[00:17:48.550] - Dori Durbin

Hello and welcome to The Power of Kids Books, where we believe books are a catalyst to inspire and empower change. Today is an expert edition. And you know, on these podcasts, I like to discover what would professionals love for kids to know about or within their own profession that parents can use as a tool to grow and help their kids change? Today I have parenting guide and documentary family photographer Anuk Brier. Godot, sorry, I still slaughtered it. I'll take that out. That's okay. She loves to guide parents to be present patient and joyful and know what's best for their highly reactive children. So welcome and thank you.

[00:18:36.520] - Anouk Godbout

I'm glad to be here.

[00:18:38.010] - Dori Durbin

Oh, it's great. We were chatting before the podcast. We cheated. I know, I'm sorry. But I've been having such a great conversation with her and I really want for her to share what her background was and why she's helping parents now.

[00:18:52.730] - Anouk Godbout

So I've been a parent myself for 15 years now, and I started supporting parents in different ways basically 15 years ago. Mostly started in volunteer work, but then I wanted to do it more, so I got my master's degree in social work, focusing on the transition to parenting when we get our first children. First child. And I was a social worker for a few years, supporting parents of kids with anticapps or special needs in children rehabilitation, adaptation center, hospital settings, things like that. And I also started to do photography on the side back then as a documentary family photographer. And I moved to another city, so I quit my job as a social worker, so I'm not a social worker anymore, but I wanted to keep supporting parents in a different way. So that's why I started my business that I'm running now, and I incorporated photography, which is called therapeutical photography, and the mix as one of the tools I use to support parents.

[00:20:09.170] - Dori Durbin

I think your type of photography is so different. We are just talking a little bit about social media and the type of photography that we see. Somebody mocks up a picture of their family and everyone looks perfect and the room is clean and neat and beautiful. And that's not the type of photography that you're talking about.

[00:20:29.450] - Anouk Godbout

No, not at all. Yeah, documentary family photography or documentary photography in general. It comes from journalistic photography. So what people were doing for journal or TV, so it document things exactly as they are. You're not moving anything, you're not setting anything, you're not posing anybody. And so in a family setting, that means you're not cleaning up the mess, you're not dressing people so they match. You're not like making sure airs are perfect or putting on special makeups. You just photograph what's happening in front of you. And the focus is not on the perfect light or the perfect color, or the perfect it's really on the moment what's happening, and really keeping memories of what's happening in our life. And yes, it can be for clients, but we can definitely do it for ourselves as family and family documentarian if you want, and document our own family. And now most people have a camera in their pocket all the time with phones.

[00:21:36.410] - Dori Durbin

Yes.

[00:21:37.200] - Anouk Godbout

So it's very easy to do. Yeah, it's very easy to do on an everyday basis by anybody, that kind of photography. And yes, it can be technically better, but the idea at first is really to just keep memories and if possible, good memories.

[00:21:56.710] - Dori Durbin

We were talking too about we might have good intentions to do journaling. Yeah, but I think you said go ahead.

[00:22:05.980] - Anouk Godbout

Yeah, I use photography as a journaling practice. I'm much better at keeping doing photography than journaling. I will skip days in my journaling practice, but photography I do basically every day. Yes, I will skip days, but I've been doing what it's called a Project 365, which means taking at least a photo a day for each day of the year. And I think I made my fifth year, so I do have at least one photo a day. Sometimes I cheat because like, everything else is not perfect and some days I don't feel like it or I forget and that's okay. It's my personal project for my family, so it doesn't really matter. But some days I have much more than a photo, so I make up for it. And so, yeah, it's kind of a gratitude practice, but in photography instead of in a journal, and it's, for me, way easier to look back to than it is a journal. Which personally, I never look back in my journal. I never read back. And as you were saying, when you do, we cringe in general, which is not the case with our photo. When we look back on our photo, we're happy in general, and we're smiling and we're even crying sometimes because we look at things that we remember.

[00:23:25.470] - Anouk Godbout

So, yeah, that's the way I use photography personally, and that I also teach people to use photography.

[00:23:35.350] - Dori Durbin

So I have to throw this in here. My family has pictures of me when I was probably about five. And this picture, I have the old fashioned iron that doesn't plug in. It's just like a hot iron. I have a hat, these giant glasses. I think I was in my mom's shoes and had her apron on like a dress. And I was mortified the first time I saw that. I was so mortified that my mom kept such a terrible picture of me. And now I look back at it and I think, how creative, what was I doing that day? It's a totally different type of feeling. And I think those are the types of pictures that you're talking about, too, because they represent the time period. They represent what was the mood of the kids. They don't have to be happy. We're talking about hair sticking up and clothes that are mismatched and all of those things that you can go back to.

[00:24:32.360] - Anouk Godbout

Those are yeah, and the kids are like we always say, the kids grow up so fast and taking cute, looking at the camera, smiling pictures, it's good, but it's not showing who the kid is, what they love, how they are, what their character, temperament, whatever, like who they are. But when you take pictures of them, when they're concentrated on something they love, and when they're acting, like, reacting and in action, you take pictures of who they are, not just their pretty face, because, yeah, they do have pretty face, and their face evolves, but it's just one thing, and it's very physical feature. That's it. So when you take pictures in everyday action, you take much more than just their image, you may remember. And it's hard. We forget that so fast.

[00:25:28.570] - Dori Durbin

There's somebody at my door. Hang on just a second. Just a second. Sure.

[00:26:23.590] - Dori Durbin

No, sorry about that.

[00:26:25.670] - Anouk Godbout

No problem.

[00:26:26.950] - Dori Durbin

I heard the doors shutting and I was like, Somebody is here. But I thought maybe they go away. But they're here, so they're working downstairs, apparently in our house. So let me get back to so we were talking about okay, can you tell us a little bit about how you would use photography or how you help parents to find some of that the joy and the acceptance of that imperfection that really is some of the happiest times in their lives?

[00:27:00.760] - Anouk Godbout

How do we find that this is so hard? It's definitely not something that is easy, that's for sure. And that's one of the thing that there's no simple one, two, three step for that, I would be lying. And I know we're seeing that stuff out there. You just need to do that and you're going to be happy all the time. I'm sorry, that's a lie. I wish it was not, but it is. It's not true. And we're not going to be happy at the time. That's just not life. But I really believe it's by focusing not only on what's going bad, because in a day with a kid, when we go to bed at the end of the day, most often than not, we remember what went badly and often, sadly, the evening routine and the bedtime routine often doesn't go well. So if that doesn't go well, the day was a crap. But we might have had like 100 sweet moments during the day, but that last moment of the day just ruins everything because that's all our brain is wired to remember is the bad stuff and the last stuff that happened and it's done.

[00:28:13.760] - Anouk Godbout

Like our brains are made like that for a reason, but we can trick it. And that's where for me, focusing on the and if it's not photography, it can be journaling or it can be something else. But for me, photography is an easy tool because if you do take a few pictures during the day and you can look back and realize, I did pretty great stuff with my kids today and I did that and that happened. And it's small stuff, it's not like incredible stuff. And whenever, as we were saying, doing things like on social media, some people look like they have perfect life and spoiler alert, it's not true. I mean, it's all for show. They don't have perfect life. They're just showing the perfect side of it. We all have side of our life that are quote, perfect. But it's just not all the time. It's just pockets of time that go well, but it's focusing on those pockets of time that is hard. It's very hard. And yeah, for me, that's why I'm using photography. That's the way I'm using photography. And that's something that is pretty accessible to most people who out of a phone or any kind of camera.

[00:29:31.960] - Anouk Godbout

Honestly, it works. Like you just need to take it with you and pull it out to take moments instead of looking at the camera smiling photos. That's it. And it's a process when you start when your kids are used to just smile at the camera. Because I know, like my daughter, I don't never, almost never do that. But at the daycare, my daughter, they are asking her to smile. So sometimes she's posing for the camera now. And if you've already done that, the kids will naturally do it. So you have to train them a little to stop doing that. But once they're used to it, they will let you do and you don't disturb them. You just let them do what they do and you take their photo and at some point they forget about it. And like, my older one are twelve and 15, and generally they don't mind me taking pictures. As for lots of kids, I aged will ask you not to do it. But since they're used to me just taking pictures of everything, what's going on, and not asking them to stop what they're doing or do something special, they don't care.

[00:30:33.560] - Anouk Godbout

They don't mind me taking the pictures. Sharing is something else, but taking the picture, they don't mind. And honestly, the first reason why I take those pictures is, for me, it's not for social media. So if they don't want me to share the photo, I don't mind. It's going to be in our follow album. That's what's the most important.

[00:30:52.510] - Dori Durbin

Yeah, I love that. I love the simplicity of it. Because like you said, everyone can do it. And you don't necessarily have to share the photos that they really don't want shared, but you have those genuine moments that you can really kind of think back to and have measured that. Like you said, there's something good that did happen out of the day that you totally forgot about.

[00:31:14.950] - Anouk Godbout

Definitely. We forget so fast, it's crazy.

[00:31:21.350] - Dori Durbin

Yeah. You said something earlier, too, about being in the pictures, which I thought was interesting because most of us try not to be in the pictures.

[00:31:30.590] - Anouk Godbout

Yes, I know. I know that's a hard thing for lots of women, mostly, I would say, or people that identify as women. We feel we need to be perfect to be in Photos. We need to be camera ready, whatever that means. Like have makeup on and perfect air, perfect clothes, and honestly, and lose weight. This is a constant thing. I will be in pictures when I lose weight. You know what? Your kids don't care. Like, your kids don't care if you lose weight or if your camera ready. They see you every day as you are. They don't care. And in ten years, when they're going to look back in Photos, they want to see the real mom they add every day. They don't want to see their perfect picture ready mom they barely saw.

[00:32:15.590] - Dori Durbin

Be honest.

[00:32:17.750] - Anouk Godbout

It's someone that they'll know.

[00:32:19.860] - Dori Durbin

Yeah, that's very true. They'd be like looking at a stranger in the photo.

[00:32:24.830] - Anouk Godbout

Yes, almost. So they want to be you in your yoga clothes with a real messy bun, not curated one, and with no makeups and whatever the way you have and whatever. If your clothes fit and we don't care. You can have old in your pants, not where it's pretty. We don't care. I mean, it's who, there you are. And that's what your kids want to see in your photo when you're older and when they're not with you anymore. Yeah, that's what we want to remember. And I know it's not easy, but being in the pictures with them, and most phone. Of course, it's less genuine, maybe, but most phones have built in. Some, like, you can take pictures a few seconds later. So if you're doing something with your kids, doesn't have to be complicated. You just set that timer. You put your phone somewhere with old and you can see, you click on it, continue what you were doing, and then go on there's even like, I don't remember exactly the name of the app, but there's an app where there's a timer, so it takes many pictures. So you can just set it up and continue what you were doing.

[00:33:38.370] - Anouk Godbout

And it's going to take a few photos while you do your thing. So that's very like, you can just continue doing what you're doing. So just be in the photos with them. It's really worth it. Honestly, it's really worth it.

[00:33:51.690] - Dori Durbin

That's a really great idea because you don't want to look back and say, okay, well, I've got all these great pictures of the kids, but I'm not there. Oh, no, who took these?

[00:34:04.490] - Anouk Godbout

Yeah, you were behind the camera. But the kids don't see that often. My youngest will ask, like, she's looking at photos and she's like, yeah, mom, you were not there. Of course I was there, I'm taking the photo. But she doesn't get that. And of course older ones will get that, but it's still you're not there. It's really telling. She's not seeing you, so you're not there. Even if you're behind the camera, but you're there.

[00:34:32.020] - Dori Durbin

That's kind of sad.

[00:34:33.730] - Anouk Godbout

Yes, it is. It's very important and I really love it. She's telling the best thing for that, because I I took a photo with her every month for her first year, and I put them all and I didn't, like, use Sili on Instagram and they're all super perfect and all exactly the same. Mine are not. They're all different and was just in the same chair. That's it. The rest is completely different. And I turned them all in black and white, which is a very great solution when you don't have a photo. Often it helps in black and white.

[00:35:05.790] - Dori Durbin

Yeah.

[00:35:06.830] - Anouk Godbout

So I put them all in a frame, and at the point she looked at it and she said, and I think she was barely three year old, maybe even less than that, and she said, mom, it's you taking care of me when I was a baby. And I mean, that's very important. They see us taking care of them, and that's so important in who they are, in how they're raised. They see that we're taking care of them because we remember bad stuff that they do, too.

[00:35:37.980] - Dori Durbin

Yeah. To have that visual confirmation that it's almost like evidence that things were fine. Yeah, exactly.

[00:35:47.180] - Anouk Godbout

That there's great things and that Moms is there for me no matter what, basically on your wall, because that's another thing. Just put your photos out of your phone, please.

[00:35:59.490] - Dori Durbin

That was my next question, was I don't know. I think many parents go through this where they have this great scrapbook and this great photo album for their first child and then each child it gets to be a little less effort. Sure. So then that made me wonder, well, okay, so if I'm taking a picture or two or three every day, what do I do with them? Because I don't even know how many photos are on my camera. But yeah, I don't have photo albums full.

[00:36:30.270] - Anouk Godbout

Yes, sure. And I would say photo on your phone, they barely exist and they can disappear tomorrow. So it's very important to get them out. That's true. For myself, my grandparents and my in laws. I got frames that you can send picture to like numeric frames. That's very great option. Cost a little bit. Like seriously, it's not cheap. But honestly, I kind of fell in love with that because you can send pictures from remotely if you want and it's ongoing and you can put like the one I got, you can put how many pictures you want on it. It's very great option and you don't have to have that choosing which photo to print, paralysis, you can send everything you want. So that's a very good option. Other than that, honestly, if you can choose a few just this down your wall, it can be like cheap frame, I don't mind. Just put something on your wall because those are the photo that your kids are going to see every day. The one on the wall, not even the one in albums. Albums are fantastic and I really encourage people to get some. But photos on the wall are the ones that will be seen and interrupt your everyday and you remember.

[00:37:47.970] - Anouk Godbout

So when you choose photos on your wall, and I have almost a method for that, it's just choose the one that moves you, that makes you physically react positively, of course. And just make sure that in that photo, in that moment, everyone was having a great time because kids will remember how they felt when you took that photo and if they felt bad, it will remind them of a bad moment. Make sure that you are physically moved by that pictures and that the moment was good for everyone before you put that up on the wall because you want to remind everyone of a positive things on an everyday basis. But then in albums you can put everything and it's okay to put things that are not going well because it's part of your life too. You have bad days and it's okay. And in albums, if you want to go very simple, there's so many apps now that allow you to do like a very easy albums. You can even have one a month delivered to your door from your Instagram account. But I'm not big on that because I think lots of photos don't have to be shared.

[00:39:01.370] - Anouk Godbout

So yeah, you can just use your camera roll to send pictures and lots of places. Now, it's super easy to do albums and they do the layout for you. So it's very not that like if you just print don't have to print the photos and you can just do their albums online and have them sent all done to your house. You can also print just individual photos and put them in boxes. I just look through them once in a while like we used to do back in the days.

[00:39:33.730] - Dori Durbin

So maybe this is a good lesson for those parents that have young kids to start doing it right away.

[00:39:38.980] - Anouk Godbout

Yeah.

[00:39:39.280] - Dori Durbin

So that you don't have that fear of missing out when you have the older kids and you're thinking, I've got how many pictures on my camera?

[00:39:47.750] - Anouk Godbout

Yeah, I printed ten years of a backlog. It's a job. Yeah, it's a very big job. So I really encourage you to not wait.

[00:39:56.910] - Dori Durbin

Very brave of you. That's impressive.

[00:39:59.300] - Anouk Godbout

And then I stop and I still have some backlogs to do and do it as simple as possible for me. It's just and now I take pictures every day and I do one album a year with one photo page. It's very big once because it's 365 and the only company I know that allows that many pages is Blurb. And they often have discount to 3%. But it's great because I don't have to think, I just put one photo a day in that and it's done. I don't do any set up or anything or arrange pictures that we can get lost in that for hours and hours on end. And another easy one is Calendars. I love doing that. That's what I've been doing that since my kids are my first one was born. It's calendars with your kids pictures and lots of big box places to offer that option. And that's very great. Like, everyone in my family get one.

[00:40:56.510] - Dori Durbin

That's really neat. That's a great idea. Well, it's funny you were talking about the pictures that make you feel those moments positively. And I had this flash of my kids with their senior pictures. And one experience in the beginning of the whole experience of 2 hours worth of pictures are very positive. And then as you go, you could see them kind of like losing momentum and excitement about the opportunity to have their picture taken. And I had them all printed because I didn't know which one I wanted to choose. And we filled a very pretty good sized book. And when you look through it, you start it went from chronologically in order, so by the end of it, it was kind of like those sloppy, tired, not feeling so great pictures. And I thought, yeah, you're right, because those are the times that you know what is happening, but it doesn't make the kids feel good about the experience, the good experience. Pictures are what we want to hang on to.

[00:41:55.360] - Anouk Godbout

Yeah. And taking pictures for taking pictures. For me, it doesn't have a point. You take pictures because you want to remember something and remember that you are perfect. And able to smile is not something worth remembering because we can all smile and we are not perfect.

[00:42:13.670] - Dori Durbin

Right. It's much better. And really, what you said earlier, too, is kind of popping my head of proving that it's okay, that we're not perfect, that parents care, teaching their kids by not staging, by not being perfect themselves, that it's okay, it's human and.

[00:42:30.510] - Anouk Godbout

It'S setting things for failure to show them that we need to be perfect because they are not perfect. And if one will circle the parents I support, they mostly have kids that can very be seen as not perfect because they're like most intense kids, if you will. And often we focus on those aspects. They're great kids, but they have flaws like everyone.

[00:42:59.990] - Dori Durbin

Yeah.

[00:43:00.710] - Anouk Godbout

And we want to fix the flaws. We want to find solution because it's making our life hard. And their life hard because they struggle when they're not feeling great, for sure, but expecting them to be perfect. And even if we say we don't, when we expect ourselves to be perfect, we send the message that they need to be perfect. And it's very our standard that we cannot meet. Nobody can. Humans are not perfect. So it's all part of the same thing. Like it's a message. It's an important message to send the kids. And pictures are a big part of our life now. A very big part. And if we want to have always perfect pictures, we're sending a very bad message to kids that we need to be perfect and we need to be physically perfect because that's all we see on smiling pictures. What we look like, not who we are.

[00:43:56.570] - Dori Durbin

That's so true. That's such a hard it's a hard world to live in already. But then when you add that to growing up, on top of not understanding how the kids are feeling internally, themselves or not being able to express themselves and potentially overreacting or reacting out yeah. That just puts such a tight lid on them to try to live inside.

[00:44:22.750] - Anouk Godbout

Yes. And lots of kids want to be good and want to do good, and they know what they should be doing. Like us, as parents, we know what we should be doing, but it's not always working. Most often they're not not working because kids don't control their emotions and be out of they lose control. And it's kind of normal. But some kids will do it more than others for many reasons. And it's very hard to put that pressure on them. And the more pressure they have to be perfect, the more they will react that way because the less they can meet their own expectation and their parents expectations. And that's difficult to live with.

[00:45:06.540] - Dori Durbin

Yeah. So what kind of advice do you give to parents as far as how to help their kids be more in that present patient joyful type of mode. What can we do to help our kids find that?

[00:45:23.570] - Anouk Godbout

I would say it's the same, it's related to how we feel. And often with kids, they don't know how they feel and we don't know how they feel. And it's kind of a detective work to find what's going on when kids react really intensely. But it's just accepting that feelings aren't perfect and they're part of life. And most norton western society are very focused on not letting feelings show like it's getting a bit better, but we have like feelings, we're not okay. And it's still there a lot. And learning, understanding what people are going through, letting some space for those feelings to be expressed and often at the end of the day and it's really simple like kids were in school or in daycare, all day, for example. And we are tired because we've been working be it at home, on our side at home we've been working all day and they get home and they're tired too and often they bottle things up during the day at school or daycare because they don't feel as safe as they do at home. And when they come home, they explode and that's where it gets very hard because we are already and we also explode then because we are triggered by the earth kids exploding.

[00:46:57.970] - Anouk Godbout

And so it's allowing space for that to happen, allowing and preventing it if it's possible. It's like doing some connection and I know that's easy to say and far from easy to do, especially when we're tired and stressed and we have dinner and we have homework and we have all those things to do, but sometimes it's just a few minutes, it's enough. But we need to feel like what we're doing helps them because otherwise why bother if it's not helping? And often it's hard because most families that I work with, it's not clear the general parenting advice don't work with their kids and so they try and it's not working and so they feel like they are failing but they try and they try and then they don't know, they don't know what to do. And so what you don't know, you feel bad and you feel out of control and it's very hard to support someone else when yourself you feel out of control, you feel that you don't have any power in this situation. And so, yeah, just letting ourselves again, it's accepting that it's not going to work necessarily all the time.

[00:48:18.430] - Anouk Godbout

It's not going to be perfect, letting that go and giving ourselves the freedom to just try things differently, to just do things our way and to, as I said, with pictures, to focus on who the kids are, not try to put them in a box of like that's how we should be parenting kids. Your kids might need something different as a parent from you, something that you've never seen. You need to invent it, maybe, but they need something else. And if you start from them, their needs, their emotion, you'll find an answer at some point. It's not going to be a one to three step solution. Again, as I said, it's not going to be simple, but it's doable.

[00:49:01.210] - Dori Durbin

I really love that because I think it really makes it more personalized to the kids. And if we can not try to have a solution like you said, a formula to go to and just really see them as people, I feel like they would feel more appreciated and more cared for and more willing to take risks in other places if they knew that support was back at home.

[00:49:26.210] - Anouk Godbout

And I was asked at some point if I treated my kids differently, and I was like, yeah, of course I do. And I know it's like, in the general message, it's like, you need to treat your kids the same. But I was like, no, because they don't need the same thing. They're different. I cannot if I was treating them the same, I would serve nobody because they don't need the same thing. One kid needs something, and the thing that helps one is just triggering the other one. It's not working. So I needed to adapt my way of parenting to my kids. My first two were so different in that way. Like, nothing in my parenting my first would be helpful, for my second, it was just making things worse. So I learned very early that I needed to adapt my parenting. But my kids are neurodivergent, so it explains it, but it took me more than ten years to learn that, because they don't have something very clear. But neurodivergent or not, every kid is different from the next. And every kid needs something different, and every parent needs something different. And we are different people.

[00:50:42.200] - Anouk Godbout

Like, we cannot be expected to parent the same way. And we can parent as a team if we are more than one parent, but we're not going to parent the same way. It's not possible.

[00:50:54.190] - Dori Durbin

Yeah, I think you're right. And that takes you right back to that whole picture concept.

[00:51:00.670] - Anouk Godbout

Yeah.

[00:51:03.470] - Dori Durbin

Everything comes back to pictures. No, it really does, because then if you had that picture, you see that and that just, again, clarifies their position in the family, who they are. Yeah, I just love that. You're brilliant. Do you know that?

[00:51:17.910] - Anouk Godbout

Thank you.

[00:51:19.910] - Dori Durbin

I think it's great. Okay, let me ask you this. We've picked your brain pretty hard here. Where can people find you if they have additional questions or just want to get in contact with you?

[00:51:30.620] - Anouk Godbout

Sure. My website is familymoments. CA because I'm in Canada. So it's Ca.com, my instagram. I should change that for something easier, but it's the French version, which is mamafami, which mama is the same as moments, but femme is the French for family. So it's mama femme my Instagram. But I could give you the link. But yeah, I'm mostly on Instagram as my social platform. As a photographer, we kind of default to Instagram.

[00:52:05.410] - Dori Durbin

We do as artists, too. It's okay.

[00:52:07.400] - Anouk Godbout

Yeah, I know lots of people do, but yeah, photographers were kind of like owning Instagram at some point before the reels and everything came. But it was the platform for photographers when it started. But yeah, now it's much more widespread than that.

[00:52:25.450] - Dori Durbin

Well, fantastic. Well, what I'll do is I'll get those from you, and I'll make sure to drop them in the show notes so people can contact you and check out your Instagram feed. And I just want to thank you anuk for today. This was really great. And I hope people got some really positive feedback as far as what they can be doing with their photos. Maybe even they feel a little bit lighter. They can just take pictures and not worry about it.

[00:52:49.270] - Anouk Godbout

Yes, I hope so, because that's what's the most important. Just document those moments. They're not coming back.

[00:52:55.810] - Dori Durbin

Yeah, absolutely. You're right. Well, thank you so much. I appreciate your time today.

[00:53:01.420] - Anouk Godbout

Thank you. I'm really glad that I've been here with you. It was very great to chat with you. Thank you.

[00:53:07.990] - Dori Durbin

Don't leave. Thank you. And if there's anything that I can put in the show notes that I don't know if you have anything coming up or any information that you want parents to have. People have given me, like, workshops, they've given me articles, anything like that.

[00:53:26.740] - Anouk Godbout

I have some freebies that I can give you to put in the show notes. I have one on self care, and I have one on limits. Like limits with kids on boundaries.

[00:53:37.720] - Dori Durbin

Nice.

[00:53:38.630] - Anouk Godbout

So, yeah, those are my main, and I also have one on self portraits. Like putting ourselves in photos as parents.

[00:53:48.710] - Dori Durbin

Well, whatever you want to do. They always limit you. So many characters. So I'll try to fit as many as I can.

[00:53:57.270] - Anouk Godbout

I can send you, and you decide which one you want to put in. They're all there. They're all available. It's just a matter of which one you think are more relevant to it. But yeah, definitely put that and I'm going to send them to you.

[00:54:14.420] - Dori Durbin

Perfect. And then if they have any links, if you want to collect email addresses or anything like that, that's a great time to do it, too.

[00:54:23.870] - Anouk Godbout

Yeah, but the freebies are all, like, magnets email. Yeah. Lead magnets. It's all going to be something like that.

[00:54:32.260] - Dori Durbin

Good.

[00:54:34.050] - Anouk Godbout

My website is pretty simple right now because it all crashed in March. Sorry. The day before I started my launch for my group program, my website crashed, so I added nothing anymore. Yeah. My web designer was able to salvage some things in a super complicated way, but it's very basic. And before I add a bilingual website now, it's just weird. Like, some page are in french. Some are in English, but the main pages are in English. Just my blog posts are mostly in French, so I don't want to link people to them right now. That's why I decided to start a podcast. I was like, I'm not starting all my blog over again. I always wanted to do a podcast. I was like, okay, that's the sign. I'm going to do a podcast instead of a blog. It's over now.

[00:55:26.360] - Dori Durbin

Download the transcript anyway, right?

[00:55:28.220] - Anouk Godbout

Exactly. I got something on AppSumo that does it for you. Like, you put your audio and it gives you the transcript and it's like they use AI, so they clean all the M and things like that.

[00:55:42.220] - Dori Durbin

Nice. You might have to send me that too. I've been using Happy Scribe, but it costs money. So many minutes, whatever. So you pay like $12 for 2 hours, something like that.

[00:55:56.930] - Anouk Godbout

The one on appsimo, if it's still on appsimo, I don't know. But you're supposed to pay per month. But on appsimo it's a lifetime thing. So I got like the highest one, so I have lots of minutes per month, but it renews automatically each month. So it was like 100 something dollars, but now I'm good forever.

[00:56:15.170] - Dori Durbin

That's awesome.

[00:56:16.610] - Anouk Godbout

Yeah, I try to find a link and I send it to you.

[00:56:19.400] - Dori Durbin

Yeah, I'd be really curious about it. Yeah, because I definitely am paying every time.

[00:56:25.750] - Anouk Godbout

Yeah, I'm not started yet, but when I saw that it was like, yeah, I want to start one. And I definitely want transcript. And they also transform. They use it and they give you social posts and show notes and things like that. Automatically, of course, AI, so you have to read through and correct things up. But at least the rough of the job is done. So you have to start with that's huge.

[00:56:56.530] - Dori Durbin

So big time crunch.

[00:56:58.790] - Anouk Godbout

Exactly. That's what I was thinking. It was like, yeah, I'm getting that thing even if I'm not how long those things are up. But I'm going to check and send you that. I actually going to send you what company it is because I think it's not the first time they've been on AppSumo. So if they're not available anymore, they might come back at some point.

[00:57:17.420] - Dori Durbin

Okay, yeah, I'm always open to new ideas, so absolutely. That'd be great.

[00:57:23.370] - Anouk Godbout

So it was super nice to talk with you and do you have an idea when the podcast will be available?

[00:57:29.880] - Dori Durbin

I will definitely let you know about five days before I air it. So usually I do a post on a Friday and then I air it on that next Tuesday. We're probably about three weeks out somewhere in there. So I have to crunch through the ones that I have right now that I've got them all downloaded and everything, but not clean. So that's the next step for me. But I will let you know ahead of time for sure.

[00:57:56.770] - Anouk Godbout

Great. And if you have a visual, like something that I can share. And normally I have like a featured section on my website, so I put the link there very and I share it on Social too, and on my email list too.

[00:58:11.760] - Dori Durbin

That'd be great. That would be great. Send me your Instagram handle too, because I do put it I put it on Instagram and Facebook and then I've been trying to remember to put it on LinkedIn as well. I don't know if LinkedIn is really doing much, but it's more I was.

[00:58:29.570] - Anouk Godbout

To say I always put one, like when I have a new blog post or an off freebie or I put it on LinkedIn and I always get.

[00:58:39.960] - Dori Durbin

Clicks from that's good.

[00:58:42.050] - Anouk Godbout

Yeah. Like one or two, but for a platform I never use. Yeah. For the time it takes me to do it, I find it, it's pretty great. Even if it's just one or two people, it's still okay. It takes me five minutes.

[00:58:57.500] - Dori Durbin

Yeah. You never know what connection you're going to get from that.

[00:59:01.980] - Anouk Godbout

Exactly. I have no clue. But I'm like, yeah, it's worth putting it out there anyway. And I also do, like, put it on the Google my business.

[00:59:12.300] - Dori Durbin

Oh, I've never done that. Okay.

[00:59:14.930] - Anouk Godbout

Because I was a photographer, when you have a local business, Google My Business is much more like you should have a Google My Business. When you have a physical business got you in real life. So I got it when I was a photographer and now that I still use it, then also get like it takes a few seconds again. It's really not long and I can just retake the same text where and put a photo and I'm done.

[00:59:38.970] - Dori Durbin

Nice.

[00:59:39.340] - Anouk Godbout

And I always get one or two clicks from there too. So I'm like, yeah, it cannot hurt.

[00:59:44.810] - Dori Durbin

Between in four and five minutes, right?

[00:59:47.690] - Anouk Godbout

Yeah. And it's still that are more like evergreen than social. It's there. It's going to stay there.

[00:59:54.730] - Dori Durbin

Yeah. That's a great idea.

[00:59:57.850] - Anouk Godbout

For blog posts for LinkedIn, it's super easy. You can just click like if you have that option on your website, you click the link and it posts on LinkedIn automatically for you. Yeah, it's very easy. I don't know, for some reason last time I did that, it didn't work, but normally it works. You just click on like if you were someone else. Sharing, if you will.

[01:00:19.730] - Dori Durbin

Yeah.

[01:00:20.560] - Anouk Godbout

So you click on LinkedIn and the link is there, the image is there, and you just have to write a little blurb and it's done. So it honestly takes less than a minute to share on LinkedIn. So I think if you have a blog, like one page, you can do that for sure.

[01:00:36.950] - Dori Durbin

That's a great idea. Yeah, I have a new website that's supposed to go up now. I'm a little nervous that it could crash, but make sure you have backups.

[01:00:47.070] - Anouk Godbout

Of your website regularly. Mine was six months ago. And it was before I switched from photography, so it was all photography related. So nothing useful. Now I have a backup every single week.

[01:01:01.970] - Dori Durbin

Yikes. That's just scary. And I totally see how it could happen, I really do.

[01:01:08.320] - Anouk Godbout

And that's two things. Like, I do that and now every word I'm going to put on my website will be somewhere else too, like in a Google Doc. So if it crash, at least I have my copy that I can build again. I can pick the copy and put it back. I mean, that's the hardest part of a website, it's the copy. The rest as hard to do, but yeah, make sure it's back up and that the copy is somewhere else.

[01:01:34.010] - Dori Durbin

That's a really great idea. Thank you for that. Good to think of.

[01:01:39.160] - Anouk Godbout

Yeah, we learn from our mistakes.

[01:01:43.230] - Dori Durbin

So heartbreaking ones that really teach you a lot.

[01:01:46.590] - Anouk Godbout

Yeah, and I was like, okay, I just have to do the minimum job because I don't have time to rebuild an entire website now that I'm launching, I just can't. So I have like three page on my website. It's very basic, basic, basic. But like the main man, like, home page work with me about and the blog, which is half English, half French and very messy and the visual is all messed up and was like, oh my God, I should just take that out.

[01:02:18.250] - Dori Durbin

There'll be time at some point, but yeah, exactly.

[01:02:21.290] - Anouk Godbout

One thing at a time.

[01:02:22.640] - Dori Durbin

Yes, exactly.

[01:02:24.410] - Anouk Godbout

Since I preach imperfection right.

[01:02:27.880] - Dori Durbin

You might as well post it.

[01:02:30.250] - Anouk Godbout

I mean, people don't expect perfection from me, which is very nice.

[01:02:34.300] - Dori Durbin

Yeah, you were right. You're setting yourself up really well, aren't you?

[01:02:38.340] - Anouk Godbout

Yeah, right. It's perfect for me if I'm imperfect. People are like people in my world should not mind that much.

[01:02:46.590] - Dori Durbin

That's right, that's very true. That's a good point. And if they do, then they're probably not working with you.

[01:02:51.640] - Anouk Godbout

Exactly. They're not going to come because that's not what they're looking for.

[01:02:56.550] - Dori Durbin

Yeah, that's great. Well, I think you got to represent what you talk about.

[01:03:01.060] - Anouk Godbout

Exactly.

[01:03:04.870] - Dori Durbin

Well, thank you. Thank you so much for the time. I will definitely be in touch. Send me that stuff and if you think of anything else, just let me know.

[01:03:13.840] - Anouk Godbout

Yeah, sure. Thank you very much.

[01:03:16.140] - Dori Durbin

Oh, you're welcome. Thank you. It was great. It was great to connect with you.

[01:03:20.110] - Anouk Godbout

Yeah, sure. That's what I love with podcasts. It's connecting with different people that we would not connect with and I love that so much and can't wait to start my own to do that.

[01:03:30.670] - Dori Durbin

You'll have to let me know when you do that too. I'd love to hear it. Sure.

[01:03:34.530] - Anouk Godbout

I don't know when exactly it's going to be.

[01:03:36.500] - Dori Durbin

No pressure, no pressure.

[01:03:38.310] - Anouk Godbout

I will it's in the book. I just need to set things up. But yeah, I need something going out because I don't post blog posts since my site crashed, so I'm. Gonna I'm gonna do that for lots.

[01:03:54.640] - Dori Durbin

Of other stuff too. So that's a big thing.

[01:03:56.970] - Anouk Godbout

Yeah. I was always like making blog posts and then it was like, I should also do a podcast. Okay. Now that basically all my blog posts are gone, I'm not rewriting them, but I can still talk about what was on my podcast. So I will definitely start with just me blurbing about stuff that was on my blog that is not there anymore. So I can put that stuff back there. But eventually I want to have guests because I really love that too.

[01:04:25.380] - Dori Durbin

Connecting. Yeah, that'll be great. You'll enjoy it, I'm quite sure.

[01:04:30.390] - Anouk Godbout

Yeah, I am pretty sure too. I love talking to people one on one. I'm an introvert, so big group I don't love, but talking one on one and I find podcasts. You go deep, fast. Like you don't do small talk, which I hate doing. You go deep very fast in this subject. And that's what I really love about podcasts.

[01:04:52.710] - Dori Durbin

That's great. Can you hear that? Something is making a lot of noise in the other room. It's probably the guys working on the probably.

[01:05:04.210] - Anouk Godbout

I don't hear it.

[01:05:05.280] - Dori Durbin

Okay. Yeah, it's probably good.

[01:05:10.510] - Anouk Godbout

Thank you very much.

[01:05:11.680] - Dori Durbin

Well, thank you. I should probably go check and see what's going on, but like I said, I had a great time and I will let you know.

[01:05:18.130] - Anouk Godbout

Yes.

[01:05:18.900] - Dori Durbin

Okay.

[01:05:19.680] - Anouk Godbout

Well, Sheriff, with pleasure. And I'll send you everything. I'm going to do that now and send you everything. Think awesome.

[01:05:25.900] - Dori Durbin

Thank you.

[01:05:26.920] - Anouk Godbout

Thank you. Bye.