“Come adventure with us” is what the Greece launch said…

About 8 months ago I started our new website, which really meant starting our new business officially. One of the biggest factors in finally launching this new chapter was that I wanted our next destination photo shoot adventure to be on our new blog and site, because according to my plan, that would be around the time that all would be officially changed over and different. As with everything it started as an idea. But this Greece idea didn’t seem far fetched or even that grandiose. What was cool is that it just felt like “what we do.” We go to beautiful places, put out an open invite, and people join us and let us take their photo. How cool is that?

We arrived in Greece last night (instagram story available @marissa.boucher if you want to see exhausted us traveling grumpy, sans make-up coupled with delirium). Our first stop was Santorini. 48 hours here before we hit Mykonos. It’s Sunday, and on Wednesday we will have our welcome dinner for the six Adventuresses that we will be photographing on picturesque locations and on a catamaran.

I couldn’t sleep so I decided to get up at dawn and sit outside. The silence was wild. I mean not a peep. Not a bird, a boat, a plane, a human. All things were dormant except for everything running in my mind. For this girl who seems to always be spending a few weeks here and there in another country, it has actually been a full two years since big trip like this for me. And for the first time in a long, long time, being a foreigner actually felt kinda foreign. Having days off, real days off felt the same as well.

I slept well the first few hours last night, then I lay awake for more hours, feeling odd. Restless. But with no real distraction to distract me. Nothing to hang on to and sift through my mind till I found a solution. Nothing needed a solution any more. I think it was time to just be. To do what I was here to do; have fun and make incredible pictures. It felt odd. In a way that you would perhaps feel odd if you time hopped and were all the sudden in another time and space. I’m kinda just quiet and in awe. Sorta waiting for old adventure Marissa with all the gusto to show up. She’ll be here soon I think. As soon as jet lag decides to leave.

There are still  plenty of stressors to deal with. Like the new information that I am to demo the $28,000 build out we did to our old studio before I can finally close those doors officially. How do you even do that when you are on the other side of the world? Amongst some other things. But that’s not really what’s on my mind at all right now. What’s on my mind is that I just came from the busiest months of my life, and now I’m thrust into serenity in Greece. A magnificent beauty that is all around me and I need to chill out pronto and get my head in the game of absorbing all of it before it’s too late.

I wish you could feel the air. It’s thick and warm but not humid. The sky is pink and blue in the perfect gradient. And the smell, it’s like musky Earth and clay meet sea. It wafts through our deck every few minutes and instead of enjoying it, I’m almost surprised it smells good. Clean, beautiful and yummy smelling? In traveling all those things rarely happen simultaneously.

I am grateful to be here. And I am very much looking forward to creating some seriously gorgeous images for my clients. Time to settle into and celebrate the new, I can already tell it’s going to be beyond my wildest dreams. And I can barely sleep because of this new and wonderfully odd feeling.

To all you in the states, good night. It’s going to be an incredible morning.

I pulled off the 101 on my way home from the studio the other day to soak up this incredible view. It got me thinking about how much a scene like this feeds my soul and my imagination. And how pursuing the things of my imagination has gotten me this far. I trust it, and I trust what I create from it.

With everything going on I’ve caught me second guessing myself on some different things. Things from business decisions to the pricey decor and equipment I’m buying for the new chapter. Today I stopped to be grateful for the fact that at least I’m not second-guessing my art. I don’t second-guess my imagination or the beautiful images that I make, and I trust the process in which I make them. It’s a very powerful feeling. And it leads me to ask….

Do you believe in your art?

Now I know not everybody is going to love my work. And that’s totally OK. But what I do know is that when I create the imagery I want, I will attract somebody who’s like me; wild spirited, wanting to find a space where they feel free and alive, and hungry to create and play with the ideas they have in their mind and heart. Somebody who doesn’t look at something and see the technicalities of it, but more sees it for the emotion that it stirs.

As we’re finalizing the last details of closing the current big studio and opening our new space (3 weeks left!) I’m getting more and more eager to create this new kind of imagery here in my personal space. With that said, I’m also very excited about the shoots I’m doing every day at the studio. I know that it’s going to be my last opportunity for a while to set up a scene like the one below, something super flashy and with vibrant, over the top glamour. The NEW Boudoir Divas will have an entirely different look that we have been slowly cooking up the past few years, and like I said I’m counting down the days until my very first Boudoir Loft or By The Sea Collection, but I’m also in one of the most nostalgic moods I’ve ever found myself in. This huge world of all things over the top boudoir will be dismantled soon, so I am cherishing every moment while I’m photographing a client there. We’ve even extended a couple weeks in that space, so us gals can do a few more shoots there. It just felt right as the end of those powerful lights, and flashy glamour was coming a little fast for us.

But change has been whispering in my ear for quite some time. And I do so with a glad heart because I really do believe in myself. And I believe in what I create, and I believe in the relationships that are created through our photo shoot experiences. And I know what we do is meaningful and timeless.

What areas in your life do you believe in yourself the most?

Are you feeding and nurturing those areas? Or are you starving them? What is your art?

So it wasn’t 20 days in Bali, but it was a few days in the sunshine and heat in Palm Springs at the Saguaro. I needed that mental break from this kinda focused and obsessive state that I’m in. To stop and soak up all things sunny, warm, lazy and imaginary instead. Relaxation is easy for me if I have fun company, water, heat and a good historical fiction.

But while that was easy and needed, coming home from a vacation is not, even if it was short. I immediately realized that 10 balls have been dropped and even more opportunities lost. And worse, that I let a couple people down, one being a very important one, like my tax guy. And that’s one person you never want to leave hanging.

I’m really not complaining here. Honest. More just evaluating. As crashing down from this relaxation high got me thinking a lot about the pace of life that I have chosen.

I have so much going on non-stop that the only way to breathe a little bit feels like I need to run away. Or “adventure” as I have more positively called the past couple years. I am shooting so much these days that tackling all the studio admin things, and then starting this new business too,  has to be done in the stolen hours of dawn or late night. So my little escape cost me. This brought two important things that I made mental notes of and decided I wanted to share with you.

The first is that as a business you owner you have to get used to having a ton on your plate. Like so much that things are just constantly falling off the sides of the plate and slapping onto the ground making you lose your balance and feel a little icky. Accurate priorities are a game changer here for many reasons. As I would never let a client’s expectations be compromised or something I equally value, those are top priority. But here’s the thing, when you take on something big, you have to be okay with managing “failures.” Hate that word, let’s not use it again here. My point being the better you can handle the load, the more you can let problems roll off your back and look for solutions immediately instead of having tantrums (I’m good at that now finally, but I still could be better). Then the more you can manage. And the more you can manage without it weighing you down, the more success you will find. Professionally and personally.

My next thought was that I don’t always want to live in a season of being overwhelmed, of always having to manage more. I don’t want to feel like I need to run away to have moments where I don’t feel like I have to move at a speed so fast that I might de-rail. I want a pace of life where I am thriving creatively and professionally, and that also leaves a few hours each day to do other things at a slower pace. Like sitting down and eating a meal, not shoveling in a protein bar on the drive to work.  I felt that way a few years ago, more relaxed, and my plan is to feel that way again come July when we have our Grand Launch of Marissa-inc.com. I need to insure that this is just a season by putting in the time to plan out the future and execute. As I was writing this post I somehow stumbled onto Facebook and saw that a few of my friends had posted this meme.

By how many people I saw posting this, I know I’m not alone in this thought.

What’s funny is that then I had to pause writing this post to welcome my client today and get her into hair and make-up. I was excited to see her because not only is she a return client, but she’s a successful business owner that manages a team of sought after wedding coordinators and also coordinates them herself. She is meticulous and an incredibly focused and hard working woman. She was handling the workload with with a calm strength as she always does, but she was still working what sounded like way too much to me. For whatever reason I opened my big bossy mouth and said, “you should just manage your team only and have more free time, stop coordinating weddings yourself.” Now I don’t even know the particulars of her situation or her specific wants in life. But I chuckled to myself thinking about how excited I am in this new mission I have of…..

simplifying AND becoming better at my craft AND giving more value all around.

I feel like those goals don’t sound like they can live together, but I know they can.

So here is the pep talk I gave myself as I was tucking myself into bed last night….. it’s okay to drop the ball when you’re overwhelmed. You have to just forgive yourself for that right away. It’s just part of the territory of taking on big endeavors, of being a self starter and your own boss. What matters is that you don’t dwell on your mistakes. Rectify and fix, don’t linger in that space of self doubt.

Next, and this is super important, instead focus on change. Make a plan. I’m currently assessing why going on vacation cost me equal parts stress to equal parts relaxation. I should be able to go away for a few days and not be scared to open my computer when I come home. And will the current plan I have in effect help insure this isn’t always this way? If not I need to re-examine it and make changes.

In considering a change/new plan in your life that would affect your finances and freetime here are a few things I have learned….

• Start with thinking about exactly what you want your routine and schedule to look like weekly. Then try to build your business model to those specs.
• When creating your business model, or your money making machine (see our online workshop for more on that), always create a very realistic budget. Key point here being realistic. Almost even pessimistic. When I created the biz model for our Marissa-inc.com I used worst case scenario estimates for things like repairs, utilities, insurances, fees, cost of goods, etc. Make sure you factor in savings for a future ‘just in case’ expenses. And then I almost always slap a 10% misc expense on there for each month. So that way when it happens, and it almost always does, you can rest easy because you planned for it.
• Schedule all your change goals out on the calendar in detail. I personally couldn’t live without Google calendar. And it currently has things blocked out months in the future so I can ensure that my new business doesn’t have me working into the wee hours of the night like it currently does. I have marketing days blocked out, shoot days have the full day listed and detailed, and I have days off on there too. So I don’t overbook myself.

Okay so I definitely have a gazillion more thoughts and advice on starting a business. In fact 9 hours of an online course created with my biz partner Kimberlee. But those key few were rumbling in my mind last night.

See you all soon I hope!

Marissa