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Creating a Map with Shari Part 1

Now I know there were some people in the chat rooms that were talking we're trying to figure out a good way because I know there's some questions that are coming up in the chat room we want to make sure they get answered we know we've got a lot of different audience members, but we know that a big piece of creative lives audience unusual audiences, photographers okay, so what? We don't have a photographer in the room for the photographers at home that are watching along or watching on the replay and for anybody who works in a creative business in general because this is really applicable to them and for anyone who's in any type of a service business where you're interacting with people in trying to provide a service and for anyone who offers a product yes, I'm stacking it this works for anyone, okay? We're going to actually role model it today by pretending that one of our studio audience members is hoping to book a photographer for her wedding she's going to role play being a bride wi...

ll have to figure out what kind of bride she is as we go through the conversation she's going to role play being a bride and our job in the studio audience and for those of you playing online if you are a wedding photographer photographer would be great if you can try me in if you're not pretend you are embraced that inner wedding photographer that you always wanted to be, and we're going to get the chance to have that experience. So sri, come on up big round of applause for sri were fabulous. Konya brother mike, go ahead and sit down. Okay? So we're gonna walk suri through the process off. What? Eh? Typical? If there is a typical bride would experience when trying to book a wedding photographer. So day one. So remember day zero, which is not on the map is the assessment. And for our particular exercise, we're going to pretend just for the conversation that I am role playing the wedding photographer. But you all are the wedding photographer as well as well, this everybody online, you get to come up with ideas as well. So day zero is thie assessment she's trying to figure out who she's working with. Have you interviewed photographers? Have you gone to their websites? How have you made your assessment? Pay attention to her answer! Because it's gonna give us a lot of early clues. I've talked to my friends, talk to her friends and got some referrals from them. And then I checked out those websites from those photographers, and then based on what I liked from what I saw on those websites than I gave them a call and I do have a budget so I asked them for their rates and uh then I guess then I found the one that I like how many did you call? I called three to five okay, so we're getting some insight into what kind of customers she is right? Is it fair to say that your you have some expectations for what your wedding photographer is going to dio yes because all of my friends have got married said spend the bigger chunk of your money on the photographer because those are the lasting impressions and you really don't want to get a bad photographer because in those pictures last forever so I've said excited good amount and I know I don't want terrible pictures brilliant love it so we're getting so much information by asking a couple questions that would be totally fair to ask if we were a wedding photographer so what kind of what are your expectations for them? How did you come to be here today? You know what was your process of assessment? You know, how did you evaluate the options if I could ask the guys running the camera, their pride doing it already but let's stay tight in on suri's face she's an actress she's used to it she's more than comfortable with this but what you want to be doing is watching those seven thousand facial expressions that your customer could express when you're asking them questions and walking them through the process and she's very expressive which I love about her and so this is going to be great we're going to be able to read on it and I'm gonna be calling in so hopefully for the duration of this section everybody in the studio audience watch cherie everybody on home watch cherie we don't need to have me on the screen just yet okay, so you've talk to your friends you know girlfriends guy friends both girlfriends, friends of course guy friends guys yeah, see look, guys, whatever it's like I showed up that was my awesome gay guy friend people all right now who's of course they knew some people fabulous. Okay? And you talk to some of your girlfriends and you got some recommendations then you went on their websites you looked at their work, he kind of evaluated what was going on then you actually narrowed it down to maybe five of them and you called them and you had some specific conversations mostly about budget because that was something that was important priority it's a priority? Okay. So now, depending on the type of wedding photographer you are you know a lot about whether this is a good choice for a customer not are you the kind of photographer that charges one hundred thousand dollars for a wedding? This isn't your target customer if you're the kind of photographer that part of your brand is saying, we provide fantastic photos for people on a budget, this could be really good for you, but we also know but it's based on her answers, that she's a discerning customer, okay, we don't think she's going to be ah bridezilla yet we're not sure wait for it, wait for it, I like it, I like it, but this is good because we're not sure sometimes we don't know that they're the massa kissed amongst us that need a perspective client and there are a train wreck and we're like that's, okay, I can fix you ok, ironically enough, some of this do it this in our personal lives in our dating lives, right? Russ? Well, so we have camilla mendez, who is what I know camilla nice, and camilla says, unfortunately, though, I don't think your client would tell me she put a good amount of side for the photographer, they usually have the attitude of trying to get the biggest bang for their butt, right? So it depends on the different different person, right? The different customer, different audience member you're dealing with, but then you have jessica, who just chen did and said, I put aside a big chunk of money for my photographer ah, nice so again, it's who are you drawing in is your audience there's some audience folks who are like, look, my goal is to get this entire wedding done for five thousand dollars which in our society is actually a very low budget wedding, okay, that I know that shocking and I know some of you just threw up a little bit, but the fact of the matter is, I think in terms of the wedding industry in the united states, that would be a loan overall budget for the wedding, not for the photographer right by that sand dollars for a photographer that's a pretty good budget, you know what I mean? That's pretty solid by but some people spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on the photographer now before you say that's ridiculous, why would anyone ever do that stop and think as an exercise for your business? What would it be like to be that kind of person? Because you will learn so much about your customers if you have the ability to step into the shoes off other customers for other types of businesses, right? Because you may be thinking my on ly customer is the kind of customer that would spend five thousand dollars and you may be leaving several hundred thousand dollar customers on the table because you haven't thought big enough to think could I draw in that kind of person something to think about okay, so we've narrowed it down we've picked we've now come to day one and we're going to fast forward this to move to the process you've decided I'm going to hire joey you're going to be my photographer and you're going to shoot my wedding it is day one what are we going to talk about? We're probably going to talk about like the contract the packages that you offer packages and the women will understand these next ones I believe I would want my photographer to do the engagement photos and also the dress portrait's as well as the wedding day oh yes friends I have friends who have been married yeah okay so great so we're getting a lot of insight into what kind of customer we have right now she has some very clear expectation now before when I asked her so do you have any expectation she shared a little bit it wasn't that level of detail the more questions we ask, the more information we get, the better we are able to not only serve this customer if we decide this is our ideal audience member but also to chart a path to acknowledge where they're at so help me again cause boy there's a lot of photos that I must forget sorry honey, we didn't do all of those photos for our wedding s o we have engagement, engagement the dress dress dress meaning like fortune it's the it's when the woman has her dress and like the dress fitting no, no, no it's like you go to a pretty garden like the guy. All the women are like you're an idiot, and I'm like helpless because there's a lot of guys watching and were like, what the hell is the dress party? You go to a pretty garden and that's her with the dress on already lighting and everything. Awesome! Okay, the dress order nature porsche it's. Alright, great. And, of course, the wedding and then the wedding. Oh, yeah? Then then the thing that I thought we were here for the wedding photos. Okay, great. Good to know. So this actually trust turned into a three shoot client. This client that we thought when they came in the door was a one shoot wedding client. By exploring in the conversation, we actually figured out there a three shoot client. Now when the scale of one to ten, with one being uber low maintenance and ten being one of the most high maintenance people you've ever met, the role that suri is playing, not who she is, personally, the role that she is playing, where do you think she is? On that scale of zero to ten? Shouted out six seven the guy's air paralyzed the men in the studio audience are like oh my god, I didn't know there were three different types of photos how much is this gonna cost when I get married or oh my gosh, if my wife's watching this she's gonna wonder why we didn't do all of these and we're gonna have to go redo them now or whatever it may be all right so higher than five probably in terms of her expectation yeah, by the way, are we watching her face she's like, oh yeah, yeah, I'm really comfortable with the night and I'd say for me because I want to do all these than the relationship between me and the photographer is really important like I have to like you have to trust. So is that a stated or unstated goal that we think unstated absolutely unstated is relationship stated is three shoots stated is budget right? Ironically enough, we got into the conversation we forgot about that thing was one of the first things she said price sensitivity is really interesting to explore because a lot of people think that folks make decisions on price they don't they make decisions on price when you give them no other criteria by which to make a decision the reasoning lead with prices because we live in a world with their skeptical of the value they will get for the fear charging so they think if I say, hey, this is an issue of price that I'll tone you down a little and you won't freak out and you won't try to take me for all I'm worth, you won't try to maximize thiss something to think about, okay, what other unstated goals might we have let's instead of asking the client what air their unstated goals do the people online or the people in the studio audience think might be here, any thoughts look beautiful, right? Absolutely. Uh, no, no. Okay, now this is interesting. This is interesting. So I love having men and women in the audience because the men are still paralyzed. The men are still caught up in what is that address nature thing like, like the flowers and the road like, do I have to go to that? Or can I watch the game instead, right? Let's not do it on a notre dame football saturday. Okay? We're not gonna make that happen. All right? So stated an unstated what's fascinating. And this is why we want to lock into the persona. We never identified cherie's persona, and we actually did that on purpose in this exercise because we're going to identify it. Based on the conversation you've previously identified, the persona will have one of two personas when it comes to a bride right. The one that knows she's gonna look beautiful on that's, a really big goal and she wants things to be the best photos she's ever taken. And the one who that is definitely a goal. But she doesn't really know it. Or if she knows that it's so deep inside she hasn't thought about it. Yeah, so we've got a couple coming in. We've got abundance. Who thinks that they want to be made to feel important. Okay? And we have curious. So who says I want to remember everything? I want the memories. I want to make sure that those air captured did we see her face? Do we see how she just lit up right there? I don't know. The camera was on her when we said the importance sri was like and it was like and I wanted to memory I want to capture she's like and enough who's been on a roll today? No, I love it enough way to stick with us. It says I should I think she and you specify the character might be just a bit competitive. And my watch her wedding to kick every other weddings behind. Maybe it would be unstated, I don't know four way understated yeah, I think the biggest fears for the wedding itself I don't want it to be known as the worst woman in the world, you know it doesn't have to be the best because I don't have the budget for it but I want to be nice yeah and so what's great about this for me, tio okay, interesting so we just got so much from that interaction this is why please please talk to your customers we spent the whole time on emotions and body language and observing shall start asking questions they will tell you everything you want to know she just told us some wonderful things the competitive thing for enough for what it's worth you right enough with some people that's absolutely a big piece of it. Not for her. She probably doesn't want us to be seen by the other girls that she talked to as trying to compete with their weddings. Yes. Here we watching her face watch her face not me, right that's not quite right but she wants to feel really special about this. This is a big day. She wants to be able to remember it. She wants that she has a vision of what it's gonna look like it's a very clear vision that she's had for some time now yeah, we watch your face seriously. I mean, how about this all right, there you do you think that instead of saying that you and again, an unstated gold not that you want to be better than everybody else, but you want to be, you know, sneak you want to be special and different. You don't wantto have your reception at the same place is your best friend, even if it was amazing if it was the best place possible, you're going to go someplace else because you want to be unique and special and different on your day? Yes, I don't know if I would go out of my way to avoid something somebody else did, because if it worked, I'm going to make it work for me, too, but I definitely wanted to have some sort of anchored uniqueness, specialness, and then of course, I want my photographer to capture it well and not have things out of focus or whatever photography problems could occur. Yeah, so oh my gosh, I love these answers, and seriously, this is what you should be doing with your customers, right? Ask him the question. What is the worst thing that could happen with the photo shoot based on what she just shared in her eyes? Blurry photos, unfocused, the wedding photographers they're playing along in her online are going, yeah, thanks that's like the ante up trips for playing I don't knew blurry photos remember my earlier story about being the criminal defense lawyer and the things that were comfortable with me and I was worried about versus the things that my customers were worried about she's worried about blurry photos has she ever seen photos from any of her friends weddings that were blurry not from the ones that I asked recommendations from but I have seen back when he has seen but you okay, so you've seen bad wedding pictures but have you seen bad wedding pictures that were blurry or just bad wedding pictures that didn't really capture the moment and they okay blurry add like it is something that actually happened so it's a wedding photographer and I know we've got some awesome photographers that air in the chat room right now I've seen there work and they're wonderful they're going yeah, this is like I would never give you blurry photos like we got that were dialed in but now that we know that that's a big issue for her let's make that part of the conversation it's not stated for her we had to push and push and push to get her to state it in the opening volley. It was not stated she didn't say I'm looking for something that isn't blurry she didn't share that and if we really tried to get into the shoes of our customer we might not have even have come up with that on our own but what we probably could have come up with my goal is to only get married once I want to capture this moment in a very special way I want to memorialize this moment with the photos and from a lot of my girlfriends that I've talked to it was one of the happiest days of their life and I want to make sure that when the marriage is at a point where it's maybe not feel in his grade really watching her watch her not any artifact her I want to be able to look back at those photos and remember how I felt that day this is what we're doing right? This is where we're at in the process this is how by exploring the stated and unstated needs of our customer we can start to map and figure out where this is going all right? We couldn't do this all day we could have so much fun with it in the interest of time we're gonna pick it up a little bit and speed through okay so we go from the activation we sign up we get the package on a scale of one to ten and just to clarify here here's the positive scale here's the negatives so this is, you know, plus ten this is a minus ten where are you emotionally on day one I'd say a nine nine yeah, absolutely because guess what, folks she did her homework she's not just showing up randomly for an interview she had decided she was signing a contract with me before we even showed up for the meeting she talked to her girlfriend she looked on the website she'd called and talked to my staff this is where it's going to go now let's move in affirmation so this is the stage where right after the purchase before the first thing we're going to do so the first thing we're going to do is the engagement photos right? The engagement photos they're going to be over here in admission, right? Because that's going to be the first interaction where they actually see the quality of the work that thinking it through the engagement may not be included because thinking about wedding photo it may just be dress and wedding okay, sorry. No that's, right? No, no, no that's fine that's fine. So we will just dressing wedding. All right, so we'll just do dress this infamous dress thing that I'm still not one hundred percent sure what we're talking about. You examples okay, yeah. Did you hear that? I could show you examples if somebody always has examples of what there a vision of their wedding is you want to get that on day one you do not want to get that over here after you've done the photo shoot which is when a lot of you are getting it it's only afterwards that the person says I wanted my website to look like this other website you're like, why didn't you mention that when we first started this project orion one of my wedding photos to look like this one why didn't you mention that? Alright, ok, so we move in to the space between here when we acted me and where we're getting affirmed right up to the admission where we're going to do the actual dress shoot, right? The nature shoot what's happening here in the affirmation stage is kind of the buyer's remorse, making sure it's happening these air kind of some of the details, so this would be scheduling this in this scenario, right? This is finding the date what are we going to dio maybe talking through the shoot? Hey, which part was maybe some site visits? Which park do we want to do? What are we doing? I think during the affirmation quick response and then also giving me the details I would need like what kind of makeup should I bring? You know, how should my hair be or what works? What doesn't love? It was a great answer, so what's fascinating about this as a woman, I'm guessing sri has been wearing make up for some time I'm guessing every day she puts on makeup, I'm guessing every day she does her hair and look what's happening in the affirmation stage I'd really like to know like what I should wear for makeup, what I should do for my hair, things that she intuitively knows she's doubting and questioning why? Because she's in the affirmation stage she's in the doubt stage she's in the cognitive dissonance even when she knows for a fact I know how to do my makeup I know how to do my hair she's stacked this the desired outcomes so greatly that she's starting to doubt the stuff she actually knows so when unstated right now is doubt and what are we focused on as the wedding photographer let's get it scheduled? Which has not a damn thing to do with emotions factual, tactical, logistical those aren't things that have to do with really unsure about what the shoot's going to be do we see where right out of the blocks the way we're operating our business is different than what they need. So where are you now? We've gone from a nine toe where are you in this scheduling sewn seven seven so it's not a huge plummet because she already did her homework up here and we already started in it nine but were falling and we haven't done anything, said a jewel theory in biology class right there, two states in life we are growing or we are dying same with your customers were either growing from here or we're dying in this case, we're already at an robbery knocked down two points and we haven't even gotten a shoot scheduled. Okay, let's, make it better. We go to the admission we're going to do the dress in nature shoot. How is that going to go? So is this the ideal way or the not so pretty allow? Interesting, right? Holy cow, we get to right away put doubt in because she's so concerned that it's not going to go ideally she's not even sure if the question is. So what happens on that day? Well, is it the ideal or the not ideal? The reason? She's saying that because she's most worried that it's going to be the not ideal if she was sure was going to be the ideal, she wouldn't even have to say that some to think about. Okay, let's, just say, how do you think it's gonna go? Well, I'm going to be nervous, right? Because I'm afraid I'm going to look fat and bloated and the dresses and potentially gonna fit thes they're probably some of these will be stated, I'm nervous, yeah, fat, bloated, not fit guys just bear with me not to make this overly gendered like the guys there, like serious, like, I've never worried about being bloated in my entire life. Like, what do you even talking about? The women are like, oh, sister preach, I hear it. All right, how does the chute go? So so what's the scheduling, how long after the contract we do the dress nature that when do you want to do it? Like here engaged at this point, right? Yes. Oh, yeah, like two weeks. Fourteen. And so we probably scheduling knowing you you want to schedule the day after the contract was signed. Yeah, right. This is pretty easy. Let's get on the calendar. I need to know what I'm doing. Okay? We're doing admission. What are we doing? Where we feeling after the shoot? I have to shoot when we should. Sorry at the shoot when we show up, you know, we're nervous were anxious for feeling some tao were worried. What we're looking for is some handholding. Yes, what we're doing is the photographer is probably not hand holding. We're probably checking something off the list right now. Russ a very interesting kind of parallel right now is some people in the chat room are saying I give a shot list for for the wedding and then somebody else says I never give a shot list and they expect everything. No, I make them choose literally. So each item on your list has a predetermined amount of time while we're talking about people's emotions and about making sure that the customer is taking care of and they're unstated needs are being met, they're focused on the logistics. Still, thank you exactly. This is the problem that all of us have in our business. We have a live customer who wants to spend money with us right in front of us who is being really honest and really vulnerable and really opened when we ask questions. And what are we caught up in the freaking logistics? How are we gonna get it scheduled? How many shots are we going to do, what's my profitability per shot? How much time is this going to take? Every shot in the list has a specific amount of time. I'm gonna be on the shoot that bought a four hour package. I could only do this many shots if you want more shots, you have to buy the six hour packages. I mean, and the reason I'm doing it so fast is because the business owner that's what we're thinking and what is our lovely bride thinking, please just make me look pretty. Yeah, and and I don't know if if the teacher is coming across this because sandy says rush she should have decided whether she likes my work or not when she first viewed my work closer herself in a relationship with me. Oh, great, great. So and what? I'm sorry what's that person's name I got sam. Sam. Sam. Okay, so, sam, I love you dearly, but here's the deal if you want your business to be successful, you got to meet your customers where they're at now where you think they should be at? Stop doing that. You feel comfortable with it because you know your business better than anyone else knows your business. She's never gotten married before she's never done wedding photos before she is nervous. Is all khun b there's enough motion going on with the engagement? An actual relationship with the spouse to be that we don't need to pour more emotional baggage onto whether the freaking photos they're going to turn out or not. And yet that's where she's able to channel it because any doubt she has about the significant other any questions she have about making the right choice any fear she has about the by decision and buyer's remorse that may be kicking in with the engagement that's not going to get addressed let's just channel that right into the wedding photographer and the problem is, and I say this respectfully, some of the photographers and sam, I'm not saying this is you, but the position you were advocating could be seen as being advocated by this say, hey, look, this isn't my problem, this is her problem. She should've done better research and assessment, do you think she's picking up on that vibe at this point in the process, when we're in affirmation, when you're supposed to be making her feel good when you're supposed to be holding your hand and you're going, I can't believe she didn't. You better research? Yeah, the women in the room are going, oh, my god, if that was him, more were right there on because train wrecking this and again, sam, I'm not picking on you, it's, a perfect example of how most businesses are approaching their customers. And I have worked with photographers in different senses and whenever there's no communication from the first time. Okay, so find the bride again. One thing I want during the shoot is is validation. I want to hear like, oh, my gosh, that's, great! And and, you know, and a little bit of direction do this do that because whenever there's no communication, and if he's focused on if he knows it's great or she knows it's great and only focused on the shot and not communicating with me then I feel like they don't like me and this photo shoot is going to end terribly right because there's no back in force right and as curious so points out the thought process on the photographer side is what do I put in place to guarantee good result it's how my changing the lighting how my posing there to make them look good so I can show the bride a logical plan that will then automatically take away her doubt absolutely and that is a great idea if the bride understands things like shot list and lighting if she doesn't she's gonna look at that in here while while wall one noise that doesn't work instead what it should be is we're going to take great care of you I know you're probably nervous is khun b we've done this so many times we've had thousand you I mean you spent some time on our website is you saw we have four hundred eighty testimonials from the last two years of brides that we're thrilled with their photos you actually know five of them I saw that you're facebook friends with him I wasn't stalking you right but you know sarah, you know sally, you know these but that's how you came to us, you told us you were a referral literally and figuratively, I'm gonna hold your hand through this process it's going to be okay? We're gonna work together and guess what we haven't built in not only do we have this great checklist that make sure everything goes perfectly, but if it doesn't, we'll do another shoot just watch what happened with her shoulder she was like, oh, ok, now I'm good that was the money back guarantee I didn't say it's a money back guarantee, but I said we'll do another one and she was like, oh, okay, where it is now, we could spend the rest of our time mapping this all the way out where sri becomes a fantastic advocate what I think would be more useful for the future mapping, right? So right now you've already done your existing customer map those of you who did the homework, you have your customer map and let's pretend this was mapped all the way across let's do we're going to do a speed round of it? We do the shoot. How does the chute go? The end of the shoot I feel at a nine again you feel like a nine again? Okay, we get the shoot back up, why? Because we decide to do that. Are we getting the nine because of the conversation we just had? Yeah okay, so let's let's pretend we didn't have that conversation just first thing we'll come back to that pretend we didn't have that conversation and I just said hey it's next friday show up we'll be ready to go and you never asked me you never did the unstated hey what makeup should I bring or what should I do that never happened those were unstated you didn't say it I didn't send you a list saying this is what you should do and you show up with shooting we do the shoot where you at oh I'd be out of like a too too because I'd be so worried the whole time acclamation okay we get the photos back let's say you know we're going to pretend this is a week later you get the actual photos right? Are you happy with the photos or not if you were in it too the day of the photo shoot how good do you think the photos even if the photos are great, I probably still would rate it at a seven exactly even if the photos were a ten you can't get back up we can't dig out of this hole fast enough it could be the best quality work that the photographer is ever done but because of the emotional state of the customer at the time the interaction occurred that carries on by the way what usually happens is no communication during that time period no communication from the photographer. We scheduled the date when you're going to come in and look at the proofs and see the photos other than that it's, see in a week, we'll have him. And so you live in fear and uncertainty and doubt during that time.