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Danielle started Evoke Boudoir in 2016 with one mission: to photograph every woman who's ever looked in the mirror and not felt good enough. By 2022, that mission was generating $500K a year.
0:00Today we're interviewing Danielle Tercerio, owner of Evoke Boudoir in Northern Virginia, and today she's going to walk us through how she grew and scaled her photography business to 500,000 a year.
0:16All right, let's get started. Danielle, can you tell us in 30 seconds about yourself and your business and what you do?
0:23Sure. So my name is Danielle Tercerio and I own Evoke Boudoir. We are in the greater Washington DC area and I have been shooting boudoir for about 10 years. I currently own a beautiful 2,500 square foot studio that has basically dual studios and we are consistently a half million dollar studio, that is the revenue that we bring in with one photographer, one paid retoucher and probably a handful of hair and makeup artists with one primary person. We do have a booking manager as well and I love it. We are killing it this year and this year is about growth and action. Just looking for happiness in my business, being able to work a little bit more on the business than in it all the time.
1:17Awesome. Can you take us back to when you realized photography and your portrait studio was going to basically be your passion and your business?
1:28Yeah. So like many photographers, I was working a full-time job that I liked but it wasn't my passion. So I began, like many, taking workshops. I was originally like a Sue Bryce photographer, learning posing and I think that really set me up with a good fundamental base for boudoir. I realized that I could be my own boss and pursue solo photography, probably about two years into it or so. I was shooting out of my home and then I found a professional studio or a commercial studio space right down the street from me and that's when I knew, as I took small calculated risks that were still risks, that I was going to be able to do it in the revenue that I was able to bring in. So I was never a photographer that was charging 200, 300. My first sale was actually a thousand dollars and I was not a great photographer when I looked back at those photos. I had a lot to learn but I also was valuing myself from the get-go. So that's always been a part of how I've looked at my business and the value that it brings to people and making sure that I'm charging accordingly so I can live the life that I want to live.
2:53What year was that?
2:572013.
2:592013. And then you had a commercial studio by 20, what?
3:04I would say by 2016 or so I had, I was renting a co-renting space with another boudoir photographer who's actually we were quote unquote competitors but we shot in the same space. Our styles were different. No one ever knew. So we were shooting and booking clients from the same pool but we both were still working full-time. Now this is Julie Socker from Julie Socker Boudoir. She still is operating and doing amazing in Arlington area. I'm about 30 miles west of her. But it really doesn't matter. There's so many women for us in particular in this area that there's really no excuse to fill your books if, especially if you're just a solo photographer.
3:55And what's the best part of your business, like right now in 2023, like what's the best part on Sunday night and then Monday morning, like what are you looking forward to?
4:05Yeah, I think the best part of my business is my ability to do what I want to do based around it. So from the get-go, while it was important for me to charge my value, it was also important for me to put all the big stones in first that are my priorities, which are my family, my children, my happiness, my sanity and my house. Last year, well over the last year and a half, I've lost over 60 pounds because I knew that what I had to do to be physically active as a photographer, it wasn't going to work. It wasn't going to continue to work in my 40s. So I look forward to the flexibility and I'm looking forward to hiring new photographers so that they can start doing that work and I can watch kind of from afar as I get a little bit older.
4:57That's awesome. And having your own business, I've heard mentors tell me like you can't do both. You can't have a six pack and you can't be spending six hours in the gym and run a super profitable business. I think you can't afford not to do that. I think if you, what's the point of being successful if you are tired, you can't experience life, you are depressed, you are all the things that come with being overweight or obese. Again, I'm very body positive. I just knew what was best for me and my mental health and where I was at was not it.
5:36Yeah, that's awesome. For me, I was super focused on going to the gym last year. I went to the gym maybe five times a week. I was getting injuries and stuff and then I had to tone it down and I realized it was taking a lot of my time. And then when I started getting back into my business and hyper-focusing, in 2023 I was like I need to use every waking hour and have two days in one day. It's just been really hard to maintain that amount of intensity, but I found that walking, doing things in the morning, maybe not having the same intensity but just being consistent and eating better, that has made it so I don't need to spend four hours in the gym.
6:20Exactly. Now I'm very much focused on strength training and also increasing that TDEE, your overall motion. So when we were talking before we got on about your hour-long walks where you're thinking, that's the simplicity of it. You could actually do both. You're giving your body the exercise that it needs and you're working on your business at the same time. You're going to see improvements in how you think about your business if you are healthy and taking care of yourself.
6:51For sure.
6:53So I know we've talked about Evoke Boudoir as a whole, but tell us about yourself. What do you do outside of work?
7:03Oh, outside of work. That's so funny because when you're an entrepreneur, you're like oh, what do I do outside of work? I certainly have a network of women friends. I'm very involved in my kids' lives. So I have two beautiful children: Sawyer, who's 11, and Lila, who is three. They keep me very busy. I have two amazing dogs, Australian Shepherds, and if anybody knows anything about that breed, they keep me busy as well. And an amazing husband who I've been with for now longer than I have not been at 41. So his birthday was just yesterday and he's finally caught up to me. He always likes to joke that he's a little bit older than I am. And I love our community. I love working with other businesses in the community. It's a harder sell sometimes because of the type of work that I do. I have to make sure that I'm picking businesses that are really congruent with what we do at Evoke as a boudoir photographer.
8:13Is that something that you focus on, partnerships with other businesses?
8:18Sure. So I'm always playing to women-owned businesses and local places. Obviously in a big metro area, I'm going to make recommendations, but people are coming to me usually from out of state. We have a lot of Marylanders. We have a lot of people from West Virginia, Southern Virginia. So while it's not like a hair salon would do cross-marketing, we can do it from time to time. I found the biggest bang for my buck is through working with companies like yours, with setting up ads, getting people to know and understand what our business is, and marketing them in that funnel. But from time to time, we do those things that are worth it, like bridal shows and things like that. I just like talking about my business to real live people. That's fun for me.
9:14That's awesome. So we've worked in a couple capacities. I met you through the High Rollers program, which is like our group coaching program. So tell me, I know you said you've had your commercial studio since 2016 and I think you were one of the first to be in the High Rollers, like 2019. But tell me what business was like before 2019 and then after when you started focusing on some of the things that we teach.
9:42Sure. So I think I had put a lot of focus on setting up my brand and making it high-end. What I struggled with was getting that message out there in easy ways that I didn't know how to access. I knew that Facebook was powerful. I knew that some of these marketing engines and also using email were powerful. It was staying consistent to fill the books or doing launching large projects. Like we did our, I basically followed when I first came into High Rollers, I was following one of Jen's first five-thousand-dollar giveaway. So I was mimicking that process and I remember texting with you. As you were building that for Jen, I was just trying to make it myself. It was so incredibly successful that I was like okay, these guys are really onto something. What they're teaching really works. I think in that one sale, it booked me out for almost a year or so, which basically kept that momentum of our ability to continue to market even at a lower level. When you came in and I decided to hire you to help me with our marketing, we were still running ads that were from 2019 and they were still actually producing some leads. Things needed to be tweaked. As a lot of business owners know, you spend a lot of time doing the day-to-day and not planning and working on. So that's when I knew I could go and research how to do all this and do what I did in the beginning. But now I have the luxury to say my value is spent more on focusing once here and then I'll allow this group to help. That made a ton of sense to me.
11:37And it takes just, and again, it's about making less stress now in my life and deciding where the value is to outsource. Which, I think, for the most part, unless it's an integral part of your business and who you are in your brand, you should consider outsourcing if you can afford it and if it's going to make you more money. We know that marketing is going to make you more money. It's going to get people in your seats. And that's, I was feeling that pressure of the ads becoming old and stale and not having people in seats. And that I cannot rectify if I don't, if I have cancellations or I can't fill the spots.
12:21Do you know how many sessions you booked with that first giveaway you did?
12:26I think we did about 39 or something. That was a lot for us. Any other table we have ever done was like a handful. It really just filled our books for several months. We really kept it high-end and my giveaway was never a 99. It was always 199. So I have personally just shied away from that lower. It probably works for other people or it may work if you have several photographers. Those are things that I'm thinking about when I'm thinking about hiring these two new photographers. We may need to do that because we're just going to need more butts and seats.
13:17Yeah, and I know for a lot of students, the giveaway is kind of one of the bigger, more complicated ones. There's a lot of moving parts. There's ads, there's multiple landing pages. And a lot of times, photographers are almost like some of them are not ready and they're right that they're not ready to run something like that because they don't have the prices. They've never talked to people on the phone. They haven't taken more than one or two inquiries a month and now you're going to do hundreds of people flowing in.
13:48Yeah, but one of the biggest lessons is like if you are ready, just taking action, like opening up your pages and just seeing, does your website allow you to build landing pages like that? How could you build a checkout? Could you get a free trial for something? Could you do it on Square? So walk me through that because obviously that's a big daunting campaign. What was it like for you?
14:08Obviously we outline everything and we teach everything, but still a lot of people, okay. So I think it was valuable and it was tough. It took time, but it is again, I like to understand. I've always been a person that likes to understand the inner workings of how things work. So I did already obviously have a checklist, but there were things that I was learning along the way about what was occurring in the sales process. I was okay, all right. So they're doing this short form and they're doing a long form and I was putting together the puzzle of why this is being done, how you're capturing these people. So really, in many ways, when you're building something out yourself, which I highly encourage people to do at least on one of the campaigns, it's starting to teach you about marketing strategy. The long game is here about how you're going to continue to funnel these people into the places that you have the ability to market to them. Not everyone is going to buy initially, but if you never capture them, you're never going to be able to market to them in the future and hit them whatever the time is, the 17 to 27 touch points that will eventually turn them into either saying no or saying yes. And that was kind of a big thing for me. One of the things that we are preaching with, I think I mentioned we have a booking manager, and I'm kind of by proxy teaching her the things that come through Photography for Profits and also for High Rollers, is encouraging her to get as many no's as possible. Which is like the reverse. I'm like you just want to get them to tell you no because the more no's you get, the more yeses that you're going to get. But if you never make that ask, you're not going to get the yes. So I would encourage people to build it out. We, yes, it was frustrating. Like some of the, you were on the other day talking about all the workflows that you're building and I was looking at the charts of how things work because ultimately it isn't until you're testing them that they're not working correctly. But again, through all those failures is what you're really going to learn. And then you're not going to make those mistakes again. So it was valuable. It was valuable a because I worked really hard on it and b it worked. I get the frustration of there are times I'm sure and you've been there that you guys were like this is great, this, no it launches and it flops. Which you're not like why did that? It's their fault, the customer's fault. It's something about the offer. It's something about, you know, we're talking about International Women's Day coming up and your team had asked me about what would be a valuable offer. I was going with charity because I'm not ready to do a big giant flash sale yet. I feel like we picked up a little bit here and I was very into that. But I also know that that might not lead to as many conversions. During the pandemic, charity stuff works so well. We had people around 50 to 100 sessions and they basically committed things like the entire session fee to a food bank and stuff like that. And then we even encouraged our clients to reach out to people who organize food banks and stuff like that and to find something that they were passionate about and they would literally get donations where they got a lot of bookings. But there would be people sending money in saying hey, I just love what you're doing. I don't want a session. It's not for me but here's money. That's awesome and it was just really cool, just to give back to, to create a cause around something other than just hey, let's just be super profitable.
17:51Yeah. One other thing I think that's important, I think also as you get older essentially in your business and more experienced, those are the things that you start to look towards. You do think that, what, why is it that we're doing the why? The why is always there and we want to be profitable, but it's also how can we give back to our communities and for me in particular, I love the idea of doing International Women's Day and giving to a women-based charity because my business has always been centered around that.
18:22Yeah. And with you, what you were talking about like your studio manager, I do all my hiring. It's something I probably shouldn't do but because I do all my hiring, I have gotten really good at it and I really like feedback from the people that are coming through. A lot of times, most people might assume like oh, they have no power. They're young. You're in charge so everything you do is right. It doesn't matter what they think. They're just salty or if they don't get, if they're upset, it's their fault. And one thing I realized is I am literally trying to hire people to be on my team and they're almost more important than my clients. So I need to put even more effort into their onboarding, into how I interview them, in the process. So one thing I do for all my interviewees, before we even start getting on a call, it's a very intricate process. There's a lot of follow-up. There's very specific instructions. And there's a lot of flows and I have a CRM for them that's even better than the ones I have for my sales prospects, which probably shouldn't be the case but that's how seriously I take the hiring. And I always ask them the first question on the call is hey, before we got on the call, walk me through your experience getting to this point. How did you find it? And a lot of them have given me some really good insight. They're like hey, I was really impressed by this. I like that you highlighted this. I was confused by this. And whatever they tell me, I take it and I go back and I say okay, that was confusing and I take complete ownership of it. I'm just making it better for the next person. I'm light years ahead even with just all these small accumulations. Even now, if I have an interview, I had an interview the other day, somebody told me something and I went back and changed like three emails and text messages. And I think for a lot of people it's hard to ask that question because if you ask it and someone tells you something's wrong, sometimes you have things that they might tell you something's wrong that you've been doing for four years and you almost have to realize like hey, I've been doing something wrong for four years or two years, six months, whatever this funnel has been open for.
20:32And it kind of sucks to look at that, but if you can get past that pride and say you know what, as long as I'm just improving, it's not a zero-sum game. I'm not doing worse because I fixed something from the past. I'm just going to do better. I think that as business owners too, we get very siloed in not having a mirror on the things that we're doing and using either employees or those who have gone through the process to give us that mirror. We do it all the time with our clients. Like you were talking about how valuable employees are. I was just thinking about that and how when they leave, it's not only their salary and all the things that they're working on that we've paved into it, but they're also going to make us a lot of money too. That indeed you do need to take care of them more. Which is why I'm always asking Lauren, I personally have never been to Boston anyone before and I can own that and say I have never done that. So I'm going to suck at it at first. So the ways that I'm trying not to suck at it are saying like we have check-in calls and I'm asking her is anything that feels clunky that we're doing that you think that we can improve on? And I'm never going to say to her if she says this one thing that hasn't been working, it's finally someone is kind of proofreading our work. We don't always have that luxury and then we can make those changes.
21:58Yeah, I think too many people get egos involved. No, this is, there's only one way. Because if you, I mean I want to be learning and making mistakes until I'm taking my last breath. Because then I'm growing. I'm growing and I'm changing and the world is my oyster. So you told me how the first campaign you ran before the High Rollers. But what were you doing marketing-wise before you adopted our processes?
22:27I mean, we were doing absolutely no ads at all. Maybe I promoted posts here and there. So I really drilled down into how to create the ads. First of all, it was great just to have somebody walk you through everything. I had to literally slow down the video and watch it a couple times to see where I was going and the menus. You know, with Facebook and everything, they change their menus. So I was able to kind of drill down and do that. So before, we were boosting. We had a very scant email list. I didn't even have drip campaigns. Most of it was just Facebook and Google presence and then word of mouth. We did okay. I didn't do better than I thought, well, if again I was working a full-time job. The moment that I needed to really make sure I was filling my books, that's when I knew I needed to take a different approach to it. And the High Rollers really offered that opportunity in spades. Like the amount of, I have probably done like 25, 30 percent of what is in there and I know that I can always go back and learn something new and have updated information, which is why in this case I need to be running a business. So I was reaching out to you to help me with that. But when you are, your work is established as a great boudoir photographer or any type of photographer, you can come in and hit the ground running and make it work for you. I've seen it time and time again with all the people we've met, either through the High Rollers Club events in Las Vegas and in Miami. And it's just awesome. It's nice to see something that is proposed as being we've got it all and it really does. That sounds super salesy but it really does if you're willing to put in the work and get your hands dirty. And I think that for us too, going back to basics, there are things that we skipped. Like we were not prospecting. We you had to remind us again like go into some of these polls. Who are these people? It's not just social media. It's go and interact with these people who are commenting, looking at your posts. Something as simple as thanks for participating in our poll starts a conversation. Lauren, our booking manager, has booked several over the last week just doing that alone, costing you nothing, 10 minutes of your time. Just being like okay, we're going to message these people. Let's see if we get any bites. And either we'll get them to literally book, which she definitely did that last week, or we just get them into the VIP group, into the mailing list. And they definitely turn into conversions eventually.
25:31Yeah, and that prospecting is something that's so overlooked because we think no, that's, almost some people think we're just, that's beneath us or that's what you do when you're starting. But I think when you're even busier or when you have your ads going, when you have traffic going, that's really when it's the best, right? Because before you're just kind of doing cold prospecting but when you're doing like attracting leads and attracting traffic and getting eyeballs, then at least those people are a lot warmer. So your results are going to be a lot better.
26:14believe TikTok's free by the way because I learned so much but this woman basically said she only had maybe 800 followers on TikTok but she talked about how 99% of her revenue came from TikTok and it was because she treated her TikTok like her Facebook group
26:29I realized the moment she said that was because she's prospecting and she just talked about how every single comment she replied to, every single person she messaged, she had all her calls to action were engagement and she just created a lot of conversations and that's where her clients came from. It was something so simple. She could have just been sitting there posting to TikTok dancing, making people laugh and that works, got it. It'll drive traffic and eyeballs but to think she had less than a thousand followers and she was getting more bookings than someone with ten thousand or twenty thousand on the platform just shows it's not just the amount of touches, it's the depth of it.
27:05Yeah, and the quality of it. Like there's definitely quality people in your feed that you should be engaging with. You should be going through and looking into their profile. Who are they? Do they match your target client? I've found people who are probably, especially the ones that are watching the stories, like people who are sitting through and watching your stories on Instagram. I am messaging them and saying, just reaching out, nothing salesy. It doesn't have to be crazy and you also, when you have the luxury of being a little bit booked, when you are busy like you said, and putting out content, you're able to find out what works and what doesn't and it's not so desperate. That's one thing that when you're operating from marketing desperation, that's when you start to get your brand looks cheaper.
27:59You, so that was where I was having a concern because I never wanted to cheapen the brand by running too many sales. Again, that's me. Other people operate really great running sales all the time. That is a part of their brand. Look at Bath and Body Works. It's a great example. They're constantly running sales because they have to push a ton of product out. I don't. I only have so many seats to fill at a higher touch point and also what makes sense for my life. Working more does not always lead to happiness for me and so that's really been something that I've had to balance too. That while making money is amazing, it's the quality of the money that I'm making. Do I feel good about the product that I'm putting out, not only in photography but also in service? So that's something that I've been balancing too.
28:52And another reason why I want to expand the studio and hire more photographers because that will allow me to have that level of service because the moment that I feel like I'm burning. I don't want to say burnout. I'm burning the candle at both ends where you start to kind of resent the client a little bit for the little things that are bothering you. That's what I'm like. That's not what we do here. Like best photographers, we are service. We are grateful for them because they are the ones that keep the lights on and keep my family fed and doing fun things. And I really have to make sure that I'm reining that in so that I'm providing the best service that I can.
29:32That's awesome and by the way, I know you're talking about the stories and stuff. I actually obviously we have a lot of touch points because first we worked in the group coaching program but I always kind of look at it like, hey, where are a lot of my recent clients coming from? And for me, it's my email list and my stories on Instagram. Even though I don't have a huge following, I actually think like for you and me, you and I got on our phone call because you and I were interacting on Instagram. I think I was posting some screenshots of proof and some projects we're working on and then you reached out and we're like, hey, we need to talk.
30:07Yeah, and so I do. No matter what, you're still running a business so I'm paying attention to, man, you're like, let's get up, let's go, this is good for us. This isn't a busy time for this. This is a little less busy than it was. Let's get on the phone and make this happen. So, and had you let that fizzle for me, I might have felt a little bit differently whenever I talked to you, like, oh, I think you were like, let's talk right away. It's the same principle with that I preach to the booking manager and myself. You got to get them on the phone immediately regardless of whether they booked anything or not. You need to talk to them and see if they're ready to talk to you right now because the likelihood of them booking with you is way higher the sooner you can get to them.
30:56What's your day to day? Because I know before, obviously, your portfolio is already built, your website, like all your stuff looks good, your branding's good, you put a lot of time into that. So what's your day look like now?
31:14Right now I'm shooting. My schedule fills three shoots a week, usually Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday. I try to have Friday off and Wednesday off, although I will schedule ordering appointments, which is weird to me. Some I love ordering. That's my favorite thing to do. That has not felt like work to me at all. The work is already done. So Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday shooting in the morning and then in the afternoons around 2:30, I'm able to get lunch and stuff in there. I usually do ordering appointments either via Zoom or in the studio. Some of our clients travel pretty far so we do offer the Zoom. I have not gone fully Zoomed. I know Jen has and other photographers have. Some clients just prefer. They want to come in and I do like that interaction. I do feel like it is a better sales experience when I have them in the studio but I love the convenience and the simplicity of Zoom because when it's over, it's over and I can be done or I can do it from my home and then I can go downstairs and I'm already there. And I try to be done with everything by four or so o'clock in the afternoon so I can come home and see my kid. Not necessarily off the bus. The bus comes around 3:30 but be home with them and spend time with them before the day starts again. It's very different than it used to be. I used to commute. My husband and I both about an hour each day. And I get so much better sleep because I cared about the big rocks first. It is not about working hard. It's about putting the effort in every day. The day does start with exercise. I will say that too. The day starts at 6 a.m. with exercise and then the craziness of children and I get to the studio around nine. So it's great.
33:08Nice. And obviously you have more help now with the marketing so you can focus on the shooting. Lauren with your studio manager and social media manager and then with us doing all your paid advertising and what was it like before?
33:22So before you had to do it on your own, did that take a lot of time? Did you do that at night? When did you do that? So, it's for me I was always looking at how far out we were booked so we are always marketing in the sense that we were pushing a lot of social but what we weren't doing well was we didn't until we incorporated MeetNikki. That's something that we did before we hired you. I moved from Active Campaign and I think we had MailChimp and we had Chatra. We had all these other little tools that then MeetNikki just encompassed everything, including our email marketing. So that was really awesome that they were able to set this up for us, they were able to incorporate that because we did not have an if-you-don't-book email drip campaign. And that was something I always regretted that we did not have. So before, it was really a lot of social media and just having a brand presence in general. I think the consistency of what my work looks like, while it is not the best photography work out there, it's consistent in it. It delivers a certain product and that does help you. So, you know, and as at times when I mentor other photographers and I'm looking, I immediately go to their profile first to see what the consistency of their work is because we can all talk on the same level. It doesn't have to be stellar. It does have to be consistent and show that you're putting out the same product for each client.
35:09So that I think kept our bookings up more so maybe than somebody that's starting out and needs a little more tweaking of their portfolio.
35:17Yeah, I even for our employees, I tell them like when we take a client on, I'm looking for competency. I'm looking for the top 80th percentile. They don't need to be the very best in that city but they need to be to the undiscerning user, that's not like a judge at a photo show. They need to be able to hang with the pack and not be like an obvious issue. There's what's wrong with their skin? Why is there this? Why are all these objections I have to this? But I will say that like, when you're doing math and you're doing exponents, the portfolio is your base number. So if it's better, it makes things easier. It's easier to create a beautiful landing page when you have beautiful work. Otherwise, you have to hide things. You have to show less than the gallery. Now you can show diversity. Now you can show fewer poses and all those things. While the viewer might not know exactly why they like this photographer better, that consistency, the consistency in the skin color and the body shapes and the expressions, like all that adds up. And you know, if you're going to be spending on advertising, I'm not saying wait until it's perfect. Don't wait. But if you only have 10 watts of gold, yeah, but don't say when someone's giving you that feedback that you, when you've only been shooting for like a year and a half and you've had total of like five clients, which is great, but that's only five people in your portfolio. You're looking at people like me, people who have been shooting for 10 years, we're shooting hundreds and hundreds and we have to limit our portfolio to the year that we're working in. So to say that you've paid your dues, I hate saying that but it's true, you really do have to practice. Like we got here because we have been shooting for a long time. And if you want to go faster, get more women in front of you of all different body types, of all different posing and mobility, ages. You will learn a ton through that experience.
37:29You know, I, how did you get good? Because your portfolio to me is, when I show very talented photographers, you're definitely one that I show. So how did you? Was it passion projects? Did you do a lot of model calls?
37:45I never, so this is, I guess maybe this is where I feel like I'm a little more in divergence. I started out. My first boudoir shoot was a model call but I sold it. I sold them a price list in the thousands because I just, I never wanted to start there. I believe that what I had learned at least up into that point was valuable enough and it sold. So I really learned. Again, as I said, I was studying Sue Bryce. I started posing women in the portrait genre first so that really helped me because in some way, portrait photographers are going to murder me. There's like a restriction at times with portrait photography where you're on this backdrop and you're doing this and you're in one position and you're always sitting up or you're doing. And boudoir to me felt so freeing in the sense of being able to move a woman upside down to shoot her in any environment. I wasn't worried about, was there a window showing or was this backdrop? Did I have to extend this? I felt freed by that so I was just persistent and I paid attention to not only what I liked, which was really less important. I feel like photographers get caught up on that. I was paying attention to what people were buying. So I was like, okay, people really love this pose. How can I do more things that are like this? But why do they like this pose? So, you know, which is why I love the sales process so much because you're learning a lot about how you should direct your work. Then, if you want to make those higher sales, if you are not paying attention to when you're sitting in the sales room, how and what people are giving you, like the feedback that you're getting from these people who are hiring you, your customer is literally telling you what they didn't like about it. It might be anecdotal. It might be one time or what they really love about it because they're constantly buying that shot. So finding more opportunities in your work to provide variety that is like that shot, I try to do that because there's always this shot that sells with the wings in the mirror where they're standing backwards with the back through. Because I'm like, I don't want to be known as this one pose. So I try to find different ways to give that same effect where the client isn't totally going to know but they are. It's aesthetically pleasing to them and they're definitely going to say, I want that. I want that image. So in the sense of getting good, that is, I just stay consistent too. Like my current toning of my images is the same as it's been for the last probably two and a half years. That may change. I'm introducing things a little bit slowly. I'm definitely slow to add things in but that's who I am. I'm a perfectionist.
40:45Curious photography question. Do you use presets or do you have your own presets?
40:52I have presets. They are from a photographer who we no longer speak of in the industry currently, which is fine, but it's something that I tweaked myself. It's a look that I like. I like shooting darker and moodier. I also like a little bit of a matte tone and I love when jewel tones pop. So that's what I'm looking for. I like my work to look a little luminescent like it's glowing from inside out. And I think that you can see that in my work and our skin smoothing. I do work with a retoucher who has studied my style and she's wonderful and she has literally given me my life back as many people who have hired retouchers. So I will say I definitely started my photography journey very fast. It was like I was in the military. I knew I had to get out and I wanted to be a photographer full-time so I was super into the Super Ice world but all of her tutorials made all the backdrops at Home Depot and painted all the styrofoam.
42:00And what's funny is she did a Creative Live where she was sitting there saying, you're not, this might have been ten years now but it was something along the lines of, you're not a professional until you charge like a thousand dollars per session or something like that and I was so insulted because I was like, what? I've been charging a couple hundred. What does she mean by that? Sure, so the next time somebody called me, I remember I was in the parking lot of my daughter's childcare and I told the person the prices. I was like, session starts at this, prints start at this and you know a folio box starts at this. I had no idea. I didn't have any samples. Nothing. I just knew that she said to say that or something along those lines. And I remember the first couple sessions, it was really hard. I put a suit jacket on. I had to fake it till you make it. Although I love the product that I was showing my clients, but one of the sessions I thought it completely bombed because we went outdoors. I wasn't in love with what the couple was wearing. I legitimately on the way to do the showing, because I was working out of my house, I was going to clients' houses. I was freaking out because I was like, this is the worst session I've ever photographed. I was super hard on myself. I actually thought as I was getting out of my car and I had a bunch of samples of me, I'm going to refund them. I'm going to tell them I'll refund them. I'll give them the photos for free and I'll redo the session. And for some reason I was torn on whether I should refund them or should I just present a different option of buying. Instead of buying 25 images, maybe I'll just sell wall collages and triptychs.
43:38And I don't know how but they loved it. They bought only about seven images. They were all really big. You know, it was like a three thousand dollar sale. And I remember just being like, because I was confident because I presented it in the way, you know, they didn't love even 30 of the images. They only selected like 11 out of the 50 I showed them. It turned out well and I just realized, you know, just learn from this, keep getting better and if you believe it, they're going to believe it and they were happy with their seven images. So I feel like I like with the comment that you said, Sue Bryce again, she still inspires me to this day. I think that some people get it one way or the other for many but I think there's more context to what being professional is. It's that if you are charging whatever you are charging, you need to be able to say why that makes sense in your business. Like you need to understand that for me was one of the biggest realizations, really understanding what a business costs, then being able to understand what my time costs are, what I want to make and then translate that into pricing. Then you have, you're very confident in your pricing because you understand you are professional and that you understand how much it costs you. I don't care. Maybe you don't want to make any money at all. I always say that to the people who are charging 200. Maybe it's not important for you to do that. I'm not going to worry about you bringing down the industry because you're not going to be here for very long because it's going to wear you out by the things that you're doing and you're going to start that resentment creep, either because you feel as if you are not being reciprocated with what you are giving in value and that is true because you haven't figured out what that value is. So, and I meet photographers all the time, like how should I price myself? And I'm like, I don't know how you run your business. You have to know those things, be able to itemize them and then you need to know how much you feel like you want to pay yourself. It's sometimes I think it's things that people are scared to look at. The truth that's in front of them because numbers don't lie.
45:55Yeah, so the reason and I asked a couple of photographers to do these interviews with me and you are everyone has a very different story. So there are some that do 20 different genres, they own three different brand names. There's some that only do, you know, whatever. Some people are international. Some are men in boudoir. So everyone has a very unique story and the one I told you that was unique about you is like you were already successful like when me and you started working together last month and I kind of wanted to get into just that sprint mindset because like for me I look at projects and sprints of like, hey, we need to, when we set this up, we've set a foundation and now we move on to the next. And you know, we've talked in our Slack and we've talked on Instagram about some of the changes and some of the potential growth and like what the horizon looks like. So tell me that because a lot of photographers, you know, sometimes when I do consults, people will tell me like, why do I need you? Because I already make 200,000. And you know what's going to happen if I hire you?
47:03I think, I think you know it's funny. This is a terrible maybe to some people comparison but this is Jeff Bezos. I saw him speaking somewhere. I don't know if it was on a podcast or he was speaking at some event and he was like, a really big example. Some CEO somewhere said this. He said, I don't, you don't pay me to make a thousand decisions a day. You pay me to make three good ones. And I was thinking about that and I'm like, that is absolutely why if you want to grow, if that is your goal in your business, I'm already doing this. Well, okay, if you're already doing this and you're already sustaining this, you have to ask yourself, is it your goal to grow? Because it shouldn't be your goal to make a million other decisions to do these things. It should be your decision. It should be only deciding on a few things to let other people do it for you and help you grow that way. It's not my job to get into the nitty-gritty of how your designer is creating these ads and while I can give feedback, I'm interested in the big picture of all the things and that you can do to turn conversions for me and how things are happening. So in that sense, when you feel like, why should you hire someone? You should say so that you can finally grow and sit back and have your coffee while other things, while money is being made for you. That made perfect sense to me. So it is not it does not behoove me to make thousands of decisions a day and work all hours of the night trying to figure out Google Analytics when you I have a whole team of people who know how to do that.
49:03Yeah, that's why.
49:06And by the way, you were doing well, right? Like you just came off, tell us about last year. Like you came off of a really big year.
49:11So last year I actually cut back on my shooting. I was shooting four days a week and I cut back one shoot and I took the entire month of July off and I wound up being 25,000 more profitable in my profit margins. We didn't make as much money because if I took a whole month off and I took some of my that is okay but I did. I was more profitable with some of the things that I was doing. I have a great accounting service and that keeps me down the street and narrow. So again, it isn't always about making more money because I have asked myself and Jen and I have had these conversations in car rides over to the events in Miami, like you need to determine what your rules are. What? Again, it's awesome. I love seeing people succeed and do amazing and do thirteen thousand dollar sales. But I know how that comparison can get a little discouraging because it's not for me. It's not that for me today. What matters to me and what I value the most is that I get a good night's sleep and I am home to see my kids and not she's already in bed. I missed it because I was late at the studio again. So that kind of prioritization shift, which is why I can still continue to grow that business with hiring new people. There will be a curve where I am working a lot to get them up to speed but you know, that's why you hire more people in your business too, right? Because you can't do it all. And I bet you have some people that do it better than you.
51:02Yeah, I mean you have to know what you suck at. You know, Sue Rice would talk about that all the time. Like there are so many good nuggets of things that she has said over the years and you know, trickles down in the industry. You know, you really have to focus on what your goals are every year when you're setting them and make sure that it aligns with your higher self, your true self.
51:31Okay, so we, I think we started almost exactly one month ago. I think it was coming back from France at the time when we said yes.
51:38Yeah, I was watching you ski in the Alps and I was like, hey, you're doing cool things. I want to do cool things too.
51:45The priority was we talked we said hey you just had a killer year and we want to increase the amount of leads that are coming from non-sales. So we took a bunch of actions. For me one big thing is kind of what you were saying, that second pair of eyes of going through and seeing hey these ads could be better on Facebook. And we would get, let's just say we increased the budget and we get better click-through rates. I've been screenshotting some of the click-through rates and removing the errors from Google ads and stuff because you were doing them well. They were better than 90-95 percent of the industry. Obviously the results are that you were doing better. But then just going back and going through your Google ads, it seems small but doubling the click-through rate and the conversion rate, all those things start to add up. And then if we improve the landing page optimization where now we're getting more leads from the landing page. One huge lesson that I have found is just from working with so many different photographers, it's not always the amount of leads. I've had photographers be like well why. You know, because sometimes when I first started lead count was the biggest thing and then they would say well why don't I have 300 like that person but I had a hundred and I would tell them look you told me it was important for you not to chase down 300 people. You're not going to be calling them that much. You're just not that passionate about it. So we set up some gateways on the front end. Maybe we added more questions. Maybe we used more video that people actually have to watch a video instead of just seeing images. Maybe we highlighted the studio product instead of just the digitals and all those things. It might reduce the amount of leads but now we're getting higher quality leads, higher intent leads. And I think with that, even asking Lauren, you asked me why I put that question at the bottom of the quiz like does it help and I told you it'll probably reduce the amount of leads but the people that answer those leads are going to answer the phone. The people that answer that question yes are going to have more recall and more connection to your brand than if they just click two buttons and autofill. I think that was one of the things. So I was looking at first I was like okay I'm preparing myself to get all these leads and we actually, it wasn't a floodgate. In some ways that could be good too because you're just getting your bearings. That if you, especially if you're new, we didn't have a trained booking manager, or if you don't know what, it's kind of good to just taper that a little bit because you get better at being able to get on the phone and talk to people. But no, we have the quality of lead is there because Lauren is getting them. She's doing the things she needs to do to get them on the phone immediately if she can. Again, she also works two jobs and fits this in. But she booked 10 sessions in one week which was, we were booking like maybe one or two. Now that's exactly what I want to see. She was very close to hitting. We were like you kept checking in I was like well which day are we starting from because she's had, I think multiple days where she's had hat tricks too. So three, and that's our trick, three in a day. And she is improving because she's, I said when you find something that you like to say and it hits up against one of those objections write it down and she will get on the phone with me and say what do I say when this happens. What do I say. Because we have a firm now, we have a firm as a financing option and she's like what do I say whenever they want to finance the session fee and I say you say we might not be the best fit for you because if you need to finance four hundred dollars or if you need to wait for your paycheck to pay us four hundred dollars it can be sometimes not always but it's okay to say no. It is okay to say no to someone that you feel like is going to be a longer hassle in the long run. You want a good quality client too that vibes with you. There are people that are not good fits for you and they're a better fit for somebody else and we wish them well and hope that they find a great Boudoir photographer for their experience.
56:08For me in my marketing agency the biggest factor for my well-being is starting with projects and actually that's kind of our cheat code is I like working with companies like yours, exceptional photographers, exceptional work ethic, coachable. I'm already starting with an easy project. It's the ones where I used to have to convince people to do in-person sales. I used to take a client and then be like okay I'll convince them to follow up over phone and not just email. I'll convince them that pop-ups are not scammy and at every step of the way, I'd be putting 90 percent of my time in compared to the easy product. So for me I just focus on it. Well, I think that given that some people are just going to resist you from the get-go, I feel like the more that you pretend like you know nothing when you come into a situation, there's a lot about Google Analytics, Google Ads, Facebook Ads that I now do not know about that you guys know. So when you were talking about conversion rates and doubling this and the click through, I'm like I think a lot of photographers are like oh my God so then you should let somebody that knows how to do it handle that part. I firmly believe you're never going to be able to know, especially with marketing because it's literally other than the clients being hired and that is it. If you are not putting a lot of effort, time, money into your marketing it will not show on the other side. Consistency as well, consistency, consistency, consistency. What you're doing three months before is going to be affecting today. And it did and it showed that I was lacking consistency and we also were lacking some forward thought that is absolutely the kiss of death for your books. You have to be looking ahead and being like how. So you would work on it and maybe like sprints but then not maintaining. So you were like, I think that there is value to that as long as you are paying attention to if you, because it's at some point we can't. We weren't booking out so far from that five thousand dollar giveaway that we were building a pretty good wait list as well but it was almost like man you guys are working out so far. We were turning work away. There's a happy medium there but you just have to make sure that you're keeping your pulse on what is happening, how the book, how many good quality leads are coming in and then how many conversions you're actually making and how far out that's happening. You really do have to. And that's in this new year I was going to do a Black Friday sale. I think that what I've decided now is I'm going to do some kind of giveaway that involves travel like going to Italy to stay for a month which is something that I wanted.
59:26Sounds like fun. What do you think is the biggest thing that you've done, like you don't get no one else credit, that you've done that has led to your success? And by success I mean obviously the amount of women you shoot, your average sale, the revenue you bring. I think it's taking responsibility. So literally this is something that really clicked for me. I apologize I don't remember the name of the author. I just finished reading The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Bleep. And one of the things he talks about all the time is that something might not be your fault but it's still your responsibility. And I think that, and I was saying this to my son the other day, like you know I was like it's not your fault but it's your responsibility and that is so true in business ownership. Where ego can get in the way, for me the biggest thing was accepting that certain things are not my fault with how my clients behave or interact or do something or don't do something but it is my responsibility to change that and let go of my ego and not blame them. Never once have I gotten on Facebook or Instagram and talked about how I dislike what a client is doing because it's my responsibility to change that. So that's for me one of the biggest things, taking responsibility in your business because you're the boss and whatever happens is your fault in some way but if it isn't it is your responsibility to fix it.
61:15So obviously you're doing really well. You're definitely up there. What's it like? Do you have more confidence to do this? Does the success allow you to do other things in your business that you otherwise wouldn't? Yeah I think I operate, I try to operate from a place now. I'm 41 years old so I really want to speak my truth all the time and even to this day, I was getting on with you and I'm thinking if I had, I have imposter syndrome I think a lot of women do. They always are like you know well I'm good but I'm not that good but I'm as good as I need to be for me in my world in my circumstance and that's okay. So while it feels good to be a top, I'm always going to be clamoring to do something different. My ADHD brain will lead me to hyper focus and learn something new. I've been thinking about working more with video. Ever since I worked with a videographer and the only wedding I ever shot I was entranced by video. I also am very good friends with Michael Sasser who inspires me all the time and I want to do more things with moving pictures because I think that they're just so evocative. And I can say that little plug but yeah, so that's I think again focusing on moving past comparison to determine what is important for you, that is so much more fulfilling than what someone else is doing on the street.
62:56Yeah I think something that you just said, I think it's really important that we don't just talk about where you are now because it's so easy to say oh well this is this kind of studio, these are these numbers but you are what you do and you are what you do every day. So all of your success comes from all the actions you took the last seven years, ten years. It's not just that you exist and now you're this. It's like every day the decisions you make, what to prioritize, what to put your time into, what to delegate, that is where all this comes from. Yeah and it should fuel you. And like I said I'm glad to have found, I again I've always loved working with you and Jen because you're not going to sugarcoat anything and I come from a very, I had only had brothers in my household and a mom who told it straight. Like don't waste my time, tell me what you think I should fix and I'm not going to take it personally and if you find yourself doing it personally you got to look inward. There's some introspection that needs to happen because it's not your fault but it's your responsibility.
64:13Yeah and sometimes, there's I am the first to recognize not everything works for every studio. Like if you don't love TikTok and you don't like that format but you put all your effort into email marketing, I've seen people that barely use social media but their email marketing is their thing. Email marketing still works. It's still there for sure. We still get, now that we've implemented a drip chain, which is wild. I'm like there's people out there that are going to hear this and be like I'm like no we didn't and you should be honest with yourself about some of the things that you don't have and it's okay to be like you don't have that yet and you're still okay or you could improve it. We've gotten, Lauren's like wow yeah we just got somebody that wrote me back and said yeah they're ready to book a call and then she booked and I'm like had we not had that system that's one person that slipped through the cracks. It's the long game, it's the long game. It's easy to also build that automation and then forget you still have to email on top of that. So your broadcast, keep building that automation, whichever one you choose but you got to be consistent.
65:26Okay so there's probably a lot of people listening to this that are like oh it's so easy for you because you're already successful. It was easy for you to decide to hire Umberto and work and adopt this. So what would you say, what were your doubts even for the high rollers or for me? Because there has to be doubt where you question?
65:45Yeah sure I think any decision that you're ever going to make that feels like a big chunk of investment is like this better payoff but I also know that I've seen it work already. So I came through with high references because I've seen everybody that has done it. I obviously have been in the industry for a long time but I started shooting out of my house, not this one but it did have carpeting like this one. And I think that my doubts were I didn't put, I knew I was in a financial position to do it and what do I have to lose here? What do I, I'm already behind. I was already behind in booking and I had already seen what Nikki had done for me. I feel it was a great value to me. I was like yeah I'll pay that much to have them set it up for me and transition all my other products which can be really stressful for photographers and studios because it's like when am I going to have the time to move these emails and migrate things? That's a lot. And so I felt like I had all the dominoes in place to go. So doubt is yes, it's a big investment but so is our photography and if you feel like the person meshes well with you and is going to give it to you straight and is going to work hard, which I've already seen the team that is professional working with me, I can ask a question and have an answer almost immediately. There's no like there's no I can give, I again it's got to be a place where I can give honest feedback, it's not personal, like I like this or I don't like this. And they give me the same. Your team gives me the same like I think this would work better. Okay great you probably know because I am not in an ecosystem of working with Facebook Ads or Google Ads. You guys are. So that is the value that you have to think about. Each lead for us coming into the studio is thirty five hundred dollars. That is worth it to me to invest in a company that's going to assist in getting those people who are worth that to my revenue and bottom line.
68:26Okay thanks. The last question is what is your goal in the future? What are the two or three big things that you're trying to do in the next year or two? I want to be working on my business more and less in it. I want to have higher end sessions with just me that I do less frequently. That's just me. Some people really love shooting all the time and that's awesome. I think everybody who works in photography or owns a studio does need to ask themselves what matters. I want to do that so I can create more passive income from other associates that are working with us so I can travel more, so I can really live more of the life that I want to live which is travel with my kids. I don't want to go to Italy, I want to stay for a while. Airbnbs in the summer, I want to incorporate photography into that but it's not I wouldn't tell you it's going to be a dollar sign. Also investing in property because right now I'm renting a commercial space and every time I have to write that check each month it is annoying because it is not. I'd rather be investing in the business with something that has value because rent for me is, I do have a question because I know we talked about this before and it was about hiring. So I know you did the social media and now you've done marketing, especially the paid in marketing but hiring, what's the next step for that? Yeah so I think that I feel I hate being like I know I have to be ready but I do. I have to mentally prepare myself. It requires a lot of executive functioning that I'm not stellar at. So actually it's funny that we were talking about ChatGPT because I was actually utilizing it to brainstorm about training photographers and it was doing a pretty good job of creating a step-by-step outline for that. I feel like my integral step between that is doing an in-person workshop in my studio. I actually really like teaching and I'd be willing to have photographers fly in to stay for five to ten days and then just teach them about how everything runs. And that would be a good outline of how I'm going to train these associates. So and also just my ability to operate that way, teach everything that I can to those folks in a smaller workshop situation and then go from there because ultimately I want to be out of it a little bit more and watch because I am 41. I am not going to be a Boudoir photographer forever. So if I can set myself up where I can sell my business to someone, even if it's not my daughter, God bless her she's three, I don't know whether she's going to want to, but we're going to pass this down. But you know I'm forward thinking like that because I'm 41.
71:58Yeah that's awesome and yeah that is actually I did not brainstorm or put that into the book topics that I thought, was selling your business but now that you told me, there you go. Yeah and exactly, the only reason why, well not the only reason why, I did have a client who in her 60s was very interested in how I operated my business because she ran her own multi-million dollar consulting business in the DC area. It is a huge business and you know she was more than willing to talk to me about how she did it. It's a different concept but we are business owners. It might be scaled down but these are things that you need to think about in the long term plan. So if that has assisted you in adding another topic I'm glad. It's a big one. Yeah because otherwise what happens? Yeah what happens to it? And it has value. It has value and if you have systems set up where it is somewhat plug and play for a photographer because everything should be like, again we are artists of course we are and people are drawn to our brand of course we are but you can become a brand that is not just recognized for you. Get your ego out of the way and allow that to happen if that's your goal. If your goal is to be the face of your brand then that's your goal but if your goal is to create something that can then be plug and play for someone else to use that has value and you can sell it then you can pursue that as well.
73:37Yeah for sure well thank you so much I got so much insight from this and yeah is there anything else, any last words? I don't think so. I again just enjoy failure. Enjoy failure and know that there's lots of people out there that never even took the step to act. So if you are going out and screwing up, first of all you're learning about what worked and what didn't but you're out there doing it. You're doing it and you have to keep trying and accept criticism and critique that is coming from a loving place that wants to help you grow. Obviously there are people out there that give critiques that are coming from a different place but the willingness to change.
74:29For sure yeah I'll accept critiques from people in the arena any day but if they're on the side doubting themselves, doubting everyone else then no. You have to. I somebody commented the other day on one of our ads. It's a gal who's in sunglasses and she's inside and she's in front of this mirror and it's a cool shot, it's a vibe, it's not like. And this girl's like commenting like why is she wearing sunglasses inside and I'm like I wrote back because I'm quippy. I'm not going to ever battle anybody on Facebook or in comments so I was just like I wear my sunglasses at night and I made a smiley face. She was like I hope not. Listen everybody thinks certain things are sexy. We incorporate different things into people shoot. She loved her Ray-Ban sunglasses so we incorporated those things and then I piqued her profile just a little bit and she was of course like she was a very unhappy person. So do not take advice from trolls on the internet. Take advice from people who are doing better than you and that also is something that I would suggest is if you are in a room and you are the most successful person you know, get out of that room. Go find people that are doing way better, doing what you want to do or where you want to be and study them. Follow them, pay attention to them. Pay them for their time. I've always done that from the beginning. I wanted to find people who are doing things well. I found you and I found Jen and I've paid you for your time and you have it has rewarded me tenfold.
76:08Awesome thanks so much for the kind words and hope you have a kick-ass day. You too. Okay take care. Thanks we'll see each other.