Lessons
Class Introduction
04:35 2Common Myths & Unknown Truths
08:08 3The Road Ahead
05:22 4Find Your Passion
03:18 5Part-time, Full-time, Employed, Partners?
03:41 6Stop Wasting Time & Money
04:02 7Your 12 Week Roadmap
04:23 8Mind Mapping
02:25Select a Focus
02:51 10S.W.O.T. Analysis
04:14 11Strategy & Long Term Goals
03:42 12Values, Vision & Mission
05:40 13Quick Break for Econ 101
08:14 14Your Target Market & Brand Message
07:12 15Your Client 'Why'
02:26 16Document the Client Experience
04:47 17Business Administration Basics
08:56 18Book Keeping Management
05:23 19Create the Logo & Branding
03:21 20Three Pricing Methods
10:18 21Package Pricing Psychology & Design
02:03 22The Listing & Classified Hustle
04:51 23Make Instagram Simple
05:57 24Your Automated Pinterest Plan
03:16 25Content Marketing & SEO
06:03 26Your Content Road Map
06:41 27How to Craft Your Content
05:37 28Internal Linking Basics
03:21 29What is Sales? Show Me!
05:02 30The Sales Process
03:23 31Always Positive, Always Affirming
02:03 32The Second Money & Dual Process
05:51Lesson Info
Quick Break for Econ 101
This is my friend Christina. She's actually a fantastic photographer. Very pretty too, which is why I'm using this ridiculous expression. Because we're gonna do a little bit of Econ 101. We're gonna get into a little bit of graphs and things that gonna make you go, that, but it's not really that bad, I promise. That being said, I could embarrass her. Check out her work, by the way. Christina Blanton Lubitsch, awesome film photographer, right up your alley sure. Does this look familiar? Okay, if you've had business courses, it should. If you haven't, don't worry, not a big deal. I'm going to show you guys what it is right now. And I'm going to tell you how it applies to photography because that's the big thing, is like why does this matter? This is a demand curve. Okay, we have price on the y axis we have quantity on the x. Where our supply line meets the price point, we have this little spot which we would call the equilibrium, okay? The equilibrium is where your price matches your sup...
ply. So as your supply increases, usually the price drops down. And as the supply decreases, usually the price goes up. And these two straight lines kind of describe a perfect market until something odd happens. Okay, so in a perfect market price is where supply meets demand. Until you say, well, in the early 2000s, everybody and their dog got cameras. And instantly, there was a whole bunch more photographers. That's what that looks like in terms of a market model. So the supply curve shifted over to the right. Because we're not adding more products, we're adding more companies doing it. So we shift the entire thing off to the right. And what happens to the demand and the price point. Where does it go? Has only one place to go, right? Yeah, it will go down. This is what we call inelasticity. Inelasticity has to do with your price points or the demand is not changing as much based on changes in your environment. That means for the commodity photographer, this shift killed you, because you're offering the same product that everybody else is, and your demand has shifted down. And you're now in the dumps trying to figure out how to make money from $200 shoots. Okay? But the luxury curve is a little bit different. In a luxury market, it doesn't change like that. And think about it this way. What are different luxury products that I'd want to have? Well, examples of inelastic products are like gasoline. Everybody needs it right? Which means that the price goes up, we all still need to buy it to a point. Things are not completely inelastic, meaning that if the price on gas went up to 10 bucks a gallon most of us would still be driving. 15 bucks a gallon, most of us would probably still be driving. 20-30 bucks a gallon, we're going to start considering other options of getting around. Okay, so looking over here, this is an analysis of the products that we wanna sell. And this puts different companies in different lights and I want to relate this to photography. Over here you have cost leadership. These are people like Walmart, Honda/Toyota and you can you can argue down to like well Kia is more costly either way, cost leadership. Yeah. There Honda/Toyota, that's cost leader because they're differentiated brand is Acura/Lexus. So we have Walmart, you have Honda/Toyota you have Costco, K- mart photo. I have a new studios here with a warning I'm gonna tell you about that in a second. So this means that your target is broad. And the way that you compete in that market is cost, meaning you're offering the exact same product that everybody else is. The only differentiating factor is somebody's cost. And if that's your only differentiating factor, how many times do you think you could be replaced by another studio who's just willing to do it for a couple bucks less? That's something that can well, based on my partner this is what he says. Competitive advantage predicated on price can be copied overnight. So we've tried to build all of our competitive advantages on things that people cannot copy overnight. And when you get enough of those, you create what's called a barrier to entry. Let's go back. A narrow target with a cost focus. This is like Michaels. They specifically just do crafts, but it's inexpensive. Bella weddings, does anybody remember that name? Okay. They're out of business now. They were a narrow target cost-focused wedding studio. They were nationwide. I think they might have even been a public. I don't think they were public, but they had investors. And they were targeting the Not Brides. That $1000 to $15000 to $2000 range. And they would source out all their photographers from all over the place to do this. They're out of business. That's why I have a red flag in this area. Because you're inherently offering a luxury product with the wrong business model. If Bella weddings is sending out people that aren't that great to be shooting something that in a consumer's mind is still relatively expensive, you can't sustain it. And you can't find quality people to go and shoot for 200 bucks, 300 bucks. So to get to that price point of $1,000 or $1500 to shoot your wedding, I would have to be paying the staff that did the shooting 250 bucks, the staff that did the editing 100 bucks 200 bucks, the rest is in margin and basically admin, marketing, all the other expenses to leave themselves with a 20% margin. It's not sustainable. And I said that when they were coming in I'm like, I don't know how they would do. That can't be sustainable. And sure enough within a couple of years, they're out. Dangerous spot. This is a grey spot to start. So I put new studios in here because that's not a bad place to be. Honestly, we'll actually it should be a narrow target new studios. So new studios are fine to be in these categories. You just need to get out of it quickly. And you have two options. On a differentiated side we have companies like so. On the Walmart side you have like say kind of more boutique places like you have Trader Joe's Well Trader Joe's a pretty inexpensive too but you have Whole Foods. That would be like the differentiated broad target. Okay. Nordstroms to a Kmart. Acura and Lexus to a Toyota, Mercedes Benz, BMW, to Toyota. Nike, large boutique studios, this is kind of becoming our focus where we're starting to branch into multiple arenas and say we can do all these things. Well, they're different companies. But this is a broad market differentiation. Currently, I'd say we've probably still positioned here, because most of our stuff is wedding still. This is where I want you all to aim, though. Narrow focus, differentiated products. Does that make sense? This is Porter's. Porter's applied to our business. So the people in your arena is a Neiman Marcus, a Saks Off Fifth, a Bentley, small boutique studios. And if that's the case, do you think you might learn a lot by walking into a Bentley dealership and just seeing what their experience is like? Yeah, the people that are going to be shopping for your product are in that category. If I can afford to spend this amount of money on photography as a luxury product, then I can afford to spend money in other areas. And that gives us a great opportunity to learn how these other businesses are crafting their experiences.
Class Materials
Bonus Materials with Purchase
Ratings and Reviews
Bree Day
Harald Weinkum
Student Work
Related Classes
Business