How To Build A Joyful Business With Laura Novak Meyer

CEO/founder of Little Nest Portraits – Laura Novak Meyer

How can recession and doing every mistake in the book still produce a successful business. Why your product is never the real reason customers buy from you. (Even if they think it is!) The one thing that’s been critical for Laura’s success as a leader and business owner. The surprisingly simple step by step method Laura uses to get clear about her vision and goals. How to quickly motivate people to do what you need them to do. (Without spending hours convincing them!)

Resources Mentioned in the Podcast:

• LittleNestPhoto.com

Check out LauraNovak.comfor more info!

Thanks so much for listening!

Transcript: Download

Jaime: 	Welcome to Eventual Millionaire. I'm Jane Masters and today on the show we have Laura Novak Meyer. She runs Little Nest Photo.com which is actually a franchise photography business. I'm so excited to dive in. Thank you so much for coming on the show today.

Laura:	Thank you. So excited to be here. We had so much fun already. I can't wait to see how it continues.

Jaime:	Me too - we were all giggling and laughing and starting late. It's great. Well, it's funny because somebody emailed me and was like, "Oh, Laura would be perfect for your show," because on one of the episodes I said I was too nice. So they emailed me and they said, "Laura would be perfect because she was told that she was too nice, also."  

So before I get into the niceness which I'm sure we will connect on, tell us about your business and how you've grown it to be a huge company. Because normally - no offense to photographers out there - they're usually just a one-person shop. But you're grown it to something huge.

Laura:	Yeah, and I think that's a great pivot into our conversation. Because when you're looking at the photography industry as a whole, it's very much a cottage industry. So we saw that as an opportunity. A lot of photographers see the industry as over-saturated. 

But we said, "Okay, well what happens if you take what we know about the photography industry and also what we know about retail and then merge them together."  So I really look at our concept as the photography is the end product, but it's a service-retail business. So with that, I was in the photography industry for about ten years as an independent photographer and then I got into franchising kind of by accident. So people - 

Jaime:	How did that happen? People go, "Oh, whoops."  

Laura:	Yeah, exactly, like, "Oh my gosh, all of a sudden I'm franchising." But so what happened is that I had really reached the top of my market in the Philadelphia; had gotten to know the industry. I was teaching and speaking around the country on the business of photography, and became pretty versed in what it really took to run a solid photography business. 

At the same time, and it was really upscale. I was photographing celebrities and travelling around the country and this was around 2009, and a couple things happened. The first is that some of my very high-end customers said, "I love you, Laura, but not this year. I'm about half of my net worth as I was six months ago."  And the other thing that happened is I started thinking about having a family. And I thought, "You know what? If I take a maternity leave, I am 25 percent down for that year," and I was generating a million dollars just with a camera in my hands. 

So I didn't really like the idea that if I didn't have a camera in my hands I wasn't making money. I think that is one of the inherent flaws in the photography industry is that you're selling your time for a living and typically for not as much money as maybe an attorney that charges $500.00 an hour.  

So you're really limited even at a high price point as to how much you can grow. So I thought, "I have a great idea. I'm gonna go into retail," in 2009, in the midst of a recession. I had no idea what I was doing. I signed a terrible lease. I did everything wrong that could possibly go wrong in that construction process, and somehow we survived, and the family survived. Did really well with this idea of combining upscale photography, and that boutique feel of what it feels like to get a personalized photography service, with retail best practices, and made it fairly accessible, both in terms of convenience and in price. 

It just blew up. The customer demand really was there because at the price point that we were at, there wasn't really that many options. So this is for people who want the convenience and the accessibility of a chain operation but really wouldn't be caught dead at Picture People. 

So that's where we saw that great opportunity, and so it was very exciting for us to see what that possibility could be. Somebody came to us and said, "You should open a second location," and we were like, "Okay, we should open a second location; see if we can do it again."  And we did it again about 45 minutes away. So that's when we knew that the concept was franchise-able. 

I was approached by some people in other markets saying, "We'd love to bring this idea to our areas, and how shall we do that? Can you give me a workshop?"  I'm like, "Not really. This is a pretty extensive training process."  But the more research I did on it, the more I fell in love with the idea of franchising. 

So that's what we did. Now we have four open. One of our company locations I sold and so that has become a franchise. Then the other one I still own. Then we have two other franchises open and five more under construction. So I'll have nine open by the end of the year.

Jaime:			Wow, that's going all in. 

Laura:			That's about 15 years in ten minutes. 

Jaime:	Short and concise, now I have a thousand questions, perfect. So it's funny because you said, "I started this in 2009."  It's always amazing to hear the journey from that many years and this short period of a time. Because you sort of go over that and somehow it all worked, right? 

So why do you think it worked during that period? Because most people would think that it was a dumb move to go ahead and open something at that point. Was it just the convergence between what you could get and this boutique side that really made the difference? And do you really think that?s the one reason why you succeeded when other people failed?

Laura:	I think so. I mean, it probably was a dumb move. But I think what worked is that we had a very, very clear vision. When I say, "we" there's team members who are still part of the organization that started with us at that time, and they very much contributed to that vision. 

We had a very strong vision for not only - and we were very clear on what our differentiators were. So we knew that outstanding photography needed to be a differentiator. But one of the other differentiators is the full service experience. So, whereas a lot of photographers are just photographing, not doing very much with the files, putting them on a disc. Whereas I think sometimes the customer feels like that's what they want, they really don't. It doesn't create an end product that is satisfactory. 

So having that full service experience where you walk in and you get interior design help and you can see vignettes and it feels like you're in a home furnishing store, that highly differentiates us. And then just this incredible guest experience, like you feel like you're at the Four Seasons, is another one of our differentiators. 

So I think the fact that we were so clear on our uniques. We were so clear on our core values. We were so clear on the vision. That kind of helped us get over those natural bumps in the road that any entrepreneur faces when they start out on a crazy endeavor. The statistics are stacked against us, particularly as women, right? I'm part of, what; the one and a half percent of women have grown their businesses to over-a-million-dollar value. So there has to be something bigger than an implementation plan to get you there, I think. Or else you're just gonna get discouraged.

Jaime:	Why do you think there's an issue over - because I don't get a lot of women on this show. So I have to ask this because all the women that listen are like, "Get more women."  And I am like, "I'm trying."  So tell me what you think is the difference? Why is it that so many women can't hit over a million?

Laura:	I think - there was an article that was written about me on LinkedIn that blew up kind of by accident about this topic. The comments were fascinating because it was - I think it's a couple things. I think first of all, it's support system. 

There isn't a lot of support systems for women who are looking to go big. And when you - personally when I walked into the systems that are designed for people like me, they felt very masculine to me and I didn't feel at home. In fact, I got kicked out of one because I was pregnant. That's not gonna work. So I think it's a lack of support systems. 

It's a lack of believing that you can - that it's not more pressure. Because if you go about it the right way like, I have a two-year-old and a three-year-old at home. Yeah, they're boys.

Jaime:	Crazy.

Laura:	It's a little crazy. But I have to say, I live a very balanced life. My cell phone's away when I'm with my kids. I stop work at 3:00 three days a week and 5:00 the other three days a week, and I'm done for the night - for work. I do a lot of self-development during those evening hours. But I think there's this belief system that it's gonna be more pressure, more stress. I personally felt more when I was alone than I do today. 

So I think if it's approached with the right set of tools and resources, it doesn't have to be more pressure to grow your business. But I think there is that fear. And then there's confidence, and I see that all the time. Can I do it? Am I capable? Am I good enough? 

It's like when you - I'm an avid reader - and if you read Elizabeth Gilbert's recent book on creativity, she jokes as she does in her fabulous Elizabeth Gilbert way about how when men apply for a job they're like, "I'm 3 percent qualified for this job, but I'm gonna go for it."  And women are like, "I'm 103 percent qualified and I'm not sure if I'm the right fit."  

So for whatever reason, we have this idea of perfectionism that we put on ourselves that we can't go for it unless we have it 100 percent figured out. And I have this conversation with people in my organization pretty much daily. Like it's okay that we don't have it all figured out because hitting the go button is so much better than never executing. 

Jaime:	So tell me - because you said if you have the right tools and resources there's not more stress. I think both men and women want this. How do we have a huge, huge vision and go after it without going, "Oh my gosh, this is going to be so much more stress and so much more time and so much more everything," because you feel like you're getting it bigger? So what are those tools and resources that you're talking about that will really help people?

Laura:	I think some of it is that you have to probably develop your own system. So I can share my own experience. I don't know that I have a cookie-cutter answer because I think it depends on your own skill set. But for me, learning to lead and manage myself first, before trying to lead and manage a team has been critical. 

I didn't learn how to do that when I first started. I just kind of jumped in. Then I realized over time that I can be so much more effective with my time and so much more productive if I managed myself first and led myself first. And now it's so much easier for me to lead my team because I know where I'm headed. If I know where I'm headed and what my goals are and how I want to develop myself then it's much easier to tell other people what I expect of them. 

Jaime:			So how do you do that? How do you personally do all that?

Laura:	How I personally do that? I have daily, weekly, and quarterly personal development and professional development routines. So I spend - I have routines in the morning that set me up for success. I have routines in the evening which I'm happy to get into detail about. But just as an overview, I spend two hours a week pretty much doing a weekly review of looking back at last week and looking forward to this week.  That's non-negotiable time.

Jaime:	That's so impressive, by the way, as a mom of two kids, of a two- and three-year-old, to take two hours to plan your week is just ridiculously impressive.

Laura:	But it probably saves me five because I'm looking forward at that meeting that I have and I'm realizing there's probably somebody else on my team that's more than capable of taking that meeting if I just prep them for 15 minutes. So that just saved me an hour. So that's what I mean is that I find myself more effective as part of a team because developing other people is really enjoyable for me. It's very fun for me. I enjoy that piece of leadership a lot. I'm a big believer in servant leadership. 

So, it's really encouraging other people to very high standards, but then saying, "How can I help?"  And we all agree with what that looks like. So those expectations are really clear. And then I do a monthly personal off-site where I'm looking at my goals and I'm planning ahead. 

Then I do a quarterly team off-site. So we did that all day yesterday at a local inn. We just sat outside. We did yoga for an hour when we first got there and then we just sat outside with our yoga mats and hashed it out. What are we doing this quarter? What are our priorities? 

So if our weeks are - you know, 20 hours of our weeks are filled with all of the regular stuff we have to get done, we only have 20 more hours that we can fill with projects. There's a hundred hours of projects here. We have to battle this out now. Because you can't have too many priorities. So the idea in that is to do less, better. 

So that kind of pre-planning and that kind of structured self-discipline as an entrepreneur is - we don't have a boss to tell us that this is, these practices will make us successful. We have to learn that the hard way. And I think that these are just habits I've developed over time when I realized that hitting the ground running first thing in the morning wasn't necessarily getting me further along to where I wanted to be. 

Jaime:	Okay, so we have so many things - the morning and evening routines in just a second - but do you have full call to these' This is what I hear from everybody and me, to keep yourself on task. So when you know that you have a whole team meeting it's a little bit different because you're like, "Okay, and now we do this and blah, blah, blah, blah."  

But when it's just for you, whether it be the two hour or the monthly one, how do you keep yourself - that you're going to do it if something comes up. Because you can put it in your calendar all you want and it can be like, "Oh but I have these things."  But once you're sitting there for two hours - you just sit there for two hours and think by yourself? That seems a little hard, especially for entrepreneurs. 

Laura:	It was really hard. So part of my morning routine is a ten-minute meditation that just helps me clear my brain. But it's exceptionally difficult. I sit down. I block two hours. I don't always need it, but I find that I'm, "Oh, that's right. I didn't communicate with that person about that thing that we left hanging."  And, "Oh, that's right. That's nowhere on my calendar but it's probably a higher priority than the thing that is." 

And once you kind of get sucked into that checking all the appointments you had. And it's even something as small as - I'm a big believer in appreciation and gratitude and, "I really probably should send that person a note, like, they really, really helped me out."  That's a big part of my weekly review. It's shocking the response to - when you send something like that. Because it takes five minutes and people treat you like you're Santa Claus. So they probably aren't hearing that enough. 

People aren't hearing that appreciation and that gratitude enough and it's very motivating. So you could spend two hours trying to get somebody to do something that you need them to do. Or you could send them a note telling, "Thank you."  Then they're pretty self-motivated. 

So it's really a matter of just using your time very effectively. When I'm at work, I'm at work, and I'm hyper focused, like phone away, the whole bit. Then when I'm at home, my laptop goes into the office and my phone's away unless I'm doing a meditation or I'm doing something that's on my phone that's an app. So I'm not perfect at these things. I don't think anybody can be. But it's the intention that gets us closer to our goals, not the perfection of it. 

Jaime:	A thousand times, yes. Tell me about that morning and evening routine that really works for you. Because we talk about routines, and it's always amazing to hear what somebody has refined over many years.

Laura:	Yeah, I mean I've read a lot of those. I'm an avid reader and I've read a lot of those articles too, and like Anna Wintour plays tennis every morning or something like that. I'm like, "I'm sleeping."  

Jaime:	Thank you for saying that. Okay, good. Now continue, otherwise I'd stop you right there.

Laura:	Depends on my kids and what's happening with them, like my youngest was up at 2:00 last night. So I went for a - I did go for a very mediocre jog this morning. I stopped a few times because I was pretty tired, but it was more for my brain than for my body. So I went out at like, probably wake up, went out at about 6:30, came back, did ten-minute meditation, showered, then my husband's off to work. 

So he, some mornings - some days he has like an hour commute to the State office and some days he's local in Wilmington where we live. So this morning, he did need to leave at 7:30, so it kind of cut my morning short. 

Then I'm with my kids for another hour until either the nanny comes or they go to camp. So in that time, we make a smoothie together and there's certain supplements I put in my smoothie I don't put in theirs, and there's some that we share. So we make a whole smoothie together. We've got a whole routine. They get their smoothie. 

I put the anti-aging stuff in my smoothie. And then but there's also other things in there that really help my brain development, like flax seed oil. Because when you're pregnant, so I was pregnant in a row, right in a row because my kids are 15 months apart, the Omega 3 is - that whole brain loss is real. Your baby actually sucks the Omega 3's out of your brain and it develops their brain.

Jaime:			How yucky.

Laura:	Yeah, I know. I'm like, "Thanks, baby."  Continuing, once I read that I was like, "Okay, throw the Omega 3s into the smoothie. Throw the collagen. Throw the Maca powder in."  Just use it for energizing. So that either exercise, meditation, smoothie making, somewhere in there - I don't exercise every day - but that kind of routine is definitely present in there. 

	Then at night is a little bit longer. That's a longer routine. I'll usually read for about a half hour. I have a little notebook that sits next to my bed that speaks to - it's just notes I've made from different books over the years. But Mary Kay Ash that if you want to become a great leader, you have to reflect for 30 minutes a day on the kind of leader that you want to be. 

So I have all the characteristics written down and I think, "Oh, was I that kind of leader today? Was I the kind of leader that sees the best in other people? Did I ask questions first before responding? Or did I just react?"  

So I'm really trying to lead myself into the person that I want to become and then people - you know, when you're the boss - people watch you pretty carefully. It took me a long time to realize that. Though it's a modelling. Once you've developed those behaviors, you tend to see them show up in your organization. 

I'm a person of faith, so I pray and do a devotional. Then I write one line about - at least one sentence - about something cool that happened with my kids that day so that I can remember. So that's my evening routine. And it's usually what I'm reading is self-development. 

Jaime:	Okay, so how long does that normally take, and when does that start - the bedtime routine?

Laura:	That starts at like 8:30 and it if my kids go to bed on time and it ends around 9:30.

Jaime:	And then you're sleeping by 10:00?

Laura:	Typically, yeah.

Jaime:	Okay, great. Because sleep's usually important.

Laura:	And up by 6:00, yeah.

Jaime:	Okay, and up by 6:00. 

Laura:	Yeah, usually around 6:00.

Jaime:	So I loved what you said about the comparing yourself to the leader you want to be. I haven't actually heard that from somebody doing it consistently every single night. What have you seen as the changes from before you started it to now?

Laura:	I think in general probably I've grown a lot over the years. I think the things that I realized were not working for me, the mindsets that weren't working for me might be - and this is very common for entrepreneurs; we've got a lot on the line; we financially have a lot at stake - it's very easy to be reactive, or it's very easy to be frustrated when you make a mistake and not see mistakes as opportunities. There is a momentum in our brains to typically go in a direction that we might not want to that we see problems as discouragement, not opportunities. 

These platitudes are really easy to say, but when you're in that moment of like, "Oh my gosh, I just saw a sale walk out the door, and I've got a lot on the line here," that's really difficult. The only thing that can really rise above that, I think, is that self-management and self-leadership. 

So whereas I might have really reacted poorly to watching a sale walk out the door seven years ago, now I kind of think, "Is this person trained right? Are they being held accountable in the right ways? Are they in the right seat?"  Those are the questions that I tend to go to first, versus just being, "What happened? Are you fricking serious?" 

Jaime:	A process of chilling out.

Laura:	Yeah, yeah, chilling out. I mean that's probably true. I'd say I'm probably just as intense as I was, but I probably go about it in a much more effective way.

Jaime:	But that's just so impressive that you've trained yourself so that it's not necessarily an innate sense of "Ahh," doesn't go away. It's that your trained yourself to go, "Okay, this is the first way I react," instead of letting your animal brain or lizard, whatever you want to call it to get in the first piece before you have a chance.

Laura:	Yeah, when that emotion rises up, it's usually a sign to get into my logical brain, to really try to tap into it. Like, "What is the logic behind this situation?" Versus the emotion response. Now that I'm training other entrepreneurs, so we do tons of owner training. I did a big deep dive into personal development today on a webinar with our nine owners. These are the things we talk about because if somebody had explained these things to me when I first started, I think it would have been transformational. 

I don't think you can skip experience. They are still going to experience this. But hopefully they'll have more tools than I had when opening my business. That was my main motivation behind franchising was to see other people develop as owners within their local community and really accomplish some of the same goals that we've seen to be successful in the Philadelphia area. 

Jaime:			Best job ever - helping other people be successful.

Laura:			It's cool.

Jaime:	Let's go into the niceness thing. Because that was sort of the whole thing. Because this is an issue. I want everybody to be happy all the time and we're humans and we can't be. So what advice do you have for me on that side of the fence?

Laura:	So I am built the same way. I'm very lucky that I'm surrounded by people who tell me when I shouldn't own something. It's a balance, right? So when there's something about ourselves that maybe we found that doesn't work in our favor, the mistake could be, and the temptation could be, I'm just gonna squash that and I'm gonna swing the pendulum in the other direction. I'm gonna become totally, completely opposite. I'm gonna be a cold bitch. 

We don't want that because probably the kindness aspect is what got you to here. And what got me to here is that people want to be in an organization - especially in my industry; we're hugging babies all day long -  of course, you want the CEO to be nice. So we don't want to swing the pendulum in the other direction, all of a sudden just not be ourselves. But I think the challenge is, when do you stop owning things? And that's been my challenge is that I own things really quickly. 

So I've learned to say, "I'm gonna own up to here," like really take the time to meditate and think about it. But I'm gonna own this much. But then I need you to meet me. And I wait for them to own their part. So I'm cleaning up whatever on my side of the street I own and then I need you to clean up on your side of the street that you own. So that's part of how I approach it. 

I had to do that recently with somebody who had not kept their end of an agreement. I said, "Here's the part where I could be supporting you better. But then here's the part where you agreed to it and you're not doing it and I can't compromise because that was structured that way for a really good reason and it wouldn't be fair to everybody else who had held the standard."  That actually went really well. 

So I think we're always trying - particularly as women - trying to figure out where those boundaries are. And that - but we don't want to stop owning things, right? Because that's what makes you a good leader. So I don't know that I have a perfect answer. But I would also say that I probably didn't - I think that in the past I let the conversation go on too long, too. I don't know if you've experienced that as well.

Jaime:			Oh, I'm sure.

Laura:	Right, like "This is the eighth time I've talked to you about gossip in the workplace," right?

Jaime:	That's exactly what I was going to bring up. I give the benefit of the doubt and then they're like, "Well, I mean, I get," and they go through things and I make excuses for them.

Laura:	I do the same thing. Or I would let myself feel guilty for my part. "Oh, well, you know, I did forget to put that in the offer letter," something like that. I think that now looking back that was so damaging to let that go so far. So there's things that I just don't compromise on anymore. 

Some of those - I think you can always communicate challenges or boundaries in a positive way. So now I might sit with somebody who's continuing to gossip and say, "This just isn't something that I'm willing to compromise within our culture. So you really have to decide if you can change the way that you approach problems, or if Little Nest is the right place for you," and letting go of worrying about being liked. 

Because I think at the core I always worried about whether or not I was going to be liked when they went home at night. Now I've been so burned by that worry, that now I kind of think being liked is not the end game. It's really not. Developing other people into great leaders and making sure I've got the right people in the right seats in my organization is so much more important.

Jaime:	I think it sounds as if both of those things go together:  the knowing what to compromise on and what not to, and the being okay with not being liked. How did you find out what you didn't compromise on? Create, thinking, just sitting there and going like, "I'm not gonna compromise on this."  Did you do it as things were coming up and going, "No, no, no, I feel very strongly this way about this specific thing."  How did you pick all those uncompromising situations?

Laura:	I think I probably learned the hard way where you all of a sudden realize that the person that you were just having continual conversations with about values and culture eventually just steal from you, and then you're like, "Oh, this is how this ends."  


Jaime:	Whoops.

Laura:	Whoops, yeah, so they've - and you catch them and then you have to have that conversation. And you're like, "Okay, but that started years ago with the conversation where the boundaries are being crossed."  So I think now you see those signs earlier. I don't know if there's any way to get around that learning process - maybe just having these conversations and letting people hear them. But I think there's nothing wrong with you if you're going through that learning process, is what I would say. There's probably nothing wrong with the other person either. It just was never a fit to being with.

Jaime:	That's the thing. It always seems like a grey area. This is true for every business owner. They're like, "Everything seems seem so grey. If things were black and white it would be way easier. It would be just yay, or nay."  But everything's sort of greyish until it gets to, like you said, to a point where they stole.  "Oh, now it's black and white."  

Laura:	Right.

Jaime:	How do we distinguish when we're in the grey area, the best way to take the next action steps?

Laura:	I think it's self-confidence. I really do. I think you really have to know what you believe in. And if you join a franchise organization, we have - you can hook into those values. The hard work's been done. It's already out there. Before we hire people we put them through a values assessment. We've done that hard work, so that's the benefit of being part of a larger system. 

But if you're trying to figure it out for yourself, copying what someone else has done is probably not going to be that authentic. I think you have to decide for yourself, what does success look like? That's when these alone times are so important because that's when the stuff comes up is when you're realizing, "Gosh, this is what I really stand for and it's probably not being communicated that often."  

I've also learned that as you grow an organization - for those of you who have million dollar companies which are typically a larger size company, or are growing in that direction - there is a constant downstream momentum against your culture. You have to because there's always somebody who's scared. There's always somebody who's worried. There's always somebody who had a really crappy day, or is having trouble in their marriage, or whatever, and they're bringing that into work with them. 

You cannot over-communicate your culture, and you cannot over-communicate your values. I think that pro-active communication makes up for a lot of - it prevents you from having to be reactive. Because if somebody really doesn't jibe with it, they will self-select out, and I've seen that happen. So it kind of saves you the work of having those difficult conversations. 

I had that conversation with somebody who I was scared to lose and she self-selected out. And I was like, "That sucks, but I'm really glad."

Jaime:	That's happened to me too. It's funny that you talk so much about values because way back when, when I was talking about the nice thing on the last interview it was in regards to something, and what I did with it was look at my - I have company values. I also send people to values assessments. 

I looked at the company values and what I was going through and I was, "This doesn't align at all."  Like, I didn't even look at it beforehand. I was like, "Oh I think it's great. We're good."  And then I looked and I was like, "Oh, no, no, no."  So really having that core set of company values - before we have to start wrapping up, how would people that are listening right now get that core company values to assess on, to know whether things are grey area or not?

Laura:	That's a good question. Mine evolved over time, so I don't know if that's reasonable for somebody who's probably trying to start their own company - maybe looking at other brands and what they stand for that resonate with you, and thinking. Usually I think the values come from the heart of the founder and how their built.  That's - you could probably look outside of yourself for inspiration, but I think ultimately it probably has to come from you. And as I've become more values and culture focused, a lot of the challenges within my company have resolved themselves - of who to hire, what even our team meetings look like. We do a lot of strategic planning work and getting everybody to own their piece has become much easier than it was years ago. 

Now I feel like we are getting into a really good groove. It's been that way for a while now, where we're in the time and place where we're just sailing, like we've got past that start-up stage and that feels really good. But I don't know how much of the start-up stage you can skip. You might stumble through your values and that might just be the way it goes.


Jaime:	And it gets better, and just knowing that it will get better and better and better as you keep doing it.

Laura:	Yeah, or maybe you take a first stab, you realize this keeps showing up in my organization. It's really important to me and I need to update our values with it.

Jaime:	Yeah, what are some of your core values, just like, to name two or three?

Laura:	Ours are really easy. It's A-E-I-O-U. Yeah, so like everyone can remember it and it becomes really easy. So it's authenticity, excellence, integrity, open-mindedness, and you - just respecting yourself and those around you. 

Jaime:	I love that, a good way for people to remember it so it isn't something that you have to look at your sheet and go, "Shoot, what are the things that I [inaudible] [42:46].

Laura:	Yeah, and it's something we talk about a lot. We usually post it on our social media page once a week. We - before you get to our hiring page there is that basically "If this isn't you, don't bother," kind of webpage. 

And people - our economics are strong. I'm really proud of them, but people aren't buying the Little Nest to just make money. People are buying the Little Nest because they want to be part of something bigger than themselves and they want to be part of something with purpose and meaning. I'm realizing as we grow that that's one of my most important roles. 

Jaime:	That's amazing. Now we have to start wrapping up and afterwards I want everybody to check out the website too because these baby photos on it are just fantastic.

Laura:	Ah, thank you.

Jaime:	Before we get to that, what's one action listeners can take in this week to help move them forward towards their goal of a million?

Laura:	I think really just - writing down an affirmation. Like if we're looking at the financial aspect of it, I do affirmations. They typically - they might change once or twice a year once I've met a certain financial goal. But they get into not just the amount of money that you want to make, but what you'll do in return for that money. 

So I want to grow a million-dollar business and in return I will provide the people who are part of my organization with an amazing place to work, or I will provide our customers with the best quality baby photos for the price. You would have to put it in your own words. Mine is more around franchising or providing them with the very best infrastructure and support possible. 

But I think you have to have that mindset of like, you just don't get, right? Or if you get, you don't just get to keep - you're not able to just get and then keep. If you want to obtain wealth and retain it, you have to be prepared for knowing what you're going to give in exchange for it. 

Jaime:	That's the value - I mean that's the whole point. It's a value. I usually hear affirmations and it's usually, "I want this much money," period.

Laura:			Done.

Jaime:	Exactly - so adding that - I haven't heard that and I think that's amazingly awesome and I'm writing that down too. Thank you so much for coming on the show today. So where can they find more about you and see really cute baby photos?

Laura:	They can go to Little Nest Photo.com. You can click on "Own a studio," if you're interested in franchising. If you're just interested in my ramblings, you can go to Laura Novak.com, and I've got a leadership blog there. 

Jaime:	Perfect - thank you so much for coming on the show today. I really, really appreciate it.

Laura:	Thank you.

[End of Audio]

Duration: 46 minutes

Video Transcription provided by GMR Transcription Services

Tags: Faith, Family/Parenting, Goal Setting, Health and Wellness, Journaling, Laura Novak Meyer, millionaire interview, Mindset, Motivation, Planning, Spirituality, Work Life Balance

Categories: All, Business, Business Model, Entrepreneurship, Goals, Millionaire Interviews, Visioning

---