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Lesson Info

Creating an Action Plan

How do you get there? because that's what you really want to know. Like, come on bring this thing on home, sister. Okay let's go. All right, so, you determine the amount of funds you need to generate, so we did that. We know that my magic number is how much? 76,000. Then for number two. Now I'm going to need to determine how many session you need to make in order to get to my desired revenue amount. Now for me personally, I am in school, so before I started school, I could photograph maybe eight to 10 seniors a month. I could do that, no problem. Writing a dissertation though, I can't do that anymore. I could only do maybe four to five a month. So that means that my prices for senior portraits has done what? Gone up, because even if I'm making, if I'm doing 10 or if I'm doing five, my 76,000 doesn't change does it? Does that make sense to you all? Yeah, so you determine how many sessions and we're gonna do a little bit of math in just a moment, but that would depend on you, and then yo...

u can determine your session fee, and then we're going to determine your price for your products, because that's the real question. How you do you come up with these numbers? I'm gonna show you. Alright, so my goal, 76,000, we know that's how much I need to make for the entire year. I take that, and I divide that by 12 months. So per month, how much do I need to make? 6,333 dollars. Regardless of what happens in real life, my magic number per month is what? 6333. It doesn't matter if I don't think that you can afford my services. It doesn't matter if you broke up with your boyfriend. It doesn't matter how I feel, my magic number is still 6333. If I don't get the 6333, I'm going to be homeless, broke, it is not gonna be a very happy situation in my life. Now, how do I get to this Tomayia? So happy that you asked. So, remember my desired income amount is 6333 per month. Initially, I just had it at 5, just for me because that's how much I could do and not eat like five cupcakes a day. So, I made it, I went out a little bit further. So if you maybe can stand to do a little bit more work, then you can charge a little less. Then if you can go a little bit higher on your number, then you don't have to stress so much. So, if I can only do five sessions a month, because that's what my time will allow, then I have to come out of there every time, with a minimum of 1266 dollars. Per session. Does that make sense? You don't look so happy. Uh oh, okay, all right. So, does that make sense to you all? If I can do a little bit more, maybe I'm not in school, maybe I can just do four sessions twice a month, and then it's eight sessions. Then at that point, how much do I need to make? Right about 800 a session. And then, if I'm like oof, oof, oof, ten. Then you only need about 633 a session. That's it. Was that hard? No. So now lets do your numbers. Mm hmm, come on. So you have your desired monthly income, did you do that part yet? So you know the big amount that you need, divide that by 12, and then that will give you your big number right there. Your desired monthly income, you have that so far? And then some people shoot 20 sessions a month. I'm not that person. But depending on how many session's you'd like to, because everybody in the room has a different idea. Different time schedule, different time commitment, some of us may be taking care of our parents, different things like that. So depending on how much you would comfortably like to do a month, then that's what you write. So maybe you only do one. If I only did one session a month, how much would I need to make? I work one time a month, I make 6,333. I would like to get to that point one day in my life. Just not today, okay? Five, eight, what's comfortable for you all, five, eight, 10? How you all feeling? Five, eight? Okay. Ten anyone? Yeah, it's cool, it's okay. So eight I think is a pretty good number, like a good goal number, eight is pretty good. So if everyone wants to kind of use this as like their ideal, I'm okay with that. I'm okay with you doing five. I'm honestly okay with you doing one. Whatever is going to suit your fancy is what you write down on your paper, and everybody's going to have a different amount. So, how do you make 1266 a session? Anybody there yet? Nobody? Somebody? Almost, okay that's cool, we can deal with that. So there are a few ways in order for you to do that, and I have three examples for you to do this. Again, this is going to be total personal preference. Total personal preference, there is no right or wrong answer, it's whatever the person you took a picture of feels happy with, okay? And I will support you on whatever example works best for your life. Now, somebody's going to send me a nasty email and say I know you did not tell the audience of all those people that you can sell their digitals for 1300 dollars. I'm going to say that for the point of the example that we gave for the number, okay. My goal number is 1300 dollars for the sake of this class, we're going to give an example, of where you include the digital files for 1300 dollars. There's just one way. Maybe you don't have time to do an in person sale. Maybe you don't want to look at your client again. Who knows? I don't know what it is, but if you feel comfortable at whatever rate you put there, and you're happy with whomever you're looking at, and if you feel like your creative fee and the digital files, that's your walk-out-the-door price, by golly have a great time. And again, I'm okay with getting a nasty email that say I told the people to do 1300 dollars, okay? Because the ideal here, is to get you to 1266 per session. The idea is not to make 10 people happy in a Facebook group. My goal is to help you get to your dream number however you deem necessary, okay. Example two. So you have example one, you do all-inclusive, here the price people, have a great day, see you later, bye bye. Example two, maybe you don't include the digital files. Maybe you just have a creative fee, and then you sell them digital files and you need to make at least a thousand dollars from those. The goal is to get to what amount? 1300. So I took a 300 dollar session fee, or a creative fee, however you like to write that down, and then I give them the option of purchasing a digital collection of 1000 dollars. Again, this is your business, you do what makes you happy. Remember that some of us are in places where we are doing, we just left culinary arts school, some of us are executive chefs. So if executive chef, if you feel like your digital collection should be at least 5000, that is okay with me as well, but we are all in different places. So I'm doing an example of what would work in my life as a teacher, if I walked away from my full-time job. And then here's example three, you have a creative fee, you don't have the digital files included, and you sell your products in a collection that includes the prints and products of at least 1000 dollars. What's our goal amount? 1300. So however you get to your 1300, or 1500, or 1800, or 500, is how you get there. The only person who needs to be okay with it is who? You. All right, so I have some questions that you all wrote down earlier, and someone else asked this too. So what do you suggest if I photograph more than one genre of photography? What if I shoot babies, engagements, high school seniors, a variety of different genres, what do I do? Does it still cost you 1300 dollars to pay the bills every month? Is that what you need? Well then, either you shoot a newborn for 1300, you shoot a couple session for 1300, you shoot a wedding for 2600, however you get to your 6333, is how you get there, but your time and your cost of what it takes to run your business, doesn't change per genre. Your time changes. Obviously if you're photographing a wedding for 12 hours, or if you're photographing a newborn for five hours, you could charge differently for your time and your session, but it still costs you the same amount of money, what, to run your business. Does that make sense to you all? Yeah, so again, there's no right or wrong answer here. So if you charge 1600 or 1300, or however much, I can't personally, I charge all of mine the same, because I will never remember if I charged different prices for different things, what I'm doing. So I just charge the same rate across the board. For engagements, or high school seniors, I charge the same price. My price is still the same. The babysitter's still the same, it cost the same for the internet bill, the gas, the parking, it's just about the same, and so my goal is to get to my regardless of who I'm photographing. Another question is how do you price specials like VIP and minis? When I do those, I still run the same numbers. I gotta walk out of there that day if I'm only working one day, 6,333 dollars a day. My life number doesn't change because it's Christmas. It probably goes up. Does that make sense to you all? So if you decide to run a mini special or whatever you're trying to do that seems to be in, you just have to make sure that your walk-out-the-door price for that day is, did you clear your profit? If you didn't, then you need to scratch that and start over. So people question all the time, mini sessions mini sessions, and I see people doing mini sessions for 75 dollars, but my question is how many of those are you going to do in order for you to get to your 6333 dollars? 'Cause if you slash your prices, you better be charging something for some products on the back end to get to that 6333. If you just gave 6333 and it's three digital files, and you gave everything, then you gave them everything plus the cow, and you don't have enough money to buy the milk because you didn't leave anything left, okay? Another question, how do you balance pricing for your market and pricing for what you need to make? Do you think I charge, and do you think I care about what the market is charging? I don't care. Because my number is what my number is in order for my to take care of my children. I can't compare myself to a single person who's with no kids, living her super duper best life, right? She's just taking pictures about shoes, and I'm so jealous, okay? I can't, that's not what I'm doing. I'm making a salary in order to provide for my children, I can't sacrifice them anymore. So regardless of what whoever is doing in the Facebook group, or in the garage sale community, whatever they're doing, that has nothing to do with the amount of money it takes to keep the lights on at my house. Nothing. Because the light bill company is not going to say well did you see how much they were charging over there? The only thing they'll want to know, is did you pay your light bill. Get out of your feelings. Um, multiple brands, we talked about that, and how to tweak your prices if you are established already, and I think we already talked about that depending if you're the executive chef or if you're just walking out of culinary school, you can get an idea for that. How do you charge knowing everyone can't afford it? Everyone cannot have floor seats to Beyonce. Point blank. Some people have to sit in the nose bleed. Did she cancel the concert because everybody's not going to sit on the floor? No. She didn't. She's still having the concert but she made it accessible in case you sit on the floor, in case you wanted to be on the VIP, in case you wanted a picture with her, and in case you can afford the 67 dollars in the nose bleed. It is what it is, but you have to get out of your feelings about I know they can't afford it. You have to get out of the feeling that you can't afford yourself. It has nothing to do with anything. Whether or not you can afford your prices, just get out of your life about that. It is how much you charge if your number is 6333, and you're afraid people can't afford it, well guess what, they're at the culinary photographer that just walked out the door who doesn't have so much overhead, that maybe they can only, they're magic number is a thousand. But for you, your magic number is whatever your magic number is. There is someone for every single person. How do I charge knowing everyone can't afford it, and I think I tell you that for me, I want to make sure that my children are taken care of. That's it. So whatever your why is, you make sure you take care of that. Okay, what happens if you piss off your current clients? That's going to happen. Yeah, because your current clients are going to say wait a minute girlfriend, you were just charging $100, why are you now $633? What happened? I saw you went to the Beyonce concert. Yeah, I saw you. You got a new outfit, you went and got your hair done, yep, you went to dinner, you spent 633 dollars that one day, that you went to the concert. So my price is $633 too because I feel like I am worthy of being paid my worth. Oh man, that sucks, I guess I'll pay you. Okay. Cool, we can still be friends. If not, here are a list of photographers that have just came out of culinary arts school for photographers, that you can afford. You have to take the loss, because that feeling that you have when you're not charging your worth, and you're taking those photos, and you know for a fact that you're not charging your worth, you're going to be very unhappy, and you're going to have that resentment, and you're definitely not going to want to edit those photos, you goin' to be like no head swap for you ma'am. Choot choot, let's keep going. Or when you friend your clients on Facebook, and they're on some exotic location, and you're at home eating peanut butter and jelly, and you're like what did I do wrong? You didn't charge your worth. They're on the beach living it up, and what are you doing? You're at home hoping and praying that you can pay your light bill. And they would have paid you, but you never asked them to pay your worth, so now you're at home worried, and you're really angry because they are somewhere living it up. Pricing for digital files and products, what should I charge per digital file and for products? So I did a little bit of just manipulation, just a tiny bit because people always want to see like how much it would cost if they were to do like a collection. I personally do build your own collections, but for the sake of this, I did create a collection just so that you will still be able to walk away with your 1300 dollars-ish. So put your highest cost collection at the top. So I'll start down here. I put a 10 by 10 album, it costs 200 times 10, I'm sorry times five, that's 1200. A 10 by 10 wall art of some random kind, these are all random things, 75 times four, 300. Now, when I subtract the 1500 minus the cost of doing business, I'm still walking out with 1300 dollars. My magic number was what? 1300 dollars. So even if they were being not so expensive, and said well I'm just going to buy the cheapest package. That's fine, I still have my 1300, thank you have a great day. I don't dare make my 1300 my most expensive one, because what are they going to do? They're going to order the 700 dollar one, and now you're taking a complete loss. I put down my 1300 one at the bottom. This will at least let me clear the bills. They come up here, the Sage Collection, same thing, 12 by 12 album costs maybe like 300, marked it up times five is 1500. I have a 16 by 20 wall art. Ideally, I think that number is slightly below what it should cost, but for the sake of this, times four, that's 500 dollars. That's 2000 dollars, minus my cost, I'm still walking out with how much, a minimum of how much? 1300 dollars. I'm always going to make sure that I cover the minimum amount to get me my 1300 dollars. Anything up here, that's just extra cupcake money. When you're clearing the extra, that's when you put the money into your savings. Or for your rainy day fund, your vacation fund, and those other things, but the bare minimum is to keep your lights on. So if you create a session, and this is so confusing, that you're even confused, our friend Chip says that a confused mind always says no. So if you have like all of this laundry list, grocery list, you've called this something so spectacular only you know what the collection is called, you change the collection fee to creative liaison fee, like you've made yourself so important, and the client has no idea what is on your sheet of paper, or what's in your PDF, they're automatically going to say what? No, because they're confused. They don't know what to do. They don't know what you want. Perception is your reality, so if you don't feel like you are worthy, your clients going to kind of feel that. Like hm, I can only give her 125. I know she needs 1300-ish, but it's fine. She's gonna let me still come to the concert even though I didn't pay it. Perception is reality.