Lessons

Lesson Info

Live Lesson: The Covid Goldrush

(soft music) So everyone that's joined us so far, thank you so much for being here. I'm super excited to be talking to instructor Isaac Johnston this morning about the client gold rush in 2021. We'll just wait like another minute or two before we kick things off. In the bottom bar, if anyone saw, you look where we are, there's a chat section, so you're welcome to say hi, let us know where you're watching from. And then also there's a Q & A section. And so that's where if you click that Q & A button, I have it open now and we will see any of the questions that you post. And that will be a great place for you to ask, guys, any questions that you have, and we'll get to those today. Try to get to 'em. We'll try and get to them. Yeah, we'll do our best. (laughs) Yeah, thanks guys for showing up. I hope this is gonna be informative, helpful. I'll tell you everything that I know. Yeah, ask some big questions, maybe questions that you wouldn't have the boldness to ask normally,...

you should definitely rev up the boldness meter on this one and ask some crazy questions if you have them. That's what this webinar is hopefully designed for, 'cause my intent is that you guys get access to me in a way as if I was on a hike with you and you had some big questions, I'm not afraid to answer. Even financial questions or whatever. I feel like that's the big elephant in the room when it comes to freelancing, is how much money you can make. I'm gonna be touching on how to make that money but I also want you to understand and have expectations about how much money you can actually make, because it's hard to tell if you're approaching the right direction if you don't have an understanding of how much this could benefit you. Awesome, yeah. Isaac is an open book. So please ask some deep big questions and we'll get to them. Pretty cool, we got some people from France. Clarisse, hello. A couple people from Germany, Cape Town, South Africa. Steven, nice to meet you. This is amazing, awesome. And don't forget- I'm so sorry you're awake right now. Geez. It's very late over there. We got our first question that rolled in. Do you wanna just go into it? Yeah. Let me hit it. Joel. No. Sorry, that's not the first one. Joel, you're gonna have to wait. I don't know how to read in order. "Is it bad that I don't have a website or a personal portfolio when bidding on jobs? I do have social medias and a print shop." It's not bad. It's just not... It's not a full picture. You're missing out on an opportunity to show your client what your full range of capabilities is. Social media is great, but it's really not the deep dive that some clients wanna see. They wanna see some of the work in larger format and they wanna see it, a full photo set that lines out at in full screen if they want, and it's just a more professional place. You gotta think that the person who's hiring you is not the person who found you or who you're talking to. So most people are going to want to be able to have this professional-looking website to show to their boss. and then the boss goes, "Yeah, let's hire that guy." So I think you are missing an important piece. It is not the most important piece, but it is an important piece and you should definitely have a website. Gosh, they cost almost nothing now so you do wanna have that. I would type the answer, but I'm not a fast typer so that wouldn't work. Joel Hibanon, "What makes the ideal client for you?" Number one, they have to have money. They have to have money to pay me the rate that I feel I deserve. And if they don't have that, they're not the ideal client because you can't eat gear, you can't eat product, you can't send your kids to college on product. And you honestly don't... It's hard to further your career if you don't have money to grow into these personal projects that you've always wanted to try or to buy the gear that you feel like you need to up the quality of your product. So that's the number one thing, but really ideal client for me is a client that trusts and understands exactly what I do, which is part of why I have my website, and just wants me to go do my thing. They say, "Look, here's our product. We love what you do. We love this, this and this photo. We'd love to have you do something similar to that and come back with your product." And then for instance, I shoot for this denim company called Revtown Denim all the time. They just keep coming back and back and back. And what happens is if they like what I do, when I deliver what I do, they're happy and they wanna do more of that. So it gives me a boost of confidence and it furthers the relationship which creates product sales for them, and also creates a constant stream of income for me. So really, the match of the client is not necessarily that they be an outdoor company that's into adventure, but that they really appreciate the aesthetic and the vibe that I bring when I shoot photos. Okay, there's a lot of questions rolling in. Okay, I'll keep going. Joe, you can also read them too if you want. Yeah, I can read them to you if you want. Would you prefer that? Yeah, probably be a little more interactive. You'd get to do something. Certainly. You're so good at talking. I feel like I could almost sit here. It could just be you. (both laughing) Let's see. Yeah, pick some. Okay, this is from Max Nickels. "Have spec shoots played a big part in landing clients for you. If so, how?" So this is back to you wanna be with people with money and product, but have you done the spec work in the past? Absolutely. Yeah, of course. Okay. So, yes, you can't do work for a product, for a company, but you can do work for yourself. I think that's almost the most valuable work. So for instance, I'll give you a real life example. I am aiming to get a large auto job in the next year, this is like a real world Isaac example that's happening right now, but I don't have a lot of auto work. I've done a lot of production on auto work. I've helped a lot of other shooters shoot auto work, like second shoot, but I've never led a really big auto client. Like I don't have a lot of video or photos of that. So my intent right now, this is what I'm doing, somebody who does this professionally, is I am going down to my local Toyota dealership, where I happen to know the general manager, I'm going to grab a couple of different cars and go out and do a three, four-day shoot, just for myself, to build my portfolio, to show I can do video and photo of these products, these cars. And then I can put this film and photo on my portfolio and be like, "Look, this is what I can do for you." So that, to me, I will never go to Toyota and be like, "Hey, just let me use your car for a little bit and I'll give you all these deliverables." They don't get to use anything, nothing, but I get to use this for my portfolio. So yeah, spec work is a huge part of what I do. If I'm not doing two to three shoots a year of spec work so that I can go show clients what's possible, I'm not doing it right. So yeah, if you are wanting to work for Google, as to show their new app, you better have some tech on your portfolio. Or if you want to go ahead and do some sort of clothing company, you better get some models and some clothes and go out and shoot that stuff. Otherwise, they can't trust that you're gonna do the work. They might, if you're very persuasive, but they can't trust you're gonna do the work if they can't see that you've done the work. Yeah, it's very difficult. And you said this, but I just wanna reiterate, you said that you don't give that spec work to the client then. No. No, I don't. You build it, but then it's not like they get it because you did it. No, no. I don't tag them. I don't hope that they'll see it and hire me. I build it on my portfolio. And then oftentimes I don't even do the same brand. So like, if I shot Toyota, I'm still going to approach Nissan with that and be like, "Look at what I can do." I'm not interested in doing it for them to catch their attention. That's not what I'm doing. I'm not catching the brand's attention by tagging them in some sort of social post or whatever. I'm not expecting them to pay me for the film. They're not going to. They didn't come up with the idea. They're not gonna be like, "Let's pay 'em for that film." It would be a miracle if that happened. What I am expecting is to be able to use this as a foundational piece in the Isaac content creation business and be able to show people like, "This is what's the capabilities are. This kind of vibe, feel, quality, that's what you're gonna get if you hire me. And by the way, hiring me is going to be expensive, but worth it." Okay. We got a new question here from John Lloyd. "In your experience, what are clients looking for in a pitch that will really make them want to work with you or fund your project for them? What's the most important piece when you're pitching that client, a new client?" To be honest, the biggest piece, and this is kinda soft and squishy, it's not really like a hard piece, but they're looking for plausible deniability. And what I mean by that is they want to be able... So the client who's choosing you is going to be a junior person and they're running it up the chain, this is to an agency or at business, unless you're working for a very small company, they're running it up the chain to their boss and saying, "Look, I think we should choose this guy." And what they need is the ability to say everything that this guy had from his portfolio, his Instagram, his website, our conversation with him and his pitch, all of it together looked so good there was no reason why I shouldn't have chosen him. So, plausible deniability. So that way, if something does go wrong, they end up not being a great client, or you end up having a misstep or whatever, in their mind, they're protecting their downside of you coming back with totally unusable photos, and they're boss being like, "Why in the hell did you pick this person?" They need to be able to look at what you sent them, the pitch, your website, the conversation you had, and be like, "Look, this is why I picked him. He looked great, right? Don't fire me." That's the biggest piece, to be honest. They want to further their career. They don't care about you, they care about their career and moving up the chain. So they're looking for plausible deniability and that's why you have to build this professional-looking, you have to learn what are all the keyword and stuff. And it takes time, but that's kind of, like I said, squishy. Like, how do you build plausible deniability? In a pitch, what they really wanna know is is this person professional? Do they have a track record of making good quality content? Can I see that content? And how does that content directly sell stuff for my company? Mm-hm. Yeah. So big questions. Hard to try to do that on the first go, the goal here would be to make a lot of pitches and ask for feedback. If they say, "You know what? We decided not to go with this at this time, if you're bold, you ask the client, say, "Hey, it may not be because of me, but if it is, what are some of the pieces that are missing here that made you guys... And I'm not trying to sell you, but would you gimme some feedback for future pitches so that I can craft this in a way that I better understand what you guys need?" And you've done that before yourself. Absolutely. Remove your ego from the process. You and your photos are not the reason they're saying no. It's oftentimes timing. It's oftentimes just, there's some stuff in the back end, but you need to make sure that everything on your end is as good as possible, but it's not you as a person they're judging. it's just this pitch and how your brand fits into the timing. Yeah, ask as many questions as you can of the client, 'cause they're the people who ultimately decide. And if you can really understand what they need and what you did that didn't hit perfectly, then you're gonna have a leg up on everybody else. Next question from Amanda. She's asking what percentage of your clients is cold calling versus approaching some you have previously worked with. And to add onto that, in 2021, have you been contacting more new clients because people stalled to their budget last year and are back on right now. So percentage I'd say probably 80% is new. And the reason for that is that these people, when you're selling marketing and content and stories, people don't buy that based on when you are building the marketing, the content and the stories. They don't care that you just went to Alaska and shot some beautiful photos of a product or a bear or landscapes. They don't care. What they care about is that it fits into their marketing cycle, and most of these marketing cycles are one year long. So if they say yes, it's because it fits into the timing of where they're looking to put content and stories. If they're looking to increase the presence of their blog on their company's website, then they have timing for that. They're looking to do that in Q3. So I am trying to reach out to as many people as possible so that I end up hitting the sales cycles of all of these people, 'cause everybody's sales or marketing cycle is different. I want to be in that cycle and be touching on them in a way that I'm not necessarily asking for stuff, but just touching on them and saying, "Hey, I'm doing this. Any interest in that? Love what you guys do love to be a part of it." And I'm just touching, touching, touching to make sure that I have a hundred to 200 brands that I'm in contact with to make sure that they all know what I do. And that if it happens that their marketing schedule aligns with what I'm doing, then I'll get the job. Unless you are a massive content creator that has a massive audience, that is rare for them, there isn't a lot of pressure for them to choose you. So you're just gotta be there at the right time when they're about to go into this meeting and they need somebody to make content. So yeah, going back to the percentage, I'm always touching a bunch of new clients because I have all these ideas and I want to fill them with Motorcycle companies, mountain bike companies, camping companies, car companies, software companies, all of these things, I want to have them support these projects that I'm doing. But if I'm only just talking to the companies that I've worked with in the past, I'm limiting that and not necessarily getting into these conversations, these meetings that people have. But that said, I do talk to the companies that I've worked with in the past. I touch base with them, on average, about every three months and more for the companies that I work with more often. I'm just always touching base and just saying, "Hey guys, how's it going? How did that project go?" I'm using their names. I'm remembering their kids' birthdays. I'm building a relationship that comes into play later. And are you in your work week, whatever, are you setting a time aside or do you have like a quota of the amount of cold calls you're making or pitches you're making? Or how do you- Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't. If I get really busy on the production side of it, let's say I have three to five jobs and I just don't have time for it, then I'm only a one man show at this point. So that side falls off for sure. I'm not a superhero. But if I'm just doing my normal thing, I've got a couple of shoots in the mix and I'm wanting to keep the momentum going I try and reach out on Tuesdays. So Tuesdays, they're are the big deal for me. I think I said this, if you saw the most recent episode of my workshop, I don't like to be told no. I don't like to go out and ask people if I can work with them and have them not respond, tell me no or no to the timing, it is, no matter who you are, unless you've got this massive self confidence or ego, which people think I do but I actually don't, it does bring you down. So I'd rather just be down on Tuesday mornings. Not Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. Also don't reach out to people on Monday, they don't have time. Don't reach out to people on Friday, they don't care. And on the weekends nobody's gonna answer. So Tuesdays is the obvious strategy for me. Reach out to them Tuesday morning, you're more likely to get a response. And then I just batch it all right then. I just make a list of like 10 companies that I wanna reach out to and I just send them all emails. And I get in that head space. I start to feel a little bit creative with my responses. I don't have to start the gears and start the engine of reaching out every single time 'cause that's just exhausting. Yeah. Next question from Brian Meyer. "Curious how you structure pricing on photo shoots with clients. Do you do day rate plus licensing? Do you use perpetual licensing? Or do use something like Getty that to get estimates, the price calculator. What's what's your strategy for pricing?" This is a money question. Yeah. Okay. So I'm gonna fold in. I saw somebody in the chat ask a question, in the chat, it popped up, and they asked if I had an agent. So I don't use Getty. And in fact I was just talking to somebody a couple days ago. they were telling me that they use Social Bluebook. In my experience, Social Bluebook vastly undervalues whatever you have for social, like 10 X lower than it should be. So I don't use those. I don't know where they get their dynamics or whatever. But when I'm pricing something, oftentimes, the standard is day rate and then plus licensing for sure. Do I really know what that is? No. That's why I have an agent. I think all that stuff changes based on client, based on... And you can lower it a lot, but I've been anywhere from, for a small company, $800 a day on a shoot all the way up to $5,500 a day for a shoot, depending on the roles you're doing as well, $5,500 a day, I was a photographer, a director as well. So I was both on the shoot, directing a video commercial. But how I set my rates is once you do this enough, you understand when clients come back to you and go, "We don't have enough budget for that." And they're a big client and you know they have budget then you know you're reaching the upper limit. And then you come down from there. But generally I don't wanna be less... My personal thing is I don't wanna be less than $1,400 a day for the shoot then plus licensing then plus social sharing, so on and so forth. I don't wanna leave any money on the table. These people make hundreds of thousands of dollars from the social posts and from the photos that they post of mine. You'll see 'em on Facebook ads and all over the internet. And you better believe, if they're paying me, five to $10,000 for these shoots that they're making 50 to a hundred thousand dollars off these shoots, they're not dumb. So feeling like I'm doing them a favor by doing this whole shoot for $2,500. they don't need any favors. They make a lot of money, that's why they can pay me. Yeah. Thank you, Isaac. Here's a question from Josh. A little bit of today's age. "NFTs are all the rage right now. Is this an important space to be in as a photographer?" Would you say so? So people are in it. My friends are doing it. I'm not interested, mostly because I think that it's a bubble, from everything I've read. I think that it doesn't offer the same value as a harder asset. I'm not an expert on this space at all. I really don't like that it consumes so much energy for just a church key, is what it is. It's just this thing that you have that lives on a digital shelf and it consumes so much energy in a time where we all need to be reducing our energy. So if they can figure out a different way to do blockchain that makes that less energy, I'd probably be more interested in it. But at this time, any time that I spend thinking about or wanting to do NFTs is time in which I'm not furthering my craft to make better work. So I don't focus on things like that. I'm really at a part of my career where I am focusing on building my portfolio, doing better work and getting better clients. Kevin Rocher asks, "Most of the time, small brands do not have the budget or do not see the interest of a photographer. Would you contact medium and large companies even if you have not done work... Companies, even if we have not yet done a project for a brand before?" So you're starting out, you're talking how you wanna contact clients that have money. But let's say you're starting out building the portfolio, there is a bit of groundwork to be made, right when you're starting out. Would you agree? Oh, of course, yeah. Yeah. I mean, how are you gonna get these medium brands to trust you? I think we just talked about that. Go out, build three to six projects, three to six projects of your own in varying spaces. So again, do some tech, do some clothing, do some shoes, do some auto, just look around you in your immediate... Like, I can pull up this Spindrift right here. I can go do a shoot with Spindrift, right? Like I could just go buy a six pack of Spindrift and go do something like that. Go build that, put that on your website and then reach out to medium brands. But yeah, you don't start by doing free work for brands. You can. You'd be leaving money on the table, but just 'cause they don't have money doesn't mean you should work for free. And that said, I do work for free occasionally. Like I just did a huge shoot for my brother and his company, which is a horseshoeing company. He can't afford to pay me $10,000, but I wasn't gonna charge him 2,500, 'cause that's just like below... It's like if he came and shoed my horses, would it be easier for him to just do it for free or charge me a discount? Discount's not worth this time anyway. So he might as well just do it for free. That's the attitude I have. So I'll just do it for free. So if I like your company or what you're doing and you're my friend, I will just work for free and then do the best thing that I can and use that for portfolio work. But I just draw the line at doing discounted work, 'cause once you start doing discounted work, it's very hard to transition into full price work. That client is never going to hire you at $10, if you did a thousand dollars job for them. That's just not gonna happen. Thomas asks, "Would love to hear about how you've networked with other creators, directors, et cetera that have helped you get in the door for clients." I know you touched base in your workshop. Mm-hm. How to Become a Freelance Photographer, a lot on this, but if you wanted to touch on that question. Sure. So I think if you are interested in somebody's work, then start engaging with that work, telling them what an awesome job they've done. Really just like... So I think everybody appreciates when you engage with their work, right? Like by this, I mean, when I watch somebody's YouTube video and I'm not a YouTuber, I've done a couple YouTube videos, but I'm not a YouTuber, I just really enjoy a lot of these YouTuber's work and I will tell them in the comments and then oftentimes they have an email there and I'll shoot 'em an email and just say, "Hey, if you're ever up in Montana." And I'll try and give them some sort of value that they would enjoy if they were in this area. Nothing hard. I'm not trying to ask anything of them, but I'm trying to say like, "Hey, if you're up in Glacier, I really appreciate what you do. You seem like a cool dude. Let's link up." And for me that's always been pretty successful. Now, again, I live near Glacier, so people are always coming this way anyway, but I'm always just reaching out to people who I appreciate their work, one, because I love to be around creative people. I love to pick their brain and hear their thought process. That's a huge growth thing for me. And I know that the best creators love to be around other people that are excited about that as well. So it's got this nice synergy. But, two, I think that I would love to have people have access to the things that I have and I would love to have access to things that they have. So it floats everybody's boat. And not everybody gets this. I'd say 50% of the creators that I reach out to just don't even understand why they would be friends with some photographer from Montana, but some people do. And those people have become really good friends. It's very interesting to me that I can be really good friends with the largest sneaker reviewer on YouTube out of L.A. and at the same time, be friends with people who climb mountains in the Himalayas. It's all about just appreciating each other's work. That's where it starts. And then from there just be friendly and don't always ask for things. A lot of people really good at asking for things. I almost never ask for things. I just offer things. I'm like, "If you're up here, come stay with me, have a hot tub, I'll buy you coffee, show you Glacier park." All of the things that I can do better than anybody in this area. I'm always asking if people can connect with me if they come up here and I'll help them have a better time. So I'm trying to give them value. But I think that is probably, you touched on something, knowing and having conversations with other creators who are in similar or the same spaces as me, has been the largest boost to my career of anything. I mean, I just massively boosted my career. People like Alex Strohl and Forrest Mankins have become really close friends and I've been able to ask them all sorts of things as I was growing as a creator. Why do you do it this way? How do you do it this way? And same goes for people who do video. A friend of mine, Jesse Driftwood. I legit paid for his plane ticket to come fly out here because I liked him and I wanted him to have a good time. So I spent $700 to come out here just so we could hang out his friends, but at the same time, if I have anything video related that I have a question about, I will FaceTime him immediately and he will pick up. And so like it's friends, but it's also got this really wonderful synergy of me learning things from the people who are doing it at the highest level. Steven Reeder asks, "Who is your first point of contact when cold calling new brands? Do you try to contact the brand directly or to try to find someone in the marketing department? Et cetera." Yeah. So my easiest, easiest thing, and I just do it 'cause it's the easiest, is I DM people on Instagram, because oftentimes if it is a brand that is small enough, they'll be that Instagram in-house, and you'll be talking directly to the marketing person and that marketing person is gonna be the person that's going to be hiring you to be able to do storytelling, photos, video. If you're a larger company, the agency's gonna be running the social, and that, again, is the person who's going to be hiring you to be able to tell stories and make video and photos. So, it's an easy dive there. A lot of companies won't respond on Instagram, for some reason. I don't know why. It's 2021. It's really weird to me, but it's a nice touch point. Now again, I have followers on Instagram and I have a long list of portfolio there. I don't think that followers are so important as using it as your portfolio so when they click through and they see your photos, they're like, "Oh, this person's good." That's the easiest way to reach out. And what I do is I've made what they call a sales funnel. So I reach out on Instagram and say, "Hey, I love what you guys do. I've got a couple of upcoming ideas for projects, I'm headed to this location, I'd love to showcase your product while I'm in Hawaii or Norway or whatever. Who is the best person to talk to? That's always how I end it, 'cause it may not be the person who is the community manager of their Instagram. They'll give me an email. I email that person and say, "I hope I'm talking to the best person. If not, can you guide me to the right person? And do you have time this week for a call?" And then I get on a call. And if the call goes well, but not all the way well, I'll say, "Hey, I'm actually planning to come to Seattle or wherever your headquarters is." I may not be. "In the next week, can I swing by your office?" This is pre-COVID, back when people were in offices and liked meeting with you in person. And so I would have this sales funnel that became more and more personal and I got good on the phone and I got good in person. But on email and DMs, it's very easy to send, it's very hard to have nuance. So I would get closer and closer to the point where now I know these people. Like we've looked in each other's eyes, and if they tell me no it's because they really do mean no, but it usually means no for now and I'll be able to touch base with them again. And I'll know their kids' names and they'll know my kids' names, and we'll know each other's story and they're more likely to work with people they know. Again, goes back to trust. So that's what I lead that to. I don't expect them to sign me a $10,000 job based on one DM. That's not gonna happen. So that's where I built the sales funnel. But sometimes it takes a year for sometimes that whole revolution to come back around, the timing to be right, me having touched base with them three or four times. So yeah, first thing for me is DMs. But it's not always. Sometimes it'll be an email, but an email can just go to an info app. and some assistant is just deleting all things that don't have to do with paychecks coming into that company sort of deal. So I've had the most success creating that chain of getting closer and closer personally. I really like this question from Jason Ogden. "People always say niche down, but does that limit the opportunities you can get or does it make you the expert in a specific category that we put in more demand over someone who does a little bit of everything?? I mean... So yeah, I like niche down for sure. But if you're like me, my niche is outdoor adventure and I know that, but I'm not gonna just be the hiking guy 'cause I like hiking, but I also love riding motorcycles and I love riding bikes and I'm not gonna just be the photo guy, because I love making video and I love writing. So niche down to the things that you're interested in and the things that you can be an expert at. For me, I'm medium agnostic. By that, I mean that I don't care if I make a video or photos or write, what I care about is that I get to go do an adventure, tell the story about that and inspire other people to go have an adventure. That's all I care about. So that is my niche. So yes, niche down to the thing that is your niche. But like for instance, I'm not gonna be doing any sort of Microsoft surface laptop review of tech. That would be boring, weird, out of place. So yeah, niche down to the things that interest you, and if they don't blend together, then maybe drop the one that's way out there. Like if you're into golfing, but you're also into all the things that I listed, golfing maybe doesn't fit in the mix. You can just do that as a hobby, but at the same time, as you're nicheing down on your public facing, I'm... So I shoot a lot of architectural. Nobody ever sees it. For me, I just love to shoot flash architectural photos and they're multi-layered, sometimes 12 to 24 images, and I'm painting them on, and almost nobody ever sees it, and if they do see it, it's never attributed to me, but for me I think that is a nice way to learn how to play with external light, with flash, even with hot lights. And so I don't niche down on learning, I just niche down on what I publicly show to the outside world, so that they think I'm an expert in that space, but I'm not limiting my expertise of a little world. I'm also learning outside of that. A question here from Joel Hibanon "What have been the hardest sacrifices on your journey to live the lifestyle you have and work as a freelancer?" The hardest sacrifices, right? Yeah. I mean money was a huge one when I started out. (laughs) I mean, it was tough for... I've been doing this six years, and only in the last two and a half, has it really been above the level of where I left, as far as financially, but the lifestyle has been incredible. So I think financially, it can be a scary jump, and if you're not used to lowering the quality of your life to make sure that you're positioned for the future, that can be really discouraging. A lot of people are better at saving up money than me. So they save up money and then live off of that while they're building their client base. That's a big sacrifice. The other big sacrifice for me, was I love leading a team and that's what I did in the last business, the last two businesses I ran. I love that day to day interaction and the momentum it creates mentally. So that was a big sacrifice for me, was just going out on my own and then just being in my office, totally unmotivated. I'm very externally motivated. So totally unmotivated and just wishing that I could bounce ideas off of people, which again is why I so aggressively built the community. It can get lonely. So I think that the loneliness of being just a solo one-man operation, and then the financial wane that happened there for a bit. That was difficult. That was a real challenge. But like anything, when you set out to become an expert, there was a long period of time in which you are not an expert, in which you are learning and trying things and experimenting and doing the work that is required. So I think that was the biggest sacrifice. And maybe for you, there's some light at the end of the tunnel though. Now you feel a little bit more stable than at the start. Yeah, absolutely. I don't know that as a "Artist," there's always in the back of your head, "Is this as good as it gets? Am I past my peak?" All of that BS self talk, I try my best not to listen to that. And to overcome that, I think the thing that I use to make sure that even if I do fail tomorrow, I consider this a mini retirement. I know that I can go out and get a job and start a different career. I can start the process tomorrow. So I am just more... I angle my attention towards gratefulness that I've been able to live this really exciting, fun, integrated life, and I view it as if it ended tomorrow, I would be grateful and not bummed that it was over. I'm gonna think of it as like a mini retirement, in which I got to try and experiment something that was my passion and was really fun and I got to do it before I was 65. So I'm really grateful and I just angle it that way. And that's how I keep my head in a place of instead of being protective of losing something, I'm experimenting with expanding something, and if it pops then move on to the next thing. Here's a question from Matt Hilbreth. "How do you convince clients that you're worth the cost or that photography in general costs what it does? Many large businesses that I've talked to don't wanna spend more than a thousand dollars on a multi-day shoot?" Hmm. I don't convince them, to be honest. I have the same conversation with the same energy I'm having right now, and I just tell them, "I think we could do that for 5k." And they go, "Oh yeah, we can't really do that." And then I just bounce it back to them. I say, "Okay, well what is your budget?" And they go "A thousand dollars." And I go, "Yeah, to me it's just a math problem. We can lower the amount of deliverables. I can give you one photo for that. Does that work for you guys?" And they go, "Nope." And I go, "Okay, well, I'm sorry, we can't make it. If you guys, if your budget increases in the future, I'd love to work with you." And I move on. I'm not committed to that one company. I just move on. I don't get personally entangled in whether or not they value me 'cause that's not a value proposition on me, it's a value proposition on what they value. And not everybody's gonna value photography or have that kind of budget or value my specific photography. Maybe they wanna pay somebody else who's like an in studio shoot a lot more money. So I do know that there are companies out there that do value it. And I spend my time trying to find them instead of convincing companies that don't value it, that they should. Those people are just in the stone age, and hopefully they'll catch up. But if they don't, then the companies that are willing to spend on this are gonna be light years ahead of them as far as sales and growth. And like you said, free gear, it doesn't put food on the table. The profession of photography is worth something, it's worth a lot, actually. There's a lot of talent behind it and a lot of hard work to get in that space. So it shouldn't need convincing, it is. Yeah, absolutely. But again, I'm not offended when people think that it's not worth anything. I mean, everybody has a phone and they can take pretty good photos with it. What they really are paying me for is their ability to see that my vision and my talent is higher than theirs, and if they can't see that there's no amount of cajoling, that's gonna convince them. That's just not gonna do. Here's a question from Spencer Backman, a follow up question to what we talked about earlier with you working with the local Toyota dealership. Mm-hm. And he asks, "I'm curious what you offered the dealership in order to get access to the vehicles, if you weren't sharing images with them." Maybe it was a friendship, right? Yeah. So I've known the now general manager of that dealership for years. So I'd just call him and say, "I want a car," and I'll just tell him, I'll hook you up in the future or whatever. I can't even remember what the conversation was. It doesn't really matter. But let's say that I didn't know the dealership and I wanted to shoot a Mercedes. I might offer them a couple photos, or in my case, because I have some social influence. I might tag them in a couple of BTS stories like, "Hey, I'm doing this spec shoot for Mercedes. Thanks so and so dealership for lending me a car," and then tagged their dealership. Something small, but it's a nice little piece to give them some sort of incentive. It's difficult now because there are no cars in the lot. I don't know if it's the same where you guys are, but if you drive by any of the lots here, in fact, the Toyota dealership, it's this massive parking lot. It's probably got 10 cars in it. It's like empty, emptier than 3:00 AM in the parking lot at your airport. It's super, super empty, and so getting a car is probably gonna be more difficult right now. But that said, you don't have to get it from a dealership. You probably know somebody's parent who has a new GMC truck or something like that. Somebody you know knows somebody who has a new truck, if it's not your parents. Or just your best friend or whatever. So for instance, I could go to a number of my friends that have new cars and just borrow their car, And it's maybe not brand brand new, but it's gonna look new in the photos. It's another question from Spencer. He just said, "How do you balance being always turned on as a creative and self-driven professional with being a dad and family man? Coming from a relatively new dad, so curious to ask how this works for you." So, I mean, I'm always turned on anyway. I don't really... Nine to five job was never for me. If I'm off, I'm off and if I'm on, I'm on, Some people's personalities work better for off and on, off and on and picking rests. For me, as far as social media, I tend to consume too much. So I just delete the app, Instagram, off my phone, not delete my account, but just delete the app to build a little friction there, and it kinda helps snap me back into the real world and stop looking at my phone. But as far as always marketing, if you really actually are interested in something, and it doesn't matter what that something is, then any piece of information or scrap of information that comes along or any conversation that happens between you and your friends who are also into the same thing, doesn't necessarily feel like work. It just feels like, "Oh, this is interesting." And you get to go do it. But at the same time, I don't really hold normal business hours. I wake up when I'm not tired, which is usually like 7:45, 8 o'clock. But later, if I'm tired, I go start work probably by 10:00. I work as hard as I want until I get bored, which is about lunchtime, and then I usually go for a bike ride and then I hang out with my family, then I have dinner and then I'm back in front of the computer probably until about 10 o'clock at night, sometimes, depending on what project I'm working on. So all of that is very flexible and I just do it in a way that makes me have energy for the work. If I don't have energy for the work, if I don't have any deadlines, and I don't have energy for the work, I just take a little break just till I come back in energy, 'cause doing half ass work to me is just not acceptable. I'm just not gonna do it. Mm-hm Question from Brian Meyer. "Do you keep a collection or list of project ideas and then reach out to a company that you think fits it best. And then do you recycle those ideas if the company doesn't want to work with you right then?" So do you have a list of passion projects or ideas and then pitch them to clients or are you looking at a client and then creating the idea? Both. Yep, both. So I have a list of photos I wanna take, videos I wanna make and projects I wanna do. So they're like three separate lists. And I'm always writing them down. For instance, I'm gonna give this one out to somebody. If for some reason you have more power to make it happen than me. I once saw this photo of a Sinclair Oil ad from like the 1940s and it was some sort of big silver plane flying over an airstrip with a cowboy running below, waving his hat at the airplane. And it said something about... Like, the airplane was this new efficient model that saved 7,000 barrels of oil. So they took that money and they saved 7,000 Mustangs that were out on the range. And it was this really cool campaign from the forties. And I was like, "I'm gonna do that," because I have access to a plane that looks similar. I've worked with a company that does that. My brother's a cowboy, so he could be riding a horse. He's got a horse and he's fully capable of riding and I know a back country air strip that would let us do this. So I've got all of those big pieces. So we pitched it to Sinclair. No response. Like, zero. They didn't even get back to us. Nothing. Now it's my idea. I don't care if it's Sinclair or not. So I've got this thing in my cap, this little feather that I'm gonna pull out and be like... One day, I'm gonna be like, "I got an idea for that." And this would be a big budget project. There's a lot of logistics there. So we're talking 50,000 or above. So it's not for every... It's definitely not for every client. It's not gonna work for years, maybe. So, yes, I keep those. They're not... If I pitch an idea to a client, it is not that client's idea. Even though this one is a little tricky because it was a Sinclair ad and we reached out to Sinclair already, but I really don't care. They didn't even answer the email. So they don't really get any dibs on it. The ideas are mine, but then again, most clients in fact, right now, today after I get off this call, a client came to me and they have a couple of touchstones they wanna view and they wanna know what my idea would be, what kind of adventure I would go on for this specific project to gather these images. So I have to come up with a new, fresh idea for a project and then pitch it to them. So both. But yes, I keep a list. Again, I keep lists on my phone. I have photo idea lists, video idea lists, and then just project idea lists, which are just these big things that I've always wanted to do. And then when I'm feeling less than inspired, I just kinda scroll through those and be like, "Oh, I could do that one. Let's rev that one back up." That would be an incredible project. (laughs) Yeah. It should be really cool. I wanna see that from you, Isaac, one day. Yeah. I mean, it'll happen someday. It's just, I'd be calling in a lot of favors and I'd like those favors to be... I wanna pay the airline company that I'm using. I wanna pay my brother. I don't want to just... I could do this as spec, but I'd be calling in a lot of favors. And the next time I call somebody, they might not answer 'cause this would be a big, big project. In those photos you just posted of like Montana of the... Was it your brother working on his horses? Yeah. Yeah. So that was, again, a shoot I did for my brother's horseshoeing company and did that for his commercial. He's gonna have his website redone and all his social media and all that. And again, that shoot would've normally been... That was a two-day shoot with a ton of deliverables, and I actually did a social post, that one post, even though it wasn't super promotional. So that would've been probably $7,000 minimum, and I just did it for my brother 'cause obviously he's my brother, but obviously I wanted to have... I acted as if it was portfolio work when I went up there, I didn't just do it as a half favor for my brother. I did it as if these photos were the most important photos I'd ever taken. It took me nearly three weeks to go through all the photos and edit them, do it just perfect because I wanted to care about it as if I was getting... These photos someday, a client was gonna see them and be like, "Those are amazing. We want that exact thing." That's the level of care that I put into those. No, they're pretty special images. I'd love to see. I'm sure you have quite a few more. I'd like to. (chuckles) Yeah, there's a bit. Okay. So we're here right now. We're talking about the client gold rush. So it's 2021. A lot of people stalled everything in 2020, and you've noticed a difference in the excitement clients have at this time now compared to last year? Yeah. So, I think everybody kind of... It's hard for a company to go out and do, especially in the travel space, any sort of anything anywhere and be able to go word being a hundred percent safe. Nobody wanted to risk it. Nobody wanted to be called out as being irresponsible, even though they all wanted to make money. So they all battened down the hatch and they all expected that they weren't gonna make any money, which for, unless you're a restaurant, really didn't happen. They all made money and so now they've got... Not only did they have this year's budget, 'cause a lot of the bigger companies, they have a percentage in their budget that they have to spend. If they're not spending it, they're not doing their job. So not only do they have this year's budget, but they have last year's budget as well. And they know that everybody around them in the same space is coming up with all these ideas and doing double the work in marketing, and if they don't do it, then they're not doing their job right. So they're running around just looking for any opportunity they can to build stories, get content, spend money. So what that means, is that all their normal channels, me, all the rest of the people that they normally work with are not... We just don't have enough time in the day. Like I'm not gonna do more than probably four shoots a month. And so they're looking for new people to work with, which almost never happens. You've normally gotta come in and impress them and be better than the people they normally work with or different or have a better idea. So they are... A lot of companies, not every company, but a lot of companies are open to ideas more than they would have been not only last year, but even would've been five years ago. So it's really a wonderful time to start pitching ideas and your brand and your way of taking photos. You're gonna have, I think more success now. You're still gonna have a lot more failures than you're gonna have success, but you're going to have more success now than you've ever had. If you really get out there and start putting yourself out there. This is a very, very important question from Steven Reeder. He asks, "When are we seeing a release of Isaac's cycling Birkencrocs. (laughs) I don't know. I would love to have a pro model Birkencroc. I got mine three months ago and I've nearly worn them out. They just almost never come off my feet. So I think I probably put about 65 miles of hiking on 'em this year already. Oh, that's so funny. Where were you? It was in your stories the other day. You were cycling so much in these. They're the best to cycle in on flat pedals. You feel the breeze over your toes and you get... They actually grip pretty well on flat pedals with spikes. Yeah. It's good. They're the best cycling shoe you can get. Just don't fall off. Not a lot of protection. Here's a little more serious question from John LaGuardia. He's asking. "How do you regularly communicate with clients?" via emails, like certain interval? With your newsletter? You talked about this earlier. Like, if you haven't heard from a client, you reach out to them in three months. Do you keep like.... On your phone do you keep a reminder- I don't. I should. I would recommend that somebody uses CRM, which is a customer relationship manager. Something like HubSpot is free and integrates with your email and will give you reminders like that. I mostly do it by feel and opportunity and season. So, I'm just thinking. Like, one day I'm like, "Oh, that'd be neat to do this." And I'm like, through my head, it's like a Rolodex. And I'm like, "Oh, this company, this company, and this company. I'll reach out to so and so, and so, and so, and we'll see what they're up to." So I reach out that way. I should get something more specific. I did run a CRM for a little while, and then I just fell off the wagon with that. But for me, it's more about feel. Now the ways that I love to touch base on them or with them is oftentimes clients pay you 30 to 90 days out. 90 days really sucks, but I have these little postcards that I've made up that have mine and my agents contact information on. They have a couple of my best photos, and I just write them a thank you card and mail it. That is a really high class way to touch them because it's a little more effort than an email. It's a joy when they get mail at their office. Like they don't normally... Most people don't normally get mail at their office, specifically a nice note to them, but they get a shitload of emails and nobody cares about another email. They love to see this little postcard come through with a photo and they might stick it on their cubicle or wherever they're at, and then later they'll be like, "Oh, I need a photographer. Oh!" That'll be right there. So it's also like it's got a little bit of a strategy. So I love to do that, handwritten, thank you notes are like the best. People really appreciate them 'cause they're really rare. It's super easy. So that's a really great touch point. Also, I'd love to just DM people just to see how they're doing. Follow the people you know that are running marketing and company on Instagram, and engage with their stories, if they're good stories. You can't just BS your way through it, but engage with your stories. Like you can bet the guy who runs Fjallraven, Casey, that I am following him. I really actually like his photos, but then, I'm just naturally engaging with him as if I was his friend, because I am his friend. Like I'm following these people and engaging in their life, being a presence in their life just naturally. So for me, that's a better way to do it than like making sure I schedule it out. But if you're a schedule type person, you should absolutely be doing that. Here's a bit of like a more detailed question oriented at image licensing. "Can you talk about rates for photo licensing? For instance, if a client wants 15 to 20 photos licensed for a year to use on social media and some local print ads, how do you figure out what to charge?" Like what do you consider? 'cause it's so different for each client- Yeah, it really is different. And this is where I weigh really heavily on my agent's understanding of what the going rate is. Like, when COVID happened, there was... The rates for that just sunk outta sight 'cause everybody was like, "We're not paying that." So you can... It's really, really hard to be very specific there. And I saw that come from Brian Juice, so I know he wants specifics 'cause he's a very specific guy. It really ranges. And it also has to do a little bit with the quality of your work. And quality of your work is not necessarily quality, it's the perception of quality. So it's like this really, again, squishy thing. But to be honest, I'm not licensing, at the very lowest, I'm not licensing any image of mine for less than a hundred dollars for a year, right? So if you're doing 15 to 20 images, that's gonna be 1500 to two to $2,000 for the year. And that's a very low rate for just social, one year. And if there were going in print, it depends on where it's print. If it's outdoor media, that's expensive. If it's in store, that's expensive. If it's editorial, that's very rock bottom cheap. Like editorial is probably the cheapest way to get paid for your photos of all time. You can do a whole entire magazine article for 300 bucks. So I only do editorial for magazines that I know I want to be in. Those are like local in my community or magazines with big reach or a community that I like. So I guess a hundred dollars is gonna be like rock bottom. I don't really wanna go there. And we're talking if we're doing bulk. So we're doing 15 to 20 images, not one, I would never sell an image for a hundred dollars. You can't even pay me a hundred dollars because just the act of getting paid for a hundred dollars is gonna take more time and effort and make me stop making stuff to come over and take a hundred dollars. I just wouldn't do it. I'd be like, why don't you just take it for free? I don't care. I just don't wanna even have to write an invoice for this or anything. But that said, I think if I was doing 15 to 20 images for social, I would upsell that to actually post on social. I would also upsell that to go do a fresh shoot for them. So I'd get some shoot days in there, and I would try and upsell that 15 to to a $7,500 to $10,000 job minimum is what I would try and do. But if somebody came to me and said, "These are the 15 to 20 of your images that I want and we're gonna be using them for social on a smaller company," then I would say, "Yeah, probably five grand would probably cover it." Maybe, just depending. But this is Isaac talking and there's a reason I have an agent because I would prefer that I know exactly 'cause he does this 10 times a day and I do it once a month. He's gonna know what the going rate is and he's gonna know better on how to explain that to the client. Speaking to that, Brian Meyer asked, "When did you know it was time for an agent? How do you find one that works for both your budget and also with your goals?" So I think that for me, it wasn't necessarily... People had asked me, agents that I know had asked me if I wanted to work with them and I had done some one off jobs with them and just seen how they work. And that's the way that you should do it first, is if somebody just wants to do it with you, do a one off job and see if you like working with them. For me, it wasn't so much about timing. It was about... I felt there was a gap in my knowledge, like I didn't know what things cost and I felt like I was leaving money on the table and I wanted to see if an agent could bring the price up. And my agent certainly does. He charges somewhere between 30 and 15%. That's the going rate. Thirty's gonna be an expensive agent. Fifteen's gonna be a cheap agent. Generally west coast agents are cheaper. I'm not sure why. But I was approached by several... Sorry, not several, two, that were 15%, but they were all closed book. And by that, I mean that they would negotiate a deal and come to me and say, "Look, I got you $10,000 for that. Does that work?" And even though they said there were 15%, I had no idea how they were getting to that number on the backside 'cause they were talking directly with the client. No me on the call. So my agent is open book. If we're on the call, we're on the call together, or it's just me. Or if it's an email he's CC'd or I'm CC'd. So we all get to see everything that goes on in the background. And the reason is 'cause if I'm gonna pay somebody a percentage of my income, I want to learn more about the business. So eventually I can either do this myself or scale to the point where I feel like they're still valuable. I don't want to just get in blind and have somebody negotiate these rates and not know what the heck is going on. I wanted to do it for education purposes. So to answer your question, the short answer is, it was time to get an agent when I felt like there was a lot that I didn't know about the business side, 'cause it's very specific, this industry. There was a lot I didn't know and I wanted to learn that. So I was paying to learn that. It just so happens that my agent almost always brings the price up higher than the rate that I pay him. So I almost always don't actually pay him anything. I just get these high rates and he pays for himself. Now again, the biggest thing that I would recommend, two things with getting an agent, you have to have an open book or you're just throwing money away because you're not learning the things you need to learn about the business. You're not becoming an expert of the business side. And the second thing is that, when you get an agent, a lot of people expect to get more work. And that's just not the case. You're not gonna get more work from an agent. If they tell you that, they're full of it. They're way over optimistic. They can't bring you more work. What they can do is get you more money for the work you're already getting and occasionally bring you a job, but unless it's a massive agency, it's just not gonna bring you more work. It's just not gonna happen. 'Cause you're still the one reaching out a lot of the time. Yeah. And I do that on my roster, on my agency, which is Tinker Street. I think I do that more than anybody on the roster. I came from the business world. So I'm very used to that sales lift and I am also very dissatisfied with waiting for things to come to me. I really want to just go out there and get things and do things. And so I'm very much forward thinking in that way. I don't think a lot of people are. A lot of people would just go rather make the work and not spend that time, but I wanna to accelerate my career and that's the best way to do it, is to get more resources so I can do bigger and better jobs. Isaac, how are you doing on time? Can we do two more questions? Sure. Yeah. Here's a question from Matt Hume. "How important do you feel is branding yourself as a creative? Creating a domain email, getting a decent logo and paying for a well designed website, et cetera. This is if you have a good portfolio and so on, what and when do you think this is important verse when it is not?" So I guess those are three different things. Getting your branded email is nearly free and super easy and is really important. I think that one is important. Nobody's going to pass along your email from a Gmail account. It just feels they're not gonna do it. They're not gonna pass that to their boss and be this guy's got a Gmail account. It is just like wearing the right attire to an office was in the 1980s and nineties. Like it it's important. It just shows that you understand that we're in the business world. As far as a logo, I don't have one. I should get one. As far as a professionally-designed website, I don't have one. I'm in the process of reaching out to a couple of different people to see if they want to not only design my website, but curate my work in the way that is very tasteful and well done because I obviously have my darlings. When I look at my work, I have the things that I think are awesome, but they're not necessarily awesome as far as inside of the scope of my work and what I'm known for. So I'm doing that. But look, I'm six years in and I'm finally doing that. I'm a big believer in that all of the things that you spend your time on are things that take away from other things that you could be doing, like creating the work. So the most important part is to go out and shoot photos or video, whatever your niche is and to do it a lot, a lot, a lot. Anything that you're doing that is not that is taking away from doing that. So I just haven't really bothered with a logo. I don't think Isaac Johnston needs a logo as bad as he needs to just keep creating stories. People know me for my stories. They're not gonna know me for my logo. Who cares? You know? So that is a step. It's very nice. It's very nice. But to me, it's like making sure your front door is painted well, but why would you do that if you're still framing your house? You wouldn't. You wouldn't care. And I see a lot of people making really nice front doors before they even have a roof on their house, metaphorically speaking in the freelance career. So don't worry about that stuff. But I do say that the one thing there is, get that email. It costs almost nothing. Get powered by GoDaddy or Squarespace or Weebly off of your website as soon as you can. Like, I mean guys, it's couple hundred dollars a year to get a professional email and a professional website. It's cheaper than it's ever been, it's super easy. And a couple hundred dollars, if you're not making that in one year from your photography, it's just a hobby and you don't need any of that stuff anyway. Just don't even have it. Yeah. Here's a last question from Bjorn. We touched on this earlier about pitching to clients and specific projects versus ideas, but when you're pitching to a client, do you pitch specific ideas and projects or are you just pitching your services? Is there.... What are you pitching? It depends on what... So if the client has approached me and they wanna know, or they have a project that they have in mind, then I'm pitching myself and my ability to do that project. "Yeah, yeah, I have this guy that I can shoot and he's a rock climber that I know and his wife and him rock climb, and it's a really good story. I think it'll fit great for that rock climbing story you wanna do. I can also do that. I'm in Montana and I'm two hours away from that. So I've got all these logistics here. Here's some of the imagery that, if you look on this part of my website, you can see that." I may be pitching that. But if I have a project in mind that I want to do, and I need key pieces, so for instance, this last April, I went to Hawaii for a month. I had no clients, I just decided I'm going to Hawaii and I'm gonna get clients, and this is the two or three things we're gonna be doing. We're gonna be doing free diving, surfing, and ridge running. So I reached out to a bunch of clients and pitched them this project. "I'm gonna be there for a month. I'm already going there. These are the three things we're gonna be doing. I think that your product can fit in here, we can do some lifestyle here, best and that and the other." And I was pitching the specifics of the resources. So for me, when I'm pitching a project or convincing people, I'm often convincing them of how easy it will be for them to slot into a project that will mesh with their brand. And they don't have to think about flying me there, they don't have to think about putting me up in a hotel. They don't have to think about connecting me to... They basically don't have to produce anything. That's usually what I'm trying to do, is take away the production value of that. It's like, "I've already got this massive shoot planned. I'm gonna do it with your company or somebody else. So you guys might as well join in." Your time in Hawaii looked amazing. It was pretty good. Although it was like the rainiest April they'd had ever. So at one point, the entire ocean turned chocolate brown for two weeks, which is not, you know, oceans are chocolate brown all over the world. But when you're in Hawaii, it's difficult to look at. You're like, I came here for that clear, free diving water, and now there's just sharks swimming through this muck out there and I'm not getting anywhere in the water. I think I had one call with you while you were there and it sounded like a monsoon in the background. Yes. Well, it monsooned a lot. Yeah. So everyone, thank you so much for joining us today. We're so grateful for your time, Isaac. Always a pleasure. You can check out his workshop on our website, How to Become a Freelance Photographer, where he takes a lot of what we talked about today into even greater detail, step by step processes. And he's an incredible instructor and very fun to listen to. Very insightful. Also, if we're talking about pitch decks, is that still available on your website? Yeah. I have a pitch deck kit. It's got three different templates and the most important piece is a 12-step, I think, 12-step walkthrough that shows you exactly... It shows you exactly what you're gonna need to do and need to make happen to have a successful pitch there. So that's on my website, if you're interested. Awesome. Any last words or anything that you wanna say. I'd just say, you know, get out there and start asking questions, see if you can get some work, put yourself out there and do it in volume. If you haven't asked a hundred times, if you can do work with a company, you haven't asked enough. You need to keep at it and get ready to hear no a lot. But all you need is one yes. And it's gonna be be worth it. It starts the momentum. So don't hesitate to get out there and start asking if you can do work. Awesome. Thank you so much, Isaac. It's always a pleasure to chat with you and I hope to see you soon. Yeah, Man. Thank you very much. Yeah. Take care. Okay. Great day. Thanks everyone. Bye