Lessons

Lesson Info

General Q&A

I was gonna go with so much blockage around people saying I'm offering free sessions nobody's contacting us what do we do there's a lot of this I'm new I'm trying to start out and you talked about there's really you just go out there they're everywhere it's just there's that blockage like maybe we can just go into that a little bit okay what do you think? So I'm offering a free session because we never say free even if you say complimentary or you put a dollar value on it I'm offering a free session the first place they're gonna go is your website so that's the first place I'm going to go okay because this is up here is the top three things that people are going to look it they're going to look at your name brand you for leo and your website so even if you're a newbie photographer and you have a pretty average website you're gonna have to be pretty below average to not have anybody want to come and have a photo shoot with you because these hundreds of people that would do a free photo ...

shoot so I don't understand you know I find that really hard to understand when people do say that, but at the same time I kind of think to myself maybe the blockage is in you maybe it's the way you're offering it maybe it's the way you're saying it maybe the problem is that you don't believe it or maybe you know I get it I'm learning but maybe the biggest problem is that you actually think you're offering a free session but the truth is your energy is saying I hope they buy something and so these differently insincerity bia because when I wanted to a folio build I know I'm not getting paid when I was doing folio building I wasn't getting paid but a lot of you are trying to give away free and then expecting money and you khun since their energy what is it? What do you think the energy is you khun since it right you're nodding when somebody sees look I'm you can do that for free but the truth is is you know you you're going to try and get something out of it there's a really big difference between that and educating your client and to have a complimentary about you with may it gives you a compliment tree shoot in a hundred dollars towards portrait if you buy anything it's entirely up to you that tells me this goes towards your photography come in and do it and then the first thing I'm going to do is look at the top three things in your business and if there's nothing on those top three things that make me want to come into your business, then the problem is with you it's that simple the problem is always with you I love you soup rice all right go ahead. Kanna well so so like you said earlier people do also get stuck on the's specifics yes and again breaking it down into but tell me how tell me how so we've talked a lot about today that twelve months plan yes and people want to know what do you mean specifically how much my charging these people per month um I just splitting it up what am I getting giving them what are they getting how do I go about they love the idea how do I do it? All right, so for may a photo shoot you could get twenty five images in a big folio box for three thousand dollars twenty five images in a big polio box for three thousand dollars is a lot of money and you would come into a glamour shoot get you hear makeup done spend the day with me have a beautiful photo shoot and the document that in a folio box and you're not talking about babies know this's more confused this is may yeah okay yeah I don't shoot babies I'm here for the girls the business and the market angry kelly's the baby experience okay, so that's what I charge so imagine if you charged three thousand dollars for a baby folio now kelly's average sale is an album for fourteen hundred dollars you're an album my packages started fourteen hundred and that's a campus package my album is my top selling but okay so what's your top telling ok so sorry so her album is two thousand dollars minus three thousand alright twenty how many images it's pretty much the images from decision so twenty to twenty five depending on how many family members they have all right so I have a high price one thousand dollars yeah okay, so the difference is if kelly does a newborn shoot and then she doesn't market to the baby for the rest of the year they don't come back it's a returning client she doesn't remind them even though you've got reminded templates she doesn't entice them to come back they're gone okay, so if she makes no effort to do that and this they loved here and they make their active decision to come back because we're always going to do it. But then we're not always going to spend another two thousand dollars on something we know we should do right you know? So what would happen if you created a package that went for twelve months? That was, say with three and a half thousand dollars and you agreed to meet either every two months every three months or every mounts for twenty minutes and create one incredible photographed portrait that goes into twelve months siri's off the first twelve months of baby's life that was my idea how would that work for you? How many people could you photograph in a month and how could you create a group out of them and then service that group and make that group viable? That was my idea how you price that and what you give in the product you create and is entirely up to you how would you do it like doesn't even interest you to do it it's well at the moment I'm not capable of taking on any more work but this is a case here regarding a year ago probably not so much but I'm looking into the future at the moment off doing something bigger and better and bringing these clients back into my studio every two every three months as many times as I can and offering them and building this history I have this life into a form of an album and having that system where they can pay it off so you know their newborn session is like the big section sessions are your maternity session is not a massive session because we talked about that before it's not a huge selling one but you have to nail it to get it right to get them to keep coming back so that's the starting point so then your newborn session that's a big session they want a lot of images because this is such a monumental occasion for them having this baby but then they want to continue to document so we would have those in the form of mini sessions like thirty to forty five minutes, depending on the age and how much time you would have to spend with them. And then I would just continually build this product for them so that they've got something that they can share. Okay? Lina asked one question. Well, most of you and you born photographers, correct. How many of your clients are actively calling you back monthly for shoots after your newborn session, would you? What would your percentage bay I can't handle every month because sometimes it feels like they've just bean in when they back again. So I did try, um, come in four times during the first year, I found that too much. Now I have the newborn and four times they would be too much. But you could take for different clients because they don't want to. They would rather hold out the end of the year with the book. Uh, so said the print sales went down. I found for me and said, now I've changed all my pricing and everything but what if they were doing you through the year? A lot of them do do that but they still want some things because they don't want to wait a whole year but they said the digital copy so I can still get digital copies is they're paying you throughout the year? No, I don't sell any digital file but why not? Because I haven't wanted to but if you're not selling the digital files you're selling the book in the album and the product I have dallas just to satiate them to get through the year of what they're paying off they get the files at the end of the year when they've all got the whole book with the design than that then they were getting fired for this the images through in their end of the year so you honestly would perfect I really want to have an honest conversation because the biggest problem is is we stand up on the show and we talked to all the people out there and they're being honest in the check room because nobody can see them and they're usually under a different name but we're all sitting here going no, not for me my clients just run on the door not a problem at my studio fully booked you know and it's not true you just sit in that sentence that you would rather have four new clients they photographed the same client four times a year because no in sales went down needed okay, well that's not what I mean I mean I like having I like how I have it now they come newborn or if they've had a hard birth they come within the first month, six weeks then they come again in six months and then they come in a year because every stage is so different in the images you got from four to six in fact seven months sometimes you can get all of those I can at the six month session and then all those things going on from eight months to one year I can get all that at the year session so I find I have more images but what we try come from a long way yeah so we're trying to do is set up a system that gets them to come back so whether you want to see them daily weekly monthly once a year, what are you actually going to put in place in your studio as a system that they come back every single time because you will telling me you don't contact them they do it they contact you, you contact them, pick up a mark fine talk to me about it tell the people out there that don't believe that you're getting the same client throughout the year and that they magically calling you to do it I actually might be a little aggressive on that side of things I really pushed the idea of the one year cake smash andi I always send out an e mail with like a like a kid with bunny ears and christmas and saying like, oh, this is your baby's first christmas oh, this is your first easter so and now that I'm thinking about it I always go for the it's their first birthday it's their first year and I'm not even talking about like your baby just learned to crawl let's photograph that I'm only making it seem like the first year is the milestone, so I think that's that's my problem whereas if I'm inviting them back for all those milestones and maybe they'd come back yeah said that's where you can use your baby book your scrapbook, your group you don't have to see them every month like the logistics of this is not for you to go that's not gonna wait for may it's not to change it like if you want to do one year do one year but the baby she shot last year you're going to see again this year hopefully if you service them right, you will see those clients again, but you must make it suit you so when you say how you tell me how, how many people do you want to shoot how much money do you want? What do you going to give to get that money? Because that's what they're gonna pay you for and can you actively look after this group both marketing to them caring for them, creating a group for them and want to see them more than once a year and if you can't then it's not gonna work for you but if you can see it the most important part of this is creating a group of people that is basically years with a work or five years with work and making it work on a regular basis by creating ongoing communication with them. I have worked in a portrait studio for twenty four years and the only people that were ever ringing my studio we're winning clients every now and then somebody would ring and say I've had a baby and I want a photograph taken but that was about three percent of the time I learned one simple truth in portraiture wedding photographers wedding brides call you you call portrait clients it's simple anybody who tells me work is walking in the door is lying okay it's not the way it is. So what can you do to make that group yours that all letters so any other logistics loose knock it out right now because I want to hear what people are saying but just think about how it can work I think so I think that that that is a really important point that you just said and I think we just we have one more question for you is not gonna be logistics not good for it okay, so this is bringing a lot up for me personally and I imagine that it is for a lot of people out there to about three years ago I did a photo shoot with seven day old newborns they were twins and I could not get them to dio what I thought I was supposed to be perfect at couldn't get them to both be asleep at the same time and I walked away from that shoot devastated absolutely devastated have you guys ever felt that she called me crying? I called you crying and I said I'm done I'm done I'm done with this business this is not for me I don't know what I'm doing and it was horrible and it again like these yes, you felt that way have you felt that way online? What do you have to say to me to these ladies in here and everybody else around the world who needs to pick himself up off the floor? Can I keep going to keep going in those moments because you have you've laid out the tactics but we say over and over as you say over and over, what do I have to do so I mean, I've been I picked up my camera ten years ago, and I decided that this is what I was gonna this is what I wanted to do. I had young children, it was either go backto work to make an income to help support my family will make my business work for mei but it was really hard, and you know what? I was afraid ofthe hard work, I was afraid of actually having to do all of this and filing office, so I had so much fear inside of me, of actually putting myself out there, putting all this work and effort into something that I wasn't sure was gonna be successful, but I had to remind myself that no business can be started and can be successful without hard work, so it doesn't just create itself. You have to put yourself into it, you have to figure out where your areas that you're failing are and work at them. It is hard work. I work every day at my business to make it successful every single point that's who's got up there on that board, I work out every day, so those moments that I felt like I was failing that I wasn't good enough the sessions that I still have today, after all these years that I walk away from thinking, oh, my god it was like really hard they're not happy but you know you just have to pick yourself up because if you really want it you actually have to work for it you can't give up I kind of think that at the end of the day I think a lot of people are on the wrong path you think you're on the right path but you're not keenan was drawn to photography and then her natural instinct was to be drawn to a genre of photography oall photograph kids I have nieces and nephews I don't want to do weddings how wonderful then all of a sudden she's on a trek which he's photographing children and the point is she's struggling at it and she might have had some joy doing it but clearly she wasn't a it's eggs elling at it because that's not what she's doing now and I feel like some people are led on a path that they're very attracted to and they don't quite know why now that path might be teaching presenting photographing it could be a million different things and your you have one component of it but maybe not all of the components of it so you go and throw yourself into I'm in business and it's not working so what you need to stand back and look at us what is not working like if I have a bomb shoot there is an and I have had some shirts twenty four years, lots of bum shoots, shoots that have made me cry shoot sort of changed me shoots that have helped me grow, but I've never wanted to quit. I won't quit it doing what I'm doing, and the fact that I'm still doing it means I'm meant to be doing it. So I have a couple of friends that were on the photographic journey and as they encountered different areas of the photographic journey, like I've got this one friend, she started shooting, she failed at it, she sucked at it, she couldn't make money, she struggled, and then one day she turned around and she started working for somebody else is his business manager, and this girl makes this guy twenty five grand a week is his business manager, and he pays her really well, she used to be a photographer. Now she runs a photographic business. She would have never seen yourself as a business mind, but it seemed to hear she couldn't do it for his self but she's really good at doing it for other people and now she's in her element, she's in the one thing that she does best. Now you're going to get bam shoots you're going to get bum sales the trick is to not look at it is a personal thing you can cry about it and drink a bottle a gin and you know but the end of the day you've got to pick yourself up and you've got to say I'm going to learn from this it's something you did wrong acknowledge what you did take responsibility for it and then get back into it and enjoy it but that the problem is is the constant blocking off yourself you have to ask yourself maybe it's mei what am I doing? Do I really want to do this? So I really really, really want to do this because maybe I'm just finding another excuse to change my path now I don't know why people get so upset about change because I tell you something you don't like what you're doing tomorrow stop I don't care if your parents don't hear you've grown up now and if you want you don't want to do it don't do it because you honestly must honor what you want to do don't do it because you think you have tio don't do it because your husband said but we've got and pay the mortgage because if you hate it you're going to find a way to fail at it to force change in your life people always create negative situations to force change it's how we do it, you know, we start hating on our spouse and arguing to pick fights with them so that they'll break up with us instead of just going in and saying this is not working and honoring that we create negative situations at work so that you can go home and say they're being made to mae and the horrible, and I'm crying and I'm to prison, I hide it, I'm sick, and then your husband can say, you leave, honey, I'll support you, and they're saying, ok, come on, every human being does it. We create negative situations constantly to force the change that we want, and when you think about it, you don't have to do that. You can walk a true path to yourself every single day, so I asked myself this dough, I enjoy doing this now, I hate it, so I'm gonna either stop doing, and I'm going to outsource it. I can't afford to outsource it. That's a lie, you can always afford to outsource something you hate doing or stop doing it. And when people start walking the true path, everything starts to work because I don't pitch from a place of excuses, fear or scarcity, I pitch from a place of pure enthusiasm, and that is where I live, and when I find myself not doing that and things to to shit, I stopped and I ask myself, is this what I want? Am I really doing it? And then you get the people that say, but what if I don't know? I want everybody nice, what they want. They just don't know how to get it right. Can I get an amen?