How to Embrace Community in Photography Education with Sissela Johansson

In this episode of Photography Adjacent, Tom Trevatt sits down with Sissela Johansson — an editorial portrait photographer from Denmark, based in Sweden — to talk about burnout, hustle culture, and what it really means to build a photography business on your own terms. Sissela shares her experience of chasing the American dream, reaching six figures, and ultimately realising that outward success felt hollow without inner alignment. The conversation weaves through the pitfalls of copy-paste photography education, the underrated power of community, and the importance of knowing your own values before making any business decisions. Tom and Sissela also reveal that they are planning a retreat together in France — a small, intimate gathering designed to help photographers slow down, reconnect with their creative identity, and build businesses that actually reflect who they are.

If you’d like to know more about the Retreat, click here.

Tom Trevatt Sissela Johansson, thank you very much for joining us on podcast photography adjacent. You are our first guest back after a pretty enormous hiatus. It might even be over a year that we haven't recorded a new podcast episode. hopefully this will come out in the next couple of months. But yeah, thank you very much for being our first guest back. It's an absolute pleasure to have you on the podcast. Obviously we've spoken a lot over the past couple of months.

lots to talk about today and people who are listening will understand why we've been speaking about what we've been speaking about over the last few months. as we get into the podcast. so stick around till the end to find out what we're talking about. before we get into the meat of this conversation, I'd love you to introduce yourself. Tell us a little bit about yourself, what you do, what you're interested in.

how you came to where you are now in your photography journey. Please, thank you.

Sissela Just a little question, right? Just teeny tiny bit. Teeny tiny. Right. Hi. Thank you for having me, first of all. Lovely to be here. Happy to be the first guest in a while. I'm Sisla, as Tom said, and I am an editorial portrait photographer from Denmark, based in Sweden, with a little 10-year-ish stint in the US. So...

Quite a workaround. I've been a photographer for...

16 years, give or take. And I really love humans. So that's kind what I've specialized in and absolutely love photographing people and really diving deep into who they are and how to best capture that.

Tom Trevatt Mm-hmm.

So tell me a little bit more. You've obviously spent that time in the US. What took you back to near your

Sissela adjacent. Yeah, so

Tom Trevatt recent, yes.

Sissela Living in the US was in many ways quite magnificent and in many ways quite difficult. As anyone who have lived outside their home country knows, there is a lot of adjustment. It takes time, years often, to kind of settle. And especially in a country like the US where I've self-employed and

I don't like hostile culture, basically. So I burned out quite severely and I missed home and I missed feeling free. Things felt restrictive. I felt wrong within my skin. And eventually I tried to patch it up in so many ways. I got to studio, I attended conferences. I did all the things to kind of fix it.

But I realized that the only fix was to go back home. So that's what I did.

Tom Trevatt this burnout and this kind of reference to hustle and hustle culture, presumably that means that you actually hustled, you actually engaged in hustle culture, you became a hustler.

Sissela Oh yeah, I the American dream. Are kidding me? By all extents and live the American dream. When you're constantly fed this idea that you want something, it's very easy to give into the idea that you want something. For me, was fed through my surroundings, through my friends. We all engage in hustle culture. There's this constant

hostile vibration that also basically extended to fear, fear of losing everything, fear of becoming ill, fear of having less, not being able to go places. And it was intense, to say the least. When you live under that constant pressure of it can be gone tomorrow, you hustle, like it's your last day.

And eventually, inevitably, I think for most creative people, they will burn out. I know people in the US who have completely stopped their careers or like changed everything because they burned out so severely that it almost killed them. it's stress is no joke. And we should take it very seriously, especially as self-employed people.

Tom Trevatt Yeah, absolutely. And a lot of the time, because we're having to show up for people in the studio in front of them, often we've got to put that to one side. You've got to kind of forget about the stresses and strains of the everyday life and the kind of back end of the business.

you know, that worry about whether the next paycheck is coming in because the minute you start acting as though, well, this real, it's really important that you buy a load of photographs or the biggest package or these sorts of things. We just don't do our best job and we worry so much about these things and we can really kind of become, you know, to the worst versions of ourselves so often. Does that mean that in a way you felt

you felt like you became something that you weren't or that there was some kind of realization that happened that you thought that you wanted to be this kind of like big, expansive business owner, making lots of money, hustling really hard, working every day that you can. But then actually you just realized, I can't do this any longer. It's not me.

Sissela I think I desperately wanted to be it. But I also had to realize that I worked within constraints of my mind and body and my upbringing. Work is not my life and have never been my life. I don't necessarily want to go to work every day and be super happy in it because I'm not. I don't like having to do

the thing I love the most in the world for money. If it was up to me, I would live my life and not have to worry about the money and then just be creative on the side. But that's not life. We need to pay our bills. But in the US, I became something. I tried desperately to become something that I was not.

And I mean, there was a marriage involved in it as well. There's a lot of different things, aspects tying into this whole American experience that I had. I will never want to be without it. Like I'm incredibly grateful for everything that I've gone through, especially because it really put into perspective who I am, where I want to be and how I want to get there. So I needed to come home.

a big part to learn how to relax again and to find peace and quiet, solitude, learn how to breathe basically. So now I live in the outskirts of a forest by a lake surrounded by, I actually have multiple lakes surrounding me. Being close to nature.

doing things that ground me in everyday life that isn't about hustling and where my money's gonna come from, learning how to read again, slowing down, drinking tea, baking bread, chopping firewood, all that good stuff.

Tom Trevatt Yeah, living the Walden lifestyle, the Theroyan dream, kind of back to nature, getting away from the hustle of everyday life.

Sissela Yeah

God, I miss city life.

Tom Trevatt Yeah, but I mean, it seems like you've kind of gone from one extreme to another. You kind of went from an intense hustle experience to another. But if I look back over your work over the last, say, let's say five years, sure, there's been some developments and some changes and some modifications and some refinements, but it's not as though you were doing photo shoots like, you know, like your work is beautiful and takes time and is slow and is...

is, is like connected to people. And it's, it requires a part of you as a human that isn't really something that, you know, it's, it's so much more than just being a photographer. It's you being a human in front of another human. And you can really see that coming out in the work. But that was, that was present in your work, when you were when you were in that kind of hustle mindset.

Sissela Yeah.

Tom Trevatt Like you were still, you you're still making that kind of work, that kind of portfolio. It's not as though you, you know, it's not as though if I look back and the work that you created in the U S was just like all senior portraits and business people's headshots and you know, 300 people per day, that kind of stuff. And then suddenly you're just like, no, I want to take photographs of people lying in lakes. No, you were doing like the lake thing five years ago. So it hasn't changed in the work. What I'm saying is like,

There's clearly this kind of sense that actually you want to slow down you want to be present with in front of another person That is there throughout your entire portfolio Does that make sense?

Sissela That makes perfect sense because I refused to conform in the US. I was going through a lot of different educational sites and things like that. was a big part of the portrait community in the US. It's very difficult not to be influenced by the aesthetic of things, especially when you also partake in education that then also

Tom Trevatt Sure.

Sissela teaches you how to do the things, the aesthetic things. And I already had a portfolio back then. to me, very like, know how easy like, it's very easy to, to, to suggest things to me. I'm very inspired. And sometimes it, I take it on, like I just take it all in, and then I start my output becomes very similar. So I very deliberately had to step away from it. And

In the midst of all the hustle, I also found this need among people to slow down themselves and to be seen and to experience the things that I wanted to give. So that was a really big part of it. And my whole mindset developed over the years. Less and less makeup. I used to work with a hair and makeup artist and my clients kept saying to me, that doesn't look like me. Like it's beautiful, but I don't recognize myself.

And that had kind of become like the backbone of how I work. I want people to recognize themselves, not just physically, but also emotionally. So even in the US, stubbornness persisted. I didn't want to look like everyone else. And I wanted people to seen and connected and like something very special, not just pretty picture.

Tom Trevatt Mm-hmm. Yeah, of course. I mean, that really obviously comes out in the work and...

Sissela in the world.

Tom Trevatt We know that those kinds of motivations are often true of a lot of people in our industry, right? This kind of idea of holding space, wanting, being that person that can see someone else. Those are often things that people talk about when they're talking about their own work. I I don't really use that particular language. I might use words like wanting to create connection, or I might use words like wanting to have a business that is aligned to my values, those sorts of things.

But there is an awful lot of people that do value that and it is kind of expressed in their work. So why is it specifically that in the US that meant that you burnt out? I can appreciate that the kind of social, economic, and political situations within the US are somewhat different to being in Sweden. But like your work's not changed significantly. Your motivation to doing that work, the types of people that you work with,

haven't really changed because there are people in the US who need your service, just as there are people in Sweden that need what you do. And probably even to a greater extent, there's people in the US that need what you do because you provide them something that, you know, they all feel like that desire to take a few hours to themselves and to have that kind of breathing space. So there's something else there, isn't there, happens?

in an environment that we're in and, and, know, sort of meaning that we can't, yeah, we can't express ourselves. I I sort of feel it in the UK because we're, you know, we're sort of the baby cousin of the US, we're the lapdog with, you know, I feel the, the kind of the pressure and certainly, you know, the cost of living is extortionate and rent and all those sorts of things. So we often feel that kind of financial burden on ourselves.

Sissela David Johnson.

Yeah.

Tom Trevatt I'm running a small business. But I presume that you also still feel that financial burden now. Yeah.

Sissela yeah, that's universal I think. I don't know anyone anywhere in the world who don't feel the financial pressure of being self-employed.

Tom Trevatt Yes, exactly. Yeah, it's nuts.

Sissela Yeah, I in US, I know that things outwardly haven't changed a lot. But there's a lot of things that has changed in my approach. There's a lot of pressure around performance, obviously. And it seems to get inspired, as I mentioned before, by educators, by how people do things, by campaigns, all these different things that

will get you more because ultimately that's what it comes down to. Like where is the next paycheck gonna come from? And if you don't do that, if you don't do the work to get to that, then you will have no money and then you will be out on the street and there's no safety net. So the motivation will always be different in a country where you are not safe in more ways than one. So to me, for me,

I noticed, I think it was 23, when I was at the peak of my career in the US. I by all extent, purpose is very successful. I reached the infamous six figures. had all the clients coming in, I was busy, I booked out, everything was wonderful on paper. But I remember it was

There was one month when I had pushed myself further than what I would usually do and how many clients I can take. And there was this moment where the faces, the names, identities of each person started drifting in and out and they all kind of became one.

I couldn't allow that to be a thing in my career. I couldn't allow that to be thing in my work because I value that connection and respect that connection so much that it would be disrespectful not to recognize the individual. So I knew that something had to change. Fortunately, that was also the year that I had let myself

or decided with myself that I needed to go back to Scandinavia. So I was already on my way out. It was a good time to slow down, but...

The back end of my process has changed tremendously. It has become very part down. Like, yeah, sure, I still go through the motions. still make sure to vet people. have consultation discovery calls. I make sure that they're very aware of every step in the process. I don't have a hair and makeup artist anymore, I don't do extensive clothing guides anymore either. don't... The frame...

of which I create within has become way more expensive depending on the person that I'm working with. And I compromise way less on what it is that I want to do. It's been quite a few years now where I haven't had a client say to me, I need you to do this one thing. Most of my clients that come to me are like, I want you to do your thing with me.

That's really cool and I've been wanting to put even more into that, see where can I take people? How can I make even greater co-creations with regular everyday people? And I feel like Sweden and Scandinavia has a lot of potential for that, really, really cool potential. Yeah.

Tom Trevatt You mentioned education quite a lot, quite a few times in what you're just saying and there's obviously a reason why I want to sort of pull up this question and ask this but just initially tell me the kind of things that you've done to educate yourself, to follow courses, to what's your kind of process been over the years?

to build education into your life, to have to, you know, I teach, I love teaching. It's one of the things I really, you know, really value in my life as an educator. And that means that I value my education when I educate myself, right? So I think it's super, super important. What sort of things have you really pursued?

Sissela All mine's higher!

career as a photographer started actually through another person by someone taking me under his wings and teaching me. wasn't back then it wasn't paid for but like I became a photographer because someone decided that he wanted to help me express myself in this way. And I actually never thought of this before but it has

It has kind of defined my entire career and how I approach learning and acknowledging the fact that we need help. We cannot do it entirely on our own. So over the years, I also recognize the fact that, now I want to live off doing photography. Cool. Then I need to learn things that I don't already know around business and systems and all these wonderful things, how to sell, just that.

Tom Trevatt Yeah.

Sissela And so back in 2016, 2017, when I immigrated to the US, I knew I was going to be a photographer there because I didn't have much else to offer the US. I wasn't very hireable. So it became a natural thing that I was going to be a photographer. And within a very short amount of time, I found something called Sue Bryce Education.

now that turned into the portrait system and is a very big educational mindset group within the portrait community in the US and probably in Europe as well to an extent. The first thing I did was, this was back when you could buy a month of it and I purchased one month and it was 35 bucks and

Back then, I didn't have a lot of money. Poor Zappapa. And I learned everything that I could within that month and it defined how I did everything in my business. So I did that. I've done courses with different major educators, teaching different aspects within the same systems of how I operated within.

done campaign courses, how to do them, how to do Facebook ads, just building upon my knowledge to gain more clients. It's always to gain more clients. It's always to learn how can I do the next big thing? How can I get more and more and more? Yeah. So it's important. And then I've also done since then, personal mentorship. And that is always, I think, the best approach.

Tom Trevatt This I think is the question I have because like I said, I love education and I think it's incredibly valuable. I teach at university and I offer mentorship myself. And one of the things I struggle with about education is that so often I can find people online who are teaching something, explaining something, selling something to you.

They've got amazing YouTube videos. They've got amazing podcasts like this one all of that kind of stuff all the stuff that we also do But there's so much of it And it's all about how can I get more leads? How can I get more clients? How can I get more bookings? How can I make more money? So often it's about that that while that's incredibly valuable as business owners that we we need we need to create a business that has got

Sissela Yeah.

Tom Trevatt Profitability baked in, sustainability baked in. We're not going to be able to be here in a year's time if we don't understand how to run a successful business. And as much as we'd love to give our work away for free and like you said, be able to do what we do without worrying about money, unfortunately, in order for us to be able to continue to do what we do, there needs to be an exchange of money and that and be able to do it in a way that we want to do it.

And things cost an awful lot of money to do this. So there was always this downward pressure on us as business owners. And so the temptation is, is to continually do more and more education in order to find that one bit of information that's going to move the needle, that extra 1%, that extra 3 % just so that we can get that kind of, little extra sort of sizzle. And I always find, you know, when I'm doing my mentoring, for example,

I will sit down with people at the beginning of my mentoring sessions and we will talk about their values. We'll talk about who they are as people and then try and understand how to align those values with the decisions they'll make in their business. Decisions around pricing, decisions about marketing, decisions about branding, decisions about...

types of cameras they might even use and lenses and those sorts of things, creating workflows, all of that. And that all stems from the values. And I know that the reason that you and I get on so well when we talk about these things is because that's also where you come from. So it's always this kind of little difficulty that I have with education. On the one hand, I really love it. But on the other hand, I recognize that

Sissela Yeah, definitely.

Tom Trevatt the more education that we see and that we get involved in and we engage in and so forth. So often it's to be, it's, it's, it's in order to kind of answer that ongoing question is how to get more. And that puts it into that hustle mindset. That puts us into that place where we constantly have to kind of expand and expand and expand. And of course, like, you know, we listen to podcasters who talk about their six figure businesses, seven figure businesses sometimes.

Sissela Yeah.

Tom Trevatt And we talk about the ways in which, you I listened to a lot of podcasts and have been on podcasts talking about the financial side of my business. And, you know, I love talking about money to people because I think that part of the reason that we are so, we lack power sometimes within society, we lack power is because we sometimes don't understand the economic side. We don't understand

how to do our taxes properly. And so we outsource that to somebody else. We don't understand how to balance our books. We don't understand what a profit and loss sheet looks like, all of that kind of stuff. And that is a kind of degradation of our power. And so if we can have those kinds of conversations and enhance people's understanding around those ideas, then that's really lovely. I listened to a podcast called Financial Feminist.

or her first 100k by financial feminist all the other way around or something like this. And what what Tori Dunlap who runs this podcast is really really interested in is creating financial literacy specifically for women because often in like heterosexual relationships men take the kind of organizing the money kind of role in which case it

takes power away from the women in those relationships because they might not be able to leave so easily. They might not be able to leave a job so easily. So it's the kind of it's the financial literacy side of things. So I'm motivated in what I do to talk about money as well. But it's this real kind of battle between on the one hand, wanting to have those conversations that helps people go from not having a business to having a business or having a slow business to having a sustainable business, whilst also trying to avoid that kind of

pressure of saying, but you've got to have more, you've got to have more, you've got to have more. It's a real battle, isn't it?

Sissela It is. It absolutely is. I come from an education culture that talks about the six figure business or the seven figure business about what we should want. Instead of asking us what do you want, the question has always been, it actually hasn't been a question. It's been, this is what you should want. So you're going to do this. You're going to run a luxury boutique studio and then you're going to

have a second shooter who's going to help you build your business. You're going to have a studio manager. You're going to have all these things. You're going to outsource X, Y, and Z. So you in turn can focus on building, building, building, building. And eventually you're to get a second studio in another town. And now you have multiple branches. And instead of...

asking yourself, slowing it way down and just being like, okay, no, but, like, yeah, sure. I want to work for myself, but to what degree? What do I actually want out of my business? What are, as you said, what are the things that I value? How can I bring that into my business? How can I live with the purpose that I want to live with? Ultimately, success is highly individual. Like our definitions of success varies greatly.

By all extents and purposes people have called me successful and I recognize that. But in my head at the time that I was objectively the most successful I felt anything but. So I think the problem is that instead of of... What it comes down to is actually that education often don't ask questions. It tells us how.

And of course we need to know how, need to, it's why we do it, we want to have the answers, we want to be told how to do it.

But the anchoring is wrong or lacking. There's no anchoring. There's no, what is the business that you want to build? How does that need to look like for you? How much do you need to survive, to thrive, to grow? How do you want to grow? How much do you want to grow? How much time do you want? And I think

Tom Trevatt Mm-hmm.

Sissela especially American education is rooted in hustle culture and those questions get completely looked over because they're not relevant to the downside, the whole point of it which is accumulation more.

Tom Trevatt Yeah, a couple of things I really want to come back to on that. The first one is

That is very, true, but on the obverse, when I speak to some of my mentees.

They are so, so often at the beginning of their journey, they don't feel like they deserve success or they don't feel like they should be paid for this thing that they can do. Like, I should probably charge this amount because that's what other people are charging or like I wouldn't pay for my work more than this amount. And so I'm there, you know, looking at these people who are just desperately trying to do something they love doing.

Sissela yes, yes.

Tom Trevatt But I know if they keep doing it like that in a year's time, they'll have to close their studio. They won't be able to afford to pay their tax bill and so on and so forth. And that is devastating to me. So part of what I really want to try and help people understand is that you can actually charge well for what you do because you are valued that you do that. The other thing to your point around looking for answers, I often find when I try and speak to people about

Sissela Of course, yes, absolutely.

Tom Trevatt about these questions. Their first question is, how do I get more leads? So they come to me and they say, they ask a how question. Like, how do I do this? How do I do that? And in order for me to be able to answer that question, they need to think of me as an authority. Now, I don't need to be an authority. This is true also within my academic teaching experience. I don't need to be an authority to teach, to

exchange ideas, to expand people's minds, to, you know, open up those kinds of conversations, which is essentially what education really should be. Education really is, rather than a transfer of information, because I'm afraid you can get a lot more information from ChatGPT and YouTube and Google than you can get from little old me. Education is really about expanding people's kind of capacity to think and to drawing something out of them. And for me, that does not mean I don't require authority.

But so often people who are being taught require their teacher to have authority. They actually, they look to that person and say, you've done it. You've got that position. You are there for the authority in this particular space. which is really problematic and it becomes even more problematic within, let's say academic education in the UK and the U S and other parts of the world, not that many other parts of the world where it's paid for. It's a

product, it's something that people spend a lot of money on. And I've purchased this thing. I've purchased an education. Therefore I'm going to get this massive return on investment. And this is true. I think also of when I think about, you know, the education that I want to do, like if I want to, you know, buy a course, I want to go on a retreat. I want to, you know, get a mentor or something like that. I think what's the return on investment because that's what we're taught to think now.

Last year I went on the best retreat I've ever been on and there is no way that that gave me very good return on investment.

Sissela What did it give you?

Tom Trevatt It was wonderful. So it was this thing that was organized by some photography lecturers at the London College of Communication. I had not come across any of them before, but obviously I know the London College of Communication. But one of them, I think I had followed on Instagram and they were posting this thing, it's called Gather, and it was in the Scottish Highlands. It was in this amazing, like sort of old manor house in the Scottish Highlands. And it had a sauna next to the River Spey.

that you'd go down, you'd spend a few hours in the morning or something like this, know, saunering, jumping into the river, back into the sauna, back into the river, having all these amazing conversations with other photographers, people from all over the kind of spectrum in terms of who they are, whereas photographers are people and amazing and all that kind of stuff. And the experience was so, reminded me of being back in art school, because there wasn't a necessary purpose for doing any of these things that we were doing. It was more like,

Hey, let's just expand your mind and think about what's possible. And it was a wonderful experience precisely because it didn't have any built-in ROI, you know? And one of the things that I have really, really missed and I think is so vital to the things that I want to do now and in the future is I've missed kind of adding a kind of beauty into my life, you know? And going to the Scottish Highlands and...

Sissela Yeah, yeah.

Tom Trevatt and living with these people for five days, eating and drinking and, you know, sitting in front of the fire and sharing stories and all these sorts of lovely things that you do on a retreat with people you've never met and you'll probably never see again in your life. They're all, it's all parts of kind of adding beauty into your life, which I think is so, so much more valuable in many ways than, than ROI financially anyway, except that that's only possible if you know that you have a successful enough business at home.

that can leave it for a week and continue running the business when you get back. I don't know if I have a question for you, but I suppose the question, or the lead here is really...

Okay, let's come out and say it. Okay, so you and I are organizing a retreat. And one of the things that we've been talking about over the last six weeks, two months is exactly this. How do we bring our values around education, photography together to speak to people in a way that doesn't feel like this kind of hustle, hustle, hustle, feels a little bit more like this kind of

Sissela Yeah.

Tom Trevatt let's expand and think about beauty and think about these kinds of important values and create something that's aligned with you, but also intrinsically improves you as a photographer, which of course will improve your business. Like there's always a reciprocal relationship there. It's that kind of, know, yeah, like telling why, why did we start this conversation? Why did we start talking?

Sissela First of all, don't actually remember exactly how the conversation started.

I think how we got to speak with each other is because of community. the whole point. Okay, so I can rage against a lot of things in education. can be tired of being sold to, I can be annoyed with the lack of flexibility. But one of the things, the greatest value that I've ever received from education has always been

Tom Trevatt Yes.

Sissela community and a sense of community, learning from each other. Education brought me to conferences where I got to meet people and I got friends and we created together and we spoke and we got drunk and we did the things that that expands the mind in a way that... That's not what I said. Yeah, yeah.

Tom Trevatt Chucks.

you

Okay, fine.

Sissela I'm no longer in a country where that is legal. But the point is that the community that I received from participating in these things have been invaluable. Sure, there's also a lot of intrigue and all these different things that happens inevitably when you put a lot of people with a lot of opinions in the same place.

It's bound to happen. having the intimacy of a shared experience can expand your mind in a way that very few teachers can. Sitting together and talking about the things that are difficult and how did you do that? How did you overcome this specific challenge that I'm now sitting in? And maybe you're talking with someone who is by all intents and purposes

below you, like in their level of where they are in their career, doesn't matter because in that moment you have something to teach each other and you have something to share. I think

That's the beauty of it. And that community isn't just necessarily in person. It's also something that happens if you look for it on social media. And that's how you and I got to talk.

Tom Trevatt Yes, it was because I'd seen you being interviewed by Sean Tucker.

Sissela I have a lot of people I've met because of that interview. It's been amazing.

Tom Trevatt Yes, of course. And I think that so if anybody's listening or watching this podcast, go and go and search out this this interview that Sean did with Sizzler.

It came to where you are and spent a day or plus more taking photographs together and doing this lovely interview, which I think expanded your follower number, certainly on Instagram, quite a few thousand and thus expanded your community. And I think that it was at that time that you got invited to join Headshots Matter.

Sissela Yeah, yeah. And I've been speaking with Wayne for quite a while about Headshots Matter, and he finally convinced me.

Tom Trevatt And that is one of the things that I love about Headshots Matter because, and you know, people who've listened to this podcast have probably heard me talk about this and we have interviewed Dwayne and it's been fantastic. But one of the things I love about Headshots Matter is that it's a community of people who do radically different types of photography to some degree. And we all kind of take photographs of people, right? We all take photographs of people. But everybody in the group is

Sissela Yes.

Tom Trevatt a different type of photographer in many ways. And I can have a conversation with one of them and, you know, disagree very much on how we each run our businesses, but each of us are running a successful business. So it's wonderful to see that, you know, there are as many ways to run a business as there are people, at least people within the, within this community that we're part of. and we don't have to just be like, right, here is your plug and play kind of model to, to be a successful photographer. It's more about this kind of like.

like I saying, it's kind of drawing out of each of us what's the best way of being a successful photographer and what is the definition of success when that is all said and done. And I think, you know, we speak regularly about these sorts of things when we're having these conversations, planning conversations about the retreat. Yeah, yes, exactly. Wide and expansive about what these kinds of conversations are.

Sissela Yeah, we go quite far. Like... Exactly.

Tom Trevatt Tell me a little bit more about, tell the listener, because I know I've been part of these conversations, tell us more about the retreat that we're planning.

Sissela I need to tell you about that, okay. Well, basically, I mean, so far, we are looking at France, have found an incredible, incredible location. And one of the things that it's not about, it's not about creating dramatic, grandiose images with

Tom Trevatt Yes.

Sissela a lot of different models and making it all up. It's not portfolio building thing. The retreat is about coming together and learning how to connect with each other in a deeper level and how to build your business in a way that's creatively and financially, among many other things.

We go very far when we talk about the droid and sometimes it gets very expensive.

Tom Trevatt She said expensive, but also she means expensive.

Sissela Yeah, yeah, yeah, at least in words, there's a lot of words.

Tom Trevatt Yeah. But I think that one of the things that we've really focused on is this idea of alignment.

Sissela Alignment, yes. Yes.

Tom Trevatt because what you felt in your burnout period was a misalignment.

And I think that what a lot of people feel when they are creating a business is that they have to do something that other people do. I have to set my pricing like this. I have to do my logo like that. I have to have my website look like this because everybody else has done it. And this is the problem of those kinds of educational systems. Like, you know, I have to say it, but if you create a whole education program called the portrait system, which teaches, you know, plug and play things.

Or if you have a sort of headshot educational program, which is focused around one style of photographer, one photographer's particular style, then you really only teach the how, right? You only teach the, do I generate more leads? How do I create a photograph that looks like this? And, and because that, that becomes the absolute standard and you know, it's a copy paste. Yeah. Yeah.

Sissela It's copy paste. Like everything is copy paste.

Tom Trevatt Everything is copypaste. And what that really means is that we have all sorts of people trying to fit their businesses and themselves into this kind of copy paste spectrum, this copy paste box, let's say. And that can be suffocating. You know, that can be difficult. We all have wonky edges that don't fit into those boxes very well. And I feel like we really came to this from the perspective of wanting to create something that help people.

be successful in their own terms, be productive in their own terms, create something on their own terms that felt aligned to their values, whatever those values might be, and give them advice and give them support in a way that that means they can achieve those particular goals, or hopefully they can achieve those particular goals without it being too...

Sissela Thank

Tom Trevatt without it being too obvious or too like, you know, here is the rule of how you're meant to do it and so on and so forth.

Sissela You described that way better than me. Hold on, I'm cold. I'm just gonna put a little bit more on the stove. Yeah.

Tom Trevatt No, not at all.

Okay.

More logs in the fire. Okay, you do that Barry will Barry will cut this little bit

Sissela Thank you. I appreciate it.

Tom Trevatt Hi Barry, how you doing?

Yeah. Good.

Yep.

I think this is going to be a slightly longer episode than normal, but I will try and keep it under an hour. I don't have any clocks near me, so that was a question I was going to ask you actually now that we're talking. Okay, great. So I reckon I'll probably sort of start to wrap up in around about 10, 15, I reckon. I mean, you know, as you can probably tell, we could talk till the cows come home.

Sissela You remember our first conversation and how long that lasted? Was it like four or three?

Tom Trevatt Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It was dark when we stopped. Four hours. Four hours. Yeah. Fantastic.

Sissela And then the next one is three. That's, yeah. And then we kind of down from there.

Tom Trevatt Yeah, we can have a 20 minute conversation at some point. No, we can't. can't. No, we haven't. No.

Sissela Good voice.

we can't, yeah. No, it might happen.

Tom Trevatt That's cool. That's fine. As long as, as long as it all just gets uploaded to the cloud, then it's fine. Yeah. That's fine. I also need to bounce off to we finish anyway. So it's not, it's not really a problem. Sizzler and I will just have a kind of a five minute wrap up ourselves and she can keep the computer open while, while that's going on. if everyone's ready to go back into it, we can carry on.

So we're doing this retreat in France and we've looked at this amazing location. And one of the reasons why we looked at this lovely location was because we wanted a space that felt maybe a little bit like a French chateau. Maybe it was close to some lovely countryside. Maybe it kind of had these lovely windows and light that would come in so that we could talk about kind of, you know, finding the light in a location, all these sorts of things, these lovely experiences. And it was sort of variegated enough. It had different kinds of places in it so that we, you know,

a photographer might come and they might be super drawn to this weird drawing room with green mottled walls or whatever it is. But another photographer might be like, I really love the swimming pool. And yes, there is a swimming pool, you know. And so just so you know, we haven't done it yet. But also it's not really that far away from the Pyrenees. It's probably too far for us to go as a group, but it's not that far away from the mountains.

Sissela You're a pig.

Just so you know.

No, no, me too.

Tom Trevatt And it's certainly surrounded by some lovely, lovely countryside. And of course it's France, so we're going to have amazing food. Talking of food, one of the things that we really wanted to do was have people cook together, right? Right?

Sissela Yeah, heck yeah! When you were a kid or young, I don't know if anyone did this besides me, probably, but going on a type of retreat or camp or whatnot and everyone was cooking together and it always brings you closer. There's nothing like food.

Tom Trevatt Yeah, absolutely.

Sissela that can create a sense of shared experience and community and just coming together and playing around. Don't throw it though, it gets messy.

Tom Trevatt It's my birthday during the time that we're having the retreat so we'll have a party. Yes, not a food fight.

Sissela I was thinking something about cakes and yeah, no, I'll be nice. I'll be nice maybe.

Tom Trevatt That's cake, I'm sure. That I think is really important. Just going back to this amazing retreat I did in the countryside in the Scottish Highlands. What was hilarious about it is that they'd organized this amazing chef and she was brilliant, like a brilliant, brilliant chef. So we got lovely food, but it was all plant based. And that's totally fine, except that me being hungry, a hungry human,

Sissela Yes.

Tom Trevatt requires quite a lot more protein than was available in the sweet potato that we would have on a regular basis. So hilariously, one night I was just like, I'm really sorry guys, but is it okay if I just go to the local shop and buy some meat? And everyone was like, yeah, you can do that. And I was like, is anyone else like, who is actually here with vegetarian? And nobody apart from I think one person which vegetarian.

But obviously they'd kind of decided to have this lovely chef come and do the chef wasn't a vegetarian. The chef loved cooking meat and would cook this amazing like local food. But it was just, it was just so hilarious that we'd had this kind of decision made beforehand because it was like, okay, first of all, yes, it's really good to be plant-based. Like we should all be a bit more plant-based. so it's kind of lined with the kind of values of the, of the retreat itself. but what was hilarious was that nobody actually was vegetarian or needed this, like, you know, wanted

Sissela Yeah.

Absolutely.

Tom Trevatt to eat in their normal life. So I went to the local shop and I bought like some sausages and some bacon and some smoked salmon and came back and one other person in the group was like, yeah, I'll have some sausages with you. And we stood in the kitchen and fried up these sausages.

Sissela I actually think that's how we came to the decision that food is going to be done together.

Tom Trevatt Yes, it was. Yeah, because then people can make decisions themselves, right? Like what?

Sissela Exactly. Also, frankly, like one of the things that I sometimes push a little bit against, you know this, it's the whole idea of a luxury retreat and what that involves. I mean, there's a lot of them out there and they look amazing. And I love the idea of coming somewhere and food is catered and all these different things. it's not necessarily what I value the most. It's not how I run my business. It's not how I like

I don't seek out luxury experiences that way. I do however seek out experiences that will tie me deeper to people. And there's a little bit of responsibility in it as well. Cleaning up after each other and ourselves and sharing duties I think is important. Commiserate in who has the dishwashing duty.

Tom Trevatt Yeah, well, we all have to do it. All chipping in. We're all doing it. Yeah. And the great thing there is, is like, you know, what will you cook? What will I cook? What will the next person cook? We each get that kind of like, one day where we get the opportunity to be like, Hey guys, this is my favorite. This and like,

Sissela We all have to do it, yeah exactly, us included by the way. Yes, all equal.

Tom Trevatt you're going to try it and like, we'll all obviously, if there's vegetarians, they will also make the vegetarian version of each of the things that we'll do. Or maybe there's days when vegetarians make those versions and we all get to enjoy it together. but it's very much about, you know, for me, like food is love. Like I express my love through food. I cook for people that I love. You know, I love cooking big kind of, you know, sort of dinner party type foods. And, and like that moment when you're sitting in the, kitchen waiting for that, you know, that

thing to cook and you're chatting away to that person who's helping you and you, know, because it's not just like, I'll send Tom to the kitchen and we won't see him for four hours. It's like, Tom and you know, two other people are going to go to the kitchen and cook together and so on and so forth.

Sissela No! No, no.

someone might sit on the table drinking wine, but hey.

Tom Trevatt You chop a couple of carrots and you've done your service, you've done your community service, you chop some carrots. exactly. So super, super important to have those kinds of things. Just to talk about a little bit more about the structure of the, approximately a week. Now we've not decided everything, but one of the things that we also wanted to include was that everybody on the...

Sissela No.

Tom Trevatt retreat would get the opportunity to have a photo shoot with each of us. So that means that we can't include a vast amount of people. There's quite a limit to the amount of people that we can include. We haven't quite decided exactly what that will be given, you know, various different factors, but we really want to be able to spend a couple of hours with each person actually taking photographs of them. Now, most of the people that are coming on the retreat, we'd imagine are likely to be photographers who want to learn photography from us.

Sissela Peace.

Tom Trevatt and isn't one of the most valuable things when you're learning photography to sit for another photographer.

Sissela It is one of the things that I ran about on quite many occasions. As photographers, one of the most important duties that I think we have is to step in front of the camera and learn how just uncomfortable it can be to sit in front of the camera because we're asking other people to do the same. And we need empathy, understanding for that situation so we can better help our clients feel comfortable.

It's vital. And I come from a place where I step on in front of the camera and quite often I have an advantage. My career started as a model. So I cheated. Now I learned about it instead. seeing photographers saying the exact same thing as everyone else who is going to be photographed by you is quite hilarious because it's like

I I'm not photogenic. Can you fix that? Like the same exact same words comes out of people's mouths. And I think it's just such an amazing learning experience and it can help. It can help you understand how you want to be photographed, how you identify within photography.

And from a shared experience perspective, it's just really lovely understanding each other that way. And also one of the things that I would love to see happen is people photographing each other and practicing on each other. Less are models, more humans.

Tom Trevatt Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, exactly. I mean, we do have a plan to have at least a human there who is being a inverted commas model, but we're not doing this kind of like, let's get the sexy young thing to dance in front of the camera and do, you know, do that. Exactly. A fart stress.

Sissela Yes.

Yeah.

In a big, flowy dress, I have a friend who calls it a fart dress. Yeah, because it's like, so you stand with the dress, and then there's someone outside of the camera who throws it up in the air, and it's a fart dress. Sorry, I can be crude.

Tom Trevatt Got it. Fantastic.

No, no, it's fine. Okay, no fart dresses. Fart dresses are bad. Unless someone wants to bring their own fart dress. Yeah. When in real life do you ever wear one of those dresses apart from like in the States in the or like when you get married, I guess, you know, might wear a... Right, they're too much.

Sissela No, no, no, they stink.

then you can do that.

Not even the trains are too long. Like there's a train running after like they're really big. Never. Only those dresses. Yeah.

Tom Trevatt Right. Just ridiculous. Pointless dresses. Okay, fantastic. We're not having those dresses, but we're having, we might have a person that can sit there and be the person that we point the camera at and say, look at how the light falls on their face in this particular way. We do this and this and this, this will happen. So that's fantastic. But we also have that. What I think is going to be lovely is that we'll have these individual moments where we sit down with

Sissela Yes.

Yes. Exactly.

Tom Trevatt each of the attendees and take their photographs and do a photo shoot with them. I think that's lovely. I am not, I did not start any career as a model. So I am, I'm jealous that you've had some experience under the camera, I do occasionally now and again, do a little photo swap with a friend of mine and we do photos at either her studio or at my studio. And that has always been quite lovely. She always brings an array of

Sissela Love you.

Tom Trevatt amazing film cameras as well. then like six months later, I'll get an email with like, here are your developed photographs or something like that. You know, it's really good. Yeah, it's really cool. So it is super, super valuable. But one of other things I think that we really want to do is do this kind of align like value, value setting workshop, isn't it? It's kind of

Sissela Yeah, food aside, photography aside, the core of things is alignment.

Tom Trevatt Exactly. So really try and figure out like with each of these people that are going to be there, what are your values? And I wonder sometimes when I say this to people, do they think, I know what my values are. I live my values every day. I'm, know, I'm, course I know what my values are. But when you get this kind of moment, when you really start to sort of pull it apart and go, well, actually, which one of those two things is more important? If you have to chuck one of them away, which is more important? it honesty or is it giving care?

which one is most important. And I think that that moment where you really have to start making these kind of slightly hard decisions to pair it down to a smaller number. And then what we would do is like build those decisions about our businesses around those core values. Now, some people call this like the pillars of a business, but I think that what often happens in this kind of educational space where someone says,

find out what your pillars, your four pillars are, your five pillars are of your business. They just expect you to go away and be like, I'll take 10 minutes to do this. Whereas like, can't think of, can't sit here and think of like five pillars for my business until I've actually done the exercise to pair it down, have that list of values that it could possibly be and pair it back and take it right back to actually these are the top 12, right? Let's, let's group those things and put them together and like, you know,

Sissela I'm sorry!

Tom Trevatt honesty and integrity are next to each other and, you know, success and ambition are next to each other and kind of really try and understand how those values create what it is that, know, what decisions we make in a business. I think it's super, super important to be able to do that. And I think that kind of that sort of, that's the starting point to some degree of the, of the idea that we, we're coming to here. And I think kind of, you know,

Sissela Yeah.

Tom Trevatt We're probably, we've probably kind of got to the end of, we were up to date, aren't we? We're kind like, we told the story up to date as to what we decided and so on. What I'm going to do is we're going to wrap up in a second, the recording of the podcast. But before we do that, obviously what we want to do is allow people to

Sissela Yes.

Tom Trevatt get in touch with us if they're interested in joining us for the retreat. So when this podcast goes out, I will put a link in the show notes and a link in all of the kind of Instagram and YouTubey kind of places where they can get access to a waiting list where they can join that waiting list so that they can be informed and understand when it's released. Now, obviously there's only all handful of places.

Sissela Yeah.

Tom Trevatt And of course there is some kind of financial commitment there. So if you're listening at home, if you're watching at home, description below, go down below and click on that link and get on the wait list and we'll get a sense of who's interested. So I've done the advertising bit. I did the plug. did the plug. Before we wrap up.

Sissela Is it a flag?

Tom Trevatt You're an educator as well. You love it as much as I do. What would you say apart from joiners in France for our retreats, What would you say would be the most valuable thing that somebody who is in the early stages of their photography career can do this year? What piece of advice could you give somebody that you think could help them?

Sissela Oh my god.

Get out there and beat the pavement. Meet people, talk with people. It doesn't have to be networking events. It can be a lot of different places. You never know where your next client is going to come from. And never assume what people are willing to spend based on where they come from, their cars, their houses, their education. You never know. So,

Go out to the book club or the knitting club or the cooking club and meet some people and talk about what you do and learn to talk about it with passion and slight tinge of obsession. That comes through in a way that no elevator pitch at BNI can do.

Tom Trevatt Yeah, I totally agree. BNI unsuccessful for me, but getting into in-depth conversations is always wonderful. It's always wonderful. Even if, mean, it doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to get client out of it. It just means that you're going to make a friend. And even if it's just a friend for 10 minutes, then that's fantastic.

Sissela It's too early in morning for me, I don't do that.

Yeah. Yeah.

Tom Trevatt Yes, exactly. Yeah, it's nuts.

Sissela And also hone your creative endeavors. Don't just meet people with the intention of necessarily wanting to earn money from them, getting things from them. See what can you do for them, but also go out and create. Meet people and say, I really want to photograph you. Let's do this. And it's not going to cost you a thing. Let's do this. Many people, educators, ran against working for free, but working for free have been one of

Tom Trevatt Yeah.

Sissela some of the most profitable ways that I've built my business.

Tom Trevatt Interesting. Well, if people want to learn from you, if they want to follow your work, if they want to get to know you, I presume they can do so on the internet. So can you give us some places that people can do that?

Sissela Absolutely. It requires spelling. So basically on Instagram, am Cicela.Johansson and it's S-I-S-S-E-L-A dot J-O-H-N-S-S-O-N. lot of S's. Remove the dot and add a dot com afterwards and you have my website, CicelaJohansson.com. You can find me on Facebook, LinkedIn, even though don't.

Tom Trevatt Please stop.

Sissela I should use that word. don't. Yeah, I actually also have a YouTube channel that I haven't been posting for since 2020. So if you want look at my old work, feel free to go there. Just look up my name. I'm really easy to find if you Google me. Like really easy.

Tom Trevatt Yes. Good. Fantastic. Well, we will put all of those bits of information, all of those efforts in the description below as well, so that people can follow you and find you. And they can book mentorships with you. They can come to your studio. They can work with you as a photographer or as a client who's being photographed and as a photographer who's being mentored. They can have all of that kind of wonderful good.

Sissela Yeah, I can come to you. I travel to... I go anywhere in the world, but I mainly stay within Europe these days. Yeah, I could go to the US. I'm not going to. No, not right now. I'm a citizen, but I'm not going to go right now. But I also travel to my clients and I also have clients traveling to me. I have one this year from Germany who's going to come to me and then I have another one

Tom Trevatt You can go anywhere in the world.

Yes, thanks.

No, I wouldn't talk about it. No.

Sissela was actually in London and we talking about going to Greece or something similar like that. I'm excited.

Tom Trevatt Amazing. Fabulous. What an amazing life you built for yourself. Perfect. Well, thank you so much for joining me. We will wrap up now and yeah, catch you again very soon. And thank you very much to everyone who's listened to the first episode of Photography Adjacent. It's been really amazing having you back. I am hoping we're gonna have nine more episodes in...

Sissela My pleasure.

Tom Trevatt Short, yeah, short, what was it? What's the term? We're have nine more episodes very soon. We're gonna record nine more episodes very soon. Yeah, quick succession, there we go. So watch out for those. But, Cicela, thank you very much and we will speak again soon.

Sissela Absolutely.

Tom Trevatt Bye bye. Thank you very much.

Great.