Lessons

Lesson Info

Introduction

So I want to start with all the really solid information that the pieces they're goingto that are going to build your business, going to start with little show and get right to work. Wait to soothe it's blushing cheeks, my breasts way sean's a smooth hearing this guy's way. Thank you. I can't start the pictures. Thank you. Now well, we can get going. Alright. So gave a ten second version of who I am. But I'm gonna give a little longer version so that you guys kind of have an understanding of white. I'm here and I might help you understand why you're here. Um, as I mentioned, I started my business when I was about seventeen years old. At that time, I was obviously very young, very crazy and happened to have some good friends who gave me a camera and I photographed their children. And it was literally one of those stories where their friends saw it and they liked it. And honestly, the minute I picked up that camera happened to be a camera thirty five millimetre with a telephoto lens. And...

the first time I ever zoomed out and compressed that background, I swear to you, I thought the universe shifted, and he probably felt it if you were alive at that time. But it was one of those things where I just remember the background going out of focus and looking and of course couldn't see the back of the camera way back then, but just feeling that feeling with that camera and then the first time those images came back and I saw what it actually happened. I was completely hooked. That was absolute addicted, so I started building my company and, you know, like I said, it's, seventeen, people don't take you very serious, serious, seriously, but by eighteen, I got my business license and started to go. Now the industry back then was very different than what you see today, in fact, predominantly male between the ages of thirty five to sixty five years old, so being a young female was very different. The other anomaly is that I was very much into children and baby and back then, honestly, the majority of studios out there did not even want to work with babies. They would tell you what, when. When they're around three, bring them in for a portrait. So it's, just a very different feel. And so of course I came out of the gates with this baby frenzy long before the type of shooting you see today. And we really created a benchmark for ourselves. We separated ourselves from everybody and we started to grow. Now this is my current studio. As I mentioned earlier during the banter I purchased. This building is just under eleven thousand square feet. It's there's. A little history behind it because originally I worked out of my home. I moved to colorado, my husband. Actually, we lived in new jersey in the new york he's from new jersey. We bounced around a little bit with his work ended up in utah, which is where I'm from and from there we bopped over teo colorado. And that was about twenty years ago. And so I started once again all over at that time. Now, at that time, I had just had my second baby s oh, here I am. No, nobody. Two babies at home and set up a little siri's in my kitchen. Ah small little photo shoot area and then started to grow we eventually moved to a triplex I turned the basement into the studio. Eventually bought a home, and at that point, I turned the master bedroom into the studio, so we actually slept in the nursery, and the master bedroom was sort of like this a long, skinny room, and it was one of those things that if I had teo photograph more than four people, if there were five people in the shot, I actually had to step into the bathroom, put my feet in the sink, lean on the mirror and actually shoot like this in order to get everybody in the shot. So I'm sure some of you guys can relate to are still living in that situation out there, where you're in tiny little spaces to make things happen. I worked out of that space for about nine years, so for a very long time now in that transition, I had two children I mentioned before that I had we also have foster children, which I'll explain in a second. It was about twelve years ago, I was pregnant with my fourth child, and we had six foster children. All of the foster children were boys, and I was pregnant with my second daughter, so we had eight boys and two girls. So you can imagine the house got a little small at that point we were also living in a community that did not allow you to have home businesses. So the fact that at ten children and people parking in my driveway all day long I was really at risk for getting in trouble so I finally rented my first space it was this space it was two thousand square feet now what you're looking at here is nothing like it looked at like when I bought it um I knew nothing about design or look, I am not kidding you it was probably the ugliest thing I did, you know, commercial carpeting and twenty year sixteen by twenties down the walls I mean, I just didn't know it in my home studio I had big eleven by fourteen is on the wall, so I thought sixteen by twenties were incredible at that time and later we're going to talk about how that all changed and eventually I realized that the bigger you show the bigger yourself so we don't put anything less than forty to fifty inches on the wall now but these were some of that transitions I wish you could see the original studio because it was honestly hideous um and pretty embarrassing however it was better than when I worked out of my home because I worked out of my home my actual milk box was my delivery system people would actually it was like a filing cabinet and they would come in there and they would pick their images up and take them so we did improve a little bit and as you can see over the years we improve the environment and this was taken right before we actually left the studio. Originally this was two thousand square feet. This was twelve years ago and it was just myself and one other actually, I had no employees. I had a nanny that was helping me at that time, I hired my first employee. When I got into the studio, we started to grow very quickly. Marketing for whatever reason is my forte. And so we started to grow and evolve, and within three years we had to expand to five thousand square feet. We're about eight employees at that time and a few years later we absolutely blew out of this building. We had to rent two thousand more square feet to put people in. We had about seven thousand square feet at that time there were about twenty eight of us, um and that's about twelve years ago. So this was kind of a height of the madness really and truly I'm sorry about six years, seven years ago, and so this is when we really were getting to a point where we had to make decisions and we're going to talk a lot about how I decided to change what I was doing and how I got there. So this was the original studio at the end of its version, this is actually the current studio that we have as you can see it it's very similar and feel very high end, very elegant, feeling much, much bigger. We have a lot more space. This is one of the sales rooms. We're gonna talk a lot about these rooms later, but just wanted to give you heads off of what things look like the style that we have. This is also a sales room you can see we sell the video projection. So just to give you kind of an idea, and again, we're gonna cover sales and pricing and all kinds of fun things. This is one of the waiting area, so these air, actually the two rooms that you see here on the side are the sales rooms. When clients come in and they're waiting for a session, we have refreshments, we have a coffee machine and cookies that we may call all the time and you'll see all that coming up and a frame area that we'll talk about later. The other reason that I purchased this building is obviously more studio space, this was much better than my master bedroom much, much more space. Is and we were able to control things like lighting you could see the windows there on the far side. We were able to cut out whole walls and put in north lighting. And and these are all things that I learned over the years. It took a lot of time, tio actually evolve and learn these things. And we kind of need to be at the middle point of my career when I was making these decisions because I certainly did things a little bit better. Um, the other reason that we purchased this property is we ended up with a very large piece of property attached, eh? So we were able this is actually when it right when it when it first went in, we were able to put in some water features and some really nice gazebos and nice areas to do the work that we dio believe it or not, after we've been here four years, uh, we have disk sided, we're going to sell this building, so if you're interested, says, there are millions of you out there we actually just recently decided that even in this economy I own another piece of property that's on an acre and a half. And the building that I have, as beautiful as it is and as much of work that we put into it, there are some limitations because I had to pre had to buy what was already there. I went from fourteen foot ceilings to eight foot ceilings, which I'm sure a lot of you can you know what I'm talking about, there's just some things that as much as we love it, we want to expand. And now that I know my dream, I thought this was it, but I've never done, but I truly now, with all of the knowledge I have, I think we could build exactly what I want, and I think I will never do it again, which is exactly what I said four years ago, so don't write that down, but the point is, life is ever evolving. Our studio is ever changing. I have literally been through every experience you could possibly imagine, including shooting in a little kitchen all the way to having complete control of my environment, which is really nice, so we're gonna kind of go through this process now I have to tell you, I always start the show with the real reason I'm here because this is my biggest priority. Uh, first of all, I know that many of you out there, most of you out there probably have children of your own and that's really exciting, and these are my four biological children many years ago. The reason I throw this light is it it is probably one of the most touching images I have of my children, and I will tell you why, but I have to have an honesty check here first, because I have to know who I'm working with here. So how many of you actually enjoy photographing your own kids? Be honest, okay, so we have, like, half the room, all right? Well, I'm with the other half, I would actually rather pull all the teeth out of my head with the pliers, then photograph my chills, so I'm just kidding. I would rather pull it out of their head when I'm photographing like it because it's something that, you know, it's funny, you know, you think you know what you're doing, and you get in there with your own kids and it's like zero to sixty your patients is gone in a second, and I figured it out, it's, because we have a vision of perfection and were able to capture it for other people are our children, noah, as we all know why it doesn't work, but this is one of those great images and has a great story behind it because I could tell you exactly when this was this is the year that the pirates of the caribbean came out because that was the big bribery will go to the movies if you guys will cut me a break today. So this is one of those this hill is directly above my home. My home is right directly below that hell and I have always I drive drive home every night and I see the most stunning sunset over the rocky mountains you could ever imagine it's literally breathtaking. And so I had this vision of taking them up the hill and and getting capturing this image and so of course you know how that goes. I'm going to try to speed this up, but getting them dressed, getting them ready was complete fits. Everybody was upset. Everybody was mad by the time I get them to hill. Now remember, this is a sunset you have that tiny little window and this I wanted to be a merit print. I wanted this to be beautiful get them up the hill and not kidding I'm watching the sun go down one hundred thousand miles an hour and they start arguing with each other and this the oldest boy ends up yelling at the youngest girl and she immediately burst out crying and so now the old and you can see her little hip it sort of kicked out to this because now she's ticked off and so she's mad at the boldest boy the oldest boy has made the youngest little girl cry but the middle of the youngest son he is just a sweetheart he just so badly wants to go to the movie that he's tearing up and the long and the short of it is this was actually supposed to be a picture of their face um their faces but at the very last second as the sun was setting, I literally looked at them and yelled turn around and this is my shot. So so every time I look at my fireball case and people walk in my house and the like, oh my gosh that's so beautiful and I'm like, oh, you should have been there it was just amazing moment in my life, so I want to make sure nobody out there understands that I'm certainly not perfect. You know this is a beautiful shot but there's so much going on here we've got tears in trauma and we did make it to the movie and ironically enough pirates of the caribbean movie came out two years later and this is really funny because I happen to need a photo for a newsletter of my children made the same promise we'll go see the second pirates of the caribbean and and I'm not kidding you this is actually I was frustrated the kids we're not not being very nice I turned I was trying to fix my camera I turned around and I swear to you this is what I saw and this is not made up this one you can see the oldest boy yelled at the youngest girl she started to cry the middle son wants to just go to the movies and the oldest sister is just mad so so this is where you know photo shoots go so we'll move on for my kids but I do want you to understand this is them worker this is a couple of year and a half ago in europe s so this is what they look like now these air this is my pride and joy and they are the entire reason I do everything that I dio as I mentioned, we have been foster parents we've had forty foster children and all of our foster children are now grown up in fact, many of them have children, so I'm a grandma many times over you wouldn't want to know how many times which is very exciting as well, but currently at home the second oldest is off to college this year, so I just I'm gonna have two little ones at home, so I actually went from ten kids ten years ago to now, I'm down to two, so I'm moving along pretty brilliantly, but they are truly the reason that I do everything I do want to mention another thing, because people always question, I travel all the time I literally live on the road, we're on a tour bus or out of the country all the time, like children do travel with me quite a bit, the majority of the time eyes spent with me, but people always ask, how do you do all that? I want talk a little bit about dreams because twelve years ago, when I was pregnant with the youngest girl, she was number ten on the way, and I was working, and I just opened my first studio, and all of the sudden it occurred to me that I was committed, that having a commercial space, I had to go to work, and so of course I had one of those emotional pregnancy breakdowns where you're like, oh my gosh, what have I done? I have the studio, I have to go to work, and we've got ten kids and I'm pregnant. I don't want to have a baby sitter, and, you know, I went through that whole trauma, which I'm sure many of you have been through. And my husband turned to me and he said, all right, I'll tell you what I'll take a year off of what he's, a chef by profession, he said, I'll take a year off and I'll stay home with the baby and that way we don't have to get child care because the business was growing enough that we thought a year we could probably make it well clearly we didn't pick which year because twelve years later he's still off and we have successfully had to stay at home parent for twelve years so it's really wonderful he does work at the studio, but the nice thing is our children have had a parent home at all times somebody would take him to school and pick them up. But the point I tell you this is there's dreams and there are risks and there's always that balance of deciding when it is that you can take the risk to get to dream at that time, I can assure you we had no idea if we could make it that we absolutely were terrified, but we felt that with our value system that's what we wanted to dio and we went for it and you know, to see to cut it, to go from seventeen years old teo somewhat older than that, and to know that we've lived our dream we've been able to do those things it's fully possible for all of you to do that, it's something that, depending on where you want to go and where you want to really get out of life, you just have to set your mind and you have to go for it. So I wanna make sure people understand that because I'm a highly emotional person, which I know some of you have seen me speak, and I cry all the time so it will come up all the time, especially when you mentioned these people's we're gonna move on. But understand, this is all about dreaming. This is not about money. This is about the dream. Do you want to thank you, which we've done already, all of you for being here, especially for coming so far, those of you out in the audience, we want to thank you as well. We have many sponsors that have supported both creative live and my tour is this well, so we'll be covering some of them were not here to sell their things, as you know, but we do mention them because we appreciate their support and they allow us to do what we do more than anything. I want to thank my staff who are hiding behind the walls here they kill themselves, teo, do what we do so the truth is, I get a lot of credit for everything I do. People look at my life and they're like, oh, my gosh, how do you do all of that? But I literally surround myself with the most amazing people in the whole world who hold on and the medication kicks in in about five minutes, so we're going to be fine, but they are incredible. So huge shoutout to aaron, who was up at three o'clock in the morning finishing the show. Brandon and helen, who have brandon, who manages the tour. Helen who is here? Tosh, who did all the work on the web sites and everything and all the rest of you at home. Thank you so much. You all know who you are. I can't name you all because there were about thirty. But they are the real heroes here. I have the easiest job. I just got to sit here and share my heart. But hey, on there, the awesome there, the awesomeness. So please, those of you out there send them a little note on and let them know that you appreciate them as well. I also have to mention this. I want to make sure people understand that I don't take credit for anything ideo literally. Everything I am is a combination of the wonderful mentors and the people that I have been surrounded with so I love this quote if I have seen farther it is by standing on the shoulder of giants nothing I'm gonna teach you today is new or something I invented actually have one thing in this industry that I'll tell you later that I know is mine and I would padded but it so stupid that you guys will laugh when you hear what it is you have to wait for it but but everything I am is a product of somebody else so understand that but keep in mind that although I can't think them all I certainly appreciate them all my hope is that you will take what I give you today and actually converted to your own vision and take it and grow on it and what the the greatest compliment is seeing somebody takes something that I've done and improve it I kind of get jealous I'm not going to lie why didn't I think of that but I'm really excited for you so I hope that that that actually happen for you ah couple things just housekeeping things real quick I believe this actually sold out or we have two more spots but we do in studio workshops we only have one left this is a full five days so if you like three days five days is going to be a lot also, this one is really important. If you are enjoying the show, please do follow us on facebook, my personal pages full, but I do have a fan page also twitter and google plus now go there because every day we give away a lot of products, creative life is incredibly generous. We're goingto be as generous as we can today as well if you go to facebook or google. Plus, I didn't put it on there, but if you go to facebook or google plus and all I wanted to do is go find me and tell me what you think of the show, just tell me your favorite tip things that you've learned today every night we're going to select four, five winners that we're going to send some free downloads to some really awesome products and really nice kids, so we just want to hear from you, it helps us know that we're doing the right things, and what we like to hear is the things you like the most, so we're going to do that, and you guys could do that as well. However you're goingto win. Ah lot of prizes with just sitting here, so you're the luckiest people definitely out there. All right, so let's talk about what we're supposed to be we talked about, I want to be a complete program. I want to make sure I give you the nuts and bolts of everything that I am. We do have some discounts and offers and things which I having taught for twelve years, I've really come to the conclusion, especially with a virtual audience. I want to make sure that, uh, you know, people don't think I'm selling from the stage I've been to seminars like that and frankly, quite annoying. So our goal is not to be an infomercial. We have an incredible website with everything I've ever created, you can do dot com, and we're going to be giving a lot of free products away today, so keep that in mind as well, but I'm not here to be an infomercial, but we do have all those tools were going to help you figure out how to get them if you're interested. If you're not that's, okay, because I'm not going to hold back, I'm not going toe, you know, give you half of something, and then you have to go buy the other half were not like that at all, we're going to give you one hundred ten percent.