Visibility Medicine with Danielle Cohen

Dusti Arab: 

Hello and welcome back to Referral Worthy today I am here with Danielle Cohen. She is a photographer and visibility coach, the creator of Visibility Medicine. Danielle, thank you so much for being here today.

Danielle Cohen:  

Thank you for having me. Always so fun to chat with you. Dusti.

Dusti:  

So Danielle has done photos for me before and I think I’ve known you since at least 2016, 2017. Maybe earlier but I have just always had so much admiration for your work in the world. Your photography is unmistakable which I just adore and the way that your work has evolved to include visibility. It’s about so much more than just the photos whenever someone works with you and I remember the session that I did with you. I remember feeling that way the whole time, I left feeling so full. And that’s not how I usually leave a photo session.

Danielle:  

That’s amazing. And we’re due by the way,

Dusti:  

I know I think it’s time.

Danielle:  

It feels like so many lifetimes ago, right?

Dusti:  

Right? In LA and man, yeah, lifetimes ago was right. Okay, so, but photography wasn’t even your first business, which I didn’t realize until we had talked fairly recently. So give me your origin story here. How did you end up doing what you do now?

Danielle:  

Okay. I mean you know, I, I have to say, there’s different ways that I could tell this story. And I think that that’s true for many of us, right? Like if we really, I seem to be referring to it as a braid or a rope lately in terms of, we feel like there’s all these different threads, but actually, they come together and make this really strong thing. It doesn’t mean we’re fragmented. If anybody listening needed to hear that, I’m always reminding everyone because I think it’s really valuable to recognize. So I can look way, way back and say, “Well the work I do now is informed by things that happened, not just happened, but things that I did and learned at 10 years old.” There are some threads that come through that long. The shorter version, if I really just cut to my online business, what was the origin story for that? I have three sons from a previous relationship in my 20s and I had another child in my mid 30s. And the premise, like the real bottom line is I was in a place where I had a lot of children, and I really wanted to be with them. And also, it would have been crazy childcare to have them all in childcare. And I had a very pressing financial need. And I sat down and I said, I mean this very literally, I sat down with a piece of paper and said, “What can I do and who can I do it for?” And I was pretty immersed in the wellness community, which is sometimes loaded and also very broad term but that’s my vocational background. Before that was a mix of bodywork and other healing arts and doula and childbirth educator but also accounting and project management, and so I have this kind of funny, what often feels like funny, juxtaposed skill sets and areas of interest. But because of that, I was really in the wellness world and I knew this one person in particular who had come to mind. He wasn’t the only one but I knew a lot about his business, and his personality, and his dreams, and where I could be of service to him. I made a phone call. He hired me. And that was the beginning. I showed up. I did. I said yes. Often, right. Like, I can do that.

Dusti:  

Yep. And that’s totally what you have to do in the beginning.

Danielle:  

That is what you have…well, I think it’s often what you have to do at least. There are, there are seasons for these moments. And I think you’re probably thinking, I would guess that we have a similar thought around this because I’ve watched you evolve and because I know how you work in some ways because I’ve worked with you in a handful of capacities but you work, right? You’re not afraid to work. And also, over time, we can reshape things, so that we don’t have to say yes to everything. But yeah, for me, it was like I’m just gonna say yes. Because it was that or go get a job and a job did not work for me. It didn’t work for my body. It didn’t work for my mothering, all of the things, and it expanded. So then I had other clients that came in from him and my project with him really, really, really grew in a very significant way. And I learned so much and a lot of it was hard, all kinds of things. And then one day he said to me, “I have this patient and she needs someone like you. I’m going to introduce you.” So he introduced me to this woman, beautiful, amazing, creative like mindblowingly creative blogger, which was a world I was not in and so now we’re like around 2012 and that was just not where I was. I was very much not really online. And just in my local life. And that really opened up this whole other world. And I was now working with people where there was a lot more alignment that I didn’t even know existed. It wasn’t also always easy either. And there were lots of growing pains. And from there, what I did was out of the learnings and the variety of skill sets that I had, I created a business called Elevated Synergy, and I was really coming in, the language I would use for it now is, I was coming in as both thought partner and like creative consultant and brand consultant and helping a variety of entrepreneurs to present themselves, present their work to the world. In a handful of ways not too different in some ways than what I do now and also entirely different. And out of that, that same original woman who I had been introduced to introduced me to someone else and the three of us co-created a magazine. It was really beautiful. We were all working way too hard. We were all way under-resourced, you know, all kinds of things. But the connections that I made and the learnings that I had just continued to grow. And I was always, in all of these things, even going back to when I was doing other kinds of work, I was always taking pictures. I was always photographing moments and people and I used to think about it like I’m creating evidence for myself sometimes even especially in my personal life. I was creating evidence for myself that challenged some of my thoughts that I wasn’t doing enough or being enough or what just wasn’t enough, especially in the realm of mothering and single mothering and all of that. And so, in my work it became like “Oh, well Danielle can do our headshots,” you know, in the business realm and things like that. And at a certain point, I kind of had a body thing that happened about 12 years ago now, where there was just this moment of, “I can’t do the level of exhaustion that I’m running at.” And what was left when I stripped things away was photography. And again, the relationships that I had, the opportunities that showed up, I did still continue to say yes where I could. I had some new limitations. But I’ll be completely transparent, I often pushed past them in ways that I think is just like, that’s just sometimes what we do. And also bummer that that’s sometimes what we have to do. And I happened to have people who have platforms and they loved the photos and they would then share the photos and that’s how my business grew. And for years and years it was completely 100% referral only. And what happened for me, there’s an aside that happened for me too. In the beginning, the photos were oftentimes like I was calling them like embodiment photos or other versions of that. It was a lot of people exploring their bodies or you know they might look also like what a boudoir type session might be. I didn’t really love that language. And it wasn’t always that style for me. But then we started, like, “Well, let’s create photos for your business.” That type of thing. And what I fell in love with was photographing, particularly women, which is who I mostly photograph, in context of their work felt really richly subversive and kind of revolutionary, right? Because historically, women have been photographed either to sell somebody else’s product or only in relationship to their spouse or their children. And not that there’s anything wrong with that. And also, this was something else, there is no prerequisite for pretty. There is no like having to sell a thing. It’s just you being you out loud and doing what you can to visually convey and transmit the experience of working with you. And all of that I feel like says so much to ourselves about, you know, “I exist. I matter. I have a thing to contribute.” And also to the world that says “We exist, we matter. We have things to contribute.”

Dusti:  

That’s such an interesting point. And I’m sure you and I have talked about this at some point but it just hits so hard every time because when do you get professional photos done? At your wedding or with your kids, right? It’s always about women in the context of who they are to somebody else.

Danielle:  

Exactly. Yes. Or you know, women being used as a prop to sell somebody else’s something. Now there’s plenty of women who do that very powerfully. This is no shade on anyone. It just, for me, it made it…I need meaning. Even when I was doing things because I needed to do them, I always oriented towards meaning and if meaning isn’t there, then I tend to lose interest very quickly. And so what happened with photography is it just naturally filled all the spaces and I loved it so much. And I also love working with people in that other context of you know, in consulting, in coaching, in supporting and I didn’t have space or time. It got to the point where I was on the road 100 days a year. And I just was like so my pie looks like 90 to 95% photography, 5 to 10% coaching and consulting. I didn’t talk about it, it just kind of trickled in. And I really wasn’t talking about either, right. I was just letting whatever came in be the thing. And then when 2020 happened was when I was able to take a breath and say okay, and that’s when I created Visibility Medicine, and really was able to say “Okay, now I’m going to I need the pie to go the other way.” And now I work with about 10 photo clients a year and the rest falls into coaching, teaching, consulting. That’s my origin story.

Dusti:  

God I love that. And this is just like a heads up for everybody to go get on her waitlist if you want even a shot at one of those photography sessions because, first of all, you’d be lucky to get it and second of all, again, it’s never just the photos. It’s never just the photos.

Danielle:  

So fun.

Dusti:  

So, god, there’s so many good pieces there. I also want to explore a little bit. Tell me a little bit more about Visibility Medicine and exactly what you were trying to create with that container.

Danielle:  

Yeah, I mean, so it’s evolved, and it’s actually going through a bit of a remix at the moment, which I’m very excited about. When I first sat down and I had been taking these notes along the way, and a lot of it was already happening and existing both in the photo sessions and then also in my in the coaching consulting side, and it was more like, “How do I bring what happens here, this experience that people have when they see themselves, when they bring their work forward in a way that feels aligned, in a way that feels powerful, in a way that helps create the impact on their own lives and also the communities that they care about, how do I do that?” Photos are a really beautiful way to kind of unexpectedly create or on purpose, right, you can absolutely use photography as a transformational experience or as a healing experience or, you know, and also, what I was seeing so much of was people were coming for business photos and then having this transformational experience happen. And so I just really started teasing out like, “How do we make that explicit? How do we make that something we can do on purpose?” And what is it in service to? And I just would play with those pieces again and again, until I found like, “Okay, I kind of see what some of the foundational elements are, what are some of the other ways that this can be useful,” and that’s really what it was born from was a lot of looking for where it already existed. And I think that that’s often true when we’re trying to name a framework or methodology, or create a teaching based off of something that we know that we’re doing, or we see our clients experiencing. It’s a lot of looking for the pieces that are already there and then pulling them out and deciding how to be with them and kind of refine the flow and sequencing and how can I be most effective about this?

Dusti:  

So many good pieces there. It’s such important work. So I’m so curious now, with the way that your business has just, I wouldn’t say like totally organically grown this way, but really a lot of it was organic because you’re the type of person who is always looking for those patterns and following that thread and, you know, in tandem with what’s interesting too. So if you had the opportunity to go back and talk to baby Danielle, what would you tell her? What advice would you give her?

Danielle:  

Oh, I love this and let me orient you, this would be really fun for me. You can say no to it. But I’m 50, so this whole thing started somewhere around 12 years ago. Can you pick a place on the map? Because there’s been so many different versions and unless you literally mean five year old me, which I’m down to answer as well, but pick a bigger place on the 50 year old map and I’ll tell you what I would say to her. I’m so excited to hear what I’ll come up with.

Dusti:  

How about when you were 30?

Danielle:  

Oh, oh 30 year old me. Good god. I love her so much. So 30 year old me, now I just had a flash of me on my 30th birthday. Dancing at my favorite dive bar. Let me rephrase that, dancing on my favorite dive bar. Damn right with my friends. And I had a baby. Okay, what would I say to her? First of all, I would just tell her she was fucking amazing. So 30 year old me was working full time in a corporate environment but had negotiated remote work, brought my kids to work with me and made them little nests when they were sick, negotiated that I would be paid commission because I knew that my work was making my boss a ton of money. And I didn’t know how amazing I was at doing those things. I just did those things, like I just advocated for myself. But I didn’t do it from a place of the same kind of sense of self. It came more from like, this just needs to be, this just needs to happen. But I would. I would just be constantly whispering in her ear how much more amazing she is than she thinks she is. And I would just continuously encourage her to reach for what she wanted and to keep her standards high. And I would also help her soothe anxiety in better ways than she was using at the time. Although I totally get why she was doing what she was doing. And let’s see what else might I say to her? I’m giving you a lengthy answer. Are you surprised? Like, I think that might be the main pieces. Yeah, and I would keep reminding her she had time, but also to do the things that she really wants to do.

Dusti:  

God I feel like there are so many younger iterations of ourselves who deserve to hear all of those things just on repeat constantly. Okay, so I’m going to take us back to business here for a minute. So yeah, given everything that you’ve experienced in the multiple iterations of your businesses at this point, if you were starting over from scratch how would you get your first 10 clients?

Danielle:  

Okay, if I were right now starting a business from scratch and my business were 90% coaching and consulting and 10% photography, correct? And I had no list or no anything?

Dusti:  

Let’s say no list, but you’ve got your contacts at least.

Danielle:  

I mean, I would do the same thing but with a little bit more nuance because I would know what I was doing. Meaning I would know the work I was offering. So I would sit down and I would be like, “What is the work I do?” Right? And I would name that. “Who’s it for?”  No, actually, I might not do that. I might just be like, “What is the work I do?” And then I would list all my contacts and I would highlight everyone I knew it was for and then I would reach out to them.

Dusti:  

I love that, so really starting with the work then leading into how it’s going to serve everyone. That’s fantastic.

Danielle:  

Yeah, I mean, if you would ask me a different question. Like I don’t know what my work is yet, but I need to get started but I know I want to have a business, I might approach it differently. But if it’s me with all the skills, resources and body of work that I have, but I just don’t have those other things. That’s exactly what I would do.

Dusti:  

You know, and that’s such a great point. I do feel like there are folks who think about starting a business and all of that and it’s so easy to discount the body of work we’ve already built. Especially if you’ve been in more traditional roles and things like that. I find that folks are just chronically undervaluing all of those experiences and particularly if they do something that has a lot of soft skills, it just seems like it’s a little harder for them to figure out where to land and where to start with those things. 

Danielle:  

Yeah, I agree. I also find a lot of people who don’t recognize the way the different things that they’ve done, learned, or experienced actually work together. And so they think that, you know, this kind of goes back to what I was saying before about the braid, they think that one discredits them or makes it seem they’re all over the place or whatever. Instead of recognizing like, “Oh, that actually weaves right in here. That makes me even more valuable in this way.” And I’m not talking about making it up. I am talking about actually being able to track that. I mean, I can see where the business math and accounting, and project management and sales support and all of those things are embedded in my work and my business and inform those things. And the more that I see them, the more I’m able to actually, rather than kind of like trying to hide them or feel some kind of sideways about it, I can pull them forward and highlight it. Like “Oh, yeah, I have some skill here and this can help people.” And same with the soft skill side, or mothering. So many of us carry some kind of something around how either the time we didn’t pursue vocational experiences because of our mothering, or that just somehow mothering makes us less powerful. And yet you tell me anything that isn’t more about leadership, about you know, all these things that we’re facing and being with all the time, mothering is such an incredible training ground for.

Dusti:  

Yeah, but God forbid you have a gap on your resume.

Danielle:  

But God forbid you have a gap on your resume. And then we carry that, you know, that sucks. And that’s awful. And when we’re an entrepreneur, we don’t have to carry that over. But we do sometimes, right? We’re enculturated into that. And it lives inside of us. We can have that feeling of like, I’m less relevant. There’s so many things – same with age. Age, right? It’s not common for women to feel more relevant as they get older. While it’s so obviously true.

Dusti:  

Right? I mean, all of my clients are 50+, like, across the board. All the way from 50 to 79. And every single one of them is so powerful, like so very much, there’s no backing down. There’s no, if anything, like the children situation is so much more settled just with age. I mean, my baby’s about to turn a year old now. And I have a gap pretty similar to your kids. And it’s so different the second time around, but it’s so interesting seeing the women around me who their kids are hitting that age where they’re becoming young adults, they’re moving out there, you know, they’re starting to become their own people and seeing how that morphs and transitions, like having that energy, go towards other things and not mothering. It’s like all of that training over all that time has just helped facilitate this level of excellence, that I just think is so unique to that particular demographic and I love getting to be around it. It’s my favorite thing.

Danielle:  

Yeah, actually, it’s funny you say that because as you were talking, while I was listening to you I also had the thought that the other thing I would tell my 30 year old self is please continue to surround yourself with women that are significantly older than you and listen and participate and be a friend to them. And I do that now like I just turned 50 in June. I have multiple friends and women in my life who are 65, 75 or older. That’s really important to me. And they’re amazing. They’re amazing. You know, not only because of their age, right, there’s no monolith in basically anything. And also, that’s a big one.

Dusti:  

Yeah, I mean experience. There’s just no substitute for it.

Danielle:  

Yeah, there’s no substitute and there is a real transition that we go through in midlife and menopause. Like there’s no doubt that and those are not necessarily always happening at the same time because there’s lots of things that can create premature early menopause. But you know, there is a thing that happens and it’s almost another whole lifetime that we have.

Dusti:  

I know even, I’m so grateful to know so many women who are on that journey now and who are talking about it because it makes it so much less terrifying. Knowing it’s coming and watching. You know, I have quite a few friends who are in their early 40s, and watching them really start to step into this new level of not giving a fuck, but also giving all the fucks. 

Danielle:  

That’s what I always say. For a while there it was like, “I give none of the fucks” or whatever. I don’t remember what the thing was. But I was like, “I don’t think that’s exactly what we’re going for.” We don’t actually need to care less and also, we need to care less. And I think that orientation around what we care about versus what we don’t care about becomes even more clear, and even more potent, oftentimes as we go through that midlife transition.

Dusti:  

We got we got a little bit sidetracked but I just, I get so excited about this particular topic because I feel like it really does tie into our work so much, not just because of the health stuff that’s going on but like that level of caring and the way that that shows up in our work. And yes, it just, I feel like that transition is unavoidable at some point.

Danielle:  

I hope. I mean, if you are blessed enough to get to live the long life it is. And I do think that we’re going to see major changes. I mean, this is why I got so excited and ended up creating a workshop around it because I do feel like the perimenopause and menopause journey and/or midlife journey, but there is also this biochemical thing that’s happening in addition to, I’m saying in addition to almost as though they’re separate, and they’re not necessarily. I don’t have, I’m not a scientist. I don’t need to have those answers. And there is something significant that happens for us in this phase and stage and historically, and I mean recent history, it has been very, very, very, very, not talked about. Not talked about, not learned about, all the things and we’re having, it’s going to change for all kinds of reasons, but one of them is in 1990 there was 467 menopausal women in the world. By 2030, there will be 1.2 billion. That’s a massive change in those numbers like that’s massive, right. And when we look at you know, if we know the average age of menopause is 51 then we know that that’s a lot of women in what I like to call the power years. And I really think that they are. And we look around the world right now and we can see that most of the higher power – I’m saying power in terms of who has authority in the world, not personal authority, but like who can press the buttons, make the decisions that we’re all affected by – it’s mostly men. And it’s mostly men ages 40 to 70ish, right in that range. What if we now have 1.2 billion women like us, coming into that age range? I really think that we are positioned to see a massive shift in terms of who’s in charge, and what that looks like. And that really, for me, makes it very, very exciting and inspiring, and motivating to have us all feel, not just powerful. We don’t need a bunch of us to just become powerful in the way other people have been powerful, but really intact in our wholeness and able to bring our full self. That’s the world I want to be in.

Dusti:  

That’s life giving. Like lifegiving speaking right there. Okay, so final question, Danielle. What makes a business referral worthy to you?

Danielle:  

The first word that comes to mind is trust. And that can be looked at all kinds of ways. So I trust this person to be real, be good, be kind, be able to deliver what they say they can deliver within a reasonable and human capacity, because I’m very interested in us all having human and humane businesses and the people I’m working with and I think who we’re talking about are like service based humans, right? And so sometimes things happen, and we might have to re-calibrate what the expectations are. And I have a lot of ease with that. And I want that and also, to be able to do the thing you said you were gonna do. That makes it referral worthy to me.

Dusti:  

Danielle, thank you so much for coming on today and hanging out with me. Where can everybody find you if they want to learn more? 

Danielle:  

Ooh, probably my newsletter. Which you can sign up for at Danielle-Cohen.com. You can also go to visibilitymedicine.com. Those sites kind of talk to each other. So if you find one, you can pretty easily find the other and once in a while I show up on Instagram @DanielleCohenPhotography and if you really want to you’re welcome to email me. And that’s Danielle at Danielle-Cohen.com.

Dusti:  

I’m not brave enough to give out my email address on a podcast. Oh my god, I love it. All right, everybody. Thank you so much for listening. And we’ll see you next time.