Yvonne van Dalen is a Business Beast and Marketing Strategist and Founder of the Creatives’ Coach Academy, where she helps struggling creatives entrepreneurs and photographers worldwide turn their passion into a profitable business. 

Her signature method has enabled her to make 6-figures while working only 10 hours a week, raising two kids, and having survived depression. She now teaches this method to her 1-to-1 clients, membership, and group program students, helping them to make the transition into a full-time creative business, 30X their income, and even make EUR 26,000 in a single day. Many of her clients now run their own successful creative business that makes them more money in less time and attracts clients on auto-pilot. 

In this episode, we’re talking about the value of education and how you can speed up your business growth and results and save yourself from wasting time getting anxiety and a lot of frustration by investing in education.

Why is it a good idea to actually pay for education?

These days, many people will think about why they should pay for education if there are so many free online courses. The truth is that you can waste A LOT of time googling until the end of the time, just circling around the same instead of actually having a process and a line of learning.

Hiring someone will give you the proper guidance you need and will put you in the right direction. Hiring someone as a trainer, a coach, or enrolling in a program, it’s just putting your foot down on the gas pedal. You will save so much time. 

If Yvonne had known from the beginning that having a coach would give her so much guidance when she started her business. She would have saved so much time and money. She would have made so much more money more quickly!

Down the road, Yvonne realized she needed more guidance to really kick out her business, and that’s when she hired a coach. The learning process was set up for 24 weeks. However, she started to see results in her business about her sixth week. That was it! 

Only in six weeks, she discovers the right way to do it. That just saved her two years of googling, two years of puzzling all these pieces and duct-taping all these free solutions together. It will never be as good as when you hire someone who knows what you need. They will point you in the right direction. And you will start earning that money back while you’re in the course or as quickly when you’re done with it.

If you want to achieve your dream of having a profitable business so much quickly without working 24/7, spending endless hours in front of your computer, and burning out, check out The Sustainable Photography mentor program, where you can learn how to build a business system to be more profitable without having to work more hours, free up your time to unleash your creativity and work with clients you love and who love you back.

Investing in yourself is the best investment you will ever make

So many people say that they don’t have the money now to hire a coach to guide them in their business and that they will figure it out on their own, but that same people on the weekends are going to fancy restaurants and getting their hair done, so they do have the money! Why aren’t they spending it on something so much worth it as on their education?

It all comes to mindset in so many ways. If you think that taking that course is too much money for you, but then you buy the most expensive jewelry, you aren’t really putting in the work it takes to make it work!

Stop a moment to sit down and evaluate your finances, plan how to distribute your money more wisely, and learn to differentiate what you just want and what you NEED.

You might want to check out the episode “Money Confidence with Jillian Todd,” where we talk about how to transform your relationship with money, proving you don’t have to choose between doing what you love and being financially abundant.

Listen to the episode “Money Confidence with Jillian Todd“

Episode 2

A lot of Yvonne’s growth has come from investing in herself. She has had a dream builder coach, a money mindset coach, an online business coach, and even she started to appreciate her own time more by hiring an assistant, so she doesn’t have to do the repetitive stuff over and over again.

You need to put yourself first, like in an airplane. When something happens, you put your own oxygen mask on first, so you can help others.

Build a business based on who you are 

You won’t be successful if you are only a copypaste of someone else. It is absolutely fine if you use a framework, but the framework should be customized for your business. Create your own template to build your own model, and that’s how it will work. 

When building a business, sticking to your own gut feeling to your true identity and skills is the only thing that works. There is nothing more valuable in your business than authenticity.

Being unique is the foundation when it comes to building a successful personal brand. In episode 4, we talk in-depth about creating an authentic brand based on who you are, what you stand for, what values you believe in, and what makes you stand out. 

Listen to the episode “The importance of Branding with Danielle Garber.”

Episode 4 

In the long run, you will be keeping that sustainability because you have authenticity. You know what you are offering and how to improve it because you created it; it is your work! Your invention, your magic!

Stop trying to do everything at once 

Value your time by focusing on single-tasking. You will give the best of yourself by focusing on one task instead of doing 20 tasks at the same time.

The only thing you have when you want to start out is your time. And you can do so much without having big budgets or starting on these really expensive subscriptions. 

One of the common problems that people think they have when starting a business is a lack of time ” I don’t have the time.” to go to a webinar, enroll in classes, mentoring sessions, etc. 

The truth is we all have the same amount of hours in a week. If you just look at how much time you spend watching TV or being online or playing games, you will be surprised how much time you spend on those activities. You can miss one hour a day, right? 

Start with taking one hour off from those activities and invest your time in doing something productive that will help your business. If you do the math, you may have an entire day to study each week. That is the gift when you start out for yourself, be aware of your time and do one thing at a time.

The only thing you can’t get more of is your time. 

Art is so underestimated

The world will be a lot less attractive without art. Without music, without paintings, without images. Art is what people go to when they want to refuel and relax.

What an artist such as a photographer brings to the table as a creative business owner is so valuable. And that’s why photographers should be paid more.

You are allowed to charge for what you do and love at the same time; you are allowed to price your work and have a life and not just work constantly, having endless photoshoot sessions and editing all night long. Don’t fall into the starving artist trap.

We have an episode where we talk all about pricing and how to avoid being a starving artist, listen to the first part of this conversation on episode 8.

Listen to the episode “How to avoid being a starving artist with Yvonne van Dalen.”

Episode 8

It is possible to make a living out of photography. You don’t need to have two jobs to make ends meet at the end of the month. You just need to create a business strategy to make this sustainable and get to a much better place.

Summary

Two know more than one, and you don’t have to go it alone. Better yet, by investing in education, you can speed up your business growth and results tremendously and save tons of time, anxiety, and frustration. Investing in your own education is not a selfish act. It is in fact, the opposite: by becoming better in what you do and more focused on what you offer, your clients are better heard, served, and will become your superfans!

You never stop learning. There is always room for improvement and to implement new things in your business. Always work based on who YOU are and offer this authenticity to the world; they will love you for this.

However, don’t overwork it. Find the balance you need to recharge and get those great ideas, be friendly with yourself, focus on one task at a time, and you will give your 100%.

Many times, by doing less, you will get done so much more!

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