Episode #8 – Building a Photography Community & Your Own Freedom with Julie Christie from Tea Break Tog

In this episode, I talk to Julie Christie from Tea Break Tog, a community and course-based photography website which was built on the back of Julie’s passion for photographer as well as the determination to have a business to revolve around her family.

I first spotted Julie when watching and listening to a video podcast which featured herself and several other people. I was immediately impressed with her business and her branding, as well as enjoyed listening to the way she has conveyed herself and the pure determination to succeed.

And I had a great time interviewing Julie.

Some of the things we talk about in this episode include:

• the fear about going into the competitive photography industry
• how determination and persistence is crucial for the long-term success
• how both the ups and downs can help your business to succeed
• the tough grind in the beginning which ultimately convince Julie to adjust her business
• Julie’s next goal in helping her community to start their own photography business

Inspiring Quote:

“All the really crappy times, have led to the good times every single time. I always knew that when something is not going well in my business, that around the corner is success because I’m learning all the time” – Julie Christie

Resources:

• Tea Break Tog site – http://www.teabreaktog.com/
• Tea Break Tog on Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/TeaBreakTog
• Tea Break Tog on Twitter – https://twitter.com/TeaBreakTog
• Tea Break Tog on Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/teabreaktogjulie/
• Content Marketing Academy – https://iamahmedkhalifa.com/cma
• WPCurve – http://wpcurve.com/ (affiliate)
• TED Talk on procrastination – http://www.ted.com/talks/tim_urban_inside_the_mind_of_a_master_procrastinator

Transcript

 

Introduction

AHMED: Here we go! We’re back on again, think is the IgniteRock Podcast. This is your host Ahmed Khalifa, this is episode eight and this is where I talk to awesome and creative individuals who have created something awesome and creative on the webcast. Welcome to the show everyone. I’m so, so happy that you’re here today and I think you’re going to enjoy this one. A really, really good one.

Today I’m talking to Julie Christie from Tea Break Tog, it’s an online course and community-based photography website where Julie helps those who are keen to learn about photography altogether as a community. It’s a very, very interesting website and it’s also the fact that she is also a family person, a mother of two, she has made it work through persistence and determination. You’ll hear more about that throughout the interview.

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First time I’ve seen Julie on the web is when I saw her speak on podcasts and also been doing podcast interviews with a few other people. I really find her very interesting in how she portrays herself online and how she manages her website and how she really works so, so hard to get to where she is today and it’s very, very exciting. I hope you’re going to enjoy the show. Sit back, relax, enjoy the interview and I’ll catch you at the end of the interview.

 

Start of Interview

Here we go everyone, I’m so excited right now. I have Julie here on the line who is someone who is very, very interesting and very, very excited about what she does online in terms of the photography industry. I just had to interview her because I find her really, really interesting. Julie, thank you very, very much for coming on. I do appreciate your time and definitely want to start off with just tell me a little bit about yourself, your background and how you got to where you are today.

JULIE: Okay. Hi, thanks for having me on Ahmed, I’m delighted to be here. I suppose I would have to start with my photography business, which I used to have a very traditional photography business which I started in late 2010, before that I was a teacher and became a little bit disgruntled with the whole education system and decided to make a move into being my own boss and having my own photography business.So that was a traditional portrait photography business for a long time. I didn’t use WordPress at that time. In my journey to improve my photography business I came across, someone you know as

So that was a traditional portrait photography business for a long time. I didn’t use WordPress at that time. In my journey to improve my photography business I came across, someone you know as well, called Chris Marr, who helped me to understand more and more about content marketing and just the marketing side of business.

I actually ended up becoming really quite passionate about that side of things. You know what it’s like, you just find yourself on a different path all of a sudden and you don’t quite know how you got there. What ended up happening with me was that at the time I had started to teach photography as well as do photography, and in learning more and more about online marketing, content marketing, I thought well why not take my classes and put them online? That was the beginning of a new journey for me.

It led, that has eventually led me almost completely away from my traditional photography business and I’ve now found myself in a place where I’m pretty much solely online. So I’m selling photography courses online, and I’ve got a photography community that I manage online as well, and I’m now moving into having a membership site as well.

AHMED: Wow!

JULIE: Yeah, I know. I have no idea how it all happened.

AHMED: That’s a journey. Chris Marr is someone that I’m very familiar with. For those who don’t know, he runs the Content Marketing Academy conference once a year up in Scotland. A very, very popular conference, and it focuses on the essence of content marketing. Very, very interesting guy as well. Yes, it’s really interesting that you’ve gone a journey because people think about photography classes, courses online, there’s a lot out there. It’s very, very competitive so how did you stand out from the rest of the courses that are available out there?

JULIE: You know at the beginning I really thought about that lot. I overthink everything anyway, but I thought about that a lot and it’s such a saturated market. What I did to begin with was I started a podcast because I thought that would maybe be a little bit different to your online video courses and things. Actually, now that I think about it, I think I started a podcast because I was a bit too scared to get into video.

I did think, “How can I stand out?” I’ll do it all via audio and then the more that I got into it all online and the more my community grew, the more I thought, “Well why not? Who cares if lots of people are doing it. I can still do it and I’ll stand out just by being me.” I didn’t go about trying to stand out by creating courses that were different, I just thought, “I’m just going to do it in my way.” I’m a teacher anyway and I have a very specific way of teaching so I thought, “Why not just teach in my way and that will make me stand out.”

AHMED: It’s a very, very good point that you mentioned. The market could be competitive, but you are who you are in terms of nobody can copy you and that is your unique selling point. People will like you for who you are, nobody can replicate that –

JULIE: Exactly!

AHMED: – it’s a very, very good point that I try to tell people. Yes, you may be in an industry that’s very competitive. Someone’s doing something quite similar or very similar to you, but you have your own style and you have your own technique and people will love you for that, your own community.

Seems to be working. I’m guessing that that’s what your community like, which is like if you’ve [crosstalk] as well.

JULIE: Yeah, not everyone likes it and I used to worry about that as well. I used to think, “Oh so and so has left the community. I wonder why they left? They didn’t like me, they didn’t like the way I teach,” but actually, the more confidence I get in this arena, the more I realise that when people leave it’s a good thing because they’re not the right fit for the community. They’re not the right fit for me and I can’t please everyone. As long as I just stay authentic to me, then I will attract people who get me and I will get them and the community will be stronger as a result.

AHMED: I like that. I like that a lot. It’s really good. It’s a good point. If people leave it’s not necessarily a bad thing, it means that you can focus more on those who want to focus on yourself, want your help really.

JULIE: Totally!

AHMED: You can really focus your energy on them. It’s a very good point.

JULIE: They’re the ones I want to help. They’re the ones I want to be there so I think trying to … Wasting energy on trying to get the wrong people to stay is folly in the end. I’ve gone through a journey in that respect. I didn’t always feel that way.

AHMED: You say that, you first tried to start doing some podcasting because you’re starting off doing an audio version of content and you talk about being confident about yourself, so what is it … Did you just bite your tongue and say, “You know what? I’m going to do it”? Did you have to psych yourself up to do it? What was it that made you so worried about doing it?

JULIE: I was terrified of doing it. I was so scared. I was scared of so many things. I was scared that I would sound like an idiot. I was sacred that my friends and family would think, “What on Earth is she doing?” I was scared that other photographers would question what I was saying and tell me that I, argue with me or tell me that I didn’t know what I was talking about. All these things were going through my head and I thought, “I can’t do this.” So I followed all the guidance on starting a podcast and I had three pre-recorded, all ready to go and the podcast was all set up in iTunes, everything was ready to go.

All I had to do was get the word out there, press that button and get the word out there and I just stalled, and stalled and stalled.

Eventually a friend said to me, a fellow business friend, said to me, “Julie how would you feel if someone came along tomorrow with a similar podcast to yours and started before you with your idea?” I thought, “Right, that’s it. That’s done it! I’m going to go home and get this started.” I just had to basically get over myself. That’s really what I had to do and it was so scary, but then weirdly it took me very little time before I started just feeling completely okay about it.

AHMED: Wow. That’s some words of advice, “if someone started before you, how would you feel about it”? That’s a good point.

JULIE: Yeah. If there’s anything that’s going to get a rocket up you, it’s that. You don’t want to be sitting on this great idea or this great piece of content and then too scared to release it and then someone else comes along and gets in before you. There’s something to be said for just biting the bullet.

AHMED: Yep, and now I’m sure you’re looking back and thinking, “What was I thinking? It wasn’t that bad at all.” I’m sure you’re enjoying it as well and I’ve seen quite a few of your podcast episodes on a video format as well.

JULIE: Yeah!

AHMED: In my opinion you seem like a natural at it anyway. I don’t know what the fuss Julie, maybe just-

JULIE: Yeah I know. I know. It’s just silly. No one’s going to die if you do something like this, but it’s putting yourself out there. I think us Brits as well, we’re just that little bit more embarrassed by these things as if people are going to think, “Oh who does she think she is? Who does she think she is trying to make videos?” Really, no one is caring. No one cares.

AHMED: It’s a classic impostor syndrome isn’t it really?

JULIE: Yeah, absolutely. That’s exactly it.

AHMED: You’ve done it and you’ve gotten yourself out there quite a lot and reaping dividends in the end so I’m sure you’re really enjoying it.

You’re building up this brand name, TeaBreakTog, which I quite like that name. I can see where you got it from, but could you explain to the listeners where that name of your brand comes from?

JULIE: Sure. In the photography world, photographers call themselves Togs. T-O-G. So just short for photographer. Loads of people ask, if they’re not in the photography world they have no idea what a Tog is, but a Tog is a photographer.

The “Tea Break” came from, do you know really I kind of stole it because I met a guy called Mark Pendelton who does Coffee Break French and Coffee Break Spanish. He has amazing podcasts teaching languages and I loved Coffee Break French, I loved that name and that’s where Tea Break Tog came from because the idea is that I’m helping people with their photography and with their photography business, but I’m making the content short and sweet so that they can consume it within their tea break, or their coffee break.

Just short, to the point photography tips and tutorials.

AHMED: I like how, you’re right about the “coffee break” titles, programmes and podcasts and products. There are plenty out there. You chose tea break, for me I thought, “How very British.”

JULIE: Yeah.

AHMED: You know? I think it makes sense really.

JULIE: So British, it is.

AHMED: I think it’s a great name. I think it’s really, really clever. You’ve said it perfectly that you just learn a bit about photography during your tea break and basically a little bit every time, even ten minutes a day, you can add up to a lot of knowledge about photography.

JULIE: Exactly. People just don’t have a lot of time now do they? There’s so much content out there, they want to just consume something quickly.

AHMED: Yeah, I agree with that.

I can see that you have your membership site, you have a community behind it and then there’s also another side of your business where it’s Togs in Business. As I understand, you’re trying to help others to be where you are in terms of being your own boss, learn about photography, running a business. You’ve talked about you have to earn less than minimum wage for a long, long time.

JULIE: Yeah.

AHMED: You have to graft, you have to learn about photography and then do, not to just make money, but also to be happy.

JULIE: Yeah.

AHMED: Could you talk a little bit about that? What is the essence behind Togs in Business and just talk about that bit in terms of-

JULIE: Sure.

AHMED: -You had to graft in the beginning to get to where you are now.

JULIE: Sure, absolutely.

First of all, when I started TeaBreakTog it was really not to help business owners at all. It was all aimed at beginners or enthusiasts, maybe up to intermediate photographers. Then after a year of Tea Break Tog I surveyed my audience and discovered that over 80% of them were either thinking about starting a photography business or they already had a photography business.

AHMED: Wow.

JULIE: It just kind of gives you an idea of the landscape now in photography that there are so many people who have bought a DSLR, they’re unhappy in their jobs, or maybe they want a job that they can mould around their family and their personal life and they decide to make this big leap into professional photography.

What has happened is that because so many people have made this leap into something they thought was quite accessible, they then find themselves in an industry that is actually extremely difficult to make money in. To make a living. They find themselves thrown in at the deep end with such a sense of overwhelm. All these things they have to learn, all the business side of things, the marketing, the admin, and they realise that it’s a lot more work and a lot more difficult than they initially realised.

When I realised that there were so many of my audience in that position I thought this was something I can really help them with because I went through the exact same thing. I really struggled, when I first started my photography business I was actually quite busy, but I priced myself all wrong so I was just, that saying, “I was just a busy fool.”

I was doing so much work for very little money and at the end of my first year in business I looked back and thought, “Wow, I’ve nearly killed myself working.” Then I did my sums and I realised that I had earned less than minimum wage when I took away all my expenses and thought about the hours I’d put in. So yeah, big changes had to happen at that point.

AHMED: Wow! That must be a big shock factor for you. You look at that thinking, “Oh my God.”

JULIE: Oh it was so depressing and it was Christmas time as well and I remember I was so ill, you know when you’re so busy that you are full of adrenaline and then all of a sudden you come off on holiday and you get ill? Has that ever happened to you?

AHMED: I think I know what you mean. You put so much energy in the beginning and then you just empty the tank.

JULIE: Yeah you just crash. You just crash and I felt quite ill at the time. I was not very well. I had worked really hard and then I did all these sums, realised I hadn’t … I felt like a failure basically so what I did was I discussed it with my husband. “What should I do? Should I just throw in the towel and go back to teaching or should I try and improve? Should I try and change my business?”

We both decided that we would try and we would make a big effort to change the business and try to make more of it, but it meant taking a hit financially for awhile. I learned as much as I possibly could at that point, onwards, about business, marketing, admin, pricing correctly.

All that stuff. That’s when I started to take my website more seriously, my branding and it was a long game. I definitely played the long game. I didn’t expect it to be fabulous right away. I didn’t expect to start attracting these clients who were going to pay me lots more money. I knew it would be a long, slow burn.

Definitely took a hit and there were lots of dips. It was a big roller coaster ride where one day, things would be amazing and I’d feel great, and the next day I thought, “What am I doing? I’m not making any money.” Yeah, it was a long journey, but in the end I felt like I was making progress so I preserved.

AHMED: Good for you! Brilliant.

JULIE: Thank you!

AHMED: That’s really great. It’s a classic case of a marathon, not a sprint isn’t it really?

JULIE: Yep.

AHMED: A lot of people are not aware of that. You think that once you start doing this, it’s all daisy and roses in the beginning, a picnic, and then you’ll be fine but yeah, I think a lot of people can relate to what you’ve gone through. In the beginning, it’s such an effort.

JULIE: I think you have to go through that in order to succeed though because I think the reason most people, most business owners, not just photography business owners, but most business owners do go out of business is because they expect things to happen too quickly. And it’s the people who do play the long game and do endure the marathon and they’re the ones that come out of the other side.

AHMED: Yep, yep, that makes sense. In terms of you started your own business and it revolves around your family-

JULIE: Yeah.

AHMED: -I know you have beautiful children in your family as well and you want to focus on them, and of course being your own boss, that’s a lot of people, they’re thinking they want to be in that situation.

What advice would you say for those who want to be where you are right now. Have a business revolve around you family, being your own boss, what advice would you give to those who want to be in that situation?

JULIE: Oh wow. I don’t know if I’m that well placed to give advice because-

AHMED: Oh yes you are. Come on.

JULIE: -I’ve got a long way to go until I feel like I’m good at all of this, but I suppose one of the things I’ve already covered which is, you do need to play the long game. You can’t start a business and then three months down the line say, “This isn’t working. I’m giving up.” You can say this isn’t working and then improve, but don’t give up after a few months.

So many people get in touch with me as photography business owners telling me, “I’ve been in business for a few months now and nothing’s really happening,” and I think, “A few months? Come on! You need to give it at least a year before you can say it’s not working.”

Another part of that is you need to believe. I know you’re going to have little moments where you feel down and those negative voices creep in a little bit, but you need to make sure they’re short-lived.

You need to believe in what you’re doing and you need to have this end goal, or a short-term goal, a vision that you think about and you visualise all the time in order to help you believe. Another big part of all of this I think is just learning all the time. Building learning and education into your day-to-day life so that you’re constantly improving and constantly working towards this goal of yours. It’s so hard, so hard.

AHMED: I agree. Definitely a big advocate of always learn something every day. You can never stop learning, you can never think that you don’t need to learn anymore. There’s always something.

JULIE: Yes! Definitely.

AHMED: I definitely agree with that.

JULIE: The most successful people I meet are those who do that, who believe in that. Who are constantly learning and they don’t ever think that there’s nothing more to learn. They’re just constantly looking for little nuggets everywhere.

AHMED: Good. I like that a lot. When you first started off your business, like a lot of people, you need to have a website, you need to be online and you have to have a presence online. Like a lot of people, and yourself, you got into WordPress and you built a WordPress website.

JULIE: I did.

AHMED: How did you get into WordPress in the first place and what was your first experience with it?

JULIE: Okay, I only got into WordPress after I met Chris actually, who we just talked about. I joined the Content Marketing Academy, I had this, you’re going to be horrified, I had a Flash website before that.

AHMED: Oh no. Oh no.

JULIE: I did, I did! I remember Chris saying to me, “Julie, you need to get rid of this website.” He very much told me, “You really need to get into WordPress,” and when I … I did resist that for quite a long time because it just seemed like quite a lot of work and my website was working okay for me.

It’s one of these things, if it’s not broke, you know, why fix it? I knew. I did know deep down inside that I needed to make the move. Also at that point, that’s when if your website was not completely mobile-friendly or … What’s the word I’m looking for?

AHMED: Responsive website.

JULIE: Responsive, if your website was not responsive you were going to start getting penalised so I made that move to WordPress. I wanted to basically make sure I owned the platform, owned all my content, it was all under my roof if you like. That was one way to do that. I just loved all the themes.

When I started looking into it, I loved how much flexibility I would be able to have with design and all the themes that seemed pretty straightforward to get around, but also being able to be found really easily with Google, with search engines. That’s how I made that decision to move into WordPress. After moving into WordPress, that’s a different story. That was a learning curve. Major.

AHMED: You’re happy with it. Let me just clarify, so you’re not going to go back to Flash anytime soon at all?

JULIE: Ahmed I promise I will never, ever, ever do that.

AHMED: I’m going to hold onto you for that. That’s fine. I just want to get it on tape right here, so that’s okay. Obviously, a lot of people would have a bit of nervous experience about using WordPress, they hear things about security or they think that maybe it’s too difficult to use. Even though it’s a very, very popular platform. You’ve done it, you’ve started your own website, what would you say to those who have doubts about using WordPress and running it?

JULIE: I would say that I, first of all, I totally understand because I felt the same way. Maybe not the same way that very technophobic people would feel because I’ve never been totally technophobic. I felt very overwhelmed and there was a lot of resistance because of the … I wasn’t used to this dashboard, I wasn’t used to this backend. I didn’t know that … If there would be a problem I thought, “Will I be able to sort it? Will I have to pay lots of money to get it sorted?” I totally understand the barriers that people feel are there. Actually, it’s super, super simple once you get over that initial barrier.

I think so many people, my husband is like this, so many people go into something new in terms of technology and they come across maybe a couple of barriers and they just switch off and they want to say goodbye to it. There is so much education online now. So many tutorials, so many really good tutorials. They’ve got reviews so you can check whether they’re good or not, and you can learn everything step-by-step from beginners, upwards. I would say go for WordPress, don’t try and nail it right away, just start at the very beginning.

Do the very beginners tutorials and work your way up. Within a very short space of time you will not believe you ever resisted it. It’s so, so simple.

AHMED: There we have it. You know there’s a case study we have that you can do something amazing with WordPress and I have to say, your website looks fantastic. The front cover-

JULIE: Thank you.

AHMED: -When you land on it, you know exactly where you are and it’s very descriptive and it’s very, it has a very nice feel to it. People will not realise that you can do that with WordPress. You really can.

JULIE: Yeah.

AHMED: Definitely! It’s definitely recommended. I would say that, but definitely recommend it in terms of your choice of platform.

JULIE: Oh definitely. If you’re completely technophobic, there are so many people who can help you with it, that’s the thing. If you choose WordPress, then you’re spoiled for choice for developers and people who can help you. Whereas if you choose a different platform, you might have quite limited options when it comes to trying to hire someone to help you I think

AHMED: Yep. Which brings to my next point in terms of when you need help and support or if you have any problems, what do you do in terms of, you mentioned in your general running of it and how do you look after it? Do you tend to use, do you do it all by yourself? Do you hire someone? Do you – ? [crosstalk]

JULIE: Yeah, I used to do it all myself until my friend Caroline recommended WPCurve to me. I think maybe about three months ago I joined WPCurve and oh my goodness, that’s been amazing. That’s a service that you, I pay just the basic package, I can’t even remember, I think it’s maybe $70 a month, something like that. For that you get unlimited, no that’s not true, you get one small task done each day. If you wanted to, you could give them 30 tasks in a month. One each day, and they would do them for you. That’s just small tasks.

That has really been amazing for me because something that I used to tinker away with for maybe an hour will take them two minutes. That time that I have saved on messing about in Word Press doing very fiddly little things, that’s been taken away from me. Actually, really even if they only do two jobs a month for me, that is worth it. In terms of time and headaches.

AHMED: It makes sense, if you spend an hour or two hours, you could have been using that money to generate other sources of income, helping customers and clients-

JULIE: Absolutely.

AHMED: -[inaudible] someone, why don’t you take two minutes and, you make money out of that really when you save time.

JULIE: Exactly. You can either use that time to make money like you say, or you can use it to spend time with your family or do something fun. It’s so worth the money.

AHMED: WP Curve, I’ll mention it in a show note, a link to it. I’m very familiar with it, it’s started by Don Norris, who’s a bit of a content marketing machine, as I like to call him.

JULIE: He is, yeah.

AHMED: He’s very good at what he does, but I’ll link it to the show notes for anybody else who wants to find out more information about it.

JULIE: Here’s where I get all acting like I’m in an interview, I’m going to ask you what’s your biggest strength?

AHMED: Oh God. Us Brits, again, we’re not very good at talking about strengths are we? I would say my biggest strength is I am definitely persistent. I think I’ve already talked about this, but I just don’t give up easily at all. I will have my down days, but I always know that I’ll wake up the next day ready to fight. That is my, without a doubt, my biggest strength. Just sheer, stubborn persistence.

AHMED: Wow. That’s a powerful one. You have mentioned it, but why not bring up again? You don’t just hang around for a few months and give up, no, no, you keep on going for years and years to come, hopefully, and you keep going.

JULIE: Yeah. Absolutely.

AHMED: So then, on the other hand, what’s your biggest weakness and how do you go around it?

JULIE: Oh this is easy. My biggest weakness is I procrastinate. As much as I’m persistent, that doesn’t mean I don’t procrastinate. I am the queen of procrastination and it kills me. I’ve tried reading so many books and watching so many inspirational tutorials on how to be less of a procrastinator but it’s still a big weakness. I’m better than I was a few years ago, but if I can find something else to do, rather than the thing I really need to do, I will.

It tends to be that I will wait until I have no option but to do this thing. Then it’s a last minute big panic to get it done. I very much look for the things I want to do and then the things that I don’t so much want to do, I’ll leave them. It just drives me mad.

AHMED: I’ve read it, and I’m going to quote it, you’ve mentioned it on your site front and centre on your homepage and I quote, “I am a renowned scatter brain and procrastinator.” You’re not holding back.

JULIE: No, I have to just own it don’t I? I have to own it.

AHMED: I think so. I think so, but you’re working on it. You realise it, you know about it so you’re better than before.

JULIE: Yeah.

AHMED: You can-

JULIE: I watched this TED Talk on procrastination which was amazing, I can’t remember who it was, but he was phenomenal and he talks about the dangers of procrastination so he talks about short term procrastination like I have, when you delay doing a task until the last minute. Then he says, “Then there’s this really dangerous procrastination, which is people who delay doing something for their whole life.” I just count myself lucky that I don’t have that one. I’m not going to get to the end of my life and think, “I didn’t do this thing I wanted to do.” It’s just that I leave till the last minute, that’s all. Every time.

AHMED: It reminds me of in university people have assignments or essays and you say, “Oh I’ll be fine,” I’ll leave it till the night before. Overnight, in the library to finish it off.

JULIE: Yeah, coffee, caffeine after caffeine, after caffeine. Yep.

AHMED: Mixed with Red Bull and so on and so forth. It’s really interesting about that TED Talk. I’m going to look for it, I’m going to find it and see if I can put it in the show notes about that.

JULIE: It’s really good, yeah. I would really recommend it.

AHMED: I will definitely try and find that as well. If you had to start again, what would you do differently? I think I’ve got an idea what you’d do differently, you mentioned about that struggle in the beginning of earning less than the minimum wage, but from your point of view, what would you do differently?

JULIE: Do you know, I don’t know if I would even do that differently because going through that was really important. Yeah, I think if you’d asked me this question even a year ago I would have had lots of things I would have done differently, but now I wouldn’t do anything differently because all the really crappy times have led to the good times every single time.

I always know that when there’s something not going well in my business, that round a corner is a success because I’m learning all the time. I’m going to say that I would not change a thing.

AHMED: Wow. I like that a lot because basically what you’re saying is all the crap time makes you who you are today and you built up a strength to create what you have today.

JULIE: Absolutely.

AHMED: It’s such a good point. It is a really good point as well and now that you mention it, it does make sense to me so I like that a lot.

JULIE: Do you know I think maybe one thing I would have done earlier, is I would have put myself around like-minded people earlier. When I did that, when I found people who were also perusing their dreams, my community is the CMA, the Content Marketing Academy with Chris, but there’s all these communities all over the world and if you join them and if you find the right one, you will skyrocket with the right people around you. I think I would have done that earlier. That’s the one thing.

AHMED: It’s such a good point though because sometimes it’s all well and good to have the support of your family and friends, but they’re not from the same kind of background or same kind of mentality, or they’re not in the same situation as you so-

JULIE: Yeah.

AHMED: -It’s very hard for them to relate. With good intentions they try to support you.

JULIE: Yes.

AHMED: On the other hand, yeah, you’re right, the right community can make the difference.

JULIE: They can be so supportive, but they can also sometimes be a little bit too realistic for you. They may be just trying, they don’t mean to, but they can be a little bit naysayer or, “Maybe you should try and find a job,” that kind of thing. They do mean well, but they’re just not on your wavelength. It’s really important that you have to find people on your wavelength.

AHMED: Very true. Very, very true. So then if we go all sentimental, what are you most proud about with your business?

JULIE: Oh. What am I most proud of? Okay, I would say I’m proud that I have kept moving forward. I stayed the course and I’ve allowed my business to evolve and that I just … That’s what I just always want to be doing. I always want to move forward. I never want to get stuck. I think that’s the thing I’m most proud of is that, moving forward all the time, but also the community that I’ve built up. I’ve got this community of photographers who are just awesome and really support each other and help each other. That’s something to be proud of as well.

AHMED: Definitely. It must be so amazing to have the support of a community. They help each other, you help them and they help you as well of course.

JULIE: They do, they do, they’re great, great people.

AHMED: I like that. It’s really, really interesting. The whole point why I wanted to talk to you, talk to you, interview you, from my perspective you have got a lot of insight. You may say, you said earlier that, “Oh I don’t know if I’m in the right position to offer certain advice,” but you’d be surprised because a lot of things that you have shared is so, so useful. So informative and really inspiring as well. I definitely want to thank you for sharing that with us.

JULIE: Oh thank you. It’s been a great chat. A great chat.

AHMED: A great chat.

JULIE: Enjoyed it.

AHMED: I’ve really enjoyed it. I’m sure the listeners have enjoyed it. If they want to connect with you or get in touch with you, where can they find you?

JULIE: They can find me at Tea Break Tog. So TeaBreakTog, all one word, that’s on Facebook, on Twitter, on Instagram and teabreaktog.com is my website.

AHMED: I will link to all of those in the show notes. Julie, I can’t thank you enough. It’s been a really, really good chat with you. Very, very interesting to talk to you about everything that you do and I’m definitely keen to see what you’re doing, what you’re going to move onto. The next step in terms of Togs in Business and so on and definitely hope to talk to you-

JULIE: Yeah, it’s exciting.

AHMED: -About that in the future. You never know.

JULIE: Yeah, I’d be delighted to. Thanks so much for having me on. I’ve really enjoyed it.

AHMED: Not a problem at all. Thank you very much.

 

Conclusion

AHMED: And that is it.

Thank you Julie for coming onto the show. I really enjoyed it. Really good chat with you, really enjoyed the interview. So many good points coming out of that and even I can see myself, “Yeah, yeah, I agree with you.” It’s really, really enjoyable. So many things to take from that interview, but one big I’ve learned from Julie is that persistence and determination is so important when it comes to running your own business.It’s a classic case of

It’s a classic case of marathon, not a sprint, what we mentioned and you just have to stick at it a few months, as you Julie mentioned earlier, is definitely not enough. Keep at it.

The show notes are available on IgniteRock.com/episodeeight. Really hope you enjoyed the show, if you have, I would massively appreciate it if you could leave a review on iTunes.

In the meantime, let’s rock with Word Press.

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