Mastering Authentic Personal Branding Through Powerful Photos with Vicki Knights

Your Dream Business

In this episode of Your Dream Business Podcast, I dived deep with Vicki Knights, a pro photographer and positive psychology expert, about the challenges business owners face with photography and personal branding. We talk about why so many people feel uncomfortable in front of the camera and how to overcome that to look authentic and confident in photos. Vicki shares some great tips on preparing for a photoshoot, feeling at ease on camera, and using photos to boost your personal brand. We also touch on why investing in professional photography matters, how your appearance impacts how your business is seen, and Vicki's unique career blending photography with visibility coaching. This one's perfect for coaches, course creators, and anyone looking to level up their personal brand.

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

• Overcome Camera Shyness: Learn how to feel more confident and authentic in photos, so you can showcase your true self for your brand.

• Invest in Professional Photography: Professional photos are worth the investment because they can significantly impact how your business is perceived and help build a stronger personal brand.

• Leverage Photography for Visibility: Use photos strategically to enhance your personal branding and connect with your audience on a deeper level.

If you enjoyed this episode then please feel free to go and share it on your social media or head over to Apple podcasts or Spotify and give me a review, I would be so very grateful.

LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE

Connect with Vicki on LinkedIn, Website, Instagram Connect with Teresa on Website, The Club, Sign up to Teresa's email list, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter

Transcript

Whether we like it or not, as business owners, we have a personal brand and part of that personal brand is showing up and showing our face. And one of the ways in which we do that is through having our photographs taken and posting images of ourselves, whether it's on our website, whether it's on social media. But why is it that so many of us hate having our photo taken and how can we get over that to make sure that we're showing up authentically and with the confidence that we have in our business, but in our photos today, we are talking all about that with the amazing photographer and positive psychology practitioner, Vicki Knights. Welcome to the Your Dream Business Podcast. I'm your host, Teresa Heath Wareing. An international bestselling author, award winning speaker, TEDx speaker, certified coach, and the host of this number one ranked podcast. I am so excited to guide you on the journey of creating a [00:01:00] business and life that you not only love, but one that perfectly aligns with you and the season of life that you're in. In each episode, I'll share with you easy, actionable, and insightful strategies to grow your online business. Plus, we'll be diving into some mindset tools and strategies that keep you focused, motivated, And are going to stop you from getting in your own way. So if you're a course creator, membership owner, or coach, you're in the right place. Let's get started. Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Your Dream Business Podcast. I am your host, Teresa Heath Wareing . As always, I hope you are doing well. I have to say I am recording this and the sun is shining and the sky is blue and it just makes me feel, so flippin happy and the sooner I can get out into my garden again, if you don't follow me on Instagram then and you're interested in a bit of vegetable growing and baking, you might want to follow me over there because that's what I do when I'm not helping people with [00:02:00] launches and the fact that the sun is shining and spring is coming, it makes me feel so, so happy. Today, we are talking about something that I think lots of people might hate, and I have learned to love. Today, we are talking about photography and having our photos taken, and being confident on camera, showing up authentically, and how to Be willing to show our faces because at the end of the day, if you're listening to this, I am fairly confident that whether you think you are or not, you're a personal brand, everyone is a personal brand to some degree. I've been watching a lot of Daniel Preece's content, and he talks about the fact of. how personal brands are way more powerful than companies. If you look at someone like Virgin, he gives this as an example, how Richard Branson has way more followers than any of his Virgin companies. And he gives a ton of different examples. And it was so prevalent in today's conversation, the fact of we do need to show our face and we need to understand that we [00:03:00] are a personal brand. And today I'm talking with the very lovely Vicki Knights. Vicki is a visible strategist with a positive psychology practitioner and is one of the UK's leading branding photographers. Vicki uses photography and positive psychology to help business owners to be seen and show up with joyful confidence. She has photographed over a thousand female business owners across the globe over the last 15 years, and her work has been featured internationally in publications like Vanity Fair, Forbes, The Sunday Times, and Cosmopolitan. Vicki's photography is amazing. Now, I have never had a photo shoot with Vicki. I would like to have a photo shoot with Vicki, and the reason I haven't is because she lives quite far away from where I am, and I just haven't found the time to free up a few days in my diary to be able to go somewhere, for a photo shoot. The photo shoots that I have are either in my house or sometimes when I go to the States and stay with my lovely friend Mary, who has a beautiful house, [00:04:00] I have photos done with her. She doesn't do them. We have a photographer and someone come in. So I just haven't got round to having some photos done with Vicki, but I want to because she is excellent. So that's your first job today to go and follow Vicki on Instagram if you don't already, because her photo shoots are just awesome. But we talk about having photo shoots and having photos taken and I say pretty early on that actually, I don't mind it. I quite like it now. I never used to, that was never something that I loved, but I got used to it. But one of the things that always worried me was how do we show up authentically? Well, also trying to have a really good photo shoot and I tell a story about how I am with my photographer and how I can turn it on really quickly in terms of getting some good photos and how authentic does that actually feel and how authentic is having your hair done and your makeup done and showing up and being positioned potentially. So we talk about all of that and how Vicki ensures that her customers and people who work with her are [00:05:00] comfortable and do shop as their authentic selves. She also talks about how to feel confident on camera because it's not something, and I think as women as well, it's not something that we're used to doing. Like. Other than the business friends that I have, my friends and family who are nothing to do with business, none of them have had a photo shoot. And it feels like a very weird and bizarre thing to do when you think about it, when you're not in business. And we talk about this as well. And we talk about showing up and feeling confident and all of that good stuff. So I think if you are a woman in business in particular, you are going to find this conversation really, really helpful. And if you. need a photo shoot, want to photo shoot, and you're about to have one, then this is definitely going to help you show up with confidence and have your best photos yet. Okay. Without further ado, here is the very lovely Vicki. Vicki, welcome to the podcast. Vicki: Thank you. I'm looking forward to an opportunity to talk to you again. Teresa: Me too. I came on your podcast, didn't I? This is quite some time [00:06:00] ago. Vicki: Last year. You were one of my first guests, actually. So it must have been last April or May. So yeah, nearly a year. Teresa: And it was one of the first and very few episodes that I've done where I talked about the journey I'd been through and everything that happened. And not that I don't intend to talk about that, but just unless someone says, can we talk about it? I don't intend to bring it up, but it was really, it was a lovely episode. And I actually re listened to it. Is that sad? Do you ever do that? Vicki: Yeah. Especially if I've been a guest on someone else's, you want to make sure that you haven't made a complete idiot of yourself. I always think. Teresa: Well, yeah. Sometimes I wish I didn't re listen to some, but no, I did re listen to that one because it got such good feedback and, and your audience said really nice stuff as well. So it was like, okay, let me, let me have a listen to what I actually said. Cause also I think sometimes during a podcast, you forget. what you've actually said and where this conversation went. Vicki: So, how was it listening back? Okay. Teresa: It was good. Yeah, it was, yeah, it was good. I'm very, I am very vulnerable, [00:07:00] which is one of the things that we're going to talk about in terms of like showing up authentic and vulnerable and all that sort of stuff. And I think that's okay. I like that. I like that. I am very authentic and vulnerable and happy to share and all that. So yeah, I was happy with how it came out. I thought you were great. Vicki: You were fantastic. And I had such great feedback about that. It was such a, I knew when I started the podcast, I wanted you to be one of my very first guests. So I'm very pleased you said yes, but I thought you were fantastic. Teresa: Thank you. I appreciate that. So you, Vicki, are a photographer and a mighty fine one at that. You, On my list of people I would like to go and have a photo shoot with because your stuff is brilliant and very much like how, how I like seeing photos and how I like them styled. But I suspect that I am probably very different from most people that you will photograph [00:08:00] because I have learned to love. having my photos taken. That's so good to hear. This is not something that you deal with on the regular, I would imagine. Vicki: Occasionally it happens. And actually, because I've been doing this for so long, I have a lot of clients come back to me. And so they know that they like it now. It's always the ones that I am photographing for the first time that just Have this preconceived opinion. They're going to eat it. And then it doesn't feel like them. And then afterwards they're like, Oh, we actually really enjoyed that. It's quite addictive. I want to book another one in. So yeah, I do get it from my regular clients, but yes, you're right. First time round, people are so nervous about it. And I would say well over 90 percent of the people I photograph first time around just say, I hate the camera. Camera hates me. I don't look like the women on your website. I'm not photogenic. I hear all of that all the time. Teresa: And how do you deal with that? Vicki: So how do I deal with it? Well, first of all, it's quite common that we would feel that way. If you think about all the conditioning we have through our lives, [00:09:00] right. Of like, not showing off and not getting too big for our boots. Suddenly actually booking a professional photo shoot feels a bit like, a lot of people just say, this doesn't feel like me at all. Like booking this is, is a really brave thing for me to do. So I think that's the first thing to just think. Actually, that's perfectly normal that we would feel like that. And I think also the other thing is, and I don't know about you, but this has happened to me quite a few times, is we see an unflattering snap of ourselves, probably on a night out that a friend might've shot, you know, when you think, Oh, I look really good in that dress. Suddenly see them and you're like, Oh my. Teresa: That's me on stages. That's me when I speak on a stage because none of them are flattering. Normally I look like I'm gurning and I talk with my hands. So my hands are doing weird things. And exactly what you said, I'll see an outfit and go, Oh, that's not what I thought that looked like. Vicki: Yeah, exactly. And I can say it's really difficult to take a great photo of someone on stage because you're generally shooting from underneath as well. Which is why I don't, I don't photograph [00:10:00] events. I did a few and then I don't do them anymore because I want people to see their photos and feel amazing, rather than me having to shoot in conditions that I don't wanna be shooting in that I know they're not gonna love because I'm shooting in bad light from underneath their like you say, like, yeah, it's just difficult to get a good shot. So yeah, that's what, and I know when I look at a photo of me, it happened recently, and I was like, oh no, that is just awful. And I was sh even though I know I can look at that and know why. It's an unflattering photo because the lighting's wrong. I know where they were shooting from and everything else. But I saw it's like showing my husband and like one of my mates going, does this, is this actually what I look like? And they were like, no, that looks like you with an ugly filter on. So I knew it wasn't that, but you'd still have a moment of going, Oh no, is this actually how people see me? So quite often when people come to me and they say, I'm really unphotogenic. It's because they've seen those snaps of them that are really unflattering. So once they actually get in front of my camera and see themselves [00:11:00] through my eyes, through, you know, my years of experience, then they go, Oh my God, I've not, I literally had someone last week say to me, I have not had a photo of myself this good since the nineties. She said, I'm not kidding. I managed to get, you know, a PR shoot one day. I managed to get in front of the photographer's lens in the nineties. I haven't liked any photos since then. And that's just such an amazing feeling. And I think the way around it as well is. Well, one thing is what actually, one thing I did want to talk about is the fact that we, what we see when we see, when someone takes a photograph of us is not what we see in the mirror. So we are seeing a flipped version of ourself. So often what happens is people are so used to seeing themselves in the mirror. Also selfies, flip it, you're seeing a mirror version of yourself. So then when you actually see a photo, maybe that your friend's taken, you're like. Oh my God, my face looks really weird. If you've ever seen a video of yourself, obviously that's then flipped. The right way. Even on Zoom, we're mirrored. We've got our mirror image so I can touch my hair and know which way it's going. So it's, yeah, when we sit the right [00:12:00] way, which is how people, how the world sees us, we're like, I don't look right. And yet, to everyone else, they're like, now they're seeing a flipped version of us. So it's almost like, I always say to people, try and do a bit of exposure therapy. So take photos of yourself and flip it and then look at it. Take a video of yourself and flip it and look at the flip video of you, which is the correct video of you. Just so you can get used to it and you can see it because we like what we see the most. It's that whole mirror exposure effect. So what we see the most, we like more. So just, it's like listening to your voice. I bet the first time you listen to your voice, same as me, you go, Oh no. And then the more you hear it, like I listen to my podcast all the time. I'm now used to it. You just, I don't love it, but you get used to it, don't you? Teresa: Totally. And I think there is this element of that, like you said, exposure therapy of the more you do it, the more. you have no choice but to just get on with it and like it and, and actually. not hate it and not hate the result either. I listen to, I don't actually listen to my own [00:13:00] podcast at all really, but on occasions like this morning when I was recording a solo episode, I kind of edit a little bit as I go, so I might mess up and I'll swear on it. And to save Phil, my lovely editor's ears, I will go back, re listen, delete that bit and carry on. And although he might, it might be very entertaining for him if I left it in, but Therefore, I don't mind hearing my own voice and I listen, and my stepchildren laugh at me because they'll be like, just listen to yourself again, T, as if, you know, all they ever see on my screen is me looking at myself, listening to myself, like as if I've got this massive ego and it's like, you kind of just have to get used to it. Vicki: Well, sometimes it's exactly the same thing to me, because sometimes, you know, you're engaging with people on your own reel kind of thing, so I'm on Instagram. comment, you know, replying to comments and stuff. It's like looking at your own stuff on Instagram again, mama. Yes. Teresa: Yeah. What of it? Vicki: I'm a complete narcissist. Teresa: So let's just touch on that in the fact of like, [00:14:00] it is a weird concept and You've been doing this for, did I read, 15 years you've been in photography? Vicki: Yeah, over 16 years, long time. Teresa: So when you started, brand photography was probably not a thing. Vicki: No, it wasn't at all. So I started as a family photographer and used to do headshot photography, we called it back then, on the side. Yeah, it's a couple of years into my business. I start, I was in...