We were lucky to catch up with Siouxsie McCoy recently and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Siouxsie, thanks for sharing your insights with our community today. Part of your success, no doubt, is due to your work ethic and so we’d love if you could open up about where you got your work ethic from?
My (good ’n honest) work ethic surely wasn’t learned from my parents – it was learned Because of them.
No hate or hard feelings towards my parents, I am forever grateful for their love, care and support for me. I didn’t get to know my father until early adulthood, so even though I came to know him as an incredibly hardworking man, he had no bearing on my early development. My single mother did not work outside the home nor much inside it, she rather relied on the government and men to provide for us. She had great style and good tastes, a little creativity and certainly the eye of a photographer, but I hardly remember a full cooked meal or ours being a tidy organized house in any of the seemingly hundreds of locations we moved to.
I began noticing the absence of a hard working, productive adult in my family life more and more as I grew and spent more time at friend’s houses, watching how their parents ran their homes. There were also teachers at school and those at church. I saw cleanliness and order, productivity and accomplishments. I observed, wondered, admired them greatly, and somewhere early along the line I decided what I wanted – what I HAD – to do.
I would work to make my life better.
It became a dream, an insatiable drive…I wanted different for my life and I needed to take action, I would need to work hard to make it happen. I did not want to rely on men or be limited to what anyone else gave me. I had to do the work myself, for myself. As a kid I couldn’t actually do much about it, just do the best I could in school and wait for the day I was old enough to hop on that workforce ladder and begin (hopefully) climbing out of poverty.
I didn’t exactly become the bright shining example winning “Employee With Best Work Ethic of the Year” award anywhere, but my desire for growth and improvement usually had employers happy with my performance. I feel my first real attempt at working to make my life better was starting college. The first semester began with grand hopes and lots of hard studying for eloquently written English papers. But career ambitions quickly faded when I became pregnant, I dropped out and began planning my wedding at age 20. I entered motherhood reluctantly and unprepared, struggling through years of parenting and homemaking (learning the slow old fashioned way through books) trying to figure things out, never going back to finish college nor a trade school to learn any top earning skills. But I kept at it and made it the best I could by doing all the things my mother failed to do. I dug into the books and homeschooled my son, got down in the mud milking cows and goats, churned butter, raised chickens, kneaded dough, made scores of Fannie Farmer’s Boston Cooking School recipes from memory, sewed clothes, pillows and curtains, grew some herbs, scrubbed toilets, painted walls, and got pretty good at some DIY car repairs and home renovations.
Strong work ethics of stay at home mothers go largely unseen and unappreciated.
Along the way I picked up learning photography more seriously as a Nikon SLR film camera found its way into my hands around 1995-96. I focused my best efforts to learning the camera along with the mechanics and art of photography. There remains a full closet of boxes right now in my house, loaded with prints and discs of those homestead/church serving years. During those times I remember thinking, dreaming – I don’t know how long this will take, but I’m gonna try and become a real professional photographer someday! My motto was “TRY TRY TRY”. Becoming “the” photographer in a small church was a great outlet for this drive within me, and I worked countless hours of free or very low pay shoots for fellow churchgoers and the events in their lives: weddings, births, funerals, baptisms, birthdays, family portraits, whatever.
That era passed. We became sudden empty nesters when my son up and left home at age 17, the church dramatically split dividing families and friends across states, my husband and I divorced after 24 years. I sort of divorced photography as well, no longer feeling a creative drive or passion, much less trying to make any sort of income off it at that point – but soon after that lowest lonely point in life, the drive to move forward and work on making my life better returned, burning stronger than ever before.
My focus wasn’t clear, but I took some small wobbly steps. I spent a couple of years maneuvering through three jobs, learning, excelling, getting promoted, making moves to different fields and as I scraped through the last one on commission-only pay, I got the revelation.
It was time. I must jump all in, start my business and never look back.
Self, I said, I’ve worked my whole life for this very moment. Don’t just dream and try…
GO. DO. ACHIEVE!
The lack of role models, the poverty, the menial jobs, the failures, the imposed limitations, the heartbreaks and scars, the hard learned lessons, the ever rumbling drive to better myself and my world…those things are the why’s and where this girl’s work ethic comes from. If you have a good work ethic, I have a pretty good feeling it’s about where yours comes from too.
Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?
I am the owner and head photographer at Siouxshi Studios. My goal is to help get you seen and get you heard – Better!
I was recently moved by a quote that went something like this…”You are in the strongest position to help those who are where you once were” And though I’m still growing and evolving, that is certainly true for me, I love to serve other small business owners and artists starting out. Professional photography lends to greater success by providing them with vibrant, inviting visuals for their businesses and projects.
I’m thrilled to soon be offering new photo+video packages this year!
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
1. Strong Work Ethic – stop waiting on someone to do the hard work for you. 2. Empathy and Care – relatability is key, understanding people’s fear and having compassion.
3. Adaptability – be a lifelong learner and be flexible enough to pivot.
What do you do when you feel overwhelmed? Any advice or strategies?
There are many times you feel overwhelmed running a small business, but I think a *creative* business owner especially will. Setting up and maintaining the cold mechanics of the whole operation, systems, marketing and finances can really clog the arteries where hot creative juices should be flowing. Keeping things in check consistently can be a difficult but necessary chore.
We need help sometimes! Outsourcing is the answer. Find the jobs or processes you are comfortable sending out and free up a little more time for things that really feed your soul!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.siouxshi.net/about
- Instagram: siouxshistudios
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/siouxshistudios
