Podcast Summary
In the latest episode of the Universal Method podcast, host Ashton Winningham, a 17-year-old entrepreneur from Las Vegas, and guest Kristen Davis of Kristen Joy Photography delve into the significance of time management in both business and personal arenas. Ashton introduces “Universal Method,” his company aimed at offering diverse solutions across business, career, and personal development domains, emphasizing the one-stop-platform approach for assistance and support. He shares insights from his upbringing in a business-oriented family and his vision for global business engagement. Kristen, with 17 years of experience in photography, discusses her transition from Pittsburgh to Las Vegas and the evolution of her company through family support and independent endeavor.
The core discussion revolves around passive income as a strategic method to optimize time. Ashton underlines passive income’s role in business scalability, contrasting it with traditional employment by focusing on income generation strategies that minimize direct labor over time. Kristen illustrates this through her company’s use of outsourcing and AI technologies, like Aftershoot and HoneyBook, to streamline operations and expand passive income opportunities, emphasizing how systems and outsourcing can contribute to business efficiency and personal time management.
The conversation also touches on overcoming hesitancy towards new technologies and delegation, with both hosts advocating for outsourcing and systematization as means to leverage time more effectively, allowing business owners to concentrate on growth and personal priorities. They highlight the importance of foundational business systems, social media presence, and adapting to modern business demands for sustainability and scaling.
Drawing on statistics, Ashton highlights the high failure rates of businesses over time and identifies cash flow management as a critical factor. He suggests prioritizing foundational and system-based approaches to business to enhance longevity and cope with challenges like the COVID-19 pandemic. Kristen reflects on the importance of aligning business practices with personal values and goals, emphasizing work-life balance and strategic delegation to spend time on what matters most.
The episode concludes with a call to action for listeners to evaluate their use of time in business and personal life, advocating for system-based solutions, outsourcing, and prioritization to achieve efficiency, growth, and fulfillment. Both Ashton and Kristen express enthusiasm for discovering future outsourcing opportunities, underlining the episode’s theme: “Your time is very valuable.”
Relevant quotes:
– Ashton: “Truly having passive income allows for time to grow on your business…”;
– Kristen: “Outsourcing, I’ve realized, is so crucial to one, the passive income, but also freeing up my time so that I can sharpen my skills in the area that I need to.”
Podcast Transcription
Good morning everyone. Welcome to the Universal Method podcast. I am your host Ashton Winningham and with me today I have Kristen Davis with Kristen Joy Photography. In this podcast we’re going to review various aspects of business, personal, and career education and frequently debated topics. Our pilot episode will be business-centered, specifically about the topic question how valuable is your time? So before we dive in I’d like to thank all of you for joining and quickly introduce my company the Universal Method to you all. The reason why I named my company the way is because of my goals with forming this company. So in the beginning of this company I really wanted to focus on one centered method, which is why I said the Universal Method, right? One way that people can come to a platform and get various solutions no matter what it is. I want to be able to assist people in that way and whether it’s business, whether you’re diving into your first career, or you’re trying to enhance your career path, or you have maybe personal training, personal education courses that you are looking for, that is the goal of the Universal Method is to just have one place where you can go to for any support, any assistance, ideally in any aspect. So some of the just basics about my company, you know, I am a 17 year old entrepreneur and I was raised with two parents who are both business owners. They’ve raised me up in a certain way where I have been able to, you know, get a lot of different experiences about business and see a lot of what business is about. We’re based out of Las Vegas, Nevada, so we’re not just, you know, we’re not just no one that you wouldn’t know or anything, you know, we’re here in the United States and I seek to do business in multiple other countries in the future. So that’s kind of where we’re starting, you know, I have a foundation in various types of development but nothing crazy and another one of my goals with developing this company was just to show that, to give an easy access to people who are looking to start up businesses and to show that, hey, this is possible no matter who you are, no matter what your background is, you can start learning, you can start growing today. So that’s about it for my company. Chris said I’d like you to introduce your company now, what’s your, you know, what’s your company name, how long you’ve been in business and give us some background. So I’m Kristen, I own Kristen Joy Photography LLC, I’m based in Las Vegas also and I have about 17 years of experience independently, about 15, so I studied under a photographer in Pittsburgh and developed my skills that way and then moved out to Vegas and started my own business and basically with the help from family also, learned how to open my own business and build from there. That’s great. Alright, so our main topic question today is going to be how valuable is your time? I really want to stress this answer because I feel like it is such an important question when you’re approaching business, when you’re approaching personal education, no matter what you’re pursuing, your time is very important and that’s what I’d like to get to at the end of this here. So I’d like to talk about passive income. I’m gonna go more on the business side and then we’ll wrap it back into the main question, but I feel that passive income is such a strong way to save your time. You know, it’s so common to have a job that, and this is what a lot of people’s business dream is, is just, oh, get rid of the nine-to-five, which, okay, I mean, obviously a lot of people exaggerate that sometimes and are like, oh, you never have to work when it’s passive income. Well, obviously you have to, you know, build a foundation for your company and whatnot, but truly having passive income allows for, you know, time to grow on your business, even if that’s just, let’s say, $500 a month. That’s where you get to take that $500 a month and now put it back into your business and watch your passive income slowly scale. Compared to, you know, with a career, you can still scale and that’s very important and we’ll have other episodes about that, but with a business, you can truly establish passive income, which that means, at its very base level, that just means money that you have, you know, built the systems for and that you’ve set up your company well enough to where you’re going to be able to have a recurring income that you don’t have to directly put hours into. So, I’d like to ask you a question. What do you believe the core of passive income growth is? For me and my company, I don’t think I realized this until maybe three or four years ago, you know, 2020. I’m trying to be creative and think of other ways of income with photography kind of being shut down and travel being shut down. So, I utilize outsourcing for a lot of my passive income. So, now we’ve been able to build a team of about five or six associate photographers. So, instead of me actually going out and photographing events or weddings or elopements, I have a team that goes out. I also outsource my editing and use utilize AI now, more so in my business, which is kind of a newer thing as well. But using that and then having a great CRM. I use HoneyBook. I used to use 17 hats. So, these companies have built automations and different things that I can utilize and not have direct impact on. So, I’m not having to email all the time and do all these things that I’ve been able to outsource. And so, that has created a pretty good passive income for me in my field. Right. I’d like to ask because I know a lot of people are hesitant towards systems, towards scaling their companies with new employees and outsourcing. It’s difficult to kind of trust all these different softwares, especially like AI. A lot of people are on shaky ground about this because it’s so new and it’s so rapidly expanding. So, how long did it take you to hire out those associate photographers? Did you have to qualify them beforehand? How many different AI softwares have you used? Those types of… Yeah. So, I did obviously do some training with them. But it was actually for the type of photography that I’m doing, it was pretty minimal. I’ll say they came on. There are people that I’ve known in my network. So, there are people I’ve worked with before and trusted. Then I knew that they would show up and do a good job. But as far as training, it was pretty minimal. And the AI now, I was leery as well. I definitely want to have control of my photos and wanted to be that business owner that I’m filtering everything. I don’t want my name on something that isn’t perfect. But with AI, it definitely has saved me that time. So, I use Aftershoot. I used to use Imogen. Aftershoot basically culls through the images and then you can also have it edit your photos. And then after that, I’m just kind of taking a light glance at it to make sure it matches my branding and my aesthetics. And then with HoneyBook, we’ve been able to do AI integration. So, there’s… You know, when I get an inquiry, there’s an automation that’s already set up through that AI. I know my blogging, Universal Method does my blogging and they’ve been able to implement some AI there as well. And finding images that match my brand and aesthetic. So, it definitely is intimidating at first. But after implementing and seeing the benefits of that passive income, I definitely will not go back. There’s no way I won’t be using AI in the future. And hopefully, we’ll be learning new AI tricks. Yeah, here and there. So, yeah. I mean, it’s such… Like, even especially for you as a photographer, you know, your photo is your product, right? And obviously, it still takes a great amount of skill to be able to capture the right shot. But the editing is important as well. So, it is important to remember everyone that, you know, you can properly and quality scale your company. Your product can be replicated on a larger scale even if it’s not just you who’s the one producing it. This is where a lot of, you know, like her having a CRM. And I have a CRM as well. Having a CRM takes that…Technically, it takes that personal touch away where you don’t have to necessarily text the person. So, you’re not the one texting the person. So, I understand that that can be a something. Sometimes, like a hard point of contact and it’s not a hard thing to overcome where you’re not the one who’s directly in contact with everything. But this is where you scale your company to be a, you know, consistent number one and just quality product. You develop or you have someone else develop for you one time a consistent structure and your personal touch is written all over your company. You know, that’s your value as a company is going to be your actual product at the end of the day. You know, no matter how many have ever many systems you have, you know, if you’re just recording like, you know, whatever it may be. If you’re making a completely useless product then or completely like not helpful, not valuable product, a lot of people are not going to be interested in that. So, remembering that obviously, if you have value though, you can easily scale that. And also, if you don’t have a ton of value right now, you can alter things here and there to start adding more value. You know, like how quality were your photos when you first started your business compared to now? Oh my gosh, it was a disaster. But you know, obviously, starting out, everyone has to build on that and there was a lot of late nights where I’m grinding out and trying to be a perfect editor and a perfect email and a perfect business person. And now, realizing after all those years, I don’t need to be all those things. I know, you know, the company that I used to use is called 17 hats and that’s kind of a joke with small business owners is that we’re supposed to wear all these hats. But I’ve realized that no, actually, I shouldn’t be wearing all these hats. I should be outsourcing to people who do this for a living. And you know, obviously, some of it can be expensive. So, you know, when you’re starting out, you’re building a website and doing all these things. But like we said, your time is valuable. So, should I have done that? I probably should have outsourced immediately instead of wasting hours and hours trying to learn a system or be all of a sudden a website designer when in reality, my goal is to take beautiful photos, not to be all these other 17 hats. So, outsourcing, I’ve realized, is so crucial to one, the passive income, but also freeing up my time so that I can sharpen my skills in the area that I need to. Right. And yeah, something like what that looks like for me, you know, I do a lot of just software developing on the back end of just systems and stuff. And there have been times where I just, you know, not legitimately, but banging my head, you know, on the on a wall, just trying to figure out something for five to eight hours, just one little part of this process, when in reality, you know, I end up going to bed that night and waking up the next morning getting 20 minutes. So, remembering that you kind of have to prioritize and shape your time. You know, if you can’t figure something out, first of all, don’t deliver a bad product ever. Like, that’s just not valuable. You know, if you can’t figure out how to make a website, don’t put a blank page with your name on it. That’s not helpful, and that’s actually probably going to hurt your brand more than it will ever help your brand. But then second, if you’re really just struggling with something, maybe just take some time away, readjust your priorities, and then re-approach, you know, have this constant, more of a third-person perspective, right. This is what working on your business, rather than working in your business, kind of looks like in my eyes. So, that’s great. How are you, this next question is going to be, how are you currently applying those core methods to your business? And like, what more specifically do you have going on right now? So, for me now, it’s really just trying to build out my socials with AI and outsourcing, so that I’m even more removed from that and have experts working on that area. I know early on, you know, I tried to run that myself and try and figure out the market and do all these things. Well, I don’t have a marketing or a social media management type of degree, and so that’s an area that we’re definitely trying to push hard on. And then just expanding with the associate photographers, and you know, I live in the wedding capital of the world. This is a market that I can tap into with associates. I know it’s different in other areas of the country and the world, but you know, being in Las Vegas, I’m tapping into that market of associate photographers and having them go out and shoot and do these shoots for me where I’m still making profit, but still delivering a product that I can put my name on and my company’s name on. Right. And yeah, I think that clearly establishes like a passive income for you, which is really clear. You know, it’s really clear how you’re establishing those core methods of how you generate passive income, right? The systems, the outsourcing, it’s all very clear in a line. And sometimes I have these people who are like generating passive income in the most complex ways. Sometimes we just need to simplify it back to, you know, let’s outsource one person for this. You don’t need to have 47 employees on your first day. You need to, you know, you gotta be a thousandaire before you can be a millionaire. So that’s, those are my thoughts there. I want to quickly talk about a season of growth and scaling. This is a very difficult point in a lot of people’s business is when they’re just starting to, okay, I have my established business. I have my established product and value. Now, how do I start getting this out there for people to experience, for people to buy and to start scaling this company? And, you know, I’m sure you’ve heard these stats before, but I just want to read a couple of stats real quick. These are from various studies online, which you can access. After one year, generally of all company types, of all companies, genres, industries, whatever it is, 20% of businesses fail. So, and that’s, that’s a pretty big number. Obviously like IT tech companies, like there’s something like 90 plus percent fail in their first year. So it is going to vary on what industry you’re in and what values you have to bring forth to the table to be a competitor, right? But overall, 20% are going to fail after their first year, 37.9% fail after three years, 50% fail after five years and 65% fail after 10 years. So most businesses that are ever created fail, which, you know, it, it, it’s not, it’s no surprise really when you walk down your street and you see, you know, this business here and then five years later, that’s a different business. And it’s people are too often getting caught up in that kind of older sense of more traditional and legacy style of business, which is like franchising and all those things, which are still very, very valuable today. But you know, you have to know how to culture your business to what, to what the business context is today. You know, if you don’t have a social media presence, if you don’t have a website, like your, your company is missing out on major, major sustainability and foundation, like not just profit, you know, after when something like COVID hits we’re not, it wasn’t about whether or not you whether or not you had the, you know, had the most franchises or whatever it might’ve been. It was mainly just about what type of social foundation you had. And that really matters is what kind of social foundation you’re putting out there. So in this like season of growth and scaling, you still have to remember that your time is very valuable. So try to, when you’re scaling, consider that often. And one last stat here is that approximately 82% of businesses fail because of cashflow issues. So this is where you get into, remember that while you’re growth and scaling, you know, you’re not going to grow, you’re not going to grow and scale if you don’t have a foundation. You’re not going to grow and scale if you don’t have all these things in line. So your cashflow issues, you know, when COVID hit for all those companies that didn’t have a social media presence or anything like that, they, they probably failed pretty quickly. And I, and you know, most of us know people personally who had businesses that failed very quickly after COVID. And it’s just because that cashflow stops as soon as you know, your, your traffic is stopping and your traffic ultimately comes back from your foundation. So everything needs to be built off of every time I approach a business or every time I look into a business, it always has to be built off of systems and foundational concepts of business. Right. And this is where, you know, you can really get educated online about this, even really quickly, you can learn about what do I need to be an established social media presence? What do I need to have all these different things? So seek that, you know, while you’re, while you’re growing and scaling, don’t just look at how do I, you know, how do I get to $5,000 this month? How do I get to $10,000 next month? That’s, that should not be your concern more than how do I establish this company for longevity? So, yeah, so I was just going to add on that. I like how you said, you know, the socials, I think with us, it was a pivot because I’m, you know, I’m a millennial. I’m not into a lot of this stuff. I don’t like putting my face out there. It’s not something that I’m used to, but for the purpose of business and scaling, that was where the social media team, I know there’s people who know this information and will utilize TikTok, will utilize LinkedIn and these different platforms that I’m not familiar with and don’t really have a need for in my life. But I know that it works with the business side. So being able to utilize those outsourcing and those other people around you that have been doing this or have the understanding and knowledge of it. And by doing that, you’re committing your time to what’s important to you and the things that you love. You know, you’re not just, you’re not just sticking around on social media for eight hours trying to figure out this one or two posts or getting on all these different platforms and all this stuff. That is where this leverage. I heard Alex Hormozy talk about this one time. He’s very successful. He runs a couple SMMA agencies. So, and he talks about leverage a lot. He talks about using the skills of other people and that you can still maintain your brand identity when you use these other people. You know, if you are willing to work on your business as a CEO rather than work in your business as a, you know, member and as like a photographer versus, Hey, you know, CEO, the person who is actually running multiple associate photographers and she still does photography often, right? Yeah. I still, and that’s the benefit of it is I get to pick and choose the projects that I want to be on. Whereas I’m not working in it. I’m having these other people go and do shoots that are generating cashflow, but not necessarily something that I’m interested in being on. So there’s that benefit as well of I, I can now pick and choose different projects as the CEO, instead of having that photographer mindset of, I have to go do this. I have to go do that. I can kind of take a step back and visualize it as a bigger picture. Right. And I think that’s a big thing. Um, I am like, especially for brand identity, my name’s on it. So, you know, we get kind of wrapped up in the idea of this is what my core values are. This is what I want. And that can still remain true while having other people work in your business. Um, so like you said, your brand identity doesn’t have to change your core values. Don’t have to change, you know, the product doesn’t have to change, but being able to pivot from that working side to the CEO side is, you know, essential to grow. Right. And you’re not sacrificing your values is what she’s talking about there. You know, you’re actually growing them. You’re actually involving more people in the same core focuses and ideas that you had when you started your business, you’re expanding rather than, you know, this, this compromise that everyone seems to think they have. Now, of course, there are such thing as bad employees, right? There are certain, you know, I read a stat earlier today that was like 30% of businesses fail because of employee robberies, which, which was wild to me because, you know, that’s, that’s a huge percentage of business fails that’s coming just because of employees, um, you know, poor, poor employee choices and potentially poor hiring as well. So there’s a system to that, right? There’s a, there’s a system to your system even. So just be aware when you’re doing that, but I want to detach from the business side here real quick and just mentioned that, you know, the value of your time throughout all these seasons, um, is, is so important because truly this is, this is what you have, you know, all you have is the present right now. And I’m not trying to dive into all these ethics about, oh, you know, whatever it is, chase, whatever you want, do whatever, you know, none of that. I’m not trying to dive into ethics more than I am trying to say, um, your time is what you have and you have a limited amount of it. So, um, naturally your time is going to be very valuable. Um, so do spend it according, you know, uh, spend, spend your time according to your passions and according to what you want to do, but also make sure that, you know, you’re, you’re freeing up more time by growing passive income. You’re freeing up more time by, you know, certain investments and compromises now. So maybe you wanted to do 40 shoots this week and had the opportunity to do, but instead you decided, no, I mean, obviously 40 shoots is a lot, but instead you decided, no, I’m going to work on this outsourcing this for these amount of hours. Um, so whatever it is across your life, really focus on just prioritizing your time, finding what, um, is going to have the greatest output for you. Um, and listen, listen to what experience and what other people’s wisdom has to say about, you know, what is going to be the best outcome, listen to other people and what they, um, what they, you know, the approaches that they know. And this is where, this is where I’ve learned most of my, um, core foundations on scaling, you know, part of that is still based in my Christian faith. Part of that is still based in my, um, education from various people online, right? So all these things you still need to prioritize when you’re prioritizing, look at all of the aspects of your life. Don’t just consider, well, I need to get this business at 10 K next month. So I’m going to spend 57,000 hours this week, right? That’s, that’s not prioritizing your time. And that’s kind of just throwing a lot of hours at something that you haven’t planned and thought forth. So prioritizing, you know, focusing, um, leveraging your time throughout your whole life is really important. And again, just learning to grow, right? Learning from other people. I think that’s where I had to take a pivot in the 2020, you know, during the pandemic was I was working full-time at a hospital doing speech therapy and realizing my time is of value. I have four kids and they have one childhood. Like you said, like you get one chance with your kids, they get one childhood. So to be able to leverage the people around me and be able to capitalize on that time and passive income is key to my success. And other people, other photographers look at it completely different. They’re going, why are you having these associates? Why are you outsourcing? Why are you doing this? But for me and my core values, I have children that I want to spend their childhood with so that it always realigns. Like there’s WPPIs in town this week. And for me, I could go every day and I could probably benefit some, but I have volleyball practice with my daughter or I have something else with my kids. So everyone has to kind of take in those values and kind of assess where they want their time and their business to go. Right. And this is where you, instead of having 12 hours a day, okay, now I have six hours. Now what do I need to do in these six hours? Because or six to eight, you know, whatever, whatever that number ends out being. Maybe there is some time where you are working 12 hours a day, but whatever that time is, you need to make sure that in your 12 hours, you’re maximizing that time so that the time outside of those 12 hours is not being consumed by those 12 hours. Right. So you’re not, you know, um, you know, no priorities, just running straight forth at it. Take the time for education. Take the time for, you know, um, making up, just writing up a list, writing up a task list and all these different things. And, you know, by education, I don’t mean you have to pursue a four year college degree, although that has many benefits to it as well. So whatever, wherever route you’re taking, just make sure you’re prioritizing that time. So the general answer for our question, you know, how valuable is your time? Um, don’t forget it. Your time is very valuable. And I really would like to invite all of you to just, you know, do a self analysis, do a self checkup and look at each part of your business and each, you know, from everything from social media to backend systems, to team hiring, all these different systems and things that you need to start implementing and have going on. Um, watch your time and just prioritize and approach it with a, um, with a different, you know, with a certain approach that’s going to be able to, um, solve your issues and solve your problems in just a structured manner and just a way that other people can use their talents to be able to support your values in time. So that’s pretty much it. Do you have any other comments? No, I think that was a great conversation and I’m excited to see what other outsourcing I can find in the future. Me as well. All right. Thank you everyone for joining. I’m looking forward to the next few episodes. Make sure to join me then. I hope to have you again on the podcast, Kristen. It was great. And I just, uh, want to mention just one little plug real here real quick, uh, about my company. Um, remember what your time is worth, whether you choose our company or not. Um, don’t forget what matters most. And you know, if, if you have any interest in systems or various solutions, um, from anything that we mentioned here, any questions, go ahead and reach out to me and have a great day. Thank you.