Lessons
Lesson Info
Class Introduction
This course is, 'How to Set Up Your Pricing Structure'. A lot of us, when we got started... You just kinda charge based on how you felt, and some of us still do. (crowd laughing) In this class today, we're going to do something a little different. I'm going to talk to you about conquering your fear of charging your worth. I know when I spoke to a few of us earlier, we talked about, "Well, I don't really feel as though my work lives up to the price that I think I need to charge." We're going to talk about that. We're going to determine how much you should be making, not how much you think your clients will pay, how much you should be making. Determine your cost to do business. How much is it costing every single month to run your business? And how to create a price list that's not confusing to your client, because sometimes we use words that our clients have no idea what we're talking about, right? We know the words, but they're like, 'What?' And then, how to handle rejection. Because n...
ot everyone is going to be a yes. So let's jump right in. So, I have a warning. I am just a mom with a calculator, okay? I am not a certified CPA. I am not an accountant. Drew made me feel so good with all those things that he just said... (laughs) (crowd laughs) But, I am not a CPA or a bookkeeper or anything like that. What I am going to share with you, I'm going to be very transparent. This is probably the most transparent, gut-wrenching presentation that I am going to give, because I am just going to be completely honest. I am not going to sugar coat it, Imma just tell it exactly how it is, okay? So, we're going to start off with Introduction to some life lessons that I learned. So, these are my kids. That's me, looking like a straight diva, (crowd laughs) and that's my daughter, Grace, and that's my son, Ivory. So, about a year and a half ago, my children and I were evicted from our apartment. And I'm standing here as a testament to you all about if you hit rock bottom, I've been there, you can bring yourself back up, okay? So, if you fail to plan, you pretty much plan to fail. So, it is gonna be a hard course, it is. It's gonna be worth it at the end, but you might feel a certain way after we finish this, and you may say, 'What the hell have I been doing this entire time?', and I want you to know that I've been there with you, okay? I'm standing here because I took action, okay? So, I failed, but you don't have to. And I'm going to show you ways in which you don't have to. So, let's see, so, I'm a single mom, two kids. I've been divorced, I've done that, I have a t-shirt, and some debt behind it. So, when I walked away from the classroom, about three years ago... Like, people always tell you, for whatever reason, like, the entrepreneur dream is to walk away from your full-time job, okay? Like, 'I'm gonna be full time!' Yes, like that's the thing. What happens is that people don't tell you what to do when you walk away. People encourage you to walk away from your full-time employment, but no one says, 'Well do you have six months of savings?' Or, 'What's your plan to medical insurance?' No one really gives you that talk. The talk is, 'You should be a full-time photographer, or we're not going to take you seriously." So I walked away from my job, I did that. And, I do really good on, like, budgeting and spreadsheets, and different things like that, so I knew that I had my prices set up in a place where I could make a profit. The problem was that I didn't change my prices once I walked away from the classroom. Because, ideally, it was just part-time money, right? I was using photography at the time, it was just, I don't wanna say 'play money', but, play money, okay? It wasn't the funds that I needed to generate to make sure that our house stayed, you know, with electricity and different things like that. So, long story short, seriously, I wake up, I get the kids ready, we walk out the house. They say, "Mommy..." I'm like, "Yeah", They were like, "The car is gone." The car is gone?! What do you mean, 'The car is gone?" The car had been repossessed. Seriously. Car was repossessed. We have been in a place where we have not been homeless, but, had we not had family in the city, we would have been homeless. Seriously. All because I did not charge what I was supposed to be charging my clients. Does that make sense to you all? So, I sacrificed every single thing in my life, just because I was so afraid to charge what the expense sheet in my budget said that I was supposed to charge. So, I would watch my clients, literally, go check in on vacation, they would check in... Now they're checking in at a Beyonce concert. They're checking in at all of these amazing restaurants. So, obviously, they have disposable income, I just hadn't asked for it. Because I didn't think that they would pay for it, and I didn't think that I was worthy enough to charge what it would take for me to be able to take care of my children. Okay? So, I literally lost everything, and I'm not afraid to say, you know, I've lost my home in the divorce, we lost our car. I was struggling literally to put food on the table. It's been days when I'm like, 'Oh man what are we gonna do?' But, we always made a way through. So, I'm going to show you, If you're starting at ground zero, like I was, and you have to rebuild, or if you're at the top of your game, and you wanna take it higher, I'm going to show you that. But I'm going to be very transparent, that I've lost it all, and it's okay.
Ratings and Reviews
Sher
Great information. Simple, clear and interesting presentation. Thank you for sharing your knowledge.
Robin Spencer
Tomayia Colvin is delightful, a great storyteller and easy to listen to. A very simple explanation of basic accounting for photographers and a real eye opener for many.