm already pumped up for our next conversation. Now, before you go, can I ask a small favor? If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and leave us a comment wherever you're watching or listening to the show. It helps us build a better show, and make sure that we're covering the content that you need and that you love. And if you're not yet a member of Professional Photographers of America, you are missing out. PPA offers incredible resources like equipment insurance, top-notch education, and a supportive community of photographers ready to help you succeed. It's perfect for photographers who are serious about growing their business in a sustainable and profitable way. At PPA, you belong here. Discover more about membership at PPA.com. That's PPA.com. I'm Pat Miller, founder of the small business owners community. Thank you for joining us on this journey. We appreciate your support, and we'll be back soon with more tools to help you build your business with the professional photographer podcast.