Hard Stuff This Week – MPS039
Update: 2017-09-07
Description
I’m talking about some hard stuff this week: Texas; why I went dark; why I paused my registration campaign, and more. I’m also sharing some announcements that I’m really excited about. Upcoming events in the next few weeks (iOS11, augmented reality), the Apple event next week (and where you can join me to watch and discuss it LIVE).
[spp-transcript]
Hey everyone welcome to modern photo solutions. I’m Steph Clay and I’m so grateful that you’re here with me today. This is a little pre-show before the show. Today’s episode I recorded on August 31st, last Wednesday and today is September something, fourth, fifth, fifth! September 5th. And so as you listen to this show I know you’ll understand why it’s been delayed, as you listen to me explain kind of why I’ve gone a little bit dark on social media. I just want to emphasize that this was the answer for me and I don’t think that it’s necessarily where everybody needs to do. But for me this is what felt authentic and this is what I needed to do. And so that’s what I did. That’s what felt right for me. I understand that it might not be the right solution for everybody.
The business decisions I make based on what feels right in my heart and what feels right on my in my gut and I know that there are other people that do the same thing and their business might look different than mine and that is ok.I am grateful for this opportunity that I had to go a little bit dark and to raise some money for the hurricane Harvey recovery and I’m grateful for all of you that jumped in to help. We were able to raise a fair amount of money and I’m really pleased with what we were able to do. I’ll be sending out a copy of their receipts as soon as the rest of it hits my accounts. There is a two to three day delay between the payment processor and before it gets into my account. But I did want to mention that and tell you all. Thank you for your support. And I will be back at it this week letting you all know about registration for the heart of a fabulous. I feel like I can communicate that message now pausing it for 10 days was the right answer. Like I said earlier, but I do have bills to pay and so I need to get back at it and get some people registered for my class so that my business can can continue to move forward.
Please know that my prayers and my heart is with all of you that are going through really hard natural disasters right now in your area because it always just compounds regular life stuff that we’re all dealing with. So I’m thinking of you. And I’ve had several of you reach out to me via e-mail and the Facebook groups to help you with various situations getting your videos and photos back up before the disaster hits which I’m more than happy to do. So thank you so much for being here. Thank you for sharing some of your time with me and enjoy this week’s episode.
| Hey everyone, welcome to Modern Photo Solutions. I am Steph Clay. Thank you for being here with me today. We have some hard things to talk about today, so let’s jump into it. I want to let everyone know first off, in case you have not seen on social media or in the newsletter that I sent out, that I decided to pause my registration campaign for the Heart of Photo Fabulous. So what that means is that I’m not posting on social media about it, I’m not sending out newsletters about it. It’s just the advertising portion of the campaign registration is still open, and I’m not closing that down but I am not advertising it. I will jump back into it sometime next week. Which, will be a good thing. My family does depend on my income from this business. It helps support our family and pays the bills, and so it is something that I need to do but this is why I decided to stop. It goes back to some history I guess, that I’ll share with you a little bit.
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| My other website is called CapturingMagic.Me. On that website for a long time, I’ve had an exclusive advertising agreement with this company called Disney. They’re the only ones that I’m permitted to allow to advertise on my site, and it’s been a good partnership. But, one of the things that I learned from them was that when there were big things happening in the world, they would often pause their advertising campaigns, and we would get emails saying, “Disney’s going dark,” for however long. What that meant was that they would not post social media, they didn’t post on their blogs, and things like that.
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| Then when they would jump back into it, they would catch up. They would play catch up, and post the most important stuff that was missed. I’m sure that there was a lot of it that didn’t get posted during that time. It was something that I didn’t know it was a thing. I liked it. I thought it was a really good idea. Then I also had a mentor about a year ago that told me one of the best pieces of advice that she gave me was that I need to be authentic. My voice on social media needs to be authentic. If I’m having a difficult time posting authentically about whatever it is I’m posting about, then I need to go back to the drawing board, and figure things out. And to be careful, to not use different things to promote myself, or to promote things that I have going on. that was really good, really, really good advice.
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| There have been many times that I’ve stepped away because I just can’t post authentically about something that I’m excited about, or that I should be excited about. As things were unfolding in Texas with Hurricane Harvey, I was having more and more of a difficult time being authentic as I posted on social media about my excitement for registration for my Heart of Photo Fabulous Class. These classes are classes that have changed peoples lives. I don’t want that to sound … I don’t mean that lightly, because women email me and tell me the impact that these classes have had on their lives, the way they live, the way they document their lives, the choices they make with the way they spend their time. Both creating memories, and documenting memories. They are really a big deal, and I didn’t want it to seem like I was minimizing them I guess. I wanted to be able to post about that part of how these classes change peoples lives authentically.
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| I was so upset, I have been so upset about the images, and the things that I’m seeing and hearing about from Texas. We have a lot of people in the Modern Photo Solutions community, a lot of our friends that are in Texas. Hearing from them, and the things that they’re dealing with, my heart was broken. I felt as I went to post, and I was trying to think about what to post for registration for my classes, I thought, “I can’t post, ‘Hey, come buy my stuff’ when peoples lives and worlds are falling apart.” Yeah, I know that everybody has really hard things. Life is hard for everybody. I can’t put my business on hold every time that there’s hard things going on. But, between my mentor and between following Disney’s example, I decided that for me, I needed to pause registration because I couldn’t be authentic.
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| People pick up on that. You guys pick up on that, I pick up on that when I’m following people. It feels icky when they’re not being authentic, or when they’re using something that’s a sad situation in our country to promote themselves, and the things that they have going on. I have an example of that in a few minutes that I’ll share, that’s really sad for me, and heartbreaking.
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| I decided that I was going to pause registration, and instead do something no matter how small it’s going to be, it will help me feel better, and hopefully it’ll help you feel better as well. What I decided to do was my course that’s called, “App Smashing,” I duplicated that course just so that I could change the name of it, and set some different things up so that I’d be able to email everyone that purchases it. I renamed it to, “App Smashing 4 Texas.” This is just a temporary thing. App Smashing 4 Texas QR Codes. It is the course that’s all about creating QR codes. This course is only on IOS. Which, I’m sad about. I haven’t been able to get the Android version done yet.
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| This course, it teaches you all about how to create QR codes, and use them, link them to videos, and to animations, and GIF’s, and all kinds of additional things that you can then put the QR code in your photo book, or in your album, and then when you scan it, it will pull up that multimedia. It will pull up the video, it will pull up all of those other things. You can see an example of this in the post for, on the purchase page, the page where you can purchase this course. I will be donating all but about 75 cents. I’ll be donating everything but the payment processing fees. It’ll work out to be just under 75 cents per purchase.
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The regular price on the course is 14.97, and so almost all of that will be donated to the Red Cross, and I’ll go to the donation page that’s specifically for Hurricane Harvey recovery. Then I will email out a copy of m Comments In Channel   Download from Google Play  Download from App Store  United States00:00 00:00 x   Hard Stuff This Week – MPS039Modern Photo Solutions for Life's Photographic Journey |
